The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (2 volume set) [1 ed.] 1473925096, 9781473925090
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education offers an ambitious and international overview of the current landsca
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Table of contents :
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education - Volume 1
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on the Editors and Contributors
Consulting Reviewers
Chapter 1: Mapping an International Handbook of Research in and for Teacher Education
SECTION I. Mapping the Landscape of Teacher Education
Chapter 2: Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
Chapter 3: Teacher Education: A Historical Overview
Chapter 4: The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems in Teacher Education
Chapter 5: Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View
Chapter 6: The Continuum of Pre-service and In-service Teacher Education
Chapter 7: What We Know We Don’t Know about Teacher Education
SECTION II. Learning Teacher Identity in Teacher Education
Chapter 8: Connecting Teacher Identity Formation to Patterns in Teacher Learning
Chapter 9: Developing Teacher Identity through Situated Cognition Approaches to Teacher Education
Chapter 10: Developing the Personal and Professional in Making a Teacher Identity
Chapter 11: Identity Making at the Intersections of Teacher and Subject Matter Expertise
Chapter 12: Teacher Education as a Creative Space for the Making of Teacher Identity
Chapter 13: Developing an Activist Teacher Identity through Teacher Education
SECTION III. Learning Teacher Agency in Teacher Education
Chapter 14: Shaping Agency through Theorizing and Practising Teaching in Teacher Education
Chapter 15: The Dialectic of Person and Practice: How Cultural-Historical Accounts of Agency Can Inform Teacher Education
Chapter 16: The Impact of Social Theories on Agency in Teacher Education
Chapter 17: Narrative Theories and Methods in Learning, Developing, and Sustaining Teacher Agency
Chapter 18: Unsettling Habitual Ways of Teacher Education through ‘Post-Theories’ of Teacher Agency
SECTION IV. Learning Moral and Ethical Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education
Chapter 19: Teacher Beliefs and the Moral Work of Teaching in Teacher Education
Chapter 20: Developing Teachers’ Capacity for Moral Reasoning and Imagination in Teacher Education
Chapter 21: Disrupting Oppressive Views and Practices through Critical Teacher Education: Turning to Post-Structuralist Ethics
Chapter 22: Developing Teachers’ Cognitive Strategies of Promoting Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education
Chapter 23: Strengthening Sociocultural Ways of Learning Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education
Chapter 24: The Moral Work of Teaching: A Virtue-Ethics Approach to Teacher Education
SECTION V. Learning to Negotiate Political, Social, and Cultural Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education
Chapter 25: Micropolitics in the Education of Teachers: Power, Negotiation, and Professional Development
Chapter 26: Teachers Learning about Themselves through Learning about ‘Others’
Chapter 27: A Decolonial Alternative to Critical Approaches to Multicultural and Intercultural Teacher Education
Chapter 28: Recruitment and Retention of Traditionally Underrepresented Students in Teacher Education
SECTION VI. Learning through Pedagogies in Teacher Education
Chapter 29: Developmental Learning Approaches to Teaching: Stages of Epistemological Thinking and Professional Expertise
Chapter 30: A Foundation for Effective Teacher Education: Teacher Education Pedagogy Based on Situated Learning
Chapter 31: Constructivist Learning Theories in Teacher Education Programmes: A Pedagogical Perspective
Chapter 32: Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Chapter 33: Learning and Teaching with Technology: Technological Pedagogy and Teacher Practice
Chapter 34: Teacher Education Pedagogies Based on Critical Approaches: Learning to Challenge and Change Prevailing Educational Practices
Chapter 35: Culturally Relevant Teacher Education Pedagogical Approaches
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education - Volume 2
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on the Editors and Contributors
Consulting Reviewers
Section VII: Learning the Contents of Teaching in Teacher Education
Chapter 36: Teacher Education in English as an Additional Language, English as a Foreign Language and the English Language Arts
Chapter 37: Teacher Education in Social Studies and Civic Education
Chapter 38: The Political Shaping of Teacher Education in the STEM Areas
Chapter 39: Research for Physical Education Teacher Education
Chapter 40: The Creative Arts and Teacher Education
Chapter 41: Teacher Education in Religious Education
Chapter 42: Teacher Education in Technical Vocational Education and Training
Chapter 43: The Curriculum of Early Childhood and Lower Primary Teacher Education: A Five-Nation Research Perspective
Chapter 44: Teacher Education in Inclusive Education
Section VIII: Learning Professional Competencies in Teacher Education and throughout the Career
Chapter 45: Understanding the Development of Teachers’ Professional Competencies as Personally, Situationally and Socially Determined
Chapter 46: Teachers’ Professional and Pedagogical Competencies: A Complex Divide between Teacher Work, Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education
Chapter 47: Developing Teachers’ Competences with the Focus on Adaptive Expertise in Teaching
Chapter 48: Evolution of Research on Teachers’ Planning: Implications for Teacher Education
Chapter 49: Developing Teacher Competence from a Situated Cognition Perspective
Chapter 50: Critical Approaches in Making New Space for Teacher Competencies
Section IX: Learning with and from Assessments in Teacher Education
Chapter 51: Filtering Functions of Assessment for Selection into Initial Teacher Education Programs
Chapter 52: Summative Assessment in Teacher Education
Chapter 53: Formative Assessment in Teacher Education
Chapter 54: Teacher Assessment from Pre-service through In-service Teaching
Chapter 55: Functions of Assessment in Relation to Sociocultural Teacher Education Approaches
Chapter 56: Functions of Student-centred Approaches to Assessment in Teacher Education
Chapter 57: Functions of Assessment in Social Justice Teacher Education Approaches
Section X: The Education and Learning of Teacher Educators
Chapter 58: Defining Teacher Educators: International Perspectives and Contexts
Chapter 59: A Quest for Teacher Educator Work
Chapter 60: Professional Learning and Development of Teacher Educators
Chapter 61: The Promise of the Particular in Research with Teacher Educators
Section XI: The Evolving Social and Political Contexts of Teacher Education
Chapter 62: Adapting to the Virtual Campus and Transitions in ‘School-less’ Teacher Education
Chapter 63: Multiple Voices and Participants in Teacher Education
Chapter 64: The Role of Policy as a Shaping Influence on Teacher Education and Teacher Educators: Neo-Liberalism and its Forms
Chapter 65: Globalization and Teacher Education
Chapter 66: Research in Indigenizing Teacher Education
Section XII: A Reflective Turn
Chapter 67: Pushing Boundaries for Research on Teacher Education: Making Teacher Education Matter
Index
Citation preview
The SAGE Handbook of
Research on Teacher Education
Book 1.indb 1
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WORKING EDITORIAL BOARD Janice Huber, Canada Juanjo Mena, Spain Jerry Rosiek, USA Mistilina Sato, USA Auli Toom, Finland
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Beatrice Ávalos, Chile Douwe Beijard, Netherlands Gavin Brown, New Zealand Robert V. Bullough, Jr, USA Rosie LeCornu, Australia Effie Maclellan, UK Elaine Munthe, Norway Lily Orland-Barak, Israel Brigitte Smit, South Africa Quan Xu, China Ji-Sook Yeom, Korea Ken Zeichner, USA
Book 1.indb 2
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The SAGE Handbook of
Research on Teacher Education
Edited by
D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu
Book 1.indb 3
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SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483 Editor: James Clark Editorial Assistant: Colette Wilson Production Editor: Shikha Jain Copyeditor: Rosemary Campbell Proofreader: Sunrise Setting Ltd. Indexer: Cathryn Pritchard Marketing Manager: Emma Turner Cover Design: Wendy Scott Typeset by: Cenveo Publisher Services Printed in the UK At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in the UK using FSC papers and boards. When we print overseas we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the PREPS grading system. We undertake an annual audit to monitor our sustainability. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943498 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4739-2509-0
Book 1.indb 4
Introduction & editorial arrangement © D. Jean Clandinin & Jukka Husu 2017 Chapter 1 © D. Jean Clandinin & Jukka Husu 2017 Section I Introduction © Jerry Rosiek 2017 Chapter 2 © Jerry Rosiek & Tristan Gleason 2017 Chapter 3 © Wendy Robinson 2017 Chapter 4 © Maria Teresa Tatto & James Pippin 2017 Chapter 5 © Rose Dolan 2017 Chapter 6 © Clive Beck & Clare Kosnik 2017 Chapter 7 © Gavin T.L. Brown 2017 Section II Introduction © Douwe Beijaard 2017 Chapter 8 © Jan D. Vermunt, Maria Vrikki, Paul Warwick & Neil Mercer 2017 Chapter 9 © Sue Cherrington 2017 Chapter 10 © Douwe Beijaard & Paulien C. Meijer 2017 Chapter 11 © Francine Peterman 2017 Chapter 12 © Beverly E. Cross 2017 Chapter 13 © Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay & Florence R. Sullivan 2017 Section III Introduction © Lily Orland-Barak 2017 Chapter 14 © Effie Maclellan 2017 Chapter 15 © Anne Edwards 2017 Chapter 16 © Ryan Flessner & Katherina A. Payne 2017 Chapter 17 © Janice Huber & Ji-Sook Yeom 2017 Chapter 18 © Lisa Loutzenheiser & Kal Heer 2017 Section IV Introduction © Robert V. Bullough, Jr 2017 Chapter 19 © Matthew N. Sanger 2017 Chapter 20 © Alison Cook-Sather & Kira J. Baker-Doyle 2017 Chapter 21 © Mark Boylan 2017 Chapter 22 © Luciano Gasser & Wolfgang Althof 2017 Chapter 23 © Robert Thornberg 2017 Chapter 24 © Sandra Cooke 2017 Section V Introduction © Roland W. Mitchell 2017 Chapter 25 © Geert Kelchtermans & Eline Vanassche 2017 Chapter 26 © Mary Louise Gomez & Amy Johnson Lachuk 2017 Chapter 27 © Michael Vavrus 2017 Chapter 28 © Roland W. Mitchell, Sara C. Wooten, Kerii LandryThomas & Chaunda A. Mitchell 2017 Section VI Introduction © Juanjo Mena 2017 Chapter 29 © Juanjo Mena, Paul Hennissen & John Loughran 2017 Chapter 30 © Fred A.J. Korthagen 2017 Chapter 31 © Gary Harfitt & Cheri Chan 2017 Chapter 32 © Jan H. van Driel & Amanda K. Berry 2017 Chapter 33 © Doron Zinger, Tamara Tate & Mark Warschauer 2017 Chapter 34 © Viv Ellis & Meg Maguire 2017
Chapter 35 © Jae Major & Jo-Anne Reid 2017 Section VII Introduction © Cheryl J. Craig 2017 Chapter 36 © Quan Xu, Simmee Chung & Yi Li 2017 Chapter 37 © Wing On Lee & Maria Manzon 2017 Chapter 38 © Tony Brown 2017 Chapter 39 © Lee Schaefer, lisahunter & Shaun Murphy 2017 Chapter 40 © Robyn Ewing 2017 Chapter 41 © Elina Wright & Andrew Wright 2017 Chapter 42 © Bonnie Watt 2017 Chapter 43 © Robert V. Bullough, Jr & Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon 2017 Chapter 44 © Kirsi Tirri & Sonja Laine 2017 Section VIII Introduction © Auli Toom 2017 Chapter 45 © Sigrid Blömeke & Gabriele Kaiser 2017 Chapter 46 © Auli Toom 2017 Chapter 47 © Jan van Tartwijk, Rosanne Zwart & Theo Wubbels 2017 Chapter 48 © Elaine Munthe & Paul F. Conway 2017 Chapter 49 © Sue Catherine O’Neill 2017 Chapter 50 © Monica Miller Marsh & Daniel Castner 2017 Section IX Introduction © Mistilina Sato 2017 Chapter 51 © Robert Klassen, Tracy Durksen, Fiona Patterson & Emma Rowett 2017 Chapter 52 © Jeanne Maree Allen 2017 Chapter 53 © Susan M. Brookhart 2017 Chapter 54 © Mistilina Sato & Sara Kemper 2017 Chapter 55 © Bronwen Cowie & Beverley Cooper 2017 Chapter 56 © Surette van Staden & Brigitte Smit 2017 Chapter 57 © Valerie Farnsworth 2017 Section X Introduction © Stefinee Pinnegar 2017 Chapter 58 © Jean Murray 2017 Chapter 59 © Robert Kleinsasser 2017 Chapter 60 © Linor L. Hadar & David L. Brody 2017 Chapter 61 © Stefinee Pinnegar & Mary Lynn Hamilton 2017 Section XI Introduction © Beatrice Ávalos 2017 Chapter 62 © Craig Deed 2017 Chapter 63 © Katherina A. Payne & Ken Zeichner 2017 Chapter 64 © Beatrice Ávalos & Paula Razquin 2017 Chapter 65 © Lynn Paine, Elena Aydarova & Iwan Syahril 2017 Chapter 66 © Brooke Madden & Florence Glanfield 2017 Section XII © Jukka Husu & D. Jean Clandinin 2017 Chapter 67 © Jukka Husu & D. Jean Clandinin 2017
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Contents List of Figuresxii List of Tablesxiii Notes on the Editors and Contributorsxiv Consulting Reviewersxlv
Volume 1 1
Mapping an International Handbook of Research in and for Teacher Education D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu
Section I MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE OF TEACHER EDUCATION Jerry Rosiek 2
Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn Jerry Rosiek and Tristan Gleason
3
Teacher Education: A Historical Overview Wendy Robinson
4
The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems in Teacher Education Maria Teresa Tatto and James Pippin
23
29
49
68
5
Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View Rose Dolan
6
The Continuum of Pre-service and In-service Teacher Education Clive Beck and Clare Kosnik
107
7
What We Know We Don’t Know about Teacher Education Gavin T.L. Brown
123
Section II LEARNING TEACHER IDENTITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Douwe Beijaard
Book 1.indb 5
1
90
139
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vi
8
9
10
11
12
13
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
Connecting Teacher Identity Formation to Patterns in Teacher Learning Jan D. Vermunt, Maria Vrikki, Paul Warwick and Neil Mercer
143
Developing Teacher Identity through Situated Cognition Approaches to Teacher Education Sue Cherrington
160
Developing the Personal and Professional in Making a Teacher Identity Douwe Beijaard and Paulien C. Meijer
177
Identity Making at the Intersections of Teacher and Subject Matter Expertise Francine Peterman
193
Teacher Education as a Creative Space for the Making of Teacher Identity Beverly E. Cross
210
Developing an Activist Teacher Identity through Teacher Education Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay and Florence R. Sullivan
Section III LEARNING TEACHER AGENCY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Lily Orland-Barak 14
15
247
Shaping Agency through Theorizing and Practising Teaching in Teacher Education Effie Maclellan
253
The Dialectic of Person and Practice: How Cultural-Historical Accounts of Agency Can Inform Teacher Education Anne Edwards
269
16
The Impact of Social Theories on Agency in Teacher Education Ryan Flessner and Katherina A. Payne
17
Narrative Theories and Methods in Learning, Developing, and Sustaining Teacher Agency Janice Huber and Ji-Sook Yeom
301
Unsettling Habitual Ways of Teacher Education through ‘Post-Theories’ of Teacher Agency Lisa Loutzenheiser and Kal Heer
317
18
Book 1.indb 6
228
286
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Contents
Section IV LEARNING MORAL AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Robert V. Bullough, Jr 19
20
21
22
23
24
Book 1.indb 7
333
Teacher Beliefs and the Moral Work of Teaching in Teacher Education Matthew N. Sanger
339
Developing Teachers’ Capacity for Moral Reasoning and Imagination in Teacher Education Alison Cook-Sather and Kira J. Baker-Doyle
354
Disrupting Oppressive Views and Practices through Critical Teacher Education: Turning to Post-Structuralist Ethics Mark Boylan
369
Developing Teachers’ Cognitive Strategies of Promoting Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education Luciano Gasser and Wolfgang Althof
387
Strengthening Sociocultural Ways of Learning Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education Robert Thornberg
403
The Moral Work of Teaching: A Virtue-Ethics Approach to Teacher Education Sandra Cooke
419
Section V LEARNING TO NEGOTIATE POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Roland W. Mitchell 25
vii
Micropolitics in the Education of Teachers: Power, Negotiation, and Professional Development Geert Kelchtermans and Eline Vanassche
26
Teachers Learning about Themselves through Learning about ‘Others’ Mary Louise Gomez and Amy Johnson Lachuk
27
A Decolonial Alternative to Critical Approaches to Multicultural and Intercultural Teacher Education Michael Vavrus
435
441
457
473
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viii
28
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
Recruitment and Retention of Traditionally Underrepresented Students in Teacher Education Roland W. Mitchell, Sara C. Wooten, Kerii Landry-Thomas and Chaunda A. Mitchell
Section VI LEARNING THROUGH PEDAGOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION Juanjo Mena 29
30
31
491
509
Developmental Learning Approaches to Teaching: Stages of Epistemological Thinking and Professional Expertise Juanjo Mena, Paul Hennissen and John Loughran
513
A Foundation for Effective Teacher Education: Teacher Education Pedagogy Based on Situated Learning Fred A.J. Korthagen
528
Constructivist Learning Theories in Teacher Education Programmes: A Pedagogical Perspective Gary Harfitt and Cheri Chan
545
32
Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Jan H. van Driel and Amanda K. Berry
33
Learning and Teaching with Technology: Technological Pedagogy and Teacher Practice Doron Zinger, Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer
577
Teacher Education Pedagogies Based on Critical Approaches: Learning to Challenge and Change Prevailing Educational Practices Viv Ellis and Meg Maguire
594
34
35
Culturally Relevant Teacher Education Pedagogical Approaches Jae Major and Jo-Anne Reid
561
610
Volume 2 Section VII LEARNING THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Cheryl J. Craig 36
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Teacher Education in English as an Additional Language, English as a Foreign Language and the English Language Arts Quan Xu, Simmee Chung and Yi Li
627
633
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Contents
37
Teacher Education in Social Studies and Civic Education Wing On Lee and Maria Manzon
649
38
The Political Shaping of Teacher Education in the STEM Areas Tony Brown
665
39
Research for Physical Education Teacher Education Lee Schaefer, lisahunter and Shaun Murphy
681
40
The Creative Arts and Teacher Education Robyn Ewing
696
41
Teacher Education in Religious Education Elina Wright and Andrew Wright
713
42
Teacher Education in Technical Vocational Education and Training Bonnie Watt
728
43
The Curriculum of Early Childhood and Lower Primary Teacher Education: A Five-Nation Research Perspective Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon
44
Teacher Education in Inclusive Education Kirsi Tirri and Sonja Laine
Section VIII LEARNING PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION AND THROUGHOUT THE CAREER Auli Toom 45
Understanding the Development of Teachers’ Professional Competencies as Personally, Situationally and Socially Determined Sigrid Blömeke and Gabriele Kaiser
744
761
777
783
46
Teachers’ Professional and Pedagogical Competencies: A Complex Divide between Teacher Work, Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education 803 Auli Toom
47
Developing Teachers’ Competences with the Focus on Adaptive Expertise in Teaching Jan van Tartwijk, Rosanne Zwart and Theo Wubbels
820
Evolution of Research on Teachers’ Planning: Implications for Teacher Education Elaine Munthe and Paul F. Conway
836
48
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ix
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x
49
50
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
Developing Teacher Competence from a Situated Cognition Perspective Sue Catherine O’Neill Critical Approaches in Making New Space for Teacher Competencies Monica Miller Marsh and Daniel Castner
Section IX LEARNING WITH AND FROM ASSESSMENTS IN TEACHER EDUCATION Mistilina Sato 51
Filtering Functions of Assessment for Selection into Initial Teacher Education Programs Robert Klassen, Tracy Durksen, Fiona Patterson and Emma Rowett
869
887
893
52
Summative Assessment in Teacher Education Jeanne Maree Allen
910
53
Formative Assessment in Teacher Education Susan M. Brookhart
927
54
Teacher Assessment from Pre-service through In-service Teaching Mistilina Sato and Sara Kemper
944
55
Functions of Assessment in Relation to Sociocultural Teacher Education Approaches Bronwen Cowie and Beverley Cooper
963
Functions of Student-centred Approaches to Assessment in Teacher Education Surette van Staden and Brigitte Smit
979
Functions of Assessment in Social Justice Teacher Education Approaches Valerie Farnsworth
994
56
57
Section X THE EDUCATION AND LEARNING OF TEACHER EDUCATORS Stefinee Pinnegar 58
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853
1011
Defining Teacher Educators: International Perspectives and Contexts1017 Jean Murray
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Contents
xi
59
A Quest for Teacher Educator Work Robert Kleinsasser
1033
60
Professional Learning and Development of Teacher Educators Linor L. Hadar and David L. Brody
1049
61
The Promise of the Particular in Research with Teacher Educators Stefinee Pinnegar and Mary Lynn Hamilton
1065
Section XI THE EVOLVING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS OF TEACHER EDUCATION Beatrice Ávalos 62
Adapting to the Virtual Campus and Transitions in ‘School-less’ Teacher Education Craig Deed
63
Multiple Voices and Participants in Teacher Education Katherina A. Payne and Ken Zeichner
64
The Role of Policy as a Shaping Influence on Teacher Education and Teacher Educators: Neo-Liberalism and its Forms Beatrice Ávalos and Paula Razquin
1081
1085
1101
1117
65
Globalization and Teacher Education Lynn Paine, Elena Aydarova and Iwan Syahril
1133
66
Research in Indigenizing Teacher Education Brooke Madden and Florence Glanfield
1149
Section XII A REFLECTIVE TURN Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin 67
Pushing Boundaries for Research on Teacher Education: Making Teacher Education Matter Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin
1167
1169
Index1181
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List of Figures 4.1 Role of Evaluation Research in Teacher Education Programs: Current Tendencies 8.1 A model of teacher learning and professional development 8.2 A multi-layer model of teacher learning and student learning 12.1 Post-modern/colonial/structural identity perspectives 30.1 The three-level model and the accompanying learning processes 30.2 The ALACT model 33.1 Technological pedagogical content knowledge model 35.1 A culturally relevant teacher education pedagogy (CRTEP) 45.1 Personal, situational and social determinants of the development of teachers’ professional competencies 45.2 Enriched model of teacher competence 45.3 Conceptual model of the social context and the development of professional competencies 46.1 Dimensions of teacher competence in terms of teacher knowledge and the work of teaching 47.1 Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) 51.1 Model of relationship between academic attributes, background experience, and non-academic attributes in prediction of performance in ITE (Initial Teacher Education) and teaching behaviors 51.2 Model of Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) as a tool to assess implicit and explicit beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions 52.1 Conceptual framework 54.1 Points along the teaching career continuum where assessments serve as filters for advancing a person into and along a teaching career
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85 146 150 214 533 538 581 615 785 793 795 814 829
897 904 913 945
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List of Tables 4.1 Report of survey results 5.1 Overview of teacher preparation programme provision in Ireland, Finland and Singapore 21.1 Orientations towards social justice in teacher education 22.1 Moral educational competence profiles 29.1 Epistemological thinking model based on teachers’ knowledge and beliefs 51.1 Example of scenario for a Situational Judgment Test (SJT) 54.1 Professional teaching standards across five jurisdictions 54.2 Percentage of teachers receiving feedback from various personnel and sources of feedback data 54.3 Comparative dimensions of competency vs. professional standards-based teacher education
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77 94 371 395 516 905 948 953 958
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Notes on the Editors and Contributors THE EDITORS D. Jean Clandinin is Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta, Canada. A former teacher, counsellor, and psychologist, she is author or co-author of 17 books and many articles and book chapters. Her first book, Classroom Practice: Teacher Images in Action, was based on her doctoral research. Other books were based on research into teachers’ and children’s experiences in and out of schools such as Composing Diverse Identities and Places of Curriculum Making. She co-authored Composing Lives in Transition (2013), a narrative inquiry of the experiences of youth who left school before graduating, and Narrative Conceptions of Knowledge based on research around early career teacher attrition. She authored three books on narrative inquiry, Narrative Inquiry, Engaging in Narrative Inquiry and Engaging in Narrative Inquiry with Children and Youth. Her books have won outstanding book awards from Divisions and Special Interest Groups of the American Educational Research Association. She is the winner of many awards from the American Educational Research Association, the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching, the Canadian Education Association and the Canadian Association of Teacher Education. Currently she is working on research into the educational experiences of Aboriginal youth and families, familial school readiness practices of indigenous families and a study of the relational ethics of narrative inquiry. Within the field of education, Dr Clandinin’s research has had a profound impact upon the related areas of teacher knowledge, teacher education and narrative inquiry. Her research on teachers’ personal practical knowledge has altered our understanding of the role that teachers play in curriculum making in their classrooms and of the need for incorporating this knowledge into teacher education programs. She has been instrumental in the development of narrative inquiry as a methodology for conducting research in the social sciences. Jukka Husu is Professor of Teacher Education and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education at the University of Turku, Finland, where he has worked since 2009. Before he started his career as teacher educator and researcher, he worked as a Primary School Teacher. Formerly, in academia, Dr Husu has worked as Research Associate, Senior Lecturer, and Professor of Education at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on teachers’ pedagogical knowledge,
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Notes on the Editors and Contributors
xv
reflection and ethical judgement in teaching. Throughout his work, he has emphasized the need for incorporating these areas of knowledge and skills into teacher education and teacher learning. Dr. Husu has published extensively in the above areas, including book chapters, international journals and academic texts. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Teaching and Teacher Education and an Associate Editor in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. Currently, his research at the Centre for Learning and Instruction (CeRLI) focuses on the development of teachers’ knowledge and skills and how ways of teaching can support student learning.
THE CONTRIBUTORS Jeanne Maree Allen is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Griffith University, Australia. She has worked in tertiary education since 2005 after an extensive career in secondary teaching and school leadership. She researches teacher education, school–university partnership, standardized educational contexts, teacher identity and student retention, and has developed an international research profile with over sixty peer reviewed publications including three books. Jeanne was an associate editor for Higher Education Research and Development from 2010 to 2015 and is currently the co-editor of the AsiaPacific Journal of Teacher Education. She is a member of the Griffith Institute for Educational Research and is co-leader of the Teacher Education Program. Wolfgang Althof (Dr. phil.) is the Teresa M. Fischer Endowed Professor in Citizenship Education at the University of Missouri–St Louis (UMSL) in USA. His research interests focus on moral/character and civic/citizenship education, student participation and school democracy. He co-directs (with Marvin W. Berkowitz) the Center for Character and Citizenship at UMSL: https://characterandcitizenship.org/. For the term 2013–2016, he was the President of the Association for Moral Education (AME). Beatrice Ávalos holds a PhD from St Louis University, USA and is currently an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, where she leads a research group on teacher-related topics. She is the recipient of the 2013 National Prize in Educational Sciences from the Chilean government. Formerly, she was Senior Lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff and Professor of Education at the University of Papua New Guinea, and more recently she coordinated the application in Chile of the IEA TEDS-M study on teacher education and participated in the Latin American UNESCO review of teacher policies. She has carried out consultancy work for several international organizations and is a member of the ILO/UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendations Concerning Teacher Personnel and the
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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
IIEP Research Advisory Council. She has published extensively on teachers, education policy and educational development both in Spanish and English. Elena Aydarova is Assistant Professor of Social Foundations at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, USA. Positioned at the intersections of comparative and international education, anthropology of education, and educational policy, her interdisciplinary research examines the interactions between global social change and the work of teachers, teaching, and teacher education through the lens of equity and social justice. Her projects have explored teacher education reforms in Russia and the US, internationalization of education, teacher retention, as well as commercialization of teacher preparation. Throughout her career, Elena has taught in the United States, Ukraine, China, and the United Arab Emirates. Kira J. Baker-Doyle is an Associate Professor of Education and the Director of Master’s and Certificate degree programmes at Arcadia University School of Education, USA. Her research focuses on teachers’ social networks (online and faceto-face), professional development, and civic engagement. She is the author of The Networked Teacher: How Beginning Teachers Build Social Networks for Professional Support (2011) and a forthcoming book with Harvard Education Press, Transformative Teachers: Teacher Leadership and Learning in a Connected World. Baker-Doyle is the co-founder of the Connected Learning certificate programme at Arcadia, and conducts workshops and talks for practitioners and scholars on teacher professional learning, civic community engagement, and social network development. Clive Beck is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE/University of Toronto in Canada, teaching both pre-service and graduate courses. He is currently conducting an SSHRC longitudinal study of 40 teachers, of whom 19 began teaching in 2004 and 21 in 2007. His books include Better Schools (1990), Learning Values in Adulthood (1993), Innovations in Teacher Education (2006), Priorities in Teacher Education (2009) and Growing as a Teacher (2014), the last three with Clare Kosnik. He has served as Chair of Graduate Studies at OISE and President of the American Philosophy of Education Society. Douwe Beijaard is Professor of Professional Learning and former Dean of the Eindhoven School of Education (ESoE) of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Before he started his career as teacher educator and researcher, he worked as a teacher in a secondary school. In 2014 and 2015 he was visiting professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of Turku, Finland. His research interests focus in particular on (student) teacher learning and professional development, and the identity, quality and assessment of teaching and teachers. He was an executive editor of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice and is a member of the international editorial board of Teaching and Teacher Education.
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Amanda K. Berry is a Professor of Education in the School of Education at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia. Amanda’s work focuses on the development of teachers’ knowledge and the ways in which that knowledge is shaped and articulated through teacher preparation, beginning teaching and inservice learning. Amanda has a particular interest in researching the specialist knowledge and practices of science teachers and science teacher educators. Amanda has published extensively in the above areas, including Handbook chapters, international journals and academic texts. She is currently Editor of Studying Teacher Education and Associate Editor of Research in Science Education. Sigrid Blömeke is Director of the Centre for Educational Measurement at the University of Oslo (CEMO), Norway. Previously, she was a professor at the universities in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany, as well as a visiting professor at Michigan State University, USA. She holds a PhD in sociology and a Habilitation in education. Her research has focused on international studies of teacher education and the assessment of teacher knowledge and skills. She is currently examining the development of preschool teachers’ knowledge and skills and how these are related to performance in preschool and children’s cognitive development. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Research Award from the German Educational Research Association (GERA). Mark Boylan is a Professor of Education at the Sheffield Institute of Education, Israel, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where he leads the Practice, Innovation and Professional Learning Research Group. His background is in secondary mathematics teaching and then teacher education. He has developed programmes and curricula to address issues of social justice in mathematics teacher education and in school mathematics, particularly in relation to segregation of learners by perceived ability. One strand of this is to use arts-based approaches informed by his training as a sociodramatist and movement teacher. He undertakes research into and evaluation of national professional and curriculum development programmes in mathematics education as well as other curriculum areas. David L. Brody (DHL) is an Assistant Professor at Efrata College of Education, Israel, where he serves as Academic Dean and Chair of the Early Childhood Department. His research focuses on professional development of teacher educators, the use of the community of learners as a format for professional development, supporting early childhood educators in dealing with emotionally laden topics, and gender balance in early childhood education. His book: Men Who Teach Young Children: An International Perspective (2014) represents a milestone in research on gender balance in early childhood education. Among his other publications are: ‘From Isolation to Symphonic Harmony: Building a Professional Development Community among Teacher Educators’ (Teaching and Teacher Education); ‘The Interaction between Group Processes and Personal
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Professional Trajectories in a Professional Development Community for Teacher Educators’ (Journal of Teacher Education); ‘Talk about Student Learning: Promoting Professional Growth among Teacher Educators’ (Teaching and Teacher Education); ‘The Construction of Masculine Identity among Men who Work with Young Children, an International Perspective’ (European Early Childhood Education Research Journal). Susan M. Brookhart, PhD, is an independent educational consultant, professional developer, author and Professor Emerita in the School of Education at Duquesne University, USA, where she previously served as a full-time professor and department chair. Her interests include the role of formative and summative classroom assessment in student motivation and achievement, the connection between classroom assessment and large-scale assessment, and grading. She was the 2007–2009 editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, a journal of the National Council on Measurement in Education. She is the author or co-author of 17 books and over 70 articles and book chapters on classroom assessment, teacher professional development and evaluation. She serves on several editorial boards and research advisory panels. She received the 2014 Jason Millman Award from the Consortium for Research on Educational Assessment and Teaching Effectiveness (CREATE) and the 2015 Samuel J. Messick Memorial Lecture Award from the Educational Testing Service. Gavin T.L. Brown, PhD, is Professor of Education and Director of the Quantitative Data Analysis and Research Unit (Quant-DARE) in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research focus is on school-based assessment, informed by psychometric theory, with a special focus on the psychology of teacher and student responses to assessment. Specifically, he seeks to determine which beliefs and attitudes most powerfully influence practices of assessment and increased academic performance. After being a secondary school teacher in New Zealand for ten years, Gavin was a standardized test developer for NZCER and the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) Project. He conducts multivariate statistical research (including confirmatory factor analysis; structural equation modelling, item response theory; and longitudinal latent curve modelling), with a special interest in cross-cultural differences. He is lead editor of the 2016 Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (Routledge). Tony Brown is Professor of Mathematics Education. He leads the research group Building Research in Teacher Education and co-leads the Centre for Mathematics and Science Education. His research focuses on contemporary social theory in mathematics education. He also works with professionals researching their practice within doctoral studies. Tony has published eight books most recently Mathematics Education and Subjectivity and Becoming a
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Mathematics Teacher A new book, Teacher Education in England: A Critical Interrogation of School-based Training, is forthcoming. Educational Studies in Mathematics, the world’s leading journal in the field of mathematics education, has published thirteen of his papers. He has recently convened three conferences on Mathematics Education and Contemporary theory, and edited associated Special Issues of ESM. Tony was educated at Kent, Exeter and Southampton. He taught at Holland Park School in London and at the Teachers College in Dominica. He moved to MMU in 1989, becoming a professor in 2000. He spent two years at the University of Waikato where he was the first Professor of Mathematics Education in New Zealand. Robert V. Bullough, Jr is Professor of Teacher Education and Associate Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling (CITES), McKay School of Education, Brigham Young University, USA. He is also a Humanities Center Fellow at Brigham Young University and Emeritus Professor of Educational Studies, University of Utah. His research interests include teacher education, curriculum studies, history of progressive education and, most recently, early childhood education. His most recent book is Adam’s Fall: Traumatic Brain Injury (2011). A new book with Kendra Hall-Kenyon, Preschool Teachers’ Lives and Work: Stories and Studies from the Field, is in press with Routledge. Daniel Castner is an Assistant Professor at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. His scholarly interests include critical approaches to early childhood education, curriculum development and teacher education. Prior to entering higher education, Daniel taught kindergarten for fifteen years. Cheri Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. She teaches a wide range of courses for the Faculty’s undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programmes. Cheri began her career as an English language teacher in 1999 and taught students across all levels at different schools before she joined the University in 2006. As a teacher educator, Cheri has supported many teachers in the Hong Kong community through different school–university partnership projects. Cheri is interested in teacher education research. In particular, her studies draw on critical social theories to understand the complexities of how language teachers learn together as professionals. Her areas of research include teacher mentoring, collaboration in education and language teacher identities. Sue Cherrington, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She has an extensive background in early childhood teacher education, and previously taught in New Zealand kindergartens. Sue’s research interests are focused on early childhood teachers’ professional and pedagogical practices in the areas of teacher thinking and reflection,
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including the use of video to support collective thinking and reflection; teacher professional learning, particularly through professional learning communities; teachers’ ethical and professional experiences and practices; and teachers’ professional and pedagogical responses to working with diverse children and families. Simmee Chung, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton, Canada. Chung’s research and publications are informed by 15+ years of experience as a teacher and in educational leadership, including her role as a literacy curriculum coordinator and consultant within urban schools situated across western Canada. Based on the diverse needs and interests of children, families, and educators, she has led numerous professional learning communities and presented in-services and workshop opportunities to support teaching and learning. Recognizing her passion for teaching and contributions to the field of education, she was awarded the Minister of Education’s Excellence in Teaching Award. Her research interests include: intergenerational and multi-perspectival narrative inquiries with children, families, and teachers; belonging as interwoven with identity making; inclusive education; student and family engagement; and teacher education. Paul F. Conway is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Limerick, Ireland. With a background in educational psychology (PhD, Michigan State University), his research interests are in teacher learning, teacher education policy and learning theories, with recent publications in the British Educational Research Journal, Teachers and Teaching and Pedagogy, Culture and Society. He is a former President (2008–2010) of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI), co-chair of EARLI’s SIG on Teaching and Teacher Education (2004–2008), and has been a member of both the Council of the European Education Research Association (2006–2008) and the World Education Research Association (2009–2013) on behalf of ESAI. He is currently joint General Editor of Irish Educational Studies. He led a large-scale international comparative study on ITE Learning to Teach and its Implications for the Continuum of Teacher Education: Nine-Country Cross National Study (commissioned by Ireland’s Teaching Council) (2009). Sandra Cooke is a Lecturer on the BA Education programme in the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK. Her recent research interests include understanding the place of virtue in good teaching and how teachers can be supported and developed in their work, having been Principal Investigator for The Good Teacher: Understanding Virtues in Practice project (http://www.jubileecentre.ac. uk/1568/projects/previous-work/the-good-teacher). Prior to joining the Jubilee Centre, Sandra’s work focused on overcoming educational inequalities, including as Head of Widening Participation at the University of Birmingham and as Education Policy Officer for NASUWT, one of the main teaching unions in the UK.
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Alison Cook-Sather is the Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, USA. Supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she has developed internationally recognized programmes that position students as pedagogical consultants to prospective secondary teachers and to practising college faculty members. She has published over 80 articles and book chapters and given as many keynote addresses and other presentations around the world. Her books include Engaging Students as Partners in Learning & Teaching: A Guide for Faculty (2014), Learning from the Student’s Perspective: A Sourcebook for Effective Teaching (2009), International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School (2007), and Education is Translation: A Metaphor for Change in Learning and Teaching (2006). Beverley Cooper is the Associate Dean, Teacher Education, the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Beverley’s research is focused on teacher education programme development and implementation. Current projects are investigating the development of shared understanding of practicum judgements between school and university, the development of mathematical thinking across an Initial Teacher Education programme for a teacher’s professional role, and the development of innovative practicum and programme collaborative partnerships between the university and schools. She has been involved in a number of large national research projects focused on the development of expertise in teacher education programmes such as assessment capability and curriculum. Bronwen Cowie, PhD, is Professor and Director of the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Her research interests are in assessment for learning, classroom interaction, student voice, curriculum development and implementation, and culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in science education. She has completed a number of large national research projects as well as in-depth classroom studies where she has worked collaboratively with teachers and students to understand and enhance teaching and learning for primary and secondary age students. Cheryl J. Craig is a Professor and the Houston Endowment Endowed Chair of Urban Education in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University, USA. Her research revolves around context and how it influences what pre-service and inservice teachers come to know, do, and be in community with one another. She is an American Educational Research (AERA) Fellow, an AERA Division B (Curriculum) Lifetime Career awardee and a recipient of the Michael Huberman Award for her Outstanding Contributions to Understanding the Lives of Teachers. She has also received three outstanding paper awards: two from AERA and one from the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching.
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Beverly E. Cross is the Moss Chair of Excellence in Urban Education at the University of Memphis, USA. Cross is nationally recognized for her record of teaching, research, scholarship, and service in urban education. She has conducted research in the areas of teacher diversity, urban education, multicultural and antiracist education, and curriculum theory, and she has written frequently on urban education, particularly concerning issues of race, class, and culture in urban schools and achievement. Her research has appeared in such publications as Theory into Practice, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Education Leadership, International Journal of Educational Reform, and The Urban Review. Craig Deed is an Associate Professor in Education, School of Education, College of Arts, Social Science and Commerce, La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include the interaction between space, teaching and learning at all levels of education. This includes investigation into educator adaptation and student participation in flexible, open and virtual space, innovative and future pedagogical approaches in higher education, and the changing identity and role of academics in higher education. Recent research has focused on the relationship between pedagogy and effective use of new physical and virtual learning space in secondary schools in low socioeconomic contexts. He has been involved in several Australian Research Council grants in the area of increasing educational opportunity for students living in low socioeconomic areas of regional Australia. He has published over 30 academic papers and book chapters that have had productive impacts on school and higher education pedagogy, workplace innovation, and reform. Rose Dolan is a Lecturer in the Department of Education at Maynooth University, Ireland. She joined MU Department of Education in 2003, where she lectures on pedagogical strategies and critical reflection in education. Her PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, focused on the teacher educators’ professional development. Tracy Durksen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research focuses on professional learning across career phases and teachers’ interpersonal skills, motivation and engagement. Her programme of research involves studying the use of situational judgement tests as (1) a selection method that can help assess non-academic attributes (such as empathy and adaptability) of prospective and novice teachers and (2) an educational tool for teachers’ professional learning. Anne Edwards is a Former Teacher and Teacher Educator, whose 1984 PhD focused on the agency of young children in pre-school settings. She is currently Professor Emerita at the University of Oxford Department of Education, UK, where she set up the Oxford Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory
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Research (OSAT). She has researched teacher education and professional learning and written extensively on these topics over the last 30 years. Most recently her work has drawn on cultural-historical ideas to explain how professionals develop and deploy relational expertise in their work with other practitioners, children and families. She has received Honoris Causa degrees from the Universities of Helsinki and Oslo for her work in this area. She is currently involved in research studies in Denmark, Norway and the UK. Viv Ellis is Professor of Educational Leadership and Teacher Development in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College, London, UK. His academic interests include teacher education and development, cultural-historical activity theory and practice-developing research. His most recent book (with Jane McNicholl) is Transforming Teacher Education: Reconfiguring the Academic Work (2015). He is also a Professor II at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and a Visiting Researcher at Teachers’ College, Columbia University. Robyn Ewing is Professor of Teacher Education and the Arts at the University of Sydney, Australia. She teaches in the areas of curriculum, English and drama, language and early literacy development. Robyn is passionate about the arts and education and the role quality arts experiences and processes can and should play in creative pedagogy and transforming the curriculum at all levels of education. In the areas of English, literacy and the arts, Robyn’s research has particularly focused on the use of educational or process drama with authentic literary texts to develop students’ imaginations and critical literacies. She has been published widely in this area. Her current research interests also include teacher education, especially the experiences of early-career teachers and the role of mentoring; sustaining curriculum innovation; and evaluation, inquiry and case-based learning. She is particularly interested in innovative qualitative research methodologies, including the role of the arts in educational research. Valerie Farnsworth has a background in Linguistics, Sociology and Education. Her PhD focused on teacher identity and social justice. Since completing her PhD in 2006, her research interests have spanned the interplay between identity, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and the ways these can support and also hinder learning and transitions. She is currently Lecturer in Curriculum Studies in the Leeds Institute of Medical Education in England where she is involved in developing and researching curricular innovations to support the learning and development of students becoming medical professionals. Ryan Flessner is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Butler University in the USA. His teaching and research interests include elementary and early childhood education, teacher education, mathematics education,
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practitioner inquiry, and issues of equity, diversity and social justice. Dr Flessner is an Associate Academic Editor for The Educational Forum and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for The New Educator. He has edited two books – Creating Equitable Classrooms Through Action Research (with Cathy Caro-Bruce, Mary Klehr and Kenneth Zeichner) and Agency in Teacher Education: Reflection, Community, and Learning (with Grant Miller, Kami Patrizio and Julie Horwitz) – and has written articles for journals such as Action in Teacher Education, Action Research, Educational Action Research, The Educational Forum, The New Educator and Science Education International. Luciano Gasser, PhD, is Professor at the University of Teacher Education Lucerne, Switzerland. His research interests focus on social and moral development, moral education, classroom observations and teaching quality. Florence Glanfield is of Métis ancestry and a professor and department chair in the Department of Secondary Education, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada. Florence’s research interests include teacher education, mathematics teacher education and development, Indigenous curriculum perspectives, and relational approaches to research. Florence engages in research and teacher development with primary and secondary school teachers in urban and rural schools nationally and internationally. Tristan Gleason is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Moravian College, USA. He teaches courses on science education and educational foundations, emphasizing the intersections between the sciences, teacher education and social justice. His scholarship draws on resources from pragmatic philosophy and feminist and anti-colonial Science and Technology Studies to interrogate the political and ontological relationships between science education and democracy. His writing will appear in the forthcoming book Critical Voices in Science Education, and in a special issue of the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education on rethinking the role of STEM in the philosophy of education. Mary Louise Gomez is Professor of Literacy Studies and Teacher Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of WisconsinMadison, USA. The Masters of Science in Professional Education or MSPE courses she teaches are Teaching Diverse Learners and Current Issues in Education. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, language background, and teaching and learning. Linor L. Hadar, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Beit-Berl College of Education and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research focuses on the study of pedagogy, with special emphasis on ‘planned’ and ‘implemented’ pedagogy (or the implementation of various pedagogies) and
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their relations. Within this, her research scholarship addresses the professional learning of teachers and teacher educators. Among her publications are: ‘From Isolation to Symphonic Harmony: Building a Professional Development Community among Teacher Educators’ (in Teaching and Teacher Education, 2010); ‘The Interaction between Group Processes and Personal Professional Trajectories in a Professional Development Community for Teacher Educators’ (in Journal of Teacher Education, 2013); ‘Talk about Student Learning: Promoting Professional Growth among Teacher Educators’ (in Teacher and Teaching Education, 2016); ‘Professional Development for Teacher Educators in the Communal Context: Factors which Promote and Hinder Learning’ (in Professional Learning in Education, Academia Press, 2016); ‘Trajectories of Pedagogic Change: Learning and Non-learning among Faculty Engaged in Professional Development Projects’ (in Pedagogic Frailty and Resilience in the University, Sage, 2017). Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon is a Professor of Early Childhood Education at Brigham Young University, USA. Her research interests include early literacy instruction and assessment, and early childhood teacher education. Recently completing a multi-year project on early childhood teacher well-being, a new book written with Robert Bullough, Preschool Teachers’ Lives and Work: Stories and Studies from the Field, is in press with Routledge. Mary Lynn Hamilton, Professor in Curriculum & Teaching, University of Kansas, USA, combines research interests in teachers’ professional knowledge, issues of social justice, and the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. She is a co-editor of the International Handbook of Teacher Education (2016), a co-editor of the International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (2004) and a co-author of Self-Study of Practice as a Genre of Qualitative Research: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (2009). Gary Harfitt is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. He is currently Assistant Dean for Experiential Learning in the Faculty and coordinates a number of local and regional experiential projects at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Gary has been teaching in Hong Kong since 1989 and worked as a secondary school teacher and English department head before joining HKU in 2002. He teaches courses on pedagogy, the teaching of literature and language arts in English and effective teaching in small classes at undergraduate, postgraduate and Master’s levels. His research interests include the experiences of early career teachers, the effectiveness of small-class teaching, hearing the student voice, and good practice in English language teaching. Kal Heer is a Doctoral Candidate in Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His dissertation focuses on Sikh youth and the ways
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discourses about gender, race and religion intersect to constitute and constrain Sikh identities in multicultural contexts. In addition he has published on topics in social justice pedagogy, teacher education, gender studies and philosophy of education. Paul Hennissen is Professor in school-based teacher education at the Department of Education at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Sittard, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the relation between theory and practice within teacher education, mentoring, professional learning communities, and the professional development of the teacher (educator). Paul worked as a teacher in primary and secondary education and as a teacher educator in different subjects. Janice Huber is Professor and Director in the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development (CRTED), Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada. Her background in teacher education and development includes authentic assessment, children’s curriculum-making worlds, cultural diversity and social studies, curriculum development and integration, early childhood education, narrative inquiry, and qualitative research. As a narrative inquirer, Janice has engaged in inquiry alongside children, youth, families, teachers, principals and Indigenous Elders. Gabriele Kaiser is a full Professor for mathematics education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hamburg, Germany. She holds a Master’s degree as a teacher for mathematics and humanities for lower and upper secondary level, a PhD in mathematics education and a Habilitation in education, which was funded by a postdoctoral research grant awarded by the German Research Society (DFG). Her areas of research include modelling and applications in school, international comparative studies, gender and cultural aspects in mathematics education, empirical research on teacher education and teachers’ professional competencies. Since 2005 she has served as Editor-in-chief of ZDM Mathematics Education published by Springer. Furthermore, she is Convenor of the 13th International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME-13). Geert Kelchtermans studied philosophy and educational sciences at the University of Leuven, Belgium, where he obtained a PhD in 1993 with a study on teachers’ professional development from a narrative-biographical perspective. He is now a full Professor at the same university and head of the Centre for Innovation and the Development of Teacher and School (in the Education and Training Research Unit). His research focuses on the interplay between individual educational professionals (teachers, principals, teacher educators) and their professional development on the one hand and their organizational and institutional working conditions on the other. He is an editorial board member of several international journals and also a board member of InFo-TED International Forum on Teacher Educator Development.
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Sara Kemper is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy and Leadership at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA. She is a Teaching Fellow in the University’s initial teacher licensure program and a former 5th grade teacher. Sara’s research interests include teacher leadership, schools as workplaces, and teacher professional learning. Her dissertation investigates the characteristics of work life and teaching practice in US teacher-led schools. Robert Klassen is Professor and Chair of Psychology in the Education Research Centre, and Director of Research in the Department of Education at the University of York in the UK. His research background is in motivation, engagement and emotions in school settings. He currently focuses on applying educational psychology research to the problem of teacher selection. Rob has numerous international collaborations, and his work is funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant. Before entering academia, Rob worked as a teacher and school psychologist in Canada and is a Chartered Psychologist in the UK. Robert Kleinsasser is a Teacher Educator in the USA with interests in the sociology of teachers and second language pedagogy. He is currently the (inaugural) Book Review Editor for The Journal of Educational Research and an Associate Editor for Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies. His current research with colleagues considers online teaching, learning and professional development including recent articles in TechTrends, Language Learning & Technology, and 英語教學 English Teaching & Learning. He is also a member of a writing group that has published in the area of teacher education and professional development including recent articles in The Educational Forum, Journal of Education for Teaching International Research and Pedagogy and Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education. Fred A.J. Korthagen is a Professor Emeritus of Utrecht University, the Netherlands and Director of the Korthagen Institute for Professional Development. He has chaired two university teacher education programs in the Netherlands. His academic fields are the professional development of teachers and teacher educators, the pedagogy of teacher education, and more particularly, core reflection and strengthsbased coaching. He published numerous articles and books on these topics, in various languages, and gave keynotes on conferences and workshops all over the world. Fred received awards for his publications from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE). In 2015, he became Fellow of AERA, ‘to honor excellence in research’. Clare Kosnik is Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/ University of Toronto, Canada and Director of the Jackman Institute of Child Study. She is currently conducting a study of 28 literacy teacher educators in four
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countries (Canada, USA, England and Australia). Her authored books include: Innovations in Teacher Education (2006); Priorities in Teacher Education (2009); Teaching in a Nutshell (2011); and Growing as a Teacher: Goals and Pathways of Ongoing Teacher Learning (2014) (co-authored with Clive Beck). She was recently the lead editor of the texts Literacy Teacher Educators: Preparing Student Teachers for a Changing World (2013) and Building Bridges: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era (2016). Amy Johnson Lachuk was an Associate Professor with tenure at Hunter College in New York City. She relinquished her position and became an independent scholar in 2016, moving to Madison, Wisconsin with her family. Sonja Laine is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her main research interests are gifted education, teachers’ and students’ mindsets in learning, and teacher education. She has published her research in international educational journals such as High Ability Studies and Journal for the Education of the Gifted. She also has years of experience in working as an elementary school teacher. Kerii Landry-Thomas is a Doctoral Candidate at Louisiana State University, USA, in Educational Leadership and Research with a concentration in Higher Education Administration. She is a former assistant public defender in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and currently a research assistant for Dr. Roland Mitchell, Associate Dean for Research & Academic Services. Her scholarly contributions include ‘Breaking the Pipeline: Using Restorative Justice to Lead the Way’, a chapter which appeared in Varnet et al. (eds.), Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison–toSchool-Pipeline (2016). Her research interests include race and gender in higher education, and the intersection of law and education. Kerii holds a BS from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctor from Southern University. Wing On Lee is Chair Professor of Comparative Education and a Vice President at the Open University of Hong Kong, and Honorary Distinguished Professor at Zhengzhou University, China. He had previously served as Dean of Education Research and Professor Education at National Institute of Education, Singapore; Vice President (Academic) & Deputy to President, Acting President and Chair Professor of Comparative Education, Founding Dean of the School of Foundations in Education, Head of two Departments and Centre for Citizenship Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education; Professor of Education at the University of Sydney; and Founding Director of Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong. Prof Lee is a world-renowned scholar in the fields of comparative education and citizenship education. He has published some 30 books and over 170 journal articles and book chapters. He is a former President of the World Council of Comparative Education (2010–13) and has served as
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Honorary Professor in many esteemed universities, including the University of Hong Kong, University of Sydney and Beijing Normal University. Yi Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She teaches second language teaching methodology courses as well as graduate level courses in second language education and narrative inquiry. Her research interests and publications are on the topics of narrative inquiry as a research methodology, the role of hope in newcomer students’ experiences in Canada, and narrative inquiry in relation with the fields of international education, second language education and teacher education. lisahunter has a long history in teaching health and physical education as a teacher at all school levels and in teacher education, and as a curriculum writer and researcher. She is currently a freelance academic who researches and teaches in physical and movement cultures including foci on health and physical education, teacher education, surfing and relationships with the sea, movement education, sport and leisure, sex/gender/sexualities, and research methodologies. A current focus is on historical and contemporary narratives of surfing at personal, organizational and cultural levels and sexuality education. lisahunter plays with methodologies of sensory and visual narrative as part of participatory and ethnographic research. Recent related publications include: ‘Sensory Narratives: Capturing Embodiment in Narratives of Movement, Sport, Leisure and Health’ (2016); Workplace Learning in Physical Education (2015); ‘Active Kids Active Minds: A Physical Activity Intervention to Promote Learning?’ (Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education, 2014) and HPE: Pedagogy, Sexualities and Queer Theory (in press). John Loughran is the Foundation Chair in Curriculum & Pedagogy, Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. John was a science teacher for ten years before moving into teacher education. He is well regarded in the fields of teacher education and science education. He has published extensively with Routledge, Springer and Sense and was the co-founding editor of the international journal Studying Teacher Education and an Executive Editor for Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. Lisa Loutzenheiser is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr Loutzenheiser’s research interests are centred in youth studies, qualitative methodologies, anti-oppressive and critical race theories, curriculum policy, and gender and queer theories. Dr Loutzenheiser focuses on the educational experiences of marginalized youth and the teaching directed to and about students labelled as such. Her current research involves an ethnography of a leadership
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camp for LGBQ and T youth and a policy analysis of school-board level policies geared towards LGBQ and T youth and faculty. She is also particularly interested in the ways theories of race, sexualities and gender are useful across research projects, methods and methodologies. Effie Maclellan works at the interface of Psychology and Education. Her teaching is concerned to make complex educational psychology theory accessible to teachers, to other professions (such as Nursing and Physiotherapy), to university academics and to people-focused voluntary agencies so that these groups can use educational and psychological ideas to enhance practice. Her research draws on deep understanding of psychological principles and approaches to investigate and analyse highly important, practical and applied educational issues in schools, in higher education and in wider society. Her topics of interest are eclectic but all are rooted in the importance and complexity of pedagogy so the arena of ‘teacher’ education is the usual site for her work. She moved into higher education in 1988 after more than 20 years of professional practice as a class teacher and head teacher in mainstream and special education. She is now Emeritus Professor at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland. Brooke Madden currently works as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada. Brooke’s research focuses on the relationship between teacher identity and teacher education on the topics of Aboriginal education and truth and reconciliation education. Brooke has also published on whiteness, decolonizing processes and teacher identity; school-based Indigenous education reform; and Indigenous and decolonizing research methodologies. Meg Maguire is Professor of Sociology of Education in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College, London, UK. Her research is in the sociology of education, teacher education, urban education and policy. She is lead editor for the Journal of Education Policy. She is a Visiting Professor at Victoria University, Melbourne Australia. Jae Major, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia. She has been a teacher educator since 1995, in the fields of multicultural studies, English for speakers of other languages, and primary literacy. Her research focuses on preparing teachers for cultural and linguistic diversity, identity, intercultural competence, and international mobility programs. Maria Manzon is Assistant Professor of the Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning at the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. She has previously served as Research Scientist at the National
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Institute of Education, Singapore. She researches on comparative education from sociology of knowledge perspectives, and on parent engagement in Asian contexts. She is editor of CIEclopedia, the online Who’s Who in comparative and international education. Paulien C. Meijer is Professor on teacher learning and development, and Dean of the Teachers Academy of Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She has a long career as a teacher educator, as well as being a former teacher, and as a researcher. She publishes on topics related to beginning and experienced teacher learning, with a specific focus on identity development. From 2009 to 2013, she was chair of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). Juanjo Mena is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Salamanca (USAL), Spain. His research focuses on Teaching Practice, Teacher Education, Mentoring, Teacher Development and ICT. He is Treasurer and National Representative of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). He also spent five years as a classroom teacher before joining USAL as full time professor. Neil Mercer is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK and Director of the study centre Oracy@Cambridge at the Cambridge college Hughes Hall (of which he is also a Life Fellow). He was previously Professor of Language and Communications at the Open University. A psychologist with a special interest in the role of language in the classroom and the development of children’s thinking, one of the main outcomes of his research has been the teaching approach called Thinking Together. His research has generated strong links with researchers outside the UK, especially in the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Australia and the USA. He has been a consultant, visiting scholar and examiner for governments and universities in many countries. He is a former editor of the journals Learning and Instruction, the International Journal of Educational Research, and Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. Monica Miller Marsh is Associate Professor and Director of the Kent State University Child Development Center, USA. Her areas of interest include family diversity, early childhood education and curriculum. She is co-founder of the Family Diversity Education Council and the Journal of Family Diversity in Education. Chaunda A. Mitchell is the Director of Drug Policy and Director of Indian Affairs for the Office of Governor John Bel Edwards, USA. In both capacities she seeks to provide action-oriented solutions to enhance the lives and everyday lived experiences of the citizens of Louisiana. Prior to joining the Louisiana Governor’s Office, Mitchell served as director of the Office of Multicultural
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Affairs at Louisiana State University (LSU). She co-founded and co-chaired the SEC Multicultural Network, a network of directors of Multicultural Affairs offices in the South Eastern Conference. She is an adjunct instructor with the LSU higher education administration program teaching courses on race, gender, and college student populations. Her scholarly contributions have appeared in books and scholarly journals which continue to highlight a philosophy of integrating scholarship and practice. Mitchell is co-editor of Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America (2015) and Assault on Communities of Color: Reactions and Responses from the Frontlines (2015). Roland W. Mitchell is the Jo Ellen Levy Yates Endowed Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Academic Services in the College of Human Sciences and Education at Louisiana State University, USA. He teaches courses that focus on the history of higher education and college teaching and his research interests include theorizing the impact of historical and communal knowledge on pedagogy. Roland has authored in five coedited books and numerous other scholarly works that have appeared in leading educational journals. He is the co-editor (with Wooten, 2016) of The Crisis of Campus Sexual Violence: Critical Perspectives on Prevention and Response, which was awarded a 2016 Outstanding Academic Titles (OAT) award and highlighted on the Top 25 Favorites list of the Choice editors. He is co-editor of the Lexington Press of Rowman and Littlefield book series Race and Education in the 21st Century, and Higher Education section editor of the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. Jenna Morvay is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Her research interests include teachers as activists, affect, inclusivity and critical whiteness. Elaine Munthe is Professor of Education and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is currently the elected Chair of the National Association of Teacher Education in Norway. She has been strongly involved in the development of research programs for educational research in Norway and chaired the ‘Research and Innovation in Education’ program for the Norwegian Research Council. Her research includes studies of classroom instruction, professional learning, and teacher education policy and practice. Shaun Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His research interests are based in relational narrative inquiry and focus on familial and school curriculum making; the interwoven lives of children, families, and teachers; and teacher education. Jean Murray is a Professor of education in the Cass School of Education and Communities at the University of East London, England. Her research focuses
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on the sociological analysis of teacher education policies and practices internationally, with a particular interest in the identities and career trajectories of teacher educators. Jean has written many books, chapters, journal articles and reports on these issues and has also run a large number of educational research projects. She has taught at all levels of higher education and acted as an educational consultant on professional learning for governments, NGOs and many universities across the world. Sue Catherine O’Neill is a Lecturer in Special Education at the School of Education, UNSW Sydney, Australia. Her research interests include pre-service teacher preparation in evidenced-based classroom and behaviour management practices and programmes, transition planning for justice-involved youth, beginning teacher self-efficacy, and teacher education methods that can close the theory to practice gap. Lily Orland-Barak is Professor in Education and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research focuses on professional learning, mentoring and curriculum development in the context of teacher education. She has published numerous articles and books on these topics, and serves on national and international academic committees and editorial boards. Celia Oyler is a Professor of inclusive education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. She is the author of: Actions Speak Louder than Words: Social Action as Curriculum (Routledge); Learning to Teach Inclusively: Student Teachers Classroom Inquiries (Taylor & Francis); and Making Room for Students: Sharing Teacher Authority in Room 104 (Teachers College Press). Lynn Paine is Professor of Teacher Education and Assistant Dean, International Studies in Education, in the College of Education at Michigan State University, USA. Her work focuses on comparative teacher education, with much of her research examining teacher learning as situated practice. She has studied teacher learning, mentoring, and professional development as policy, program and practice in several different national contexts, with particular interest in reform approaches in China and the US. She is currently engaged in examining the interaction of global and local discourses of teacher education and in a comparative study of the entailments of practice-based professional development. Fiona Patterson is a Principal Researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK and founding Director for the Work Psychology Group, an international research-led organizational psychology consulting practice. Fiona has published widely in assessment, especially in relation to selecting for non-academic attributes, innovation and change in organizations.
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Katherina A. Payne is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Her research and teaching interests include teacher education, social studies education, elementary and early childhood education and democratic education. Dr Payne’s work as a teacher educator and researcher seeks to better prepare and support elementary teachers as democratic educators who create more equitable classrooms so that all students see themselves as able and active members of our democratic society. She has written articles for journals such as the Journal of Teacher Education and Social Studies and the Young Learner. Francine Peterman has served as an Urban Teacher and Teacher Educator for 40 years in diverse settings across the US. Her passion is developing partnerships to prepare teachers for diverse, challenging settings – both urban and rural. In her current position as National Director and Dean of Teachers College at Western Governors University, Fran provides leadership in developing, delivering, and refining educator preparation programs that prepare more than 12,000 teachers across the United States, ensuring the curriculum and assessments are relevant, aligned with national and state standards, challenging, and comprehensive. Prior to being recruited to WGU, Fran served as Dean at both Montclair State University and Queens College of the City University of New York after 13 years as a teacher educator and leader at Cleveland State University and 5 years at Ball State. Fran grounds all of her work in her roots as an urban teacher in Miami Dade County Public Schools and her commitments to equity, excellence, and social justice. Fran helped to envision and edit Partnering to Prepare Urban Teachers: A Call to Activism and Designing Performance Assessment Systems for Urban Teacher Preparation – the culminating projects of two collaborative teams of teacher educators who met regularly with the Urban Network to Improve Teacher Education. Partnering with faculty colleagues and school and district leaders throughout Cleveland, Fran helped to create a masters of urban secondary teaching – a residency program that expanded across districts and has endured at least one decade beyond initial funding. She has served on the Board of Examiners at NCATE/CAEP. Stefinee Pinnegar is a Teacher Educator in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. Her research interests focus on teachers’ thinking along with ways to reveal that thinking through S-STTEP and narrative methodologies. She co-authored Self-Study of Practice as a Genre of Qualitative Research: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (2009). Furthermore, she is the editor of the popular series – Advances in Research on Teaching published by Emerald Press. James Pippin, PhD, is a Research Associate in the Department of Teacher Education in the College of Education at Michigan State University, USA. He
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earned his PhD in Educational Policy from Michigan State University with a specialization in international development. His research interests include comparative and international analyses of education policies related to teachers and evaluation. Using sociological frameworks and both quantitative and qualitative approaches, his research focuses on the intersections of policy, context and individual backgrounds in shaping the recruitment, development and retention of effective teachers for marginalized students in the United States and internationally. Prior to completing his doctoral studies, Dr Pippin taught English and conducted research in China and South Korea. He has a Master’s degree from Bowling Green State University and Bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University. Paula Razquin is Assistant Professor at the University of San Andrés (Argentina) and an Adjunct Faculty at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (California). She holds a PhD in Education from Stanford University and was awarded scholarships from Fulbright Argentina, the Organization of American States, and the Argentinian National Ministry of Education. Prior to her current appointment, Razquin worked at UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report team and at the Division for Education Strategies & Capacity Building. She was a RAND/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow on Education Policy, and consulted on education reform projects for multilateral and bilateral agencies in about ten countries. She has written on student achievement and school choice, teacher pay-for-performance and incentives reforms, the global financial crisis and primary education in developing countries, teachers in comparative perspective, Education for All, and teacher salaries in Latin America. Jo-Anne Reid is Professor of Education and former Head of School and Associate Dean, Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia. She began her career teaching secondary English, and has worked as a literacy teacher educator and researcher in a number of Australian universities prior to taking up this appointment in 2002. She is particularly committed to the preparation of teachers for schools in rural and remote locations, where the issue of cultural and linguistic diversity is regularly overlooked as a key issue of social justice and equity for understanding and living in (rural) social space. She is interested in poststructuralist theories of practice as a theoretical framework for rethinking teacher education for a diverse and changing society, and has written on English teaching, school transition, Indigenous teachers, teacher education and rural schooling. Wendy Robinson is a Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, UK, where she was appointed in 2006, following appointments at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge. She is currently University Academic Dean for Students, responsible for teaching, learning and the student experience. She has published extensively in the field of history of education, with a special interest in the history of the teaching profession. Selected publications include: Pupil
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Teachers and their Professional Training in Pupil Teacher Centres in England and Wales, 1870–1914 (2003); Power to Teach: Learning through Practice (2004); and A Learning Profession? Teachers and their Professional Development in England and Wales 1920–2000 (2014). Jerry Rosiek is a Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of Oregon, USA, and is affiliated faculty in the Department of Philosophy. He teaches courses on peer-to-peer teacher knowledge networks and qualitative research methodology. His empirical scholarship focuses on the ways teachers learn from their classroom experience. Specifically he looks at the way teachers think about the mediating effects of culture, class, gender, sexuality and social context on student learning. His theoretical scholarship explores the way pragmatic philosophy, feminist materialism, indigenous philosophy and critical race theory provide promising ways to think outside of necessary, but increasingly wearisome foundationalism vs anti-foundationalism debates in the social sciences. His writing has appeared in major journals including Harvard Educational Review, Education Theory, Educational Researcher, Qualitative Inquiry, Curriculum Inquiry, Educational Psychologist and the Journal of Teacher Education. His recent book with co-author Kathy Kinslow is entitled Resegregation as Curriculum (2015). Emma Rowett is a Psychologist at the Work Psychology Group, an international research-led organizational psychology consulting practice. Her key area of expertise is in early career selection for high stakes professions in the UK and internationally, with her work ranging across a variety of both private and public sector clients. Matthew N. Sanger received his PhD in Educational Studies, along with an MA in Philosophy, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. His research focuses on the moral work of teaching and teacher education, with publications appearing in Teaching and Teacher Education, Curriculum Inquiry and the Journal of Moral Education. He is co-editor with Richard D. Osguthorpe of the book The Moral Work of Teaching and Teacher Education: Preparing and Supporting Practitioners (2013). Mistilina Sato is an Associate Professor of Teacher Development at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA. She is the inaugural holder of the Carmen Starkson Campbell Endowed Chair for Innovation in Teacher Development. Her research addresses teaching across the career continuum, including teacher preparation, performance assessment of teachers, early career induction, teacher evaluation, teacher leadership, and National Board Certification. Her current work focuses on international policy studies in teacher development with a focus on China and assessing the development of equity-based dispositions for teaching.
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Sato began her career as a middle school science teacher in NJ. She holds a PhD from Stanford University in curriculum and teacher education and a BA from Princeton University in geological sciences. Lee Schaefer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at McGill University, Canada. He is also the Chair of the Physical and Health Education Canada Research Council. His research is focused on teacher education, specifically, physical education teacher education, youth development through wellness and physical activity, the impact of the outdoors on youth physical activity levels and narrative inquiry. He has been recognized on a national and international level for both his research and his writing and has been invited to speak at local, national and international conferences. His passion for physical education, and providing youth purposeful, developmental, movement opportunities continues to drive his research, teaching and service commitments. Brigitte Smit (PhD) is a Research Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Management at the University of South Africa, South Africa. She coordinates research courses, teaches Qualitative Research, Mixed Methods and CAQDAS – ATLAS.ti, serves on national and international editorials boards and has published in national and international journals. Some past research projects include: Health and Development Africa; Teacher Identity and the Culture of Schooling; and the Multisite Teacher Education Research Project, with the University of Sussex. Her current research focuses on relational and female leadership in disadvantaged schools. She is a recipient of the 2009 Outstanding Reviewer Award: American Educational Research Journal: Social and Institutional Analysis – American Educational Research Association. In 2015, she received the Research Medal of Honour, awarded by the Education Association of South Africa in recognition of her research over the past ten years. She also received the 2015 Leadership in Research Women’s Award, from UNISA. Dr Smit is an accredited professional trainer and a consultant for ATLAS.ti for Africa. Florence R. Sullivan is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at UMass, Amherst, USA. Her research interests include gender equity in STEM learning, the processes and outcomes of collaboration in computational learning environments for children, service learning and teaching in computational and STEM learning environments, and learning in online environments. She is the author of Creativity, Learning, and Technology: Theory for Classroom Practice (2017). Iwan Syahril is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Sampoerna University in Indonesia, where he directs the University’s Center for Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum Development. His work centers on understanding teaching quality. Currently, he is interested in the development
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of teacher candidates and beginning teachers, and in policy sense-making in teacher reforms in national and international contexts. Tamara Tate is a doctoral student in the Language, Literacy and Technology specialization within the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, USA. She received her BA in English at UC Irvine and her JD at UC Berkeley. Tamara was a corporate finance partner at Morrison & Foerster, LLP for 17 years, specializing in public companies and mergers & acquisitions. Besides representing a number of high-tech companies, she was involved in the use of technology and knowledge-based solutions to improve the quality of practice. Tamara left law to focus on K-12 literacy education, technology-supported learning, and exceptional learners of all types. She is inspired daily by her own exceptional learners, her two sons, who also strive to keep her aware of the latest technology. Maria Teresa Tatto is the Southwest Borderlands Professor of Comparative Education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University (ASU), USA. Her research is characterized by the use of comparative frameworks to study the impact of policies on educational systems, particularly reforms affecting teacher education, teaching and learning across organizational, economic, political and social contexts. Her work combines the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches and methods, and emphasizes user-relevant participatory research approaches. She is currently the director and principal investigator of two large-scale international studies funded by the US National Science Foundation: the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), and the First Years of Mathematics Teaching Study (FIRSTMATH). Dr Tatto is an editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives, has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Teacher Education and guest editor for the Oxford Review of Education and the International Journal of Educational Research, and has edited, co-edited, and authored several books. From 2008 to 2012, she was elected to function in an executive leadership capacity for the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) including serving as President in 2010. Robert Thornberg, PhD, is Professor of Education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. He is also the Secretary of the Board for the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA). Dr Thornberg’s current research is on school bullying, especially in terms of social and moral processes (such as peer norms, moral disengagement, group processes, moral reasoning and class climate), bystander reactions and actions, and students’ perspectives and explanations. His second line of research is on values education, moral practices, school rules, student participation and social interactions in everyday school life. He has investigated teachers’ everyday
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work with school rules and how students view, judge and make meanings of school rules, student participation, school democratic meetings, and teachers’ disciplinary practices. Kirsi Tirri is a Professor of Education and Vice-Dean in charge of research at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is the Chair of the Doctoral Programme SEDUCE (School, Education, Society and Culture) and the Chairman of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. She is also a Visiting Professor at St. John’s University, New York, USA. From 2008 to 2012, Tirri was the President of the European Council for High Ability and the President of the SIG International Studies at the American Educational Research Association from 2010 to 2013. She has published widely in international educational journals and books on teacher education, moral education and gifted education. She also serves on the Editorial Boards of 13 educational journals. Auli Toom, PhD, is a Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Center for University Teaching and Learning at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. She is the Chair of the Doctoral Programme PsyCo (Psychology, Learning and Communication). She also holds an adjunct professorship in pedagogy at the University of Eastern Finland. Her major research interests are teachers’ pedagogical knowing, agency and teacher education, as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning, and student learning in the context of higher education. Professor Toom leads and co-leads several research projects on teacher education and higher education and supervises PhD students involved in these projects. She has published her research extensively in international refereed journals and edited books, and has given several international keynote speeches and workshops related to research on teacher education and acted as an expert on teacher education. Eline Vanassche is an Assistant Professor at the School of Health Professions Education at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. She received her PhD in Educational Sciences from the University of Leuven, Belgium in 2014. Her PhD research focused on how to understand and conceptualize teacher educators’ professionalism and its development throughout their careers. Since then, she has continued her research in this area and published widely on this topic, both in ISI listed journals as well as edited book volumes and more practitioner-oriented outlets. She is also a board member of the Flemish Association of Teacher Educators (VELOV) and the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development (InFo-TED). Jan H. van Driel is a Professor of Science Education at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. Jan’s research expertise concerns teacher knowledge and teacher learning and among others, he has conducted several research projects on the development of pedagogical content
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knowledge (PCK) in science teachers. Some of these studies focused on pre-service teachers, whereas others targeted in-service teachers in the context of educational innovation. Jan has published articles and chapters on empirical projects and review studies, for instance, in the International Encyclopedia of Education (2010) and in the Handbook of Research on Science Education (2014). He is coeditor-in-chief of the International Journal of Science Education. Surette van Staden was appointed in June 2011 to the Department of Science, Maths and Technology Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa. She teaches on the PGCE programme at Honours level and is also a lecturer on the Master’s Programme in Assessment and Quality Assurance. She is currently involved in the supervision of a number of Master’s degree students. Surette has experience in international comparative assessment studies and has served as co-national research coordinator for the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 in South Africa. Having worked in a research centre for ten years with a focus on issues of assessment and quality assurance in education, her focus is now on interventions to address issues raised by assessment and quality standards. Jan van Tartwijk is Professor of Education at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University the Netherlands, where he chairs the Graduate School of Teaching and the faculty’s Educational and Consultancy group. In his research and teaching, he focuses on teacher–student communication processes in the classroom, learning and assessment at the workplace (in particular in teacher and medicals education), assessment and motivation, assessment and creativity, teacher education, and the development of teacher expertise. Michael Vavrus is Emeritus Professor at the Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA, USA) where he teaches interdisciplinary programmes in education, history and political economy. He is the author of Diversity and Education: A Critical Multicultural Approach and Transforming the Multicultural Education of Teachers: Theory, Research and Practice. Among the journals in which his research and book reviews have appeared include Teachers College Record, Journal of Education Policy, Teaching and Teacher Education, Journal of Negro Education, Urban Education, Educational Studies and Action in Teacher Education. In addition to book chapters in edited books, Dr Vavrus also has chapters in the reference texts 21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook and the Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education. He is past president of the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education. Dr Vavrus is the current scholarship/research committee chair for the Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender, a special interest group of the American Educational Research Association.
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Jan D. Vermunt is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Wolfson College, UK. The study of human learning has fascinated him since he started his studies in the Psychology of Learning and Education. Current research interests include: how people integrate knowledge from different sources into a unified theory of practice; how people differ in their pathways to growth and development; and how learning environments can be created that foster high-quality learning. His scientific work has been published in journals such as Learning and Instruction, British Journal of Educational Psychology, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Studies in Higher Education, Learning and Individual Differences and Vocations and Learning. Jan has served on the Editorial Boards of several international journals. Currently he is the Editor-in-Chief of Learning and Instruction, one of the world’s leading journals in the fields of Educational Research and Educational Psychology. Maria Vrikki works as a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK. Her work centres on productive dialogue and its effects on learning and development in different contexts. She has studied professional groups, like Lesson Study groups, where dialogue is the main mechanism driving teacher learning processes. She is also involved in the study of dialogue in the classroom context, and in particular in teacher–student and student–student interactions. Her background is in Linguistics. She holds a DPhil (PhD) degree in Education from the University of Oxford. She has taught on professional development, language acquisition and learning at several institutions. Mark Warschauer is Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine, USA. He has carried out a wide range of research on the use of digital media by diverse learners in K-12 schools and colleges. Warschauer is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association and editor-in-chief of AERA Open. His books include Learning in the Cloud: How (and Why) to Transform Schools with Digital Media (2011) and Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide (2003). Paul Warwick is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Homerton College, UK. His research and teaching focus on students’ developing understanding of the scientific approach to enquiry, the role of technologies in the development of a dialogic classroom pedagogy and the development of teacher learning. He has an interest in classroom assessment practices and the development of teachers as reflective practitioners – in particular, the ways in which beginning teachers create and sustain a professional identity. Paul is a member of the Faculty’s Psychology and Education academic group and Chair of Examiners for primary teacher education. He has acted as external examiner for Initial Teacher Education at various universities and has led professional development related to both dialogic pedagogy and assessment in Africa
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and Europe. He is a founder member of Oracy@Cambridge, a study centre at Hughes Hall, Cambridge, established in 2015. Bonnie Watt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Secondary Education at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her teaching and research interests include Career and Technology Studies (CTS) and technical vocational education and training (TVET) areas, CTS and TVET program development, curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education; youth and adult school to work/ school transitions; dual credit and high school to post-secondary articulation policies, programs, and practice; apprenticeships; and policies related to education, training, and work. Sara C. Wooten is a Doctoral Candidate in Educational Leadership and Research with a concentration in Higher Education Administration at Louisiana State University, USA. Wooten’s research interests include the intersections of higher education policy; campus rape culture; discourse theory; feminist poststructuralism; queer theory; and critical race theory. Wooten has presented her work at numerous conferences including the American Educational Research Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and the National Women’s Studies Association. She was honored to have her symposium on campus sexual violence selected as a Presidential Session for the 2014 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She is the coeditor of The Crisis of Campus Sexual Violence: Critical Perspectives on Prevention and Response (with Roland W. Mitchell, 2016) and recently published her second co-edited volume Preventing Sexual Violence on Campus: Challenging Traditional Approaches through Program Innovation (with Roland W. Mitchell, 2017). Andrew Wright is Professor of Religious and Theological Education at UCL Institute of Education, UK. His primary research interest is the promotion of religious and theological literacy across religious and secular traditions and communities. As a philosopher, theologian and educationalist, he is interested in the theoretical dimension of Religious Education and its pedagogic application in schools, colleges and universities. He employs critical realism as an underlabouring framework, and envisages religious and theological education as the pursuit of ultimate truth and truthful living sub species aeternitatis. Professor Wright was the founding Chair of the Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education, and has advised various national governments and NGOs, sat on the editorial boards of numerous academic journals, and contributed to various radio, television and online forums. Elina Wright, ThD, is a researcher in Religious Education at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, UK. She has previously worked as Post-Doctoral
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Researcher and University Lecturer in Religious Education at the University of Helsinki, as Visiting Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland at King’s College London, and as All Saints Saxton Research Fellow in Education at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. Her primary research interest is in learning, teaching, teacher education, and teachers’ professional learning, particularly in the field of Religious and Theological Education. She specializes in the pedagogical framework of Phenomenography and Variation Theory of Learning and was a Coordinator of the EARLI Special Interest Group (SIG 9.) and Phenomenography and Variation Theory in 2011–2015. Theo Wubbels is Professor of Education at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He participates in several national and international committees on education, pedagogy and quality assurance in teaching in higher education. He is the President of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) and council member of the World Educational Research Association (WERA). His research interests include the problems and supervision of beginning teachers, teaching and learning in higher education, and studies of learning environments, especially interpersonal relationships in education. Quan Xu is an Associate Professor and Vice Director of the Centre for Research for Foreign Language Teacher Education in the Department of English Language and Literature, Central China Normal University, China. As a university teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and EFL teacher educator, he has authored/co-authored ten books and thirty articles on EFL teacher education and second language acquisition. Two books, English Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs: Components and Features and University English Teacher’s Beliefs: Causing Factors and Developing Mechanism are researches on EFL teachers’ beliefs. Other books, Foreign Language Pedagogy, English Language Teaching Skills, An Introduction to English Linguistics, Comprehensive English that he authored/co-authored are for English teacher education programs and used by university pre-and in-service EFL teachers and teacher educators. He offers courses for pre and in-service EFL teachers at undergraduate and graduate levels. Ji-Sook Yeom is a Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education, Konkuk University, South Korea. She completed her doctoral degree and postdoctoral programme at the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta. Her research interests involve narrative inquiry, children’s, mothers’ and teachers’ experiences, and teacher education in preservice and in-service education contexts. She has published a number of articles and translated English books in the area of narrative inquiry into Korean to share the topic among the Korean academic community.
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Ken Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. His current research focuses on the integrity and effectiveness of the policymaking process in teacher education internationally and in the US. His current work also focuses on the creation of new forms of teacher education that help provide high-quality teachers for everyone’s children and that support both the dignity of the teaching profession and the legitimate rights of local communities in democratic societies to have a voice in their children’s education in public schools. Doron Zinger is a Doctoral Student at the University of California, Irvine, USA. As a former high school science teacher and school administrator, Doron led numerous technology integration and instruction initiatives. His research focuses on teacher learning, especially in STEM fields. He researches how teachers learn to use technology in the classroom, as well as teachers’ learning online. Rosanne Zwart is an Assistant Professor in the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research has a strong focus on teacher professional development throughout teachers’ careers. In the teacher education programmes of the university’s Graduate School of Teaching, she coordinates several courses that prepare prospective teachers for practice-oriented research. She is also involved in several projects with schools for secondary education aimed at supporting (beginning) teachers’ professional development. She is President of the Teaching and Teacher Education division of the Netherlands Educational Research Association.
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Consulting Reviewers Section I: MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE OF TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Barbara Stengel and D. Jean Clandinin Jerry Rosiek and Peter Sleegers Jerry Rosiek and Jukka Husu Jerry Rosiek and Eila Estola Jerry Rosiek and Robert V. Bullough, Jr Jerry Rosiek and Bob Adamson
Section II: LEARNING TEACHER IDENTITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13
Douwe Beijaard and Sanne Akkerman Douwe Beijaard and Elana Joram Alison Kington and D. Jean Clandinin Douwe Beijaard and Catherine Beauchamp Douwe Beijaard and Beatrice Ávalos Douwe Beijaard and Anne Edwards
Section III: LEARNING TEACHER AGENCY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18
Janice Huber and Tammy Iftody Janice Huber and James Greeno Janice Huber and Jamy Stillman Michalinos Zembylas and Jukka Husu Janice Huber and Kirsten Edwards
Section IV: LEARNING MORAL AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24
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Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Elizabeth Campbell Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Wiel Veugelers Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Carmen Mills Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Kristján Kristjánsson Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Richard D. Osguthorpe Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Hugh Sockett
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Section V: LEARNING TO NEGOTIATE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28
Roland W. Mitchell and Nathan D. Brubaker Roland W. Mitchell and Annemarie Alberton Gunn Roland W. Mitchell and Carmen Montecinos Ben Kirchner and D. Jean Clandinin
Section VI: LEARNING THROUGH PEDAGOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35
Rosanne Zwart and Jukka Husu Juanjo Mena and Mark Winschitl Juanjo Mena and Baljit Kaur Juanjo Mena and Drew H. Gitomer Juanjo Mena and Sara Hennessy Juanjo Mena and Brigitte Smit Juanjo Mena and Mariana Souto-Manning
Section VII: LEARNING THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44
Cheryl J. Craig and Patience Sowa Cheryl J. Craig and Cameron White Cheryl J. Craig and Billie Eilam Cheryl J. Craig and Ashley J. Casey Cheryl J. Craig and Lynn Butler-Kisber Cheryl J. Craig and Jude Butcher Cheryl J. Craig and Frans Meijers Cheryl J. Craig and Ying Guo Cheryl J. Craig and Kristine Black-Hawkins
Section VIII: LEARNING PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION AND THROUGHOUT THE CAREER Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47
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Auli Toom and Katrien Stuyven Elaine Munthe and D. Jean Clandinin Auli Toom and David Gijbels
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Consulting Reviewers
Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50
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Auli Toom and Fred Janssen Auli Toom and Elisabeth van Es Auli Toom and David Zyngier
Section IX: LEARNING WITH AND FROM ASSESSMENTS IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57
Mistilina Sato and Gavin Brown Mistilina Sato and Harm Tillema Mistilina Sato and Kari Smith D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu Mistilina Sato and Val Klenowski Mistilina Sato and Mary Hill Mistilina Sato and Rosie Le Cornu
Section X: THE EDUCATION AND LEARNING OF TEACHER EDUCATORS Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61
Ronnie Davey and Stefinee Pinnegar Ronnie Davey and Hafdis Gudjonsdottir Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin Ronnie Davey and Sally Galman
Section XI: THE EVOLVING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS OF TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66
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Beatrice Ávalos and Keith Turvey Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin Miriam Ben-Peretz and D. Jean Clandinin Beatrice Ávalos and Jukka Husu Beatrice Ávalos and Lani Florian
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1 Mapping an International Handbook of Research in and for Teacher Education D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu
Faced with the daunting task of editing an international handbook of research on teacher education, we spent a great deal of time discussing ways we might conceptualize the task. We were mindful from the outset that, as Bullough (2012) pointed out, ‘a collection of articles does not a handbook make’ (p. 141). To make his point Bullough drew on what Boyer (1990) characterized as the scholarship of integration [which] involves doing research at the boundaries where fields converge … [It] also means interpretation, fitting one’s own research – or the research of others – into larger intellectual patterns. Such efforts are increasingly essential since specialization, without broader perspective, risks pedantry … Those engaged in integration ask, ‘What do the findings mean?’ (p. 19)
Boyer’s work drew our attention to the importance of attending to the boundaries where the many fields that attend, even peripherally, to teacher education meet. His work also drew our attention to the importance of trying to create or discern larger intellectual patterns that may be at work in teacher education. With this dual focus on attending to boundaries and creating larger intellectual patterns, we agree with Bullough that handbooks should ‘further the scholarship of integration’. Indeed, perhaps handbooks are the one genre of research publication that can foster the larger scale required by a scholarship of integration amidst increasingly siloed genres such as research articles, chapters in books and even books. As we took on the task of editing the Handbook we saw our aim as furthering the conceptualization of scholarship in the field of research in teacher education. Defining just what teacher education is, as well as defining what counts as research in teacher education, are both contested matters. We took up our
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task hopeful that how we conceptualized the Handbook could offer something to the scholarship of integration in international research in teacher education and could highlight ways forward to new lines of scholarship. With that (partly implicit) idea of scholarship in our minds, we acknowledged that the overall aim of the Handbook was to critically advance and extend areas of research in teacher education and to do so mindful of the importance of attending to boundaries where fields of study meet in teacher education and of creating larger intellectual patterns. As co-editors, we both have long histories of engaging not only in teaching and teacher education but also in research in teaching and teacher education. We have both participated in policy and practice discussions in our home institutions, local and state governing authorities, local and national associations, and policymaking bodies. While we have lived out our teaching, research and policy work in different countries, our shared interests brought us to general research meetings, such as the annual gathering of the American Educational Research Association, research meetings focused on teacher education such as the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching, and editorial work in research journals such as Teaching and Teacher Education. Becoming co-editors allowed us to deepen our understandings and conceptualizations of attending to boundaries where fields of study meet in teacher education and of the importance of larger intellectual patterns in research in teacher education. As we began our editorial work we held knowledge shaped by years of experience as teachers, teacher educators and researchers of teaching and teacher education. We knew our experiential knowledge could be a double-edged sword in that we were somewhat comfortable in teacher education and research in teacher education, at least in how it looks from where we stand. However, we also knew that, like the proverbial fish in water, we were sometimes unaware of the water in which we swam.
OUR STARTING POINTS FOR THE HANDBOOK An International Research Handbook As we began conceptualizing the Handbook, we knew the importance of speaking to more than local or national contexts as well as the importance of including a broad range of research from as many countries as possible. This international focus was both a matter regarding what to include, that is, a broad range of research from different national contexts, as well as one concerning the importance of reaching a broad international audience for the Handbook. This focus on including research from many international contexts and addressing researchers and policymakers from multiple countries would, we imagined, allow us to promote teacher education scholarship that is theoretically and practically relevant to
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national and international social contexts where teacher education takes place. We were aware of the great variability across countries in teacher education approaches, selectivity, curricular demands, state regulatory policies, and the role of research in teacher education (Tatto, 2015). We saw this diversity as a source of insight to find novel ways to address challenges of teacher education. However, our purposes were to seek greater coherence, but not uniformity, in research in teacher education. We did not wish to wash out the importance of attending to boundaries but to highlight the meeting of work at the boundaries as sources of insight. Further, we were searching for ways to discern or create ‘larger intellectual patterns’ within research in teacher education that would allow dialogue across diversity. Without it, we saw, diversity would not be a strength, but, rather, might become a means of confusion (Grimmet & Chinnery, 2009). As we began to imagine ways to include diversity, we drew on work already done. Clandinin, along with Hamilton (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010), questioned what it meant to think of research with an international perspective. Hamilton and Clandinin wondered ‘How we might step out of national silos, single disciplines, and taken-for-granted understandings’. Working from a view of research in teaching and teacher education as ‘not universally understood terms or activities’, they acknowledged that contexts make a difference in research in teaching and teacher education, and they wondered how those unique contexts in different countries create differences. Offering considerations taken up as citizens of the world, they wondered, as do we, what tensions are opened up in research dialogues in teacher education when the dialogue is opened up to multiple international voices. Hamilton and Clandinin drew on cosmopolitanism, especially the work of Nussbaum (1998). Nussbaum suggests that we see ourselves as Kosmopolitês – world citizens or cosmopolitans. She [Nussbaum] suggests that taking a cosmopolitan view opens ways to see beyond traditionally bounded edges … This view ‘does not privilege already formed communities. It seeks to defend emerging spaces for new cultural and social configurations reflective of the intensifying intermingling of people, ideas, and activities the world over. However, cosmopolitanism does not automatically privilege the latter (Hansen, 2008, p. 294).’ Unlike globalization, which can be homogenizing, cosmopolitanism offers a ‘distinct alternative’ (Hansen, 2008, p. 307). (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, 1227)
As Hamilton and Clandinin (2010) pointed out, ‘taking a cosmopolitan stance comes in the “ever-changing space between what a person and community are in the present moment and what they might become through a reflective response to new influence juxtaposed with an understanding of their traditions and roots” (Hansen, Burdick-Shepherd, Cammarano, & Obelleiro, 2009, p. 588)’. Adopting a cosmopolitan stance, Hamilton and Clandinin (2010) argued that, following Nussbaum (1998), ‘… the task of world citizenship requires the would-be world citizen to become a sensitive and empathetic interpreter’ (p. 63), yet does not, and should not, ‘require that we suspend criticism toward other individuals and cultures … The world citizen may be very critical of
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unjust actions or policies and of the character of people who promote them’ (p. 65) … As citizens of this world we must have the ‘ability to see [ourselves] as not simply a citizen of a local region … [but as] inescapably international’ (Wisler, 2009, p. 132) … Living as a citizen of the world, ‘spotlights the familiar fact that human beings can create not just ways to tolerate differences between them but also ways to learn from one another, however modest the resulting changes in their outlooks may be. It is a cosmopolitanism that does not take sides dogmatically and yet that does not stand apart from conflict, misunderstanding, and challenge’ (Hansen, 2010, p. 4) … In this Hansen directs our attention outside of the familiar to the possible and encourages us to engage these places of conflict, misunderstanding and challenge with a spirit that calls us to consider the possibilities of otherwise. (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, p. 1227)
Similar to what Hamilton and Clandinin were trying to open up as co-editors of the research journal Teaching and Teacher Education, we also saw our task in including international research as pressing ‘beyond national borders, beyond disciplinary borders, beyond borders of institutions. Pressing beyond borders and boundaries, we want to press for more than the inclusion of citations but the inclusion of ideas and practices around the world’ (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, p. 1228). We shared their hope that by bringing together diverse authors from many locations and theoretical viewpoints, we could work toward creating ‘a community of scholars’, where we can, as Dewey (1916) described, ‘assimilate, imaginatively, something of another’s experience in order to tell [her/]him intelligently of one’s own experience’ (p. 6), one’s own research. For us, Dewey’s ideas speak to what is possible in research dialogues within a community of scholars. In a Deweyan spirit, we hoped that through creating a Handbook, we could create a space where researchers could share more deeply ‘in the experiences of others’, and in so doing there would be ‘more resources’ ‘for dealing with our problems, and hence the more intelligent our collective problem solving will [hopefully] be’ (Biesta and Burbules, 2003, p. 70). The Handbook, we hoped, could begin processes of dialogue and knowing within a community of research in teacher education. We also hoped that we could approach issues ‘with a cosmopolitan perspective that opens rather than closes our understandings of issues’ (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, p. 1228). We saw our task as an inclusive one, but one that fits well within the scholarship of integration, one that includes ideas and practices from around the world, one where new and often unheard voices join in the dialogue about research in teacher education.
A Research Focus We also knew we wanted to keep our focus on research and to attend to the broad range of theoretical frames and methodologies within which research in teacher education was undertaken. We did not exclude or draw boundaries around particular methodologies or theoretical frameworks but, rather, were inclusive of the range of research undertaken in teacher education. We know our way around
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research methodologies that are commonly used in teacher education research. In some ways, we are ‘at ease’ in discussions around research in teacher education. We know, for example, of metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) such as ‘theory drives practice’, ‘the gap between theory and practice’ and ‘the need for a bridge between theory and practice’ that are used so often that they are frequently no longer questioned or unpacked for their entailments that shape research in teacher education. We realized the challenge of being wakeful enough to see the gaps and lacunae that surround us in the field of research in teacher education. We are aware that research in teacher education is usually labelled as applied research, suggesting that knowledge is usually first ‘discovered’ (often outside teacher education) and then ‘applied’ in teacher education contexts. This can be seen as a boundary tension when fields related to research in teacher education come together. As we continued to work with the concept of attending to boundaries that meet in the field of research in teacher education, we began to attend more and more to tensions created as boundaries meet. One of our purposes is to focus on these tensions at the boundaries in ways that allow us to reconsider whether seeing teacher education research as applied research is appropriate. There is another boundary at work here and that relates to the relationship between research in teacher education and the practice of teacher education. Teacher learning and teacher knowledge are often characterized as tacit, personally held, and oriented toward practice and developed on the basis of formal and informal educational experiences throughout a person’s teaching career. Teacher education, supported by teacher education research, is linked with these complex learning processes. As we approached these adaptive perspectives of teacher learning, we began to draw attention to their contested relationship with teacher education research and teacher education practices. We imagine ourselves at the intersection between the interests of research in teacher education and the interests of societies it aims to serve. And, at least to some extent, we imagine research stimulated by both. Following Boyer, we do not want research only to respond to teacher education problems and challenges, but also to allow problems and challenges outside of teacher education to ‘define an [extended research] agenda for engaged scholarship [of teacher education]’ (Boyer, 1990, p. 21).
A Focus across the Continuum of Teacher Education within Times and Places We conceptualized teacher education and professional learning in teacher education as on a continuum from pre-service teacher education to continuing teacher education. We realized that not everyone shares this view of teacher education. Some understand teacher education as only referring to pre-service or initial teacher education. Indeed, this is the most common understanding in the academy,
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in the teaching profession, and in the many public discussions around teacher education. We realized that we were broadening what counts as teacher education when we attended to the continuum of teacher education from initial/pre-service teacher education to in-service teacher education and professional development. Teacher education occurs across the lifespan of teachers and research on teacher education, of necessity then, also ranges across the lifespan. Besides this continuum, we also acknowledged the need to cover many kinds of teacher education programs and practices, ranging from ‘traditional’ to ‘alternative’. It is important to attend to the increasing variation in how teachers are educated in national and international contexts. We know this expansive view of teacher education has implications for the contexts in which we see legitimate research in teacher education. In the Handbook we included research in teacher education across the same continuum and with attention to diverse teacher education programs and practices in national and international contexts. We know it is important to attend carefully to the ways in which the past shapes the present and futures of research in teacher education. What has gone before in research in teacher education and how research in teacher education shapes what is happening now is something to which we were attentive from the outset. Attending to both temporal and place contexts drew our attention to multi-disciplinary perspectives and cross-disciplinary investigations. We wanted to look at research in terms of intercultural and cross-cultural understandings of, and within, different teacher education systems and contexts. Such work allowed us to focus globally as well as on what is called the indigenization of teacher education, as those who work in research in teacher education gradually become more inclusive of wider definitions of their field.
FACING THE ENDURING ISSUES OF RESEARCH ON TEACHER EDUCATION As we worked through our opening assumptions for the design of the Handbook, we composed our first draft of a proposal. We were fortunate to have Sage seek review comments from six carefully selected reviewers from different countries. We were also fortunate to have colleagues who shared our interests in creating an international Handbook agree to work in two editorial boards, one a group of highly regarded international colleagues, and a second smaller group, also international and highly regarded, who agreed to work more closely with us. It was the responses of the six reviewers and the two editorial boards to the first proposal that furthered our conceptualization of the Handbook. We studied their responses, which highlighted what seemed to be enduring issues in research in teacher education, issues we needed to attend to in editing the Handbook. In what follows we identify six enduring issues and show how we worked to make sense of them as we drafted the outline of the Handbook.
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(1) One enduring issue centered around what we see as the blurred boundaries of research in teacher education. As Grossman and McDonald (2008) highlighted, it is important to attend to what counts as the field of research in teaching and what counts as the field of research in teacher education as well as to attend to how the two research fields are positioned in relation to each other. Our reviewers noted the need for us to be clearer on ‘what is research in teacher education, knowing that it is not a subject matter and yet it is too often considered to be just subject matter by those in disciplinary areas’. One reviewer response was that our link was too close to research on teaching and our focus was ‘almost entirely about teachers, not teacher educators’. Closely connected to the blurring of boundaries and the close link between the field of research in teacher education and the field of research in teaching was a concern around whether teacher education was merely teaching/learning subject matter knowledge to be taught/learned in schools. A reviewer noted, ‘I find that my colleagues who are subject matter specialists in teaching do not make such a big distinction between teaching and teacher education, whereas I do as more of a generalist scholar in teacher development. I am suggesting that this handbook should stay centered on teacher education’. She suggested more specification on ‘the boundaries between the focus on teacher education and what might be in a handbook on teachers and teaching’. We reflected on whether the need to sharpen the boundaries between research in teaching and teacher education was part of our desire to contribute to the scholarship of integration. By doing so, we highlight ‘research at the boundaries where [the two] fields converge’. However, even as we considered the two fields, research in teaching and research in teacher education, we highlighted the need for more careful attention to the reasons for holding the two research fields in such tight proximity. Is it helpful to keep these two fields of research so tightly coupled, one to the other? We wonder if it is important to consider other fields of research which also converge at the boundary with research in teacher education. What becomes visible if we loosen the tight coupling of the two fields and begin to consider other fields of importance in research in teacher education? We feel dis/ease about shaping a boundary which continues to keep the roots of research in teacher education situated so firmly in research in teaching, particularly in research in the subject matters that are currently taught in schools. Would opening questions about boundaries with other fields of research continue to speak to the scholarship of integration but also disrupt some of the conceptual ways of linking the two fields, ways that were initially formed mainly in the US context? Were there other ways to re-imagine the relationships between research in teaching and research in teacher education, ones that we had not yet imagined? We were beginning to recognize that there are possibilities to open ways for research in teacher education not yet explored. (2) A second enduring issue that we attended to with renewed interest after the review and editorial responses centered around possible relationships of theory
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and practice in research in teacher education. One concern raised by reviewers related to how, in our draft proposal, we had separated theory and practice. This was not our intention. We intended that in reviewing the research in teacher education we could attend to the various theoretical standpoints from which researchers take up their studies. These theoretical standpoints shape what can be learned from the studies. However, in our initial framing, we unintentionally managed to reinforce the entailments of the metaphor of a gap between theory and practice in teacher education. We had also unintentionally suggested that research in teacher education was a way that the theory practice gap could be filled, ameliorated or bridged. This reading of what we had written sharpened our view that we wanted to shift this relationship between research in teacher education and the practice of teacher education. Our intention was to create a conceptualization in which research in teacher education could be seen as in dialectic relationship with the practice of teacher education in ways that allow for multiple perspectives, perspectives that allow us to understand the complexity of what is happening in teacher education and what could, or should, be happening in research in teacher education. Seeing theory and practice in dialectic relationship in the research and practice of teacher education allows possible research dialogues within a community of scholars. As noted above, we see dialogue as a process of interconnections and back-and-forthness during which researchers are able to contribute to teacher education in dialogue with other stakeholders and make teacher education communities flourish. We linked this concern to the importance of attending more closely to the possible relationships between theory and practice in research in teacher education, that is, the theoretical standpoints of researchers, and the ways that research stands in relation to practice. Our efforts to re-imagine these relationships drew us again to think about the scholarship of integration, but also about trying to disrupt the taken-for-granted in order to re-imagine the taken-for-granted and sometimes unexamined metaphors that shape the discourses of teacher education. (3) A third enduring issue highlighted by review responses was framed by attention to terms used in teacher education and research in teacher education. Attending carefully to the terms used across diverse contexts allowed us to understand what they make visible as well as what they obscure. Related to the enduring issue of coming to terms across the field of research in teacher education is the importance of turning our attention from considerations of the instrumental to considerations of the conceptual in research in teacher education. As Grossman and McDonald (2008) noted, the fields of research in teaching and teacher education need to develop a common professional vocabulary to describe, analyze, and improve teaching. The reviewers noted something similar, drawing attention to terms such as pre-service teacher education, alternative certification, practicums and the role of schools, internships, and so on. Again, we sensed the importance of the task but again we felt dis/comfort about the tight
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links between research in teaching and research in teacher education. We agreed that we do need to find ways to talk with each other in research communities in teacher education. We do need to use terms and concepts in ways that can be understood across various disciplinary and policy boundaries. We also need to consider how the terms we use structure the design of policies and practices. However, we need to be wakeful to the important conceptual shifts that lie behind the use of terms, terms such as ‘teacher educators teaching teachers’ as distinct from ‘teacher educators creating learning spaces/opportunities for teachers to learn’. As one reviewer pointed out, ‘the perspectives on how teachers learn are the driving theories behind much of teacher education research’. We began to see how selecting the terms that we might use as ‘common terms’ could contribute to a scholarship of integration but could also blur important conceptual issues in how we imagine research in teacher education. Again, we sensed the importance of attending to the need to open up considerations of terms and relationships in order to broaden, perhaps even shift, how we understand research in teacher education. Working with Deweyan concepts could help us work toward a more dialectical view of the relation between theory and practice in research in teacher education. (4) A fourth enduring issue emerging from the issue of the relationship between research in teaching and research in teacher education was the importance of broadening our views of teacher education as well as our views of research in teacher education. We were aware of the ‘content debates’ (e.g. Wilson, 2005) of teacher education where teacher educators were blamed for caring more about teacher candidates’ beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions than their content knowledge (of teaching). The content debates shaped research in teacher education such that, for some, research in teacher education is sometimes synonymous with research in school subject matter areas. We see the importance of including research in teacher education in cognition, craft, and affect as well as research in subject-matter-specific areas. However, our agenda is more ambitious than even this. We also want to bring the relational aspects of teaching more seriously into the arena of teacher education research. As editors, we saw that it was important to emphasize teachers’ and teacher educators’ moral beliefs and capabilities, their agency, and their sociopolitical views as integral parts of research in teacher education. There has been a consensus that the moral qualities of teaching, the moral work of teaching, should be brought more to the foreground. However, even if the moral characteristics and challenges of teaching have been adequately identified, teacher educators have found them challenging to enact in their work. As Sanger and Osguthorpe (2011) stated, we are still missing productive means for conceptualizing and connecting teachers’ professional knowledge and skills to their moral work of teaching, and developing it adequately in teacher education in all its facets. As part of broadening our views of research in teacher education we attended more carefully to issues around identity making and agency in teacher education.
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We knew that there was an increasing focus in the research of identity making and agency in teacher education. (5) The fifth enduring issue highlighted by reviewers related specifically to the socio-political contexts of research in teacher education. Initially we included this research within understandings of the shaping power of contexts more generally. Reviewers helped us see the importance of attending more directly to the sociopolitical contexts as an enduring issue. One reviewer noted our ‘lack of attention to the shifting landscapes impacting teacher education, how the focus on teacher education programming [needs to be] on the lively, dynamic, socio-political/cultural contexts informed by and informing teacher education’. With advice from a working board member, Jerry Rosiek, we framed a new section that addressed ‘Learning to negotiate social, political, and cultural responsibilities of teaching in teacher education’. In that section we include a vast research literature that frames teachers as agents of social change and teacher education programs that prepare teachers to do this work. We included, at Rosiek’s suggestion, research undertaken from a stance that views teacher education as ‘collective political work [that] cannot be adequately understood [only] through individualistic theories’. (6) We framed the sixth issue around the larger research puzzles that continue to haunt us. We tentatively began to explore understandings of awakening to the gaps and silences in research in teacher education. We did not imagine that this was a binary distinction between being asleep (not aware of the gaps and silences) and being awake (noticing all of the gaps and silences). We saw this as a process of beginning to notice and highlight what was not visible when our attention was too narrowly constrained by the taken-for-granted assumptions in dominant views of teacher education. One reviewer hinted at this concern, noting that we needed a better ‘balance between research from different areas [of teacher education]: … [not] only inclusion’. While this review comment helped us begin to see the issues around inclusion and balance, we were also attentive to the need to disrupt, to interrupt, some of the ways we understand a scholarship of integration. Gavin Brown pushed our thinking further and restated our cosmopolitan stance when he wrote that we seemed to be working within ‘a first world vision of teacher education. I don’t see anything that addresses issues of preparing teachers for work in Africa or Asia (for example) where culture, language, and poverty are real, persistent, and troubling and where the vision of a teacher is so different to that advocated by democratic, critical, neo-Marxist, etc. visions of being a teacher’. As Brown suggested, researchers in teacher education have ‘much to give and learn’ in countries where research in teacher education is not included in English-speaking publications. As he wrote, ‘half the world seems to not be present in this outline. In these societies teacher education and the teaching profession is huge, highly regarded socially, but perhaps troublingly conventional, traditional (possibly reactionary?) relative to the agenda outlined for the volume’. While we were already beginning to question the importance of only working within a scholarship of integration, we began to realize we also needed to
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offer what we are calling a scholarship of disruption. Working with the idea of disruption, that is, of creating a rupture, crack or break in the taken for granted was inspired, in part, by Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem and his words ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in’. We began to imagine disruption as a way to allow light into research in teacher education, and to allow us to create a scholarship through which we open taken-for-granted frames as we attend to enduring issues in new ways, with previously unheard voices, and from contexts that cannot be understood without new framings. It was with these enduring issues in mind, along with a view of the importance of working within a dialectic between a scholarship of integration and a scholarship of disruption, that we began to re-conceptualize the Handbook into its current form.
RE-IMAGINING THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE HANDBOOK: BEGINNING TO WORK A DIALECTIC BETWEEN A SCHOLARSHIP OF INTEGRATION AND A SCHOLARSHIP OF DISRUPTION In this section we return to the opening quotation to consider again Boyer’s insight into boundaries and what it might mean to attend to the ‘boundaries where fields converge’. As we worked our way through conceptualizing the Handbook we realized that doing research at the boundaries of fields necessarily also leads to disruption, to the need to reopen, to reconsider, to re-imagine the boundaries of research in teacher education. What fields should come together in the boundaries of research in teacher education? What are the fields that bound/ should bound teacher education research? We began to attend more closely to the tensions of considering work at the boundaries and were reminded of borderland work. Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) drew on the work of Anzaldúa (1987) and wrote that ‘What Anzaldúa teaches us is that borders are never clean and clear but are blurred as regions overlap and come together’ (p. 59). They are places of tensions, places that ask us to stop and inquire, to engage in wondering about what it means to engage in inquiry. While tensions are often seen as something to be avoided or smoothed over, we see tensions as something that exist at the boundaries or borders where fields or areas of study converge. As we attend carefully to the boundaries where fields converge, and when we begin to consider deeply which fields share boundaries with research in teacher education, tensions are inevitable. Rather than smooth them over in the Handbook, we try to identify the tensions and use them as ways to disrupt the taken for granted, to see them as cracks or breaks that let the light shine in. Both in the structure of the Handbook and in the inclusion of authors from different theoretical standpoints, methodological commitments, and different contexts, we intentionally created possibilities for tensions to help us understand in deeper ways research in teacher education.
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By February 2015 we had outlined the Handbook in the following way. We include the initial outline here to give a sense of the framework we invited authors to write within.
HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 1: Mapping an International Handbook of Research in and for Teacher Education In this Handbook we take up the task of (re)conceptualizing the field of research on and for teacher education. We see our task as bringing together scholars from around the world who share our stance that teacher education is a social force for bringing change to the ways schools and other educational institutions work with children and young people. It is through our work as researchers on and for teacher education that we see possibilities for learning both what works in teacher education and what work is worth doing. We also recognize there are possibilities for research in teacher education not yet explored. We work from a starting point that teacher education as currently composed needs to be imaginatively transformed. We see this Handbook as providing a starting point for imagining that change based on a range of diverse research in teacher education.
Section I: Mapping the Landscape of Teacher Education Teacher education is a phenomenon that has a long history and an uncertain future. Fairly recently pre-service teacher education was taken up and formalized in various institutions, including, but not limited to, universities. Prior to moving to the universities and other post-secondary institutions, pre-service teacher education occurred differently in different countries and in different ways, in part dependent upon the grade level for which teachers were being prepared (i.e. early childhood, primary, secondary). Prior to being moved into formal higher education institutions teacher education occurred as teachers engaged in teaching (with an implicit assumption that experience as a teacher was the ‘training’ or teacher education that each teacher needed). The positioning of teacher education is also dependent on national and local policy contexts such as whether education, including teacher education, is under a centralized government system or a more decentralized system and who the central policy stakeholders are within the systems. We realize that in some situations international bodies such as the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO, UNICEF or Education International play major roles in teacher education, particularly ongoing and in-service teacher education. We examine the major trends in past and present teacher education policies that have shaped the current landscape of teacher education. We are also aware that the career trajectory of teacher educators is different in different national contexts (i.e. in some places
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teacher educators are first teachers and then become teacher educators and in some places teacher educators do not begin in classroom teaching).
Sections II–X In Sections II–X, we began with identifying enduring problems or puzzles in teacher education. What we meant by enduring puzzles were those issues that concerned us as teacher educators and as researchers in teacher education, i.e., for example, puzzles around the shaping or learning of identities as teachers, the learning of competencies, and the learning of subject matter knowledge. These larger puzzles shape more practical issues such as those around practicum and field experiences. We use these enduring problems or puzzles to identify the nine sections. We realize that there may be other enduring problems or puzzles, but these seemed the most pressing to us. We then draw on different theoretical approaches used in research on teacher education, with the contexts where they are used, in order to give a better understanding of what we learn from the results they provide. Using different theoretical frames as connective tissues we aim to help readers come to grips with how a particular theoretical frame drives research tasks, positions research in different contexts, and brings a different set of interpretations to understanding and developing approaches in teacher education. For this purpose, within Sections II–X, certain relevant/key theoretical approaches are discerned, thus enabling us to build more integration and coherence between the theories used, the teacher education approaches presented, and the research undertaken. In sections II–X, each chapter should be guided by the following formula for analyzing research on teacher education: • To identify enduring problems or puzzles in teacher education in order to show how particular topics are defined in research on teacher education • To uncover how certain theoretical frames help us to understand particular topics/domains • To review how particular topics/puzzles in research on teacher education are studied with different methodologies • To report what we can learn from research undertaken with specific theoretical frames and methodological approaches • To discuss implications for teacher education practices: what and how teachers learn; how to develop effective practices within particular domains in teacher education? • To offer future directions in teacher education research.
We try to develop a sense of narrative coherence across the sections as we begin with issues around teacher identity as a starting point in teacher education. We end with a section devoted to considerations of the identities of teacher educators and the learning of teacher educators.
Section II: Learning Teacher Identity in Teacher Education The chapters in this section address the ways in which teacher education works to develop or shape teachers’ professional identities. Within teacher education,
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there are different practice approaches shaped by different theories and concepts of identity. For example, if teacher educators work from a situated cognition theory, they engage in practices such as partnership programs where student teachers are placed in schools or practices such as working with students in learning communities. Within such settings student teachers and practicing teachers develop their professional identities. Part of the complexity here is that different views of identity, including the interweaving of personal and professional identity, identity as something developed in stages, identity as fixed, identity as contextual and fluid and so on, are also at work.
Section III: Learning Teacher Agency in Teacher Education Professional agency is characterized by the dynamics between teachers and their professional (and personal) environments. Teacher education programs are also learning environments that offer candidates varied possibilities to participate in and contribute to their own learning processes. As teacher educators we also work to highlight our sense of agency in developing faculties of education that are attentive to the professional needs of candidates. Being an active professional agent in teacher education means perceiving oneself as an active and intentional professional who makes decisions and reflects on the impact of one’s actions. It means developing one’s own expertise for the benefit of others, especially for candidates’ learning but also for collegial professional development. In addition to these pedagogical requirements, agency relates to issues of equity and fairness: it seeks to ensure that faculties of education both lead in, and are attentive to, matters of social justice and other areas where change is needed in schools and in society.
Section IV: Learning Moral and Ethical Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education There is a strong consensus in the field of teacher education that teaching is inherently a moral endeavor and this central aspect of teaching should also be exposed and developed during teacher education. However, it is argued that programs of teacher education do not sufficiently and explicitly deal with these issues in their curricula. This is because we do not understand fully enough the phenomenon, and how it is articulated in the practice of teaching. Thus, there is a need and demand for research on the moral work of teaching as well as on the moral work of teacher education. This section aims to fill that gap by presenting chapters that uncover the phenomenon from different theoretical starting points and related empirical research and results. For example, if teacher educators work from a constructivist approach to the moral domain in teaching and teacher education, they engage in practices of discerning and exposing those salient features of teaching that can be seen and developed as moral qualities of teaching. If teacher educators work from a cognitive and developmental view of moral
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reasoning, they tend to use more structured methods to discern particular levels of moral reasoning and behavior; whereas teacher educators who prefer more descriptive methods tend to clarify the question ‘Where’s the moral in teaching?’ and how they can get a grip on it in their practice. We hope that chapters in this section can serve as a basis for building more substantially coherent and effective teacher education practices to better cope with the growing demands of the moral work of teaching.
Section V: Learning to Negotiate Social, Political, and Cultural Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education There is an expansive literature that frames teachers as agents of social change and, correspondingly, sees teacher education programs as needing to prepare teachers to do this work. It is a central tenet of much critical and post-structural scholarship that collective political work cannot be adequately understood through individualistic theories of teaching and teacher education. This idea dates back to scholars such as Durkheim who rejected the idea that teacher education cannot be the force to transform society and resolve social problems. Instead, it is thought that teacher education can have impact on its contexts only by reforming itself and its practices. The metaphor of a classroom (also in teacher education) as an image of a society is well known both in Deweyan and Freirean forms. The former aims to develop the classroom community to include the wide spectrum of human differences, where the teacher/teacher educator is seen as responsible for organizing learning experiences for good and democratic living. Freirean advocates, however, call for teacher educators to challenge both injustice and unequal power arrangements both in campus classrooms and in society. Others, such as Maxine Greene, offer ways for creating democratic classrooms where teachers/teacher educators learn to listen to students’ political/social voices. There are many contemporary theorists working on political, social, and cultural frameworks who take up these issues. In all these stances, teacher education is always in the making. And thus, teacher learning is a search for ‘situated understanding’ that places ideas and events in their social, historical, and cultural contexts. Chapters in this section focus on social commitments/responsibilities, institutional structures, targeted course contents, and pedagogical processes that support prospective teachers. They aim to clarify how issues related to teacher education are often political and contentious among people with different ideologies, interests, and perspectives (also with and within teacher education).
Section VI: Learning through Pedagogies in Teacher Education In this section, we aim to provide theoretically framed examples of how different kinds of inquiries in teacher education are addressed in different teacher
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education programs/contexts, and how different pedagogies in them are connected to particular ways of teacher learning. By pedagogies we mean all kinds of practices, principles, and teaching methods organized in teacher education. Put simply, this is about ways of teaching student teachers and teachers in teacher education. The chapters in this section intend to take a broader view of teaching and teacher learning, which encompasses more than just delivering the (to be learned) contents of teaching. For example, we seek to clarify the relation between learning to teach in courses and learning to teach in field experiences (classrooms, out of classrooms, alternative settings), and the role of supervision in academic studies/course work and in field experiences, etc. Pedagogies of teacher education refer to the methods used in teaching (e.g. the degree of interaction and responsiveness of instruction), the degree of the science of teaching (e.g. research-informed teaching and its theoretical underpinnings), and its intended outcomes (e.g. knowledge, skills, and attitudes). We ask that chapter authors take up questions of not only how but what teacher educators teach about assessment to student teachers as part of/related to pedagogies. In these chapters then we ask each author to address the implications/ ramifications of assessment as part of pedagogies. Within teacher education there are multiple ways of organizing teacher education practices that are explicitly or implicitly shaped by different theoretical views. It is also important to remember that pedagogies in teacher education are grounded in various educational foundations. Thus, teaching is never simply an instrumental activity, a question just of technique or method. For example, if teacher educators work from constructive or collaborative learning theories, they engage in practices that differ greatly from activities linked to transmission of professional knowledge approaches. Naturally, we acknowledge that there are contradictions and tensions between different pedagogical approaches in teacher education, and the coherence within each approach will be quite loose and open to further development.
Section VII: Learning the Contents of Teaching in Teacher Education There is a vast literature with starting points in the subject matter areas of teacher education that specify essential knowledge and skills in subject matter areas. It is in this section that we deal with what is often seen as the core of teacher education, i.e. subject matter knowledge. Subject matter knowledge is often seen as the starting point for programs of teacher education in many countries in the world. There are a number of subject matter knowledge areas that stretch across teacher education programs in most countries. We also ask authors to consider the content of assessment that is part of particular subject matter knowledge.
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Section VIII: Learning Professional Competencies in Teacher Education throughout the Career Ways of teaching in teacher education are also ways of professional learning in teacher education. We realize that the idea of competencies as the measurable or observable knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors critical to successful teaching performance is a contested and problematic idea. The concept of competencies, with its attendant meaning of being competent in a skill or area of knowledge, has been taken up in teacher education with the idea of developing competence-based teacher education programs. The concept can carry heavy ideological meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Here, our aim is to broaden the discussion of the topic to include more than the importance of outcomes in terms of (policymaking) competencies. Thus, we acknowledge that the list of possible competencies that teachers are to develop through pre-service and in-service teacher education can, literally, be endless. In order to make a clearer distinction between outcome behaviors and competencies, we feel that it is important to promote understanding that competencies can also be seen as integrated bodies of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. As such, they represent a potential for behavior, not just the behavior itself. However, in all contexts with which we are familiar, some concept of teacher competencies is at work. However, diverse approaches are taken to compe tencies in teacher education, dependent upon how teachers take up the challenge of professional and pedagogical competencies. While some approaches develop a predetermined list of skills and knowledge, other approaches work from different understandings of what it means to hold and develop pedagogical competencies. These diverse understandings shape different approaches in teacher education.
Section IX: Learning with and from Assessments in Teacher Education There is a diverse literature in the areas of assessment processes (learning about assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning, addressed in relation to pedagogies in Section VI) as well as in the processes of being assessed in pre-service and in-service teacher education (in-course work, field placements, and performance assessments). In this section we take up questions around the latter point, that is, how teacher educators assess teachers and teacher candidates. This is important because assessment practices largely determine what and how teacher candidates are learning during their teacher education. In this section, we inquire into ‘teacher performances’ in pre-service and in-service teacher education, the benefits and pitfalls of common core standards in teacher education, and the relationships between teacher assessment
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and teacher engagement/commitment. During the course of teacher education, assessments have different functions and varied (content/methodological) forms. We can identify at least three functions of assessment in teacher education. First, as teacher candidates are selected in teacher education programs, what kind of assessment processes are used to select candidates? Second, during teacher education, what assessment procedures are used in order to assess teacher candidates’ development (of learning) toward the aims of teacher edu cation (programs/professional learning)? Within this second function we see a range of formative and summative assessment processes at work. A third function of assessment takes place when certification of approval is granted for a particular license or credential to teach officially. Within teacher education, these different functions or uses of assessment exist in relation with different approaches to teacher education. For example, assessment operates as a kind of filter or judgment when teacher candidates are selected into teacher education programs. Further, in order to evaluate the progress of teacher candidates during teacher education, many kinds of formative and summative assessments are used: for example, we use formative assessment strategies/tools/approaches to assess that required professional learning has been engaged (assessment of performance or knowledge or skills or attitudes or a combination of them). When we assess teachers at the end of courses, field experiences, or programs, etc., different forms of summative assessments are often used. Dependent upon what approaches to teacher education are being used, the (formative and summative) assessment strategies are different. We note, of course, contradictions and tensions around approaches to assessment in teacher education, both within programs and across programs. Some of these contradictions and tensions are shaped by the policy and social contexts within which we work as teacher educators.
Section X: The Education and Learning of Teacher Educators Teacher educators are an integral part of every educational system. The term ‘teacher educator’ is often taken to refer to someone working in higher education and teaching educational sciences and/or subject matters in initial teacher education programs. This narrow view, however, is no longer valid: the task of educating teachers is complex, lasting throughout a teacher’s career, and requires the active cooperation of many actors. Teacher educators work in university faculties of education, in schools alongside teacher candidates/student teachers, and may also be community members and students who attend schools. Who is a teacher educator is a complex question. Teacher educators, both in universities and outside universities, are not only responsible for initial teacher education for new teachers, they also contribute to the continuing professional learning of already qualified and educated teachers. One can say that they are usually present over a
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teacher’s career. They teach teachers how to teach and facilitate and encourage their learning both explicitly (via lectures, seminars, and tutorials) and implicitly (by modelling their own teaching and what it means to be a professional teacher). Teacher educators, in the schools and in the universities, guide student teachers to consider the relations between theory and practice, in order to reflect upon, inquire into, and evaluate their own teaching performances and thus enhance their learning to teach. They also do their share in taking care of the well-being of pre-service and in-service teachers through providing advice, counsel, and knowledge to sustain and improve their teaching. Teacher educators, in both schools and universities, play key roles in introducing pedagogical innovations into schools, and they undertake the key/focal research that develops our understanding of teaching and learning in schools. Teacher educators are crucial in supporting both new and experienced/qualified teachers to continue to learn throughout their careers.
Section XI: The Evolving Social and Political Contexts of Teacher Education This section is somewhat different from Sections II–X in that it deals with issues around the evolving contexts for teacher education, with particular attention on the social and political contexts of teacher education. Context is nearly everything when it comes to teacher education. Without schools, curriculum, parents, and children in their particular communities in different societies, the ideas and needs of teacher education would not even arise. However, the research and practice of teacher education still often attempt to work in context-free ways, treating teacher education as a separate system for the purposes of study and reform. We acknowledge that is it unreasonable to expect every significant social movement to be addressed in teacher education in detail. But it should be reasonable to expect a growing awareness of contexts having their impact on teacher education. Thus, in this section, we ask, what creates, or should create, shifts and changes in teacher education? This eleventh section of the Handbook draws attention to (i) the changing and ever demanding international political contexts of teacher education (how teacher education should respond to the many-sided accountability pressures?); (ii) societal changes that demand teacher education to better respond to and connect with its public contexts (what added-value[s]/ social and human capital[s] teacher education can contribute to our living in the modern world?); and (iii) how technological imperatives challenge the ways and structures by which teacher education should/could be organized (How can rapidly evolving teaching and learning technologies provide support for the development of teacher education? What does teacher education 3.0, 4.0 or 5.0 look like?). This section attends to the ways that the political and social contexts of teacher education are impacting and will impact teacher education and research on teacher education.
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Section XII: A Reflective Turn In the final section of the Handbook the editors, with the help of the introductions to each section, take a reflective turn to highlight the intellectual patterns that become evident in a scholarship of integration and a scholarship of disruption in research in, and for, teacher education.
PROCESSES USED IN THE SELECTION OF AUTHORS, REVIEWERS, AND SECTION INTRODUCTIONS We used our own knowledge of experts, the knowledge of our editorial board members, and reviews of the literature in each area, to select authors for each chapter. We were fortunate that almost all of the authors we approached took up our invitations with some enthusiasm. We offered each author the opportunity to select others as coauthors and, as is evident in the Handbook, many chapters are co-authored. We first asked authors to write draft abstracts, which we, as co-editors, reviewed and subsequently sent feedback to the authors. When authors submitted first drafts of their chapters, we asked editorial board members and other external reviewers to review the chapters. These were not blind reviews and we asked reviewers to offer supportive but also substantive comments. We also asked those we invited to write Section Introductions to review each chapter in their section and to provide feedback to the authors. The two reviewers of each chapter are included in a list in the opening materials of the Handbook. We also reviewed each chapter and drew together the review comments into a letter to each author providing directions for further revisions. When the revised chapters were submitted, we asked the authors of the section introductions to again review the revised chapters. We also reviewed each revision. In most cases, we asked the authors to make further revisions. Occasionally we sought one more external review. We also reviewed the final chapters. We submitted the final chapters in each chapter to the authors of the section introductions. We asked the section introduction authors both to summarize the main points from each chapter and also to provide themes that cut across chapters and that pointed to future research directions. We also reviewed the section introductions and asked for further revisions. Finally, we drew on the section introductions and the chapters to co-author Chapter 67, a chapter in which we discern intellectual patterns that point to future research directions in teacher education.
REFERENCES Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Biesta, G.J.J. & Burbules, N. (2003). Pragmatism and educational research. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
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Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bullough, R.V., Jr (2012). What makes a handbook? Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy, 39(1), 136–141. Clandinin, D.J. & Rosiek, J. (2007). Mapping a landscape of narrative inquiry: Borderland spaces and tensions. In Clandinin, D.J. (Ed.) Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 35–75. Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and education. An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan. (reprinted in 2004, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications) Grimmet, P. & Chinnery, A. (2009). Bridging policy and professional pedagogy in teaching and teacher education: Buffering learning by educating teachers as curriculum makers. Curriculum Inquiry, 39(1), 125–143. Grossman, P. & McDonald, M. (2008). Back to the future: Directions for research in teaching and teacher education. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 184–205. Hamilton, M.L. & Clandinin, D.J. (2010). Citizens of the world: Recognition of the international connections. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1227–1228. Hansen, D. (2008). Curriculum and the idea of a cosmopolitan inheritance. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(3), 289–312. Hansen, D. (2010) Cosmopolitanism and education: A view from the ground. Teachers College Record, 112(1), 1–30. Hansen, D., Burdick-Shepherd, S., Cammarano, C., & Obelleiro, G. (2009) Education, values, and valuing in cosmopolitan perspective. Curriculum Inquiry, 39(5), 587–612. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nussbaum, M. (1998) Cultivating humanity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sanger, M. & Osguthorpe, R. (2011). Teacher education, preservice teacher beliefs, and the moral work of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(3), 569–571. Tatto, T.M. (2015). The role of research in the policy and practice of quality teacher education: An international review. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 171–201 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985. 2015.1017405 Wilson, R. (2005). We don’t need that kind of attitude: Education schools want to make sure prospective teachers have the right disposition. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(17), A8. Wisler, A. (2009). ‘Of, by, and for are not merely prepositions’: Teaching and learning conflict resolution for a democratic, global citizenry. Intercultural Edition, 20(2), 127–133.
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SECTION I
Mapping the Landscape of Teacher Education Jerry Rosiek
Teaching is an ancient activity. As long as there has been some skill or knowledge that needed to be passed on to the next generation, someone knowledgeable was needed to assist with that learning. The role of being a teacher predates the concept of formal education, the construction of school buildings, and modern conceits such as discrete courses of study, textbooks, and standardized assessments. Institutions designed to support the teaching of larger groups of students are more recent developments (Gutek, 1995). Formal education of teachers is newer still. The first forms of teacher education were preparation in the skills and subject matter that needed to be taught. Once someone thoroughly learned the material, they were considered prepared to take on apprentices. Medieval European versions of the Masters degree and doctorate were originally formal designations that qualified someone as expert enough to teach a subject (Labaree, 2008; Shulman, 1986). The establishment of pathways into the vocation of teaching younger children occurred more recently. China formalized its shifan system of teacher education roughly one hundred years ago (Li, 1999; Tan, Zhuang & Wendel, 1985). The establishment of normal schools and state controlled processes of teacher certification in the United States began around the same time period (Angus, 2001). Even more recently, international organizations such as the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO, UNICEF, or Education International
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have begun playing major roles in teacher education, particularly ongoing and inservice teacher education (Spring, 2015). Universities in the United States began to acquire near exclusive control of teacher certification around the 1970s, a mere forty years ago (Labaree, 2008). It is only since then that the familiar debates about what coursework and practical experiences aspiring teachers need have occupied the attention of academics and policy makers. That being said, approximately one hundred years is a long time to have been discussing the appropriate content and methods of teacher preparation. It has been enough time for a history of practice to be recorded, a scholarly literature on teacher education to develop, and multiple schools of thought about appropriate teacher education curriculum to gain adherents. Add to this the inevitable variations in the cultural and political influences on teacher education policy and practice across the globe, and we should not be surprised that the international landscape of teacher education is varied and complex.
MAKING A MAP The chapters in this section of the Handbook offer multiple maps of this complex intellectual and political terrain. The metaphor of a map is appropriate here since every map is a projection that involves the emphasis of certain features of a terrain and an accompanying omission of others. Highway maps emphasize roadways at the expense of attention to the shape of the land. Topographic maps provide mathematically precise detail about the shape of the land, but are only accurate at smaller scales because they can’t account for the curvature of the earth. Globes can account for the curvature of the earth, but cannot be seen all at once like a planar map. Similarly, the overviews of teacher education scholarship and policy presented in these chapters offer various cross-sections of the field – from a review of the philosophical assumptions underlying contemporary teacher education scholarship and a history of the enterprise of teacher education, to an analysis of how a global accountability movement is affecting teacher education practice, an examination of the relationship between teacher education at various grade levels, comparisons of pre-service and in-service teacher education, and comparisons of teacher education priorities in nations with different levels of industrialization and wealth. Although complementary, these mappings of the intellectual landscape of teacher education scholarship should not be considered comprehensive. These are only a few of the many possible ways teacher education research might be surveyed and assessed. Neither should these chapters be considered an elaborate form of triangulation – each dispassionately depicting teacher education from a certain angle, the combination of which can help us assemble a single accurate picture of the current state of teacher education. Maps also play a part in constituting
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the future of the territory they editorially represent. Maps of soil properties can inform people where it is best to establish farms for particular crops and thus shape the way humans inhabit landscapes. Similarly, conceptual maps can highlight intellectual and political possibilities and thus draw scholarly world travelers (Lugones, 1987) to some areas of inquiries over others. Maps can highlight dangerous territories and warn people away from those places. In the same way, critical scholarly surveys can warn researchers about design flaws in their empirical studies and dangerous ideological complicities lurking in their unexamined assumptions. Finally, maps can fail to represent significant features of reality altogether, such as the maps of settler colonialists who still fail to mark the sovereign territories of Indigenous peoples all over the planet, thus enabling continued displacement of our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Similarly our conceptual maps can fail to note a particular effect of research and policy on various persons and communities, thus reinforcing habits of silence and neglect of certain educational experiences and priorities. In all these ways overviews of the research literature are as much interventions as they are descriptions. They draw our attention to various aspects of an enterprise, thus encouraging some forms of relation and implicitly discouraging others. The essays in this section are no exception, nor should they be. Teaching and teacher education is about preparing new generations to face an always indeterminate future. As such, each of these chapters offers a vision of what teacher education currently is as a prelude to helping us imagine what it could be.
CHAPTER SUMMARIES One of the common features of the current landscape of teacher education scholarship that emerges across all six chapters in this section is a concern about the relative influence of state authority and local authority on teacher education. National and local governments have an interest in monitoring the quality and content of teacher education even as the teaching professionals often defend practitioner autonomy and the ability to adapt teaching to local needs, priorities, and unique learning opportunities. This Handbook is being published at a moment when state authority over teacher education is ascendant. We are witnessing a global movement to centralize control over k-12 teaching and teacher education. These efforts struggle with the diversity of contexts that influence teacher education practice and the divergent interests invested in the preparation of teachers. This struggle is reflected in the chapters of this section. Chapter 2: Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn by Jerry Rosiek and Tristan Gleason reviews the foundational concepts that have shaped the current landscape of teacher education policy and practice. They identify the way an emphasis on the epistemology of teaching practice transformed the field of teacher education scholarship over the past three to four decades. They
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raise questions about the way an exclusive emphasis on the epistemic foundations of teaching competency can contribute to unintended consequences, including an over-emphasis on the measurable outcomes of teaching. Citing recent developments in the philosophy of social science that draw on new feminist materialisms, Indigenous philosophy, and revisionist pragmatism, they propose that the landscape of teacher education scholarship is in the early stages of a tectonic shift towards an emphasis on the ontological and ethical outcomes of teaching. Chapter 3: Teacher Education: A Historical Overview by Wendy Robinson argues for the importance of historicizing contemporary understandings of teacher education practice and policy. To this end she provides a broad historical account of the sedimentation of different conceptions of teacher education practice, from a pre-industrial era emphasis on apprenticeship and work-based learning, to the establishment of normal schools, to the move of teacher education programs to universities. She examines the way conceptions of the knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for effective teaching have evolved over time in response to competing contextual influences. Among the most important of those influences is the tension between the teaching profession’s efforts at self- governance and the state’s interest in controlling it. This tension, she observes, has shaped the landscape of teacher education practice for centuries and has become especially acute in recent decades. Chapter 4: The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems in Teacher Education by Maria Teresa Tatto and James Pippin directly examines the efforts of government agencies to influence teacher education curriculum and practice through the creation of state mandated accountability systems. The authors provide a history of the recent rise of teacher education accountability systems. They then examine the effects – both intended and unintended – of these accountability policies at micro, meso and macro levels of teacher education systems. To this end they present case studies of two national education systems that score highly on international exams: Finland’s and Singapore’s. They conclude that current accountability systems often involve a fundamental contradiction, in that they are ostensibly intended to improve education institutions, but may contribute to the elimination of teacher education or undermine its function by diverting scarce resources away from efforts to improve teaching practice. Chapter 5: Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View by Rose Dolan looks at teacher education practice and policy as a multidimensional systemic phenomenon. Drawing on contemporary systems theory, she offers three approaches to analyzing the relations between teacher education practice and the context that shapes that practice. She refers to these as research that uses a systems/environment lens, a functions/structure lens, and a process lens. Dolan illustrates the power of these lenses by applying them to a review of teacher preparation systems of three countries that perform highly in international assessments: Finland, Ireland, and Singapore. Each of these nations represents an approach to education situated in a different cultural landscape. The chapter illustrates how systems
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theory permits the representation of these distinctive cultural histories while also highlighting the common themes of control, freedom, and ownership that emerge across all three cases. Chapter 6: The Continuum of Pre-Service and In-Service Teacher Education by Clive Beck and Clare Kosnik extends the landscape of teacher education by examining teacher education practice and policy across the whole arc of teachers’ professional careers. Generally, pre-service teacher education curriculum is controlled by university scholars and is organized around some version of constructivist theories of learning that focus on preparing teachers as critical thinkers and problem solvers. In-service teacher education is controlled by districts and state-level administrative professionals and is more focused on promoting discrete techniques that will improve student learning outcomes. As a consequence, these two forms of preparation often work at cross purposes, or, at best, fail to complement one another. Beck and Kosnik provide an argument for aligning both pre-service and in-service teacher education under a robust form of constructivist educational philosophy that provides a means for achieving the divergent goals of the multiple teacher education stakeholders. Chapter 7: What We Know We Don’t Know about Teacher Education by Gavin Brown calls into question the assumption that there is or should be a construc tivist consensus in teacher education practice and policy. Brown draws attention to the fact that most teacher education research is conducted in and on western, educated, industrialized, rich democracies. The teacher education preferences in those nations reflect the underlying cultural values of individualism, fluidity, and the framing of tradition as an impediment to progress. Too often, he observes, teacher education policy makers uncritically assume western conceptions of the purpose of education will fit all nations and communities. As a consequence, teacher educators may become agents of colonialism and cultural displacement. Brown recommends that teacher education scholars find a way to interrogate the known unknowns about teacher education as a means of letting go of the aspiration to find universal best teaching and teacher education practices. These six chapters provide a range of conceptual vocabulary and variety of theoretical lenses for interpreting the subsequent chapters of this Handbook, as well as the international field of teacher education research as a whole. These multiple, at times contradictory, mappings of our field are intended, not to foreclose conversation with summary conclusions, but to stimulate imagination and provoke ambitions. They provide, we hope, guidance for further development of pluralistic practices as the story of teacher education research continues to unfold on a global scale.
REFERENCES Angus, D.L. (2001). Professionalism and the Public Good: A Brief History of Teacher Certification. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
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Gutek, G.L. (1995). A History of the Western Educational Experience (2nd edn). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Labaree, D. (2008). An Uneasy Relationship: The History of Teacher Education in the University. In Cochran-Smith, M., Feiman Nemser, S. & McIntyre, J. (Eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Issues in Changing Contexts. Washington, DC: Association of Teacher Educators. Li, D. (1999). Modernization and Teacher Education in China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 15(2), 179–192. Lugones, M. (1987). Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception. Hypatia, 2(2), 3–19. Shulman, Lee S. (1986) Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(1): 4–14 Spring, J.H. (2015). Globalization of Education: An Introduction (2nd edn). New York: Routledge. Tan, R.M., Zhuang, M., & Wendel, R. (1985). Recent Chinese Innovations in Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 36(5), 16–19.
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2 Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn J e r r y R o s i e k a n d Tr i s t a n G l e a s o n
What is less commonly recognized is that [Dewey’s] conception of philosophy required him to think of action itself as instrumental, as a means of ontological change. From this perspective … Dewey’s pragmatism is seen to be a radical form of realism – transactional realism in which instrumentalism plays a subordinate role … and thinking entails active involvement with independent reality, an involvement that is causally efficacious. Even reflection is a means of conducting transformational transactions with the world, a means of changing or reconstructing the world. (Ralph Sleeper, 2001, p. 3) … the ‘knower’ does not stand in a relation of absolute externality to the natural world being investigated – there is no such exterior observational point. It is therefore not absolute exteriority that is the condition of possibility for objectivity but rather agential separability – exteriority within phenomena. ‘We’ are not outside observers of the world. Nor are we simply located at particular places in the world; rather, we are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity. (Karen Barad, 2003, p. 29)
Teacher education research over the past four decades has been the site of considerable methodological innovation, with scholars employing everything from behavioral and cognitive experimental designs and socio-cognitive design experiments, to ethnographic and critical ethnographic methods of inquiry, case study methods, narrative inquiry, action research, and many variations within these. This methodological experimentation has been largely focused on an examination of the epistemic foundations of teacher competency. Scholars of teacher education have documented the knowledge that enables effective teaching of specific subject matter content, have critiqued the way ideology distorts teachers’ understanding of their practice, have examined how cultural discourses
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mediate teachers’ understanding of student needs and influence teacher professional identity, and have widely deployed the theoretical/practical knowledge binary to argue that some useful knowledge about teaching arises in the course of practice. This research has had a diversifying influence on teacher education curricula. Where once teaching was assumed to require only knowledge of content and general pedagogical techniques, in many places around the globe preservice and in-service teacher education curricula now feature the study of pedagogical content knowledge, the cultural context of teaching, critical examinations of the ideological biases of curriculum materials, case studies of teacher problem solving, narrative inquiry, and the preparation of teachers to conduct research on their own practice. All of these forms of knowledge are important to the work of teaching, and scholars of education consistently defend the plurality of these findings. However, the multiplicity of these ways of knowing sit in tension with the larger socio-political climate of teacher education. In a recent review of the field, Cochran-Smith and Villegas (2015) frame the research on teacher education as a ‘historically situated social practice’, noting the influence of a global shift from an industrial to a ‘competitive knowledge society’, and the rapid ascent of neoliberalism as a nearly invisible form of common sense (p. 8). Tatto (2015) compares current trends in teacher education in the United States, Finland, Singapore, and Chile, contrasting approaches to selectivity and curricular demands, the locus of decision making and control, and the role of research. While important differences exist, Tatto notes that ‘the driving force in recent teacher education policy has been asking programmes to demonstrate that their graduates are qualified to teach against a set of norms or standards outlining what they should know and be able to do’ (p. 173).1 Ironically, it is the same focus on epistemology that has underwritten both the proliferation in conceptions of the knowledge that enables teaching and the current policy emphasis on narrowing forms of teacher education curricula. Recent history suggests that further epistemic arguments will not resolve this tension. When debates about teacher education are framed exclusively in terms of what we know about teaching, then under conditions of limited resources – and resources are always limited – the conversation inexorably trends to debates about what we know with a high grade of certainty. Policy makers implement systems of accountability for demonstrating effective teaching that use narrowly circumscribed standards of evidence which appear neutral and uncontroversial. These accountability systems often conspire against efforts to address a wide variety of ways of knowing in teacher education programs. Epistemic certainty about educational effects, however, is not the ultimate goal of teacher education. Education itself is the goal. In the gap that falls between these two ambitions lie philosophical questions that present both a challenge and opportunity to teacher education researchers. The increasingly ubiquitous rhetoric of accountability in teaching and teacher education is rarely held accountable
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itself for its impact on educational processes – how narrow standards of evidence alter schooling conditions, constrain teaching ambition, and ultimately change the very nature of educational experience itself. An analysis of these broadly conceived consequences, we offer, is needed if teacher education is to be genuinely answerable for its effects on children and communities. Philosophically speaking, shifting attention to the holistic impact of our teaching ideals, as opposed to just the known or measurable effects of teaching techniques, would constitute a turn from an exclusive focus on epistemology to a focus on the interdependence between epistemology and ontology in teaching and teacher education research. These past decades of focus on the epistemology of teaching practice have brought with them some attention to ontological matters. Epistemologies and measurement systems used in education research always carry with them assumptions about what is real and available for documentation. These assumptions have occasionally been examined in the teacher education literature (e.g. Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; OECD, 2007; Shulman, 1986; Sleeter, 2014). They have not, however, been the central or frequent focus of questioning and debate in the field. Moving ontological matters to the center of conversations about teacher education makes it possible to ask, not just ‘what knowledge about teaching is most certain and reliable?’ but also ‘what are the ontological consequences of adopting one system of knowing over another?’ and ‘what ethical and political values are guiding our decisions to prioritize one set of consequences over another?’ Pursuing this end, the remainder of this chapter surveys contemporary conceptions of teacher education research and examines some of the ontological assumptions informing that research. While a comprehensive inventory of these philosophical assumptions is beyond the scope of this chapter, we review some classically distinct conceptions of research on teacher education and their applications. We seek to understand how the epistemological and ontological commitments of various philosophical research traditions often work against the methodological plurality that the field has striven so hard to produce. This exploration aims at expanding the possibilities of research within the field and identifying new or overlooked conceptual resources for addressing the complex problems of the present.
PHILOSOPHICAL OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH ON TEACHING AND TEACHER EDUCATION At the risk of oversimplifying a complicated history, we offer that the contemporary social sciences, including teacher education, have been shaped by four major philosophical movements over the past century: interpretivism, positivism and post-positivism, critical theory, and poststructuralism. Teacher education also has had its own peculiar philosophical developments, not reflected in the overall arc of social sciences generally. Most notably, the field of teacher
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education research has developed a theoretical and empirical literature on the importance of recognizing the practical insights that emerge from within the course of teaching practice itself.
Interpretivist Research on Teacher Education Interpretivism is one of the oldest approaches to secular social inquiry in the Western academic tradition. It refers to a constellation of analytic methods used to understand the historical, social, cultural, economic, and other contextual influences on human affairs. Interpretivist practices of social inquiry have been informed by numerous philosophical and intellectual movements, including hermeneutics, pragmatism and the Chicago school of sociology, semiotics, phenomenology, functionalist anthropology, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, feminism, anti-colonialism, cultural studies, and others. In the field of teacher education scholarship, interpretivist programs of research have taken a variety of forms, ranging from cultural and sociological ethnography (Athanases & Heath, 1995; Frank & Uy, 2004; Jackson, 1990; Lortie, 2005; Niesz, 2010; Rosiek, 2005; Woods, 1985; Zymbelas, 2005a), to phenomenological and grounded theory studies (Bengtsson, 1995; Biesta, 2012; Cazden, 2001; Goodman, 1988; Hatton & Smith, 1995; Huberman, Grounauer, & Marti, 1993; Motari, 2012; Noddings, 1986; Vagle 2010, 2011; Van Manen, 2015), to case studies of individual teachers’ practices (Grossman, 1990; Lampert, 2001). The strength of these studies lies in their ability to acknowledge and analyze the complexity of teaching practice and their ability to sensitize practitioners to the nuances of educational processes. Epistemically, interpretivism is representationalist. It seeks to provide: (1) an accurate representation of the social and personal significance that educational processes have for the people they affect; and (2) an account of how that meaning in turn shapes continuing educational practices. Ontologically it is foundationalist. It presumes there is a real world that researchers should strive to represent as comprehensively and accurately as possible. This real world is in effect the foundation of our knowledge claims. While interpretivist research may not always aim towards generalizability and universal truth, it does presume that there are real meanings of teacher and student experience that scholars can reveal. Scholarly debates within this philosophical framework focus primarily on who has better descriptions of teaching and teacher education – in all of their contextual complexity – where better descriptions are presumed to lead to improved practice and outcomes for students.
Positivism and Post-Positivist Research on Teacher Education Positivism refers to an epistemological stance that defines knowledge as only those assertions which can be positively verified or at least falsified (post-positivism) by
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the evidence of our senses and logical deduction from that evidence. Positivist philosophy emerged historically in the early 20th century as a response to the limitations of interpretivist approaches to social analysis.2 Positivism and post-positivism received one of their earliest and clearest expressions in teacher education scholarship among the process-product researchers of the 1970s and 1980s (Gage, 1989, 2009). This genre of research focused on identifying teacher behaviors, teaching strategies, and curricular designs (processes) that were reliably correlated with measurable improvements in student learning outcomes (products). More recently, positivist conceptions of education inquiry have been encoded in the public policy of some nations, such as the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States that limited federal funding to only those educational interventions that could show significant impact using experimental designs that included randomized controlled trials. A list of these interventions was collected in a US federal brokerage entitled the ‘What Works Clearing House’ (NCEE, 2014). New Zealand set up a similar, though less narrowly constrained, brokerage site, entitled the ‘Best Evidence Synthesis Programme’, as have Denmark, the United Kingdom, and other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations (OECD, 2007). Positivist programs of teacher education research differ considerably from interpretivist programs in the questions they ask, their conceptions of data, and the way they draw inferences from data. However, at a rudimentary philosophical level, their premises are similar. Positivist programs of research are focused on the generation of accurate representations of educational processes. Ontologically, positivism is, therefore, also foundationalist, because it assumes knowledge claims are founded on a privileged access to reality. Positivism is characterized, however, by a Spartan ontology, committing to the reality of educational observations if and only if they can be scientifically confirmed.
Critical Theoretic Research on Teacher Education Critical theory is a tradition of social analysis developed in the 1930s at the Frankfurt School in Germany, in response, in part, to specific limitations of interpretivist and positivist social science (Jay, 1996). Critical theory expanded upon these approaches to social inquiry by examining the influence of power on both individual experience and the very standards of rationality being used in scholarly processes of interpretation. Critical theorists argued that certain academic traditions of knowledge actually serve to obscure, as opposed to reveal, the causes and reality of human suffering through the limited way they frame what counts as relevant questions for social science and what counts as relevant evidence. Critical theory has been applied to research on education in a number of ways, most notably in the critical ethnographic literature (Anyon, 1997; Fine,
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1991; Levinson, Foley, & Holland, 1996; Willis, 1981), critical curriculum studies (Apple, 2004; Counts, 1978; Freire, 2011; Pinar, 2012; Weis, McCarthy, & Dimitriadis, 2006), and critical pedagogy literature (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2009; Giroux, 2011; Grande, 2015; McLaren & Kincheloe, 2007). Critical theory has also been applied directly to research on teacher education (Kincheloe, 2012; Liston & Zeichner, 1991; Zeichner, 2009). Critical scholarship on teacher education, although often using similar forms of data and logical inference, is epistemically distinct from positivism and interpretivism. The purpose of its analysis is not only to represent existing educational processes, but more importantly to critique the contradictions in takenfor-granted views of education and educational research that block the path to socially transformative action. This project of transformation, however, retains the most fundamental ontological commitments of positivism and interpretivism: critical scholarship on teacher education is foundationalist, in that its critiques are intended to pierce the obfuscating veil of ideology and permit a view of the real mechanisms of institutionalized oppression in schools. Its representations also lay claim to a privileged access to reality.
Poststructuralist Research on Teacher Education Poststructuralist theory emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a response to the limitations of critical theory. Adopting critical theory’s critique of rationality and taken-for-granted standards of evidence, and drawing on contemporary linguistic and semiotic theory (Derrida, 2006; Rosiek & Atkinson, 2005; Sarup, 1993), poststructuralism questioned whether rationality and objectivity could be rescued from ideological distortion. Rather than introduce critique as a means of clearing the way for truer descriptions of human affairs, it problematized the idea that a single authoritative description of human activities was possible or even desirable. Such skepticism was considered productive because, by the mid-20th century, history had shown that the discourses of enlightenment settler society rationality were as capable of underwriting sectarian violence as religious, ethnocentric, and nationalist discourses. Better to think from a position of ironic suspension, it was thought, than to watch the authority of one’s knowledge claims be used to underwrite the erasure, displacement, or genocide of others. Poststructuralism inspired many forms of analytic practice, including genealogical studies (Foucault, 1995, 1998), deconstruction (Butler, 2006, 2011; Derrida, 1998, Derrida & Bass, 2002), postcolonial critique (Said, 1979; Spivak, 2006), and others, whose purpose was to generate a principled undecidability about our interpretations of the social.3 These modes of analysis have been applied to teacher education scholarship in a number of ways. They have been used to call into question narrow conceptions of the purpose of schooling (Kumashiro, 2002; Popkewitz, 2008), to problematize taken-for-granted conceptions of teacher competence (Atkinson, 2012; Iftody, 2013; Mazzei, 2007; Ryan, 2005; Zymbelas,
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2005c), and to highlight the various forms teacher identity can take (Britzman, 1992; Jackson, 2001; Lanas & Kelchtermans, 2015; Zymbelas, 2005b). Poststructuralism is epistemically similar to critical theory in that it is primarily a tradition of critique. Ontologically, however, poststructuralism is anti- foundationalist. It rejects the idea that representations of teaching and teacher education can be guaranteed by an exclusive relationship to the reality of teaching. Instead, poststructuralism frames social analysis as a performative act, one that positions audiences in a certain way, requiring them to adopt certain subject positions if our representations are to be legible.4 Different kinds of subject relations have practical and political implications that are themselves parts of educational reality. In this way poststructuralism calls for social scientists to acknowledge that our scholarship reproduces some forms of relations at the expense of others.
Teacher Practical Knowledge Research The general philosophical frameworks just reviewed all share one thing in common. They locate the source of the most salient knowledge about teaching outside of the experience of teaching itself. Interpretivist scholarship offers that teachers could benefit from the insights gained from disciplined participant observation studies of student life and classroom processes. Positivist scholarship posits that teaching needs to be informed by inquiries conducted by scholars using rigorous scientific protocols. Critical theoretic scholarship begins with the premise that educators’ understandings of schooling processes are distorted by ideologies of which they are largely unaware. Correcting for this requires critical analysis that by definition has to come from outside of teachers’ already compromised professional experience. Similarly, poststructuralist scholarship regards all human experience as shaped by naturalized socio-cultural discourses. This condition, they allege, calls for a disciplined deconstruction of teaching experience – usually provided by university scholars – that sensitizes us to the socially constructed character of our understanding of educational processes. These theoretical frameworks leave largely unexplored the kind of useful knowledge teachers can acquire from reflecting on the course of their own experience. In response to this lacuna, scholars of teacher education over the past three decades developed a research literature aimed at doing exactly that. Referred to broadly as teacher practical knowledge scholarship, this research has taken a variety of forms, such as case studies on teachers’ wisdom of practice (Grossman, 1990; Shulman, 1987) that applies traditional university processes of peer review and publication to identify and share useful insights arising from within teachers’ practice. Others advocated that teacher inquiry be guided by the needs of teaching practice, pursuing its own ends rather than the priorities of university-based scholars or state-level policy makers (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Noffke & Stevenson, 1995). Still others maintain that teacher knowledge is simultaneously practical and personal, and offer a practice of narrative inquiry
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that both documents and helps teachers refine the complex weave of personal values, technical knowledge, and personal identity that enables their teaching (Chang & Rosiek, 2003; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Craig, 2004; Huber, Caine, Huber, & Steeves, 2013; Sconiers & Rosiek, 2000). The epistemologies underlying these programs of research have varied, drawing from Aristotelian practical knowledge theory (Fenstermacher, 1986), Deweyan pragmatism (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2006; Schön, 1983), feminist theory (Hollingsworth, 1994; Taylor & Coia, 2014), and Freirean theories about social transformation (Kincheloe, 2012; Zeichner, 2009) to describe the nature of teacher knowledge and how it compares in utility with other sources of knowledge. Clear articulations of the relationship between these epistemologies and an underlying ontology of teacher practice, however, have been less common. Often they are implicitly foundationalist, suggesting that there is a definitive reality of teaching experience that can only be adequately represented through case study or narrative forms of representation (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Shulman, 1987). At other times, there appear to be anti-foundationalist process ontologies at work, leading scholars to suggest that the inquiry process itself is more important than any specific conclusions that emerge from those inquiries (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Where ontologies of teacher practical knowledge have been explicitly offered, they most often draw on pragmatist ontologies of experience (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Clandinin & Rosiek, 2006; Rosiek & Atkinson, 2005) which combine anti-foundationalism and ethical realism, emphasizing both the malleability and continuity of experience. It is the emphasis on teacher experience as a source of knowledge that distinguishes teacher practical knowledge research from general qualitative or interpretivist research. Pragmatism’s focus on the necessity for all knowledge projects to seek their inspiration and ultimate justification in the qualities of ordinary experience has, therefore, made it particularly relevant to the teacher knowledge research literature.5
MOVING BEYOND AGONISTIC FOUNDATIONAL DEBATES Clearly, the field of teacher education research is both philosophically diverse and robust. The primary project in this era of epistemic exploration has been to identify and defend the forms of knowledge that should be included in teacher education curricula. Conversations between advocates for different conceptions of teaching competence have most frequently taken the form of agonistic debates about which approach to inquiry on teacher education yields the most reliable, most comprehensive, and most valid representation of the knowledge that enables good teaching. The question that faces contemporary scholars and policy makers is how to deal with this diversity. In the effort to defend the legitimacy of one conception of knowing, teacher education scholars have often felt compelled to impugn the utility of others.
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Interpretivists critique the way positivist research ignores the influence of context and culture on student and teacher activity. Positivists critique interpretivist research for its lack of replicability and failure to produce scalable solutions to persistent educational challenges. Teacher educators influenced by critical theory critique both positivism and interpretivism for their failure to interrogate the way ideology influences the framing of educational inquiries more broadly. Those influenced by poststructuralism critique the failure of other traditions of research to recognize the irreducibly mediated nature of all truth claims in teacher education scholarship. Teacher practical knowledge researchers critique the scholarly habit of assuming teachers’ ways of knowing are primarily sources of bias that need to be displaced with more ‘rigorous’ research practices. Almost always we find conversations devolve into disputes about who has identified the best source of teacher knowledge. This either/or logic of debates about epistemic merit has conspired against a sustained pluralist approach to teacher education, one that reflects what the best teacher education scholarship seems to show – that there are a variety of important forms of knowledge that teachers need in order to serve students well. It is not enough, we offer, to try to get teacher knowledge ‘right’. We need to take responsibility for how our conceptions of knowledge often serve to predetermine the educational ends we seek and achieve. This influence on our educational goals and actions ultimately affects students’ lives. What is needed, we offer, is a simultaneously philosophical and empirical analysis of how applying different epistemic frameworks to teacher education policy and practice generates different material and experiential consequences in schools and communities. What type of relations between students and subject matter do they enable – not just effects on student test scores, but on affective experience, ethical relations to other students, the environment, and the community? What types of teacher–student relations do our conceptions of evidence and curriculum enable or inhibit? What types of parent–teacher relations do they enable or inhibit? What types of citizen-subjects do they produce? What kinds of social stratification do they reduce or intensify? What possibilities for personal transformation and social amelioration do they open up or foreclose? Our ways of knowing about schools, teachers, and students are ontologically generative – they influence our ways of being in schools and with each other – and it is on this basis that they can and should be compared. Such an approach to teacher education research would not promise some new transparency that could form the basis of a new totalizing policy consensus, nor would it assume the desirability of a single ideal outcome for education. Both aspiring to ideal outcomes and embracing ways of knowing are forms of actions, producing consequences that are not identical to envisioned ideals and for which we remain ethically responsible. What is needed is a reconstruction of the notion of accountability in teacher education research that includes taking responsibility for these broader consequences of our ways of knowing and acting.
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NEW PHILOSOPHICAL RESOURCES This onto-ethical turn is already underway in the general social sciences. Having grown weary of well-rehearsed foundationalist debates about discursivity vs materialism, relativity vs realism, constructivism vs naïve empiricism, social theorists in a variety of areas of study have developed or reaffirmed philosophical frameworks that place the ontology and ethics of inquiry at the center of research design discussions alongside epistemic considerations. Perhaps the most visible of these at the moment is the new materialism being forwarded by scholars such as Karen Barad (2007), Bruno Latour (2013), Vicky Kirby (2011) and Rosie Braidotti (2013). An adequate review of this compelling literature is beyond the scope of what remains of this chapter. Suffice it to say here that the new materialism embraces the poststructuralist notion that our representations of reality are in principle editorial and therefore cannot achieve totalizing epistemic authority. However, they reject the poststructuralist emphasis on the linguistic mediation of our relationship with reality. The emphasis on linguistic mediation, they offer, leaves our inquiries focused on discourse and neglects the material obduracy of things. Our representations of the world, according to these philosophers, are better thought of as instruments of ‘intra-action’ that put us in relation with the materiality of the world in particular ways. The world, rather than being thought of as a passive object awaiting a single accurate representation, is instead framed as an active agent that comes to meet us half-way in our inquiries (Barad, 2007). Our inquiries can thus produce valid representations of the way reality intra-acts with specific study designs. However, other inquiry designs can produce different – even contradictory – representations of reality that are equally valid. Reality, in other words, is both materially substantive and protean, and will always exceed our ability to represent it in any single way. Karen Barad (2007) uses modern quantum mechanics as her primary illustration of why this return to metaphysics is necessary. Citing Bohr’s famous diffraction grating experiment, she focuses our attention on its ontological implications. If the diffraction grating experiment is set up in one way, we intra-act with light as a particle. If it is set up another, we intra-act with light as a wave. We cannot, however, do both. This is not a failure of triangulation; light changes in response to the way we measure it. This principle of ontological exclusion has been tested and confirmed repeatedly by physicists (e.g. Jacques, Wu, Grosshans, Treussart, Grangier, Aspect, & Roch, 2007; Manning, Khakimov, Dall, & Truscott, 2015). The implication, according to Barad (2007), is that our inquires don’t reveal a single reality passively awaiting our discovery. Instead the way we design inquiry involves us within a dynamic reality in a particular way. It establishes material relations that could be otherwise. The relevance to contemporary education research conversations is not hard to discern. We can measure educational success through the use of high stakes mandatory standardized tests, and this will
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reveal something real about student learning. Relying primarily on these tests to inform curricular decisions will also alter the conditions of schooling in a variety of ways. We can similarly measure educational success at a more local level, using criterion referenced portfolio assessments designed to fit what is being taught in a particular classroom or school. These assessments will also reveal something real about student learning, and relying upon them will alter the conditions of schooling in a variety of ways. Real education happens either way. The question is not: which is right or which is real? The question is: what value do we find in the educational intra-actions made possible by these different ways of knowing? And how do these modes of inquiry differently position the myriad of stakeholders involved in educational processes? These philosophical ideas are not as new as the phrase ‘new materialism’ suggests. Similar themes have been explored in the field of Indigenous studies for a very long time. Indigenous studies scholars have spoken and written about how different ways of knowing establish different ontological relations since time immemorial, and certainly since Indigenous studies was established as an academic field (Bunge, 1984; Deloria, 2012; Garroutte & Westcott, 2013; Watts, 2013).6 Similar themes have also been developed in the work of postcolonial scholar Sylvia Wynter (McKttrick, 2015) and they are present in pragmatist philosophy. In his essay ‘The Development of American Pragmatism’ John Dewey (1931) wrote of our inquiries as being not merely a form of discovery, but instead a form of ontological transformation. Pragmatism thus has a metaphysical implication. The doctrine of the value of consequences leads us to take the future into consideration. And this taking into consideration of the future takes us to the conception of a universe whose evolution is not finished, of a universe which is still, in James’ term ‘in the making,’ ‘in the process of becoming,’ of a universe up to a certain point still plastic.’ (p. 33)
Of particular note for our purposes is the revisionist scholarship in pragmatist philosophy that has seen the inclusion of Harlem Renaissance intellectuals such as Alaine Locke and W.E.B. DuBois and early feminists such as Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett in the pragmatist canon. These more politicized scholars, in their efforts to leverage social change of various sorts, explored more thoroughly the material and experiential consequences of our conceptions of valid knowledge (McKenna & Pratt, 2015; Pratt, 2002; Seigfreid,1996; West, 1989).7
A NEXT GENERATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIP The influence of these philosophical developments are already being felt in teacher education research. In a parallel fashion, many teacher education scholars have grown weary of well-rehearsed foundational debates in our field about reflective practice vs scripted instruction, critical pedagogy vs subject matter
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mastery, teacher inquiry vs teacher-proof curriculum. As a result, they have begun refusing these well-worn epistemic binaries and have turned their attention to the ontological consequences of taking up particular conceptions of teacher knowledge in particular settings. The search is on for new (or perhaps old but long overlooked) philosophical frameworks that can support a pluralistic analysis of these various consequences. Because John Dewey is a canonical figure in education scholarship, some versions of this turn to ontology have long been latent in the teacher education research that draws on Deweyan pragmatism. Dewey’s (1994, 2007) ontology of experience, for example, was cited as the justification for Donald’s Schön’s (1983) concept of reflective practice. The tradition of narrative inquiry in teacher education, which draws on Dewey’s philosophy, takes the transformation of teachers’ ontological relation to the practice of teaching to be the purpose of their research (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007; Craig, 2004). The work of other pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and Jane Addams has likewise been used to raise questions about the ontology of teacher education research (Atkinson, 2013; Rosiek, 2013a, 2013b; Rosiek and Atkinson, 2005) Scholars at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Boston College in the United States have recently advocated for the use of a synthesis of complexity theory and critical realism for conducting research on teacher education that ‘preserves wholes, privileges interactions and interdependencies, and expects surprising outcomes’ (Cochran-Smith, Ell, Ludlow, Grudnoff, & Aitken, 2014, p. 33). Complexity theory emphasizes the danger of overreliance on epistemologies and research designs that seek to compartmentalize salient aspects of teaching at the expense of attending to the complex interactions of multiple influences on teaching. Critical realism complements this by enabling scholars to highlight real cause and effect relationships within the complexity, thereby providing an ‘ontological underpinning of complexity most consistent with the important questions posed by teacher education research’ (p. 16). Keffrelyn Brown (2013) has offered a persuasive critique of the tendency of teacher education scholars to advocate for curriculum about student culture ‘without understanding and seeking to challenge the epistemic, ontological, and structural reasons for doing so in the first place’ (p. 329). Drawing on Sylvia Wynter’s (McKittrick, 2015) writings on the social ontology of colonialism and Ian Hacking’s (2004) work on historical ontology, she points out how certain conceptions of knowledge intended to enable culturally responsive teaching actually contribute to reproducing the oppressive reality Black students face. She calls for going beyond a single epistemology of teaching, and instead preparing teachers to ‘navigate between clear bodies of knowledge … [and] to address the shortcomings/ biases of official school curriculum while drawing from the strengths, beauty and knowledge that all students bring with them to school’ (p. 332). Indigenous studies scholars have written about what teacher education can learn from traditional Indigenous approaches to teaching. Prominent among the
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themes in this growing literature is the way our epistemologies of practice ontologically transform both teachers and community relations. Bryan Brayboy and Emma Maugham (2009) write that ‘individuals live and enact their knowledge and, in the process, engage further in the process of coming to be – of forming a way of engaging others in the world’ (pp. 3–4). In a recent review of the growing Indigenous studies scholarship on teacher education, Brooke Madden (2015) concludes that explicitly engaging the need to prepare teachers to serve Indigenous communities can work an analytical transformation on teacher education scholarship. Tracing a fulsome network of Indigenous education with/in Faculties of Education may provide analytical frames to examine how pathways shape teacher identity and teachers’ constructions of Indigeneity and (de)colonization: What subject positions are produced and prohibited by particular pedagogical pathways? (p. 13)
Finally, the aforementioned new materialist philosophies are being taken up by teacher education scholars (e.g. Lanas et al., 2015; Phillips & Larson, 2013; Rath, 2015), who are emphasizing similar themes. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s and Karen Barad’s philosophy of science, David Mulcahy (2011) asks of teacher educators, ‘What if multiple knowledges reflect not only varying positions but, in certain situations, a multiple ontology?’ (p. 99). In such circumstances the fundamental question for teacher education scholars is not whether we have represented teacher education accurately, but how our standards of knowing about teacher education produce certain ways of being in schools and communities. Following a similar logic, Kathryn Strom (2015) draws on the new materialist philosophies to call for ‘an ontological turn in teacher education research’. In our current climate of reforms driven by market logic, methodological frameworks, such as those featured in this study and beginning to be used by other educational researchers (e.g., Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuk, 2011), move the focus from ‘outcomes’ to the actual ontology of practice. That is, these new lenses and tools turn our attention to the processes through which outcomes are produced. (Strom, 2015, p. 10)
The emerging trend being pointed to here crosses a variety of disciplines and communities of inquiry. As such there are notable differences between the way they take up the concept of ontology and the aspects of teaching to which it is applied. What they share in common is a frustration with epistemological debates that encourage an oversimplification of teaching practice by encouraging efforts to identify one right or best form of teacher knowledge. Instead, these scholars focus on teacher education research as ontologically generative and on how we need to be answerable (Patel, 2015) for the holisitic consequences of our ways of knowing.
TEACHER EDUCATION FUTURITIES What we see here, we offer, are the early signs of a broad, multidisciplinary shift in the philosophy of teacher education scholarship. While the earlier emphasis on
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epistemology transformed and diversified the field in important and exciting ways, the exclusive reliance on epistemological arguments to defend this pluralism has proven problematic. Although the conceptions of teacher knowledge circulating in the field became more diverse, the overall conversation remained organized around the ideal of identifying the most accurate or most important knowledge for teachers to have. Debates about which forms of teacher knowledge matter most can become degraded when political pressures force a framework of efficiency on conversations about teacher education research – limiting conversations to focus only on educational outcomes that can be measured reliably and economically. The turn to ontology being discussed here is not an effort to return to an old-fashioned metaphysical debate, to move from debating what the single best ‘truth’ of teacher education is to a debate about what the single ‘reality’ of teacher education is. That would just be trading one Procrustean foundational debate for another. Instead, it reflects an emerging collective sense that we need to pay closer attention to the ontological effects of the conceptions of ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ that we adopt. These include the causal effects of the kinds of pedagogy our research recommends, the socially reproductive effects of the kinds of questions we ask, the subject producing effects of our research, and more. Additionally, because these effects are effects on other people, this consideration is inherently an ethical and political one as well. This onto-ethical turn does not displace previous developments in the philosophy of teacher education research. Instead it builds on what is best in that literature and attempts to marshal analytic resources to give greater scope and influence to the epistemic pluralism already established in teacher education scholarship and well represented in the pages of this Handbook. As we look to the future of teacher education research, we see the familiar challenges of deprofessionalization, defunding, stratification of opportunity, and an underestimation of the complexity of teaching practice in policy discussions. However, we also see new theoretical developments that have the capacity to usher in a second renaissance of teacher education scholarship. These developments hold the promise of providing new more comprehensive conceptions of educational accountability, ones that move beyond narrow forms of measurement and help us attend to the overall quality of the experiences we provide students and the kind of people and communities our teachers can help us to become.
Notes 1 See also Suzanne Wilson’s (2014) review of the economic theories behind the current wave of market-based reforms. 2 However, in the field of education, interpretivist programs of research are often thought of as having emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a response to the limitations of process-product approaches to education research. As a consequence, the differences between interpretivism and positivism are often emphasized in the field of education, and their common philosophical roots are often overlooked.
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3 There are different opinions about whether these forms of analysis should be called ‘methodologies’ because that term is often thought to refer to the means used to produce substantive knowledge claims. We use it here in the broader sense of referring to any practice of analyzing the significance of personal and social phenomena. 4 Interpretivism, for example, positions educators as spectator subjects who can view teaching as embedded within a network of social relations. Positivism similarly positions educators as spectator subjects, in this case viewing teaching through the lens of particular metrics of success and failure. Critical theory positions the reader as a co-conspirator in projects of social transformation. Poststructuralist analysis positions its audience as cosmopolitans who view definitive claims about educational realities and ideals with ironic suspicion. 5 More will be said about pragmatic ontologies of experience in the later sections of this chapter. 6 Indigenous studies scholars have pointed out that calling these ideas ‘new’ is a form of colonialist erasure that is continuous with ongoing processes of cultural genocide with which Western scholars have long been complicit (Tuck, 2015). 7 For an outstanding and comprehensive summary of this revisionist view of the pragmatic philosophy canon, including an emphasis on inquiry as an ontologically transformative process, see Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt’s recently published book American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present (2015).
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Shulman, L.S. & Wilson, S.M. (2004). The Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning, and Learning to Teach (1st edn). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sleeper, R.W. (2001). The Necessity of Pragmatism: John Dewey’s Conception of Philosophy (1st pbk edn). Urbana: University of Illinois. Sleeter, C. (2014). Toward Teacher Education Research That Informs Policy. Educational Researcher, 43, 146–153. http://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X14528752 Spivak, G.C. (2006). In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Strom, K.J. (2015). Teaching as Assemblage: Negotiation Learning and Practice in the First Year of Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 66, 321–333. Tatto, M.T. (2015). The Role of Research in the Policy and Practice of Quality Teacher Education: An International Review. Oxford Review of Education, 41, 171–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/030549 85.2015.1017405 Taylor, M. & Coia, L. (Eds) (2014). Gender, Feminism, and Queer Theory in the Self-study of Teacher Education Practices. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-686-8 Tuck, E. (2015). Re-visioning Social, Re-visioning Context, Re-visioning Agency. Paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL. Vagle, M.D. (2010). Re-framing Schön’s Call for a Phenomenology of Practice: A Post-intentional Approach. Reflective Practice, 11, 393–407. http://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2010.487375 Vagle, M.D. (2011). Critically-oriented Pedagogical Tact: Learning about and through our Compulsions as Teacher Educators. Teaching Education, 22, 413–426. http://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2011.618534 Vagle, M.D. (2015). Curriculum as Post-intentional Phenomenological Text: Working along the Edges and Margins of Phenomenology Using Post-structuralist Ideas. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47, 594– 612. http://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2015.1051118 Van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical Tact: Knowing What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous Place-thought & Agency amongst Humans and Non-humans (First Woman and Sky Woman go on a European World Tour!). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2, 20–34. Weis, L., McCarthy, C., & Dimitriadis, G. (Eds) (2006). Ideology, Curriculum, and the New Sociology of Education: Revisiting the Work of Michael Apple. New York: Routledge. West, C. (1989). The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Willis, P.E. (1981). Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs (Morningside edn). New York: Columbia University Press. Wilson, S.M. (2014). The Commodification and Control of Teacher Education. Theory into Practice, 53(3). Woods, P. (1985). Sociology, Ethnography and Teacher Practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 1, 51–62. http://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(85)90029-0 Zeichner, K.M. (2009). Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice. New York: Routledge. Zembylas, M. (2005a). Beyond Teacher Cognition and Teacher Beliefs: The Value of the Ethnography of Emotions in Teaching. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18, 465–487. http:// doi.org/10.1080/09518390500137642 Zembylas, M. (2005b). Discursive Practices, Genealogies, and Emotional Rules: A Poststructuralist View on Emotion and Identity in Teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 935–948. http:// doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2005.06.005 Zembylas, M. (2005c). Teaching with Emotion: A Postmodern Enactment. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
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3 Teacher Education: A Historical Overview We n d y R o b i n s o n
INTRODUCTION That teacher education over its long history and in different international contexts and settings has been contested and fraught is not in dispute. The very existence of this new international Handbook, to map out, critique and then to seek imaginative new resolutions to those enduring problems and puzzles that have long thwarted the education of teachers and thus the very idea of what it means to be a teacher, bears testimony to this difficult past. Currently, a welltrained, professional, up-to-date, flexible and responsible teaching force, able to make a real difference to the quality of young people’s learning, is regarded as key to educational reform and economic sustainability across the world. Yet, there is also real anxiety that teaching is somehow in a state of impending crisis, reflected in problems associated with attracting, developing and retaining the best possible recruits into the profession. Thus far, however, a coherent set of workable answers that satisfy politicians, policymakers and educators alike has remained elusive. It would seem that each successive generation of teachers, teacher educators and policymakers has disregarded the past, in a desire to seek better and new ways to manage the business of teacher education in an everchanging world. Given that whole volumes have previously been devoted to detailed historical accounts of teacher education in individual or groups of countries, there is a danger that this one focused historical chapter will risk being too superficial to be meaningful. Robinson and Christie, in their contribution to Tom O’Donoghue and Clive Whitehead’s important 2008 work, Teacher Education in the English-Speaking
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World, warned of such a challenge in that ‘the broad historical brush may easily overgeneralize, glossing over contradictions, points of difference, and contestation’ (2008: 138). However, at a time when a fundamental rethinking of what should shape and inform the education of teachers is being called for, as explored in this volume, there is a real imperative for revisiting earlier historical models, not just so that we can map the terrain and understand the provenance of the present situation, which is inherently important in itself – but also for assessing their currency and potential contribution to future developments. To this end, the chapter is organised into four main parts. First, the rationale and value of presenting a historical perspective and the methodological approach taken in the framing this analysis is briefly outlined. Secondly, the development of recognised models of teacher education over time is discussed, with reference to pre-industrial practices, apprenticeship and work-based learning, specialist normal school or training college programmes, and the role of universities. Thirdly, ideas about the knowledge, skills and behaviours of intending teachers and how these were differently reflected in the various formal models of teacher preparation are considered. Finally, in drawing the chapter to a close, it will be argued that an overarching theme running through the history of teacher education is a conflicted relationship between the teaching profession and the state wishing to control it.
HISTORICAL RATIONALE AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES Though contemporary theorising about the current state of teacher education internationally has much strength, and though there are a number of important standalone studies on the history of teacher education in different international contexts, it could be argued that a proper historical analysis of current policy developments is lacking. Metaphors of ‘swinging pendulums’ and ‘reinvented wheels’ are often applied to critiques of educational reform and particularly so in the case of teacher education, where so much of the debate has been dichotomised along rigid ‘theory/practice’, ‘training/education’, ‘pedagogy/ knowledge’, ‘art/craft/science’ and ‘school-based/college/university-based’ lines. In appealing to historians of education to be much more proactive in their contribution to current educational debate, Susan Semel and Alan Sadovnik have urged educational reformers and practitioners to ‘stop reinventing the wheel’, and for ‘historians of education to assume active roles in policy conversations’ (Semel and Sadovnik, 1999: 376). A historical perspective can enable a deeper understanding of recurring themes in teacher education, where they have come from, how they have been embedded in different contexts at different times and what they could usefully bring to future developments, including identifying those models which might have lacked efficacy. There is real benefit to seeking what Diane Ravitch has coined as the ‘time-tested truths’ in relation to teacher education, though my view is that the lure of untested myths and glorified golden
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pasts must also be avoided (Ravitch, 2000: 453). As Rosa Bruno-Jofre and James Scott Johnston have so eloquently expressed in their recent global overview of teacher education: ‘Historical explanations prevent presentism, a positioning that neglects processes, continuities and discontinuities and rupture – in other words, the temporal and spatial dimensions that may lead to a rich connection with the present’ (Bruno-Jofre and Johnston, 2014: 4). When trying to grapple with the sheer scale and complexity of the international past in teacher education, some sort of filtering at the interface of the historical and the comparative is required. The concept of ‘snapshots in time’ informed how the work in O’Donoghue and Whitehead’s historical overview was framed and is useful in the context of this chapter where continuities as well as change have to be considered. So much of the international history of teacher education has emerged through a process of policy borrowing and exchange. Dominant models, developed either in Europe (particularly in France, England and Germany) or in Asia (particularly in China and Japan) have permeated and been translated and adapted in other international contexts across Africa, the Pacific Region, North and South America and elsewhere, often through processes of colonialisation and assimilation. Looking at ‘snapshots in time’, similar patterns and histories clearly emerge across the world, though these have been differently experienced in different contexts and in different time frames. A further layer of complexity is referenced by David Raffe and Ken Spours, who, in their critique of the limitations of international educational policy borrowing, have warned that ‘this inability or unwillingness to learn from the past has been accompanied by superficial learning from the experience of other countries, as governments have borrowed policy ideas from abroad with little regard to differences of culture or context and with a tendency to borrow from the countries which suited the political mood’ (Raffe and Spours, 2007: 2). Bringing together the historical and the comparative enables a more nuanced understanding of key influences, drivers, relationships and priorities in the development of teacher education over time. In framing the content for this chapter, the themes explored and the detail of examples and illustrations have been drawn from a secondary analysis using a range of existing published historical studies in the English language, as well as partially from my own primary research into the history of English teacher education. My methodology has drawn from the principles of systematic review, common to contemporary educational and social sciences research, and involved applying a number of relevant search terms to comprehensive education-specific databases, as well as a number of general web-based search engines (Davies, 2000; Slavin, 2008). In identifying the range of sources to be consulted, I was concerned to access a wide international spread of material, particularly to include as many non-Western examples as possible, within the English-language constraints of the search. It should also be noted that much of the published historical scholarship is focused on mass education systems in post-industrialised societies, and is dominated by nineteenth and twentieth-century material, which is reflected in the bias
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of the examples presented in this chapter. However, where studies of earlier models and developments have been identified, these have been included. My analysis of the secondary material was influenced by three fundamental organising questions which I consider to underpin any scholarship of the history of teacher education. Put simply, these are ‘the how?’, ‘the what?’ and ‘the who?’ questions. The education of novice teachers, or the formal process by which they become fully fledged teachers, is essentially concerned with what teachers should know (their subject knowledge) and what they should be able to do (their pedagogical skills). In broad historical terms, this has shaped how and where teachers have been prepared, trained and educated; how they have been deemed to be qualified; what status their qualifications or formal accreditation has carried; and how judgements have been made about the quality or standard of their teaching. As a historian committed to the idea of a usable past that has the potential to contribute to current and future policy and practice debates in teacher education, my reading of the historical material is also influenced by contemporary discourse. A range of different sources have been used in this chapter, but a number of substantive works warrant special mention, including: Moon (1998); O’Donoghue and Whitehead (2008); Schleicher (2011); Darling-Hammond and Lieberman (2012); Akiba (2013); Furlong (2013); BrunoJofre and Scott Johnston (2014); and a special edition of the Journal of Education for Teaching published in 2014, which focused on international perspectives on the recent history of teacher education over the past forty years. As such, the specific historical approaches underpinning the studies vary, with many being traditionally policy focused, using official government or institutional source materials, some drawing on oral-history and narrative approaches to interrogate teacher identity and experience, some using more explicitly Marxist, post-structuralist, post-colonial or comparative lenses. Thus, by its very nature, material presented here is selective and partial but it is hoped that something of the salience of the overarching themes around teacher education which have transcended both time and space will speak to the wider discussion taken forward throughout the rest of the book.
MODELS OF TEACHER EDUCATION OVER TIME Pre-Industrial Trends Established forms of teacher education and their historical precedents, as well as the very idea of a recognised teaching profession, are mostly associated with the rise of modern Western European national systems of schooling from the eighteenth century onwards and the formation of industrialised societies. However, teachers, teaching and various forms of both formal and informal education have existed since ancient times across different world systems (Crohe, 2003). As David Labaree has pointed out, ‘Teaching existed long before teacher education’ (Labaree, 2004: 291). Arguably, whether rooted in the ancient articulation of the
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Socratic method, dominant ecclesiastical practices of the West, Confucian philosophies of learning in the East, Buddhist and Hindu teachings in India and South-East Asia, Islamic teaching of the Qu’ran in the Middle East or oral traditions in Africa, there has been a very close association of education and teaching with societies’ leading religious and philosophical cultures and beliefs. In Western Europe, education was the preserve of the privileged few, with the clergy, monks and bishops leading on the teaching of the Latin language and religious teachings to the male social elite. Christian monastic and cathedral schools, some of which evolved into grammar schools and universities, were responsible for the training of the clergy (Leach, 1915; Orme, 2006). Writing about the early history of teacher education in Kenya, Patrick Kafu reminds us that one should not lose sight of the fact that before the coming of Europeans there existed an elaborate teacher education system in indigenous/traditional African education systems … This may not have been formal in the sense of Western European education systems, but it produced competent teachers who sustained the African indigenous/ traditional education systems. (Kafu, 2011: 44)
The lack of documentary record within this strong oral tradition of teacher education renders it very difficult for historians to analyse this in any real depth. In his work on Japanese teachers, Tomitaro Karasawa describes a long tradition of private elementary schooling from the fifteenth century until the nineteenth century where teachers were highly regarded in a society which was organised according to Confucian ethics and where teachers were accorded great respect and reverence, with an almost religious piety associated with learning and educational activity. ‘Teachers followed a code of strict self-discipline and were regarded as the leaders and guides of ordinary people, as can be realized from the saying: “A pupil should follow behind his master seven feet, so as not to tread on his master’s shadow”’ (Karasawa, 1966: 400). Historically, the business of teaching has been imbued with intensely moral and vocational values, and this is a theme that has echoed across the centuries and has been mirrored in the development of formal modern models of teacher education. At times and in different contexts, this religious/vocational association accorded teaching high status and respect. However, there was also a counter trend, which viewed teaching as a much more low status social activity, with the emergence of untrained and often poorly educated private tutors, casual ‘dame’ schools, governesses for young children and girls, and the idea that teaching was the occupation of last resort.
Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning Perhaps one of the earliest forms of teacher education, and one which still resonates in debates about how teachers can best be prepared for the job of teaching today, was the idea of learning from the expert in situ – in the school and the
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classroom. Systems of apprenticeship, in which young novices would learn and be initiated into their craft through working alongside an expert or ‘master’ over an extended period of time, normally five to seven years, as part of their own education and maturation, were a commonplace means of professional preparation across a range of industries from the Middle Ages onwards (Lane, 1996). At the heart of the idea of apprenticeship was the transfer of craft skills and knowledge and learning through practice – with the emphasis very much on the practical, not the theoretical. In relation to the history of teacher education, perhaps the most obvious example of apprenticeship to examine is the English pupil-teacher system which emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century and formed the backbone of teacher education and supply for the working-class elementary schools, and which then went on to inform numerous education systems around the world. The pupil-teacher system was disparaged by many contemporaries as well as by more recent critics as an inferior ‘stop-gap’ until more organised and high-quality models could be more widely implemented and resourced. From the early 1900s, the advent of mass organised elementary schooling for children of the working classes, led by the principal religious societies, created an urgent demand for new teachers. Advocated by pioneering educationists Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell, the ‘monitorial system’ utilised groups of older, more able pupils to transmit basic knowledge to younger pupils, thus reducing the number of experienced adult teachers required in the expanding schools. This was the foundation of the pupil-teacher system, established in 1846 by James Kay Shuttleworth, the first minister in the English government to take responsibility for educational policy (Selleck, 1994). The English pupil-teacher system enabled bright aspiring elementary school pupils to learn on the job, through classroom observation and practical experience of supervised teaching, whilst at the same time receiving a certain amount of further personal education from the head teacher of the school. Pupil teachers were normally apprenticed for five years from the age of 13. They were examined annually by government inspectors and their progress monitored. Pupil teachers were entirely reliant on the patronage and good will of their head teachers, who were also expected to provide them with at least one and a half hours daily personal tuition to prepare them for annual competitive examinations. The most successful pupil teachers could win places at the newly emerging teacher training colleges, but many continued to teach in an uncertificated capacity for the rest of their teaching lives. Premised on the belief that teaching was a craft that could be learned like many of the other traditional apprenticeship crafts, there was a strong emphasis on the bond between the expert practitioner and the novice teacher. In reality, the quality of the initial preparation for pupil teachers varied enormously, and many critics of the system argued that it was an impoverished scheme which generated much needed cheap teaching fodder for the elementary schools (Robinson, 2003). With large class sizes and narrow expectations for their charges in terms of educational achievement, pupil teachers would have proved their mettle in the classroom by honing their management and
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class-control skills – with less emphasis on their subject knowledge or theoretical understanding of the principles of education. In recruiting new teachers from within the elementary school world and relying on a very narrow, restricted and basic personal education, the pupil-teacher system represented a closed system of initial training which undoubtedly helped shape some of the prevailing discourse that teaching was a low status activity. Recruits were only modestly educated themselves, originated from the lower social classes and, as the nineteenth century progressed, were predominantly female. Echoes of practical apprenticeship models of initial training persisted throughout the early twentieth century, in modified schemes, as documented by Phil Gardner and Peter Cunningham (2004). More recently, the controversial revival of school-based training, through various schemes, such as Teach for America, Teach Australia, Teach First (UK), graduate teacher programmes and apprentice or licensed teacher contracts, have re-emphasised what Eric Hoyle has termed ‘the turn to the practical’ in teacher education policy, as the hegemony of college- and university-based models has been called into question (Hoyle, 1982: 165). Pupil teaching and adaptations of this type of apprenticeship model can be found in a range of international contexts. For example, Lucy Steward and Elwyn Thomas, in their study of Caribbean education, traced the introduction of a modified version of the English pupil-teacher system for primary education in Belize in 1894. Though not regarded as satisfactory or adequate, for many of the same reasons that it was criticised in England (i.e. practical and financial reasons), it remained the dominant model of initial teacher preparation in this country well into the twentieth century (Steward and Thomas, 1996: 40). In his history of teacher education in South Africa, Charles Wolhuter discusses the widespread import of the pupil-teacher system into the country in the early years of the nineteenth century – though he judged this to be an impoverished model that was soon superseded by the formation of proper teacher training colleges (Wolhuter, 2006). In Australia, the ‘pupil-master’ teacher apprenticeship model dominated for much of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, and Tania Aspland has argued that in spite of its known flaws, ‘by 1880 the apprentice system of teacher training was widely used throughout Australia. Pupil teachers were young and enthusiastic, and shamelessly exploited but they were cheap! It is not surprising, therefore, that the pupil-teacher system persisted well into the early twentieth century’ (Aspland, 2008: 177; Mayer, 2014: 263)
Specialist Normal School or Training College Programmes It is widely agreed by historians that it was Jean Baptiste de La Salle who, in 1685, pioneered the early establishment of an ‘École Normale’ in Reims, France, with a focus on training teachers along systematic and agreed lines for the newly emerging state schools. In 1698, the first teacher training seminars were
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organised in Gotha, Germany (Moon, 1998: 2). The idea of some sort of formal teacher training began to permeate across Europe and became much more widespread with the expansion of mass education systems in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Across Prussia and Switzerland, for example, normal schools were strongly influenced by the teachings of Pestalozzi, and offered some training in didactics and pedagogy as well as formal learning (Oancea, 2014: 499). In Scotland, in 1836, David Stow set up a normal school and, in England, teacher training colleges were set up to build upon the foundations of the rather crude monitorial system, described above. Jun Zhou, describing teacher education in China, has argued that a normal school tradition of teacher training which prevailed for much of the twentieth century has been strongly associated with the low status of elementary school teaching. There has been long debate in China about whether teachers should be trained at comprehensive universities or in single-purpose teacher education colleges (Zhou, 2014). Similarly, in Japan, prior to 1946, teacher education predominantly took place in state normal schools which were regarded as glorified secondary schools – and even in the normal school context, training was regarded as ‘not professional but more like a conventional apprenticeship’ (Shin’ichi, 2014: 525). In the United States, the development of the normal school model and the way in which the European tradition helped to shape approaches to teacher training has been extensively documented (Edwards, 1991; Herbst, 1989; Labaree, 2004). Paul Ramsey has argued that the wholescale adaptation of a Prussian model of teacher training was attractive to conservative educational reformers and was also closely aligned to the simultaneous development of the common school movement (Ramsey, 2014). Though differently applied in different international contexts, there are some key characteristics of the normal school or training college model which explain in part why they have often been judged as an inferior or unsatisfactory part of the evolution of formal teacher education. First, they were single-purpose, vocational and quasi-higher education institutions, focused entirely on providing special, intensive courses for teacher training. They also functioned very much as quasisecondary schools where trainee teachers could both expand and complete their own personal education, which had normally been restricted or curtailed. In most cases they were single-sex and for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were dominated by women. Jurgen Herbst has argued that in the United States the ‘success and acceptance of normal schools and their promotion and support by localities had little to do with their presumed purpose of teacher training. Instead, we must ascribe it to the desire of communities to offer publicly supported post-elementary education in their midst’ (Herbst, 1980: 226). Secondly, they were residential and, in many cases, had strong religious or denominational affiliations. Even where they were not explicitly religious, their residential, communal culture fostered an emphasis on moral character training for intending teachers. They promoted strict codes of conduct and behaviour, were heavily
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regulated and controlled and placed very high expectations and responsibilities on their students. Arguably, these moral qualities were as highly prized as any academic, theoretical or practical abilities. Thirdly, they were focused mainly on the training of teachers for elementary or primary schools, with a relatively narrow and restricted curriculum, though this was modified over time. As such they were firmly associated with the education of young children – a job to be done mainly by women and a job requiring less of an academic education or preparation as a pre-requisite than for higher levels of schooling (Chan, 2012; Cortina and Ronan, 2006). The positioning of teacher training colleges within an evolving hierarchy of educational institutions, sitting somewhere above elementary/secondary schooling but below the more prestigious universities, is an important part of the history of teacher education and also resonates with broader debates about teacher status and professionalisation that abide today. This is further complicated by the fact that many single-purpose teacher training colleges have historically been repurposed to meet a growing demand for more liberal higher education provision – either being incorporated into existing universities or given university status. Their history is also part of the wider history of higher education – and of widening access to higher education.
THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES What David Labaree refers to as the ‘uneasy relationship’ between teacher educators, schools and the universities is a fundamental part of the history of teacher education across the world (Labaree, 2008). Bound up with this history is an equally complex one of the expansion of universities in the second half of the twentieth century, the nature of higher education, the hard-won acceptance of ‘education’ as a respectable university discipline worthy of academic study, and the development and accreditation of a distinctively university-based professional training for teachers separate to that provided either in schools or in training colleges (Lagemann, 2002; Furlong, 2013). As Rosa Bruno-Jofre and James Scott Johnston have argued: ‘The somewhat Janus-faced position of teacher education, looking simultaneously into the university and out to the world of schools, and to a degree connecting them to each other, enables the development of several fascinating lines of inquiry’ (2014: 13). In contrast with the key characteristics of the training college model outlined above, the involvement of universities in teacher education has crudely highlighted an almost opposite set of characteristics. These include: a focus on the preparation of secondary-level teachers; the recruitment of students with higher academic qualifications and often from higher social class backgrounds; and the development of a strong theoretical or scientific basis for teaching, rather than a practical or vocational one. Universities have been associated with
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having the potential to raise the status of teaching and to give it some academic credibility, but the relationship has invariably been ambivalent (Crook, 1995). In their historical study of the relationship between universities and teachers in France, the United States and England, Harry Judge, Michael Lemosse, Lynn Paine and Michal Sedlak demonstrated the real challenges of undertaking such a detailed comparative project, where there are both obvious as well as more nuanced differences between the emerging issues around teacher education or training, status, credibility, and the role of universities in the shaping of teacher education policy (1994: 262). The case of Germany offers an interesting perspective on the role of the universities, where there has been a very long historical tradition of differentiated teacher education in the universities for future grammar/secondary school teachers, as well as a firmly established science of education, with teaching and teachers enjoying high social status and respect (Terhart, 2014). Indeed, the scientific focus of teacher education in Germany and the early development of pedagogical seminars is often contrasted with the more vocational models of teacher training that evolved in France and England (Dhondt, 2008). However, German teacher education has often been criticised for its very weak relationship between theoretical and practical aspects of professional preparation, which more recent experiments have sought to address with the development of practical centres outside of the university system (von Bagen, 2014). Though these three models – apprenticeship, normal school/training college and university – might be broadly viewed as linear, chronological ‘phases’ in the history of teacher education, the rate, pace and intensity of development has clearly varied across countries with considerable overlap and oscillation. Indeed, in some Western societies there has been a more recent return to revivified apprenticeship models, suggesting more of a complex cyclical pattern. Understanding this phenomenon presents a challenge. It might be assumed, for example, that a straightforward, linear, ‘progressive’ historical narrative of teacher education becoming more demanding and sophisticated over time, with greater requirements for formal academic accreditation and extended periods of professional training, can be linked with associated advances in a society’s economic prosperity and social expectations. However, this is clearly not the case in some parts of the world, where the recent hegemony of college- and university-based provision is now being eroded in favour of a renewed interest in training ‘on the job’. My view is that this reveals as much about contemporary socio-political values and beliefs around the nature of school teaching and the business of being a teacher, as it does about economic prosperity, possibility and ambition. As such, it goes to the very heart of prevailing tensions around the ambivalent professional status and standing of teaching in society. Arguably, it is this very complexity of these historical narratives, and the questions then raised about which contexts and circumstances foster certain models and approaches, which historians of teacher education need to examine.
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KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND BEHAVIOURS OF INTENDING TEACHERS Whether rooted in the apprenticeship, training college or university models outlined above, decisions about what intending teachers needed to know and be able to do in order to be deemed ready for the work of teaching, reveals much about how teaching has historically been conceptualised and valued in different societies (O’Donoghue and Whitehead, 2008: 192). Roger Oppenshaw and Teresa Ball, in their reflections on the history of teacher education in New Zealand, argue that those well-rehearsed tensions over theory and practice, training and education can be traced back to two fundamentally conflicting ideas about teacher education that ‘have historically jostled for supremacy. One sees teaching as a practical craft centred on classroom management. The other accepts the need for these skills, but also sees teaching as a learned profession, where members have a broad grasp of the social, historical and political context of schools’ (Oppenshaw and Ball, 2008: 155–156). In my own research on the history of teacher education in England and Wales, I also explored the tensions between the idea of teaching as an art, craft or science, which went on to influence the form and content of any initial training programme, as well as the much less tangible idea of personal ‘power to teach’ (Robinson, 2014). In unpicking some of these known tensions in the history of teacher education, it is necessary to examine four key areas: subject knowledge; pedagogy; classroom management; and personal attributes. Historically, when teacher education was developed alongside emergent education systems, and intending teachers, particularly those for the elementary schools, were inadequately educated themselves, a focus on rudimentary subject knowledge was a necessity – with a traditional emphasis on reading, writing, arithmetic and, in many countries, religious education. Arguably, this represented something of a deficit model in which the teachers for the masses might be considered only just one or two steps ahead of their pupils. In contrast, a university degree with mastery in a specific subject was more normal for prospective secondary or higher-level school teachers. This reinforced patterns of social class, gender and status differentiation between groups of teachers. A good example of this can be found in the dual system of teacher education in France, where historically the Napoleonic écoles normales and écoles normales supérieurs prepared elementary and higher secondary teachers separately, with secondary teachers on a par with university teachers in terms of their status and position in society. Unlike the elementary teachers known as instituteurs, secondary teachers or professeurs traditionally held the agregation – a university-level diploma that attested high academic and intellectual achievement in a specific academic subject, not knowledge of teaching (Lynch and Plunkett, 1973). Aspirations for teaching to be an all-graduate profession, with an expectation that both
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primary- and secondary-level teachers should be highly educated to university degree level, prior to or at the same time as undergoing any professional training and clinical experience, are regarded as highly desirable in current thinking on teacher education. Indeed, these ideals can be seen in emerging models of teacher education in countries judged as high performing in education, such as Finland and Singapore (Furlong, 2013: 187). As Kirsi Tirri has argued, in Finland, where historically there is a deep-seated tradition of respect for teachers as ‘candles of the nation’, both primary and secondary teacher training moved into the universities in the early 1970s as part of a deliberate move to unify the two strands of the teaching profession and to enrich the subject knowledge of primary teachers and the pedagogical knowledge of secondary teachers respectively (Tirri, 2014: 601). The early history of the development of a theory or science of teaching – ‘pedagogy’ – is strongly linked with the movement of teacher education into the universities and a corresponding desire to elevate the status of teaching as a profession. Its contribution to teacher education, and the weighting variously placed upon it in different models and at different times, has long been contested. Historians such as Marc Depaepe, Richard Selleck and Adrian Wooldridge have explored in depth the multiple scientific trends which shaped educational theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which were influenced by a plethora of emergent interests, such as Herbartian theories of teaching, the child-study and child-health movement, experimental pedagogy, intelligence testing and numerous branches of psychology (Depaepe, 1987; Selleck, 1967, 1968; Wooldridge 1994). Marc Depaepe’s account of the conceptual confusion and incoherence of this development across Europe and in the United States goes some way to explain ongoing tensions between the scientific and practical dimensions of teacher education (Depaepe, 1987). The general suggestion is that the more scientific and theoretical education became as it was established in the universities, the less practical and intuitive was any associated training of teachers, taking it further and further away from the realities of the classroom. Brian Simon, in his critique of the historical denigration of pedagogy in Britain, written in the early 1990s, argued that ‘the most striking aspect of current thinking and discussion about education is its eclectic character, reflecting deep confusion of thought and of aim and purposes relating to learning and teaching – to pedagogy’. He claimed then that one of the fundamental problems with Britain’s education system was a distinct lack of any all-embracing universalised, scientific theory of education relating to the practice of teaching (Simon, 1991: 34). More recently, Anne Rohstock and Daniel Trohler have identified the ‘triumphal march of psychology’ as a leitmotif in the history of teacher training in the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century. This push for more scientific, cognitive and technical aspects of training have led to the ‘academicization of teacher training’ as a ‘phenomenon that has spanned multiple nations’, with an intensification of this process from the 1960s onwards (2014: 121). This trend has also been observed by Iveta Kestere and Iveta Ozola in their recent study of the development of pedagogy as a
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component of teacher education programmes in Soviet Latvia during a period of intellectual isolation from the dominant ideas about educational theory percolating in the Western world (Kestere and Ozola, 2014). In contrast, in China during the 1950s, influenced by trends in teacher education in the Soviet Union, it was subject knowledge and not pedagogy that was particularly stressed (Zhou, 2014). It is interesting that some contemporary critiques of teacher education policy have identified a political suspicion and disregard for educational theory located in the academy and have blamed this for the failure of education systems to deliver highquality learning, preferring a turn back to the practical art and craft designations of teaching that preceded the development of more scientific principles (Furlong, 2013; Gilroy, 2014; Robinson, 2016). If subject knowledge and pedagogy reflect what Furlong has coined ‘the knowing that’ in teacher education, then practical teaching skills and approaches to classroom management and organisation represent ‘the knowing how’. The development of the skills of teaching has historically been associated with supervised teaching practice and, in more recent years, with the development of increasingly competency- or standards-based frameworks of assessment for teachers. Many education systems have traditionally prescribed the amount of time trainee teachers should spend on practical teaching activities as part of their initial preparation, although this, and the various approaches taken to assessing the quality of teaching skills and accrediting these, has varied enormously across time and space. An excessive preoccupation with practical teaching skills has often been attributed to the contested professional status of teaching, and associated with low-level mechanistic ‘tips for teachers’. My own research on the development of more nuanced ideas of ‘learning through practice’ in English teacher education has traced the contribution of ‘practising’ and ‘model’ schools which were built on the same sites as the new denominational training colleges, where students would take part in criticism and demonstration lessons and where models of best practice were upheld. These were later superseded in the early part of the twentieth century with the idea of the demonstration school, attached to university departments of education and not unlike the clinical schools associated with medical training; and it was here that novice teachers could showcase their skills in exposition, narration questioning, lesson planning and classroom management (Robinson, 2004). Comparable, but different experimental schemes in Europe and in America, such as the Lincoln schools in New York, the Gary Schools in Chicago and Dewey’s famous laboratory school in Chicago and their modern-day incarnations as professional development schools, are a welldocumented part of the history of teacher education (Cremin, 1988; DarlingHammond, 1994; Goodlad 1990). The strong moral and vocational aspects of teacher education have already been highlighted above, and the development of personal qualities and attributes in becoming teachers has formed an important part of the socialisation of teachers. In her recent review of teacher education in England, Alys Oancea draws
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attention to the ‘ecclesiastical language of “calling”, “mission” and “dedication”’ ascribed to teaching and how this was reflected in the earliest forms of training (Oancea, 2014: 500). A different but equally powerful set of values for teachers was identified by Gusta Singer in her analysis of teacher education in communist Poland and the central role played by teachers in the fostering of particular ideological values amongst its trainee teachers and then in the schools. In a centralized educational system such as that in Poland, teacher education is the most appropriate level at which the philosophy of education can be examined and analysed. This is because the assumption of teacher education is that whatever political and social attitudes have been instilled in the future teachers during their studies will be passed on to their students. (Singer, 1965: 8)
Strict moral codes and contracts for training teachers, which prescribed certain model behaviours both inside and outside of the classroom, with serious sanctions for unsuitable behaviour, particularly in public, were commonplace throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in a range of different countries, and could be viewed as part of an informal, hidden teacher education curriculum (Britzman, 1991; Theobald and Prentice, 1991). In addition to teachers’ moral behaviours and qualities being shaped by religious or ideological beliefs there has also been a powerful association of the personal qualities of teachers with those of ideal forms of motherhood. Friedrich Froebel’s much-cited axiom of the good teacher as the ‘mother made conscious’ and the impact this concept has had on the development of early years and primary teaching has been an important part of the way in which teacher education has been conceptualised and valued at different times in different contexts (Grumet, 1988; Steedman, 1985). The problem with associating teaching with motherhood and ‘women’s work’ is that this has undermined the very idea that teachers require any special education or training beyond drawing out those essentially natural, inherent personal qualities. Running alongside the historical debates about the value and weighting of specialist subject knowledge and theories of teaching in any formal models of teacher education was a deep-seated countercultural idea that teaching was not something that could be taught – rather that teachers were ‘born, not made’. From this perspective, innate personal qualities and a natural way and rapport with children and young people were to be more highly prized than any knowledge or skills, thus raising some serious questions about the professional credibility and status of teaching.
CONCLUSION In this chapter some of those core questions that have shaped debates about teacher education and have underpinned policies and practices of teacher education across time have been discussed through a broadly thematic approach, drawing on examples and illustrations from a range of international contexts. The
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history of teacher education is inextricably entwined with much broader educational and social developments and priorities, particularly the history of the evolution of mass education systems from the nineteenth century onwards. In drawing this chapter to a close it is argued that the most consistent overarching theme which has dominated the history of teacher education has been its relationship to the state. This has meant that the structure, content, focus and locus of teacher education has essentially been externally controlled and shaped by governments and their agencies – and not by the teaching profession itself. As John Furlong has argued, ‘Education’s difficulties go back right to the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the first intervention of the state into the professional education of teachers. Teacher education, both for initial preparation and for continuing professional development, has always been central to the discipline of education within our universities; but it has always been far too important to governments simply to be left to the universities themselves to determine’ (Furlong, 2013: 182–183). In seeking to understand the significance of the relationship of teacher education to the state, whether this has been enacted through governments, the church or other influential organisations, there are three key points to be raised. First, state control has underpinned all the linear and, arguably in places, cyclical models of teacher education that have evolved since the early nineteenth century. The apparently contradictory oscillation between work-based learning as the dominant form of teacher preparation and external college- or university-based models, discussed above, and what this reveals about some of the fundamental values around the purpose of schools and the role and function of teachers, remain key questions for further historical inquiry. Where comparative/historical transnational studies can be undertaken to probe the shifting patterns and preferences of the state in relation to teacher education policy then there is further potential for much more in-depth understanding of the different contexts in which models thrive. Secondly, teacher education has been and still is critically important to the state because of the intricate connection between schooling and the economy and related concerns about economic prosperity in volatile global markets. However ambivalent the status of teachers is in society, they remain pivotal in any plans for economic and social reform, and as such are a significant priority for any state. Thirdly, the need for states to control teachers is about the control of citizens and citizenship, particularly as the school has always been in the past and is evermore now in the present one of the major sites for social reproduction. If societies’ school systems hold up a mirror to their socio-political values, expectations and beliefs, then this is further reflected through their approaches to teacher education and the way in which they seek to shape and influence teachers and their work. This fundamental historical legacy is woven through past and present narratives of teacher education and will no doubt shape its future, unless opportunities to rethink the relationship between teaching, teacher education and state control are seriously examined.
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In my 2004 book, Power to Teach, I concluded with a plea to historians of education to continue to engage critically with the problem of teacher education and, in particular, to enrich ongoing contested contemporary debates about pedagogy and practice with historical insights (Robinson, 2004). Arguably, in the intervening period, these debates have become more vexed and concerns about a perceived crisis in teaching and teacher education in some societies even more pronounced. At a time when it is argued that neo-liberal political imperatives have served to de-professionalise teachers and to centralise educational reform, it is timely to rethink the historical agenda. It would be simplistic and anachronistic to transpose an uncritical re-adoption of historical understandings on to current and future contexts. However, I do believe that there is a role for a more informed, critical historical knowledge to help us think through the present moment of struggle for the control of teacher education. At the beginning of this chapter, I referred to the notion of ‘time-tested truths’ – those often elusive core concepts which might enable a more holistic and coherent conversation between past, present and future dimensions of teacher education. Historians of teacher education need to continue to identify and make more explicit what these timetested truths are. To conclude, I would propose that the following key areas might form a useful framework for this continued historical project. First, historians should seek to clarify and define how principles of teaching, which rest on a clear understanding of the relationship between teaching and learning and the complexities of classroom interaction, have emerged over time and through different models of teacher education. There is scope for the articulation, through this historical narrative, of a more holistic, rather than narrow or technicist understanding of pedagogy, that could enrich current thinking and help to inform future models of teacher education. Secondly, the relationship between states and their teachers, and how this has shaped teacher education policy and practice, as well as fundamental beliefs about the nature of a teaching profession, warrants continued examination. Thirdly, further work is needed to interrogate some of these issues beyond national boundaries to more supra-national historical/comparative analyses. In particular, this is where a drawing out of those ‘contradictions, differences and points of contestation’ to which Robinson and Christie have alluded becomes so potentially powerful for historians of teacher education.
REFERENCES Akiba, M. (ed.) (2013) Teacher Reforms around the World: Implementation and Outcomes. Bingley: Emerald Press. Aspland, T. (2008) ‘Australia’, in O’Donoghue, T. and Whitehead, C. (eds) Teacher Education in the English-Speaking World: Past, Present and Future. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. Britzman, D. (1991) Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. New York: State University of New York Press.
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Bruno-Jofre, R. and Scott Johnston, J. (eds) (2014) Teacher Education in a Transnational World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Chan, A. (2012) ‘From “civilising the young” to a “dead-end job”: gender, teaching and the politics of colonial rule in Hong Kong (1841–1970)’, History of Education, 41(1): 495–514. Cortina, R. and Roman, S. (eds) (2006) Women and Teaching: Global Perspectives on the Feminization of a Profession. New York: Palgrave. Cremin, L. (1988) American Education, the Metropolitan Experience 1876–1980. New York: Harper and Row. Crohe, P. (2003) Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. London: OneWorld Publications. Crook, D. (1995) ‘Universities, teacher training and the legacy of McNair, 1944–1994’, History of Education, 24(3): 231–235. Cunningham, P. (1989) ‘Educational history and educational change: the past decade of English historiography’, History of Education Quarterly, 29(1): 77–94. Darling-Hammond, L. (1994) Professional Development Schools for Developing a Profession. New York: Teacher College Press. Darling-Hammond, L. and Lieberman, A. (2012) Teacher Education Around the World. London: Routledge. Davies, P. (2000) ‘The relevance of systematic reviews to educational policy and practice’, Oxford Review of Education, 26(3–4): 365–378. Depaepe, M. (1987) ‘Social and personal factors in the inception of experimental research in education (1890–1914): an exploratory study’, History of Education, 16(4): 275–298. Dhondt, P. (2008) ‘Teacher training inside or outside the university: the Belgian compromise 1815– 1890’, Paedagogica Historica, 44(5): 587–605. Edwards, R. (1991) ‘Theory, history, and practice of education: fin de siècle and a new beginning’, McGill Journal of Education, 26(3): 237–266. Ellis, V. and McNicholl, J. (2015) Transforming Teacher Education. London: Bloomsbury. Furlong, J. (2013) Education – the Anatomy of a Discipline: Rescuing the University Project. London: Routledge. Gardner, P. and Cunningham, P. (2004) Teachers: Texts and Testimonies 1907–1950. London: Woburn Press. Gilroy, P. (2014) ‘Policy interventions in teacher education: sharing the English experience’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 622–632. Goodlad, J. (1990) Teachers for our Nation’s Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Grumet, M. (1988) Bitter Milk Women and Teaching. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. Herbst, J. (1980) ‘Nineteenth-century normal schools in the US: a fresh look’, History of Education, 9(3): 219–227. Herbst, J. (1989) And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Hoyle, E. (1982) ‘The professionalization of teachers: a paradox’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 30(2): 161–171. Judge, H., Lemosse, M., Paine, L. and Sedlak, M. (1994) ‘The university and the teachers’, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 4(2). Kafu, P. (2011) ‘Teacher education in Kenya: emerging issues’, International Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 1(1): 43–52. Karasawa, T. (1966) ‘A history of Japanese teachers’, Paedagogica Historica, 6(2): 400–415. Kestere, I. and Ozola, I. (2014) ‘Development of history of education in the context of teacher training in universities: the case of Latvia and Belgium’, Bridges/Tiltai, 66(1): 13–28. Labaree, D. (2004) The Trouble with Ed Schools. New Haven: Yale University Press. Labaree, D. (2008) ‘An uneasy relationship: the history of teacher education in the university’, in M. Cochran-Smith et al. (eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Issues in Changing Contexts. Washington, DC: Association of Teacher Educators.
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Lagemann, E. (2002) An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lane, J. (1996) Apprenticeship in England, 1600–1914. London: Taylor and Francis. Leach, A. (1915) The Schools of Medieval England. London: Methuen. Lynch, J. and Plunkett, H. (1973) Teacher Education and Cultural Change: England, France, West Germany. London: George Allen and Unwin. Mayer, D. (2014) ‘Forty years of teacher education in Australia: 1974–2015’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 461–473. Moon, R. (1998) The English Exception? International Perspectives on the Initial Education and Training of Teachers. UCET Occasional Paper No. 11, London: UCET. Oancea, A. (2014) ‘Teachers’ professional knowledge and state-funded teacher education: a (hi)story of critiques and silences’, Oxford Review of Education, 40(4): 497–519. O’Donoghue, T. and Whitehead, C. (eds) (2008) Teacher Education in the English-Speaking World: Past, Present and Future. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. Oppenshaw, R. and Ball, T. (2008) ‘New Zealand’, in O’Donoghue, T. and Whitehead, C. (eds), Teacher Education in the English-Speaking World: Past, Present and Future. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. Orme, N. (2006) Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England. New Haven: Yale University Press. Patrick, H. (1986) ‘From Cross to CATE: the universities and teacher education over the past century’, Oxford Review of Education, 12(3): 243–261. Raffe, D. and Spours, K. (2007) Policy-Making and Policy-Learning in 14–19 Education. London: Bedford Way Papers, Institute of Education. Ramsey, P. (2014) ‘Toiling together for social cohesion: international influences on the development of teacher education in the United Sates’, Paedagogica Historica, 50(1–2): 109–122. Ravitch, D. (2000) Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. New York: Simon and Schuster. Robinson, M. and Christie, P. (2008) ‘South Africa’, in O’Donoghue, T. and Whitehead, C. (eds), Teacher Education in the English-Speaking World: Past, Present and Future. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. Robinson, W. (2003) Pupil Teachers and their Professional Training in Pupil Teacher Centres in England and Wales, 1870–1914. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. Robinson, W. (2004) Power to Teach: Learning through Practice. London: Routledge Falmer. Robinson, W. (2016) ‘Educational knowledge and teacher education in England and Wales: the development of practical experimental pedagogy 1900–1920’, in Horlacher, R. and Hoffman-Ocon, A. (eds), Educational Knowledge in Teacher Education. Germany: Klinkhardt Press. Rohstock A. and Trohler, D. (2014) ‘From the sacred nation to the unified globe: changing leitmotifs in teacher training in the Western world 1870–2010’, in Bruno-Jofre, R. and Scott Johnston, J. (eds), Teacher Education in a Transnational World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Schleicher, A. (2011) Building a High Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from Around the World. Paris: OECD Publishing. Selleck, R. (1967) ‘The scientific educationist 1870–1914’, British Journal of Educational Studies 15(1): 148–165. Selleck, R. (1968) The New Education, 1870–1910. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. Selleck, R. (1994) James Kay-Shuttleworth: Journey of an Outsider. London: Woburn Press. Semel, S. and Sadovnik, A. (1999) ‘Schools of Tomorrow’, Schools of Today; What Happened to Progressive Education. New York: Peter Lang. Shin’chi, S. (2014) ‘Towards professionalisation or deprofessionalisation? Teacher education over the past 40 years: a Japanese retrospective’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 524–542. Simon, B. (1981) ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’, in Simon, B. and Taylor, W. (eds) Education in the Eighties: the Central Issues. London: Batsford, 124–145.
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Singer, G. (1965) Teacher Education in a Communist State: Poland 1956–1961. New York: Bookman Associates. Slavin, R. (2008) ‘What works? Issues in synthesizing educational program evaluations’, Educational Researcher, 37: 5–14. Steedman, C. (1985) ‘The mother made conscious: the historical development of a primary school pedagogy’, History Workshop Journal, 20(1): 149–163. Steward, L. and Thomas, E. (1996) Teacher Education in the Commonwealth: Caribbean Issues and Developments. London: The Commonwealth Secretariat. Terhart, E. (2014) ‘Education – an anatomy of the discipline: rescuing the university project?’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 633–638. Theobald, M. and Prentice, A. (1991) Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tirri, K. (2014) ‘The last 40 years in Finnish teacher education’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 600–609. von Bagen, I. (2014) ‘A new reform in teacher education? A historical perspective on recent developments in teacher education in Germany – the case of North Rhine-Westphalia’, Research in Teacher Education, 4(2): 5–10. Wolhuter, C. (2006) ‘Teacher training in South Africa: past, present and future’, Education Research and Perspectives, 33(2): 124–139. Wooldridge, A. (1994) Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England 1860–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zhou, J. (2014) ‘Teacher education changes in China 1974–2014’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 507–523.
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4 The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems in Teacher Education1 M a r i a Te re s a Ta t t o a n d J a m e s P i p p i n
Calls to demonstrate the quality of teacher education appear to be on the rise across a number of nations. Scholars attribute this phenomenon to various global and local forces, such as the globalization of international standards, and the increased marketization of education. These forces, affecting higher education institutions more generally, engender competition among institutions within and across countries as they try to maintain key positions in the national and international community (Chong & Ho, 2009; Hou, 2011; Kim, 2000). In most countries higher education institutions are expected to be accountable to the public in order to maintain the value of their credentials; accordingly, departments and colleges within these institutions, including teacher education, strive to ensure the legitimacy, or ‘value-added’, of their programs (Hou, 2011; Chong & Ho, 2009). A more muted rationale for increasing accountability and quality assurance for higher education around the world is that programs are merely complying with regulations and professional norms, and among these a good number are also genuinely interested in improving their quality (World Bank, 2007). Regardless of the reason for engaging in the quest to demonstrate quality, there are a number of assumptions accompanying this movement that need to be examined. One assumption is that ‘quality’ means the same thing in every national context and thus arriving at a judgment seems relatively straightforward (e.g., quality can be determined via periodic internal and external evaluations to secure accreditation, periodic site visits, annually spaced reports, and so on). Two additional assumptions are the notion of a common purpose and that expertise to assess quality exists within institutions. That is, most calls to demonstrate quality imply that there is openness, broad community support and expertise to engage in
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program evaluation activities (Jussila & Saari, 2000). Finally, quality assurance policies often assume that evaluations are conducted reliably and objectively and that competition among institutions (and nations) leads to improved quality (Kim, 2000). In this chapter we question these assumptions through a review of approaches used to assess quality in teacher education across the world and examine how these approaches map against the three most common purposes of teacher education program evaluation, to provide: diagnostic information for program self-improvement; accountability data for internal and external monitoring; and information to consumers. After describing the global context for evaluation of teacher education programs, we look at evaluation systems at different levels – macro, meso and micro – including two specific country cases: Finland and Singapore. Finland and Singapore are of particular interest to illustrate the reach of accountability policies in two systems that are widely recognized as excellent, yet have very different cultural trajectories to those of the West.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION The literature search presented in this chapter engendered a high degree of complexity because of the definitional challenges that characterize the field (e.g., confusion between teacher evaluation and teacher education evaluation). To capture variability, we decided to use the following terms: ‘teacher education’, ‘teacher preparation’, ‘teacher training’ and ‘higher education’, paired with ‘quality assurance’, ‘program evaluation results’, ‘program effectiveness’, ‘program monitoring’, ‘program improvement’, ‘accountability’ and ‘evidencebased’. In addition, the use of the term ‘quality assurance in teacher education’ helped us find comprehensive reports of efforts across countries. Quality assurance was most often defined as an ‘all-embracing term referring to an ongoing, continuous process of evaluating (assessing, monitoring, guaranteeing, maintaining and improving) the quality of (teacher) education systems, institutions or programmes’ (Eurydice, 2006, p. 74). After agreeing on definitions we decided to use three main sources of infor mation for this chapter: (a) research articles reporting results from program evaluation in teacher education programs published in peer reviewed journals in the last 15 years; (b) research reports from quality assurance and similar agencies found on the web (e.g., Eurydice’s Quality Assurance in Teacher Education in Europe 2006 report); and (c) data from a survey developed for this purpose and sent to education scholars and policymakers in selected countries (Tatto, Krajcik & Pippin, 2013). The literature search revealed remarkable similarities in processes to demonstrate quality, and thus comply with accountability demands, across countries. Most teacher education institutions are asked to follow a process that includes an
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external review, which evaluates an institution’s progress in relation to a required internal self-evaluation. The external review is typically conducted by a panel of experts assembled by a recognized body (e.g., accreditation or government agency) and may include site visits and conversations with key institutional and community stakeholders. Internal evaluations are typically conducted annually and external evaluations over a longer period of time (e.g., every 3–7 years). How this information, which is assumed to take significant effort and resources to collect, is subsequently used by each institution is rarely identified in the literature. Some scholars suggest that external monitoring does not seek to improve quality in teacher education programs or to improve institutional learning; it only meets accountability requirements (Bell & Youngs, 2011; Tatto et al., 2016). Others have found that changes in learning outcomes had not been linked to quality assurance systems, and that even the function of public accountability was not fulfilled (Kis, 2005). In other instances, both intended and unintended consequences have been detected. In sum, the concept of quality in teacher education has increasingly become more prominent and, at the same time, more contested. This is in part because the teaching profession and, as a consequence, teacher education are under increasing attack from a number of fronts which have used as a lever results of international and national tests of pupil achievement. Whether or not these critiques are justified, they have resulted in policy mandates which have had in some cases deleterious effects on educational systems. Scholars have raised the alarm, arguing that in some influential contexts, such as England and the US, reforms amount to accepting that the university project of teacher education has failed (Furlong, 2013; Levine, 2006), and that new alternatives need to be found to prepare more effective teachers. In other contexts, such as countries in Europe and Asia, teacher and teacher education quality seem strong (Sahlberg, 2011) and assessment results are used in more constructive and formative ways. In all of these contexts, accountability systems have been operational and these tensions did not immediately affect ways to assess quality; however, as we illustrate below, policies over the last ten years have had a significant impact on the development of teacher education accountability systems throughout the world (Tatto, 2007). Examining the ways in which quality is assessed in teacher education, and the use of these results (usually for accreditation), is important because these actions have the potential to shape teacher education in dramatic ways. In the next sections we provide a review of approaches to assess teacher education quality across several regions in the world. We then examine in more depth the common notions of external and internal evaluations, how these have been used (looking at the EU as an example), and whether or not they seem to afford relevant and valid data for institutional learning. We then discuss what it would take to engage in responsible teacher education program evaluation, and conclude with some general principles.
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EVALUATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS: A GLOBAL VIEW Asia and the Pacific Most of the literature in Asia comes from the more affluent East Asian countries: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. In general, we found quite similar strategies to assess quality in each of these countries. Perhaps the key difference was in the way the search for quality to ensure accreditation is governed. For example, we found more decentralized practices (e.g., accreditation agencies) in Japan and Taiwan and centralized ones (e.g., ministries of education) in South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Given their size and the historical evolution of the educational systems in these countries, these differences make sense. Singapore is a special case as the country has one teacher education institution, so it seems reasonable that the Ministry of Education would conduct the evaluation. Japan adopted the US accreditation system with mixed success because many Japanese institutions did not wish to be accredited (Yonezawa, 2002). Yet according to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2009) the accreditation system remains in effect for all universities. Institutions in Japan must conduct a self-evaluation prior to the accreditation process, which takes place once every seven years and is conducted by certified agencies, namely the Japan Institution for Higher Education Evaluation (JIHEE). JIHEE (2013) promises institutions that evaluations are conducted in a way that grants them the autonomy to show their unique characteristics. According to the Ministry of Education, there are three possible outcomes of this process: satisfactory, unsatisfactory and pending. Similarly, South Korean institutions must conduct self-evaluations and submit reports to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) (Kim, 2000). These efforts were first launched for all teacher training programs by the Presidential Commission on Education Reform of 1996 (Kim, 2000). According to Kim, the reform promotes competition as a means of improving quality. Competition is fostered by tying both financial support and administrative decisions to the evaluations. MEST then assembles a team to evaluate the report before conducting a site evaluation. Possible results of the evaluation are very good, good, standard or poor. The government of Taiwan also adopted the US system of accreditation. The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) follows a process of self-evaluation followed by peer-review. These evaluations examine programs’ goals, features and plans for self-enhancement; curriculum design and teaching; learning outcomes and other aspects related to student affairs; research and professional performance; and the performance of graduates (Hou, 2011). Possible results of the evaluation are for a program to be accredited,
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accredited conditionally, or denied accreditation. Programs that receive conditional accreditation or are denied accreditation require additional evaluations within one year; if a program fails for two years in a row, it must cease enrollment and operations. Hong Kong, while conducting similar practices, incorporates some additional measures that are notable. Like the other Asian countries, institutions must first engage in a self-evaluation on a routine basis. Yet this evaluation must include feedback from staff, students, external examiners from years past, and past reports with recommendations for improvement (Tripartite Liaison Committee of Hong Kong, 2009). In addition to these self-assessments, institutions must conduct broader program reviews that include detailed accounts of faculty teaching and quality as well as student assessments and progression. Interestingly, they also gather systematic feedback from employers on the success of their graduates in the labor force. The National Institute of Education (NIE) of Singapore emphasizes that improvement is the most important purpose of evaluation and the goal is to ‘support future performance’ and not to make judgments on the past (Chong & Ho, 2009, p. 306). Their evaluation process appears very straightforward; it considers the context in terms of the program’s goals and interests, the inputs used to achieve those goals, the process by which this was done, and the product, matching data to outcomes. In Australia, five performance models are utilized in quality assurance: accreditation, audit, budgeting and funding, reporting, and surveys (Chalmers, 2008). Like universities in other federal systems, Australian institutions of higher education are likely accustomed to assessment by external agencies, but institutions are still granted a great deal of autonomy in how they might use the information gleaned from these assessments.
Europe Information from specific countries in Europe suggests that the quality assurance process is understood as one that should facilitate dialogue among stakeholders on how to improve educational quality, and serve as external and internal monitoring tools. The range of stakeholders appears quite broad; beyond policymakers and institutional leaders, often teachers, and students are included, likely improving overall participation. The notion of accountability to the community external to teacher education is held as a high priority as well. But while there is agreement on the need to create and sustain quality, the ways in which this is achieved is highly variable. Finland, for instance, has no accreditation system; instead the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council (FINEEC) – an independent body that aids higher education institutions and the Ministry of Education and Culture – conducts the evaluations (Niemi & Lavonen, 2011). Like most of the Asian countries, the
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process begins with a self-evaluation made by institution staff members in which they identify their objectives, strengths and weaknesses and document this with evidence. Then an external panel of experts familiarizes themselves with this report and prepares follow-up questions for the institution. Finally, the panel of experts assembles an evaluation report based on the information from the selfevaluation and the follow-up interviews (Niemi & Lavonen, 2011). According to Jussila and Saari (2000), the Finnish evaluation system is engineered to incorporate a wide variety of viewpoints and facilitate dialogue. For instance, they note that the evaluation teams involve heads of universities and faculties, teacher education representatives, student body leaders, administrators, delegates and government officials. They also mention that many higher education institutions request an international perspective on the evaluation; accordingly the FINEEC often invites foreign experts to participate. In Portugal, after 1999, policymakers clearly differentiated between quality assurance evaluations of higher education institutions and teacher education programs (Campos, 2004). Institutions that prepare teachers must still be evaluated with the standard higher education process, yet it is a necessary, but not sufficient, assessment. The accreditation committee that evaluates teacher education programs is completely independent of the government and includes primary and secondary teachers as well as higher education faculty members. Outcomes of this evaluation include accreditation for six years, for four years (with renewal dependent upon meeting certain objectives), and accreditation withdrawal (changes may be made within one year). Like Finland, the ‘accreditation criteria and methodology is made following consultation and debated widely among participants in the teaching profession including teacher educators and school teachers’ unions and associations’ (Campos, 2004, p. 23). Norway provides yet another example of this variability as it requires that higher education institutions maintain routine yearly assessments of their own programs. Essentially, the institution designs and manages its own system, the data it chooses to gather, how that data will be used, and what documents will be produced based on its size, academic profile and local characteristics (NOKUT, 2011). The Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) then proposes a panel of experts that will conduct the external review of the institution based on its proposed goals and evidence of meeting those goals. Each institution has the right to comment on the NOKUT’s proposed panel of experts before the panel is ever appointed in order to negotiate for alternative members.
Middle East The literature we found on quality assurance of higher education institutions in the Middle East is limited, but the evidence suggests that the process is quite similar to other regions. That is, there is an internal evaluation effort followed by an external evaluation that generates information with which an institution can
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develop changes that lead to improvements in institutional and educational quality. The Council for Higher Education in Israel (2012) outlines the evaluation process as also including a self-evaluation report conducted by the institution itself followed by an external evaluation by committee. This committee is appointed by the Council and its evaluation report is based on data gleaned from an on-site visit as well as meetings with the heads of the institution. The committee is comprised of representatives from various sectors, including academic leaders, faculty, students, administrative staff, and often ‘leading personalities’ from other disciplines and departments (Council for Higher Education in Israel, 2012). The committee report is then discussed by the Council and the resolutions published along with a response from the institution. Though Pakistan is in the early stages of developing a national assessment of higher education institutions, it has formed the Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (ACTE), an organization that is working on developing standards and requirements for institutions and programs involved with the education of teachers (Dilshad & Iqbal, 2010). The authors briefly note that in a survey of educators asking for respondents’ chief desired outcomes of the accreditation assessment, participants emphasized professional development as the most important goal. While Oman is considered ‘Asian’ geographically, here we include it in the Middle East section because of proximity. As in most other countries identified in this review, al Bandary (2005) states that policies in Oman also require institutions to conduct their own evaluation of their key areas of excellence and difficulty. An external team also visits the institution, engaging in formal meetings and informal conversations to get a deeper sense of the institution with the self-evaluation as a guide. The team’s feedback is then offered to the institution, which ideally begins to make changes that are then further monitored. Al Bandary (2005) suggests that for this process to work, each institution must have the degree of autonomy necessary to identify and solve its own problems and alter course when data urges them in a new direction.
North America In the US, since the 1950s the agency to accredit teacher education has been the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), followed by the creation of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC). The process for accreditation relied for the most part on external evaluation under the NCATE model, while the TEAC model sought to make the process more organic to the program, increasing institutional learning and participation among stakeholders. More recently, in mid-2013, the Council for the Accreditation of Education Preparation (CAEP) was created attempting to combine both models. In addition, CAEP was tasked with the development and implementation of new
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standards for teacher education programs emphasizing knowledge, recruitment and program impact. CAEP is also seeking to align with other standards, such as the revised Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium standards (InTASC), designed to provide curriculum guidelines and progress benchmarks for teacher education programs. Because the US is highly decentralized, the regulation of teacher education resides primarily with the states, while at the same time, and increasingly since the early 2000s, the Department of Education has sought to create regulations at the federal level. At the end of 2014, for instance, the US Department of Education issued a proposal for new regulations to ‘implement requirements for the teacher preparation program accountability system under title II of the Higher Education Act of 1965 … [to] result in the development and distribution of more meaningful data on teacher preparation program quality’. In this context of heightened accountability, the proposed regulations were expected to produce indicators for the ‘meaningful differentiation’ of teacher education programs as exceptional, effective, low-performing or at-risk (see Tatto et al., 2016). The final rule on the proposed new regulations was officially published in the Federal Register in October of 2016 under the Obama administration. In February 2017 and under a new administration, the US House of Representatives introduced a resolution to rescind the regulations which passed along party lines; after consideration by the Senate, the federal teacher preparation regulations were rescinded on March 27, 2017. While these regulations were seen by teacher educators as problematic in many respects, in other respects they were seen as necessary to improve the quality of a number of teacher education programs, and to regulate the ever growing alternative routes into teaching (see Tatto et al., 2016). Canada operates in a decentralized fashion and therefore it is difficult to speak of the country as a whole. In the province of Ontario, the Universities Council on Quality Assurance (2010) offers a thorough explanation of the process to ensure quality assurance, and we find it similar to the process in other regions and countries. Again, institutions are tasked with designing and implementing their own quality assurance process consistent with their own goals, but also with the framework provided by the Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance. A panel of auditors then audits the self-evaluation and reports to the Audit Committee of the Quality Council. The panel then evaluates each institution’s compliance with its own internal goals and objectives and it has the power to accept or reject the auditor’s evaluation. While this is true in Ontario, the situation in other provinces is somewhat different. Challenges
In spite of the universal agreement on the need to create and sustain quality, and the creation of standards around what counts as teacher education quality, implementation processes are quite variable – a situation that suggests numerous challenges to assessing higher education institutions and teacher education programs.
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One challenge is the difficult task of integrating ‘international standards’ in local contexts. For example, in Taiwan some evaluation results were used to suggest that institutions reduce class sizes, strengthen student support services, and increase the use of English as a medium of instruction – all perceived as ‘international standards’ (Hou, 2011). Yet some of these measures fly in the face of culture and traditional methods of instruction. In other settings, for instance Singapore, teacher education curricula are considered standard, which means that no variation is expected in coverage and pedagogy, even when the courses may be taught by different faculty. In some European countries, such as Finland, the fact that there is a core curriculum allows faculty freedom and autonomy to create diversity in implementation within a high level of standardization (Tatto, 2015). In the US and in other Western countries, however, higher education faculty will likely resist such limitations (Kennedy, 2005). Thus while standards may be an important tool for regulating a profession, there is much to learn about what forms of standardization work and for what purposes in teacher education. Indeed, insisting on standardization may engender institutional resistance. For example, Rennert-Ariev (2008) examines how faculty members at a US higher education institution acknowledged their own lack of intention to integrate new standards in their coursework. They were willing to include the standards on their syllabi, but viewed them as mere labels. Even if an institution (and its members) takes on the challenge of adopting new standards, often administrators, faculty and students lack clarity on what the standards mean and how they ought to go about meeting them (Kim, 2000). This lack of clarity can lead to failures to implement the standards with fidelity and frustratingly persistent weak evaluations. Our comprehensive search found that the notion of assessing quality in higher education is now firmly embedded across the system of higher education in most world regions, and has also permeated quality assessments in teacher education. The quality of the work and information that has been done in this area, when available, shows wide variability, with better developed strategies in those systems where assessment activities are backed by legislation. In conclusion, as per our review, internal institutional evaluations are usually driven by external evaluations requirements and guidelines. In external evaluations of higher education, and by implication of teacher education programs, results are typically made public and carry high stakes. In some cases, however, systems have external and internal evaluations. But external program evaluations which require an internal evaluation, while they may be intended to stimulate institutional learning, seem to impose a heavy burden on institutions and their programs, including teacher education programs – an exception seems to be in cases where a special office has been created within the institution (as in Singapore) or outside the institution (as in Taiwan) to carry out the evaluation.
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A NATIONAL LEVEL VIEW OF THE EVALUATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS To complement the data obtained in our literature review and via websites, we sent questionnaires to university faculty members and policymakers in 25 countries. Answers to the survey helped us gain additional and current insights into the processes by which these governments seek to ensure the quality of teacher education programs and their graduates. Respondents from nine of those countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan) supplied the detailed information that we outline below. All of the responding countries point to efforts to attend to quality teacher education (see Table 4.1), while some are clearly more systematic than others. For example, in Brazil the government appears to rely on results of assessments of teacher graduates to determine the quality of the content, skills and competencies taught in teacher education programs. In contrast, the South Korean government has established a clear national system of standards and mandates that are used to evaluate teacher education programs through both internal and external evaluations linked to specific consequences. All respondents except Germany and Italy report a focus on national-level quality assurance mandates and slightly more than half report linkages to laws or regulations. Fewer than half of the respondents identify quality assurance efforts
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Germany
Israel
Taiwan
Finland
South Korea
China
Italy
Bulgaria
Quality assurance system in teacher preparation National-level mandates Local-level mandates Program-level mandates Linked to laws or regulations Teacher preparation program evaluation systems Internal Mandated External Mandated STEM teacher preparation program evaluation
Brazil
Table 4.1 Report of survey results
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that address teacher education programs specifically. Most point to measures that focus on quality assurance of universities in general; teacher education programs, housed within universities in most countries, are therefore included in these measures. Of the four countries reporting specific evaluation systems for teacher education programs, three are located in East Asia. Regarding specific teacher education program evaluations, countries reported differences in the approaches used to assess the quality of their graduates. In most countries either internal or external evaluations were conducted and four countries reported conducting both internal and external assessments. Few systems mandated that universities or teacher education programs conduct internal evaluations, but mandatory external evaluations were quite common among countries with identified teacher program quality assurance systems. Interestingly, none of the respondents report a focus on evaluating the quality of STEM teacher education.
Purpose and Intent of Quality Assurance Systems for Teacher Education For those countries with quality assurance systems for teacher education programs, respondents generally report that the intent of these systems is to engage in external monitoring and accountability with an eye toward improving the quality of teacher education programs and their graduates. Additional purposes include increasing transparency for public awareness and consumption, helping to balance the supply and demand of teachers, and offering financial and administrative support for high-performing institutions.
Types of Evidence Used Our survey asked respondents to identify the evidence collected to evaluate teacher education programs, and the measures used to collect this evidence. In terms of outcomes, participants report looking at tests of graduates’ knowledge, evaluations of classroom performance, teacher placement and retention rates. The evaluation of inputs typically include numbers and qualifications of faculty members, facilities, resources, number and quality of scientific or educational projects, characteristics and quality of student candidates. Finally, the process measures identified by our respondents suggest that evaluations consider student subject area course credits, descriptions of curricula and syllabi, use of information technology, observations of instruction, and quality of field experiences.
Process We asked respondents to briefly describe the process of assessing quality and identify the various roles of actors in the quality assurance system at the federal,
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state, agency and program levels. Since most of the responding countries have national quality assurance systems, survey results indicate that the key roles in the evaluation process are most often performed by a Ministry of Education and an evaluation or accreditation agency. In these countries, the Ministry of Education sets the standards and mandates the evaluations conducted by the appropriate agency. Teacher education program faculty and administration are expected to align their programs with the standards, and conduct internal evaluations with the intent to support continued improvement. Whether or not this occurs is rarely reported as an outcome of the evaluation.
A VIEW INSIDE INSTITUTIONS OF TEACHER EDUCATION IN SPECIFIC COUNTRIES In this section we provide detailed information of the quality assurance processes in two countries – Finland and Singapore – as a way of illustrating the great variation that exists in implementation, even in countries with centralized systems of governance.
Finland in 2010–2013 According to the Finnish National Board of Education website, the teaching profession in Finland is regulated by the Teaching Qualifications Decree 986/1998.2 The University of Helsinki, the largest institution preparing teachers in Finland, states that the qualifications required to be a teacher in Finland include a Master’s degree, strong competence in the language of instruction (usually Finnish or Swedish), at least 60 ECTS3 credits in a subject area (120 ECTS credits in two subject areas for upper secondary teachers), and at least 60 ECTS credits in pedagogical studies (University of Helsinki, 2006). According to the Finnish National Board of Education website, the structure of Finnish schools has influenced teacher education reforms. Future teachers are designated as ‘class’ teachers (primary grades) or ‘subject’ teachers (lower and upper secondary grades). For ‘subject’ teachers, education in the subject area (e.g., mathematics) is provided by university faculty in that area; generally, after one or two years studying in a subject area, future subject teachers apply to teacher education for an additional four to five years. Both groups of teachers are prepared by university departments of teacher education in partnership with so-called ‘teacher training schools’ for teaching practice, experiments, research and continuing education. Teacher competencies are clear in the Finnish curriculum. Future teachers are expected to develop competence in planning how to teach the curriculum, language/communication skills (including foreign and second national lan guages), and media and information technology. Finnish teachers also must have
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a deep understanding of the cultural, psychological and pedagogical bases of education, as well as knowledge about the role of research in education and key methods of conducting educational research, culminating in a thesis required for graduation. Finally, teachers in Finland are expected to be competent practitioners, receiving considerable experience teaching students. Although teachers’ work is not subject to ‘standards’, as is done in many other countries, there is an explicit agreement that teachers are expected to follow the national core curriculum, while using their own professional judgment to guide instruction. While the evaluation of teacher education programs is left up to the individual program and their faculty, the external evaluation is in the form of an audit by the Finnish Education Evaluation Center (FINEEC) (Finnish Education Evaluation Center, 2016a). FINEEC is an independent government agency responsible for evaluating all levels of education in Finland and is composed of an Evaluation Council, Higher Education Evaluation Committee, and special units focused on the evaluation of general education, vocational education and training, and higher education (FINEEC, 2016a).
Singapore in 2010–2013 In Singapore there is only one teacher education institution, the National Institute of Education (NIE), which is an autonomous institute of Nanyang Technological University. There is a high degree of control over teacher training and certification in the nation. Teachers are recruited by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and sent to NIE for training, where they choose from among four concurrent and four consecutive program types. All teacher education candidates are required to complete core courses in education studies, subject knowledge (primary grades only as prospective secondary teachers enter the teacher education program with a high level of subject knowledge), curriculum studies, academic studies (degree only), practicum, and Language Enhancement and Academic Discourse Skills (LEADS). LEADS courses are unique to Singapore and include courses to develop the skills required to use English for communication, academic and professional purposes. The core competencies for graduates of teacher education programs at NIE are outlined in the Graduand Teacher Competencies Framework (GTCF), which offers specific standards for teacher competencies in three main categories: Professional Practice, Leadership and Management, and Personal Effectiveness. The coherence and quality of this system – one in which teachers are trained in and evaluated according to the same core competencies – is maintained by a robust quality assurance framework adapted from the CIPP Evaluation Model (Chong & Ho, 2009). This model includes four key components: context, inputs, process and product. It also emphasizes that developing quality teachers is the key objective and that evaluations are for improvement, not punishment. Similarly, evaluations of teacher education programs aim to help these programs develop their quality and to ensure that systems and structures are aligned
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in order to meet institutional objectives (Seng, 2009, p. 143). Quality assurance in Singapore occurs at three levels: formative, external and summative (Chong & Ho, 2009). In the formative reviews, or institutional self-assessments, all processes and procedures are measured against ‘best practices’ in order to note program strengths and areas in need of improvement. External reviews are conducted periodically by a panel of experts (comprising 6–7 corporate leaders, industry professionals and academics, including one local chairperson) and often include a five-day site visit to validate an institution’s self-assessment (Seng, 2009, p. 143). Summative reviews aid long-term strategies for continuous improvement. At the end of the process institutions submit a report in which they identify proposals to meet the recommendations of the external review panel, and the MoE offers funding to incentivize institutions and programs to pursue quality improvement, while these institutions promise to provide annual progress updates (Seng, 2009, p. 143).
DISCUSSION How the Current Accountability Movement May Be Undermining Quality After our review of the systemic, national and local-scale approaches to assess quality in teacher education, we conclude that great variability exists, yet while in some cases there are deliberate attempts at developing organic systems, in others there is a strong tendency toward regulation and standardization as part of the new accountability movement. The idea behind standardization is that it is a useful tool facilitating compliance with accreditation mandates and promotes quality, yet we argue that paradoxically teacher education quality may be undermined by these current attempts at accountability. This is because a generic model of program evaluation tends to assume a standard for all program outcomes, which then can be equally measured and compared (e.g., pupils’ learning outcomes as an indicator of teacher education programs’ quality). Yet while teacher education programs may have similar goals in some areas (e.g., knowledge proficiency to teach primary-level mathematics), they may not in others (e.g., an expanded knowledge of cultural differences according to contexts), and some teacher education programs may be, in fact, attempting to maximize individualized outcomes among future teachers, including variability and flexibility to adapt to the needs of students in challenging contexts. This situation may be more common in large and diverse countries such as the US, Canada or Germany. If this is the main goal of teacher education programs, especially those that attempt to equip teachers to work with traditionally disadvantaged students and settings, then it is likely that the more successful the program is at adapting to specific contexts and needs, the more it runs the risk of not ‘fitting the standards’ according to current evaluation practices. To be clear, this does not mean
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not having standards that serve to specify the knowledge required to teach a core curriculum, as in Finland, but rather it means understanding the richness of pedagogical skills and related knowledge needed so that teachers can develop the autonomy to teach according to the learning and emotional needs of diverse students. The key question is whether the type of information required by accountability mandates is more generic, rather than particular to actual programs, and thus seems in a way not as relevant to learning about and improving the program. Thus a bifurcation between the daily life of the program and the activity to satisfy accountability demands occurs. Is compliance with accountability mandates really helping inform program improvement and learning? What is required for programs to transform these requirements/mandates into an organic part of a learning community? In this chapter we propose that the kind of approach that is more appropriate to assess and improve teacher education quality is one that has been developed over the years: ‘utilization-focused self-directed quality-assessment’ (Tatto, 2001). There are few examples of this approach, but some can be found to some degree in Finland and in Singapore, and among the countries that recently participated in the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics or TEDS-M (see Tatto et al., 2012). In contrast, a variety of outcome-focused approaches and hybrids have resulted in legislation to regulate higher education institutions and the formation of external evaluation agencies. The result has been in some cases the evaluation of teacher education under the same ‘generic’ models used to evaluate higher education. In some cases, this has meant the creation of internal evaluation procedures to respond to increasing demands for information required by accountability mandates that these institutions are ill prepared to collect (such as the use of Value Added Models to evaluate teacher education which are based on assessing the effects of teacher education based on an assumed causal link between graduates’ performance and pupils’ performance). Other aspects having to do with program enactment, such as the examination of the content of the teacher education curriculum provided by the institution, the teaching methods, the assessment practices, and the program’s human resources and infrastructure, may be easier to procure and represent a more appropriate model for implementation-evaluation but may not help programs improve. In a number of countries, these evaluations are done by so-called ‘experts’, while in others they are done by ‘peers’, or by both. In cases when the evaluation is done by peers, or by experts and peers, there is a tendency to have an internal evaluation committee within the teacher education institution, but not always. In other words, by definition ‘expert and goal-driven quality assessment’ systems may not be participatory and/or program utilization focused. While a program utilization focused quality assessment model would argue for a collaborative approach enacted with knowledgeable program implementers and evaluation researchers, a whole ‘industry’ has evolved to ‘take care’ of teacher
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education program evaluation, eliminating participation from those who implement the programs. This, in essence, takes the important activity of program evaluation away from the hands of the program enactors themselves (teacher educators). In the research done for this chapter we found a wide variety of organizations that carry out the needed reviews for accreditation. While we have not found data that speak to the validity of these quality assessments and standards, high-stakes evaluations based on these tools continue to be implemented. For instance, there are non-government agencies in charge of evaluation mostly following set standards mandated in the legislation, or by professional bodies. Under this model, programs are evaluated by an external group such as the NCATE in the US (now the CAEP). This model seems to also exist in Norway and Taiwan. More centralized models are common in Asian and Latin American countries, usually enacted by the national government through the appropriate branch of the Department of Education (DoE) or by the Ministry of Education (MoE). Singapore follows this centralized model but is one of the few systems that seeks to validate the evaluation process. To do this, experts and foreign authorities are invited to participate or review the evaluation documents/data. In other countries, notably England, the government is also the evaluation authority via an inspectorate system. In this system, careful monitoring activities are carried out periodically and reports are shared with the public. In other countries the programs design and implement the evaluation (self-study) according to professional standards/the national core curriculum, but are accountable to an external agency that corroborates the information collected by the program. In some cases, the external agency has the power of placing the program on probation if the evaluation results are non-favorable, as in many Asian and European countries, and in the US.
Developing a New Approach to the Study of Teacher Education Our analysis suggests the need to develop an incremental approach to studying teacher education programs. We use Patton (2002, pp. 143–187) as the basis for this framework, and suggest a sequence and a typology of studies as a response to what we encountered in the field: 1 As with any large-scale high-stakes enterprise, a pre-evaluation study, a tried procedure to determine whether a program can and should be subjected to a formal evaluation, should be standard practice in the field. We found no mention of such studies in the literature and documents we examined. Instead, programs are placed on probation if they fail to fit ‘quality’ criteria. Preevaluation strategies may help to better understand particular programs’ goals and expectations and may support program improvement before more serious steps are followed. 2 Other types of studies are studies of program outcomes and of individualized outcomes. Evaluations of program outcomes have become the central focus of accountability-driven evaluations to demonstrate the responsible use of public funds to achieve desired results. These
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studies in general do not seem to be constructed to help programs fully learn from the evaluation process and improve their practice, in part because evaluations of outcomes are typically done by experts external to the institution. In contrast, evaluation of individualized outcomes seeks to uncover whether or not program services are matched to the needs of individual clients and would be an important goal of any evaluation study, yet we found few examples where this is an explicit goal of quality assurance assessments. The predominance of external evaluations may make it difficult to document program implementation and processes accurately, how these programs continuously learn to adapt to their clients, and how standards may impede the flexibility needed to adjust to clients’ needs. Studies of programs and individualized outcomes together constitute a more promising alternative. 3 Essential to understanding and improving programs are process and implementation studies designed to find whether or not the program is operating according to design. These kinds of studies, while more expensive, would seem to be a necessary element of quality assurance. If outcomes are evaluated without knowledge of how implementation facilitated them, the results seldom provide a direction for action as information is lacking about what produced the observed outcomes or lack of outcomes. While quality assurance models create the expectation that teacher education programs’ processes and implementation will be monitored, it is difficult to find any documentation of how this is currently done, with the problematic conclusion that it is likely that evaluations may be driven by the ‘one standard fits all’ model. 4 Logic models and theories of action-based studies depict the connections between program inputs, activities and processes (implementation), outputs, immediate outcomes, and longterm impacts to achieve an ‘ideal’ vs ‘actual’ comparison or a contrast between the program’s espoused theory and the theory in use (based on Patton, 2002, pp. 143–187). Logic models, program theory of action-based studies, as well as process studies conducted by teacher educators (key to proving and improving quality) are ideal venues for organizational learning, yet they do not seem to be part of the large accountability movement in teacher education.
In sum, most of the studies we encountered were externally driven and focused on aggregated outcomes, with a few studies asking about process/implementation aspects. The ‘one standard fits all’ model may have the undesirable consequence of limiting programs’ ability to improve their programs and prepare future teachers to attend to individual students’ needs. For example, it may be that programs that are successful at adjusting to their clientele fail to look like the standard ideal expected by reformers. Therefore, programs successful in meeting client needs may still be placed ‘on probation’. A yet more perverse effect can be that programs choose to abandon innovation in order to conform to more standard models. There are exceptions, however. Figure 4.1 shows that in some countries studies are done to inform practice, while in others studies are done mostly to comply with accountability requirements. But we argue that these purposes do not need to be mutually exclusive. An example of a participatory-collaborative self-study of quality assessment is the 17-country TEDS-M study (Tatto et al., 2012). TEDS-M was an effort supported by national governments but was executed by a team of teacher educators in collaboration with universities, relevant institutions and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The study was designed through close collaboration between evaluation researchers and program implementers. The program implementers researched their own program in detail, including analyzing syllabi and the program’s opportunities
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Study to Inform / Support Practice (Research to primarily improve programs and demonstrate effectiveness) TEDS-M Countries Finland
Singapore (?) NonParticipatory 1
USA (TEAC)
US (NCATE) Norway Taiwan Most EU countries
Participatory 2
Some EU countries
England (inspectorates) US (NCTQ)
Study to Inform Accreditation (Studies of standard-fit primarily to comply with accountability mandates)
1
Methods and measurement decisions are predetermined and limit participation. Evaluation users and program implementers are marginally or not involved in the evaluation design, methods, scope and data collection or in the analysis and findings reports. Based on notions of organizational learning to develop more informed practitioners through use of findings that they themselves helped produce, and more thoughtful and deliberative practitioners by helping them weigh evidence and think and engage with each other within an evaluative framework.
2
Figure 4.1 Role of Evaluation Research in Teacher Education Programs: Current Tendencies
for learning, designing and implementing measures to assess the knowledge for teaching of their graduates, and a survey that included questions about prospective teachers’ beliefs and individual characteristics including the level of subject knowledge before entering the program. The idea was for the program theory of action to drive the evaluation, in a model that was collaborative, bottom-up and formative, and which incorporated the program implementers’ accumulated knowledge of and research on their own practice, working with multidisciplinary working groups to create the basis for longitudinal studies. While the TEDS-M study was
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not mandated by law, and was therefore not high stakes, it did create the capacity and the infrastructure for rigorous program self-study and program improvement. While studies to inform and improve practice and studies to inform accreditation are placed in two extremes in Figure 4.1, both have a place in improving teacher education quality. However, the fact that the picture is not more balanced means that programs may be engaging in quality assessment activities more to respond to external mandates for accountability than to increase their learning from practice. This may have the result of neglecting engagement in research that may lead to improvements to the program, thus resulting in the paradox that assessing quality as currently configured may lead to a decrease in program quality. We argue that one reason for this is that most efforts have focused on measuring outcomes, providing information for managers and accreditation agencies rather than practitioners, and the efforts have been for the most part characterized by non-participatory approaches and conducted by ‘experts’ under a model expected to provide ‘compliance-based’ answers to ensure accountability. This ‘enforcer’ dynamic is illustrated in Figure 4.1 in the lower left quadrant. If we were to agree that the purposes of teacher education program evaluation are to engage in studies to inform and support practice, then the recommendation would be an emphasis on studies that use the methods of the social sciences to improve programs and demonstrate effectiveness within contexts, and a participatory approach toward quality assessment. The imperative is to clarify the purposes, means and ends for teacher education quality assessments as geared to program improvement, to evaluate individualized outcomes, program implementation and process according to the program’s theories of action in a collaborative bottom-up inquiry model. These studies should be formative and longitudinal so as to accumulate knowledge of practice; they should be internally driven by practitioner research (collaborative across programs and contexts); and should be carried out in collaboration with multidisciplinary groups of evaluation researchers and program implementers and users.
FINAL THOUGHTS Evaluating teacher education programs is a delicate matter and needs systematic thought and expertise. This has made it difficult for teacher educators to engage in evaluating their own programs. It is possible to imagine, however, how this could begin to evolve. First, the faculty of teacher education programs could charge a specialized group with expertise on participatory research and evaluation to facilitate collaboration to carry out the task of conducting yearly internal evaluations that gather information on individualized program outcomes, process studies and implementation studies, all based on logic models and theories of action. The effort should be directed at developing a longitudinal database in close collaboration with and useable by program people.
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Second, to ensure the development of the habit or culture of self-evaluation (weighing and valuing evidence), program implementers could participate fully in learning from their own practice. Students should be exposed to methods for conducting research on their own knowledge and practice early and often in their teacher education. This is not a practice best reserved for induction, mentoring or professional development; it is a life-long skill. An example is teacher candidates learning how to develop assessments and how to effectively use them to evaluate and improve their own performance and that of their pupils. This is a practice firmly embedded in the Finnish curriculum. Third, in terms of creating effective teacher education programs to develop highly competent teachers, we found that in high-achieving countries like Finland and Singapore, the curriculum for teacher education programs appears quite lean. Both have three key elements: the performance of key practices, class planning according to a core curriculum, and assessment and reflection.
Notes 1 This chapter draws from previous work by Tatto, Krajcik and Pippin (2013), Variations in teacher preparation evaluation systems: International perspectives. NSF Project on Evaluation of Teacher Education Programs: Toward a framework for innovation (US National Academy of Education). 2 Decree No. 986/1998 on the qualification requirements for teaching personnel and the amendment to the aforementioned decree, Decree No. 865/2005. 3 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) is a standard for comparing the study attainment of students of higher education across the European Union. One credit generally corresponds to 25–30 hours of work while one academic year corresponds to 60 ECTS credits that are equivalent to 1,500–1,800 hours of study.
REFERENCES al Bandary, M.S. (2005). Meeting the challenges: The development of quality assurance in Oman’s colleges of education. Higher Education, 50, 181–195. Bell, C.A. & Youngs, P. (2011). Substance and show: Understanding responses to teacher education programme accreditation processes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(2), 298–307. Campos, B. (2004). The balance between higher education autonomy and public quality assurance: Development of the Portuguese system for teacher education accreditation. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 12(73), 1–33. Chalmers, D. (2008). Indicators of university teaching and learning quality. Australian Learning and Teaching Council. Paris: OECD. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/site/eduimhe08/41216416.pdf Chong, S. & Ho, P. (2009). Quality teaching and learning: A quality assurance framework for initial teacher preparation programs. International Journal of Management in Education, 3(3), 302–314. Council of Europe (2009). Learning and living democracy: Introducing quality assurance of education for democratic citizenship in schools – Comparative study of 10 countries. Paris: Author. Council for Higher Education in Israel (2012). The self-evaluation process: Recommendations and guidelines. Quality Assessment and Assurance Division. Retrieved from http://che.org.il/wp-content/ uploads/2012/04/Recommendations-and-Guidelines-July-2012.pdf
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Dilshad, M. & Iqbal, H.M. (2010). Quality indicators in teacher education programs. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 30(2), 401–411. Engeström, Y. (1987) Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. European Commission (2013). Glossary: International standard classification of education (ISCED), Eurostat. Retrieved from http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/ Glossary:ISCED. Eurydice (2006). Quality assurance in teacher education in Europe. Brussels. Retrieved from http://www. cen.eu/cen/Services/Education/Educationaboutstandards/Documents/1.QualityAssurance-en.pdf (accessed on 7 Apr 2013) Finnish Education Evaluation Center (FINEEC) (2016a). FINEEC. Retrieved from http://karvi.fi/en/ fineec/ Finnish Education Evaluation Center (FINEEC) (2016b). Audits of quality systems. Retrieved from http:// karvi.fi/en/higher-education/audits-quality-systems/ Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council (2013). Audit manual for the quality systems of higher education institutions: 2011–2017. Helsinki: Author. Furlong, J. (2013). Education: An anatomy of the discipline. Rescuing the university project. London: Routledge. Hou, A.Y.C. (2011). Quality assurance at a distance: International accreditation in Taiwan higher education. Higher Education, 61, 179–191. International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (2013). Full members. Retrieved from www.inqaahe.org/ Japan Institute for Higher Education Evaluation (2013). Evaluation system: Guidelines for implementation of certified evaluation and accreditation of universities and colleges. Retrieved from http://www. jihee.or.jp/en/evaluation/university.html Jussila, J. & Saari, S. (2000). Teacher education as a future-molding factor: International evaluation of teacher education in Finnish universities. Publications of Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council, 1–79. Kennedy, M.M. (2005). Inside teaching: How classroom life undermines reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kim, H.S. (2000). Towards achieving high quality pre-service teacher training in Korea. Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education and Development, 3(1), 55–77. Kis, V. (2005). Quality assurance in tertiary education: Current practices in OECD countries and a literature review on potential effects. Paris: OECD. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/skillsbeyond-school/38006910.pdf Levine, A. (2006). Educating school teachers. Washington, DC: The Education Schools Project. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2009). Quality assurance framework of higher education in Japan. Tokyo: Author. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/component/ english/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/06/20/1307397_1.pdf Ministry of Education, Singapore (2013). The desired outcomes of education. Retrieved from https:// www.moe.gov.sg/education/education-system/desired-outcomes-of-education National Institute for Education, Singapore (2009). TE21: A teacher education model for the 21st century. Retrieved from https://www.nie.edu.sg/docs/default-source/te21_docs/te21-online- version—updated.pdf?sfvrsn=2 Niemi, H. & Jakku-Sihvonen, R. (2009). Teacher education curriculum of secondary school teachers. Retrieved from http://www.revistaeducacion.educacion.es/re350/re350_08ing.pdf Niemi, H. & Lavonen, J. (2011). Evaluation for improvements in Finnish education. Retrieved from http://www.tepe2012.uni.lodz.pl/uploads/ThemenIV/Niemi,%20Hannele%20%26%20Jari,%20 Lavonen.pdf
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NOKUT (2011). Regulations concerning NOKUT’s supervision and control of the quality of Norwegian higher education. Retrieved from http://www.nokut.no/Documents/NOKUT/Artikkelbibliotek/Norsk_ utdanning/Forskrifter_Kriterier_mm/Regulations_concerning_NOKUTs_supervision_and_control_ of_the_quality_of_Norwegian_higher_education.pdf. Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance (2010). Quality assurance framework. Toronto: Author. Retrieved from http://oucqa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Quality-Assurance-Framework-andGuide-Updated-May-2016-Compressed.pdf Patton, M.Q. (2002). Utilization-Focused Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rennert-Ariev, P. (2008). The hidden curriculum of performance-based teacher education. Teachers College Record, 110(1), 105–138. Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press. Seng, T.O. (2009). Higher education quality assurance practices in Singapore. Retrieved from http://www. rihed.seameo.org/wp-content/uploads/other_reports/Proceedings_QA_SEA-HE_Sep2010.pdf Steiner, L. (2010). Using competency-based evaluation to drive teacher excellence: Lessons from Singapore, 1–24. Part of the series Building an opportunity culture for America’s teachers. Chapel Hill, NC: Public Impact. Tatto, M.T. (2001). The value and feasibility of evaluation research on teacher preparation: Contrasting the experiences in Sri Lanka and Mexico. International Journal of Education and Development, 22(6), 637–657. Tatto, M.T. (2007). Reforming teaching globally. Oxford, UK: Symposium Books. (Reprinted in 2009 by Information Age Publishers.) Tatto, M.T. (2011). Reimagining the education of teachers: The role of comparative and international research. Comparative Education Review, 55(4), 495–516. Tatto, M.T. (2015). The role of research in the policy and practice of quality teacher education: An international review. In Tatto, M.T. & Furlong, J. (Eds), Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 171–201. Tatto, M.T., Krajcik, J. & Pippin, J. (2013). Variations in teacher preparation evaluation systems: International perspectives. NSF Project on Evaluation of Teacher Education Programs: Toward a framework for innovation. Washington, DC: National Academy of Education. Tatto, M.T., Schwille, J., Senk, S.L., Ingvarson, L., Rowley, G., Peck, R., Bankov, K., Rodriguez, M. & Reckase, M. (2012). Policy, practice, and readiness to teach primary and secondary mathematics in 17 Countries. Findings from the IEA Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Student Achievement. Tatto, M.T., Savage, C., Liao, W., Marshall, S., Goldblatt, P., & Contreras, M. L. (2016). The emergence of high-stakes accountability policies in teacher preparation: An examination of the US Department of Education’s proposed regulations. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(25). DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.14507/epaa.24.2322 Tripartite Liaison Committee of Hong Kong (2009). Good practices in quality assurance: A handbook for the sub-degree sector. Hong Kong: Author. Retrieved from http://www.jqrc.edu.hk/resources/ Good_Practice_handbook.pdf University of Helsinki, Finland, Department of Teacher Education. Retrieved from http://www.helsinki.fi/ teachereducation/about/structure.html (accessed on 7 Aug 2013). World Bank. (2007). Teacher education quality assurance: Accreditation of teacher education institutions and programs. Policy Draft. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank. org/INTSOUTHASIA/Resources/PolicyBrief2.pdf Yonezawa, A. (2002). The quality assurance system and market forces in Japanese higher education. Higher Education, 43(1), 127–139.
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5 Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View Rose Dolan
INTRODUCTION According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2005), there will be a significant increase in the number of new teachers entering the profession between 2010 and 2015 in comparison to the numbers that entered the profession between 1985 and 2005. A report on teacher education programmes in Ireland (Department of Education and Skills, 2012), linking the prioritisation of national policy on teacher education with the emergence of high-performing education systems, also indicated that such systems have a number of common features. Teachers are educated in academic universities that combine both theory and practice, teacher education is research-based and, because the career is an attractive one, admission to teacher education is highly competitive. In many countries, policy relating to the education of teachers has tended to focus on primary and secondary teacher education, i.e. the period of compulsory education, with little attention to the education of staff for early childhood, adult or higher education systems. Teacher education has evolved in response to changing educational landscapes. But has it evolved as one system with unifying principles and concepts at the heart of it, or as a group of systems that have grown in a more ad hoc manner? This chapter considers that question by using a systems theory framework to examine teacher education in three countries, Ireland, Finland and Singapore. All three countries have similar population sizes, have previously been ruled by another country and gained independence within the last hundred years. They all participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and were all significantly above the OECD average in all three domains in PISA 2012.
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Ireland, in common with countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Teacher education in Finland represents a Northern model of education while Singapore represents the East-Asian model (Bulle, 2011). Drawing primarily on the work of Banathy (1992), supported by Banathy and Jenlink (2003) and Bronfenbenner (1977), the chapter examines teacher education structures and processes for staff of early childhood education (ECE), primary, secondary, university and further education in these three countries. It considers the admission criteria, the location of the teacher education programmes, the staffing of such programmes, and the role of the state and other bodies in the certification and registration of staff in educational institutions. The results of the research are then viewed using Banathy’s three lenses, namely the systems/environment lens, the functions/structure lens, and the process lens. Each lens allows teacher education for different stages of education to be considered in order to establish common concepts and areas of divergence. This permitted a more synthesised version of teacher education structures, functions and processes within and between the countries to be examined. The general principles and concepts arising from this analysis and synthesis are presented throughout, in the form of a general application to teacher education, using country-specific examples for illustrative purposes. The chapter begins with an overview of the three countries selected. This is followed by a synopsis of Banathy’s (1992) systems theory. The chapter then looks at teacher education through Banathy’s three lenses, concluding with a discussion of what a systems view tells us about teacher education systems.
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND The Republic of Ireland is a small island situated off Western Europe with a population of 4.64 million (Central Statistics Office, 2015). For ease of reading, it will be referred to as Ireland for the remainder of the chapter. The school system in Ireland is made up of 3,137 mainstream primary schools (age 4–12) and 732 second-level schools (ages 12–18) (Department of Education and Skills, 2015). School attendance is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16 but, in reality, 95% of four-year-olds are enrolled in school, in either primary or preprimary education (OECD, 2015). Ireland has participated in PISA since 2000. The most recent PISA results show that Ireland ranks above the OECD average performance in each of the three domains, with a rank of 7/65 in reading, 20/65 in mathematics and 15/65 in science (Perkins et al., 2013). Public expenditure on education amounts to 5.6% of GDP (OECD, 2015) and appears to be mainly in the area of teacher salary. After 15 years of experience, teachers in both primary and secondary sectors can expect to have one of the highest salaries among OECD and partner countries,
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although they also have a higher net average of teaching hours than their OECD counterparts (OECD, 2015).
FINLAND Finland, located in the northern part of Europe, has a population of 5.49 million (Official Statistics of Finland, 2016). Compulsory education begins at age 7 and continues to age 16, with 75% of four-year-olds enrolled in pre-primary schools (OECD, 2015). In contrast to the Irish system, which has a transition from primary to secondary school at age 12, Finland has a single structure education, i.e. primary and lower secondary combined, for the duration of compulsory education (Eurydice Network, 2012). Finland has 3,010 schools, of which 2,482 are comprehensive schools (from 7 to 16 years old), 350 are upper secondary and 137 are vocational schools. There are 41 schools that comprise both comprehensive and upper secondary education (Official Statistics of Finland, 2015). PISA results from 2012 also show that Finland ranks above the OECD average performance in each of the three domains. It ranks 6/65 in reading, 12/65 in mathematics and 5/65 in science (OECD, 2014). It spends 6.5% of GDP on education (OECD, 2015). While the starting salaries of teachers are higher than the OECD average, salaries at the top of the pay scale are below the OECD average (OECD, 2015).
REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE The Republic of Singapore is located in Southeast Asia. It has a population of 3.9 million citizens and permanent residents, although this number increases to 5.54 million when those who work and study in Singapore are taken into account (Department of Statistics Singapore, 2015). Singapore has 355 schools, comprising 185 at primary level (for ages 6–12) and 154 providing secondary education (ages 12–16/17). A further 16 schools are known as mixed level schools, offering either primary and secondary education or secondary and junior college education, covering the age range from 12 to 19 (Ministry of Education Singapore, 2015). Compulsory education in Singapore begins at age 6 and continues to age 15 and, similar to Ireland, has a transition from primary to secondary school at age 12. In common with both Finland and Ireland, Singapore ranks significantly above the OECD average in all three domains. In 2012, it ranked 3/65 in reading, 2/65 in mathematics and 3/65 in science (OECD, 2014). The country spends 6.1% of GDP on education (OECD, 2015). The Ministry of Education monitors occupational starting salaries to ensure that teaching is considered an attractive option, and there are both retention bonuses and performance bonuses available (OECD, 2011).
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OVERVIEW OF TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMMES IN IRELAND, FINLAND AND SINGAPORE Multiple case study design (Stake, 2006) with literal replication was used to allow the similarities and differences in teacher education within each of the countries to be considered. A number of documents and reports were consulted in order to study the teacher education programmes in the three countries, inter alia (e.g. Conway et al., 2009; Department of Education and Skills, 2012; Eurydice, 2016; Hyland, 2012; Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016; Ministry of Education Singapore, 2016; OECD, 2011; Teaching Council, 2011). Teacher education for ECE, primary, secondary, university and further education for each of the three countries was considered under the headings in Table 5.1. The general patterns emerging from the country specific case studies were then summarised in the table to allow the reader to become more familiar with the similarities and differences at country level. As with any such study, there were some anomalies within the systems and these anomalies are considered later in the chapter.
SYSTEMS THEORY – CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES The overall conceptual frame within which the study was conducted is that of systems theory, drawing on the work of Banathy (1992), Banathy and Jenlink (2003) and Bronfenbenner (1977). Banathy’s (1992) application of systems theory to education systems provided three systems models or lenses through which a system, or an aspect of it, might be analysed and conceptualised: the systems/environment lens, the functions/structure lens, and the process lens. The systems/environment lens considers the relationships between the system and its immediate and wider environment, providing situational context for the system. The functions/structure lens captures a snapshot of the system at a particular moment in time while the process lens considers the behaviour of the system through time, looking at the manner in which the system evolved and the influences on its evolution. While each lens could be considered in isolation, a comprehensive view of the system is captured when they are viewed as superimposed images (1992, p. 15). In the following sections the systems of teacher education in Ireland, Finland and Singapore are considered through each of the three lenses.
The Systems/Environment Lens As mentioned earlier, the relationships between the system and its immediate and wider environment are the focus of the systems/environment lens. These relationships are viewed in terms of the expectations that the environment has in
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State department responsible for sector
Professional recognition body
How is it funded?
Level of award
Admission process
Higher education institutions (public and private)
Where does teacher preparation take place? Applicants
Higher education institutions (public)
Finland
Singapore
National Institute of Education in Nanyang Technological University (Public) Top 15% of academic achievers Only 20% of those who participated Top 30% of degree graduates for (school leavers) apply for Primary in entrance examination to teacher the Postgraduate Diploma. Those teaching – no comparable figure education programmes were admitted entering the undergraduate available for other sectors degree are selected from high performing A-level students Academic results – occasionally Academic results. Entrance examination Academic results. Interview and proficiency test interviews including interviews, a written examination and participation in a clinical activity Bachelor’s Degree / Postgraduate Bachelor’s Degree / Postgraduate Bachelor’s Degree / Postgraduate Diploma / Master’s Degree Licentiate Degree / Master’s Degree Diploma / Master’s Degree No undergraduate fees, postgraduate No fees. Student financial aid consisting No fees. Students are regarded as employees of the Ministry of fees paid by individual of a study grant, a housing Education and are paid a salary supplement and a governmentwhile they qualify guaranteed student loan Teaching Council (for primary, Higher Education Evaluation Council Ministry of Education secondary and further education and Ministry of Education teachers) Department of Education and Skills Ministry of Education Ministry of Education (in conjunction with Department of Children and Youth Affairs in ECE)
Ireland
Country
Table 5.1 Overview of teacher preparation programme provision in Ireland, Finland and Singapore
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relation to the system. For teacher education programmes, the expectation of the state and its citizens is the development and certification of teachers who are capable of teaching learners at particular stages of the education system, i.e. preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. This expectation is held by many groupings and organisations within a country. It is an expectation of the state, which funds and oversees the systems of the state, including the public education system, and of the citizens, whose taxes support the public education system and pay the salaries of the teachers. It is an expectation of the professional recognition body which has statutory responsibility for the profession of teaching, and of the learners, whose development is the fundamental purpose of the education system. It is also an expectation of other interested groupings, such as industry and business, those groupings that employ the graduates of the education system and who are interested in ensuring that those graduates have been taught the necessary capabilities to contribute to the economy. Groupings concerned with civic and/or social responsibility also expect graduates of teacher education programmes to teach learners to contribute to society in a meaningful manner. Mechanisms to ensure that these expectations are met are devised and implemented by particular bodies within the state, e.g. State Departments and Ministries of Education and of Finance, through reviews, evaluations and budget oversight, and statutory professional standards bodies, e.g. a Teaching Council, through professional accreditation of teacher education programmes. In the three case study countries, teacher education programmes for the primary and secondary school sectors are located within the country’s Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). All are funded from public taxation, with the exception of one private HEI provider in Ireland. Control of the design and administration of the programmes for teacher education lies primarily with Education Faculties within the HEIs and in most cases, decisions in relation to staffing, specific programme content, criteria for graduation and numbers on programmes are at the discretion of the HEI. These programmes must be professionally recognised by the Ministry of Education in each country, with responsibility for this recognition devolved to a statutory professional standards body (Teaching Council) in Ireland (Government of Ireland, 2001). Although the schools within the education system are part of the wider environment under consideration in this lens, the control of teacher education appears to reside beyond schools, primarily dwelling with the HEIs, the state and the professional standards body. Publicly funded education is not the only education system within a state. Private education may also operate within a country but has different accountability pathways. The employment of staff to work in private education institutions may not be subject to the same national requirements for qualification and registration with a professional standards body. Indeed, publicly funded education institutions with functions additional to teaching, e.g. research in universities,
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may also operate without the need for specific teacher education programmes for their sector of the system. This requirement for accreditation certainly affects the control of the providers in relation to the programmes as the regulatory body publishes specific outcomes that must be met by teacher education programmes in order to meet the professional accreditation requirements. It also raises questions in relation to the location of teacher education programmes within HEIs, particularly because academic freedom is enshrined in legislation in Ireland and Finland (Government of Finland, 2009; Government of Ireland, 1997). The emerging theme of control and freedom, in relation to the state and the programme provider, will be considered later in the chapter.
The Functions/Structure Lens An overarching theme in systems biology is that form follows function. This means that the structure of a living thing is determined by its purpose. In this section, the teacher education system is viewed through the functions/structure lens to determine if and where there is a corollary between the two. The view of the system is as a snapshot in time, capturing a static image and considering it in relation to the system’s functions and structures and to their relational arrangements. It looks at these through an overarching view of the function of the system, as defined by the state and by other stakeholders within the system. The societal expectation of teacher education programmes, i.e. learning to teach, is not as simple as it may first appear. The degree of freedom that a teacher education programme in a HEI has to define its purpose is mediated by external factors. Historically, teacher education programmes were seen as the qualification stage of becoming a teacher and it was felt that little further input or up-skilling was required upon completion of the programme. The development of the concept of a continuum of teacher education challenged this idea. Teacher education as a stage on the continuum was supported within the teacher education community and the unique tasks of teacher education could now be described. While teacher educators in HEIs may well have viewed the purpose of teacher education as the first step along the continuum, this view may differ when other stakeholders are consulted. The idea of being ‘classroom-ready’ upon graduation still persists with some teachers, although the presence of induction programmes goes some way towards ameliorating that view. If teacher education can reasonably be viewed as the foundation stage of learning to be a teacher, then the functions of that system and the structures that support them can be considered from that perspective. Feiman-Nemser (2001) describes those functions as building on ‘current thinking about what teachers need to know, care about, and be able to do in order to promote substantial learning for all students’ (2001, p. 1016) and included a
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capacity to critically examine beliefs in relation to a vision of good teaching as well as developing in the following areas: 1 2 3 4
subject matter knowledge for teaching; an understanding of learners, learning, and issues of diversity; a beginning repertoire; tools and dispositions to study teaching. (Feiman-Nemser, 2001, p. 1050)
The professional standards body in Ireland indicates these functions as: 1 2 3 4
the development of knowledge of practice, for practice and in practice; being mindful of and challenging attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning; preparation for core areas of teaching and learning; preparation for entry to their professional role. (Teaching Council, 2011)
In addition to these teaching and development functions, the teacher education programme also has a role in monitoring and assessing these areas of student teacher development and, as HEIs, accrediting the student teachers’ learning upon completion of the programme. The structures used to attend to these functions include the design of the teacher education programme, the feedback and assessment systems that consider the development of the student teacher, the provision of experienced teachers to teach them, and access to placement situations to assist in the development of these areas in the professional situation. In the main, these structures support the achievement of the functions described earlier. Additional state-provided or mandated structures such as funding for the HEI, national reviews and institutional reviews, in addition to the accreditation by the professional standards body, also support the realisation of these functions and provide models of transparency and accountability within the system. Banathy (1992) speaks about the importance of synergy and wholeness in relation to structure and function. The snapshot of teacher education above does not take into account other structures, historical in nature, that influence the education of teachers. If a snapshot of teacher education in Ireland were taken in the years prior to the establishment of the professional standards body, a different picture would emerge. In order to understand this picture, a brief historical interlude is required. The Evolution of the Education System in Ireland
On 6 December 1922, the British Government granted the status of independence to Ireland and the Irish Free State, comprising 26 of the 32 counties on the island of Ireland, came into being. Prior to this, the governance of the country had been within the framework of the United Kingdom and, as a result, the structure of the education system had, like other post-colonial countries, been very
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strongly affected by the culture and politics of the colonial power (Coolahan, 1981). ‘Ireland was frequently used as a social laboratory where various policy initiatives’ that would have been less acceptable to England’s laissez-faire political philosophy were tried out (Coolahan, 1981, p. 3). These initiatives included the setting up of state-supported non-denominational structures, namely a primary education system with model schools and a training college for teacher training, and a farm training institute complete with model agricultural schools. However, the influence of the various churches in Ireland meant that, from the middle of the 19th century, this non-denominational aspiration gave way to a system that was increasingly denominational. This denominational system was also mirrored in the provision of teacher education for primary teachers. The preparatory colleges, later the Colleges of Education, were set up to meet the denominational and gendered needs of the system (Walsh, 2012). A consideration of the routes into teaching at the second level in Ireland show a distinction between the academic and the vocational systems of education within the country. The requirements to be a teacher within each system depended on the subject(s) taught and the ownership/patronage of the school. The Catholic Church influenced the requirement for a teaching qualification for secondary teaching in Ireland. The voluntary secondary schools were privately owned by religious orders, whereas the technical or vocational schools, established by the vocational education sector, were owned by the state. The requirements to teach in secondary schools differed from the requirements to teach in vocational/technical schools. Practical subjects such as woodwork, metalwork, etc. were the preserve of vocational education and teachers of those subjects did not need a degree in the subject in order to teach it. Practitioner experience sufficed. Teachers in secondary schools had university degrees and, having completed a postgraduate diploma in a university, registered with the Teacher Registration Council. The exceptions to this were members of religious orders who taught in schools that were under the auspices of that order and who did not need to be registered as a result. The ‘cult of the amateur held full sway for secondary teaching’ (Coolahan, 2004, p. 35) and, until the establishment of the Teaching Council in 2006, these requirements theoretically remained. In reality, the majority of teachers in voluntary or vocational schools had graduated from teacher education programmes, irrespective of the bi-partite system in existence. Although the situation has now been regularised in relation to registration requirements, the historical situation shows a lack of integration in terms of function and structure. The system of teacher education was subservient to a different ideology, in this case a religious system, and as this system essentially owned sections of the school system, control of teacher qualification requirements was outside the remit of the state. This historical interlude serves to highlight not only issues in relation to structure and function but also issues from the first lens of environment and system. The historical influence of religious ideology on the state and on the education system can still be seen in anomalies within the system
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of teacher education and employment and is mirrored today in the private provision of education. That is not to say that there is no place for particular philosophies or ideologies within an education system, but it is important that they are clearly identified and that their structures and functions within teacher education and within the overall education system are explicit. This raises a second theme, namely control and freedom between state and school in relation to employment in private and public institutions of education.
The Process Lens If Banathy’s second lens provided us with a snapshot of the system, his third lens could best be represented as a series of moving images (Banathy, 1992). The process lens looks at the route through a teacher education system, from entry into the programme to completion and graduation. The process of entry to teacher education programmes begins with system decisions. Some decisions are made by the programme providers, influenced by the availability of resources, e.g. the number of staff available to teach on the programme and the number of places needed for programme viability, both pedagogically and financially. Others are made by the providers in consultation with the state and the professional standards body, e.g. teacher supply models, the number of graduates needed to meet the wider system needs. Deciding the entry criteria may be the domain of the HEI or may be directed by the state. In Finland, the individual HEIs decide the minimum criteria for entry to teacher education programmes. As applicants who meet the criteria are offered places, they then register with the HEI and become students of that institution. In Singapore, applicants are accepted by the Ministry of Education and become employees of that institution. There may be a public feedback system mechanism at this time to indicate the cut-off point for acceptance on to a programme, particularly if there are many more applicants than places. This provides system transparency, particularly important in relation to public accountability. Teacher education programmes in the three systems are funded in different ways. In Finland and Ireland, the student teacher is registered with the HEI until graduation, whereas in Singapore, the student teacher is an employee of the Ministry of Education from the moment s/he is accepted on to the programme. In Finland, student teachers pay no fees and are eligible for a study grant, a housing supplement and a government-guaranteed student loan, whereas student teachers in Ireland pay fees for postgraduate teacher education programmes but not for undergraduate teacher education programmes. In these three different scenarios, it is easy to see issues in relation to identity and control. A student teacher could feel as if s/he is owned by the state, has an obligation to the state or is supporting the state as s/he prepares for entry to the profession. Within the teacher education programme, student teachers engage with the internal programme process. This process, constructed by teacher educators
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within the education faculty, brings the student teachers through a transformative process designed to bring about the desired outcomes, as mentioned earlier in the chapter. Facilitation of the process is the responsibility of the teacher educators and is brought about in a number of different ways. In some instances, lectures are used to transmit knowledge. In other instances, group seminars are employed. In all cases, the education programme involves some period of placement in, or exposure to, the school or education setting associated with the education programme. This transformation from learner to student teacher is motivated by a number of things, some intrinsic and others extrinsic. Brookfield (1995) describes a reason for teaching as a desire to change the world. In some instances this is a motivating factor for those who choose to enter a teacher education programme, while in other cases job status and security may be the motivating factors. Whatever the motivation, change or transformation does not take place unless the student teacher wishes it. Managing the programme so as to ensure that outcomes are met is the responsibility of the programme providers and they are assisted in determining this through feedback from staff and student teachers, through assessment results and from the internal and external review systems of the HEI, the state and the professional standards body. If the outcomes have been achieved, the student teachers graduate from the HEI and join the professional body of teachers. In order to do this, they have to be acknowledged by a professional standards body. This system is then informed that the graduate has achieved the outcomes, either by the graduate through HEI transcripts or directly by the HEI with the permission of the graduate. The programme providers may also communicate such information to other parts of the system, usually to prospective employers through the provision of written and oral references. In this manner, some formal feedback is given to the school management about the programme, the graduates and the outcomes. The employment of graduates from particular programmes allows school management to conduct its own assessment in relation to whether outcomes have been achieved. This provides informal, anecdotal information in the system that may or may not be formally fed back to the programme providers. When there is only one institution responsible for teacher education within a country, e.g. Singapore, this brings both benefits and drawbacks. The benefits include a clear line of feedback and communication, and the ability to adjust standards relatively quickly if the need arises. The drawback is the potential of any closed system to have an insular feedback loop.
DISCUSSION: WHAT DOES THE SYSTEMS VIEW TELL US? A synthesis of the three lenses highlights some interesting concepts in teacher education, including a change in the definition of the role of education
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programmes, the location of such programmes within HEIs, the locus of control of education programmes, and the effects of such programmes on participants. Banathy and Jenlink’s (2003) four domains of systems enquiry in educational systems – philosophy, theory, methodology or practice, and application – provided a final layer for looking at the results of the research. The philosophical domain considers the body of thought that underpins practice within a particular system, while the theoretical domain refers to the set of principles on which the practice of that system is based. The structural components and functioning contexts of the practice comprise the methodology domain and the application domain focuses on the governance, education and licensing of the practitioner. As these systems are part of a larger system, the interactions and relationships of the systems, the behaviours within the system as a whole in relation to the properties of parts of the system, and the interplay between the micro-, exo- and macro- systems (Bronfenbenner, 1977) are also used to develop a number of principles that may inform the analysis of the system of teacher education within a country. These are discussed further below.
The Continuum of Teacher Education The state and its citizens expect the system of teacher education to prepare people to work in various subsectors of the education system. Changes in understanding the role of teacher education programmes, as part of a continuum with induction and continuing professional development, means they are no longer expected to equip graduates for a lifetime of teaching. This should free up teacher education programmes to concentrate on the foundation stage of teacher education, rather than preparing graduates for a lifetime of teaching. This is dependent on the efficient working of the induction system and the system for continuous professional development. If those systems are not functioning as they should, the education stage is affected and, although this may not be reflected in the stated expectations of the state and its citizens, education programmes revert to trying to prepare for the entire career rather than for the initial foundation stage.
The Significance of Academic Freedom The location of teacher education programmes within HEIs confers a status to such programmes but at times, the principles underpinning HEIs, most notably that of academic freedom, may be at odds with the impact of external regulatory bodies such as a Ministry of Education or Teaching Council. Locating teacher education programmes on Higher Education campuses has a wider significance, particularly in relation to their role in critical engagement and knowledge development. Separating programmes from HEIs would indicate that a teacher’s role is as knowledge consumer and transmitter rather than producer and
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consumer of knowledge. In addition, academic freedom provided by HEIs can protect teacher education programmes from the pervasive influence of a particular ideology, whether that is religious, as demonstrated in the Irish system, or political, as seen in Soviet countries in the past and in the English education system, most particularly since 1992 (Reid, 2000). This is particularly important as it allows education to be viewed as a practice in its own right rather than subservient to other societal systems (Hogan, 2011).
Transformation Students who participate in teacher education programmes are expected to think critically and to examine their attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning (Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Teaching Council, 2011). Hunting assumptions about teaching and learning (Brookfield, 1995) assist the student teacher in doing just such a thing. But many of these are paradigmatic assumptions that are deeply held and may be resistant to change or challenge. The concept of transforming the attitudes and beliefs of student teachers is in itself a problematic one as it assumes that student teachers are uniform, unproblematic and desire to be transformed. It also assumes that they need to be transformed in order to work as teachers within the state’s education system. But they are products of this longestablished robust system. For which version of the system is the student teacher being prepared? Is it the current system or is it a more idealised version of that system? If the education is for an idealised version of an education system, then student teachers may find a significant disconnect between the HEI dimension of the programme and the reality of the school. If, however, the education is for the current system, it assumes that all educational institutions within the system are the same, hold the same values and operate in the same manner. That is not the case. This scenario may leave graduates feeling unprepared and unequipped to teach in certain kinds of schools, depending on their experiences on the education programme, and, in such cases, can negatively impact their beliefs about the value of teacher education programmes. If the teacher education system is used as a vehicle to bring about change within the robust school system through the education of student teachers for a more idealised system of education, it can only be effective if other parts of the system wish to develop, e.g. school management and leadership, experienced teachers. Otherwise the student teacher is caught in a contested space and expected to navigate this very uneven terrain while learning to teach. As Eisner says, ‘it is difficult to be pedagogically graceful when you are lost in unfamiliar territory’ (1992, p. 611).
Who is the System Built for? The modes of entry to teacher education programmes, the sites where they are located, and the financial requirements for participation in the programme are
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influencers in terms of who applies to such programmes and therefore to the diversity, or lack thereof, within the profession. In Ireland, entry to teacher education programmes is determined in the main by academic qualifications, either acquired at the end of secondary education in the case of undergraduate teacher education programmes, or Bachelor’s degree results, in the case of postgraduate programmes. These criteria privilege academic knowledge over other capabilities, including those of an interpersonal nature. In all three cases, academic criteria are used to deal with the large numbers of applicants for teacher education programmes in as objective a manner as possible. There are also pathways for mature students and for applicants from non-traditional backgrounds, but these groupings continue to be underrepresented in the teaching profession. Ireland has recently extended the duration of the education programmes for primary and secondary teaching and, while this moves the profession towards a Master’s degree entry profile, it also significantly increases the cost of qualification, with a resultant implication for decreasing diversity within the teaching profession. Postgraduate teacher education programmes incur total fees of €10,800–€12,000 while undergraduate programmes incur much smaller costs as undergraduate degree fees are paid by the state. This could result in undergraduate teacher education programmes becoming the route of choice for prospective teachers and may impact on the provision of postgraduate programmes. The financial burden will affect those who decide to enter teaching as a second career, through loss of earnings while studying set against other financial commitments, such as mortgages and families, which they have at that stage of their lives. Both Singapore and Finland have financial systems in place that make teaching available to a wide variety of potential candidates. Changes to teacher education systems may improve the overall readiness of graduates but, without careful planning for the consequences of such changes, there may be unanticipated and detrimental side effects, thus potentially further reducing diversity in an already relatively homogenous workforce (Dolan, 2016).
What’s in a Name? In the case studies, the subsystems of primary, secondary and further education teacher education programmes shared the professional title or identity of teacher. In contrast, the ECE and higher education sectors tended to use the titles ‘staff’ and ‘lecturers’ respectively. One explanation for this may lie in the ecological notion of colonisation. Historically, primary teacher education programmes tended to be the first to be established within an education system, followed by secondary teacher education programmes. It is therefore possible that in a number of years, ECE and HE will move towards adopting the title of teacher or educator. There are already signs that this is underway within the field of higher education, where lecturers are also referred to as university teachers.
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CONCLUSION Systems designers envision the entity to be designed as a whole, as one that is designed from the synthesis of the interaction of its parts. Systems design requires both coordination and integration. We need to design all parts of the system interactively and simultaneously. This requires coordination, and designing for interdependency across all systems levels invites integration. (Banathy & Jenlink, 2003, p. 47)
Analysis of the systems of teacher education within Ireland, Singapore and Finland shows a variation along a spectrum of systems design. Regular engagement in systems analysis allows us to identify the areas where there is a lack of coherence and to work to address this, e.g. in contrast to Finland, lecturing staff in Irish and Singaporean HEIs do not need to have a pedagogical qualification. But the system of teacher education is not a standalone one. It is intrinsically linked with the system of education within the state, with the historical influences and varied philosophical underpinnings of that system and with those individuals who were taught in that system and now return to work within it. Rather than designing all parts of the system simultaneously, we need to be able to view all parts simultaneously in order to have a system that is coherent, fit for purpose and built on coherent principles. Defining the concept of ‘teacher’ to encompass all stages of education might be a place to begin.
REFERENCES Banathy, B.H., 1992. A Systems View of Education: Concepts and Principles for Effective Practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Banathy, B.H. & Jenlink, P.M., 2003. Systems inquiry and its application in education. In D.H. Jonassen, ed., Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 2nd edn. New York: Macmillan. pp. 33–57. Bronfenbenner, U., 1977. Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32(7), pp. 513–31. Brookfield, S., 1995. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, 1st edn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bulle, N., 2011. Comparing OECD educational models through the prism of PISA. Comparative Education, 47(4), pp. 503–21. Central Statistics Office, 2015. Central Statistics Office. [Online] Available at: http://www.cso.ie/en/ releasesandpublications/er/pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2015/ [Accessed 10 November 2015]. Conway, P.F., Murphy, R., Rath, A. & Hall, K., 2009. Learning to Teach and its Implications for the Continuum of Teacher Education: A Nine Country Cross-national Study. Maynooth: Teaching Council. Coolahan, J., 1981. Irish Education History and Structure. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. Coolahan, J., 2004. The historical development of teacher education in the Republic of Ireland. In A. Burke, ed., Teacher Education in the Republic of Ireland: Retrospect and Prospect. Armagh: Centre for Cross-Border Studies.. Department of Education and Skills, 2012. Report of the International Review Panel on the Structure of Initial Teacher Education Provision in Ireland: Review conducted on behalf of the Department of
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Education and Skills. [Online] Available at: https://www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/ Press-Releases/2012-Press-Releases/Report-of-the-International-Review-Panel-on-the-Structure-ofInitial-Teacher-Education-Provision-in-Ireland.pdf [Accessed 9 March 2015]. Department of Education and Skills, 2015. Key statistics. [Online] Available at: http://www.education.ie/ en/Publications/Statistics/Key-Statistics/Key-Statistics-2014-2015.pdf [Accessed 10 May 2016]. Department of Statistics Singapore, 2015. Population in Brief. [Online] Available at: http://www.singstat.gov.sg/statistics/browse-by-theme/population-and-population-structure [Accessed 16 June 2016]. Dolan, R., 2016. Initiation and implementation: changes to teacher education in Ireland. In J.M. Spector, D. Ifenthaler & D.G. Sampson, eds, Competencies, Challenges, and Changes in Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership in the Digital Age. New York: Springer. Eisner, E., 1992. Educational reform and the ecology of schooling. Teachers College Record, 93(4), pp. 610–27. Eurydice, 2016. Finland. [Online] Available at: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index. php/Finland:Redirect [Accessed 18 June 2016]. Eurydice Network, 2012. Key Data on Education in Europe 2012. Brussels: Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency Eurydice network. Feiman-Nemser, S., 2001. From preparation to practice: designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching. Teachers College Record, 103(6), pp. 1013–55. Government of Finland, 2009. Universities Act. [Online] Available at: http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2009/en20090558.pdf [Accessed 17 June 2016]. Government of Ireland, 1997. Universities Act. [Online] Available at: http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ eli/1997/act/24/enacted/en/html Government of Ireland, 2001. Teaching Council Act. [Online] Available at: http://www.irishstatutebook. ie/eli/2001/act/8/enacted/en/html Hogan, P., 2011. The ethical orientations of education as a practice in its own right. Ethics and Education, 6(1), pp. 27–40. Hyland, A., 2012. A review of the structure of initial teacher education provision in Ireland. Background paper for the International Review Team. Higher Education Authority. Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016. Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. [Online] Available at: http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Koulutus/koulutuspolitiikka/lait_ja_ohjeet/?lang=en [Accessed 17 June 2016]. Ministry of Education Singapore, 2015. Education Statistics Digest 2015. [Online] Available at: https:// www.moe.gov.sg/about/publications/education-statistics [Accessed 16 June 2016]. Ministry of Education Singapore, 2016. Careers Teach. [Online] Available at: https://www.moe.gov.sg/ careers/teach [Accessed 18 June 2016]. OECD, 2005. Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers. Paris: OECD. OECD, 2011. Lessons from PISA for the United States, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education. [Online] Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264096660-en [Accessed 16 June 2016]. OECD, 2014. PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do – Student Performance in Mathematics, Reading and Science (Volume I, Revised edition, February 2014). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. [Online] Available at: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-volume-I.pdf [Accessed 16 June 2016]. OECD, 2015. Education at a Glance 2015. Paris: OECD Publishing. Official Statistics of Finland, 2015. Providers of education and educational institutions. [Online] Available at: http://www.stat.fi/til/kjarj/2015/kjarj_2015_2016-02-11_tie_001_en.html [Accessed 16 June 2016]. Official Statistics of Finland, 2016. Population structure. [Online] Available at: http://www.stat.fi/til/ vaerak/index_en.html [Accessed 16 June 2016]. Perkins, R. et al., 2013. Learning for Life: The Achievements of 15-Year-Olds in Ireland on Mathematics, Reading Literacy and Science in PISA 2012. Dublin: Educational Research Centre.
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Reid, I., 2000. Accountability, control and freedom in teacher education in England: towards a panoptican. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 10(3), pp. 213–26. Stake, R., 2006. Multiple Case Study Analysis. New York: Guilford Press. Teaching Council, 2011. Policy on the Continuum of Teacher Education. Maynooth: Teaching Council. Walsh, T., 2012. Primary Education in Ireland, 1897–1990: Curriculum and Context. Bern: Peter Lang.
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6 The Continuum of Pre-service and In-service Teacher Education C l i v e B e c k a n d C l a re K o s n i k
INTRODUCTION The terrain of teacher education is potentially very extensive. The term ‘teacher education’ on its own usually refers just to teacher preparation, occurring prior to becoming a regular teacher; other names (in English) for this include preservice teacher education and initial teacher education (ITE). However, our concern in this chapter is with teacher education in a broader sense, embracing both pre-service and in-service professional learning, and connections between the two. In-service teacher education again has several other names: for example, in-service professional development, ongoing teacher learning, continuing professional development (CPD), or simply professional development (PD). In the view of many theorists, while pre-service teacher education is very important, it cannot impart all the knowledge and skills teachers need. Not only is there a limit to what can be learned prior to becoming a full-time teacher with a classroom of one’s own, but also teachers must change and adapt over the years ‘as teaching contexts, pupil behaviour and expectations of teachers change’ (Eraut, 1999, p. ix). According to Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005), part of the role of pre-service teacher education is ‘preparing teachers for future learning as professionals’ (p. ix). Apart from recognizing the need for ongoing teacher learning, there is increasing discussion today of linking pre-service and in-service teacher education in a ‘continuum’ of professional learning. In a landmark paper ‘From preparation to practice: Designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching’, Feiman-Nemser (2001) argues that we should think of pre-service teacher education as, among other
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things, ‘preparing novices to learn in and from their practice’ (p. 1016). Along the same lines, Richter, Kunter, Klusmann, Ludtke, and Baumert (2011) in the German context describe teacher professional learning as ‘a long-term process extending from teacher education at university to in-service training at the workplace’ (p. 116). In Finland, Sahlberg (2015) sees a problem in the currently ‘weak coordination between initial academic teacher education and the continuing professional development of teachers’ (p. 120). And the 2013 European Commission report on teacher education argues that we need ‘a ‘teacher education system’, understood as a single, coherent continuum of policy and provision’ (p. 7). But despite the talk of continuity, coordination, and coherence, there has not been much written about how to connect pre-service and in-service teacher education. Moreover, little attention has been given to the reasons for establishing a continuum, or indeed the possible dangers (e.g., constraining and homogenizing teacher learning). A key challenge in attempting to build a continuum is that funding for in-service professional development is typically much less than for pre-service preparation: how can one link an activity that is well resourced with one that is not? In this chapter – in the space available – we will attempt to provide a fuller exploration of this area. What exactly does it mean to have a continuum of pre-service and in-service teacher education, how can this be achieved, why is it important, and how can the dangers and challenges be overcome? As these questions suggest, this chapter deals not only with where we have been in teacher education but also where we should go in the future. To summarize briefly, our position is that teacher education around the world has traditionally paid attention (in varying degrees) to the following components: (i) the subject knowledge needed for teaching (Avalos, 2000; Shulman, 1986); (ii) the general theory of teaching (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Shulman, 1986); (iii) concrete teaching strategies (Ball, 2000; Lemov, 2010); and (iv) first-hand experience in schools (BERA/RSA, 2014; OECD, 2012). Against this background, the approach to teacher education we will advocate involves (a) balancing and integrating these four components, rather than stressing one at the expense of the others. Furthermore, (b) we will set teacher education (and teaching) within a constructivist framework that emphasizes dialogue between instructors/teachers/PD facilitators on the one hand and teacher candidates/school pupils/in-service teachers on the other. Finally, as already discussed, (c) we will propose an approach that connects pre-service and in-service teacher education in a continuum, with the same general approach modified and refined continuously over the years. It might be thought that advocating an approach to teacher education – balanced, integrated, constructivist, and continuous – runs the risk of limiting diversity and innovation. Should we not, as Mao (1957/1966) said, support ‘[l]etting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend’? However, as we will explain in the sections to follow, the constructivist approach is precisely one that allows for a diversity of viewpoints and permits educators to experiment in their classrooms, constructing a pedagogy appropriate to their
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particular context. Consensus in teaching and teacher education should indeed be sought and can be very valuable, enabling educators to reinforce each other’s efforts. However, on a constructivist view, consensus should be arrived at largely through sharing and dialogue; even the constructivist approach itself should be recommended rather than imposed from above. How is it possible to talk in general terms about where teacher education has been, is now, and should go in the future? Are there not – and should there not be – major differences in teacher education around the world? Our position is that, while there are indeed global variations in practice (e.g., institutional setting, length of program) and circumstances (e.g., financial resources, education level of teacher candidates), many important similarities exist in teacher education and schooling itself. With respect to schooling, for example, in virtually all countries the main emphasis (in practice, if not in theory) is on teaching traditional academic content and skills (Avalos, 2000; NCTE, 2009; Noddings, 2013; Zhou, 2014). With respect to teacher education, the style of pedagogy is often much the same (Aubusson & Schuck, 2013) and the theory is similar. For example, we have found almost identical theory of how teacher education should be conducted in the US (DarlingHammond, 2006), Europe (European Commission, 2013), China (Zhou, 2014), India (NCTE, 2009), Central and South America (Avalos, 2000; Hammerness, 2014; Torres, 2000), South Africa (Samuel, 2012), and Ethiopia (Tessema, 2007). It is true that advocacy of centrally controlled, test-based teacher education is currently more common in certain wealthy countries, notably England (Furlong, 2013), Australia (O’Meara, 2011), and the US (Wiseman, 2012); but we can expect this GERM (global educational reform movement) to spread rapidly to other countries, as other teacher education trends have in the past (Sahlberg, 2015). It would have been ideal to be able to detail systematically past and present variations in teacher education around the world, and then proceed against this background to explore issues of policy and practice. However, given the similarities in teacher education globally, and the daunting task of discussing both pre-service and in-service teacher education in a single chapter, we have opted to focus on what we regard as the most important themes and future directions world-wide, noting in passing some differences (which occur mainly within rather than between countries).
PART I: PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION FOR INITIAL COMPETENCE AND ONGOING LEARNING Our chapter is divided into two main parts, with Part I focusing on pre-service teacher preparation and Part II on in-service teacher learning. In each part, however, we refer to the other domain and explore ways of creating a productive connection between the two. We begin, then, with pre-service teacher education.
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1. Acquiring a Broad, Feasible Vision of Teaching In order to teach well, teachers need a ‘vision’ of teaching that ranges across the many goals of schooling and combines both theory and practice (Hammerness, 2006; Kennedy, 2006). We believe that fostering such a vision, along with related skills, should be central to teacher preparation. In the past, going back to the 19th century, the vision of teaching promoted in preparation programs has frequently been very narrow, focusing mainly on subject-specific content and pedagogy (Dewey, 1916; Freire, 1968/1972; Martin, 2011; Noddings, 2013; Shulman, 1986). Even today, as noted earlier, the ‘subject transmission’ conception of teaching tends not to be strongly challenged; and where it is, it is replaced by a heavy emphasis on social and educational theory that leaves new teachers only marginally better off. They have heard of terms such as constructivism and holistic education but have little understanding of how to implement them in settings where transmission pedagogy is the main expectation (Ball, 2000; Kosnik & Beck, 2009; Lemov, 2010). In our view, it is important to reject both an excessively subject-oriented approach to teacher education and an overly heavy emphasis on theory. By contrast with the former, a wide range of life goals needs to be considered: teacher education should be ‘holistic’ (Miller, 2014; Sahlberg, 2015). Young people today spend so much time in school that their learning should go far beyond narrowly academic content to other types of growth: personal, social, political, cultural, esthetic, physical, and so on (Chapman & West-Burnham, 2010; Martin, 2011; Noddings, 2013). And by contrast with an overly theoretical approach, teacher candidates need to be introduced to a vision that integrates theory and practice, thus enabling them to implement the theory (Kennedy, 2006). Fostering a broad teaching vision that integrates theory and practice serves to establish a continuum of pre-service and in-service learning in several ways. Having the concept of such a vision in itself helps new teachers understand the central aim of ongoing professional learning, namely, to constantly refine their vision and make it ever more coherent and feasible. Having the beginnings of a sound and practical teaching vision also allows new teachers to achieve a degree of initial success in their career, thus boosting their satisfaction and the ‘resilience’ they need to keep on teaching and refining their craft (Day & Gu, 2014). And working to identify broad directions for education links pre-service faculty and students with the wider educational community and again lays a foundation for future growth.
2. Interactive, ‘Constructivist’ Teacher Preparation A vision of teaching is essential, but not just any vision will do. The point of establishing a continuum of teacher education is ultimately to ‘strengthen’ teaching (Feiman-Nemser, 2001). In what direction do we need to go to improve
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teaching today? We have already stressed the importance of having sound, holistic goals; but what pedagogy should we use? We wish to advocate what is often called a ‘constructivist’ pedagogy, one that is dialogical and inquiry-oriented. The importance of adopting an interactive, constructivist approach to teaching and teacher education has been argued at length by many theorists (e.g., Ahsan & Smith, 2016; Falk, 2009; Fosnot, 2005; Hagger & McIntyre, 2006; Richardson, 1997; Vygotsky, 1978). To summarize briefly, the main reasons given for choosing such an approach are as follows: (a) it gives students the opportunity to contribute, and build on, insights they already have as a result of their wealth of life experience; (b) learning becomes more individualized, enabling students to develop ideas that are appropriate for them personally, culturally, and professionally; (c) students are more engaged and so learn more; (d) educators learn too, both by listening to their students and by practicing the pedagogy they are advocating; and (e) students gain confidence in their insights and inquiry abilities, thus preparing them for ongoing learning and confident interaction with in-service PD providers. In practice, however, teacher preparation has tended not to be very constructivist in nature. We pre-service instructors usually do much of the talking, and even where small-group work is arranged, the topics and required outputs are typically specified in a detailed, top-down manner. According to Aubusson and Schuck (2013), in the eight countries whose teacher education programs they studied, there was often ‘a gap between the rhetoric and reality’ (p. 325); teacher educators advocated development of ‘personal, social and learning skills’ but in fact focused mainly on transmission of academic content (p. 324). Similarly, Sykes, Bird, and Kennedy (2010) observe: ‘Teacher education … fits into cultural scripts, with much of it occurring in classrooms where instructors dominate discussion, use Power Point, assign readings in texts, and give tests’ (p. 467). Interestingly, this relatively top-down pedagogy occurs despite widespread agreement in theory that teaching should be constructivist and dialogical. In preservice courses and the literature on teacher education there is constant positive reference to authors broadly representative of constructivist pedagogy (e.g., Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Freire). As Kennedy (2006) states: ‘Teacher educators are famous (or notorious) for the progressive vision of teaching that they espouse. They embrace terms such as learning community, co-construction, inquiry, and social justice’ (p. 209). And while this agreement in theory is important, offering the possibility that teacher education may go further down this path, it is to little avail if we do not practice the pedagogy ourselves, thus enabling teacher candidates to learn about it through first-hand experience.
3. A Balanced Subject Emphasis in Pre-Service Education: Doing Both As noted earlier, pre-service teacher education in the 19th and much of the 20th century focused largely on subject-specific content knowledge and teaching skills
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(Shulman, 1986). Then later in the 20th century, many pre-service programs around the world turned their attention to broad social and educational issues and general pedagogy, to the relative neglect of subject-specific knowledge (Ball, 2000; Shulman, 1986). Now today, the main emphasis in many jurisdictions is again on subject teaching, in part because of the pressure to boost student test scores in subject areas (Menter & Hulme, 2011; Munthe, Malmo, & Rogne, 2011; Wiseman, 2012). How should we view these changes in the landscape? It is important to note that, despite the shifts in teacher education, the focus in schools throughout this period – in richer and poorer countries alike – has remained largely on subject teaching. This is a long-standing tradition in schooling and is unlikely to change soon: according to Noddings (2013), we can ‘resist’ it in certain ways but ‘we have to work within that basic structure’ (p. 11). Given this reality, the approach to pre-service teacher education we propose is to prepare teachers to do both – teach for subject learning and relevance – so their pupils gain both subject knowledge and real-world understanding. However, this requires two things of pre-service teacher educators. First, general ideals and theory have to be discussed in the context of subject teaching rather than separately, with a great many subject-specific examples included in all courses. Second, we have to prepare student teachers for the real world of teaching. For example, we must help them understand that subject mastery need not be at the expense of relevance (Grant & Gradwell, 2010; VanSledright, 2011), and give them practical advice on how to survive and thrive in a subject-oriented school system, while still teaching for relevance (Noddings, 2013). Approaching pre-service education in these ways will again help establish a continuum with later teaching and professional learning. New teachers will be prepared for the political realities and be able to satisfy parents, authorities, and the public to a substantial degree while also teaching well. ‘Doing both’ is not easy: it is a complex, challenging process and not the way most teacher candidates were themselves taught in school and university. But if teachers acquire the basic concept and skills in their pre-service program, they can progress steadily in this respect throughout their career.
4. A Social, Inclusive Pre-Service Community Many teacher preparation programs are rather impersonal, with large classes and an array of disconnected courses taught by different instructors (Tom, 1997); and with increasing pressure today to emphasize subject coverage, one may wonder how time can be found for a more social emphasis. However, the approach to teaching and teacher education we are advocating – broad, holistic, and constructivist – requires a communal setting, so student teachers feel safe expressing their views and have opportunities to grow personally and socially. Sometimes the term ‘learning community’ is used to refer to a school or pre-service education class; however, we prefer simply the term ‘community’,
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signaling the presence of genuinely social dimensions such as warmth, humor, and conversation. Moreover, the community should not just be among the students: the instructor should also be a full member of the community (Dewey, 1916), so students see social interaction as an important and legitimate part of the class experience. One way to enhance social interaction in pre-service teacher education programs is to form small cohorts of about 30, within which student teachers and instructors get to know each other well (Beck & Kosnik, 2001, 2006). This has the added advantage that, with a class roughly the size of a school class, methods advocated for the school setting can be modeled and experienced. The link between social interaction and constructivist learning was emphasized by both Piaget (1932) and Vygotsky (1978) (although Vygotsky placed more stress than Piaget on the influence of the larger society beyond the school). Sometimes terms such as ‘co-construction’ (Wells, 1994) and ‘social constructivism’ (Ahsan & Smith, 2016; Beck & Kosnik, 2006; Richardson, 1997) are used to highlight the social dimension. In our view the social aspect of knowledge construction should not be over-emphasized, since individual insights, needs, and life structures are also important (as we will discuss in the next section). Nevertheless, for the reasons noted, we believe social experience is a crucial dimension of pre-service and school settings. The pre-service class community needs to be inclusive. Accepting diverse personalities, backgrounds, and points of view is essential if student teachers are to learn from each other, openly explore their own ideas and way of life, and become inclusive teachers themselves. A great many teacher educators today attempt to foster inclusive, multicultural outlooks and practices among student teachers, but there are vivid accounts of how difficult this can be (e.g., Dolby, 2012). While discussion of inclusion plays a key role, embodying it in the preservice community enables student teachers to see its advantages more clearly and learn more fully how to implement it in their own classrooms. Once again a social, inclusive pre-service program is key to establishing a continuum in teacher learning as a whole, helping prepare student teachers for successful initial teaching and ongoing professional learning. They know better how to: establish a social, inclusive classroom; enjoy and learn from their students; and maintain their resilience. They also begin to learn what it is like to be in a ‘professional learning community’ (PLC) and how to support and participate in PLCs in their future school community.
5. Balancing the Common and the Individual Teacher preparation has often been conceived in terms of introducing student teachers to a standard official curriculum and a common set of teaching practices; as noted earlier, this approach is increasingly widespread today. However, while teaching common content and skills has an important place, helping students flourish at an individual level is also essential (Gardner, 1999; Stefanakis, 2011).
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Students should be able to pursue individual goals and display their learning in different ways. Interestingly, emphasis on the individual need not be at the expense of community: the more individuals see they are accepted and respected in a community the more likely they are to commit themselves to it. Yet again, having acquired an individualized (personalized, differentiated) approach to instruction not only makes new teachers immediately more effective; it sets them on a path of observing individual differences in their students and finding more ways to individualize instruction. It also helps them become steadily better at fostering inclusion in the classroom, ensuring that students are respected for their distinctive talents and are themselves becoming more accepting of differences in others.
6. Discussing Practicum Experiences in the Pre-Service Classroom At the end of Part II, we will consider ways to strengthen the pre-service/inservice continuum through close institutional links between preparation programs and their practice teaching schools. In this final section of Part I we note briefly one aspect of this connection, namely, extensive discussion of practicum experiences in campus classes. As mentioned before, the vision with which new teachers emerge at graduation should run the whole gamut from general theory to concrete practice. One way to achieve this is by talking about their practice teaching during pre-service classes (Beck & Kosnik, 2002, 2006). This gives student teachers the opportunity to share what they are learning in their placements and so multiply the benefits; it also helps them see links between their practicum learning and the theory being studied on campus. An activity we have found works well is to go around the class, with each student commenting in turn on at least one thing they learned about teaching during practice teaching and/or how their vision or philosophy of teaching has altered as a result of their practicum experiences. With activities such as these, student teachers not only learn more about teaching but also get a sense of how to learn on the job, which will help them later in the in-service context.
PART II: IN-SERVICE LEARNING THAT BUILDS ON AND REFINES PRE-SERVICE PREPARATION In Part I, we explored ways in which pre-service teacher education could be enhanced to lay a better foundation for ongoing teacher learning. Now, in Part II, we look at the same continuum from the in-service end, discussing how continuing professional development can build on pre-service learning and extend it over a teacher’s career.
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1. Continuing to Refine a Vision of Teaching As mentioned in Part I, sound teaching is a complex process with a broad set of goals; hence a vision of teaching has to be extensive, ranging from abstract theory about society and human development to concrete goals, strategies, and skills. Moreover, all this has to be interwoven with substantial subject mastery, both to help in the achievement of life goals and to satisfy the societal and political demand for subject learning in schools. Given the complexity of teaching, then, teachers need to continue to develop their vision significantly throughout their career. Over the decades, and especially recently, there have been frequent suggestions that teaching could be transformed suddenly by adopting a particular set of ideas and practices. In England, for example, the current government maintains that a heavy emphasis on phonics – and in particular ‘synthetic phonics’ – will greatly increase the effectiveness of reading instruction. In the US, Australia, and again England, a focus on standardized tests – with teachers compelled to prepare students for the tests – is being proposed as a way to dramatically improve teacher effectiveness. Furthermore, this ‘sudden change’ or ‘silver bullet’ approach to school improvement is now being applied to pre-service and in-service teacher education, with simplistic, top-down ‘reforms’ required of schools of education and school districts on pain of drastic government sanctions (Wiseman, 2012). By contrast with this ‘sudden’ approach to school improvement and teacher development, we propose a ‘gradualist’ approach that takes account of the complexity mentioned earlier; and in this we are not alone. Kennedy (2010), for example, in a paper significantly titled ‘Against boldness’, criticizes educational reform initiatives that are ‘unrealistic, out of range, over the top [and] fail because they don’t take real circumstances into account’ (p. 17). Similarly, Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, and LeMahieu (2015) reject the view of many ‘reformers’ that ‘they must disrupt the educational system substantially and quickly’. They advocate instead ‘engaging the minds and hearts of … teachers and principals’ (p. 6) and involving them in multiple ‘improvement cycles … to develop a change idea that actually works’ (pp. 120–121). These theorists are not opposed to major change; in fact what they advocate is typically much more radical than that envisaged by so-called reformers. However, they see a gradualist approach as significantly more effective. Like Dewey (1916), they believe change is best achieved through ‘reconstruction’ of what is already there rather than supplying ‘ready-made’ ideas that over-ride past and present experience (pp. 89 and 188).
2. Acknowledging the Extent of On-the-Job Learning Building on the vision they bring from pre-service preparation, teachers learn a great deal informally in the classroom (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Dewey,
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1916; Loughran, 2010; Schön, 1983; Zeichner & Liston, 2014). The first few years are often quite stressful, but this is largely because the learning curve is so steep: they must rapidly learn more about the realities of everyday teaching and how to negotiate them. Within their initial ten to fifteen years, teachers learn more about teaching than most people ever know. In many ways they are becoming key experts on teaching (Beck & Kosnik, 2014; Loughran, 2010). This is not to deny that teachers can benefit from outside help: they can enormously. But there is need to recognize to a greater extent what they learn every year in the classroom. Too often, as Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) note, teachers ‘are expected to learn about their own profession not by studying their own experiences but by studying the findings of those who are not themselves schoolbased teachers’ (p. 1). In a later work, these authors observe: [P]ractitioners are deliberative intellectuals who constantly theorize practice as part of practice itself. … [T]he goal of teacher learning initiatives is the joint construction of local knowledge, the questioning of common assumptions, and thoughtful critique of the usefulness of the research generated by others both inside and outside contexts of practice. (CochranSmith & Lytle, 2009, p. 2)
As emerging experts, then, teachers should have a major voice both in the organization of ongoing learning sessions and in the discussions that occur within those sessions. This serves to increase the quality and value of in-service professional development initiatives.
3. Support for Informal In-Service Learning Outside help for teachers should come largely (though not exclusively) through support for their informal learning. For example, their working conditions should be reasonable so they can maintain the resilience necessary for ongoing learning (Day & Gu, 2014). It is difficult for teachers to learn when they are overworked, have excessively large classes, and are constantly criticized. In some jurisdictions – e.g., Scotland – new teachers receive a great deal of support, with a reduced teaching load and substantial mentoring (Menter & Hulme, 2011). Elsewhere, however, they are often at the bottom of the pecking order and given the most difficult classes and no load reduction. Apart from appropriate working conditions, teachers need opportunities to share with each other what they are learning in the classroom. As in the pre-service setting, this gives them a chance to pool and hence multiply their practice-based learning. An especially effective way to do this is through arranging observation in each other’s classrooms, followed by discussion of what they see there. Groups of teachers meeting to share their insights and strategies are often referred to as professional learning communities (PLCs); however, it is important that the meetings avoid the excessive formality and pre-set expectations sometimes associated with system-mandated PLCs (Beck & Kosnik, 2014).
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Whole-school support for in-service learning is one of the most promising approaches to ongoing teacher development. This is partly because a strong principal can arrange for teacher sharing and informal research to occur despite current (and likely future) financial constraints, using normal opportunities for teacher meetings and release time. The role of the principal as curriculum leader and in-service learning facilitator should be emphasized more than at present, although principals must work with teachers rather than in a top-down manner if their leadership is to be effective (Davies, 2011; Falk, 2009; Ylimaki, 2011).
4. System-Level Formal In-Service Learning Apart from the largely informal teacher learning discussed so far, many valuable formal learning opportunities can be arranged by school districts, government departments, and other agencies and organizations. These include formal induction programs, formal mentoring, workshops, short courses, degree programs, and formal teacher research. These formal kinds of in-service activities are the ones most often cited when the ongoing improvement of teaching is discussed. To date, however, the impact of such initiatives has often been limited and patchy (Chapman, 2012; Cuban, 2008). In many cases very specific ‘standards’ are imposed, to the disregard of teachers’ own views and experiences; in others the extensive ‘portfolios’ teachers must keep and on which their teaching is largely assessed are ‘make-work’ activities with little benefit in terms of teacher growth; in yet other cases mentoring has been combined with high-stakes teacher assessment in such a way that a helpful relationship between mentor and teacher is virtually impossible (Strong, 2009). The frequent ineffectiveness of formal professional development activities is not inevitable. As we have said, in-service teachers continue to need external input (just as much as in the pre-service stage). But to be successful, such activities must be designed in accordance with the interactive, constructivist principles discussed in Part I. They should be part of the same continuum of dialogical professional learning.
5. A Joint Research and Knowledge-Sharing System The continuum of pre-service and in-service teacher learning needs to be supported by an extensive research and knowledge-sharing system. However, as Bryk et al. (2015) say, system improvement should not take the form of ‘specialized studies carried out exclusively by external researchers. Learning to improve demands the active, full engagement of [practicing] educators’ (p. 9). The findings of formal teacher research – such as ‘action research’ and ‘self-study research’ – should be incorporated into the knowledge framework, along with the insights from informal teacher inquiry conducted in the normal course of classroom teaching (as discussed earlier).
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One way to bring together teacher inquiry and university-based inquiry is to have university faculty interview in-service teachers on a regular basis and document what they are discovering on the job (Beck & Kosnik, 2014). Another approach is for teachers to participate as full members in funded research teams that include university faculty, research officers, and other school district personnel (Bryk et al., 2015). Less costly collaborations of the same general type can also be designed, with various parties contributing voluntarily in a digital k nowledge-sharing system, somewhat akin to Wikipedia (Bryk, 2008; Lowrie, 2014).
6. Direct Institutional Links between Pre-Service and In-Service Settings So far in Part II we have emphasized connecting pre-service and in-service learning through a theoretical and practical vision of teaching that is discussed and refined in pre-service programs and subsequent professional learning contexts. However, a more direct strategy is to establish formal institutional links between pre-service programs and practice teaching schools. This need not mean that student teachers spend more time in schools, but simply that the value of what occurs there should be optimized. As stated in the 2014 BERA/RSA report, ‘it is the quality of the clinical experience that matters. Simply extending the amount of time spent by trainee teachers in the classroom is not associated with improved outcomes’ (p. 16). In recent decades, there have been several initiatives to forge institutional connections between pre-service programs and in-service settings. For example, in the US ‘professional development schools’ (PDSs) have been established (Darling-Hammond, 1994; Holmes Group, 1986) that accommodate a considerable number of student teachers and collaborate with their partner university in research and teaching activities. In the UK, similar initiatives are referred to variously in terms of ‘internships’, ‘hub schools’, ‘training schools’, and ‘clinical practice’ (BERA/RSA, 2014; Conroy, Hulme, & Menter, 2013; Menter & Hulme, 2011). In Finland, student teachers complete most of their practice teaching in ‘teacher training schools’, which have ‘higher professional staff standards [and] pursue research and development roles in teacher education in collaboration with the university’ (Sahlberg, 2015, pp. 118–119). Such arrangements have often been very successful; however, they face a number of challenges, such as: additional cost (Darling-Hammond, 1994); the need for increased time commitment by teachers and university faculty (Beck & Kosnik, 2006); student teacher reluctance to spend a great deal of time in discussion with mentor teachers (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006); resistance to giving special status to certain schools (Menter & Hulme, 2011); and difficulty finding a large enough number of teachers in a given school who function well as mentors (Beck & Kosnik, 2002, 2006). These challenges do not mean we should abandon such efforts. However, we should not expect too much from this approach, and
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additional ways of establishing and maintaining close institutional connections should be found (Beck & Kosnik, 2006; Goodlad, 1994).
CONCLUSION There is great merit in working to establish a continuum of pre-service and inservice teacher education. It can deepen pre-service preparation, create a framework and foundation for ongoing teacher learning, and place us in a better position to explain and justify our endeavors when interacting with policy makers and the general public. In order to coordinate our efforts in pre-service and in-service settings, however, we need a largely common vision of the goals and processes of education. If those of us working in education are not pulling in roughly the same direction, we will surely not get there. But the answer does not lie in the currently widespread practice of imposing a pedagogical approach on teachers and teacher educators. Rather, the vision must arise in the course of rich dialogue between all interested and involved parties, a dialogue that is increasingly possible today given advances in information and communication technology. In this chapter, we have argued that both our vision for schooling and the process for implementing it should be constructivist in nature: we need a dialogical, inquiryoriented approach to teaching and teacher education, in which subject learning has a major place but many other goals are pursued as well. We noted Kennedy’s (2006) position that – among teacher educators at least – considerable agreement already exists on such a vision. This is encouraging, but the vision is interpreted in different ways by different teacher educators and often not modeled in practice. Going forward we should bring more parties to the table – notably teachers, teacher educators, and other university-based researchers – and improve the communication structures. Pointing us strongly in this direction are scholars such as Bryk (2008), Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009), Lowrie (2014), and Zeichner and Liston (2014). Hopefully, through growing dialogue and communication, an increasingly productive continuum of pre-service and in-service teacher education will emerge.
REFERENCES Ahsan, S. & Smith, W. (2016). Facilitating student learning. In W. Smith (ed.), The Global Testing Culture (pp. 131–151). Oxford: Symposium. Aubusson, P. & Schuck, S. (2013). Teacher education futures: Today’s trends, tomorrow’s expectations. Teacher Development, 17(3), 322–333. Avalos, B. (2000). Policies for teacher education in developing countries. International Journal of Educational Research, 33, 457–474. Ball, D. (2000). Bridging practices: Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 241–247.
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Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2001). From cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17, 925–948. Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2002). Professors and the practicum: Involvement of university faculty in preservice practicum supervision. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 6–19. Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2006). Innovations in Teacher Education: A Social Constructivist Approach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2014). Growing as a Teacher: Goals and Pathways of Ongoing Teacher Learning. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. BERA/RSA Final Report (2014). Research and the Teaching Profession: Building the Capacity for a Selfimproving Education System. London: British Educational Research Association. Bryk, A. (2008). The future of education research. November 2008 presentation. http://www.aei.org/ events/2008/11/19/the-future-of-education-research-event/ Retrieved October 2, 2014. Bryk, A., Gomez, L., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. (2015). Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Chapman, C. (2012). School improvement research and practice: A case of back to the future? In C. Chapman, P. Armstrong, A. Harris, D. Muijs, D. Reynolds, & P. Sammons (eds), School Effectiveness and Improvement Research, Policy and Practice: Challenging the Orthodoxy? (pp. 27–43). London and New York: Routledge. Chapman, L. & West-Burnham, J. (2010). Education for Social Justice: Achieving Wellbeing for All. London and New York: Continuum. Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. (1993). Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge. New York: TC Press. Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as Stance. New York: TC Press. Conroy, J., Hulme, M., & Menter, I. (2013). Developing a ‘clinical’ model for teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 39(5), 557–573. Crocker, B. & Dibbon, D. (2008). Teacher Education in Canada. Kelowna: Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education. Cuban, L. (2008). Frogs into Princes: Writings on School Reform. New York: Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (ed.) (1994). Professional Development Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L. & Bransford, J. (2005). Preface. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (ed.), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do (pp. vii–x). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Davies, B. (2011). Leading the Strategically Focused School (2nd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Day, C. & Gu, Q. (2014). Resilient Teachers, Resilient Schools: Building and Sustaining Quality in Testing Times. London and New York: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan. Dolby, N. (2012). Rethinking Multicultural Education for the Next Generation: The New Empathy and Social Justice. London and New York: Routledge. Eraut, M. (1999). Preface to C. Day, Developing Teachers: The Challenges of Lifelong Learning (pp. ix–xii). London: Falmer. European Commission (2013). Supporting Teacher Educators for Better Learning Outcomes. Brussels: European Commission. Falk, B. (2009). Teaching the Way Children Learn. New York: Teachers College Press. Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparation to practice: Designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching. Teachers College Record, 103(6), 1013–1055. Fosnot, C. (ed.) (2005). Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice (2nd edn). New York: TC Press. Freire, P. (1968/1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder.
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Furlong, J. (2013). Globalisation, neoliberalism, and the reform of teacher education in England. The Educational Forum, 77(1), 28–50. Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books. Goodlad, J. (1994). Educational Renewal: Better Teachers, Better Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Grant, S. & Gradwell, J. (eds) (2010). Teaching History with Big Ideas: Cases of Ambitious Teachers. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Hagger, H. & McIntyre, D. (2006). Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realizing the Potential of Schoolbased Teacher Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Hammerness, K. (2006). Seeing Through Teachers’ Eyes: Professional Ideals and Classroom Practices. New York: Teachers College Press. Hammerness, K. (2014). ‘El Plan Maestro’ & teacher education (3 pp). https://internationalednews. com/2014/11/13/el-plan-maestro-teacher-education/ Retrieved November 14, 2014. Holmes Group (1986). Tomorrow’s Teachers: A Report of the Holmes Group. East Lansing, MI: Holmes Group. Kennedy, M. (2006). Knowledge and vision in teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 205–211. Kennedy, M. (2010). Against boldness. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 16–20. Kosnik, C. & Beck, C. (2009). Priorities in Teacher Education: The 7 Key Elements of Pre-service Preparation. London and New York: Routledge. Lemov, D. (2010). Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Loughran, J. (2010). What Expert Teachers Do: Enhancing Professional Knowledge for Classroom Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Lowrie, T. (2014). An educational practice framework: The potential for empowerment of the profession. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(1), 34–46. Mao, Tse-Tung (1957/1966). On the correct handling of contradictions among the people. Peking Speech, February 27, 1957. Cited in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1966) (p. 302). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Martin, J.R. (2011). Education Reconfigured: Culture, Encounter, and Change. New York and London: Routledge. Menter, I. & Hulme, M. (2011). Teacher education reform in Scotland: National and global influences. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(4), 387–397. Miller, J.P. (2014). Teaching from the thinking heart: The practice of holistic education. In J.P. Miller, M. Irwin, & K. Nigh (eds), Teaching from the Thinking Heart: The Practice of Holistic Education (pp. 1–17). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Munthe, E., Malmo, K-A., & Rogne, M. (2011). Teacher education reform and challenges in Norway. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(4), 441–450. NCTE (2009). National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education: Towards Preparing Professional and Humane Teacher. New Delhi: National Council for Teacher Education. Noddings, N. (2013). Education and Democracy in the 21st Century. New York: Teachers College Press. OECD (2012). Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons from Around the World. Paris: OECD. O’Meara, J. (2011). Australian teacher education reforms: Reinforcing the problem or providing a solution? Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(4), 423–431. Piaget, J. (1932). The Moral Judgment of the Child (transl. M. Gabain). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Richardson, V. (ed.) (1997). Constructivist Teacher Education: Building a World of New Understandings. London: Falmer. Richter, D., Kunter, M., Klusmann, U., Ludtke, O., & Baumert, J. (2011). Professional development across the teaching career: Teachers’ uptake of formal and informal learning opportunities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 116–126.
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Sahlberg, P. (2015). Finnish Lessons 2.0: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? (2nd edn). New York: Teachers College Press. Samuel, M. (2012). Shifting waves of teacher education policy in post-apartheid South Africa. In R. Osman & H. Venkat (eds), Research-led Teacher Education (pp. 21–35). Cape Town: Pearson. Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. (Also in The Wisdom of Practice, Ch. 6, pp. 189–215.) Stefanakis, E. (2011). Differentiated Assessment: How to Assess the Learning Potential of Every Student. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Strong, M. (2009). Effective Teacher Induction and Mentoring: Assessing the Evidence. New York: Teachers College Press. Sykes, G., Bird, T., & Kennedy, M. (2010). Teacher education: Its problems and some prospects. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 464–476. Tessema, K.A. (2007). The teacher education reform process in Ethiopia: Some consequences on educators and its implications. Teaching Education, 18(1), 29–48. Tom, A. (1997). Redesigning Teacher Education. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Torres, R.M. (2000). From agents of reform to subjects of change: The teaching crossroads in Latin America. Prospects, 30(2), 255–273. VanSledright, B. (2011). The Challenge of Rethinking History Education: On Practices, Theories, and Policy. New York and London: Routledge. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wells, G. (1994). Changing Schools from Within: Creating Communities of Inquiry. Toronto/Portsmouth, NH: OISE Press/Heinemann. Wiseman, D. (2012). The intersection of policy, reform, and teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 87–91. Ylimaki, R. (2011). Critical Curriculum Leadership: A Framework for Progressive Education. New York and London: Routledge. Zeichner, K. & Liston, D. (2014). Reflective Teaching: An Introduction. New York and London: Routledge. Zhou, J. (2014). Teacher education changes in China: 1974–2014. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5), 507–523.
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7 What We Know We Don’t Know about Teacher Education G a v i n T. L . B ro w n
Currents of globalisation and universalism underpin the table of contents in this Handbook – it is after all an international collection. However, it seems that this Handbook is focused, not unnaturally, on the issues and concerns related to preparing teachers for and within multicultural, individualistic, democratic, and highly developed economies and societies. Phrases from the draft table of contents made me wonder where in this international Handbook of teacher education was there explicit attention to teacher education issues in other regions of the world (e.g., China, India, Muslim-majority countries, Africa, and South America) where teaching and teacher education function in quite different contexts and possibly have different characteristics. The terms that triggered my reaction included: ‘theories of social activism/change’; ‘sense of agency’; ‘social (e.g., democratic, neo-Marxist) theories of education’; ‘post-colonial, post-structural and post-modern theories of education’; ‘feminist science studies, revisionist pragmatism, and contemporary Indigenous theories of knowledge’; ‘multicultural and critical approaches to teacher education that emphasize the reality of sociocultural identities, as well as poststructuralist approaches to teacher education that emphasize the need to deconstruct oversimplified discourses about race, gender, and cultural identity’; ‘teacher education as a democratic practice’; ‘critical approaches: learning to challenge and change prevailing educational practices’; ‘a learning-centred/person-centred approach’; ‘systemic (social justice, critical race theory, and so on) approaches’; ‘neoliberal contexts’; and ‘impact of globalisation and the changing contexts of migration and immigration through global marketing of teacher education’. This list of concerns suggested to me that, within a global conversation about teacher education, it was possible
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that the presumptions underpinning the concerns of the volume might not necessarily be shared or necessarily be foundational across the globe. For much of the world, the conditions of education, schooling, and teaching are quite different to those in the developed world (e.g., North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand). Hence, what might matter in one context in relation to being a good teacher, and subsequently what makes good preparation of a teacher, may be invalid in another. As an educator in New Zealand, it is evident that primary schooling is very much focused on the development and enhancement of the individual child (McGee, 1994). This is a consequence of the priorities set in New Zealand arising from the influences of Dewey (1902, 1915) and most vividly expressed in Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s approach to teaching reading and vocabulary which based curriculum on the life experiences and needs of each individual child (Middleton, 2012). However, such an approach to teaching already seems not to be the norm in the USA or England, which have focused teaching much more on test outcomes (Lingard & Lewis, 2016). Hence, imposing the teaching approach of one society upon another, as in the spread of the contemporary Global Education Reform Movement (Sahlberg, 2011), may smack of cultural imperialism, since all societies have, albeit perhaps unexamined, knowledge and beliefs about the goals of teaching and teacher education that position the child and the teacher in their own appropriate ways. While any international Handbook naturally draws on the concerns and priorities of the various authors, I wonder which voices and values are left outside the confines of this volume. In this chapter, I will reflect on how little seems to be known, and especially how little I know, about teacher education in the type of circumstances much less visible in peer-reviewed research published in English might reveal. My point of view is that much of what is taken for granted as appropriate teacher education, at least in New Zealand where I work and in Canada where I was taught to be a teacher, may be invalid or naïve in the very different socio-economic and cultural contexts in which more than half the world is schooled. Three countries alone (i.e., India, China, Brazil) make up 2.5 billion people; while their economies are no longer impoverished, their histories, traditions, and contexts make for potentially quite different notions of teaching and teacher education. I will not attempt a review of the global literature on teacher education; instead I will focus on societies (i.e., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa) in which I have conducted research and which have challenged my presuppositions as to teacher education norms. It is hoped this global tour might contribute some greater awareness of what teacher educators might conclude is not known about good teacher education.
CULTURE AS A LENS TO UNDERSTANDING TEACHING AND TEACHER EDUCATION In this chapter, I take the view that culture is ‘a shared organization of ideas that includes the intellectual, moral and aesthetic standards prevalent in a community
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and the meanings of communicative actions’ (LeVine, 1984, p. 67). Consequently, cultures are collective (i.e., social), organised (i.e., purposeful), variable (i.e., changing across time and between each other), and have multiplexity (i.e., they have complex interrelationships within themselves) (LeVine, 1984). Characterisation of societies is complicated and often inaccurate in meaningful ways, usually because of individual variation within social groupings. Nonetheless, Hofstede (2007) draws attention to important issues, such as the distance between authority figures (e.g., teachers) and subordinates (e.g., pupils) (Power Distance), the relative emphasis on the group or the individual as the source of authority (Collectivism vs Individualism), and the degree to which uncertainty is tolerated (Uncertainty Avoidance). Taking another approach, LeVine and White (1986) classified societies on their relative priority towards allowing individuals choices or options versus their tendency to define an individual by social connections or ligatures. They argued that urban-industrial cultures of the last two centuries prioritise options over ligatures, while traditional-agrarian cultures prioritise ligatures over options. For example, urban-industrial cultures tend to view school as a way for individuals to learn future work and as a means of enhancing opportunities and choices. On the other hand, in traditional-agrarian societies schooling tends to be viewed as a means of developing moral character and strengthening social relationships, social identity, roles, and support. A third approach sees within Western societies liberal, progressive ideas that are in tension with conservative, traditional views. The former focus on, among other things, maximising the freedom of the individual, participatory decision making, and scientific management, while the latter focus on rational processes to resolve problems in a manner consistent with the past (Bowers, 1992). Nonetheless, while there is diversity of value and opinion within all societies, the wealthy, urban-industrial societies with their democratic approach to government do have institutionalised and legislated privileges around the status of all individuals, who on a global scale are generally immensely wealthy. A large proportion of the global population, however, does not live in societies that guarantee the legal protection, resources, or freedom that are taken for granted in most of the countries in which the editors and editorial board members of this Handbook reside. Indeed, the argument has been made that much of what we know about psychology, cognitive science, economics, and the ‘behavioural sciences’ is based upon research with ‘people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies’ (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010, p. 61). While this acronym may be seen as disparaging or insulting, it is important to remember that, relative to the global population, the societies from which teaching and teacher education knowledge have been developed are a privileged minority (e.g., I am a citizen of New Zealand, Canada, and the UK). The acronym also indicates that current norms and values about teaching depend on research into curriculum, instruction, and learning theories and methods developed in those
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same contexts. Hence, knowledge about teaching and teacher education may be weird or unusual and definitely not normative at all. This means that, even within political jurisdictions, the meaning and practice of schooling and teaching tends to differ according to cultural priority. The important message from these attempts to understand the impact of culture on teaching is that adoption by one nation or society of another culture’s schooling and teaching practices would not necessarily meet the first society’s needs or priorities. Consider, for example, the idea, reasonably commonplace in Western societies, that placing the teacher at the front of the class is non-democratic and results in greater use of memorisation teaching and learning (Doménech Betoret & Artiga, 2004). However, Cole (2010) has shown that traditional approaches to education involving teacher at the front, desks in rows, and didactic methods of transmitting core skills of literacy and numeracy efficiently create valued competencies. Thus, a progressive democratic approach to teaching might not have validity in contexts where mass literacy and numeracy are not already assured, but required.
DIFFERENCES IN THE GOALS OF EDUCATION AND TEACHING Cultural factors shape educational systems, which, in turn, reflect the values and priorities of cultures and societies (Brown & Harris, 2009). Consequently, the nature of teaching and teacher preparation is both created by, and a tool for, the preservation and extension of societal values. Drawing on Hofstede’s (2007) characterisation of societies, it seems highly likely that cultures which prize high power distance in education (i.e., high respect towards teachers or central policies and texts) and the importance of the group over the individual (e.g., identity is determined by group membership rather than individual achievement), and which also prioritise certainty (e.g., the truth or correct knowledge is determined by authority such as government or religion), are likely to have a different approach to the purpose of schooling than those with contrasting values. In this light I wish to turn to my experience in Confucian-heritage societies.
Confucian-Heritage Societies Confucian-heritage societies (e.g., China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau) give very high importance to respect for authority and bringing honour to one’s social group (especially family) (China Civilisation Centre, 2007; Li, 2003). These values result in a strong emphasis on transmission-oriented teaching (Kember & Kwan, 2000) and memorisation of material for explicit recall (Purdie & Hattie, 2002) on frequent externally mandated tests and examinations used to reward and distribute resources (Choi, 1999; Davey, De Lian, & Higgins, 2007; Wang, 1996). Just as importantly, this approach is seen by
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Chinese teachers as helping to improve the personal and moral characteristics of learners (Brown & Gao, 2015; Chen & Brown, 2016). It is normally presumed in the teacher education that I have been party to in New Zealand, Canada, and Hong Kong that such approaches are not ideal and generally result in surface learning with little deep understanding (Ho, Watkins, & Kelley, 2001). However, it is clear from many cross-cultural testing systems (e.g., PISA, TIMSS, or PIRLS) that the pedagogical approaches adopted in Confucianheritage societies work, in so far as tested academic performance is concerned (OECD, 2011; Zhao, 2014). To be a teacher in these circumstances means with strict authority to successfully enable students to do well, while at the same time, given the Confucian focus on the teacher as parent, providing warmth, especially to those who do not reach expected thresholds (Brown & Gao, 2015; Chen, Brown, Hattie, & Millward, 2012). In this latter sense, Chinese conceptions of teaching mirror views found in Western models of good teaching at the middle school level (Chen, 2007); although this emphasis seems less prevalent in senior secondary school when attention is focused on the national entrance examination for higher education. Further, given the collectivist outlook of such societies, achievement needs to be construed more as a matter of interdependence with others in a social web than as a function of internal psychological attributes such as personality or attitude. For example, duty toward family is a major motivator to greater achievement among Hong Kong students since success on assessment fulfils familial obligations (Brown & Wang, 2013; Wang & Brown, 2014). This suggests that an educational focus on a child’s self-concept is not so much a matter of attention to the child’s individuality, but rather much more about recognising his or her identity as a member of a group and the pressure placed on the individual by the group to make an effort to fulfil those obligations. It is worth noting, however, that this approach is not unique to Confucian-heritage contexts, since similar group-oriented objectives have been reported in one German school (Spindler & Spindler, 1987). A second characteristic of Confucian-heritage societies is that success on assessments, tests, and examinations is treated as the gold standard by which students’ effort and learning and school quality are judged. The current global pressures towards test-based school accountability (Lingard & Lewis, 2016) also mean that this phenomenon is not restricted to Confucian-heritage societies. Assessment scores may be a narrow and, potentially, reductionist metric by which to evaluate students, teachers, and schools, but they, nevertheless, have some merit, frequently overlooked in educationally progressive or liberal societies. Scores are intuitively simple to understand and an easily used ‘rule-ofthumb’ in determining the merit of performance – what Braun and Mislevy (2005) called intuitive test theory. Furthermore, introducing new tests as political levers to move schooling in a certain direction can be done quickly and relatively cheaply (Linn, 2000). Importantly, tests give the appearance of fairness; all participants complete the same tasks under the same conditions and scores are
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awarded meritocratically, independent of who the candidate is, is related to, or how much wealth or influence the family may have (Cheung, 2008). The rewards for high performance in Confucian-heritage societies, in addition to any social obligation to family, are substantial, since access to higher education is relatively limited and the benefits of university degrees are substantial in terms of future employment and income and, consequently, the ability to support the family (Wang & Brown, 2014). It needs to be mentioned here that the use of examinations to make decisions about rationed resources is not unique to Confucian-heritage cultures; for example, examinations are widely used in India (Brown, Chaudhry, & Dhamija, 2015), Brazil (Matos, Cirino, & Brown, 2009), and Arabic-speaking nations (Gebril, 2016), although the cultural reasons for reliance on high-stakes forms of assessment in these contexts are not attributable to Confucian philosophy. These conditions have implications, of course, for the feasibility of importing educational policies across cultural differences. For example, since Black and Wiliam’s (1998) seminal work showing the effectiveness of assessment for learning, many East Asian societies have attempted to implement assessment for learning reforms (Berry, 2011). These policies strongly urge the use of assessment as a tool for improving learning by understanding student strengths, weaknesses, and next steps, rather than as a ranking and selection device. This requires teacher feedback and the active involvement of students to construct criteria, make judgements about quality, and actively question classroom knowledge. The prizing of the child learner as an active contributor to learning and teaching processes may make sense within liberal individualistic societies, but in societies which rely strongly on external tests or examinations, such an approach may be difficult to integrate effectively. Indeed, the introduction of the assessment for learning policy reform in Hong Kong, originating from a rejection of annual external testing of children in England at Key Stages (i.e., ages 7, 9, 11, and 14), has not resulted in the abandonment of public examinations as the ‘real’ measure of academic success. East Asian societies have retained examinations as a ‘hard’ policy while introducing external ‘soft’ policy options (Kennedy, Chan, & Fok, 2011), resulting in a situation where formative assessment is endorsed by educators, while teaching practice continues with a strong focus on success in examinations. For example, a sample of Chinese teacher education students indicated that excellence in teaching was seen as helping students succeed in examinations, while ignoring the diagnostic and formative features of assessment (Chen & Brown, 2013). Even among a large sample of practising teachers in China who strongly endorsed a student-focused conception of teaching, endorsement of knowledge transmission approaches to teaching positively predicted the belief that excellent teaching meant ensuring student success in examinations and the development of the student’s character (Chen & Brown, 2016). This fundamentally conservative, traditional view of educational purpose appears to mean that good
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teaching and teacher education ensures students are thoroughly prepared for examination success. For teacher education of a more democratic, progressive, and liberal form, this is not what would be expected of a good teacher or a good student.
India A difficult tension in some societies has to do with the education of girls. It is a sine qua non of liberal education that all citizens, independent of race, colour, sex, orientation, and so on, are given the best and fullest education; simultaneously, conservative economic forces also argue that societal advancement depends on the education of all children. However, in many societies there are pressures which resist equal provision of schooling and teaching to all citizens (sometimes on the basis of sex, residency status, caste, or other demographic characteristics). This raises interesting questions as to what it might mean to be a teacher in or to educate teachers for a society where the majority has a view, for example, that the ‘proper’ place of girls is in the home. The case of Malala Yousafzi (Yousafzi & Lamb, 2013), a young woman shot for her pursuit of education for girls, illustrates how intense such a struggle can be. My collaboration in India has brought to my attention forcefully the experience of girls in that country. While recent legislation establishes that both girls and boys are to be educated at no cost from age 6 to 14 (Government of India, 2009), there is a 10% secondary school enrolment gap between boys and girls (World Bank, 2009), with fewer girls (effect size d = .30) making the transition from primary schooling into secondary schooling (NUEPA, 2014). Indian girls outperformed boys in secondary school examinations, but not in higher secondary examinations (NUEPA, 2014). These schooling differences extend outside the school gates into the lived experience of boys and girls. For example, more boys in poor families are employed outside the home, while girls perform household chores (Sucharita, 2014). Girls are much less likely to attend school after the age of 9 (Ota & Moffatt, 2007), and 47% of girls marry under the age of 18 (Nanda, Datta, & Das, 2014). Child marriage reduces girls’ educational attainment and makes girls less able to take advantage later of employment or economic opportunities. Even the time that girls might spend studying at home has to be seen as a family investment, since household chores have to be done by others. Although 95% of secondary schools provide toilets for girls from the specific government funding to all schools meant to provide this resource (NUEPA, 2014), conversations with my colleagues in India suggest that despite this funding, toilets may not always be available for girls to use (i.e., they may be locked for teacher use only). Parental concerns about preserving girls’ chastity and enhancing their attributes for marriage mean that secondary schooling, which usually takes place outside
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the village, is considered problematic (Nanda, Datta, & Das, 2014). Indeed, as Nanda, Datta, and Das (2014) put it: Parental aspirations and investments in a girl’s education are constrained by the notion that girls are ‘another person’s wealth’ (paraya dhan), or the wealth of their marital home. The belief that a girl’s earnings will only benefit her marital family significantly discourages parents from investing in their daughter’s education beyond a certain level. (p. 4)
Simply put, especially in rural and poor communities, the status of girls in India is generally not equal to that of boys (Sekher & Hatti, 2005). Although this situation seems to be a deliberate preference of specific communities, there is political pressure to change it. However, I am left with a sense of irony in that it is a liberal democratic principle to support local control of schooling, yet such communities might want a much more traditional schooling than teacher educators may advocate.
Challenges for Teacher Education Hence, being a teacher or teacher educator in these types of society may require accepting quite different goals than might be valued in liberal societies. These two case examples of the Confucian-heritage and Indian situations help clarify interesting challenges for teacher education that question progressive values. The first case raises the troubling challenge for the preference, especially in Anglo-Commonwealth and Nordic societies, for a child-centred pedagogy. In such an education, perhaps not the norm in societies that have strongly adopted test-based accountability, the child co-constructs with the teacher the curriculum and what counts as learning (Barnes, 1976; Dewey, 1915). In progressive societies, educators prefer the student to learn by experience with problems and situations, guided by the teacher who seeks to create a future citizen who can critically discuss reflectively and ethically the question of a proper contribution to society (Fraser & Spiller, 2001). In this way, the child overcomes docility and compliance with external authority. However, the use of examinations to identify and select students for rationed resources has merit relative to selection by privilege or connections in many developing nations, and the widespread acceptance of examinations as a legitimate basis for selecting students means that teaching is probably different. Ignoring the importance of the examination and failing to prepare students adequately to maximise their performance would be seen as a dereliction of professional duty. Thus, learning to be a teacher requires being able to juggle two competing needs; that is, being warm and positive with children and effectively preparing children for success in examinations. Because the United States and England have high-stakes school evaluation testing systems, teachers in those contexts have had to learn how to navigate the tensions between assessment for improved learning and assessment for accountability – a matter that current research indicates is not being successfully achieved (Nichols & Harris, 2016). In contrast, many other developed nations have much lower-stakes methods of evaluating school
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and teacher quality, consequently placing greater emphasis on assuring that all children learn. However, in examination societies, teaching that does not quickly generate higher examination scores, no matter how strongly advocated by teacher education institutions, will be seen as high risk. What does it mean to be a good teacher and how does one prepare such a teacher when governments, administrators, parents, and students will determine the quality of instruction by its direct impact on a highly valued, high-stakes examination? The second aspect of societally determined educational goals is the position of girls. It is the liberal progressive position that girls are equally entitled to schooling and that they are able to take up any subject or career. This is clearly a high priority in the developing world for the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (http://www.ungei.org/) but successful adoption is not yet universal, perhaps because economic benefits still accrue in many societies through the labour of children or because religious and political forces protect the status quo. Of course, a case can be made that even in WEIRD societies, equality of opportunity and outcome for all is not guaranteed, nor do all communities within such jurisdictions necessarily endorse such goals. Hence, how should a teacher act when community-led priorities suggest that not all students are equal and not all students should be entitled to the same quality of schooling? In a relatively popular view of education planning in Western societies, community priorities are used as the basis for determining what teachers and schools should be doing (Freire, 1972). However, this model seems to fail when the community’s values are at odds with those of teacher educators within a specific polity. This could be treated as a case of hegemonic ideology in which the ideologies of a dominant, ruling class become the values of the oppressed (Femia, 1975); however, it is difficult to ascertain when a culture so widely holds values that the espoused and enacted values are somehow hegemonic. That some positions are oppressive to girls, rather than liberating, seems self-evident. However, how can a teacher, who may well have been raised in such a community and is meant to serve it, question or doubt the validity of the community preference? What does it mean to prepare future teachers to work with within a community when the values of the community are not those held by the teacher educator? While community values are rarely monolithic, the values of the employing authority may not necessarily support a progressive approach to schooling. Whether we find this type of society palatable or not, and whether there are pressures within the society itself to change or not, teachers must be prepared to cope within these strictures. Hence, teacher education in such contexts will probably not be the same as mine, as a teacher of English in Canada, despite it taking place in Québec after the election of a separatist government in the middle 1970s.
Contextual Variance: Unpredictability in Schooling Other external conditions beyond the control of teacher education also impact on the meaning of successful teacher education. War (e.g., in parts of Africa,
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South Asia, South America, and the Middle East), climatic disasters (e.g., rises in sea levels, cyclones, earthquakes), uncontrolled diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, etc.), pandemic poverty, corruption and incompetence in government, management, and leadership, among other factors, impinge on schooling and create immense barriers to understanding what a good teacher is, let alone what good teacher education might be. It is well-established in WEIRD societies that the socio-economic resources of the home account for about half of student outcome variance (Hattie, 2009). Hence, the pressure felt by teachers, from their own sense of vocation or from the vision placed on them by teacher education, has to be tempered by what might actually be achievable. While teacher educators understand what is involved in ensuring that all future teachers can deliver high-quality education, this may not be sufficient for knowing how to prepare teachers to achieve basic educational outcomes under these most trying of circumstances. This is especially true of schooling in highly under-resourced socio-economic contexts. For example, schooling in rural environments, even in South Africa, arguably the most developed of Africa’s nations, often takes place without adequate resources (Kanjee, 2009); for example, 10% of South African children still experience daily hunger, at least half of all households require free basic services (i.e., water, electricity, sewerage, and solid waste collection), and at least 10% of schools have no electricity or water (Republic of South Africa, 2014). Despite these challenges, South Africa has near universal enrolment and completion of primary schooling, accompanied by relatively low performance on international comparative tests. Other countries also face substantial infrastructure challenges; schools in the provinces of Sabah and Sarawak, in the otherwise modern society of Malaysia, are being targeted to ensure ‘access to clean, treated water; at least 12-hours of electricity per day, along with sufficient toilets, classrooms, tables, and chairs for the student and teacher population’ (Malaysia Ministry of Education, 2012, p. E18). These two cases reflect teaching challenges in relatively developed nations (Malaysia ranked 62, classified high; South Africa 118, classified medium; out of 166 nations on the 2013 United Nations Human Development Index [http://hdr.undp.org/en]). So the question arises as to what teacher education designed for contemporary privileged societies can do in societies where such extreme challenges exist for some, let alone what teacher education might mean in the 20 least developed nations. One possibility is that teacher education in such contexts might replicate the generation of a new version of Dewey’s child-centred pedagogy that occurred in the United States long before modernisation. However, the economic conditions of the USA at that time were characterised by industrialisation, urbanisation, and rapid growth through consumption of resources. It may be that such a renewal may not be feasible in so many of the least developed nations. In economically advanced societies, teaching now seeks to introduce and integrate high-technology touch-screen portable wireless devices. But this situation
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seems a world apart from societies in which some, but not all, have electricity and few, if any, have access to modern ICT. Preparing teachers to teach in a different future is rightly part of contemporary teacher education in high-technology societies, but how do such concerns and research play out in societies where much more than basic infrastructure cannot be taken for granted? Is it a matter of moving into the future while keeping a firm eye on the rear-view mirror so that those behind are not lost in the dust? And if so, how are teachers educated for such conditions? Another interesting challenge for teaching is the issue of professionalism and quality among teachers themselves. Although nearly all teachers (97%) in South Africa are qualified to teach, ‘teaching of Grades 1, 2 and 3 is so poor, and the learners’ ability to read so weak, that they are likely to struggle for the rest of their school years’ (Republic of South Africa, 2014, p. 45). A similar pattern of poor quality teaching is noted in India where the professional integrity of the teacher employed in government schools cannot be relied upon (e.g., they are not present every day or do not actually teach as expected) (Kingdon, 2007; Nambissan, 2013). Questions about teacher professionalism also arise in contexts where gifts to teachers are made in order to intercede or mediate on behalf of the gift-giver, even to the extent of giving gifts in hope of achieving better grades or job opportunities for one’s children (Cunningham, Sarayrah & Sarayrah, 1994). Even the popular ‘Teachers’ Day’ in China has become a problematic occasion in which increasingly large gifts (e.g., cash, air tickets, watches, etc.) indicate not just respect for the teacher, but also an attempt to win favourable treatment for the child whose parents make the gift (IB Times, 2012). Additionally, many mainstream teachers in China run fee-charging after-school classes purportedly as a further guarantee that students will excel in schooling, though such practices supplement their relatively modest salaries (Zhang, 2011). As Zhang (2011, p. 28) points out, the greatest risk in this practice is that this type of tutoring could reduce the teachers’ incentive to teach well during school hours. Some teachers may ‘save’ parts of the curriculum during the school day in order to keep it for the private lessons and thereby gain extra earnings. Some teachers may even coerce students to take their extra classes.
In these contexts, teachers have to be prepared to join a society in which apparently unprofessional practices are the norm. The pressure, even in WEIRD societies, to conform to the normative practices of schools in which teacher education students complete their practicum or in which they gain their first job is great. While graduating teaching standards and professional codes of conduct may require or exhort future teachers to resist dishonesty and unethical behaviour, such behaviour depends in part on societal belief that individuals should stand for truth against great odds (e.g., Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People; Henley’s Invictus; the Southern Song stories of Monk Ji Gong). However, in almost all societies, those who resist power are often vilified and rarely vindicated (witness the treatment of Ai Weiwei
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and Liu Xiabo in China and Edward Snowden in the USA). Hence, teacher education has much to do to determine if and how future teachers can be prepared to teach in contexts of great personal and professional challenge. A final concern I have for teacher education is the rise of the private sector as a valid solution for the challenges of the educational world. As indicated earlier, India’s public, government-funded schools are not only considered to be secondrate but have mean achievement scores lower than private schools (INEP, 2005) and there has been a remarkable shift in the last 25 years to private schooling (Nambissan & Rao, 2013). Although government schools are free, the public is generally convinced that private schools provide a superior educational experience (Tooley, Dixon, & Gomathi, 2007), even though private school teachers are paid less than their government peers. Brazil has also moved to private schooling as a mechanism to meet demand for education. Publicly funded universities in Brazil enrol the most academically able students on the basis of examination performance at the end of high school, while private fee-charging universities enrol students who fail to reach the cut-off scores for entry to public universities (Matos, Cirino, & Brown, 2009). What these conditions imply is that growth in the employment of teachers will be greatest in the private sector, where conditions of employment are normally less advantageous than in public government sectors. Similar privatisation trends can be seen in economically advanced nations with the development of ‘charter’ schools, which increasingly enrol students from the public school system without necessarily ensuring superior results (Ravitch, 2013). These trends suggest teacher education needs to take seriously the challenge of preparing teachers for employment conditions that may be less than ideal or even adequately protected.
CONCLUSION This opportunistic tour of nations, based on my personal experience, has taken us outside contexts with which most members of Western liberal democracies would be familiar. This has been a deliberate ploy to point out aspects of education which teacher education in developed societies seems to overlook. It also shows that even in WEIRD societies some of the issues facing other nations have currency, and a critical stance towards our normative approaches to teaching is warranted. Certainly, in my own nation of New Zealand, teacher education is seeking to prepare teachers for work in multicultural schools faced with relative poverty, cultural difference, and linguistic diversity. However, my concern is that, if much of what we think we know about psychology is based on research conducted with unusual and non-representative samples, how different is teacher education? Even my presumption that teacher education is sufficiently developed in Western liberal democracies to guide teacher development in those societies may be questionable.
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Obviously, the goal of this Handbook is to establish what we do know about preparing teachers for contemporary conditions, although I suspect most chapters will raise doubts and uncertainties and challenges rather than present definitive universal solutions within even one developed nation. This suggests that any Handbook of research on teacher education must be inherently uncertain because teacher education research is always incomplete, not yet conducted, or because social change happens relatively quickly. It may also be that my concerns about the unknowns in education are simply a reflection of my own ignorance; perhaps the research and literature on how to prepare teachers in the challenging environments I have described exists, but in languages or locations of which I am simply unaware. However, I stand by my concern that the norms of liberal, democratic, and progressive approaches to teaching and teacher education are probably inadequate for teaching in conditions that apply to the vast majority of the world’s population.
REFERENCES Barnes, D. (1976). From Communication to Curriculum. London: Penguin. Berry, R. (2011). Assessment reforms around the world. In R. Berry & B. Adamson (Eds), Assessment Reform in Education: Policy and Practice (pp. 89–102). Dordrecht: Springer. Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74. doi:10.1080/0969595980050102 Bowers, C.A. (1992). Education, Cultural Myths, and the Ecological Crisis. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Braun, H. & Mislevy, R. (2005). Intuitive test theory. Phi Delta Kappan, 86, 488–497. doi:10.1177/ 003172170508600705 Brown, G.T.L. & Gao, L. (2015). Chinese teachers’ conceptions of assessment for and of learning: Six competing and complementary purposes. Cogent Education, 2(1), 993836. doi:10.1080/2331186X. 2014.993836. Brown, G.T.L. & Harris, L.R. (2009). Unintended consequences of using tests to improve learning: How improvement-oriented resources engender heightened conceptions of assessment as school accountability. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 6(12), 68–91. Brown, G.T.L. & Wang, Z. (2013). Illustrating assessment: How Hong Kong university students conceive of the purposes of assessment. Studies in Higher Education, 38(7), 1037–1057. doi:10.1080/0307 5079.2011.616955 Brown, G.T.L., Chaudhry, H., & Dhamija, R. (2015). The impact of an assessment policy upon teachers’ selfreported assessment beliefs and practices: A quasi-experimental study of Indian teachers in private schools. International Journal of Educational Research, 71, 50–64. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2015.03.001. Chen, J. (2007). Teacher’s conceptions of excellent teaching in middle school in the north of China. AsiaPacific Education Review, 8(2), 288–297. doi:10.1007/BF03029263 Chen, J. & Brown, G.T.L. (2013). High-stakes examination preparation that controls teaching: Chinese prospective teachers’ conceptions of excellent teaching and assessment. Journal of Education for Teaching, 39(5), 541–556. doi:10.1080/02607476.2013.836338. Chen, J. & Brown, G.T.L. (2016). Tensions between knowledge transmission and student-focused teaching approaches to assessment purposes: Helping students improve through transmission. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 22(3), 350–367.doi:10.1080/13540602.2015.1058592
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Chen, J., Brown, G.T.L., Hattie, J.A.C., & Millward, P. (2012). Teachers’ conceptions of excellent teaching and its relationships to self-reported teaching practices. Teaching & Teacher Education, 28(7), 936–947. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2012.04.006 Cheung, T.K.-Y. (2008). An assessment blueprint in curriculum reform. Journal of Quality School Education, 5, 23–37. China Civilisation Centre (2007). China: Five Thousand Years of History and Civilization. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. Choi, C.-C. (1999). Public examinations in Hong Kong. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 6(3), 405–417. doi:10.1080/09695949992829 Cole, M. (2010). What’s culture got to do with it? Educational research as a necessarily interdisciplinary enterprise. Educational Researcher, 39(6), 461–470. doi:10.3102/0013189X10380247 Cunningham, R.B., Sarayrah, Y.K, & Sarayrah, Y.E. (1994). Taming ‘wasta’ to achieve development. Arab Studies Quarterly, 16(3), 29–41. Davey, G., De Lian, C., & Higgins, L. (2007). The university entrance examination system in China. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31(4), 385–396. doi:10.1080/03098770701625761 Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1915). The School and Society (Revised edn). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Doménech Betoret, F. & Artiga, A.G. (2004). Trainee teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning, classroom layout and exam design. Educational Studies, 30(4), 355–372. doi:10.1080/0305569042000310309 Femia, J. (1975). Hegemony and consciousness in the thought of Antonio Gramsci. Political Studies, 23(1), 29–48. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.1975.tb00044.x Fraser, D. & Spiller, D. (2001). Effective teachers. In C. McGee & D. Fraser (Eds), The Professional Practice of Teaching (2nd edn, pp. 67–84). Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin. Gebril, A. (2016). Educational assessment in Muslim countries: Values, polices, and practices. In G.T.L. Brown & L.R. Harris (Eds), Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (pp. 420–435). New York: Routledge. Government of India (2009). The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. New Delhi: The Gazette of India, Extraordinary. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1HVvA6Q Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Meta-analyses in Education. London: Routledge. Henrich, J., Heine, S.J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The Weirdest People in the World? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2/3), 61–135. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999152X Ho, A., Watkins, D., & Kelly, M. (2001). The conceptual change approach to improving teaching and learning: An evaluation of a Hong Kong staff development programme. Higher Education, 42, 143–169. doi:10.1023/A:1017546216800 Hofstede, G. (2007). A European in Asia. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 10(1), 16–21. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-839X.2006.00206.x IB Times (2012, 11 September). Expensive gifts on Teachers’ Day in China raise question: Kindness or bribery? International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/expensive-giftsteachers-day-china-raise-question-kindness-or-bribery-782511 INEP (2005). Results from Brazil’s National Evaluation System of Basic Education (SAEB). National Institute of Educational Research Anísio Teixeira. Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira. Retrieved 16 February 2006 from http://www.inep.gov.br/basica/saeb Kanjee, A. (2009). Enhancing teacher assessment practices in South African schools: Evaluation of the assessment resource banks. Education as Change, 13(1), 73–89. doi:10.1080/16823200902940599 Kember, D. & Kwan, K.-P. (2000). Lecturers’ approaches to teaching and their relationship to conceptions of good teaching. Instructional Science, 28, 469–490. doi:10.1023/A:1026569608656 Kennedy, K.J., Chan, J.K.S., & Fok, P.K. (2011). Holding policy-makers to account: Exploring ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ policy and the implications for curriculum reform. London Review of Education, 9(1), 41–54. doi:10.1080/14748460.2011.550433
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Kingdon, G.G. (2007). The progress of school education in India. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 23(2), 168–195. doi:10.1093/oxrep/grm015 LeVine, R.A. (1984). Properties of culture: An ethnographic view. In R.A. Shweder and R.A. LeVine (Eds), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (pp. 67–87). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LeVine, R.A. & White, M.I. (1986). Human Conditions: The Cultural Basis of Educational Developments. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Li, J. (2003). The core of Confucian learning. American Psychologist, 58(2), 146–147. doi:10.1037/0003066X.58.2.146 Lingard, B. & Lewis, S. (2016). Globalization of the Anglo-American approach to top-down, test-based educational accountability. In G.T.L. Brown & L.R. Harris (Eds), Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (pp. 387–403). New York: Routledge. Linn, R.L. (2000). Assessments and accountability. Educational Researcher, 29(2), 4–16. doi:10.3102/0013189X029002004 Malaysia Ministry of Education (2012). Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013–2025 (Preliminary Report). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Author. Matos, D.A.S., Cirino, S.D., & Brown, G.T.L. (2009). Students’ conceptions of assessment in higher education in Brazil. In D.M. McInerney, G.T.L. Brown, & G.A.D. Liem (Eds), Student Perspectives on Assessment: What Students Can Tell Us about Assessment for Learning (pp. 235–253). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. McGee, C. (1994). Classroom Interaction. In C. McGee & D. Fraser (Eds), The Professional Practice of Teaching: An Introduction to Teaching, Learning and Curriculum (pp. 175–195). Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press. Middleton, S. (2012). Ashton-Warner, Sylvia Constance. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6a1/ ashton-warner-sylvia-constance Nambissan, G.B. (2013). Opening up the black box? Sociologists and the study of schooling in India. In G.B. Nambissan & S.S. Rao (Eds), Sociology of Education in India: Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns (pp. 83–102). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nambissan, G.B. & Rao, S.S. (2013). Introduction: Sociology of education in India – Trajectory, location, and concerns. In G.B. Nambissan & S.S. Rao (Eds), Sociology of Education in India: Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns (pp. 1–23). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nanda, P., Datta, N., & Das, P. (2014). Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers on Girls’ Education. New Delhi: International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Nichols, S.L. & Harris, L.R. (2016). Accountability assessment’s effects on teachers and schools. In G.T.L. Brown & L.R. Harris (Eds), Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (pp. 40–56). New York: Routledge. NUEPA (2014). Secondary Education in India: Progress Toward Universalisation (Flash Statistics). New Delhi: National University of Educational Planning and Administration. OECD (2011). Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States. Paris: OECD Publishing. Ota, M. & Moffatt, P.G. (2007). The within-household schooling decision: A study of children in rural Andhra Pradesh. Journal of Population Economics, 20(1), 223–239. doi:10.1007/s00148-0050033-z Purdie, N. & Hattie, J. (2002). Assessing students’ conceptions of learning. Australian Journal of Educational & Developmental Psychology, 2, 17–32. Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York: A.E. Knopf. Republic of South Africa (2014). Millennium Development Goals: Country Report 2013. Pretoria, RSA: National Coordinating Committee for the Millennium Development Goals.
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Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press. Sekher, T.V. & Hatti, N. (2005). Discrimination of Female Children in Modern India: From Conception through Childhood. Paper presented at the XXV International Population Conference, Tours, France. Spindler, G. & Spindler, L. (1987). Cultural dialogue and schooling in Schoenhausen and Roseville: A comparative analysis. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 18(1), 3–16. doi: 10.1525/aeq.1987. 18.1.04x0758d Sucharita, V. (2014). Negotiating between family, peers and school: Understanding the world of government school and private school students. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 44(3), 379–393. doi:10.1080/03057925.2013.792671 Tooley, J., Dixon, P., & Gomathi, S.V. (2007). Private schools and the millennium development goal of universal primary education: A census and comparative survey in Hyderabad, India. Oxford Review of Education, 33(5), 539–560. Wang, G. (1996). Educational assessment in China. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 3(1), 75–88. Wang, Z. & Brown, G. (2014). Hong Kong tertiary students’ conceptions of assessment of academic ability. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(5), 1063–1077. doi:10.1080/07294360.2014. 890565 World Bank (2009). Secondary Education in India: Universalizing Opportunity. Washington, DC: The World Bank, Human Development Unit South Asia Region. Yousafzi, M. & Lamb, C. (2013). I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. New York: Little, Brown & Company. Zhang, W. (2011). Shadow education with Chinese characteristics. The Newsletter, 56, 28. Retrieved from http://iias.nl/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL56_28.pdf Zhao, Y. (2014). Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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SECTION II
Learning Teacher Identity in Teacher Education Douwe Beijaard
The interest in teacher identity and the development of this identity has much of its origin in research on teachers’ practical knowledge in the late 1980s. When exploring teachers’ practical knowledge through the use of narrative research methods and techniques, it became clear that the teachers who participated in research not only explicated knowledge they used in their practice but that this knowledge was also very personal. In their knowledge of their work as teachers, they also expressed the kind of teacher they were (e.g., Clandinin & Connelly, 1987; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). Since then, the interest in teacher identity has grown rapidly. Meanwhile several review studies have been published about this topic such as those – in chronological order – by Beijaard, Meijer and Verloop (2004), Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) and Izadinia (2013). Teacher identity is often seen nowadays as a lens through which to explore or address many topics/issues in the domain of teaching and teacher education. In this section of the Handbook six of these topics/issues are presented. The first chapter in this section, written by Jan D. Vermunt, Maria Vrikki, Paul Warwick and Neil Mercer, connects teacher identity formation to what is known about learning patterns from an educational psychology perspective. In educational psychology, a number of learning patterns have been distinguished. Vermunt et al. empirically support the claim that teachers’ professional identity (in this chapter
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defined as how teachers professionally see themselves) is strongly associated with a meaning-oriented learning pattern. Dialogues among colleagues, such as those that take place in the context of lesson study, are an important aspect for fostering a meaning-oriented learning pattern. The authors argue that dialogue is a relevant mechanism that underlies the relationship between teacher learning and the formation of a teacher identity, and that being a meaning-oriented learner leads to strong and self-conscious teacher identities. Situated cognition is an important perspective for investigating the development of a teacher identity, the topic of the chapter written by Sue Cherrington. Student teachers participate in different social contexts and, as Cherrington explains, the uniqueness of these social contexts presents complex challenges for both initial teacher education and more general professional learning and development programmes for teachers. A number of examples of studies into educational programmes are given that are grounded in situative approaches and strategies and aim at influencing teacher identity development of student and novice teachers as well as teachers in general. Specific attention is given to the role of personal aspects, contextual factors and emotions in identity development. It is further argued that learners’ identities develop and are shaped through participation in community practices. Against this background, Cherrington explains why situative approaches to research hold promise for understanding the development of teacher identity. In the context of teacher education, teacher identity is often seen as a complex and dynamic configuration of personal and professional factors that more or less influence each other. In their chapter, therefore, Douwe Beijaard and Paulien C. Meijer frame teacher growth in terms of reconciling aspects of the personal and professional dimensions of becoming a teacher. In this process, it is important to pay attention to the beliefs that student teachers bring with them when they enter teacher education, and the tensions these may cause. Against this background they point to the need for doing ‘real’ identity work in teacher education. They furthermore argue that ownership, sense-making and agency are essential concepts for understanding and provoking identity learning in teacher education. Most teachers, particularly in secondary and higher education, derive their identity first of all from the subject they studied themselves. This topic is the subject of the chapter written by Francine Peterman. One’s subject or content area strongly determines who one is and how one wishes to be seen as a teacher, but Peterman makes clear that this is not as straightforward as might be suspected. She illustrates this with many examples from the studies she reviewed. The impact of subject or content area on one’s professional identity depends, for example, on one’s own experiences as a student and on former teachers who are (not) seen as role models. The recognition of your subject or how your content expertise is recognised by peers from the same subject are further influential factors. In sum, what subject or content area you have studied, from whom, how and where, all ensure that the impact of subject or content area on developing a teacher identity is already a complex issue in itself.
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Beverly Cross’s chapter challenges more ‘traditional’ conceptualisations of teacher identity by following a post-modern approach to identity. In this approach, teacher identity is seen as complex, dynamic and changing. It is interesting that Cross does not see identity as something that has to be developed, but more as something that one lives: as processes of sense-making about identity in the complex contexts of teaching with all its contradictions, uncertainties, dominant thoughts, etc. A post-modern approach to identity opens new spaces for new ideas around identity, such as providing a creative space for individuals to complicate who they are and how they wish to represent themselves to and with others. It also opens new ways of understanding how identity is interpreted and how meaning is ascribed to it in lived contexts like schools. Cross finds it essential that teacher educators and the teachers they prepare need to understand their own identities and make this essential and relevant to learning, in her opinion the next seminal component of teacher educator’s work and research. A somewhat other theme than those described above pertains to developing an activist teacher identity through teacher education. This theme is highlighted in the chapter written by Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay and Florence R. Sullivan. Teacher activism as conceptualised by Oyler et al. foregrounds issues of social (in)justice. Teacher education that fosters an activist teacher identity is inherent in the tension that exists between schooling for competition and control versus schooling for collective social justice. Oyler et al. review a number of studies into teacher education for social action. As such, they explore how students, teachers, teacher educators and non-profit leaders – all moved by their own critical consciousness – forge unique relationships that exceed the typical school–university partnership. The authors argue that building critical consciousness makes it possible for teachers to integrate activism into both their work and identities as teachers. The chapters in this section of the Handbook represent dominant discourses that currently take place about teacher identity in the context of teaching and teacher education. They also give rise to new questions with regard to the understanding and development of teacher identities. For example, what specific types of learning or learning patterns need to be encouraged in order to develop a teacher identity? When and to what extent should teacher learning be perceived as identity learning? In addition, is it necessary to do specific ‘identity work’ in teacher education or must teacher education in essence be identity development itself, where identity is not only a learning outcome but – simultaneously – an ongoing learning process as well? If so, what does this all mean for the content areas and issues to address in teacher education? If identity is to a large extent lived in contexts, what does this mean for the contexts we bring our student teachers into? What is the influence of the subjects or content areas studied in prior education and in teacher education itself on developing a teacher identity? And not to forget: what should be characteristic of teacher identity in general, what more context-specific and who will have to decide on that?
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Currently, a trend is visible that research focuses more on programme development in teacher education, with an explicit focus on identity formation, while previous research focused much more on trying to understand what teacher identity entailed and how it could be understood. In this phase of research on teacher identity, it might be wise to opt for both ways of approaching teacher identity in order to develop this topic further. Against this background and the questions mentioned above, the following themes are particularly worth investigating. First, sense-making processes play an important role in identity learning, connecting what someone learns with the kind of teacher (s)he is and wants to be. It would be relevant to develop a teacher education programme to figure out which specific kinds of learning activities support these processes of sense-making by making use of insights from educational psychology for this; for example, activities such as critically processing and sharing (new) knowledge and experiences, self- regulation and (social-)constructivist learning activities. Second, identity learning is both a process and a product. How to do justice to both in teacher education? For research purposes, it is worthwhile to find out how the two are related within and across individual student teachers, and the influence thereon of someone’s personal and professional agency and contexts. Third, but less easy to investigate, is trying to find out what effect an explicit attention to identity learning in teacher education may have on teachers’ work and lives on the long run. The chapters introduced in this section of the Handbook offer much inspiration for these and undoubtedly other research themes as well.
REFERENCES Beauchamp, C. & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: An overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 175–189. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P.C. & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107–128. Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (1987). Teachers’ personal knowledge: what counts as ‘personal’ in studies of the personal. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19(6), 487–500. Connelly, F.M. & Clandinin, D.J. (1988). Teachers as Curriculum Planners. Narratives of Experience. New York: Teachers College Press. Izadinia, M. (2013). A review of research on student teachers’ professional identity. British Educational Research Journal, 39(4), 694–713.
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8 Connecting Teacher Identity Formation to Patterns in Teacher Learning J a n D . Ve r m u n t , M a r i a Vr i k k i , P a u l Wa r w i c k a n d N e i l M e rc e r
INTRODUCTION Many recent educational innovations all over the world aim to foster active, selfregulated and collaborative ways of learning, since research suggests that these ways of learning are most beneficial in terms of both the quality of learning and the preparation for lifelong learning (e.g. Baeten, Dochy & Struyven, 2013). Examples of teaching-learning models or pedagogies with this aim include problem-based learning, project-centred learning, competency-based teaching, and concern-based teaching and learning. Increasing students’ self-regulation assumes a gradual decrease in teacher regulation of student learning, which is often contradictory to teachers’ common practices and beliefs about good teaching. These pedagogical models not only have implications for teachers’ teaching practices, but first and foremost for their identity as a teacher. In more traditional forms of teaching, a teacher’s core identity is defined as a subject expert, whose main responsibility is to transfer subject knowledge to the students. In many contemporary teaching approaches, however, the teacher is instead viewed as a learning process expert, whose main responsibility is to foster active, self-regulated and collaborative learning in the students. In problem-based learning, for example, teachers are expected to be able to act as learning and group process facilitators. In project-centred learning teachers are expected to supervise project groups and to facilitate collaborative learning.
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Competency-based teaching requires teachers to assess students’ competencies, design bespoke learning trajectories and act as students’ mentors. Concern-based pedagogies expect teachers to be able to help students clarify their concerns and act as portfolio supervisor (Vermunt, 2007). For many teachers these are new roles that they are not used to fulfilling, and the need for teacher learning to master these roles is often underestimated. But even more importantly, these new roles and expectations impinge upon a teacher’s identity. As Brickhouse (2001, p. 286) puts it, ‘learning is not merely a matter of acquiring knowledge, it is a matter of deciding what kind of person you are and want to be and engaging in those activities that make one part of the relevant communities’. Failing to recognise the challenges that pedagogical adaptation poses for teachers’ identities, and instead seeing professional development mainly as learning new teaching behaviours, grossly underestimates the significance of teacher professional identity for their learning and development. This chapter explores the relationship between teacher learning and teacher identity. Using the example of teacher learning processes identified in the course of our work on Lesson Study, which is an increasingly used model for teachers’ professional development, we discuss the interrelations between teacher learning processes and professional identity, and how the dynamic nature of the latter positions identity as both a personal factor and an outcome variable in teacher learning.
TEACHER PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY FORMATION Although research on teacher identity is growing, the concept itself still lacks a clear and common definition. Teacher identity has often been poorly defined, if defined at all (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004). This lack of a common definition points to the fact that identity is a particularly complex notion. In a recent review of the literature, Akkerman and Meijer (2011) identified three main characteristics of teacher identity: (1) multiplicity, which refers to the multiple subcomponents of identity; (2) discontinuity, which refers to the ongoing process of identity formation; and (3) social nature, which suggests relations of identity to numerous ‘social contexts and relationships’ (p. 310). The definition of identity we use in our work pertains to all three characteristics. In terms of multiplicity, we adopt Beijaard et al.’s (2000) conceptualisation of professional identity, which refers to ‘representations of [teachers’] understanding of their own professional identity’ (p. 750); in other words, we focus on how teachers see themselves as professionals. These representations derive from combinations of ‘the ways [teachers] see themselves as subject matter experts, pedagogical experts and didactical experts’ (Beijaard et al., 2000, p. 751). Subject expertise refers to teachers possessing deep knowledge of the subject that enables them to develop effective tasks, provide high quality explanations and diagnose
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students’ misconceptions. Pedagogical expertise concerns the ethical and moral dimension of teaching, which tackles social and emotional dilemmas. These dimensions are particularly important, as they seem to be present in the teaching profession more than in any other profession (Fenstermacher, 1994). Finally, didactical expertise mainly refers to knowledge and the skilled use of teaching approaches. In particular, this area concerns the potential effects of the shift from teacher-centred approaches to more student-centred approaches on teacher identity. The implicit change of the teacher’s role from a ‘transmitter of knowledge’ to a ‘facilitator of learning’ may have a strong effect on how teachers perceive themselves in their profession. Concerning discontinuity, recent research has shown that identity is not a stable trait and that identity formation is an ongoing process, which involves the continuous re-interpretation of experiences (Kerby, 1991). As Danielsson and Warwick (2015, p. 73) put it, ‘identity is a constant becoming’. These re- interpretations take place through teachers’ self-dialogue around the question ‘who am I at this moment?’, which leads to constant shifts of identity (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Finally, the social nature of identity stresses the impact of external interactions, or dialogues, on identity formation. Several authors conceptualise identity as socially constructed through negotiations with others, primarily colleagues (Cohen, 2010; Rodgers & Scott, 2008), to frame who they are (Danielsson & Warwick, 2015). The social nature of identity is particularly relevant in the context of our research. Lesson Study promotes collaborative professional development through dialogue between colleagues. While its aim is teacher learning oriented towards student learning, it sets the context for social constructions and negotiations of the identity of its group members. The discussion around the three characteristics of teacher identity demonstrates the complexity of the concept. Being dynamic, identity constantly shifts according to the influence of internal and external factors. Teachers’ internal dialogue about who they are at each point in time brings in the history of one’s previous identities and, through reflections on and narrations of experiences, this history is further built up. External factors refer to the social nature of identity and the influence of the people that a teacher negotiates his/her identity with. Again, dialogue becomes key here.
TEACHER LEARNING FROM AN EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE Theories and Research on Teacher Learning The kind of student learning that teachers – implicitly or explicitly – promote, and the kind of students they hope to develop, is dependent upon their beliefs and
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values and how they view their identity. Research on the nature of the learning activities teachers employ in their own professional development, and on the way teachers regulate their own learning (and not that of their students), is only recently beginning to emerge (James & McCormick, 2009; Opfer & Pedder, 2011). Figure 8.1 shows a model of teacher learning in context (Vermunt & Endedijk, 2011). The core of the model is formed by teachers’ learning patterns. These consist of teachers’ own learning activities (what they do to learn), the way they regulate their own professional learning (how they steer their learning), their beliefs concerning learning about teaching, their motivations to learn about teaching, and the interrelationships between these elements. These learning patterns are influenced by personal and contextual factors, and lead to learning outcomes, indicated by some kind of change usually in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional identity. These processes are illustrated in Figure 8.1. As indicated in Figure 8.1, teachers’ professional identity can play a dual role in their learning. The type of teacher that individuals perceive themselves to be at a moment in time, which pertains to the multiplicity characteristic of identity, is an important personal factor that can largely affect their approach to learning. Its discontinuous and social nature, however, also places identity as an outcome in the model. The triggered learning processes in a collaborative context
Beliefs of learning about teaching Regula on of learning Mo va ons to learn about teaching
Learning ac vi es
Learning outcomes (including changes in professional iden ty)
Learning paern
Personal factors (including professional iden ty)
Contextual factors
Figure 8.1 A model of teacher learning and professional development
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of professional development can influence the internal and external dialogues that teachers hold when constantly forming their identity. With changes in their learning processes, there are likely to be changes in answering the question ‘who am I?’, as the ways in which teachers learn can become part of who they are. In addition, changes in learning processes may affect teachers’ negotiations of their identity with colleagues who are part of their professional group. For example, if a teacher learns more in an application-oriented way, then this teacher may perceive himself/herself as more practical in their profession, rather than theoretical, and this is the type of identity that the teacher will implicitly negotiate with the members of the group through dialogue. This mutually influential relationship between learning patterns and professional identity will be illustrated in the next section of this chapter, which refers to the example of our recent project on Lesson Study. Oosterheert and Vermunt (2001) found some preliminary evidence for the existence of patterns in the learning of student teachers, while Evans (2014) documented a deep approach to learning adopted by some student teachers. Hoekstra, Brekelmans, Beijaard and Korthagen (2009) studied experienced teachers’ informal learning in the context of a national educational innovation and found that teachers employed different learning activities to cope with the innovations. Donche and Van Petegem (2009) tracked developments in learning patterns of student teachers in higher education, and found an increase of meaning-directed learning and a decrease of undirected learning over time. Endedijk, Donche and Oosterheert (2014) reviewed research on student teacher learning patterns that used a particular measurement instrument. In these studies, generally, a survivaloriented, a performance-oriented and two variants of a meaning-oriented learning pattern were found. Opfer, Pedder and Lavicza (2011) found four ‘orientations’ of teacher learning, a concept related to what are called learning patterns here and consisting of teachers’ beliefs, practices and experiences about learning: an internal, research, collaborative and external orientation. Bakkenes, Vermunt and Wubbels (2010) studied teacher learning activities and outcomes in the context of a nationwide introduction of active and self-regulated learning in upper secondary education in the Netherlands. The innovation meant a profound change in the role of the teacher from a subject matter expert, who explains and clarifies the subject matter, to a coach, who is expected to support and guide the active and self-regulated learning processes of students. About 500 reports of learning experiences were collected from 94 teachers over the course of one school year in the form of digital logs. The researchers identified 735 learning activities in these logs, with experimenting with new teaching practices (32%), considering own practice or students’ learning (33%) and getting ideas from others (15%) emerging as the most frequent ones. With regard to learning outcomes, 1,287 descriptions were identified, half of which referred to changes in knowledge and beliefs (awareness, confirmed ideas, new ideas), 35% to emotions (positive, negative, surprises), 13.5% to intentions for practice (to try new practices, to continue new
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or current practices), and only 1.5% to actual changes in practice. This last figure is rather surprising and illustrates that the innovation did not immediately bring about changes in classroom practices. Possibly, the teachers’ identity had remained unaffected. In a recent study of our research team at Cambridge, teacher learning patterns were investigated in the context of Lesson Study. The project, which was initiated after the introduction of a new mathematics curriculum in England in 2013, aimed to help teachers adjust to this educational innovation by implementing Lesson Study within the practice of mathematics teachers in about eighty primary and secondary schools in London. One way in which the effectiveness of this implementation was evaluated was by using a new inventory on teacher learning patterns. The data analysis revealed three types of learning patterns. They were named meaning-oriented learning, application-oriented learning and problematic learning (Vermunt, Vrikki, Mercer & Warwick, 2015). Meaningoriented learning was characterised by learning activities such as comparing different students’ work, thinking about how different lessons relate to each other, monitoring pupils’ progress, experimenting with new ways of teaching, trying to understand how students learn, and reflecting on one’s own teaching practices. Application-oriented learning was typified by wanting to know which teaching methods work, using tips and ideas from colleagues in one’s teaching, learning most from one’s own practical experiences, and learning best when trying out new ideas in practice. Struggling with new ways of teaching, not knowing how to teach one’s subject in another way than one is used to, having a growing feeling of discontent with one’s teaching, and only wanting to learn things that can be used immediately in one’s teaching, were some defining elements of problematic learning. A longitudinal comparison showed an increase in meaning-oriented teacher learning and a decrease in problematic learning during the time the teachers worked with Lesson Study. There is some evidence for the influence of personal and contextual factors on teacher learning patterns. Personal factors known to influence teacher learning are, for example, self-esteem, interest in the profession, tolerance of ambiguity, love of learning, professional agency and professional identity. Among the contextual factors documented in the literature are, for example, the pedagogy of the teacher education or professional development programme, the quality of the leadership for learning in a school, a collaborative versus individualistic school culture and school organisational conditions (such as openness to innovation, learning orientation of the school culture, dominant beliefs in the school) (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Endedijk et al., 2014; Pietarinen, Pyhältö & Soini, 2016; Postholm, 2012; Vermunt & Endedijk, 2011). To date, there are few studies on the relation between teachers’ way of learning (in terms of process and pattern) and the learning outcomes they attain (in terms of the kind of knowledge and practices they develop). However, there are exceptions, including the Bakkenes et al. (2010) study, which found that the
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extent to which teachers experimented with new practices was positively associated with learning outcomes as ‘intention to continue new practices’, ‘positive emotions’ and ‘surprises’. Opfer et al. (2011) found that elements of what they called teacher learning orientations were related to change in terms of beliefs, practices and students.
Crossing Boundaries between Teacher Learning and Student Learning Research on students’ learning and on teachers’ teaching and learning is currently carried out in separate research communities, with each having its own conceptual frameworks, methodological preferences, professional organisations and scientific journals; cross-referral is unusual. In our view, traditional boundaries have to be crossed to allow knowledge advancement on how teachers’ and students’ learning may benefit from one another: boundaries between research communities, between communities of practice, and between research and practice. In 2011 Vermunt and Endedijk published a review of the international research literature on teacher learning patterns, and we feel it would not be appropriate to repeat that review in this chapter. Moreover, some very good reviews about teacher learning and professional development have been published over the last couple of years (see for example Avalos, 2011; Borko, Jacobs & Koellner, 2010; Desimone, 2009; Lieberman & Pointer Mace, 2010; Postholm, 2012; Timperley, Wilson, Barrar & Fung, 2007; Van Veen, Zwart & Meirink, 2012). Since all the chapters in this part of the Handbook address teacher identity, we have chosen not to include a systematic review of teacher identity as well. The current chapter is more theoretical in nature than a review or meta-analysis chapter. Many empirical and review studies over the last decade have tried to identify the core features, characteristics or critical components of effective teacher professional development (PD) programmes (e.g. Borko et al., 2010; Desimone, 2009; Postholm, 2012; Van Driel et al., 2012). For example, Borko et al. (2010) identified the following characteristics of effective PD: it addresses problems of practice; it is focused on students’ learning; preferred instructional practices are modelled; it promotes active teacher learning and teacher inquiry; it is collaborative in nature; it is appropriate to, often school-based, goals; and it is ongoing and sustainable. Other reviews come to similar conclusions, with Van Veen et al. (2012) adding favourable school organisational conditions (providing time, resources, facilities and support). In a recent review, which concerned the effectiveness of teacher PD programmes in the domain of science teaching, Van Veen et al. (2012) used an analytic framework based on Desimone (2009). The model can be characterised as mainly an intervention – outcome model. In the model, features of an intervention lead to increased teacher quality in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes, which in turn leads to changes in teacher classroom behaviour. This change in teaching behaviour consequently leads to
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improvements in student outcomes. This chain of events takes place under certain school organisational conditions. However, in their review of teacher professional learning, Opfer and Pedder (2011) question why there are studies showing that some teachers who participate in PD programmes with all the core characteristics do not learn or change at all. This points to an important omission in these models. In our view, programme characteristics like those mentioned above are not the same as qualities, characteristics of learning processes, although these two characteristics are often mixed up in the literature. In our view, what is missing, crucially, in models such as those presented by Desimone (2009) and Van Veen et al. (2012) are the processes of teacher learning and student learning (cf. Timperley et al., 2007). These missing links remind us of the black box approach in behaviourist psychology, where the processes intervening between a stimulus and a response were thought of as an illegitimate object of study. In theories and models of student learning, these processes of student learning occupy a central place (Dinsmore, Alexander & Loughlin, 2008). Research on student learning has shown the importance of cognitive, regulative and affective processes mediating between a learning environment (of which the teacher and his/her teaching is an important part) and the learning outcomes a student achieves. Moreover, this research has shown that it is not so much the learning environment in itself that influences the way students go about learning, but rather it is the learning environment as perceived and experienced by students. The way students perceive and experience a learning environment is influenced by both the ‘objective’ learning environment and the knowledge, conceptions, beliefs or mental models a student uses to interpret his or her environment (Nijhuis, Segers & Gijselaers, 2008). Figure 8.2 represents our conceptualisation of the relation between teacher learning and student learning, including the processes of learning. Teacher Learning environment
Learning processes
Learning outcomes
Teacher layer
Teacher educaon – professional development
Teacher learning processes
Teacher learning outcomes
Student layer
Students’ learning environment – teachers’ teaching
Student learning processes
Student learning outcomes
School organisaonal condions
Figure 8.2 A multi-layer model of teacher learning and student learning
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education or PD programmes, which represent the ‘features of the intervention’, may initiate teacher learning processes. These learning processes lead to teacher learning outcomes, which may become manifest in many different forms, including changed knowledge, beliefs, motives, attitudes, skills and professional identity; this phase is represented by the ‘teacher quality’ part of the Desimone (2009) model. Given its multiple, discontinuous and social character (Beijaard et al., 2004), professional identity is likely to be affected and re-shaped by processes of teacher learning. Certainly, different kinds of interventions would induce different kinds of learning processes, which would have differential effects on identity. When teachers use these changed knowledge, skills, beliefs or identity to change their teaching practices, they become part of the student learning environment; the change in the teachers’ teaching part of the model. The changed student learning environment may then initiate student learning processes, leading to student learning outcomes, which can be conceptualised as changed knowledge, beliefs, identity, motives, attitudes, skills, and so on. Student learning outcomes may then become visible in improved results on achievement tests. These interrelations are dynamic and the influences may well move in other directions as well. Therefore, the arrows between the elements of the model are represented as bidirectional. For example, teachers may observe the learning processes of their students and through reflection learn how their students’ understanding is fostered or hampered by the way they taught a particular topic. Educational innovations may demand different teaching practices and hence give rise to changes in teacher education programmes. Moreover, students may learn a lot by observing their teachers struggling to understand new and difficult content.
CONNECTING TEACHER IDENTITIES TO PATTERNS IN TEACHER LEARNING THROUGH DIALOGUE IN LESSON STUDY Lesson Study is a context that reinforces the connection between teacher and student learning. Originating in Japan, it is a model of teacher professional development which involves joint planning and joint evaluation of research lessons by small groups of teachers within or between schools. A distinct characteristic of Lesson Study is the emphasis on case students (Lee, 2011), who are selected by the teachers for more focused discussions as representatives of typical student subgroups within a class (e.g. high ability students, students who have problems with mathematical language). Lesson Study discussions then become more focused on students through setting specific success criteria for case students, focusing observations on them, and evaluating teaching based on student performance, rather than assessing the teacher (Dudley, 2013). This emphasis on case students reinforces the relationship between teachers’ professional learning and students’ learning outcomes.
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The Impact of Teachers’ Learning Patterns on their Identity Formation and the Other Way Around Relations between these three learning patterns and certain personal and contextual factors were investigated as well, including professional identity. The learning patterns were strongly associated with the three forms of professional identity previously examined by Beijaard et al. (2000). These refer to pedagogical expertise (related to student development), didactic expertise (related to teaching) and subject knowledge expertise. The meaning-oriented learning pattern turned out to be significantly and strongly associated with all three of these professional identities, with correlations ranging between 0.56 (student development expertise) and 0.64 (teaching approaches expertise). Application-oriented learning was also significantly, but to a somewhat lesser degree, associated with all three identities, with correlations varying between 0.37 (subject knowledge expertise) and 0.53 (student development expertise). Finally, problematic learning showed negative but non-significant correlations with all three identities, with correlations varying between −0.14 and −0.23 (Vermunt, 2016). These results suggest a significant positive correlation between what might be termed ‘good quality learning patterns’ – namely meaning-oriented learning and application-oriented learning – and all three identity variables. Problematic learning correlated negatively but not significantly with the three identity variables. These results are tentative but provide some initial evidence for the mutually influential relationship between learning patterns and identity suggested earlier in the chapter. Of course, these are correlational data and hence no strong conclusions can be drawn about the direction of the relationships. It may be that teachers’ professional identity, as a part of personal factors, influences the quality of teacher learning. It may also be the case that the quality of teacher learning influences teacher professional identity development. Finally, these associations may also represent reciprocal relationships, in which the existing professional identities influence the learning patterns teachers are inclined to adopt, which in turn influence teachers’ identity formation. This scenario would support the assertion that identity is not a stable trait and that it is open to reciprocal influences. In any case, the importance of the meaning-oriented learning pattern is underlined here, since this pattern shows the strongest associations with teachers’ professional identities. It is remarkable that the meaning- and application-oriented learning patterns proved to be related to all three types of teacher identity described by Beijaard et al. (2000). The three identities intercorrelated to a high degree as well, varying between 0.47 and 0.62. As Beijaard et al. (2000) did not report the correlation coefficients in their article, we cannot compare our findings with those of their study. Our findings could be explained by the fact that the teachers participating in our study were experienced teachers and therefore may have had the time to develop a more integrated professional identity, in comparison
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with that of beginning teachers or student teachers. If that is the case, it may be that the process of identity development is not only, or not primarily, a matter of seeing oneself more (or less) as a subject knowledge expert, or as a student development expert or teaching expert. It may well be that the core of identity development is an increasing integration of these three different facets of identity to a point where one can see oneself increasingly as an expert in teaching subject matter to foster student development (cf. Horn & Kane, 2015). In such a scenario, the fact that meaning-oriented learning shows higher correlations with this integrated teacher identity is not surprising, since the core of meaning-oriented learning is the development of an integrated theory of practice. Lesson Study therefore may provide a suitable platform for these processes to take place. With its focus on case students and subject matter teaching, Lesson Study fosters the development of integrated identities through fostering meaning-oriented learning.
The Role of Dialogue in Teacher Learning and Identity Formation In understanding how teacher learning patterns emerge and change in the context of Lesson Study, our investigation focused on the collaborative nature of Lesson Study, which places dialogue at its core (Warwick et al., 2016). When teachers participate in Lesson Study, they become part of collaborative peer groups in order to plan lessons and reflect on them. Adopting a sociocultural framework (e.g. Vygotsky, 1962) for understanding the role of talk, we examined talk as a social mode of thinking used for constructing common knowledge, sharing ideas and tackling problems collaboratively (Littleton & Mercer, 2013). In this sense, dialogue is not just a tool for conversation, but a tool for people to think together. This is the notion of ‘interthinking’ (Mercer, 2000), a term that effectively expresses the Vygotskian idea that humans learn ways of thinking through ‘intermental’ functioning (i.e. interaction with other people) and this shapes their ‘intramental’ functioning (i.e. within themselves); it expresses the importance of interaction for intellectual purposes, in the pursuit of joint goals and for identity formation. For this reason, a major focus of our research is on teachers’ discussions taking place in Lesson Study meetings and the ways in which these discussions mediate learning processes for teachers (Vrikki, Warwick, Vermunt, Mercer & Van Halem, 2017). A sociocultural discourse analysis (Mercer, 2004) of video-recorded teachers’ discussions revealed that the main features of productive discussions were explaining reasoning, building on ideas and questioning. These are important features of ‘exploratory talk’ (Barnes & Todd, 1995; Mercer, 1996), which was found to be the most ‘educationally effective’ type of talk in the analysis of students’ group work discussions (Littleton & Mercer, 2013). This type of talk therefore seemed to be the core mechanism in our Lesson Study videos for stimulating teacher learning processes.
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Our emphasis on dialogue is in line with previous theoretical analysis of identity formation in the PD context, which suggests that teachers need to be active in forming their professional identities – that is the concept of agency (Beijaard et al., 2004; Coldron & Smith, 1999). Specifically, Coldron and Smith (1999) argue that in order for teachers to form professional identities, they need to be empowered by their schools to participate in dialogue with fellow practitioners; they also need to be part of professional communities where dialogue flourishes, challenging them to create new practice. The development of their identity therefore ‘is dependent on the quality and availability of’ (p. 711) these social structures. All the above suggests that dialogue in collaborative professional groups plays a significant role in teacher identity formation. The intermental and intramental functioning, which enable different ways of human thinking and thus learning, strongly relate with the social and discontinuous nature of identity. Its social nature enables it to be reinforced through intermental functioning, when teachers are in external dialogue with others. Similarly, its discontinuous nature enables it to be reinforced by intramental functioning, through the teachers’ internal dialogue on the question ‘who am I at this moment?’. These shifts have effects on the multiple components of identity, with teachers moving between subject expertise, pedagogical expertise and didactical expertise. Being part of a professional group like Lesson Study, therefore, enables teachers to become agents in forming their identity through this ‘interrelatedness between the individual and the social’ (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011, p. 311) and thus develop much stronger professional identities. Dialogue therefore seems to be the mechanism that underlies the relationship between teacher learning and identity formation.
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION Through this chapter we have tried to contribute to theory development in two ways. First, we have contributed to the development of a conceptualisation of teacher learning, grounded in educational psychology research, and as such much more strongly conceptually connected to theories of student learning than was the case up to now. Second, we have connected this conceptualisation of teacher learning empirically and theoretically to teacher professional identity formation and have discussed the importance of dialogue in this process. We have been able to demonstrate the empirically strong relationships between teacher learning patterns and teacher professional identities, and found that meaning-oriented learning shows the strongest relationships with integrated professional identity formation. The teacher learning model developed in this chapter offers new insights into how the black box model for teachers’ learning can be opened, and the processes of learning understood. The model depicts the influence of personal and
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contextual factors on learning patterns, the components of learning patterns and their relationship with learning outcomes. Using our recent project on teacher learning in the context of Lesson Study, we presented how professional identity and learning processes may interact in the model. This suggests a symbiotic relationship between the two, as professional identity is an important personal factor that can affect learning patterns, but also a learning outcome that can be affected by learning patterns. In particular, our correlational findings indicate that meaning-oriented learning is most strongly associated with all three types of professional identity: subject knowledge expertise, student development expertise and teaching approaches expertise. This may suggest that this type of learning helps to integrate the three sub-identities into one, unified and multifaceted, professional identity. Our inventory results seem to tentatively support the existence of this relationship, but our analysis of video-recorded teacher discussions attempts to explain it. The core element of Lesson Study, namely dialogue, both induces learning processes and enables teachers to be active in shaping their professional identity by socially interacting with peers. Previous research has suggested that teachers need to be active agents in shaping their identity and this can only be achieved through dialogue. Lesson Study, like other PD programmes that promote collaboration, thus offers a suitable framework for teachers to engage in productive dialogue. All in all, we think the chapter leads to the conclusion that high quality teacher learning is equivalent to identity development. The nuanced and complex notion of identity adopted in this chapter, characterised by multiplicity, discontinuity and social nature, shows clear links with processes and patterns of teacher learning. Although teacher identity is multifaceted in nature, here conceptualised as the different emphasis teachers place on their subject expertise, pedagogical expertise and didactical expertise, the core of identity development in our view is an increasing integration of these three different facets of identity into a unified whole (compare the notion of adaptive expertise [Horn & Kane, 2015]). The processes and patterns of meaning-oriented learning turn out to be the best vehicle to bring about this integrated teacher identity development. The discontinuity aspect of teacher identity means it is not a fixed trait, but that it is malleable and can develop. This facet of identity is especially relevant when teachers (have to) adapt their teaching to changing ideas about good pedagogies and teaching models. It is in this context that professional development programmes are often developed and used to bring about teacher change, and the analysis in this chapter has shown that features of an intervention programme do not directly lead to teacher learning outcomes, but are mediated by processes and patterns of teacher learning. The social nature of teacher identity aligns with collaborative teacher learning in which dialogue plays an important role. Lesson Study shows many of the characteristics of effective PD programmes as identified in the literature: it addresses problems of practice; it is highly focused on students’ learning; teachers observe each other’s practices; it
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promotes active teacher learning and teacher inquiry; it is collaborative in nature; it may be appropriate to school-based goals; and it may be ongoing and sustainable. Research has shown that Lesson Study encourages meaning-oriented teacher learning and discourages problematic learning (Vermunt et al., 2015). Professional development initiatives such as Lesson Study, through their collaborative, studentfocused, classroom-practice-focused, inquiry-based and durable nature may open teachers to identity learning, much more than PD programmes outside the school which hardly affect teachers’ identity. Practical implications are evident, especially in the context of educational reforms. All over the world, educational reforms are being initiated to promote pedagogies which foster active, self-regulated and collaborative student learning. These reforms have major implications for the role of teachers, who, instead of being experts in transmitting knowledge to students, are expected to become expert in initiating and guiding active, self-regulated and collaborative learning processes in students. This change is more than an adaptation in teaching practices, but often entails a fundamental change in teachers’ professional identities. Recognising that teachers (like students) may learn in different ways and that certain learning patterns are more beneficial for identity formation than others, this seems to call for professional development initiatives that are designed to foster meaning-oriented learning. Such initiatives would create professionals with stronger, more integrated and multifaceted identities. Future research should be aimed at further exploring the nature of the relationships between teachers’ identity formation and their learning patterns. Broadening our perspective, we need studies which examine the relations between these two core phenomena, as well as the role of dialogue and features of PD programmes. Most importantly, we need studies which cross the boundaries between studies of teacher and student learning and look simultaneously at the processes and outcomes of teacher and student learning. Such approaches could lead to significant advances in our understanding of the interplay between student and teacher learning, and increase the impact of our research endeavours on classroom practices. In conclusion, this chapter has demonstrated the importance of studying teacher learning processes as part of a multi-layered model which connects and integrates teacher learning and student learning. We argue for a mutually influential relationship between teacher identity and learning patterns, in which meaning-oriented learning, as a product of good quality dialogue, helps to develop more integrated professional identities. Future research should therefore focus on clarifying the nature and magnitude of the relationships between these variables.
REFERENCES Akkerman, S.N. & Meijer, P.C. (2011). A dialogical approach to conceptualizing teacher identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 308–319.
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Avalos, B. (2011). Teacher professional development in teaching and teacher education over ten years. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 10–20. Baeten, M., Dochy, F. & Struyven, K. (2013). Enhancing students’ approaches to learning: The added value of gradually implementing case-based learning. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 28, 315–336. Bakkenes, I., Vermunt, J.D. & Wubbels, T. (2010). Teacher learning in the context of educational innovation: Learning activities and learning outcomes of experienced teachers. Learning and Instruction, 20, 533–548. Barnes, D. & Todd, F. (1995) Communication and Learning Revisited. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P.C. & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 107–128. Beijaard, D., Verloop, N. & Vermunt, J.D. (2000). Teachers’ perceptions of professional identity: An exploratory study from a personal knowledge perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 749–764. Borko, H., Jacobs, J. & Koellner, K. (2010). Contemporary approaches to teacher professional development. In E. Baker, B. McGaw & P. Peterson (Eds), International Encyclopedia of Education (part 7, pp. 548–555, 3rd edn). Oxford: Elsevier. Brickhouse, N.W. (2001). Embodying science: A feminist perspective on learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 282–295. Clarke, D. & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of teacher professional growth. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 947–967. Cohen, J.L. (2010). Getting recognized: Teachers negotiating professional identities as learners through talk. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 473–481. Coldron, J. & Smith, R. (1999). Active location in teachers’ construction of their professional identities. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31, 711–726. Danielsson, A. & Warwick, P. (2015). Identity and discourse: Gee’s discourse analysis as a way of approaching the constitution of primary science teacher identities. In L. Avraamidou & W.M. Roth (Eds), Studying Science Teacher Identity: Theoretical Perspectives, Methodological Approaches and Empirical Findings. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Desimone, L.M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 181–199. Dinsmore, D.L., Alexander, P.A. & Loughlin, S.M. (2008). Focusing the conceptual lens on metacognition, self-regulation, and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review, 20, 391–409. Donche, V. & Van Petegem, P. (2009). The development of learning patterns of student teachers: A crosssectional and longitudinal study. Higher Education, 57, 463–475. Dudley, P. (2013). Teacher learning in Lesson Study: What interaction-level discourse analysis revealed about how teachers utilised imagination, tacit knowledge of teaching and fresh evidence of pupils learning, to develop practice knowledge and so enhance their pupils’ learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, 107–121. Endedijk, M.D., Donche, V. & Oosterheert, I. (2014). Student teachers’ learning patterns in school-based teacher education programmes: The influence of person, context and time. In D. Gijbels, V. Donche, J.T.E. Richardson & J.D. Vermunt (Eds), Learning Patterns in Higher Education. London: Routledge. Evans, C. (2014). Exploring the use of a deep approach to learning with students in the process of learning to teach. In D. Gijbels, V. Donche, J.T.E. Richardson & J.D. Vermunt (Eds), Learning Patterns in Higher Education: Dimensions and Research Perspectives (pp. 187–213). New York: Routledge. Fenstermacher, G.D. (1994). The knower and the known: The nature of knowledge in research on teaching. Review of Research in Education, 20, 3–56. Hoekstra, A., Brekelmans, M., Beijaard, D. & Korthagen, F. (2009). Experienced teachers’ informal learning: Learning activities and changes in behavior and cognition. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 663–673.
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Horn, I.S. & Kane, B.D. (2015). Opportunities for professional learning in mathematics teacher workgroup conversations: Relationships to instructional expertise. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 24(3), 373–418. James, M. & McCormick, R. (2009). Teachers learning how to learn. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 973–982. Kerby, A. (1991). Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lee, C. (2011). Crossing Borders: The Global Spread of Lesson Study. Tokyo: University of Tokyo. Lieberman, A. & Pointer Mace, D. (2009). Making practice public: Teacher learning in the 21st century. Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 77–88. Littleton, K. & Mercer N. (2013). Interthinking: Putting Talk to Work. New York: Routledge. Mercer, N. (1996). The quality of talk in children’s collaborative activity in the classroom. Learning and Instruction, 6, 359–377. Mercer, N. (2000). Words and Minds: How Can We Use Language to Think Together. London: Routledge. Mercer, N. (2004). Sociocultural discourse analysis: Analysing classroom talk as a social mode of thinking. Journal of Applied linguistics and Professional Practice, 1, 137–168. Nijhuis, J., Segers, M. & Gijselaers, W. (2008). The extent of variability in learning strategies and students’ perceptions of the learning environment. Learning and Instruction, 18, 121–134. Oosterheert, I.E. & Vermunt, J.D. (2001). Individual differences in learning to teach – relating cognition, regulation and affect. Learning and Instruction, 11, 133–156. Opfer, V.D. & Pedder, D. (2011). Conceptualizing teacher professional learning. Review of Educational Research, 81, 376–407. Opfer, V.D., Pedder, D.G. & Lavicza, Z. (2011). The role of teachers’ orientation to learning in professional development and change: A national study of teachers in England. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 443–453. Pietarinen, J., Pyhältö, K. & Soini, T. (2016). Teacher’s professional agency – a relational approach to teacher learning. Learning: Research and Practice, 1–18. Postholm, M.B. (2012). Teachers’ professional development: A theoretical review. Educational Research, 54, 405–429. Rodgers, C.R. & Scott, K.H. (2008). The development of the personal self and professional identity in learning to teach. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D.J. McIntyre & K.E. Demers (Eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (pp. 732–755). New York: Routledge. Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H. & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher Professional Learning and Development. Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. Van Driel, J.H., Meirink, J.A., Van Veen, K. & Zwart, R.C. (2012). Current trends and missing links in studies on teacher professional development in science education: A review of design features and quality of research. Studies in Science Education, 48, 129–160. Van Veen, K., Zwart, R. & Meirink, J. (2012). What makes teacher professional development effective? A literature review. In M. Kooy & K. van Veen (Eds), Teacher Learning that Matters: International Perspectives (pp. 3–21). New York: Routledge. Vermunt, J.D. (2007). The power of teaching-learning environments to influence student learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology Monograph Series II, 4, 73–90. Vermunt, J.D. (2016). Promoting Student Learning and Teacher Learning through Diversity. Invited keynote given at the Conference of the EARLI-SIG Teaching and Teacher Education, June, Zürich, Switzerland. Vermunt, J.D. & Endedijk, M.D. (2011). Patterns in teacher learning in different phases of the professional career. Learning and Individual Differences, 21, 294–302. Vermunt, J.D., Vrikki, M., Mercer, N. & Warwick, P. (2015). UK Teachers’ Perceptions of Lesson Study and its Effects on Teacher Learning: A Survey Study. Paper presented at the 16th Conference of the European Association of Research on Learning and Instruction, Limassol, Cyprus.
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Vrikki, M., Warwick, P., Vermunt, J.D., Mercer, N., & Van Halem, N. (2017). Teacher learning in the context of Lesson Study: A video-based analysis of teacher discussions. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61, 211–224. Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Warwick, P., Vrikki, M., Vermunt, J.D., Mercer, N. & Van Halem, N. (2016). Connecting observations of student and teacher learning: An examination of dialogic processes in Lesson Study discussions in mathematics. ZDM Mathematics Education, 48, 555–569.
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9 Developing Teacher Identity through Situated Cognition Approaches to Teacher Education Sue Cherrington INTRODUCTION Developing teacher identity is central to teacher education, both within initial teacher education and as part of teachers’ ongoing professional learning. Whilst multiple definitions and conceptualisations exist, teacher identity is generally conceived to be fluid and dynamic and involving both personal and contextual elements (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004). This existence of multiple definitions makes teacher identity ‘hard to articulate, easily misunderstood, and open to interpretation’ (Olsen, 2008a, p. 4). Challenges in defining teacher identity, including different disciplinary influences and the use of different conceptual frameworks and methodologies in empirical studies, have been noted by Beauchamp and Thomas (2009). Reviews of research into teacher identity highlight a complex set of, often interconnected, variables influencing the development of, and shifts in, identity in student teachers and throughout teachers’ professional lives. These variables include factors at the personal level such as teachers’ sense of self and their selfawareness, cognitive knowledge, sense of agency, confidence, and the role of emotion (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Izadinia, 2013). Contextual factors such as teachers’ ‘educational contexts, prior experiences and learning communities’ (Izadinia, 2013, p. 708) and their ‘relationships with colleagues, parents and students’ (p. 707) also shape identity development whilst Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) note ‘the power of stories and discourse in understanding identity, [and] the role of reflection in shaping identity’ (2009, p. 176).
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Previous reviews (Beijaard et al., 2004; Izadinia, 2013) note clearly identified theoretical frameworks were absent from many studies. Earlier studies with clearly articulated frameworks were more likely to emphasise cognitive perspectives, leading Beijaard et al. to argue in 2004 for conceptual frameworks underpinning identity development to be broadened from this emphasis to also include sociological approaches. A decade later, Izadinia noted those studies reviewed with identified conceptual frameworks mostly used ‘theories with a social focus either as the sole framework or in combination with others’ (2013, p. 706). This shift of conceptual focus in the period between their respective reviews highlights the growing interest in understanding teacher identity from situative perspectives that underpin the aims of this chapter. Olsen notes that research into teacher identity within a broader sociocultural vein ‘draws attention to the holistic, dynamic, situated nature of teacher development’ (2008a, p. 5). It is the role of this chapter to review current research on teacher identity development located within situative approaches to better illuminate and understand the complex factors influencing teachers’ identities. The next section provides an overview of situative perspectives of learning, highlighting key concepts such as limited peripheral participation, negotiability of meaning, cognitive apprenticeship and communities of practice that underpin situative approaches. The chapter then reviews research using situative approaches that help address the enduring puzzles faced by teacher educators aiming to support and enhance the development of teacher identity before examining the implications for teacher education practice arising from this research. The chapter concludes with a scoping of possible future research into teacher identity development using situative approaches.
SITUATED COGNITION THEORIES AND SITUATIVE APPROACHES TO LEARNING Situated cognition theories position learning as located within social contexts. Lave and Wenger (1991) emphasised the situated nature of learning, particularly for apprentices, through their concept of legitimate peripheral participation within a community of practice. Through legitimate peripheral participation, apprentices or newcomers engage ‘in social practice that entails learning as an integral constituent’ (1991, p. 35). Newcomers’ peripheral participation provides access to sources for understanding the community’s practices and, whilst initially limited, develops over time towards full participation. Lave and Wenger theorised that opportunities for learning arise out of newcomers’ engagement with the community’s culture and through the relationships they have with community members. Thus, access, through other members and the artefacts of practice, increasingly makes the community’s practices transparent. Central to
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the development of this transparency and full participation is the newcomer’s increasing ability to be able to talk within and about practice – to share information relevant to ongoing community activities and the stories and community lore that promote communal reflection and signal membership (Lave & Wenger, 1991). These ideas have particular relevance for thinking about how student and novice teachers learn through their limited peripheral participation within schools and early childhood contexts. Wenger’s (1998) later work elaborating the concept of communities of practice argued that learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon that occurs when people actively participate in the practices of social communities and, as such, provides for situated cognition theory to inform both initial and ongoing teacher education. Four interconnecting concepts are central to Wenger’s (1998) theory: meaning, practice, community and identity. Individuals negotiate meaning and learn though participation – involving social, affective and cognitive aspects – with others and with the reified tools and artefacts used to share negotiated understandings amongst community members. Learning occurs through engaging in the practices of a community which includes: both the explicit and the tacit. It includes what is said and what is left unsaid; what is represented and what is assumed. It includes the language, tools, documents, images, symbols, well-defined roles, specified criteria, codified procedures, regulations, and contracts that various practices make explicit for a variety of purposes. But it also includes all the implicit relations, tacit conventions, subtle cues, untold rules of thumb, recognizable intuitions, specific perceptions, well-tuned sensitivities, embodied understandings, underlying assumptions, and shared world views. (Wenger, 1998, p. 47)
Wenger describes communities as social collectives within which individuals undertake worthwhile activities and are seen as competent. Communities exist in all spheres of daily life, are frequently informal, and their familiarity and pervasiveness mean they often go unexamined. Finally, the concept of identity is central to Wenger’s (1998) theory. Identities are built out of individuals’ negotiated experiences of membership within social communities and hence are bound to practices within those communities. Identity is not static but reflects learning trajectories shaped by previous learning and future possibilities. Different identities may result from participation in multiple communities, requiring negotiation of belonging within those different communities. Paralleling Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work, focused primarily on situated learning within informal or workplace settings, Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) and Greeno (e.g., 1997) and colleagues (Greeno & The Middle School Mathematics Through Applications Project Group, 1998) addressed learning and cognition situated within formal schooling contexts. Brown et al. argued that knowledge and concepts are tools located and used in authentic situations within different social and physical contexts. They posit that students, through cognitive apprenticeship, are supported to ‘acquire, develop, and use cognitive tools in authentic domain activity’ (1989, p. 39), and argue for pedagogic shifts
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that allow learners to engage in activity where they collectively solve problems, engage in multiple roles, develop skills for working collaboratively with others, and where there are opportunities for misconceptions to be identified and addressed. Whilst focused on learners within school settings, the concept of cognitive apprenticeship is drawn upon by studies using situative cognition within teacher education. Greeno (1997) agrees learning occurs as a result of participation in social practices, but re-positions situated cognition and situated learning as situative perspectives or approaches, arguing that the inclusion of ‘cognition’ and ‘learning’ in the former implies some learning and cognition is situated and some is not. Greeno’s framing is adopted for the remainder of this chapter, given its predominance in the research discussed below. Greeno and colleagues emphasised the theoretical focus within situative perspectives as being ‘on interactive systems that are larger than the behaviour and cognitive processes of an individual agent’ (1998, p. 6). Similarly, Putnam and Borko note within situative perspectives, ‘cognition is (a) situated in particular physical and social contexts; (b) social in nature; and (c) distributed across individuals, others and tools’ (2000, p. 4). Hence, both what and how individuals learn are shaped by the contexts within which they are situated, the activities in which they engage, and the tools and processes used by the community. Sustained participation in a community’s practices shapes individuals’ thinking and learning and, so, understanding the social systems within which individuals participate is fundamental to understanding their learning. As participation is shaped by the community’s social practices and by the individual, both participation and the resultant learning may vary across individuals. Furthermore, communities are not static entities and learners also shape the learning of others and the community’s practices through their participation, with learning thus distributed across the wider community. Learners’ identities develop and are shaped through their participation in community practices, both in their growth as individuals and through their contributions to the practices and goals of the community (Greeno et al., 1998). Putnam and Borko (2000) highlight the importance of undertaking research that addresses the social contexts within which teachers learn as well as teachers as individual participants in those social contexts. Drawing upon multiple units of analysis, research undertaken within situative approaches enables both individuals and the social systems within which they learn to be examined. Given that learners’, including teachers’, identities are influenced and developed by their participation in the social practices of communities (Greeno et al., 1998), situative approaches to research hold promise for understanding the development of teacher identity. The next section of this chapter explores some enduring puzzles facing teacher educators in the development of teacher identity in both pre-service and in-service teacher education contexts that have been investigated using situative approaches.
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ENDURING PUZZLES IN DEVELOPING TEACHER IDENTITY Beauchamp and Thomas’s (2009) discussion of issues in teacher identity development provides a useful starting point for identifying enduring puzzles faced by teacher educators about the design of pre-service and in-service programmes that support and enhance the development of teacher identity. These issues, including (1) the relationship between self, beliefs, prior experiences and identity, (2) the role of emotion in identity, and (3) the contextual factors that hinder or enhance identity development, have been explored in research underpinned by situative perspectives. The following sections review these studies before examining research into situatively based teacher education programmes that support teacher identity development.
Self, Beliefs, Prior Experiences and Teacher Identity The concept of self and its relationship to identity, Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) suggest, is one of the most complex issues in defining teacher identity. Individuals’ beliefs and prior experiences shape and are shaped by the personal selves they bring to teaching. Studies into the development of teacher identity using situative approaches focus more explicitly on the influence of prior experiences than on the concept of self or on beliefs, although these are somewhat overlapping concepts. For example, Olsen’s (2008b) American study of six female secondary English teachers found personal beliefs and prior experiences were intersecting influences for entering teaching. Whilst his participants described possessing personal beliefs that they felt made them well suited for teaching, Olsen also posited that their prior experiences made ‘visible some of the development processes that constituted teacher identity’ (2008b, p. 27). Freedman and Appleman found that the ‘personal identities and predispositions to teaching’ (2008, p. 115) of teachers in their study contributed to participants’ decisions to undertake a reform-focused teacher education programme and to future decisions about whether to remain in teaching. Whilst those experiencing compatibility between their personal beliefs and the programme’s philosophy and goals more easily developed a strong teaching identity able to sustain them during challenging teaching situations, dissonance between teachers’ personal beliefs, the programme’s values and the school culture contributed to identity conflicts. Personal beliefs may also be shaped by teachers’ ongoing professional experiences. Takahashi’s study found that teachers’ engagement in ‘evidencebased decision-making’ (2011, p. 733) meetings within a community of practice enabled them to construct meaning together about the impact of their teaching on student performance, reified these practices and shaped their efficacy beliefs that they were responsible for students’ learning.
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Negative prior experiences can also have a positive influence on identity development as evident in Gujarati’s (2013) case study of three elementary school teachers who held negative views about their own mathematical experiences and abilities. Each teacher addressed their negative beliefs and invested significant effort to ensure that the experiences and learning of their students were more positive, resulting in positive shifts in their mathematics teaching identities. Gujarati argued that reflective activities, such as constructing autobiographies, support teachers to understand how prior experiences influence their classroom practice. Situative approaches used in these studies – engaging in communities of practice, explicitly addressing the influence of personal beliefs and prior experiences, and aiming for congruence between programme values and personal beliefs – appear useful in supporting teachers to examine the influence of beliefs and prior experiences on their identities. Situative approaches also illuminate how prior experiences influence identity for career changers. Participants in Grier and Johnston’s (2009) and Williams’s (2010) studies experienced identity challenges in transitioning from strong previous career identities to being students again, and in developing new identities as teachers, both within teaching contexts and amongst their broader social communities. Grier and Johnston’s participants reported frustration at being required to complete initial teacher education and resistance to some learning approaches within their programme, but, over time, recognised the usefulness of teaching ‘tools’ such as lesson plans and reflections. Their previous identities, located in careers such as engineering and science, helped establish legitimacy with their students and remained important within their emerging teacher identities (Grier & Johnston, 2009). Williams’s (2010) case study of one student teacher was positioned within a larger study which surveyed 375 student teachers who had changed careers, and undertook in-depth interviews with 15 of them. The case study student reported challenges in adjusting to the role of newcomer, particularly given her extensive communicative and relational skills developed in her previous career, and in developing a sense of belonging with others in the, generally younger, student teacher community. Williams suggested that teacher educators need to ‘recognise the diversity, complexity, and richness of experience that career changers bring’ (2010, p. 646) and provide support to assist such students in their identity transition from career expert to student teacher. Andersson and Hellberg’s (2009) study into the identity trajectories of students entering an early childhood teacher education programme with prior experience as child minders within Swedish pre-schools reflects the complexity described by Williams (2010). Together with the strong practice-based identities developed in their workplace settings, the recognition of their prior experience by the programme supported these students in moving rapidly from peripheral to full participation within their new, university-based community whilst simultaneously shifting identity within their workplace from ‘child minder to university student and pre-school teacher’ (Andersson & Hellberg 2009, p. 277). Thus, these studies
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suggest that the extent to which identity transitions are challenging for career changers may be influenced by the nature and status of their previous careers and by how their programme recognises their existing identities.
Emotion and Identity Development Whilst the role of emotion in identity development is identified by Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) as a key issue, few studies investigating this aspect utilise situative perspectives. Timoštšuk and Ugaste (2012) drew on Wenger’s (1998) concept of identity in their study of Estonian student teachers’ professional identity, finding that ‘emotions play an important role’ (2012, p. 430) in their learning to teach. Whilst students experienced a range of positive emotions, including joy, contentment and pleasure, in their teaching practicums, negative emotions were experienced more intensely and overshadowed both their positive emotional experiences and their ability to use strategies to strengthen their teaching. Negative emotions reported by students included disappointment as a result of criticism from others, particularly university supervisors and cooperating teachers, and insecurity and anxiety, especially in relation to content knowledge and pedagogy. Timoštšuk and Ugaste suggest that initial teacher education programmes could pay more attention to the impact of emotions on student teachers’ developing identity, including encouraging awareness of their own and others’ emotions, supporting them to recognise and analyse positive moments in their teaching, and helping them develop coping skills to address differences that naturally occur within schools and classrooms. A similar mix of positive and negative emotions was experienced by seven student teachers participating in Izadinia’s study of mentors’ roles in shaping students’ professional identity. Students valued mentor teachers who provided ‘encouragement and support, open communication and feedback’ (p. 4). Where these elements were not experienced, students felt frustrated, unsupported, less connected to their mentor teacher and less confident. Izadinia concludes such outcomes ‘could negatively impact the pre-service teachers’ future performance or could lead to attrition’ (2015, p. 7).
Contextual Factors and Identity Development Situative perspectives foreground the role that social and physical contexts play in learning and, therefore, in identity development. For student teachers and those transitioning into teaching, participation within the social contexts of initial teacher education programmes and in schools and early childhood settings provides powerful learning experiences that shape their emerging professional identities. Such participation is particularly complex for student teachers as they participate in and negotiate their identities within multiple communities – the university coursework-based community and the practice-based communities of
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the schools or early childhood centres within which they undertake practicum and internship activities (Andersson & Hellberg, 2009). The extent to which these contexts support students to construct a positive identity or, conversely, create negative images of themselves as teachers, plays out as they negotiate meaning through their interactions with cooperating teachers and students/children, move from peripheral to fuller participation, and gain a sense of affiliation and increased legitimacy as teachers. Central to these activities is the extent to which students and novice teachers experience powerlessness or are empowered by more experienced community members. Student teachers’ relative powerlessness in the practicum situation impacts on their willingness to discuss with their cooperating teachers tensions that arise from different philosophical and pedagogical approaches (Izadinia, 2015). Myles, Cheng and Wang’s (2006) evaluation of a programme designed to credential internationally qualified and culturally and linguistically diverse teachers to teach in Canada identified that power dynamics between the student and their associate teacher could be complex. Differences between these students’ existing philosophies and pedagogical practices and those evident in their practicum placements, the degree of collaboration between associate and student teachers, and the extent to which students felt subordinate, despite their existing qualifications and experience as a teacher, all impacted on their professional identities. Beginning teachers also face challenges as newcomers within a school: Flores’s (2007) research found that attempting to implement social justice practices that contrasted with existing school practices was challenging for novice teachers, who often felt powerless to take on the change agent role envisaged by their initial teacher education programme. Interactions between student and cooperating teachers are influential in students being able to negotiate meaning and begin developing their sense of legitimacy as teachers. For example, Cuenca’s study of two student teachers undertaking their final field placement found that when cooperating teachers shared their tools of teaching, inducted students into their classroom rituals and provided ‘tethered learning’ (2011, p. 121), the student gained access to the activity of teaching and felt like a legitimate teacher. Cuenca described tethered learning as allowing students to practise, and at times make mistakes, with the ‘safety net’ (p. 124) of the cooperating teacher’s active monitoring of their teaching. Similarly, Izadinia (2015) found that whilst mentor teachers did not significantly influence their students’ professional identity, they did have a strong impact on their confidence levels. She argued that, ‘if mentor teachers fail to instil a sense of confidence in pre-service teachers, the latter will think they are inadequate, not ready for the job and unsuited for the profession’ (Izadinia, 2015, p. 7). Student teachers’ interactions with others beyond their cooperating teachers also influence their developing identities. Hou (2015) found the use of an online forum during their practicum by students at a Chinese university enabled them to negotiate meaning about their experiences as they made the transition from university
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to the classroom. Through their interactions online, students provided both affective and professional support for each other, were able to share and co-construct knowledge, and developed as reflective practitioners. Studies that have traced shifts in student and new teachers’ identities as they moved towards full participation within their community of practice include Ben Said’s (2014) case study of one teacher’s experiences over a year of teaching prior to initial teacher education in Singapore, and Kanno and Stuart’s (2011) case study of two second-language student teachers as they undertook teaching assistant roles within their university’s English as a Second Language programme. The latter study drew upon Wenger’s concept of ‘identities-in-practice’ (1998, p. 215) to illustrate how ‘classroom practice helped nurture their teacher identities, and their emerging identities in turn shaped their practice’ (Kanno & Stuart, 2011, p. 237) over the course of the year. They identified that the sustained teaching practice these teachers experienced supported their identity formation in three key ways: (1) teaching several full cycles of courses enabled them to improve and refine their instructional skills; (2) the extended teaching period gave time to identify and improve aspects of teaching that were important to them; and (3) developing an area of expertise enabled them to feel more competent as teachers. Ben Said (2014) found becoming socialised into the discourses of teaching within the school was influential, as his teacher participant’s developing identity was linked to his increasing participation within the community, including his emerging activity as a mentor for other unqualified and less experienced teachers. The research reviewed in this section highlights how the social contexts within which students learn to teach may influence their developing identities. The uniqueness of these social contexts presents complex challenges for teacher educators: the next two sections of this chapter explore research into situatively based programme models and learning activities to support identity development in student and novice teachers and through ongoing professional learning.
Situative Approaches and Strategies that Influence Teacher Identity Development in Student and Novice Teachers Studies investigating specific programme design or learning activities underpinned by situative approaches provide insights into how teacher educators can support the development of teacher identity in student and beginning teachers. Ten Dam and Blom’s (2006) pilot school-based initial teacher education programme attempted to more directly link the education of students with processes of ongoing professional learning within the school. Their model involved students, alongside their university supervisors, teacher mentors and the school’s deputy principal, taking an active part in an ongoing project to improve the quality of teaching in the upper secondary school. Such engagement was conceptualised as developing students’ identity as they (and others) saw themselves as
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members of the school community, able to move towards increasingly full participation. Outcomes of the pilot were mixed: students felt part of the school and were treated like teachers, with responsibilities for their own class of students. However, students felt less responsible for the school development project and did not ‘become members of the COP envisaged by management’ (ten Dam & Blom, 2006, p. 656), primarily because the project was perceived to be a management initiative with group members having unequal status. Ten Dam and Blom conclude: ‘if a school innovation project is to enable student teachers to progress from being peripheral participants to being central participants, the project must, above all, be authentic’ (2006, p. 659), where students can have joint ownership and be influential. Adaptations to the early childhood teacher education programme described by Andersson and Hellberg (2009) above attended to the different learning trajectories of students with extensive child minding experience compared with those entering the standard programme. In addition to a modified programme – including part-time study, workplace completion of practicum requirements and credit awarded for prior experience – the informal recognition of students’ prior experience and knowledge by lecturers in classes was important. Several studies have focused on how specific approaches to course design and pedagogy can assist student teacher identity development. Central to these is an emphasis on engaging students in authentic learning activities such as online discussions which give students access to experienced teachers’ thinking (Sutherland & Markauskaite, 2012), using web-based cases to support planning for teaching with technology (Kim & Hannafin, 2008), and lesson planning conferences (Morton & Gray, 2010) which promote student teachers’ agency and meaning-making. Particular pedagogical approaches have also been explored including Kaartinen’s (2009) study of Finnish student teachers’ learning in a primary programme chemistry class which supported their participation in joint activity as community members through their involvement in goal-setting, activity design and joint problem-solving. Learning activities such as clinical simulations (Dotger, 2015) are designed as a pedagogical tool to support students to experience and explore complex situations typically faced by practising teachers but in an intentionally limited, bounded context. Dotger created several simulations that, typically, involved individual students engaging with a standardised individual playing a carefully scripted role and responding in particular ways to the student’s interactions. Simulations were video-recorded for analysis by the class as a collective community of practice, enabling negotiation of students’ identities and dispositions as teachers. The use of information and communication technologies to support teacher identity development is evident in many of the approaches cited above. In addition, Hou’s (2015) study (described earlier) used an online discussion forum to support students on practicum. The online nature of the discussions appeared
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conducive to these students engaging with each other and their lecturers in new ways: students were more able to reflect on practice, disagree with each other and participate as equals in the online environment than was typical in their face-toface classes. Hou suggests that the community of practice model and use of the online environment showed ‘a high degree of compatibility with Chinese styles of learning’ (2015, p. 14), suggesting the community of practice construct may be helpful in programmes preparing students with a Confucian heritage culture. Few studies have compared the influence of different pedagogical approaches on student teachers’ learning. One such study compared situated and cognitive learning pedagogical approaches when using video to support students to develop reflective skills. Blomberg, Sherin, Renki, Glogger and Seidel’s finding that each promoted different kinds of reflection highlights the importance of educators being clear about their intentions for learning activities: when fostering the ability to reflect on classroom events, video-based learning environments designed according to principles of SL might be better suited for fostering reflection in the long run, and cognitive approaches might be better suited when expert-like reflections are demanded within a short period of time. (2014, p. 457)
The importance of mentoring for student and beginning teachers is well recognised but mentors need careful preparation if they are to undertake their role effectively (Izadinia, 2015). Such preparation should address mentoring skills and build awareness of mentors’ responsibilities in supporting students (Izadinia, 2015). Mentoring styles involving listening and questioning support teachers’ development as reflective practitioners (D’Souza, 2014). Unexpected mentoring occurred for new teachers participating in a longitudinal study that gathered data across their teacher education programme and first five years of teaching, as the researchers were the only people who ‘moved with the teacher from teacher preparation to full time teaching’ (D’Souza, 2014, p. 171). D’Souza suggested the trust built between researcher and teacher enabled the researcher to act as ‘a bridge linking the ideas learned in teacher education with the realities of beginning teachers’ (2014, pp. 179–180) and that university researchers may have a unique position as ‘boundary spanners’ (D’Souza 2014, p. 183) between the teacher education programme and the school.
Situative Approaches and Strategies that Influence Teacher Identity Development through Ongoing Professional Learning and Development Despite a strong focus on situative approaches to teachers’ professional learning in the literature (e.g., Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg & Pittman, 2008; Sherin, Linsenmeier & van Es, 2009), there is no explicit focus on shifts and ongoing development of teacher identity. Instead, the focus is on either models of professional learning located within situative approaches or fine-grained analyses of
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teacher and facilitator interactions and conversations that reveal shifts in teacher thinking and reflection over time. Such models include video clubs (e.g., van Es, 2012), the Problem Solving Cycle (Borko et al., 2008), collaborative apprenticeship (Glazer & Hannafin, 2006), and the PLC-METS which used a wiki to facilitate learning activities involving early career science teachers, scientists and mentor teachers (Kim, Miller, Herbert, Pederson & Loving, 2012). Although an explicit focus on teacher identity is absent from these discussions, their attention to teachers’ participation in communities of practice or professional learning communities in which they closely examined and discussed aspects of their teaching and students’ learning suggest that teachers’ identities were being reshaped through their participation. More explicit attention to shifts in the identities of practising teachers (beyond those transitioning into teaching) is evident in a small number of studies. Takahashi’s (2011) study, reported earlier, highlighted how a school-based community reified teachers’ practices of analysing student achievement as a means of improving their teaching and shaping their efficacy beliefs and identity. Leuhmann’s case study of a teacher who engaged in extensive blogging to support her professional identity development as a reform-minded teacher found that blogging enabled her to engage and re-engage in reflections ‘from a distance’ (2008, p. 330) in order to critically think about her practices and to share insights and receive feedback from others following her blog. Leuhmann suggests blogs have potential as a tool for supporting identity development, in that they enable teachers to tell stories of their practices and seek recognition from others. However, she also cautions that sharing personal and professional information through blogging may leave teachers vulnerable: incorporating the use of blogs into teacher education programmes requires understanding the potential risks to students of such public engagement and of strategies to minimise those risks. Leuhmann’s study highlighted her participant’s professional identity as a reform-minded teacher. Research on reformed-minded teacher identity addressed thus far in this chapter has focused on teachers who hold this identity already (Leuhmann, 2008) or who experience tensions between their identity and the dominant beliefs and practices in their school (Flores, 2007). A further consideration is for teachers whose professional identity is challenged by the implementation of policy reforms which demand shifts in pedagogical practices. Saigal’s (2012) study of an in-depth situated learning approach to in-service teacher education in India provides interesting insights into the strategies adopted by the programme facilitators to negotiate and support changes to the teachers’ practices. Facilitators worked with teachers’ existing knowledge and experiences as they initiated new ideas, and used dialogue and modelling to scaffold teachers into new practices within the contexts of their classrooms. Saigal’s findings highlight the intense engagement and support required to reform pedagogical practices, particularly through the unfamiliar situative approach to professional learning.
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IMPLICATIONS: HOW SITUATIVE APPROACHES SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHER IDENTITY The situated nature of learning and participation within social and physical contexts emphasised by situative approaches highlights that teacher identity development is multifaceted, ongoing and influenced by complex and intersecting factors. Core concepts, such as limited peripheral participation and communities of practice, offer useful insights to teacher educators as to how identity is shaped as student and practising teachers gain access to, negotiate meaning about, and become full members of teaching communities. Thus, pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes drawing on situative approaches will take account of the following issues and how they impact on teacher identity: • Navigating entry into and membership across multiple communities of practice • Moving from peripheral to full participation within a community of practice • Engaging in authentic learning activities
Navigating Entry Into and Membership across Multiple Communities of Practice Whilst all teachers participate in multiple communities, student and novice teachers face particular challenges to their identities as they enter the universityprogramme community and gain access to teaching communities through practicum and initial teaching positions. The values, beliefs and prior experiences that student teachers bring to their initial teacher education intersect with their programme’s philosophy and with their practicum experiences. Recognising students’ values and prior experiences and helping them explore how these influence their teaching identities and beliefs appears to support smoother transitions into university and teaching communities. The complexity of participating in multiple communities is apparent as students enter their practicum community: different strengths and experiences are necessary to meet institutional- and practicum-context requirements, whilst any conflicting expectations between their programme and cooperating teachers create dissonance. Becoming a member of a community involves developing relationships – in the case of practicum, with their cooperating teacher, other teachers and students/children in their classroom – and access to the community’s artefacts of practices. Students’ participation in practicum communities, and their developing teacher identity, is supported by acknowledgement of the emotional challenges endemic in practicum; encouragement, open communication and feedback from cooperating teachers and university supervisors; and addressing the power relations inherent in student–cooperating teacher relationships.
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Moving from Peripheral to Full Participation within a Community of Practice Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that newcomers are supported to move from peripheral to full participation through their increasing engagement with the community’s practices. As students build relationships, access artefacts of practice, and learn to talk within and about teaching, practice becomes increasingly transparent, leading to an enhanced sense of legitimacy as a teacher. Thus, cooperating teachers who give students access to their thinking, classroom rituals and tools of teaching, and who actively coach students’ increasing engagement in teaching practices, provide the kind of support that facilitates fuller participation within practicum settings. Access to peers, including through online forums, also supports students in participating more fully in their practicum communities.
Engaging in Authentic Learning Activities Brown et al.’s (1989) construct of cognitive apprenticeship emphasises the importance of authentic learning experiences that encourage collaboration, enable collective problem-solving, and allow misconceptions to be identified and addressed. Examples of authentic learning experiences within teacher education that support identity development include student autobiographies, case-based learning, clinical simulations and accessing mentor teachers’ thinking about their teaching intentions and decisions. Professional learning programmes that work from teachers’ existing knowledge and experiences, and use dialogue and modelling, are effective especially where teachers’ identities are challenged by new philosophical and pedagogical practices.
Criticisms of Situative Approaches The above discussion summarises how situative approaches may support teacher identity development within pre-service and in-service programmes. However, critics note that the apprenticeship model inherent within situative approaches enculturates student and novice teachers into existing practices and thus ensures the replication of social and pedagogical practices (McNamara, Jones & Murray, 2014). Strengthening and embedding reform-focused practices may, thus, be more problematic and challenging in programmes using situative approaches.
SITUATIVE APPROACHES TO DEVELOPING TEACHER IDENTITY: FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS This chapter has discussed how situative approaches may influence teacher identity development, drawing on recent empirical research. When taken as a body of research, several gaps are evident across both research contexts and the
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trajectories of identity development across teachers’ careers. Thus, there is value in further research that examines the usefulness of situative approaches in understanding teacher identity development within early childhood and across cultural contexts, and which investigates how factors such as growing teacher expertise, shifts in role and changing policy contexts influence on-going teacher identity development. A number of other fruitful areas for research are apparent. First, more systematic research into the extent that different initial teacher education models influence teacher identity development is required. Taymans, Tindle, Freund, Ortiz and Harris’s (2012) evaluation of a professional development school teacher education programme, whilst not focused on teacher identity development, used a situative conceptual framework, suggesting that this evaluative approach could be appropriate for investigating how different programme models support student teachers’ developing identities through how they assist entry into, and movement from peripheral to full participation within, multiple communities of practice. Second, current research into different situatively based learning activities is mostly small-scale. There is room for systematic research that builds on these initial studies, and which explores how the integration of approaches such as mentoring, clinical simulations and online discussions into programmes serving larger and more diverse student cohorts influences students’ identity development. Third, Orgill (2007) noted several studies outside of teacher education focused on how limited peripheral participation may be denied to members of underrepresented groups. Examining this issue in terms of how students from minority backgrounds or how men, particularly in early childhood contexts, may be denied opportunities for limited peripheral participation in their communities could help address discriminatory practices and improve recruitment into teaching from under represented groups. Finally, few studies combine situative design methodologies with other conceptual and methodological frameworks. Blomberg et al.’s (2014) comparative study of situative and cognitive approaches to course design and instruction in a teacher education programme provides a useful model for research into the specific contributions of different design and instructional approaches, including situative ones, to identity development. In a similar vein, Korthagen’s (2010) model of integrated teacher learning and behaviour suggests how situated learning and cognitive theory may be brought together to inform programmes. Collectively, these studies illustrate how combining situative with other conceptual approaches may further illuminate the complexities inherent in developing teacher identity.
REFERENCES Andersson, P. & Hellberg, K. (2009). Trajectories in teacher education: Recognising prior learning in practice. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37(3), 271–282.
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Beauchamp, C. & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: An overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 175–189. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P.C. & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107–128. Ben Said, S. (2014). Teacher identity and narratives: An experiential perspective. International Journal of Innovation in English Language, 3(1), 37–50. Blomberg, G., Sherin, M.G., Renki, A., Glogger, I. & Seidel, T. (2014). Understanding video as a tool for teacher education: Investigating instructional strategies to promote reflection. Instructional Science, 42, 443–463. Borko, H., Jacobs, J., Eiteljorg, E. & Pittman, M.E. (2008). Video as a tool for fostering productive discussions in mathematics professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 417–436. Brown, J.S., Collins, A. & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42. Cuenca, A. (2011). The role of legitimacy in student teaching: Learning to ‘feel’ like a teacher. Teacher Education Quarterly, Spring, 117–130. Dotger, B.H. (2015). Core pedagogy: Individual uncertainty, shared practice, formative ethos. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(3), 215–226. D’Souza, L.A. (2014). Bridging the gap for beginning teachers: Researcher as mentor. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 3(2), 171–187. Flores, M.T. (2007). Navigating contradictory communities of practice in learning to teach for social justice. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 38(4), 380–404. Freedman, S.W. & Appleman, D. (2008). ‘What else would I be doing?’ Teacher identity and teacher retention in urban schools. Teacher Education Quarterly, Summer, 109–126. Glazer, E.M. & Hannafin, M.J. (2006). The collaborative apprenticeship model: Situated professional development within school settings. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(2), 179–193. Greeno, J, (1997). On claims that answer the wrong questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17. Greeno, J. & The Middle School Mathematics Through Applications Project Group. (1998). The situativity of knowing, learning, and research. American Psychologist, 53(1), 5–26. Grier, J.M. & Johnston, C.C. (2009). An inquiry into the development of teacher identities in STEM career changers. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 20(1), 57–75. Gujarati, J. (2013). An ‘inverse’ relationship between mathematics identities and classroom practices among early career elementary teachers: The impact of accountability. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 32, 633–648. Hou, H. (2015). What makes an online community of practice work? A situated study of Chinese student teachers’ perceptions of online professional learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 6–16. Izadinia, M. (2013). A review of research on student teachers’ professional identity. British Educational Research Journal, 39(4), 694–713. Izadinia, M. (2015). A closer look at the role of mentor teachers in shaping preservice teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 52, 1–10. Kaartinen, A. (2009). Meaningfulness via participation: Sociocultural practices of teacher learning and development. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15(5), 601–616. Kanno, Y. & Stuart, C. (2011). Learning to become a second language teacher: Identities-in-practice. The Modern Language Journal, 95(2), 236–252. Kim, H. & Hannafin, M.J. (2008). Situated case-based knowledge: An emerging framework for prospective teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(7), 1837–1845. Kim, H.J., Miller, H.R., Herbert, B., Pedersen, S. & Loving, C. (2012). Using a wiki in a scientist-teacher professional learning community: Impact on teacher perception changes. Journal of Science and Educational Technology, 21, 440–452. Korthagen, F.A.J. (2010). Situative learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behaviour and teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 98–106.
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Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leuhmann, A.L. (2008). Using blogging in support of teacher professional identity development: A case study. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 17(3), 287–337. McNamara, O., Jones, M. & Murray, J. (2014). Workplace Learning in Teacher Education. Springer: Dordrecht. Morton, T. & Gray, J. (2010). Personal practical knowledge and identity in lesson planning conferences on a pre-service TESOL course. Language Teaching Research, 14(3), 297–317. Myles, J., Cheng, L. & Wang, H. (2006). Teaching in elementary school: Perceptions of foreign-trained teacher candidates on their teaching practicum. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(2), 233–245. Olsen, B. (2008a). Introducing teacher identity and this volume. Teacher Education Quarterly, Summer, 3–6. Olsen, B. (2008b). How reasons for entry into the profession illuminate teacher identity development. Teacher Education Quarterly, Summer, 23–40. Orgill, M.K. (2007). Situated cognition. In G.M. Bodner & M.K. Orgill (Eds) Theoretical Frameworks for Research in Chemistry/Science Education. Pearson: Upper Saddle River, NJ. Putnam, R. & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29(4), 4–15. Saigal, A. (2012). Demonstrating a situated learning approach for in-service teacher education in rural India: The Quality Education Programme in Rajasthan. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(7), 1009–1017. Sherin, M.G., Linsenmeier, K.A. & van Es, E.A. (2009). Selecting video clips to promote mathematics teachers’ discussion of student thinking. Journal of Teacher Education, 60, 213–230. Sutherland, L. & Markauskaite, L. (2012). Examining the role of authenticity is supporting the development of professional identity: An example from teacher education. Higher Education, 64, 747–766. DOI: 10.1007/s10734-012-9522-7. Takahashi, S. (2011). Co-constructing efficacy: A ‘communities of practice’ perspective on teachers’ efficacy beliefs. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(4), 732–741. Taymans, J., Tindle, K., Freund, M., Ortiz, D. & Harris, L. (2012). Opening the black box: Influential elements of an effective urban professional development school. Urban Education, 47(1), 224–249. ten Dam, G.T.M. & Blom, S. (2006). Learning through participation: The potential of school-based teacher education for developing a professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(6), 647–660. Timoštšuk, I. & Ugaste, A. (2012). The role of emotions in student teachers’ professional identity. European Journal of Teacher Education, 35(4), 421–433. van Es, E.A. (2012). Examining the development of a teacher learning community: The case of a video club. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28, 182–192. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, J. (2010). Constructing a new professional image: Career change into teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3), 639–647.
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10 Developing the Personal and Professional in Making a Teacher Identity D o u w e B e i j a a rd a n d P a u l i e n C . M e i j e r
INTRODUCTION Teaching is both personal and professional. Who one is as a person is strongly interwoven with how one works as a professional. Both dimensions together represent one’s teacher identity. Teacher identity is expressed in one’s image-ofself-as-teacher and consists of a complex configuration of personal and professional factors that more or less influence each other (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004; Day & Gu, 2014). It is not a perspective by which teacher professional learning is conceptualized as a linear process of developing the knowledge, skills and dispositions that are needed for competent teaching, but a perspective by which becoming a teacher results from the interaction between student teachers’ beliefs, including the norms and values they hold, on the one hand, and the educational contexts in which they find themselves, including generally accepted theories of teaching and learning, on the other (Beijaard et al., 2004). It is a perspective by which teachers’ growth is framed in terms of reconciling aspects of the personal and professional dimensions of becoming a teacher and understood as a complex internal process that includes ‘struggling’ with questions such as ‘who am I as a teacher?’ and ‘what kind of teacher do I want to become?’ (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Kelchtermans, 2009; Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson & Fry, 2004). The ‘who-we-are’ develops in our minds and in the minds of others through interaction with relevant others (teacher educators, mentors in schools, peers, students and their parents), resources, textbooks and other teaching and learning materials. This interaction results in experiences that student teachers (re-)interpret, and means that their identity as teacher is never ‘finished’ and, although in part felt as stable, continues to develop (cf. Lee, 2013).
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Teacher education programs that explicitly use ‘teacher identity’ as a lens for student teachers’ learning and professional development are scarce (Rodgers & Scott, 2008), but have slowly increased over the last decade (e.g., Leijen, Kullasepp & Anspal, 2014; Meijer, Oolbekkink, Pillen & Aardema, 2014). Two implications of the conceptualization of teacher identity described above are that much attention needs to be paid in teacher education to (1) the beliefs that student teachers bring with them as they enter teacher education, and (2) tensions that may arise with student teachers through the interplay between internal and external forces. This chapter first focuses on these two aspects of developing a teacher identity. Next, the emphasis is on identity development itself and the way this learning process can be conceptualized. We introduce three identity-related concepts for this, namely: ownership, sense-making and agency. What follows in this chapter then are more specific design principles for a pedagogy of identity learning in teacher education. Attention is paid to working on identity development in general and to working on identity tensions. This chapter adds to the development of a coherent framework for supporting the process of becoming a teacher from a perspective of student teachers’ need for reconciling the personal and professional in developing a realistic teacher identity. In the final section we emphasize the importance of implementing identity work in teacher education and to have this work accompanied by research on what works and why, including its contribution to the retention and quality of beginning teachers after their graduation from teacher education.
BELIEFS AND TENSIONS IN RECONCILING THE PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL The notion that teachers themselves are a source of their work and learn from their experiences makes teacher identity a relevant focus of pre-service teachers’ professional learning and development (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; McLean, 1999; Sternberg, Karlsson, Pitkaniemi & Maaranen, 2014). Their personal beliefs about teaching and learning strongly determine the kind of teacher they are and the kind of teacher they wish to become. In this section attention will be first paid therefore to the role of beliefs in developing a teacher identity, followed by tensions student teachers may experience while trying to reconcile the personal and professional in their teacher identity under construction.
Role of Beliefs Central to teachers’ identity are beliefs that guide their engagement, commitment and actions in and out of the classroom. For example, when student teachers begin their teacher education, their developing teacher identity includes a large number of beliefs about teachers’ work (Lamote & Engels, 2010). These beliefs strongly influence their professional decisions and actions; as such they strongly connect to
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the development of a teacher identity (Sternberg et al., 2014). Student teachers’ beliefs stem from many sources, such as being a product of their upbringing, a reflection of their life experiences, and a result of their socialization processes in schools (Kennedy, 1997). One belief that student teachers bring to their professional schooling is ‘that they already have what it takes to be a good teacher, and that therefore they have little to learn from the formal study of teaching’ (Kennedy, 1997, p. 14). In other words, student teachers bring their ‘individual capacity’ (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Lasky, 2005) with them to teacher education. Pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning may even be so strong that, in fact, they resist change during teacher education or hinder learning about teaching (Bronkhorst, Koster, Meijer, Woldman & Vermunt, 2014; Richardson, 1996). Pre-service teachers’ expectations, views and earlier experiences with teaching, also captured by the concept of apprenticeship of observation (Hammerness et al., 2005), strongly shape how they enter teacher education and are thus of vital concern, because they are ‘the basis for meaning making and decision making … [and] teacher education must begin, then, by exploring the teaching self’ (Bullough, Knowles & Crow, 1992, p. 21). Since beliefs are the building blocks of a teacher’s professional identity, they are essential to understand, because all subsequent instruction and experience will pass through these beliefs, as water passes through a filter (Kagan, 1992; Merseth, Sommer & Dickstein, 2008). People hold beliefs to make sense of the world around them, and as such, beliefs tend to be difficult to change. Since becoming a teacher involves a role change (transition from being a student to being a teacher), experiences in practice need to be interpreted from a different perspective. Beliefs formerly seen as stable do not seem to hold in the new role. As a consequence, existing beliefs need to change, and new beliefs need to be formed. The case study described by Meijer, Korthagen and Vasalos (2009) presents an example of a novice teacher, whose belief was that if you treat students respectfully, this means that you should treat them as adults. This teacher was asked to reflect on a classroom situation in which she noticed that three pupils were looking out of the window and not contributing to the discussion. When she asked her students why their attention had lapsed, they told her that it was not because of lack of interest, but that they found it very difficult to think about their own opinion. The teacher started to realize that she was treating her students as adults who are able to articulate their opinions. In a supervisory session, she was asked how she experienced realizing this: Teacher: Quite painful, actually. I always wanted to treat them with as much respect as possible, and I discovered that I didn’t really respect the fact that they are … well … just kids, actually. Supervisor: But you dealt with it, didn’t you? Teacher: Well, yes, we talked about it, and in fact I was rather pleased that I could now help them. (Excerpt in Meijer et al., 2009, p. 305)
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In this fragment, the teacher hints at a redefinition of her belief about treating students respectfully. Whereas she first intended to respect her students by expecting them to voice their opinions and their ideas during the lesson, she now redefined ‘being respectful’ in terms of perceiving the students as ‘kids’ who may need some guidance. The process of changing or developing beliefs, however, is complex and in part a personal matter. But since the new beliefs are directly associated with being a teacher, they are professional as well. This indicates that becoming a teacher includes a process of relating personal beliefs to the demands of the teaching profession, and the result is a belief system that is both personal and professional, defining one’s teacher identity (Alsup, 2006). By no means, changing or developing personal beliefs into teacher beliefs should be seen as an easy process. It can cause friction and resistance (cf. Bronkhorst et al., 2014). But supported carefully and thoughtfully, this process can be seen as essential in developing a teacher identity that fits both the individual person, as well as the teaching profession. Throughout the world, attention for relating, combining and integrating personal and professional aspects of becoming a teacher has increased over the years. In Europe, for example, a central role was granted for ‘reflection’ in relating these aspects (e.g., Husu, Toom & Patrikainen, 2008; Kelchtermans, 2009; Kelchtermans & Hamilton, 2004; Korthagen, Loughran & Russell, 2006; Leijen et al., 2014; Meijer, de Graaf & Meirink, 2011). Korthagen and Vasalos (2010) described a core reflection approach, in which student teachers are engaged in combining personal and professional aspects of becoming a teacher. Here, personal beliefs as well as beliefs about the teaching profession are seen as one of the linking pins in forming and further developing one’s identity as a whole, and one’s professional (teacher) identity in particular. In the United States and Canada, a strong narrative approach was developed for the same reason (e.g., Clandinin & Connelly, 1996, 1998; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Craig, 2013). For example, Clandinin and Connelly (1998) used the metaphoric expression ‘stories to live by’ as a narrative conception of teacher identity; through these stories, teachers make sense of themselves and their practice. In this conception, stories to live by are a nexus of teachers’ personal practical knowledge and the landscapes (in and out of schools; in the past and the present) in which teachers live and work. Downey, Schaefer and Clandinin (2014) identified two knowledge landscapes: the personal and the professional. From the perspective of ‘becoming’, they found that ‘becoming a particular kind of teacher was interwoven with becoming a particular kind of person’ (p. 17). This narrative conception of teacher identity has had a strong influence on much current research on teacher identity, a complex concept in which the personal and professional are interwoven. Rodgers and Scott (2008) and Alsup (2006) referred to the practice of narrative and the processes of storytelling as the means for the construction of one’s teacher identity. They stress that stories change over time, across contexts, and depend upon
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relationships. Rodgers and Scott (2008) claim that, when distinguishing one’s teacher identity as evolving historically, one can be seen as the meaning-maker or storyteller, and one’s identity as the stories being told or the meaning made. Becoming a teacher, and sustaining as a teacher, cannot be seen as separated from one’s larger life and, as Clandinin et al. (2015) claimed, ‘being a teacher is only one part of a person, one piece of a larger unfolding life’ (p. 13).
Tensions in the Development of a Teacher Identity Tensions may arise between what is personally found relevant by the student teacher from inside and what is professionally seen as relevant to the profession by others from outside. These may emerge as conflicts or constraints (‘identity issues’) in student teachers’ professional identity development. Based on a study of the literature and a questionnaire among 182 student/beginning teachers, Pillen, Beijaard and Den Brok (2013) found 13 of these tensions, of which some were (very) difficult to cope with. Most of these tensions can be categorized as follows: 1 Tensions regarding the change in role from student to teacher. A frequently mentioned example of such a tension has been given by Volkmann and Anderson (1998) who aimed at describing a beginning teacher’s professional identity. One of this teacher’s identity tensions was that she felt like a student, but was expected to behave as a ‘real’ teacher by her students and colleagues. She felt caught between two different worlds. 2 Tensions as a result of conflicts between the desired and actual support or attention given to students. Pillen et al. (2013), for example, refer to student teachers who were struggling with the desire to take care of their students as much as possible on the one hand and to distance themselves emotionally on the other. These student teachers felt the need to protect themselves, meanwhile wanting to be there for the students as much as possible, in particular for students with private, social-emotional problems. 3 Tensions based on conflicting conceptions of learning to teach. For example, Olsen (2010) describes a student teacher who conceived teaching in a very teacher-centered or traditional way, while the university program asked for a student-centered approach with an emphasis on cooperative learning and hardly giving lectures. Although this student teacher began to realize that both approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive, it still remained a tension to her during her time spent in teacher education. Particularly in mentoring relationships such ‘conflicts’ may arise; for example, when student teachers and their mentors differ in their orientations towards and expectations about what and how to learn during the school practicum. For example, Rajuan, Beijaard and Verloop (2007) found that such conflicts can serve as major obstacles to the formation of contexts for learning.
A tension less easy to categorize but frequently mentioned by the participants in the study by Pillen et al. (2013) pertains to wanting to invest in their private life and at the same time feeling the pressure to put a great deal of effort, time and energy into their work. They also found that student teachers’ ‘identity tensions’ are often accompanied by feelings of helplessness, anger and frustration, or by an awareness of these as personal shortcomings. Tensions may thus have a (very)
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negative impact on student teachers’ professional learning and development, their longer-term career trajectories and for several of them be a reason to quit teacher education. Following the narrative tradition, Huber, Huber and Clandinin (2004) explored moments of tension that arose as teachers’ stories to live by are experienced as resisting children’s or school stories. They found that teachers’ stories to live by go side by side with others’ stories, such as those of other teachers, students and even schools. All these stories resonate and influence each other. Moments of tension between these stories made ‘narrative interlappings’ (p. 194) visible, and understanding these allowed for opportunities for developing and shifting one’s identity in searching for ‘narrative coherence’. This seems to be related to the work of van Rijswijk, Akkerman, Schaap and van Tartwijk (2016), who found that student teachers experienced tensions when they considered the process of becoming a teacher as a discontinuity within their identity. Too much sense of discontinuity can lead to attrition, but a general sense of discontinuity, alongside feelings of continuity, leads teachers to experience becoming a teacher as a new and challenging process.
CENTRAL CONCEPTS IN DEVELOPING A PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY It is not enough to see identity development as a complex, dynamic and continuing process of reconciling the personal and the professional. Concepts are needed that may be helpful to indicate how this process can be described and explained. Following the work of Ketelaar, Beijaard, Boshuizen and Den Brok (2012), three identity-related concepts seem to be useful for this, namely ownership, sense-making and agency. Together these concepts are presented here as fundamental for a theory of identity learning. Ownership. Ownership can be seen as a sort of facilitator for expressing who one is as a teacher and what one finds important, or what one identifies with. According to Pierce, Kostova and Dirks (2001), ‘people use ownership for the purpose of defining themselves, expressing their self-identity to others, and assuring the continuity of the self across time’ (p. 300). It is essential therefore that student teachers become ‘owners’ of what and how to learn about the teaching profession. Through ownership, student teachers feel the urge or necessity for learning and, subsequently, are willing to invest time and energy in that. Student teachers feel a high degree of ownership towards what and how they learn, as well as how they communicate about that and express their identification with it (Pierce, Kostova & Dirks, 2003). Consequently, for ownership development it seems important to encourage student teachers’ engagement with their teacher education program and the work of teachers. Sense-making. Sense-making refers to the interaction between one’s identity and one’s learning focus, resulting in maintenance or change of aspects of one’s
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identity (Ketelaar et al., 2012). Sense-making is an active cognitive and emotional process in which people attempt to relate new experiences or new information to their existing knowledge and beliefs (van Veen & Lasky, 2005). Sense-making may result in assimilation (fitting something new into existing knowledge and beliefs so that nothing changes) or accommodation (transforming one’s knowledge and beliefs and adapting these to what is new). Next to these two types of sense-making there are two other types: resistance or distantiation (rejecting something new and strengthening one’s own frame of reference) and toleration (accepting something new, meanwhile maintaining and continuing the use of the same frame of reference). Sense-making is more than simply interpreting a message. In teacher education it is important that student teachers learn to make sense through processes of enactment (consciously applying theory in practice) and reflection (relating experiences to theoretical knowledge and beliefs, i.e., student teachers’ frames of reference). Both processes strengthen each other (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) in supporting student teachers to develop a ‘sense of themselves-as-teachers’ or, in other words, a realistic teacher identity. Consciously building a teacher identity through self-conceptualization helps student teachers to position themselves in the face of the students they teach, their educators, peers and future colleagues in schools, and to make explicit where they stand; in turn this helps others in ways of approaching these student teachers and to support their further growth into the profession. Agency. Agency, as the third concept, might be seen as a vehicle to give direction to one’s development and career and staying true to oneself (Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, Eteläpelto, Rasku-Puttonen & Littleton, 2008). In shaping a teacher identity it is important that student teachers actively contribute to that. They are agents of their own development as teachers, fed by who they are as teachers and the kind of teachers they wish to become. Their agency not only results from the interaction between what they desire or try to realize from within, and external demands from their environment; it also influences this interaction. Agency refers to exerting control over one’s work and development (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015). Agency is connected to teacher identity through ideals and goals as well as commitments and ethical standards related to the work of teachers and their students (Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen & Hökkä, 2015). Agentic student teachers are supposed to feel in control of what and how they learn to teach based on their own goals, interests and motivation (Eteläpelto et al., 2015). Agency is not something you have, but something you do intentionally and with consideration; it expresses the engagement of actors with specific situations, topics, etc. For being agentic, it is important that student teachers experience a certain amount of autonomy during their teacher preparation and room for negotiation about their intentions with their educators. For example, the study by Soini, Pietarinen, Toom and Pyhälto (2015) of first-year student teachers in Finland underpins the need for this. Based on their research they conclude that a supporting learning environment is needed for the development of professional agency and that teacher
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educators should be – more than was found in their study – the primary resource in developing a sense of professional agency with their student teachers, among other things by placing emphasis on the quality of their relationship with student teachers from the earliest stages of their studies. In particular, the social and emotional dimensions of learning to teach for these student teachers demand such quality relationships in the learning environment (Soini et al., 2015). Apparently educators, both in teacher education institutes and in schools, need to be more aware of what challenges and what constrains student teachers’ agency, and that agency plays a substantial role in the development of a sound and realistic teacher identity. Edwards (2015) emphasizes the interaction between teacher identity and practice when studying agency. In her view, agency refers to this interaction, or dialectic, given the sensitivity of one’s identity to the environments in which teachers (learn to) work. It is interesting to know how the three concepts above are interrelated when developing a teacher identity. It might be assumed that agency, particularly in terms of the control someone has over something, positively relates to his/her degree of ownership towards that (Pierce et al., 2001). One can, however, also feel too much ownership. Pierce et al. (2003) warn about what they call the dark side of ownership: being overly possessive of what and how someone learns, unwilling to share things with others and keeping exclusive control of that. It might furthermore be assumed that a low degree of ownership may – at least for the person involved – also positively relate to agency, but then in terms of demonstrating resistance or distantiation from something. This latter situation, for example, regularly takes place in the context of innovations in schools when these conflict with teachers’ professional identities (Ketelaar et al., 2012). To this must be added that resistance by teachers does not necessarily need to be something negative, but can be a sign of involvement and development (Sannino, 2010). For example, student teachers might be encouraged to coach and guide their students instead of immediately supporting them through lectures and structuring their learning. In this case resistance might be caused by a lack of experience, competence or confidence. In general, it might be argued that a relationship between student teachers’ ownership and agency influences processes of sensemaking based on their existing knowledge and beliefs.
TOWARDS A PEDAGOGY OF IDENTITY LEARNING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Student teachers’ identity continuously undergoes influences of which their educators are not aware and of which they themselves are sometimes not aware either. During their studies, student teachers are expected to do assignments, reflect on their practical experiences, do research and development projects, read literature, etc. Teacher educators form their opinions about their student teachers
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as a result of the ways in which they deal with these program components and communicate about this with their colleagues and through ways of giving feedback to the student teachers themselves. This is common to all kinds of education. We continuously provide labels to our students based on the ways in which they perform. Teacher education is no exception to this rule. But since teacher education programs in most countries are working towards a set of standards that are often scrutinized and monitored meticulously, there is not always space for the hard-to-measure aspects of identity development in teacher education programs. Following Verhaeghe (2014), one can assume that student teachers’ identity is formed in line with the standards they need to meet. If these standards do not include identity aspects, and there is no pedagogy for identity learning to support student teachers, there is a risk that student teachers are only confronted with professional aspects of becoming a teacher, and that their own beliefs are ignored. If student teachers feel that what is expected of them does not fit them, then this might cause negative frictions and result in drop-out (Bronkhorst et al., 2014; Rajuan et al., 2007). Or, in other words, the teacher identity (re)presented by the existing curriculum does not feel like their own identity. Meijer et al. (2014) and Leijen et al. (2014) described a number of pedagogies used mainly in European teacher education programs that put identity development in a central place, and that focus on the combination and integration of the personal and professional aspects of becoming a teacher (cf. DarlingHammond & Hammerness, 2005). According to Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004), this includes a kind of learning and reflection leading to ‘deep’ understanding that ‘does justice to the full complexity and richness of being a teacher’ and goes ‘beyond the level of surface action to the level of underlying beliefs, ideas, knowledge and goals’ (p. 801).
Identity Work in General Developing a teacher identity is not simply a matter of internalizing and, subsequently, performing externally formulated competencies. In contrast, learning to teach is much more than learning to ‘play a role’. The kind of teacher one wishes to become, including the ways to learn this, comes first of all from inside. It is the personal side of one’s teacher identity itself that really fuels one’s learning (Pinnegar, 2005), no matter how rudimentary or immature that identity might be in one’s phase of becoming a teacher. From this perspective, identity work in teacher education entails professional development settings in which student teachers are encouraged: 1 To negotiate about their teacher identity under construction (cf. Akkerman & Meijer, 2011), for example by playing an active role in formulating their own learning trajectory based on clear goals they want to pursue. This helps others (peers, teacher educators) to recognize who they are as a person and professional and, consequently, how to meet them as a learner and (future) colleague.
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2 To go public with their self-concept as teacher, which they develop during their practical and theoretical work in teacher education (cf. Beijaard et al., 2004). By doing this, student teachers not only get feedback on their image of self-as-teacher, including accompanying conceptions of teaching and learning and suggestions for further development, it also prevents them from developing a ‘deviating identity’. 3 To assess themselves against the background of professional standards and criteria as a relevant objective source for learning and development. Self-assessment does not necessarily need to be an activity carried out by the individual alone. Ross and Bruce (2007), for example, argue that peers might considerably contribute to the quality of one’s self-assessment. It can further be argued that self-assessment stimulates student teachers’ self-monitoring capacities and the need for lifelong learning.
Identity work such as mentioned above often takes place in teacher education, though not specifically from an explicit perspective on developing a teacher identity or, in other words, helping student teachers to develop understandings of and for themselves as teachers. The essence of this kind of identity work is encouraging student teachers to become and be agentic in seeking for and learning from the interaction between the inside and outside world in the process of developing a teacher identity. Through identity work, pre-service teachers may develop capacity for resilience. Mansfield, Beltman, Broadley and WeatherbyFell (2016) interpreted this capacity in terms of building personal resources (e.g., motivation and social competence), understanding ways to mobilize contextual resources (e.g., relationships and support networks), and developing a range of coping strategies (e.g., time management and work–life balance) to manage challenges in view of resilient outcomes (e.g., well-being and commitment). Further research is needed to better understand how developing a teacher identity and a capacity for resilience are related and reinforce each other.
Working on Tensions in Teacher Education One pedagogy that particularly focuses on the combination and integration of personal and professional aspects of becoming a teacher and, as such, on the development of teacher identity, is working on tensions. Pillen (2013; see also Meijer et al., 2014) in the Netherlands and Leijen et al. (2014) in Estonia described two versions of working on identity tensions in teacher education programs. Pillen conceptualized identity tensions as internal struggles between aspects relevant to the teacher as a person and the teacher as a professional. Her ‘at-tension program’ aims at an educative approach towards experiencing identity tensions that are inherent to learning to be a teacher: these tensions are an opportunity for learning and, thus, must be transformed into learning experiences. Beginning teachers need to be aware of their tensions and supervised in how to cope with them. In a series of sessions, beginning teachers work towards focusing on transforming professional identity tensions into learning moments for their development. Collaboratively, they are encouraged to think ‘out of the box’ and
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help each other to look for positive approaches towards each other’s professional identity tensions. Teacher educators or mentors in schools have an important role here. They need to be able to recognize the many aspects that may play a part in professional identity tensions and they need to be creative in order to help beginning teachers to see tensions as possibilities to develop themselves as teachers, thus helping student teachers to shift towards seeing their negative frictions no longer as obstacles to learning but as positive factors to learn from (cf. Meijer et al., 2014). For example, one of the beginning teachers in Pillen’s study experienced tension when a student told her something in confidence, while at the same time she felt that she should act against the student’s integrity (by breaking the rule of confidence) in order to protect the student or other people. After discussing this with her peers, she decided to explain her tension to the student, saying that she would like to share the student’s problem with a colleague in school in order to be able to support the student in the best way possible. Afterwards, she said that the student understood her position and agreed. By sharing her tension with her peers and, after that, with the student, she coped with her professional identity tension and felt she developed her identity as a teacher. In this example, the process of helping each other to create learning moments out of tensions can mark the beginning of teachers’ professional identity development. Following the same argumentation as Pillen (2013), Leijen et al. (2014) focus in their work on identity tensions on dialogue (self-dialogue, peer-dialogue and supervisor-dialogue) as a means to ‘negotiate tensions’. By addressing the personal as well as the professional aspects of their tensions, student teachers were stimulated to reflect on and develop their identity in a way that made sense for who they are as a person and who they are (becoming) as a teacher. Using Hermans’ (2001) dialogical self theory, they worked towards the explication of student teachers’ ‘I-positions’, which led to the formulation of tensions such as ‘I as a student at university versus I as a teacher at the practice school’. Both I-positions are associated with their own set of beliefs and expectations, which can be in conflict, leading to tensions. Leijen et al. propose working towards student teachers’ ‘meta-positioning’, meaning that student teachers are able to identify all I-positions and accompanying beliefs that are part of being a teacher, as a starting point for developing a teacher identity in which all these (sometimes conflicting) beliefs are input for an on-going professional dialogue. Also Maclellan (2014) pointed at the need for dialogic feedback, with co-learning in developing one’s confidence of self-as-teacher. Working on identity tensions (see also Flores, 2014) is an example that shows a variety of elements of a vital learning environment for identity development. Such an environment needs to: • acknowledge that becoming a teacher involves the combination and integration of personal aspects (in particular beliefs as expressed, for example, in expectations, study engagement, etc.) and professional aspects of teaching (generally accepted knowledge, skills and dispositions);
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• acknowledge that changing beliefs and how one sees him/herself personally and professionally feels inherently unsafe and resisting such change should be taken seriously; • be a safe environment for, in essence, unsafe learning; • include an atmosphere of openness and respect in combination with dialogues and narratives; • include a variety of dialogues: self-dialogue, peer-dialogue and supervisory dialogue.
As such, working on identity tensions addresses the various perspectives that are described in literature as indispensable in the development of a teacher identity. From this list, however, it becomes clear that such an environment needs to underlie perhaps all courses and activities in teacher education curricula, and even in the teaching practicum. In the years to come, pedagogies in teacher education need to be further developed in order to build such an underpinning.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This chapter presumes that developing a teacher identity is complex and dynamic. As a ‘product’, teacher identity is, at a certain moment in time and in a given situation, a complex configuration of many personal and professional factors that interact and influence each other. As a ‘process’, it is dynamic and may change as a result of factors from inside as well as outside oneself. For example, reading a book, having a valuable teaching experience or encountering others’ ‘stories to live by’ may lead to (subtle) changes in how a student teacher sees or wishes to see him/herself as a teacher (e.g., Huber et al., 2004; van Rijswijk et al., 2016). Identity development is seen in this chapter as an internal or mental process that is closely connected to one’s beliefs and is often accompanied by emotions, in particular with student teachers, who often seem to ‘struggle’ with identity issues, which in many cases surface as conflicting beliefs (Flores, 2014; Pillen et al., 2013). Being aware of student teachers’ identity tensions, and supporting them to transform these tensions into key experiences (Meijer et al., 2011) or learning opportunities, is seen in this chapter as fundamental for developing a strong and realistic teacher identity. A teacher identity that is consciously built and explicitly based on identity work in teacher education might be a basis for preparing student teachers to become resilient in their work as teachers, for being recognized as a particular professional by others, and for making choices based on knowing who they are and the kind of teacher they want to be inside and outside the classroom. It might, furthermore, be expected that through identity work teachers are more aware of the identity issues of the students in their own classrooms and are willing and able to support them to cope with these issues. As such, arguably, teachers can make a difference for students in a way that goes beyond the teaching of knowledge and skills, but adds to ways students are developing as people (see also Day & Gu, 2014). It might be argued thus that identity work in teacher education contributes to teacher quality and the retention of teachers during their induction period and later in their career (Day
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& Gu, 2010; Mansfield et al., 2016). We strongly recommend longitudinal research on these yet preliminary claims. We also recommend doing research on what in the personal and professional ‘knowledge landscapes’ (Downey et al., 2014) means that (beginning) teachers are capable of sustaining a positive professional identity throughout their induction period and thereafter. Identity work in teacher education is needed in order to develop professional teachers with strong and realistic teacher identities. With this perspective in mind, identity learning as conceptualized in this chapter is learning as a function of becoming and being a professional teacher from a holistic point of view, including the teacher both as a person and as a professional. Learning preferably comes from inside by agentic teachers with ownership over what and how they learn, and who make sense of their learning through reflection on what that all means for who they are as teachers and the teachers they want to become (cf. Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Beijaard et al., 2004; Maclellan, 2014). In this chapter we have attempted to outline a coherent framework for what teacher identity entails and how it develops, including general and more specific principles for doing identity work in teacher education. We strongly recommend explicitly integrating identity work in teacher education programs and investigating what works, why it works, and under what conditions and circumstances. Particularly the experiences during the practicum or workplace learning give rise to identity tensions and should be supervised and dealt with carefully, by teacher educators as well as mentor teachers. The extent to which mentors in schools are aware of and able to support student teachers in coping with identity issues is still an unexplored area. This also applies to the more general identity work that is needed, for example through challenging student teachers to negotiate around what and how they wish to learn to teach and to act as a beginning colleague in school. This means that being a mentor teacher implies much more than being a teacher who opens his or her door for student teachers and provides them with feedback on a lesson.
REFERENCES Akkerman, S.F. & Meijer, P.C. (2011). A dialogical approach to conceptualizing teacher identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 308–319. Alsup, J. (2006). Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Beauchamp, C. & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: An overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39, 175–189. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P.C. & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 107–128. Bronkhorst, L.H., Koster, B., Meijer, P.C., Woldman, N. & Vermunt, J.D. (2014). Exploring student teachers’ resistance to teacher education pedagogies. Teaching and Teacher Education, 40, 73–82. Bullough, R., Knowles, J. & Crow, N. (1992). Emerging as a Teacher. London: Routledge.
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Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (1996). Teachers’ professional landscapes: Teacher stories. Stories of teachers. School stories. Stories of schools. Educational Researcher, 25(3), 24–30. Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (1998). Stories to live by: Narrative understandings of school reform. Curriculum Inquiry, 28, 149–164. Clandinin, D.J., Long, J., Schaefer, L., Downey, C.A., Steeves, P., Pinnegar, E., McKenzie Robblee, S. & Wnuk, S. (2015). Early career attrition: Intentions of teachers beginning. Teaching Education, 26(1), 1–16. Clarke, D.J. & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of professional growth. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 947–967. Connelly, F.M. & Clandinin, D.J. (1999). Shaping Professional Identity: Stories of Education Practice. London, Ont.: Althouse Press. Craig, C.J. (2013). Teacher education and the best-loved self. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 33(3), 261–272. Darling-Hammond, L. & Hammerness, K. (2005). The design of teacher education programs. In L. DarlingHammond & J. Bransford (Eds), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World (pp. 390–441). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Day, C. & Gu, Q. (2010). The New Lives of Teachers. London: Routledge. Day, C. & Gu, Q. (2014). Resilient Teachers, Resilient Schools: Building and Sustaining Quality in Testing Times. London/New York: Routledge. Downey, C.A., Schaefer, L. & Clandinin, D.J. (2014). Shifting teacher education from ‘skilling up’ to sustaining beginning teachers. Teacher Education: Learning from Experiences, 8(1), 15–20. Edwards, A. (2015). Recognizing and realizing teachers’ professional agency. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21, 779–784. Eteläpelto, A., Vähäsantanen, K. & Hökkä, P. (2015). How do novice teachers in Finland perceive their professional agency? Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21, 660–680. Flores, M.A. (2014). The development of teacher professional identity: Influencing contexts and inner tensions. In J.M. Sancho, G. Correa, X. Giró & L. Fraga (Eds), Aprender a ser docente en un mondo en cambio (pp. 45–55). Barcelona: University of Barcelona. Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L. & Bransford, J. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World (pp. 358–389). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hermans, H.J.M. (2001). The dialogical self: Towards a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture and Psychology, 7(3), 243–281. Huber, M., Huber, J. & Clandinin, D.J. (2004). Moments of tension: Resistance as expressions of narrative coherence in stories to live by. Reflective Practice, 5(2), 181–198. Husu, J., Toom, A. & Patrikainen, S. (2008). Guided reflection as a means to demonstrate and develop student teachers’ reflective competencies. Reflective Practice, 9(1), 37–51. Kagan, D. (1992). Implications of research on teacher beliefs. Educational Psychologist, 27, 65–91. Kelchtermans, G. (2009). Who I am in how I teach is the message: Self-understanding, vulnerability, and reflection. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15, 257–272. Kelchtermans, G. & Hamilton, M.L. (2004). The dialects of passion and theory: Exploring the relation between self-study and emotion. In J. Loughran, M.L. Hamilton, V. Kubler LaBoskey & T. Russell (Eds), International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (pp. 785–810). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kennedy, M.M. (1997). Defining an Ideal Teacher Education Program. Washington, DC: National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. Ketelaar, E., Beijaard, D., Boshuizen, H.P.A. & Den Brok, P.J. (2012). Teachers’ positioning towards an educational innovation in the light of ownership, sense-making and agency. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28, 273–282. Korthagen, F.A.J. & Vasalos, A. (2010). Going to the core: Deepening reflection by connecting the person to the profession. In N. Lyons (Ed.), Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry (pp. 529–552). New York, Dordrecht, Heidelberg and London: Springer.
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Korthagen, F., Loughran, J. & Russell, T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(8), 1020–1041. Lamote, C. & Engels, N. (2010). The development of student teachers’ professional identity. European Journal of Teacher Education, 33, 1–13. Lasky, S. (2005). A sociocultural approach to understanding teacher identity, agency and professional vulnerability in a context of secondary school reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 899–916. Lee, I. (2013). Becoming a writing teacher: Using ‘identity’ as an analytic lens to understand EFL writing teachers’ development. Journal of Second Language Writing, 22, 330–345. Leijen, Ä., Kullasepp, K. & Anspal, T. (2014). Pedagogies of developing teacher identity. In C.J. Craig & L. Orland-Barak (Eds), International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (pp. 311–328). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Maclellan, E. (2014). How might teachers enable learner self-confidence? A review study. Educational Review, 66(1), 59–74. Mansfield, C.F., Beltman, S., Broadley, T. & Weatherby-Fell, N. (2016). Building resilience in teacher education: An evidence informed framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 77–87. McLean, V.S. (1999). Becoming a teacher: The person in the process. In R.P. Lipka & T.M. Brinthaupt (Eds), The Role of Self in Teacher Development (pp. 55–91). New York: State University of New York Press. Meijer, P.C., de Graaf, G. & Meirink, J.A. (2011). Key experiences in student teachers’ development. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 17(1), 115–129. Meijer, P.C., Korthagen, F.A.J. & Vasalos, A. (2009). Supporting presence in teacher education: The connection between the personal and professional aspects of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), 297–308. Meijer, P.C., Oolbekkink, H.W., Pillen, M. & Aardema, A. (2014). Pedagogies of developing teacher identity. In C.J. Craig & L. Orland-Barak (Eds), International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (pp. 293–309). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Merseth, K.K., Sommer, J. & Dickstein, S. (2008). Bridging worlds: Changes in personal and professional identities of pre-service urban teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(3), 89–108. Olsen, B. (2010). Teaching for Success: Developing your Teacher Identity in Today’s Classroom. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Pierce, J.L., Kostova, T. & Dirks, K.T. (2001). Toward a theory of psychological ownership in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 26, 298–310. Pierce, J.L., Kostova, T. & Dirks, K.T. (2003). The state of psychological ownership: Integrating and extending a century of research. Review of General Psychology, 7, 84–107. Pillen, M.T. (2013). Professional Identity Tensions of Beginning Teachers. Doctoral dissertation. Eindhoven: Eindhoven University of Technology/ESoE. Pillen, M., Beijaard, D. & Den Brok, P. (2013). Tensions in beginning teachers’ professional identity development, accompanying feelings and coping strategies. European Journal of Teacher Education, 36, 240–260. Pinnegar, S. (2005). Identity development, moral authority and the teacher educator. In G.F. Hoban (Ed.), The Missing Links in Teacher Education Design (pp. 259–279). Dordrecht: Springer. Priestley, M., Biesta, G. & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher Agency: An Ecological Approach. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Rajuan, M., Beijaard, D. & Verloop, N. (2007). The role of the cooperating teacher: Bridging the gap between expectations of cooperating teachers and student teachers. Mentoring & Tutoring, 15, 223–242. Richardson, V. (1996). The role of attitudes and beliefs in learning to teach. In J. Sikula, T.J. Buttery and E. Gyton (Eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (2nd edition) (pp. 102–119). New York: Macmillan. Rodgers, C.R. & Scott, K.H. (2008). The development of the personal self and professional identity in learning to teach. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser & D.J. McIntyre (Eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (pp. 732–755). New York: Macmillan.
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Ross, J.A. & Bruce, C.D. (2007). Teacher self-assessment: A mechanism for facilitating professional growth. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 146–159. Sannino, A. (2010). Teachers’ talk of experiencing: Conflict, resistance and agency. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 838–844. Smagorinsky, P., Cook, L.S., Moore, C., Jackson, A.Y. & Fry, P.G. (2004). Tensions in learning to teach: Accommodation and the development of a teaching identity. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 8–24. Soini, T., Pietarinen, J., Toom, A. & Pyhälto, K. (2015). What contributes to first-year student teachers’ sense of professional agency in the classroom? Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 641–659. Sternberg, K., Karlsson, L., Pitkaniemi, H. & Maaranen, K. (2014). Beginning student teachers’ teacher identities based on their practical theories. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37, 204–219. Vähäsantanen, K., Hökkä, P., Eteläpelto, A., Rasku-Puttonen, H. & Littleton, K. (2008). Teachers’ professional identity negotiations in two different work organizations. Vocations and Learning, 1, 131–148. van Rijswijk, M., Akkerman, S.F., Schaap, H. & van Tartwijk, J. (2016). Past perceptions and future expectations: Sensed dis/continuity at the start of teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 58, 99–108. van Veen, K. & Lasky, S. (2005). Emotions as a lens to explore teacher identity and change: Different theoretical approaches. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 895–898. Verhaeghe, P. (2014). Identiteit [Identity]. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Volkmann, M.J. & Anderson, M.A. (1998). Creating professional identity: Dilemmas and metaphors of a first-year chemistry teacher. Science Education, 82, 293–310.
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11 Identity Making at the Intersections of Teacher and Subject Matter Expertise Francine Peterman
Revisiting research on teacher education through the lens of subject matter knowledge and teacher identity reveals diverse tensions at the intersection of self and context. In the 1980s, categories of content knowledge and the degree to which they were attained frequently differentiated descriptions of teachers’ professional identities; however, over time, more complex and differing methodologies for collecting and analyzing data allowed researchers to look more comprehensively at the intersections of context, knowledge, learning to teach and emergent teaching identities. Foreshadowing expansive views of teacher identity, Grossman and Stodolsky (1994) noted that institutional contexts – school, department and higher education – play significant roles in framing teachers’ professional identities. In the mid-1990s, the global enactment of reform initiatives in complex educational settings challenged teachers’ identity as content experts. As ethnographic, narrative, autobiographical, post-structural and phenomenological approaches to research on teacher education flourished, teacher identity was more frequently represented as an emergent, storied, contextually bound phenomenon. Thus, in recent research, content expertise was explored within complex processes situated in political, historical and cultural settings. In this review of recent research, studying teachers’ identity formation and its relation to subject matter knowledge illuminates the intricacies and tensions of learning teaching (Mayer, 2015) within and across diverse, complex educational landscapes.
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ANALYSIS OF A REVIEW OF THE RESEARCH To conduct this review, a broad scan of research about teacher identity as a content or subject matter expert was conducted using a variety of web-based search engines. At the start, 110 studies regarding teacher identity were identified – including 55 focusing on teacher identity in general (e.g., as a teacher versus as an art teacher), 6 presenting a review of the literature, 5 lacking a coherent description of methodology, and 3 situated in post-secondary settings. To delimit and focus the review, the following criteria were applied to the studies: (a) they were published in peer-reviewed professional journals within the last 20 years; (b) they employed clearly delineated disciplined inquiry (Shulman, 1997); (c) they involved the preparation of elementary and/or secondary teachers; and (d) they focused on teacher identity as related to content knowledge or subject matter expertise, which are explicitly discussed in the findings. A constant-comparative analysis of 41 studies, situated across 5 continents and 11 nations and representing diverse K-12 school settings and theoretical frameworks, yielded a distinct set of tensions among identity as a subject matter expert and personal history, context and culture. An open and resultant selective coding of the findings of the studies included in this research focused on teachers – their personal experiences and histories and the contexts and cultures in which they learned teaching and developed an identity as a content expert. The analysis of the discussion and findings of these studies resulted in the construction of the following generalizations: 1 Personal experience and history of being a learner often frame identity as a teacher of a particular subject, create tensions in learning to teach, and impact one’s professional stance towards teaching. 2 Identity as a subject matter expert evolves as content competency is challenged and supported within schools, classrooms and other educational communities. 3 The culture of an educational context and its participants transforms professional identity as it relates to subject matter expertise.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore these themes, the studies from which they emerged and their implications for teacher education.
Personal Experience and History Educators frequently noted the impact of their teachers, families and classroom experiences on their decisions to become and how to be professionals. Sometimes, teachers explained their drive to become passionate, talented educators was rooted in their perceived inadequacies as learners and those of their teachers as content experts. Their stories revealed keys to becoming valued professionals who often persevered in less than supportive environments.
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Professional stance. Pre-service teachers’ personal stories revealed how their professional identities were influenced by the individuals who are close to them – family, teachers and professors (Isbell, 2008). Many teachers told tales of loved ones and teachers who were challenging, caring and ethical. Other pre-service teachers discussed unskilled, under-prepared teachers who provided the inspiration to be responsive to students and knowledgeable of the content. Science teachers linked engaging students in scientific thinking to their professional identity as a content expert who learned from inspiring individuals dedicated to the discipline (Helms, 1998). Often, teachers told stories of developing a professional identity that was like or unlike that of their own teachers. Science teachers, for instance, noted their former teachers’ knowledge of science – or lack thereof – as pivotal in their becoming science teachers. New science teachers wanted their students to benefit from working with content experts – unlike their teachers (Stears, Good & James, 2012). Pre-service mathematics teachers frequently expressed that their ‘love’ of mathematics, their proficiency in the field and their decision to be teachers were inspired by their mathematics teachers – whether or not they were ideal role models (Kasten, Austin & Jackson, 2014). Two English teachers related tales of teachers who impacted their professional identities by exemplifying what professionals should and should not be (Fox, 2005). Language teachers negatively critiqued their former teachers, rejected the reading and writing methods used in their formal schooling, and – in their classrooms – used the more naturalistic strategies that they had learned mastering a language in community settings (Daly, 2011). Images of teachers often framed identity formation. A first-year chemistry teacher expressed concern about expectations that she be an expert, noting her discomfort with high school chemistry. When her confidence waned, she constructed an image of herself as a favorite rather than her best teacher – one who cares, has a good grasp of the subject and is human, rather than one who is tough, smart and perfect. Finding a balance among these descriptors framed her developing an identity as a first-year science teacher (Volkmann & Anderson, 1997). Learning content. Personal experience as a content learner often frames professional identity. Content teachers use their experience as learners to make decisions about how to create the learning communities that are distinctly different from those in which they learned the subject. When challenged by new content, teachers sometimes become learners alongside their students. Several teachers defined themselves as content experts who create safe learning environments (Daly, 2011). Two language teachers claimed they had improved their language content knowledge by living in contexts where the language was spoken and rejected their language teachers’ reliance on reading and writing as primary strategies for learning. In reviewing their personal experiences, the teachers created classrooms where students learned a language conversationally and unabashedly. When these teachers came across new content, they comfortably flipped through
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the text and other resources to respond to questions, collaboratively learning with their students. When artists, scientists and musicians sought to accomplish a valued identity as a content teacher, each adopted a new identity – teacher as learner within the classroom and among peers. Realizing that their content knowledge was limited by their professional experience in one genre or instrument, music teachers expanded their expertise by building collaborative relationships with peers and students (Webb, 2005). Frequently, how teachers felt about themselves as learners of a content impacted their confidence and their approach to teaching. Elementary teachers discussed learning to read inside and outside of school and feeling competent as literacy learners and teachers, yet experiencing varying levels of failure and success learning mathematics in school. Those who frequently failed at mathematics were challenged by inquiry-based initiatives adopted in their schools; while those who experienced success became more reform-minded mathematics teachers (Drake, Spillane & Hufferd-Ackles 2001). One teacher struggling to implement inquiry-based teaching expressed confidence and security in her study of literacy and identity as a reading teacher yet had difficulties with her identity as a mathematics teacher. She noted that her school experiences emphasized memorizing and following procedures. In her classroom, the content and processes of academic tasks focused on literacy were authentic and rooted in students’ constructing knowledge; in mathematics, the content was more procedural and rules-oriented (Spillane, 2000). An elementary teacher discussed how her female college professors served as role models for her becoming a science teacher, rooting her professional identity in content as it is used in scientific inquiry and noting the importance of gender in the mentoring she received. Despite her mentor teacher’s disapproval, she maintained her stance as an inquiry-based teacher of science throughout her student teaching experience (Avraamidou, 2014). Two individuals with similar characteristics, beliefs about teaching and learners, and professional experiences worked in the same school yet expressed differing identities as science teachers. One teacher did not see herself as a science teacher, detailing her struggles as a learner. Feeling more confident in and as a teacher of mathematics, she encouraged students’ problem solving, engaged in the process with them and resisted following a curriculum script. The other teacher, who felt more confident as a science teacher and learner, noted she needed deeper content knowledge related to sequences, processes and connections in her curriculum. She emphasized specific procedures for collecting data that she had learned in science laboratories. The other teacher encouraged students in identifying a variety of strategies for inquiry – as she had done in learning mathematics. The complex web of relationships among teachers’ multiple identities – especially those as a subject teacher and a learner of particular subjects – played critical roles in their pedagogical decisions to enact curriculum in vital learning communities (Enyedy, Goldberg & Welsh, 2005).
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Recognition presents an important tension for teacher identity as a content expert and highlights the intersections of multiple identities within educational settings. In their university art classes, pre-service teachers felt less valued; while in their education classes, they felt their artistic expertise is less valued than their teaching capacities. The tension of seemingly contradictory roles – artist and art educator – complicated their developing a sense of efficacy and accomplishment (Blair and Fitch, 2015). Several teachers who noted their roles as artists, musicians and scientists as core to their teacher identity recognized the limits of their expertise once they discussed their plans and practices with school colleagues. Such conversations led to the teachers’ identifying how much more they needed to know to feel competent and gain the respect and cooperation of other teachers (Webb, 2005). As she began to examine and discuss her experience as an English language learner and as a poet/writer with colleagues and apply the knowledge she gleaned from these roles, a new reading specialist felt more confident and began to be recognized by her peers for her teaching competency (Assaf, 2005). The complexity of teachers’ identity as content knowledge specialists may be rooted in from whom, how and where they learn the subject. While many teachers claim their decision to teach was inspired by classroom teachers, their storylines vary in terms of the nature of their experience. In some cases, they determined to be a very different teacher – perhaps not the favorite but the best in terms of being responsive and caring; perhaps not didactic but more like the teachers they found in community settings; often, more passionate and studentcentered. Interestingly, when faced with challenges that shed light on their lack of content knowledge, teachers often become learners alongside their students, modeling the collaborative learning they had not experienced.
Learning Teaching across Settings Expressed explicitly and implicitly in assessments required to enter the profession and by students, colleagues and parents, expectations for teachers to be content experts impact their sense of competency. Educators continuously learn teaching across educational landscapes – in informal and formal settings – that highlight inconsistencies in, challenge and strengthen their identity as a competent content teacher. Expectations. Expectations expressed in examinations, in collegial conversations and in educational communities often challenge teachers’ sense of their content expertise and its enactment. Frequently, beginning teachers identified feeling incompetent as a tension in their professional lives and identity formation (Pillen, Beijaard & den Brok, 2013). To be certain they would ‘perform mathematics accurately in front of children, their parents, and the principal’ (Meaney & Lange, 2012, p. 60) and be recognized as competent in the field, pre-service primary teachers of mathematics used their basic skills test scores to evaluate their content knowledge.
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How content expertise is defined creates tensions, especially when the expectations of peers and students conflict with the educator’s professional identity as a content expert. After participating in a summer institute in community-based laboratories, new teachers embraced inquiry as their identity shifted to being scientists teaching science. When they perceived colleagues and students expected more linear, procedural learning, their professional identity and concomitant practices shifted to teachers of science content not process (Varelas, House & Wenzel, 2005). Pre-service primary teachers’ multiple identities as science teachers, primary teachers, traditional science teachers and teachers as learners became intertwined and conflicted when they discovered the limitations of students’ science knowledge. Recognizing the disparity between their own content knowledge and that of their students forced two new teachers to question whether or not their students could engage in inquiry-based science – an element of their professional identity, as rooted in the discourse of their teacher education program. The teachers’ internal conflict regarding how to implement science as inquiry focused on similarities and differences among their experiences as learners and those of their students and their new positionality as teachers (Danielsson & Warwick, 2014). New content, new perspective. When teachers are faced with presenting unfamiliar content, they often question their competence and focus on developing deeper understandings and new pedagogies that represent their expanding identity as subject matter experts. Two student teachers expressed confidence in their content knowledge; however, while working with students in unfamiliar content areas, their identity as competent English teachers waned. Content expertise – a strength at the core of their professional identities – became an area of concern (Kanno & Stuart, 2011). Similarly, science teachers who sought to integrate science, technology, society and environment education noted their lack of content knowledge while implementing an issues-based approach to learning with which they were not familiar (Pedretti, Bencze, Hewitt, Romkey & Jivraj, 2008). In their first years of teaching, two English teachers began to reframe their identity as content experts – first, when they discovered their weaknesses in grammar; again, when they realized that their learning English in college was quite different from their students’ learning in secondary classrooms. The teachers revisited how and what they learned in these settings and challenged their students to develop critical knowledge and skills in authentic tasks. In doing so, the teachers shifted their articulation of themselves as English teachers with content expertise to those with pedagogical content knowledge (Fox, 2005). While participating in professional development activities to implement culturally responsive mathematics instruction, early childhood teachers who identified as content specialists struggled with using funds of knowledge found in students’ lives within their own classrooms. Instead of using home visits as a means to bring students’ learning and knowing into the classroom, the
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teachers wanted to help parents teach their children mathematics. Several teachers’ struggles were firmly rooted in their identities as developmentalists who built curriculum based upon in-school experiences. Through ongoing dialogue and application of new understandings, the teachers gained competence in identifying and connecting children’s experiences to classroom mathematics, using content and ways of knowing situated in the home and play. Their understandings of themselves as mathematics teachers and of their content expertise shifted. Rather than simply knowing mathematics, the teachers identified with finding and using the mathematics in students’ typical activities and resources to enrich the curriculum (Graue, Karabon, Delaney, Whtye, Kim & Wager, 2105). Pre-service teachers and their mentors experienced challenges to their identities as subject matter experts when they learned about historical inquiry and interpretation’s shaping influence on content knowledge. While exploring this perspective, the pre-service teachers questioned what they learned and practiced in their history classes; their mentors questioned how well they taught. All questioned their content expertise. As a result of feeling less competent, the mentors resisted providing examples for the pre-service teachers to examine and apply their new understandings in the classroom (Burn, 2007). In another teacher education program focused on challenging epistemological beliefs about history, pre-service teachers critically explored the nature of the content of and learning history amidst cultural expectations for their students to meet national standards. By emerging in a critical study of learning and knowing history, the teachers’ identity as content experts shifted from a focus on knowing more to challenging the nature of the content and emphasizing coming to know in their own classrooms more than simply knowing (Rogers, 2011). Support. Teachers express the importance of having a supportive learning community to feel confident as a content teacher and expand their content expertise. Regardless of their content knowledge, first-year elementary teachers’ identity as science teachers was most influenced by contextual factors – in particular, the openness and supportiveness of other teachers, the status of the content within the school culture, and resource availability. Lack of any combination of these factors delimited the teachers’ sense of their content expertise and confidence as a science teacher (Appleton & Kindt, 2002). Two beginning language teachers whose professional identity was grounded in their content knowledge faced similar classroom realities with differing responses. Over the first three years of teaching, especially when she transferred to a new school that seemed somewhat chaotic, one teacher’s confidence as a content expert diminished. Frequently, she blamed her teacher education program for not preparing her for classroom management and engagement. The other teacher consistently expressed a strong sense of personal autonomy and improved her practice through reflection and peer collaboration. Her confidence grew. While being a language teacher highlighted her professional identity, the
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second teacher developed a complex sense of her professional self in relation to pedagogy, collaboration and agency (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2013). Safe learning communities support teachers’ identity as competent subject matter teachers. A non-native speaker of English focused on her ‘“otherness” in language, race and culture’ (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston & Johnson, 2005, p. 27) as key to her professional identity, limited stature in school and feeling less competent. When she found a learning community within her professional organization that validated the benefits of her non-native status, her confidence as a content expert flourished. A new teacher engaged in Critical Friends Protocols at her school, discussing lessons, student work and dilemmas with colleagues. Finding the context safe, supportive and interactive, the teacher developed a stronger sense of her identity as an English teacher – a struggle during preservice education (Franzak, 2002). Pre-service primary teachers of arts education discussed the significance of their safely exploring their understandings with colleagues in arts-based activities. They noted that working collaboratively developed their confidence as content experts and advanced their identity as arts teachers (Kenny, Finneran & Mitchell, 2015). The expectations of teachers, their students, peers and communities often impact educators’ feelings of adequacy and inadequacy as content experts. Teaching new content, especially through new theoretical lenses, creates tensions and challenges teachers to expand their content knowledge expertise. At the intersections of learning teaching, context and professional identity, collaboration and reflection in a safe learning environment transforms the identities of the teachers as content experts and as teachers of a particular content.
Traversing Cultures While contexts differ in a variety of ways, such as resources, structures and participants, the culture of the setting sometimes challenges teachers’ sense of themselves as content experts. When inconsistencies in values, support structures and opportunities to learn arise, multiple identities are illuminated, challenged and renewed. Cultural heritage. When teachers’ cultural heritage distinguishes forms of knowledge that are valued differently than the cultural norms of their educational contexts, their identity as competent content experts often wavers. In such cases, teachers not only question their competence but shift their focus simultaneously on to professional and pedagogical content knowledge, as they explore the notion of students as learners and responsive classroom practices. In exploring the dissonance among cultural values, teachers may see themselves as content experts who are more confident, culturally responsive and sociopolitical. After developing in-depth subject matter knowledge in a professional development program, all but one teacher expressed images of themselves as ‘more mathy now’. They positioned themselves as strong teachers who mastered the content as mathematicians. The outlier expressed her concerns that knowing
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may be expressed differently across communities and that understanding how mathematics works in daily living was equally important to content mastery. Rarely discussed by the other teachers in her teacher education program, these understandings were highly valued in her Nigerian culture and education, defined her identity as a math teacher, and created dissonance for her in adopting the approach to teaching promoted in her teacher education program (Hossain, Mendick & Adler, 2013). Cultural norms related to the English language distinguished the professional identity of pre-service teachers of English as a Second Language in China and Hong Kong. The Chinese teachers valued British and American English as linguistic standards and felt less competent than the post-colonial Hong Kong teachers, who valued imperfection and local language skills, like code-switching between English and Cantonese. The Hong Kong teachers, speaking several dialects, adeptly connected to working-class students and legitimized their value as natives to motivate their language learning (Gu & Benson, 2014). After her African American art professor critiqued her work as not having any of herself in it, a teacher wondered about her work reflecting the African American or Afrocentric motifs valued in her culture. The teacher began a personal exploration of these traditions, expanding her content knowledge expertise and identity as an art teacher (Kraehe, 2015). A science teacher working in an urban school explained how her biology degree was a symbol of success and defined her as competent among other African Americans in her school’s diverse community. Among teachers and administrators, however, she believed she was seen as having ‘poor academic ability to teach science … [and as being] ill prepared to teach science effectively’ (Upadhyay, 2009, p. 576). Despite perceived differences in views of her racially diverse community, she maintained her ‘science teacher for minority students’ identity’ (p. 576), engaging families in students’ learning and using culturally responsive pedagogy to ensure student success. Two graduate students serving as content experts re-conceptualized their identities in response to the culture of the students they encountered – which was distinctly different from theirs. The urban landscape posed dilemmas and raised a socio political consciousness for each teacher striving to build relationships and accommodate students’ mastery of content for which many were not prepared. Responding to cultural differences and perceived inequities of schooling, the teachers interwove understandings of their students’ cultural history and values into responsive pedagogy. For these teachers, content knowledge began to play a less significant role in their identity formation than being equity-oriented and culturally responsive (Ye, 2011). Professional culture. Oftentimes, the professional cultures of individuals and educational settings – especially the values implicitly and explicitly expressed – differ. Informal settings present opportunities for learning teaching and transforming professional identity.
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Subject matter teachers may find that their content areas and specific knowledge are less valued in schools than in their professions (Grossman & Stodolsky, 2012). Many find differences among their values as artists, scientists, musicians and mathematicians and the values of other educators and students in the workplace. For instance, artists may value independence, creativity and self-expression; yet these qualities may not be equally valued in schools or classrooms where order and precision are expected. A new reading teacher – also an artist – explored her resistance to dressing like a ‘real teacher’ when her administrator required she wear a supportive undergarment to work. As she reflected, the teacher realized that being independent and freely expressing oneself as an artist differed from being a ‘real teacher’ who may act in more conventional ways than her students (Assaf, 2005). Finnish teachers discussed content knowledge and their responsibility to preserve crafts as part of their rich national heritage as key to their identity as arts professionals. They emphasized the importance of their knowing basic skills and techniques as well as the history of particular crafts. Other arts teachers in the group explained that values transmitted through cultural and historical knowledge were more core to their identity. They determined that artistic expression and other transformative cultural values, while key to art educators’ identity, were not always revered in school (Collanus, Kairavuori & Rusanen, 2010). When pre-service music teachers from Australia learned to teach in Bali, they experienced and analyzed the incongruences of teaching and learning music across settings. Examining music knowledge and teaching strategies as culturally embedded, the teachers soon recognized that being a musician played a more critical role in Balinese culture than back home. In Bali, the teachers imagined themselves as valued musicians and music learners, which shifted their identity to being more confident in their content and capacity for new ways of thinking about and teaching music (Rowley & Dubar-Hall, 2013). As they engaged in inquiry as scientists in laboratory settings over the summer, beginning teachers appreciated scientific discovery as messy work that is not always procedural, structural and predictable. They wondered about incorporating complexity and uncertainty into classrooms where time constraints, inconsistencies in students’ prior knowledge and the lack of an inquiry-based mindset prevailed. When values in school and out conflicted – especially regarding students and peers expecting teachers to be content experts and not discovery experts – the teachers began noting the limitations of their content knowledge (Varelas, House & Wenzel, 2005). Two elementary teachers identified their informal science experiences as ones that shifted their professional identity. As they explored their resilience, excitement and engagement in learning teaching in an after-school program, the teachers noted these new values at the core of their teaching identities, replacing the teacher as content expert reinforced in the high-stakes testing environment of their schools (Katz, McGinnis, Riedinger, Marbach-Ad & Dai, 2013).
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At the intersection of teachers’ cultural values with those of the context in which they work, tensions regarding their identity as content experts arise. In some cases, teachers begin to doubt their competence; in others, they refine their identity as content experts to focus on pedagogical content knowledge and other aspects valued or needed in diverse classrooms like resilience, engagement and equity. Incongruences in the racial and cultural identities of teachers, colleagues and students play significant roles in teachers’ identity as a content expert. Faced with incongruences in cultural values within and across settings, teachers often shift to seeing content knowledge as being malleable, relative to context, culturally relevant and/or far more complex than simply procedural and structural. Reflection and support for illuminating and valuing professional identities played key roles in teachers feeling valued and competent across various settings.
IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNING TEACHING The studies reviewed traverse a series of experiences in learning teaching in school and community settings, teacher education programs and professional development activities. In each setting, teachers’ personal histories, culture and experience intersect with institutional, individual and community values and expectations that often jar teachers’ identity and sense of adequacy. Most frequently, context – not content – impacted identity formation across institutional and community settings. An examination of current contexts and ways in which to address tensions that arise when teachers are faced with conflicting values and new perspectives may inform research and practice related to teacher identity as a subject matter expert. Teacher education. The intersections of personal culture and experience within various contexts of learning teaching play critical roles in teachers’ identity as content experts and teachers of a specific content. Most often, when tensions arise, teachers’ sense of the adequacy of their content knowledge diminishes and they develop strategies to co-learn content among colleagues and students to gain their respect. Teacher education programs might better anticipate this discord as a space for critical reflection and encourage teachers’ close examination of the differences among their personal and professional values and those of the contexts in which they work. Using what they learn, teachers may more consistently strengthen their content knowledge – as in the experience of the Australian pre-service teachers learning music teaching in Bali who embraced a valuing of music and musicians in ways that supported their professional growth rather than diminishing it (Rowley & Dunbar-Hall, 2013) and those who discovered supportive learning communities. Teacher education requires intentional exploration of differing personal and cultural values inherent in professional identity and educational settings. Teachers of the arts – who most frequently leave their teaching careers when
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faced with their subjects’ being less valued in a school setting – require resolving the dilemma of competing personal and institutional values before investing years in preparing for a career (Scheib, 2006). Situating learning teaching in formal and informal settings forces teachers to examine beliefs, values and practices in light of their identity as content experts and translate the cultural differences into school practices that are impactful. Apprenticeships and residencies in schools where professional learning communities are the norm assist pre-service teachers in identifying strategies for moving through tensions that accentuate their inadequacies and differences. Teacher educators must intentionally create and select settings that are safe spaces for collaborative learning and creating new knowledge. Valuing the subject knowledge teachers bring to their practice and their ability to create new knowledge in exploring complicated concepts are equally important for supporting them in learning teaching (Burn, 2007). Professional growth is supported by teacher education programs that provide time and engagement in open-ended, dialogic activity in learning communities that honor and illuminate personal identity as fundamental to professional identity (Assaf, 2005). Thus, teachers require collective reflection on the tensions across identities and contexts to illuminate conflicts and challenges that they tackle in professional identity development across their careers (Danielsson and Warwick, 2014). Perhaps the most important shift in teacher education must be from teaching content to analyzing context as the most powerful influence on the ways in which teachers approach their work (Collanus, Kairavuori & Rusanen, 2010). National reform. Across the globe, as represented in the studies included in this review, national reforms for more standards- and inquiry-based learning create contexts for learning teaching that challenge the values and practices inherent in teachers’ personal and professional culture and history (Smit & Fritz, 2008). When writing about the implementation of inquiry-based science teaching in the 1980s, Olson (1981) noted that frequently teachers had difficulty with such reforms because the beliefs that underpinned the proposed practices remained in the mind of the beholder – those who invented it! Similarly, the values and beliefs of teachers that were embedded in their early experiences with their content and their personal culture and history may differ significantly from those embedded in the theoretical framework of national agendas. Since teachers’ self-efficacy is strongly correlated to student achievement and to the successful implementation of innovations (Ghaith & Yaghi, 1997), teacher educators and researchers may benefit from engaging teachers in thoughtful dialogue and reflection to reconcile differences among the values and theories that drive reforms and the values and theories teachers adopted through their learning and experience. Otherwise, reforms will continue to fail as teachers revert to what is known and valued (Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman & Wallace, 2005; Ogden & Fixsen, 2014). Across studies focused on the implementation of reforms in this review, tensions and challenges arose when teachers experienced dissonance regarding the valued ways in which knowing and learning content differed from their
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culture’s valuing language learning, mathematical thinking and content expertise. Interestingly, their realization of such differences generally led to teachers’ feelings of diminished competence and alienation or ‘otherness’. Conflicts between teachers’ and workplaces’ cultural values of self-expression also manifested in feelings of inadequacy, especially in regards to their content knowledge. The mismatch between the policy image and teachers’ professional identity is problematic (Jita & Vandeyar, 2006). In the long run, the conflict among values frequently results in teachers becoming prey to job dissatisfaction and attrition (Scheib, 2006). In the United States, major cities are experiencing teacher shortages as school enrollments soar (Rich, 2015; Weingarten, 2015). One cannot help speculating that when teachers’ identities, especially in regards to their sense of adequacy in content expertise and of their fit within a context founded in values different from their own, are diminished, they not only choose work elsewhere but discourage family and community members from pursuing teaching careers. As a counter-narrative to those of teachers across the globe who frequently discuss content expertise as a relevant component of their professional identity, when Finnish teachers discussed being good teachers, they rarely mentioned content knowledge and focused frequently on values such as equity and love and characteristics such as empathy, confidence, motivation and effort, and willingness to develop the self (Lanas & Keltchermans, 2015). The authors questioned whether or not highly selective teacher education, like the Finnish model, focused professionals on their own agency. This question is amplified by the fact that agency was rarely discussed in the research on teacher identity as it relates to content knowledge and that content knowledge plays a critical role in teacher’s self-efficacy, which is directly related to student achievement (Bandura, 1993; Goddard, Hoy & Woolfolk Hoy, 2000). Changing national contexts to mirror Finland, where teaching is highly valued, teacher education programs highly selective and the culture monochromatic, is improbable. However, shifting research agendas to focus on identity as it relates to content expertise and agency might provide new insights on impacting student achievement, professionalization and teacher retention. Only one study among 41 included in this review focused on the sociopolitical aspect of teacher identity as it relates to content expertise – in a teacher education context that valued culturally responsive teaching and engaged teachers in analysis and reflection upon their personal cultural knowledge and experience and that of their students. Through this analysis, teachers began to experience themselves as professionals whose identities as content specialists were tied to their responsibilities in addressing the inequities present in diverse school settings. To accomplish not only national reforms focused on student achievement, but generational prosperity and peace (even happiness, dare I say), teacher education programs must consistently create dissonance by requiring teachers to engage in critical analyses of their own lives, privilege and cultures, and the probable impact of their own agency in reforming teaching, learning and schooling. By engaging teachers and
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teacher educators in action research towards these ends brings light to the socioeconomic and cultural differences that have significant impact on student achievement across nations (Schmidt, Burroughs, Zoido & Houang, 2015).
CONCLUSION Across the globe, federal and local policies promote inquiry- and standardsbased teaching – and often high-stakes testing – that requires teachers to be content experts who impact student achievement regardless of inequalities within school and community settings (Darling-Hammond, 2014). Valuing teaching and teacher learning while creating spaces and time for collaboration within schools and addressing the inequities that undermine learning are the most promising policy agenda items to globally address the achievement gap (Darling-Hammond, 2011). Research regarding teacher identity that focuses on these dimensions of the landscape – the sociopolitical, socioeconomic and cultural factors that create tensions in learning teaching – presents possibilities for advancing the field of research in this area. To accomplish such studies, their theoretical frameworks may be founded in sociocultural, post-structural and phenomenological perspectives, using epistemologies that illuminate the tensions among race, class and culture within contexts and the personal and professional histories and experiences of teachers learning teaching. Such studies may unpack the complexity of teacher identity within and across settings and time, especially in illuminating the roles of marginalization, subject matter expertise and power relationships in identity formation (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston & Johnson, 2005). Within spaces where collaborative reflection and dialogue promote professional learning and attend to the culture of individuals and contexts, teacher educators may provide insight into the ways in which global concerns about teaching and learning may be more adequately and appropriately addressed.
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Blair, L. & Fitch, S. (2015). Threshold concepts in art education: Negotiating the ambiguity in pre-service teacher identity formation. International Journal of Education through Art, 11(1), 91–102. doi:10.1386/eta.11.1.91_1. Burn, K. (2007). Professional knowledge and identity in a contested discipline: Challenges for student teachers and teacher educators. Oxford Review of Education, 33(4), 445–467. doi:10.1080/ 03054980701450886. Collanus, M., Kairavuori, S. & Rusanen, S. (2012). The identities of an arts educator: Comparing discourses in three teacher education programmes in Finland. International Journal of Education through Art, 8(1), 7–21. doi:10.1386/eta.8.1.7_1. Daly, N. (2011). Context, content, and teacher education: Six language teachers in a New Zealand primary setting discuss their language teaching identity. Babel, 43(2/3), 51–58. Danielsson, A. & Warwick, P. (2014). ‘You have to give them some science facts’: Primary student teachers’ early negotiations of teacher identities in the intersections of discourses about science teaching and about primary teaching. Research in Science Education, 44(2), 289–305. doi:10.1007/s11165013-9383-9. Darling-Hammond, L. (2011). Want to close the achievement gap? Close the teaching gap. American Educator, 38(4), 14–18. Darling-Hammond, L. (2014). What can PISA tell us about US education policy? New England Journal of Public Policy, 26(1), 1–14. Drake, C., Spillane, J.P. & Hufferd-Ackles, K. (2001). Storied identities: Teacher learning and subjectmatter context. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(1), 1–23. Enyedy, N., Goldberg, J. & Welsh, K.M. (2005). Complex dilemmas of identity and practice. Science Education, 90(1), 68–93. Essien, A.A. (2014). Examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within preservice teacher education mathematics classrooms. Perspectives in Education, 32(3), 62–77. Fixsen, D.L., Naoom, S.F., Blase, K.A., Friedman, R.M. & Wallace, F. (2005). Implementation Research: A Synthesis of the Literature. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, The National Implementation Research Network. Fox, D.L. (1995). From English major to English teacher: Two case studies. The English Journal, 84, 17–25. Franzak, J.K. (2002). Developing a teacher identity: The impact of Critical Friends Practice on the student teacher. English Education, 34(4), 258–280. Ghaith, G. & Yaghi, H. (1997). The relationships among experience, teacher efficacy, and attitudes toward the implementation of innovation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(4), 451–458. Goddard, R.D., Hoy, W.K. & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2000). Collective teacher efficacy: Its meaning, measure and impact on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 479–507. Graue, E., Karabon, A., Delaney, K.K., Whyte, K., Kim, J. & Wager, A. (2015). Imagining a future in PreK: How professional identity shapes notions of early mathematics. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 46(1), 37–54. doi:10.1111/aeq.12086. Grossman, P.L. & Stodolsky, S.S. (1994). Considerations of content and the circumstances of secondary school teaching. Review of Research in Education, 20, 179–221. Gu, M. & Benson, P. (2014). The formation of English teacher identities: A cross-cultural investigation. Language Teaching Research, 19(2), 187–206. doi:10.1177/1362168814541725. Hatfield, C., Montana, V. & Deffenbaugh, C. (2006). Artist/art educator: Making sense of identity issues. Art Education, 59(3), 42–47. Helms, J.V. (1998). Science – and me: Subject matter and identity in secondary school science teachers. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(7), 811–834. Hossain, S., Mendick, H. & Adler, J. (2013). Troubling ‘understanding mathematics in-depth’: Its role in the identity work of student-teachers in England. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 84, 35–48. Isbell, D.S. (2008). Musicians and teachers: The socialization and occupational identity of preservice music teachers. Journal of Research in Music Education, 56(2), 162–178.
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Smit, B. & Fritz, E. (2008). Understanding teacher identity from a symbolic interactionist perspective: Two ethnographic narratives. South African Journal of Education, 28, 91–101. Spillane, J.P. (2000). A fifth-grade teacher’s reconstruction of mathematics and literacy teaching: Exploring interactions among identity, learning, and subject matter. The Elementary School Journal, 100(4), 307–330. Stears, M., Good, M.A. & James, A.A. (2012). Exploring the professional identities of physical science teachers enrolled in an advanced certificate in education programme. Education as Change, 16(2), 241–253. doi:10.1080/16823206.2012.745753. Upadhyay, B. (2009). Negotiating identity and science teaching in a high-stakes testing environment: An elementary teacher’s perception. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 4(3), 569–586. Varelas, M., House, R. & Wenzel, S. (2005). Beginning teachers immersed into science: Scientist and science teacher identities. Science Education, 89(3), 492–516. Varghese, M., Morgan, B., Johnston, B. & Johnson, K.A. (2005). Theorizing language teacher identity: Three perspectives and beyond. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 4(1), 21–44. Volkmann, M.J. & Anderson, M.A. (1998). Creating professional identity: Dilemmas and metaphors of a first-year chemistry teacher. Science Education, 82(3), 293–310. Webb, M. (2005). Becoming a secondary-school teacher: The challenges of making teacher identity formation a conscious, informed process. Issues in Educational Research, 15(2), 206–224. Weingarten, R. (2015). The teacher shortage. New York Times, August 15. Retrieved from http://www. nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-teacher-shortage.html Ye, L., Varelas, M. & Guajardo, R. (2011). Subject-matter experts in urban schools: Journeys of enacted identities in science and mathematics classrooms. Urban Education, 46(4), 845–879. doi:10.1177/ 0042085911399930.
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12 Teacher Education as a Creative Space for the Making of Teacher Identity B e v e r l y E . C ro s s
INTRODUCTION As recently as this year, the vast array of teacher education knowledge has been classified into the two large, established categories of ‘process-product’ knowledge and ‘teachers’ thinking and decision making’ (Darling-Hammond, 2016). These categories represent the traditions in which teacher education has operated and been understood practically and scholarly. Recently, however, teacher educators have also given additional attention to teaching contexts as increasingly important in addition to these two large categories. As teacher educators face the new challenges of preparing teachers with contextual knowledge, they find themselves in a significant paradox: on one hand it is increasingly essential to focus on the individual teacher and his or her preparedness to teach anywhere around the world, juxtaposed against the demand for teachers who can relate to and are skilled at teaching children in a unique community, neighborhood, village, or nation. The first view essentially ignores teacher identity and views teachers as depersonalized and transportable across various contexts and borders. The second view recognizes teacher identity as meaningful and as a necessary component to understanding student needs and what it means to teach in particular contexts. In either case, greater understanding of teacher identity as complex, dynamic, and changing rather than fixed, measurable, and static is needed and is the focus of this chapter. When the above exigency is taken alongside the transition from a modern world view to a post-modern one, the context in which teacher educators are doing their work is of greater consequence. They are now faced with questions such as: How
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have the identities of the teacher educators and teachers been shaped by postmodern paradigms as the world and its multiple complex, dynamic, uncertain perspectives change? What does it mean when teacher educators and teachers live out competing and contradictory identities? How do teacher educators and teachers negotiate post-modern identities in modern and even in some instances, pre-modern schools still operating around the world? And what are the implications for the future of teacher education practice and research? Before turning to these questions, an abbreviated conceptual analysis of the traditional schools of thought on identity and teacher identity will be presented as a means to provide a baseline for the concept. Following this presentation, a comparative analysis for thinking about identity development from both traditional and post-modern perspectives will be presented; and, finally, implications for teacher education research will be discussed.
CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS: FROM IDENTITY AS SELF-IMAGE TO IDENTITY POLITICS It is not surprising that the definitions of identity vary considering the array of intellectual traditions, disciplines, and theories that are used to examine the concept and its practical manifestations. Many trace identity to Mead’s work (1934) on identity, self, and social behavior and Erikson’s (1959) stages of psychosocial development. For example, Olsen (2012) traces identity from the field of psychoanalysis (focused on individualized self-image) to psychology (focused on the rational being developing over time). Furthermore, conceptions of identity derive from sociology and anthropology, and rather than place emphasis on the individual they privilege cultural identity to refer to the ways any person selfidentifies with – or is somehow claimed or influenced by – various cultural, gender, or racial/ethnic categories. Used in this manner, identity is understood in terms of broad cultural strata such as race, class, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, language, and physical ability. This view treats individuals as mostly shaped or constructed via cultural markers and social positionings (p. 3). These conceptions of identity cannot be sufficiently examined in this chapter. Others have captured various perspectives and analysis that inform the diverse perspectives on identity and teacher identity (Agee, 2000; Britzman, 2003; CochranSmith, 2005; Day, 2002; Flores and Day, 2006; Hamachek, 1999; Lasky, 2005; Oakes and Lipton, 2003; Schwartz, 2001). The field of education also has its own conceptions and operationalization of identity, ranging from personal identity, social identity, collective identity, and professional identity, based in fields such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy. For example, in 2004, researchers from the Netherlands concluded: ‘In the last decade, teachers’ professional identity has emerged as a separate research area’ (Beijaard, Meijer,
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and Verlopp, 2004), and others have affirmed this with advances in theoretical and practical analysis of identity (Alsup, 2006; Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009; Cross and Gearon, 2007; Lortie, 1975). If their chronological marker of 2004 is correct, another decade has passed since identity has emerged as a separate research area, and the need to study and integrate teacher identity into teacher education remains critical and has become intensified due to the many contexts in which teachers work and the diverse populations they will teach (Olsen, 2012). Teacher identity is ‘a pedagogical tool that can be used by teacher educators and professional development specialists to make visible various holistic, situated framings of teacher development in practice’ (Olsen, 2008, p. 4). Much of the research on teacher identity relates to their professional identity. To illustrate, a study of teacher identity across three countries – Australia, the USA, and Spain – concluded that future teachers viewed their identities as ‘dynamic and moving between discipline expert and teacher’ (Ballantyne, Kerchner, and Aróstegui, 2012). Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004) reviewed several studies about teachers’ professional identity that they place in three categories: studies that focus on identity formation, studies on the characteristics of identity, and studies that represent teacher stories about identity. Connelly and Clandinin (1999, p. 4) further explored teacher professional identity through stories and narratives in which they described identity as ‘given meaning by the narrative understandings of knowledge and context’ and in which stories are multiple, fluid, shifting, continuously composed and recomposed. The literature is clear on the international scope of teacher identity as well. Much of this work is helpful in thinking about identity from post-modern perspectives in which context, societal arrangements, and inequity are important considerations. For example, scholars from Spain assert: ‘This is a critical moment for European schools, faced now with increasing cultural diversity and social inequities’ (Sancho and Hernández-Hernández, 2013, p. 349). Smit and Fritz (2008, p. 28) frame their conception of identify in their study in South African schools from personal identity, to social identity, to professional identity, and concluded that the ‘power of the working context, the educational landscape, appears to be a much stronger force in the development of teacher identity than national educational policies’. Goodwin in ReEd (2013, p. 4) describes teacher identity as a ‘tension – between what you want to be and what you are expected to be’. In her work in Singapore, she advises, ‘If teachers function like technicians or worker bees, they will be overwhelmed by different messages from various stakeholders. You’ll not be able to develop an identity; you simply adopt an identity’ (p. 5). A recent Finnish study (Hökka and Eteläpelto, 2014) complicates teacher and teacher educator identity by examining the obstacles to renegotiating professional identity. They suggest an important review of the imbalance between professional identity and social demands based on changes in society that stimulate the need for more and more renegotiations. Scholars conducting a study of Scottish teachers similarly highlight the role of context and relationships and wider sociocultural process on teacher identity (Colucci-Gray and Fraser, 2008).
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Clearly the frameworks and theories to study teacher identity have expanded. For example, Esteban-Guitart and Moll (2014, p. 31) combine their experiences in Spain and the USA to advance the idea of ‘Funds of Identity’ as a theory of human identity based on funds of knowledge, indicating that identity requires an understanding of the ‘funds of practices, beliefs, knowledge, and ideas that people make use of’. Clandinin, Downey, and Huber (2009) explore teacher identities within the context of globalization, immigration, demographics, economic disparities, and environmental changes. Zembylas (2003) describes three perspectives on identity as developmental, socio-cultural, and post-structuralist. In an essay on identity, language, and post-structuralist perspective, two scholars from the University of Tehran (Kouhpaeenejad and Gholaminejad, 2014, p. 201) discuss identity as either based in a monocultural, cognitive view or a constructivist view. From their analysis they concluded that identity can ‘unite and assimilate individuals, making them similar to other members; on the other hand, it can divide and differentiate people, making them unique and different’. Framing identity in these terms advances the concept within the realm of identity politics which represents a critical anchor to the study of identity within post-modern paradigms because they both are grounded in the similar views that are examined and articulated in the following section.
TEACHER IDENTITY FROM POST-MODERN/COLONIAL/ STRUCTURAL APPROACHES Understanding teacher identity as personal, individual, professional, social, and even collective is instructive in thinking about new paradigms of identity based in post-modern worldviews as depicted in Figure 12.1. The figure represents a graphic organizer/visual representation of the remainder of the chapter and is designed to create the space that Lincoln, Lynham, and Guba (2011) called for as a means to help educators construct new ways of connecting persons and their personal identities and troubles with social justice within institutional sites such as schools. It recognizes that ‘identity development occurs in an intersubjective field and can be best characterized as an ongoing process, a process of interpreting oneself as a certain kind of person and being recognized as such in a given context’ (Gee, 2001, p. 108). And it expands on Olsen’s (2012, p. 1123) conclusions that understanding teacher identity evolves from various theoretical approaches and analytical lenses – from psychoanalysis, identity politics, and sociocultural theory – but should be understood as: • Dynamic and not fixed • Both a process and product • An ongoing and situated relationship among persons, others, histories, and professional contexts
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Figure 12.1 Post-modern/colonial/structural identity perspectives
• • • •
A political project as much as a philosophical frame Socially situated and therefore not traditionally psychological Clearly differentiated from a teacher’s role Not clearly differentiated from a teacher’s self.
Although the comparison of the traditional and post-modern views is presented here as a binary, in reality they are not so absolute and differentiated. Instead they represent more discrete movements in thinking over long periods of time and create a space for multiple worldviews rather than a total conversion of ideas and worldviews. In addition, on the post-modern side, the intent is not to conflate, reduce, or essentialize post-colonial, post-modern, or post-structuralist theories, but rather to see them as interrelated worldviews that form the political, cultural, and social nature of identity. They are all important and unique
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in their own right; however, they do coalesce sufficiently around enough similar ideas (e.g. language, meaning, power, privilege, oppression, and equity), and for this analysis they will be examined as a post-modern paradigm. Kincheloe and McLaren (1994, p. 143) warn ‘it is misleading to identify post-modernism with poststructuralism. Although there are certainly similarities involved, they cannot be considered discrete homologies.’ The comparison that follows will be achieved through the analysis of traditional views based on personal or professional identities juxtaposed alongside post-modern propositions of identity as: (1) multiple, fluid, unknowable, and ideologically inscribed; (2) often privileged and supporting oppression and inequality; (3) embedded in discursive, political, and economic purposes; and (4) subjective, socially constructive, and mediated by power relations. These four themes are anchored in and evolved from the reading of key ideas generally used in an analysis of such paradigms as positivist, post-positivist, critical, and constructivist (Lincoln, Lynham, and Guba, 2011), critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 2004), or narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2007; Clandinin et al., 2006). These scholars collectively challenge conventions that are grounded in traditional paradigms and worldviews, and present instead post-modern interpretations about ontology, epistemology, the relationship of the knower to the known, the nature of knowledge, experience, context and voice, relationships, representation, and power. These are the exact ideas that are used to create the four themes that follow. In addition the discussion of each also includes an analysis and specific considerations for teacher educators.
Identities are Multiple and Fluid, Unknowable and Ideologically Inscribed Increasingly identity is viewed as fluid rather than static, fixed, set, and biologically determined, as traditionally believed and understood. In a post-modern sense identity can be experimented with, tested, and chosen. It can further change. Because identity operates in dynamic and complex social, cultural, and political contexts, it is not only much less fixed than previously believed, but is also confounded in values and ideology. It is complicated and situated in contexts that are described as diverse, fluid, and contradictory, and within discursive systems that produce, repress, and distribute realities in cultural and political ways (Fiske, 1993). For example, current constructs and realities around sexual identity are increasingly fluid and have challenged not only the language to describe sexual identity, but also traditionally held beliefs that identity is biologically defined and determined. Certainly sexual identity is central to how individuals and groups construct their identities, how they relate to others in societies, and how they are perceived inside the specific hierarchy or structure in that society. In post-modern views, sexual identities have shifted over time and become less fixed and determined, and have entered the space of identity politics
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through changing, for example, gay marriage laws, healthcare partner benefits, and military service. Even after policy changes, debates and unrests continue as societies wrestle with what this means against their traditional views, hierarchies, and structures. Understanding that identity is multiple, fluid, unknowable, and ideologically inscribed requires that teacher educators become skilled in thinking about identity in a complex way. Teacher educators have had to think about identity based in their work around multicultural education, culturally relevant teaching, and international education. This has led to some teacher educators including program design features that recognize identity as critical to teachers’ success and to examining which teachers are best fit to teach which children. For example, many in the field are asking questions such as about which teachers are best fit to teach children in poverty, or if teachers should share the same heritage language as the students they teach, or whether teachers can be exported from one country to teach in another to meet supply and demand crises. These are not mere questions of teacher skill, but are also questions about identities and what it means when identities are socially constructed and come into contact with each other. They raise further questions – such as, can matches be made across geography, class, and language? Rather than preparing teachers for a specific narrowly defined place, population subset, or generation, teacher educators will benefit from expanding the conception of context to include preparing teachers by making transparent their non-fixed, shifting, and sometimes unknowable identities and what this means for their work. To illustrate, a recent summary of the generational gaps indicated that Millennials (the approximate age of those entering the profession now) asked ‘What is a career?’ as one of their most contemplative questions (Feirstein, 2015, p. 82). This group is likely to face double digit careers in their lives and certainly will experience identity not only as multiple and fluid, but ever changing. They might be one of the first generations of teachers who hold no long-term connection to teaching as a key piece of their identity and who have short-term commitments in the field. One obvious example of this is Teach for America, which originally expected a three-year contractual commitment for its corps members to teach. That is now lowered to two years due largely to this shift in Millennials and their much-shortened commitment to a particular type of work or job and to their new vision of their own identities and work identities rather than a career. Teach for America and Teaching for All (its international organization) have been explicit about recognizing the powerful role of identity in the current generation of college recruits as compared to previous generations who held teaching as a central element of their consciousness and identity as life-long career educators. And they are making adjustments in how they recruit, what they expect, and how they support corps members. It is important to understand these shifts in identity and what they mean for teacher education because the impacts are not limited to Teach for America. The same Millennials are in teacher education programs and will hold certain ideas about their relationship to the workforce and their
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identities as teachers that will challenge traditional teacher education preparation and expectations. Teacher educators will need to ask new questions, such as what does it mean to prepare future teachers (who themselves are discovering and changing in their complex identities) to teach others with possibly even greater unknowable, fluid, multiple identities considering the interrelated nature of the relationship between teaching, learning, and identity.
Some Identities are Privileged and Support Oppression and Inequality Societies in general are characterized by some form of hierarchy, either formal or informal, that creates structures of inequality based in gender, class, race/ ethnicity, language, familial lineage or heritage, or religion, for example. Any one of these social axes can represent powerful privileging or marginalizing positions based on societal beliefs, values, and cultural practices. These multiple axes of identity from a traditional analysis may appear biological or fixed, but they are social categories rewritten as biological determinants to support and explain societal privilege, oppression, and inequality (Fiske, 1993). Fiske further explains that in post-modern contexts, imperializing powers work to control physical realities, human societies, histories, and consciousness. This type of power subsequently influences how people make sense of their identities and experiences and how these intersect with others at both the individual and societal levels. The example of the role and positioning of women in many societies (although to varying degrees) illustrates how identity has been and is still used in societies to create a hierarchy that operationalizes privilege for men while simultaneously oppressing and marginalizing women. Men in these societies are awarded privileged status and benefits. Women, on the other hand, continue to struggle for equity in rights to education, healthcare, or self-sufficiency, as well as in equity in social status, acceptance, and protections. As women across the world continue their struggles for equity, they are simultaneously disrupting the often silent ‘natural order’ that results in their society’s acceptance of the privileged status of men often conditioned on the marginalization of women. Today’s classrooms continue to increase in diversity around much of the world both in scale (the sheer quantity of individuals and groups) and in the extensiveness of that pluralism (the scope and new forms of diversity). For example, it is not uncommon for schools and classrooms to serve students who speak multiple heritage languages. Teachers frequently indicate that they have as many as 200 languages spoken in their schools, for example. They further identify how unprepared they are to engage with and teach students across these languages. Even in schools that have a specific language concentration, many are concerned that they are not adequately prepared to teach students with the scope of language diversity represented in their schools. They might be well prepared to teach Spanish heritage language learners but not the increasing African, Middle Eastern, or other
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languages of students and families now populating their schools. They have particular concern over what this disconnect means for student performance and even their own teacher evaluations. The subsequent demands for linguistic diversity in the teaching force have raised issues for teacher educators and for teachers regarding their preparedness to serve students well in these rich linguistic environments. This challenge is among the highest and most critical needs facing teacher educators, yet is among the most lagging reforms. It represents not merely a practical matter of being able to communicate across languages, but increasingly a denial of access to curriculum, teaching, and learning because of the strong relationship between identity and school knowledge. As Smith (2012) suggests, the devaluing of a people’s culture and heritage (including language as a key element) continues colonial education through defining, essentializing, labeling, and alienating students. This alienating result is further described by Valenzuela (1999) through the ways in which schools ask students to leave their identities and language outside of school as they enter. Teacher educators must ask questions about how to disrupt this colonizing schooling context. This includes, but is not limited to, increasing the number of teachers proficient in multiple languages. It raises the larger question of how privileging statuses based on unchallenged assumptions about identity operate inside the profession and how the traditional notion of teacher identities can re-inscribe this often unrecognized process. It further asks what role teacher educators and teachers can play in disrupting the oppression and inequality that results.
Identities are Embedded in Discursive, Political, and Economic Purposes Doll (1993) indicates that from a post-modern perspective everything is time, culture, and discursively bound. That is, the way in which we think about and act upon things, including identity, is based in a specific time period; a particular historical, political, and cultural context; and with the discursive forms and practices available to frame and describe virtually everything within a society. Although this likely reads as a fixed reality because it is so bounded, it instead changes over time. He further explains that post-modern perspectives require thinking in non-linear ways not bound by uniformity, but rather about growth and emergence, where indeterminacy, interactions, transactions, disturbance, disequilibrium, and perturbations prevail to create and sustain some level of chaos necessary for transformation. This context is further complicated because it operates to signify discursive, political, and economic purposes. Within and across societies, ways to think about identity are subject to these same discursive, political, and economic contexts. It is often stated that language is power. From a post-modern perspective, that would now read that the power to control language is power. In most societies the language used to describe various marginalized groups has shifted over time. These discursive practices are certainly informed by the political and economic exigencies of
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the moment and the ways in which those impact how the larger society shifts its thinking about marginalized groups. For example, the ways in which a society frames, controls, and circulates the identities of immigrant groups often suffer from the political and economic moment at hand. It is not unusual to experience a harsh shift in the language used to describe immigrant groups as the economy shrinks or other opportunities in a society decline or diminish. And it is not unusual to see this negative language take hold and spread, further marginalizing the groups and the opportunities and social status accorded them at the time. And this process can shift over time. Once welcoming communities for immigrants can become hostile and even violent and retaliatory as the discourse about the group becomes mean, fearful, and even hate-filled. The time and culture can support the discursive shift of the moment because the power to control language can subsequently control the image and representation of the identity of the immigrant group to the rest of the community. It can further control and restrict materially what the group has access to inside the society. Teacher educators have increasingly redesigned their programs to ensure they are responsive to the demands from their societies for teachers who are relevant and effective with the increasingly diverse student bodies in schools. This responsiveness often conflicts with, confirms, or confronts changing social, political, and economic dynamics. Thus, teacher educators have to negotiate not only what this means for their own identities and programs but also how they develop the complex individual and professional identities of their teacher candidates and other teachers they work with in schools. For example, a high school in the US Midwest struggled to identify and select teachers for its LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) student body, the population served by the school. In this context, the local teacher preparation programs did not equip their teacher candidates to understand what it means to honor and teach students with these identities or to reflect on and understand their own identities in relation to the students served by the school. The school subsequently concluded that the teacher education program held a particular negative or indifferent discursive, political, and cultural perspective on LGBT students, was detached from the realities of youth, lacked interest in serving the teaching needs of the school, and was outdated. They further concluded that the teacher educators worked from political, social, and cultural ideologies against their student population, their subjectivities, and their subordinated social status. Fair conclusion or not, the gap this created between that local school community and the teacher education program played out publicly and worked against the teacher education program which ultimately was viewed as essentially out of touch, irrelevant, and non-responsive. A breach was created between not only that school and the teacher education program, but between the larger school system and the teacher education program. The local education community concluded that the teacher educators and their programs were stuck in traditional times, grounded in the status quo, and locked in discursive practices that hindered them from partnering with the school around
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its needs and the needs of its students. They believed that the teacher educators, like a large sector in many societies, still did not know how to recognize or challenge traditions of time, culture, and discursive boundedness, because their own identities were wedded to a particular ideology that implicitly participated in disregarding and marginalizing this population.
Identities are Subjective, Socially Constructed, and Mediated by Power Relations Not only are identities flexible, discursively bound, and potentially privileging, they are subjective, socially constructed, and mediated by power relations. Psychologists such as Bruner (1990) described identity as not only ‘socially and culturally mediated but also the result of prolonged and intricate processes of construction and negotiation deeply embedded in the culture’ (p. 24). His constructivist theory informed and broadened the view of identity from fixed and permanent to more dynamic. For example, in the PBS (American Public Broadcasting Service Television Network) series Race: The Power of an Illusion, scholars from such diverse fields as medicine, sociology, and anthropology analyzed how race is a social construction based in power relations and how it has been discursively and historically used to explain injustices based on difference and inferiority. In this sense, power is socially and historically grounded. To disrupt the traditional seemingly intractable idea of race as biology is a profound example of shifting a key component of identity into an area that is subjective, socially constructed, and mediated by power relations. The series narrator states, ‘Racial beliefs have always been tied to social ideas and policy. After all, if differences between groups are natural, then nothing can or should be done to correct for unequal outcomes.’ As one scholar states in the film series in reference to race, ‘We made it, we can unmake it.’ Racial and ethnic identity appears to be one of the most fixed identities in the imagination of many societies, but many other components of identity could also be inserted into this analysis. However, Race: The Power of an Illusion calls upon scholars from a wide range of disciplines to provide evidence of how race is used to explain the privileging, oppressing inequalities in many societies. Because of its seemingly intractable role in many societies, however, the series profiles the ways in which race, although not a biological fact, continues to shape, inform, and sustain inequity in realities, identities, social status, and opportunities. Understanding that identities are subjective, socially constructed, and mediated is critical to informing how teacher educators approach their work. Increasingly teacher educators have attempted to examine the identity of teacher candidates and classroom teachers as they work to equip them to be successful in increasingly diverse classrooms and schools. Key strategic approaches such as multicultural education, culturally relevant teaching, and critical pedagogy have become central to this work, even if only at the conceptual or theoretical levels because
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translation of these ideas into practice is still limited. Recently Gloria LadsonBillings (2014, p. 75) addressed what she calls ‘Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0’ as a reflection on 25 years of this important work and its need to focus on producing ‘new generations of teachers who would bring an appreciation of their students’ assets to their work with African-American children’. This quartercentury-long struggle to prepare teachers to understand the intersection of their identities with the identities and academic achievement of African-American students, for example, is foundational to understanding the roles of teacher identity as a force in disrupting how privilege, oppression, and inequality manifest themselves across the world. In fact, Ladson-Billings concludes her reflection by suggesting that future teacher educators and their teacher candidates need to ‘link their work to the very survival of people who have faced systematic extinction’. For example, The Civil Rights Project led its 2014 report on education desegregation in the United States by stating that six decades of ‘separate but equal’ as the law of the land have now been followed by ‘six decades of “separate is inherently unequal” as our basic law (Orfield and Frankenberg, 2014). The Brown decision set large changes and political conflicts in motion and those struggles continue today’ (p. 2). The report concluded that the educational achievement of AfricanAmerican children and youth in the United States is at pre-civil-rights levels. Certainly teacher educators and teachers have contemplated how this can be true amid decades of education reform. And across the world, nations have had to recognize and at times confront the issues of seemingly intractable, pernicious, and persistent education inequality facing their marginalized populations. As suggested by Ladson-Billings, Tate, Gay, Foster, and others, the identity of teachers is unequivocally connected to African-American students and to marginalized groups in other communities around the world. Ladson-Billings (1995) challenges the gap between teacher identities and student identities and the essential need to bridge these gaps through Culturally Relevant Teaching which focuses on academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. She is still currently calling for changes.
TEACHER EDUCATION RESEARCH ON IDENTITY IN THIS POST-MODERN REALITY Understanding post-modern ways of thinking about identity is critical to the practical work of teacher educators in ways discussed above. It is also of utmost importance to teacher education research. In a time when identity seems to matter more and more in and across societies, teacher educators face a paradox: What does it mean to, on one hand, develop, shape and research identity at the exact same time that it is more dynamic, uncertain, and complex than ever? Just as Freire proposes a new relationship between teachers, students, and society in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000), new relationships
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between teacher education researchers and others in society are needed, particularly in terms of understanding identities and how they intersect with teaching in multiple contexts. This is further complicated because it is impossible to ever completely capture what identity really is since it is a referent rather than being fixed and permanent under the control of the individual. However, teacher educators can build on their work over the past decades to disrupt intellectual and scholarly paradigms to include approaches that explore subjectivities and intersubjectivities (both central to identity). Doing so is important to challenging mainstream viewpoints on identities and on examining and removing traditions that extend the ways in which research fortifies systems that reproduce the oppression of certain groups, controls their representation, and distorts their voices. There is still room in teacher education research to confront the injustices and structural arrangements. To examine what this means for teacher education scholarship, I will use working the hyphens, praxis, and conscientization to provide intellectual scholarly spaces for teacher educators to contemplate developing their own identities and that of the future teachers they prepare. I will use these three because they allow for ‘unpacking notions of scientific neutrality, universal truths, and researcher dispassion’ (Fine, 1994, p. 71). They speak to a context and view that is grounded in complexity, uncertainty, and multiple perspectives.
Teacher Identity Research: Working the Hyphens Perhaps one way to think meaningfully about teacher identity is to explore identity as a form of conscious negotiating, relationship building, power confronting, and an equity struggle. This situates identity in the individual and social realms and in terms of subjectivities, particularly the efforts to move toward a conscious level of identity. Subjectivities and consciousness in examination of identity are complicated and relate to what Fine (1994, p. 72) describes as ‘working the hyphens’ when she talks about ‘self and other as knottily entangled’. She states that working the hyphen means to ‘probe how we are in relations with the contexts and with informants, understanding that we are all multiple in those relations’. As researchers, the implication is meaningful for teacher educators to ensure we do not essentialize teacher identity, but instead, think of it in social terms, connected to social relationships and the hyphens, margins, and dynamics around them. Developing teacher identity becomes living identities (always plural to represent the complexity and multiplicity of identities). Rather than developing and shaping identity, instead the focus is more generative and centered on sense making about identity in the context of consciousness, relationships, contradictions, power, and equity. Thus the research aim becomes making meaning of identity, reflecting on identity, making choices about identity, and understanding how
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identity interacts with others. Fine (1994) describes it as creating occasions to discuss what is and is not happening between, within the negotiated relations of whose story (and identity) is being told, why, to whom, with what interpretation, and whose story is being shadowed, why, for whom, and with what consequence. Each of these approaches to researching teacher identity will advance understanding it in the complex contexts of teaching.
Teacher Identity Research: Praxis In post-modern sensibilities, praxis intersects thought and action and proposes the practical-critical where thinking and social practice can never be isolated from one another. Therefore, it is necessary to connect thought and action to the world and to facilitate new interpretations, knowledges, and action through research. Rather than working toward developing identities as something that exists in a static sense, teacher education research might be more accurately thought of as participating in and researching living identities in the spirit of praxis. Identities are, from the perspective of praxis, not operationalized in isolation; they are, instead, in constant interaction with others’ identities. They are shaped by and shape other identities in motion, in action, and in interaction. That is, thinking of identity as praxis allows for thinking of identity as engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing. It also allows for thinking of identity as agency. The role of teacher educators in connecting praxis with identity can build on the long-standing work on teacher reflection as a key learning and scholarly focus of study. However, thinking about reflection will need to expand from a process orientation to reflection as a form of social critique. For example, identity may further be thought of through what Doll describes as perturbations, disturbances, and interactions to foreground how critical consciousness and critical reflection interact and reshape how teacher educators research and understand teacher identity. This requires researching identity less procedurally and more as a messy and unpredictable form of understanding teachers, their reflections, and their actions in various world contexts.
Teacher Identity Research: Conscientization In overwhelming socially intensive times as those being experienced now (maybe best characterized by omnipresent social media), it is virtually impossible to think about identity as a fixed set of characteristics about oneself or others. Individuals can take on and explore identities in various virtual and physical spaces and places. This context of hyperreality (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994, p. 142) describes ‘an information society socially saturated with ever-changing forms of representation … that have a profound effect on constructing the cultural narratives that shape our identities’. In post-modern environments, the
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nature of identity often plays out in dynamic forms. In addition, identity manifests itself multiply and in creative forms. Intersecting this reality with Olsen’s characteristics (for example, identity as ongoing and situated relationships among persons, histories, and contexts, socially situated and not traditionally psychological) leads to shifts in thinking about identity similar to Freire’s (2000) conscientization – raising critical consciousness and encouraging critical reflection on the real world, identifying contradictions in experience through dialogue, and breaking through prevailing mythologies to reach new levels of awareness. Teacher educators working in this paradigm target their work toward developing identity as grounded in the dialectical and in reflection not only on identity as individuals but also in relation to others. They become concerned with the social construction of experience and challenge power relations and the contexts that produce them. They challenge and confront their own identities and engage with teacher candidates and teachers to do the same. As Freire (2000, p. 53) makes clear, ‘Knowledge [identity] emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.’ This suggests a different paradigm for teacher educators’ relationship to teacher candidates and in-service teachers when their work and research centers on critical consciousness and critical reflection.
CONCLUSION Who do you think you are? For many, this question can be quickly answered with a response of certainty that identified what one does in the workplace, what one’s racial or sexual identity category is, or simply a name. Such responses still are used by many to note with certainty who they are. Zembylas (2003) cites Trinh as suggesting the question should read when, where, and how one is. Postmodern ideas have further opened space for new ideas around identity that even challenge identity as something that ‘is’. It has provided the creative space for individuals to complicate who they are and how they choose to represent themselves to others and with others. Elena Jurasaite-Harbison (2005) reminds us that individuals always have multiple and competing identities that are grounded in social circumstances and are reflected upon through social mediation. Postmodern ways of knowing allow us to not only recognize this reality but also understand how identity is interpreted and how meaning is ascribed to it in lived contexts rich with meaning, language, and everyday practices in varied social contexts and circumstances. One of the most omnipresent and powerful contexts in which identity is lived out, developed, recreated, and mediated is in schools. Borrowing from sociological ideas, schools are not a place like a spot on the map but rather a place that is a construct of the mind (Rushing, 2009). Therefore, they
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are a playground in a sense for the proliferations of, experimentation with, and negotiation of identity. Teacher educators and the teachers they prepare need to understand their own identities as well as the identities of children and youth interacting on this literal playground for identity experimentation. They need to further be able to instigate the turbulence, disorder, and perturbations necessary to foster identity development and to make it essential and relevant to learning. Examples of ways to be a stimulus and protector of identity development might well be the next seminal component of teacher educators’ work and research. Therefore, from post-modern perspectives, teacher educators and their future work will benefit from being more purposefully political, contextual, and engaged in changing the world. They can be more purposeful and explicit about their own identities, ideological frameworks, and epistemological assumptions. Teacher educators can choose to do more than add knowledge and prepare teachers from procedural and routinized approaches. They can also choose to redress injustices through surfacing the manifestations of social injustice as it plays out in classroom life as embodiments of society and identity. They can recognize how identities are at the core of determining what education is centrally about. And teacher educators can work to decrease how they, their teacher education candidates, and classroom teachers ‘misrecognize relations of power … where the political dimensions of everyday life can be shrouded by commonsense knowledge and, in effect, rhetorically disengage’ (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994, p. 141) by affirming and utilizing identity as essential to teaching and learning. The challenge ahead lies in working in the complexity of ideas about teacher identity as a way to enable teachers to live in their multiple identities with students, institutions, and society.
REFERENCES Agee, J. (2000). Theory, identity and practice: A study of two high school English teachers’ literature instruction. National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement report. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Alsup, J. (2006). Teacher identity discourses: Negotiating personal and professional spaces. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ballantyne, J., Kerchner, J. & Aróstegui, J. (2012). Developing music teacher identities: An international multi-site study. International Journal of Music Education, 30(3), 211–226. Beauchamp, C. & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: An overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 175–189. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P.C. & Verlopp, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 107–128. Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clandinin, D.J. (Ed.) (2007). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Clandinin, D.J., Downey, C.A. & Huber, J. (2009). Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 27(2), 141–154. Clandinin, D.J., Juber, J., Huber, M., Murphy, M.S, Orr, A.M., Pearce, M. & Steeves, P. (2006). Composing diverse identities: Narrative inquiries into the interwoven lives of children and teachers. London: Routledge. Cochrane-Smith. (2005). The new teacher education: For better or worse? Educational Researcher, 34(7), 3–17. Colucci-Gray, L. & Fraser, C. (2008). Contested aspects of becoming a teacher: Teacher learning and the role of subject knowledge. European Educational Research Journal, 7(4), 475–486. Connelly, F.M.Y. & Clandinin, D.J. (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Cross, R. & Gearon, M. (2007). The confluence of doing, thinking and knowing: Classroom practice as the crucible of foreign language teacher identity. In A. Berry, A. Clemans & A. Kostogriz (Eds). Dimensions of professional learning: Identities, professionalism and practice (53–67). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Darling, Hammond, L. (2016). Research on teaching and teacher education and its influences on policy and practice. Educational Researcher, 45(2), 83–91. Day, C. (2002). School reform and transitions in teacher professional identity. International Journal of Educational Research, 37, 677–692. Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. (2013). Critical race theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Doll, W.E. Jr. (1993). A post-modern perspective on curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Esteban-Guitart, M. & Moll, L.C. (2014). Funds of identity: A new concept based on the funds of knowledge approach. Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 31–48. Erikson, E. (1959). Identity and the life cycle. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 4(1), 56–121. Feirstein, B. (2015). Generation gaps. Vanity Fair, November, p. 82. Fine, M. (1994). Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds). Handbook of Qualitative Research (70–82). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fiske, J. (1993). Power plays, power works. New York: Verso. Flores, M.A. & Day, C. (2006). Contexts which shape and reshape new teachers’ identities: A multiperspective study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22, 219–232. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gee, J.P. (2001). Identity as an analytic lens for research in education. In W.G. Secada (Ed.). Review of research in education, 25, 99–125. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Hamachek, D. (1999). Effective teachers: What they do, how they do it, and the importance of selfknowledge. In R. Lipka & T. Brinthaupt (Eds). The role of self in teacher development. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hökkä, P. & Eteläpelto, A. (2104). Seeking new perspectives on the development of teacher education: A study of the Finnish context. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(1), 39–52. Jurasaite-Harbison, E. (2005). Reconstructing teacher’s professional identity in a research discourse: A professional development opportunity in an informal setting. TRAMES, 2, 159–176. Kincheloe, J.L. and McLaren, P.L. (1994). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds). Handbook of Qualitative Research (138–157). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kouhpaeenejad, M.H. & Gholaminejad, R. (2014). Identity and language learning from post-structuralist perspective. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(1), 199–204. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159–165. Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). New directions in multicultural education: Complexities, boundaries, and critical race theory. In J.A. Banks and C.A.M. Banks (Eds). Handbook of research on multicultural education (50–65). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
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Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74–84. Lasky, S. (2005). A sociocultural approach to understanding teacher identity, agency and professional vulnerability in a context of secondary school reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 899–916. Lortie, D.C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mead, G. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lincoln, Y.S, Lynham, S.A. & Guba, E.G. (2011). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions and emerging confluences, revisited. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds). Handbook of qualitative research (97–128). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Oakes, J. and Lipton, M. (2003). Teaching to change the world. New York: McGraw-Hill. Olsen, B. (2008). Introducing teacher identity and this volume. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(3) 3–6. Olsen, B. (2012). Identity theory, teacher education, and diversity. In J.A. Banks (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (1122–1125). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Orfield, G. & Frankenberg, E. (2014). Brown at 60: Great progress, a long retreat and an uncertain future. UCLA: The Civil Rights Project. Race: The Power of an Illusion. (2003). PBS Series. ReEd: Teacher Identity. (2013). Research in Education at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. Rushing, W. (2009). Memphis and the paradox of place: Globalization in the American South. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Sancho, J.M. & Hernández-Hernández, F. (2013). Developing autobiographical accounts as a starting point in research. European Educational Research Journal, 12(3), 342–353. Schwartz, S.H. (2001). The evolution of Ericksonian and neo-Ericksonian identity theory and research: A review and integration. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 1, 7–58. Smit, B. and Fritz, E. (2008). Understanding teacher identity from a symbolic interactionist perspective: Two ethnographic narratives. South African Journal of Education, 28, 91–101. Smith, L.T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies. London: Zed Books. Trinh, T.M.-H.A. (1992). Framer framed. New York: Routledge. Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: US-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. New York: SUNY Press. Zembylas, M. (2003). Emotions and teacher identity: A poststructural perspective. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 9(3), 213–238.
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13 Developing an Activist Teacher Identity through Teacher Education C e l i a O y l e r, J e n n a M o r v a y a n d F l o re n c e R . S u l l i v a n It is only through engagement in the practical and theoretical tasks of political activism that teacher activists begin to instantiate and make sense of their social justice philosophies and agendas. They embark upon a process of reflection that deeply transforms their conception of the nature of activism, which ultimately impacts their identity development as social justice educators. (Montaño et al., 2002, p. 273)
TEACHER ACTIVISM: BUILDING ON SOCIAL JUSTICE Teacher education organized around building teacher activist identities always foregrounds issues of social in/justice. Analyzing root causes of systematic oppression, coupled with imagining possibilities for social, economic, and political justice can lead to critical consciousness and potentially transformative action (Freire & Macedo, 2005). In this way, teacher education becomes a site to explore social inequity and learn content, skills, and attitudes that can ground students and teachers in pedagogies and curriculum designed to bring about a more just world. However, creating an identity as a teacher activist goes beyond pedagogies and curricula; being a teacher activist requires actually taking action in the world to fight for a more just world. Here we situate identity construction as not only a discursive act, but also an experiential one. In this way, our definition of identity hues most closely to the framing of identity as the ‘person-in-practice’ (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). This view accommodates both the structural influences on who one is allowed to be in a given context through acknowledgement of the important role of culture in identity performance, as well as the
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influence of the agency of the individual through an emphasis on ‘practice’ or the actions of an individual in any given cultural context. From this perspective, by teaching for conscientization we highlight agentic means for transformative action; and we understand that it is through such action that a teacher activist identity develops. As societal transformation has not, typically, been a goal of public education systems, teacher activists are not what state governments, charged with hiring public school teachers, have typically desired. Accordingly, teacher activist identity development must be understood as being situated in the contradiction between the role of state schooling to foster compliant citizens and good workers (Willis, 1981), and the alternative vision that humans might live on earth with greater peace, more equality, respect for the earth and all its beings. This central tension – between schooling for competition and control versus schooling for collective social justice – is inherent in teacher education that fosters an activist teacher identity. As Bree Picower (2012) makes clear, social justice educators need acute analysis of how schooling can be both oppressive and liberatory; she offers examples of teachers who: worked toward their vision of liberation by creating classroom spaces in which students could develop mindsets and skills to take action on issues that affect students’ lives. Second, as activists, they organized collectively to rally against the ways in which schooling is set up to reproduce existing inequalities, and maintain the status quo. They saw both components of their work as activism: the traditional activism of protesting and organizing, but also the creation of programs and events that build upon the liberating potential of education. (p. 89)
Enacting equity and anti-oppressive pedagogies and critical pedagogy curricula is an important form of classroom-based teacher activism. However, for the purposes of this chapter, we limit our review to studies that move teacher activism beyond the four walls of the classroom. We collected only research studies (not conceptual articles) using various combinations of search terms, including ‘teacher education for activism’, ‘activist teacher’, ‘social activism and teaching’, using various search engines from our university library, and we also looked in Google Scholar and academia.edu. Near the end of our collection of possible studies to review, we began searching within specific international education and teacher education journals. We review studies in which the teacher educators added activism to the labor process of teaching; we wanted to understand how such teacher education work is organized, and what teachers learn in the process of teacher education for activism and social change. We further limited our review to studies that are situated within teacher education programs or projects; thus we did not review studies of teacher activism outside of organized teacher education. Furthermore, we sought to review studies – published in English – that take up teacher education for activism in different national contexts. Given different national histories of social exclusion/inclusion and differential status conferred by gender, ethnicity, race, caste, class,
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gender expression, and sexual orientation, who is marginalized differs in different national, socio-political, and historical contexts. Thus, teacher educators who take up teaching and promoting activism as part of their teacher education curricula are always working within specific contexts, which shape relationships of power and privilege and also inform what is considered activist work for teachers. We begin our review of the literature by addressing the theoretical and practical assumptions that underlie teacher education for activism. We focus on four such assumptions that are prevalent in the reviewed literature as follows: first, activism involves community interaction; second, such action may be spurred through the process of conscientization, which is an identity development process; third, teacher education for activism occurs in a qualitatively different ‘third’ space than does teacher education for social justice; fourth, given the tension between the implicit goals of public education for societal reproduction and the societal transformation goals of teacher education for activism, the latter is always counter-hegemonic. Next, we discuss the activism-based, pedagogical methods used by teacher educators involved in this work. As noted above, these methods include, primarily, narrative self-analysis followed by dialogic community interaction. In this section, we also discuss the role of hybrid spaces and border crossing in the organization of community partnerships as they have been reported in the literature, including grassroots projects, university-initiated projects, and projects with nongovernmental organizations. We conclude with recommendations, drawn from our reading of the literature, for teacher educators interested in transforming their own practice toward activism.
THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASSUMPTIONS THAT SUPPORT TEACHER EDUCATION FOR ACTIVISM Working with Others Teacher activism can take place in a variety of ways, but all the teacher activist projects share one important aspect: activism involves working with others. As we have explained elsewhere, ‘social action is never possible in isolation and by its very definition, involves the recipients of entreaties and advocacy’ (Oyler, 2012, p. 5). In this regard, Caroline Clark’s (2010) study on teaching about LGBTQ issues as part of a required diversity course for pre-service teachers is instructive. She makes a distinction between ally-work and anti-work. In the context of LGBTQ curriculum, she explains: ‘anti-work serves, primarily, to interrupt racist, heterosexist and homophobic discourses. Ally-work, on the other hand, moves beyond interrupting racist, heterosexist and homophobic discourses; rather, ally-work invites critical dialogue and discussion, interrogating
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perceived lines of difference and inquiring into the possibilities for creating productive alliances across these lines’ (p. 705). It is the ‘productive alliances’ we point toward here; our review highlights how teacher educators designed learning experiences for teachers that work toward building critical consciousness and toward integrating activism into the labor process of teaching, thus building a teacher activist identity. Indeed, we argue that it is through the educative process of conscientization (Freire, 1970) that teachers may develop an activist identity, and this identity is always in relation to working with others for justice.
Conscientization and Teacher Identity At the center of much of the work on activist teacher identity development is the understanding that ‘a teacher’s personal history, life experiences, and sociocultural positionings deeply and somewhat firmly shape his or her consciousness’ (Olsen, 2011, p. 261). The teacher education projects in this chapter all understood that taking up an activist teacher identity could only come about through the process of conscientization. Conscientization refers to the development of critical consciousness on the part of individuals who have been marginalized by the dominant forces in a society (Freire, 2000). The process of conscientization involves ‘learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality’ (p. 35). Moreover, the process of conscientization leads to a transformed self-perception as regards one’s own and others’ identities in the world (Abdi, 2001). Education is central to the process of conscientization. The purpose of conscientization is to liberate marginalized groups from the negative images/story of the group propagated by those in power as a form of oppression. This negative storytelling affects the view a group of people has of themselves and the view may be popularly adopted as a subtle means of continuing to suppress them. In teacher education, conscientization can also occur for pre- and in-service teachers who may or may not be members of a marginalized group; yet, the goal of conscientization remains the same, that is, to liberate people from negative images of marginalized groups propagated by those in power as a means of oppression, and then to take action – based on these reflections – to change social and material reality. Conscientization as an aspect of teacher education for social change is aimed not only at dispelling negative myths of oppressed people, but also as a means of teacher activist identity construction. Teacher education programs that involve teachers in social action projects, then, are providing the operative means for the construction of a new teacher identity as activist by way of conscientization. These operative means include narrative inquiry and dialogic interactions with historically marginalized communities, made possible through social action proj ects, which enable teachers to reflect upon the nature of reality and transform their view of self and other.
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TEACHER EDUCATION FOR ACTIVISM AS A THIRD SPACE The teacher educators whose work we studied are creating very much a ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994). This third space is qualitatively different from most common forms of teacher education. It does not just adopt piecemeal solutions for justice. It is not just about teaching anti-racist pedagogies or culturally sustaining pedagogies, which are a central component in social justice oriented teacher education projects and programs. It is also not just about situating teacher education in communities (Noel, 2013; Zeichner, 2010). The third space created by these teacher educators for social action is formed by: (1) fostering critical consciousness about systemic oppression; (2) connecting teachers with communities for collective action; and (3) supporting teachers to envision and build systems of schooling that create and sustain a more just society. It is essential to highlight here that the teacher education pedagogy that we review is a unique teacher education pedagogy in that it is activism in action. That is, the projects described by these teacher educators are all doing activist projects. These teacher educators are not just educating about activism, they engage in it with their students. We follow how teacher educators move teacher education from inside the walls of universities and classrooms to teacher education that is in the world – and not just in the world, but designed to act upon the world and leave it changed by enacting pedagogies of teacher social action. While such studies in the literature are rare, here we present the work that does exist, and we note the need for additional research in this area. The vast majority of the research studies we reviewed for this chapter are written by teacher educators wherein they document and analyze their curriculum and pedagogies designed to foster activism as a central aspect of the labor process of teaching.
Hegemonic Schooling and Counter-hegemonic Pedagogies As previously noted, the primary internal contradiction of state-based, public education in the Western world revolves around institutionalized oppression (that results from sorting, leveling, ranking, and labeling) and the notion of equitable education for all. The teacher education projects and programs that we review in this chapter are rooted in counter-hegemonic pedagogies and purposes. What is hegemonic at any one time and place, of course, shifts, but in regard to schooling, we can think about the myriad ways normativity is structured and surveilled. Though schooling practices in various national (and historical) contexts differ, state-sponsored schooling is by its very purpose and design a hegemonic enterprise – oriented to create modern citizens who regulate themselves and become self-supporting and compliant workers. Therefore, counter-hegemonic pedagogies and purposes are processes that, consonant with the notion of conscientization, offer challenge to mainstream views about social and political relationships and reality (Gramsci, 1971).
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To elaborate on the meaning of hegemony and the possibilities of counterhegemonic practices we turn to the case of Indigenous people’s movements and the role that teacher educators are able to play within/for such movements. In a review of ‘pedagogical pathways for Indigenous education with/in teacher education’ Brooke Madden explains that critical and Indigenous scholars have called for Indigenous education that works both within and against colonial systems and frameworks through a focus on revealing, examining, and challenging the ways colonial relations of power continue to construct and uphold ideologies that produce multiple oppressions. (Madden, 2015, pp. 1–2)
Ideologies that uphold multiple systems of oppression undergird the apparatus of hegemony. In defiance of this, the Indigenous teacher education practices, projects, and pedagogies that Madden reviews are in solidarity with the community – thus repositioning the very purpose of schooling. This repositioning of schooling as a counterweight to legacies of colonial oppression offers teachers opportunities to simultaneously build critical consciousness (elders as teachers; land as central to knowing/being) and become teachers who take up projects with the community. This counter-hegemonic teacher education has, at its very core, a call to action. Subsequently, the scaffolding of such action begins with conscientization.
METHODS FOR DEVELOPING CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS FOR ACTIVISM Across all the studies we reviewed, certain approaches and methods were utilized by teacher educators to mediate teacher meaning-making toward the purpose of creating activist teacher identities. At the beginning of this century, Christine Sleeter (2000) lamented that, while a great deal of research existed on the need to prepare critically conscious teachers, there was not much research on how that preparation might occur. While there continues to be a need for critically conscious teachers all over the world, the number of studies on the processes teacher educators use to prepare their teachers-in-formation has grown significantly. Utilizing these processes to increase critical consciousness and activist identities is an integral part of facilitating social change.
Narratives as a Pedagogical Approach to Conscientization A common pedagogical practice in various studies was narrative creation and narrative sharing. Judyth Sachs, in her book The activist teaching professional (2003), explains that teachers: construct these self-narratives, as they relate to their social, political and professional agendas … Critical self-narratives about professional identity at the individual and collective
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levels have clear emancipatory objectives … towards an activist stand and the development of an activist identity (p. 132).
Multiple studies have discussed how using the tool of narrative fosters conscientization and taking an activist stance. Our first example is from Canada, in a project involving in-service teachers (who were born both in and outside of Canada) and articulated a need to better know their students’ home communities. The teachers began by sharing their own personal histories through a life narrative approach. By surfacing their own differences as part of a discussion of overall identity formation, storytelling allowed the teachers to confront their own differences and complicity in hegemony, and to go on to promote more inclusive practices in their classrooms (Dagenais et al., 2008). As a result of sharing life narratives, teachers who participated in the professional development were more likely to create curricula that both addressed structural inequalities in their communities, as well as help their own students find ways to advocate for community change. In a United States social-justice-oriented, university-based pre-service program, a social foundations course asked white students to compose three different kinds of narratives: ‘narratives that one tells about oneself; narratives that one tells about others; and narratives that one thinks that others tell about him or her’ (p. 10). Such narrative writing about oneself and about impressions of others served as an important opportunity for white teachers to work out their own places, understand whiteness as a mediating factor of their identities, and find ways to become ‘social justice enough’ teachers within the context of urban schooling (Philip & Benin, 2014, p. 11). Similarly, teacher educators in an Australian teacher education program used narratives to understand how pre-service teachers position themselves among each other and among their future students. After reading the narratives and realizing that the majority of pre-service teachers in the program categorized themselves as ‘mainstream’, ‘belonging to the norm’, and ‘unable to see how those outside dominant discourses may be marginalized through curricula’ (Allard & Santoro, 2006, p. 117), the teacher educators created a mandatory class on diversity. This diversity course had pre-service teachers in the program continually interrogate the normativity of whiteness through telling their own stories and hearing the stories of others, thus leading to the conscientization of these teachers. Finally, we turn again to Canada, where a group of white and Indigenous teachers who taught Indigenous students participated in a study on storytelling. These teachers met monthly in literature circles to discuss children’s literature written about Indigenous people, engage in storytelling about their own literary histories, and reflect on how specific pieces of children’s literature may have shaped their lives. The white teachers participating in the study were asked to ‘engage in a decolonization of his or her own stories’ (Strong-Wilson, 2007, p. 117); this included examining how both literature and childhood events informed their views of Indigenous people, and understanding how their stories and memories
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had ‘broader implications beyond the local and immediate and thus, in participating in an international project of decolonization through the moving of horizons’ (p. 128). Across all of these studies, teacher educators found that narrative pedagogy offered affordances for understanding self-positioning, facilitating the process of conscientization, and supporting the development of activist identities
CREATING HYBRID TEACHER EDUCATION SPACES FOR BOUNDARY CROSSING The theory of action underlying teacher education for social change is that although schools are conserving institutions of the state and society, they can alternatively be sites for radical change through conscientization. In this section, we explore how students, teachers, teacher educators, and nonprofit leaders, moved by their own critical consciousness, forge unique relationships that exceed the typical school– university partnerships. These unique relationships – which underpin all of the studies of teacher education for social action discussed here – require teacher educators to cross boundaries as they involve themselves in these relationships, and create hybrid spaces outside of the typical teacher education classroom that are necessary for teachers to develop both critical consciousness and activist identities (Zeichner & Payne, 2013). Here we detail how and why the collaborations were initiated, and what goals the projects articulated. Across the studies, we found three different sources of initiation for the teacher education for social action projects: (1) grassroots, non-bureaucratic, non-institutional; (2) university-based; and (3) non-profit/NGO. We analyze the goals and epistemological commitments within each project. By highlighting the range of possibilities for collaborations, the projects in this section demonstrate the interaction between epistemological grounding and strategic action.
Grassroots Initiated Projects We review three very different teacher education projects that we categorized as ‘grassroots’, as they were launched without institutional or bureaucratic planning, but through activism within specific communities. The first project of teacher education for activism we examine takes place among the Innu people who live in northeastern Canada on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. Although their ancestors lived nomadically on, and with, the land for some 40,000 years, European, Canadian, and US exploration and exploitation have caused the Innu people to settle in permanent communities. However, Innu have engaged in various forms of activism, including the education of teachers, which has been a key strategy in gaining epistemological control of schooling. As James Ryan (1998) explains: It appears that after years of bowing to non-Innu, the Innu will within a short time finally be the ones that will be making decisions about the schooling of their young … Indeed there
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are two innovations in which educators had the foresight to invest that can provide a useful base upon which Innu can build. These include the training and hiring of Innu teachers and teacher aides and the use of the Innu language up to grade three. (p. 351)
Here, community control of education works to ensure that community knowledges, epistemologies, and ontologies are carried into the school buildings by having Innu Nation adults become teachers. In this sense, then, the very act of educating has the potential to be counter-hegemonic and the community controls teacher education. This example is very much like the Grow Your Own programs in the United States, in which people from the community go through teacher education programs in a cohort and are prepared to teach in the communities which they are from (Skinner, Garreton, & Schultz, 2011). These programs are collaborations between grassroots organizations and local universities, and are designed specifically for urban and rural areas to support schooling for social change, thus forging a teacher activist identity by program design. The second project we review was launched independently in three different sites by activist-oriented teachers/teacher educators. A promising practice for fostering teacher identity development for activism is what a group of activist teacher educator-scholars (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015) term ‘critical professional development (CPD), where teachers are engaged as politically aware individuals who have a stake in teaching and transforming society’ (p. 7). They offer CPD as a framework for other scholar-activists who seek to take up professional development that is dialogic and justiceoriented. Critical Professional Development positions teachers as subjects of their own learning, in contrast to the very common Anti-Dialogic Professional Development, which requires teachers to comply with top-down mandates and enact curriculum reforms with fidelity. In their analysis of three different grassroots groups, teachers came together voluntarily, united around their shared commitments to justice-oriented teaching and learning. The authors explain that ‘CPD frames teachers as politically-aware individuals who have a stake in teaching and transforming society. In both pedagogy and content, CPD develops teachers’ critical consciousness by focusing their efforts towards liberatory teaching’ (p. 9). The projects were located in different cities in the United States and included: the New York Collective of Radical Educators Inquiry to Action Groups; the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice; and The People’s Education Movement. The projects, although all independent, share a commitment to Freirean-based critical pedagogy (Freire & Macedo, 2005), with an explicit attention to sharing power among teacher educator/ organizers and teachers, and a focus on offering support and building of unity toward matters of equity and racial justice. The work of such groups is designed to ‘challenge deficit belief systems, and build upon the rich knowledge of their communities to transform schools’ (p. 13). Such work must be understood as organized around the creation and nurturing of dialogic spaces, which is also
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an essential feature of both the university-initiated projects and the non-profit initiated projects. Third, we turn to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where pre-service and in-service teachers involve themselves in two teacher activist organizations – Organization for Justice in Teaching and Consortium of Critical Pedagogy – which were founded and housed as student groups at the College of Education, and not formally affiliated with the teacher education programs at Center X (Montaño et al., 2002, p. 267). Center X has a stated commitment to educating critical pedagogues, and alumni of the teacher education programs often go on to become teacher activists (p. 266). While participants in this study acknowledged the ways in which Center X ‘contributed to their development as teachers through exposure to powerful and useful theoretical concepts and teaching methods’ (p. 271), the students and alumni did not feel as if their teacher education had gone far enough in forwarding their own activist identities. Spurred by the need to work as activists outside of their classrooms, the pre-service and in-service teachers who participated in these activist groups felt that ‘their definition of social justice [became] more lucid, which enabled them to directly apply their theoretical knowledge to their practical work in the classroom’ (p. 271). And through their work with the community activist organizations, the teachers challenged their roles in schools, collaborated with colleagues to create social action curricula to implement with their own students, and participated in broader community-based struggles for justice.
University-Initiated Projects University-initiated collaborations for social change have multiple aims: to conscientize pre- and in-service teachers through the actual teaching and organizing work of social change; to work in concert with schools and wider communities to agitate for equity for the community; and to effect social change outside of the communities. One example of a university-initiated partnership is The Council of Youth Research, an organization made up of teachers, university professors, graduate students, and high school students from around the Los Angeles area (Mirra & Morrell, 2011, p. 414). The Council of Youth Research works with community organizations and political action groups to design social action curriculum. High school students ‘become critical researchers of their own schools and communities’ (p. 414) by working on social justice projects. In tandem, teacher educators, graduate students, and pre- and in-service teachers collaborate with the high school students to critically analyze their communities and schools, and from that research, present their findings to City Council, school board members, state governments, and other political groups several times a year. The teachers who were involved in The Council were graduates of UCLA’s Center X, and most of them were within their first five years of teaching. According to the
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authors, ‘participation in this project influences how teachers view themselves as professionals and civic agents, which in turn impacts the way that they conceptualize their classroom instruction’ (p. 415). It is important to note that teacher educators, teachers, and students involved in The Council transgressed the implicit rules of what is legitimate school work for public school students and teachers. Positioning the work as both research and professional development offered opportunities for the teachers (in-service and pre-service) to work through critical theories, conduct research with students to promote social justice through action, and shape their identities both in and out of the classroom in a unique space. A similar university-initiated partnership is The Equity Network, a collaboration forged among a university-based teacher education program, a network of professional development schools, parents of students in the schools, and the community in which the school is located in California’s Central Valley (Glass & Wong, 2013). In this coalition, student teachers take methods classes – collaboratively taught by the in-service teachers and university-based teacher educators – at their school sites. The collaboration has the goal of its pre-service teachers becoming ‘teachers for communities’ (p. 24), rather than merely teachers of a particular subject, and becoming a teacher for community includes working with, and within, the communities on social action projects. This idea of becoming a teacher for community includes bringing in funds of knowledge from students and their families in order to design curriculum, and thereby designing lessons and projects that ‘collectively … connect school and community knowledge, and … address real community needs’ (p. 24). Through the teacher education and professional development, the pre-service and in- service teachers utilize community knowledge to create curriculum so that students can advocate for community improvement. One example of such social action curriculum is a project called ‘community mapping’. In this endeavor, parents, students, and teachers at one of the schools in the partnership grouped together by race and class to create community maps. These maps revealed both class and race differences among members of the community, and what services and amenities the different groups felt were both present and missing in the community surrounding the school. These community maps then inspired the students and teachers to work collaboratively with students and their families to undertake advocacy projects that would bring those missing services into the community, meeting the goals set out by the teacher educators, the school network, and the communities of which the schools are a part. The Equity Network project demonstrates the possibilities for collective community action as a central component of school-based teacher education where community members and families are engaged as co-learners and co-teachers. This is a powerful reframing of parents from traditional school–home collaborations that all too often position parents in mostly deficit frames; instead, in this project, teachers learn with families and engage in collective problem solving.
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A very different kind of university-initiated partnership designed around activism and anti-racism is between the School of Education at The Ohio State University and a large African American community church organization, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church (Seidl & Friend, 2002). Mt. Olivet houses a private school, a community center, an after-school program, and a male mentorship program where pre-service teachers in the Literacy Education and Diverse Settings (LEADS) program undertake their student teaching through an activist approach. The teacher educators and the church leaders work together to determine both the needs of the community and the needs of the student teachers; they then assign the pre-service teachers to placements, including: working in the mentoring program (I’m Making a Godly Expression); working in the Sunday school; working in the after-school program; or working as interns with teachers in the private school. The student teaching placement is only one component of the collaboration; coursework is held at both the church and the university, and church members, cooperating teachers, and the university-based teacher educators work together to design the curriculum and teach these courses. Thus, the shape of the coursework changes each year, depending on the mutual needs of both the pre-service teachers and the community, as decided by the people involved in planning the courses. Furthermore, the coursework includes working with the community on activist projects. Since one of the goals of this collaboration is to conscientize pre-service teachers to do explicitly anti-racist work, the framework of mutuality among all members of the collaborative is designed to help minimize ‘white savior’ impulses of the mostly white future teachers, and also allows for activism to occur in partnership with the church community, rather than being imposed on the community by outsiders. The authors report that through dialogue, interactions, and activist work, although the teacher educators, pre-service teachers, and community members felt ‘reciprocity and respect for both sides’ (p. 431), some tensions existed between the mostly white, middle-class female teachers and the community, including a sense that the teachers felt they were not ‘needed’ in the church community (p. 429). This project highlights the potential for pre-service teacher education to be organized in part in communities that are not familiar to most student teachers, thus building relationships as activists with family members. The project, however, also raises questions about requiring community activism as a part of a teacher education program; who selects which communities will be sites of collective action? Another form of teacher education for social change can be found in partnerships initiated by teacher education programs with Indigenous nations in both Canada and the United States to educate members of the nations to become teachers in their own communities (Brayboy, Castagno, & Solyom, 2014). Such partnerships – like the example of the Innu described earlier – are designed to increase Indigenous nation building by infusing Indigenous knowledges into the school curriculum along with Western pedagogical knowledges. Instead of
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imposing Western epistemologies taught by Western teachers upon communities, community leaders and teacher educators come together to create teacher education programs for First Nations/Native American members to become certified teachers, and then work in schools to create stronger Indigenous nations through education. In one university-initiated partnership, an Indigenous faculty member at a university-based school of education worked with the US Department of Education and Indigenous communities to create a teacher education program with a ‘tribal nation-building orientation’ (Brayboy et al., 2014). Teacher educators made spaces, both in the university and in Nation schools, for the graduates of this particular program to recognize the needs of both the children and their communities (including those in the boundaries of the Indigenous nations and urban and rural areas outside of the nations with high concentrations of Native populations), and to take action to address those needs. These kinds of teacher education programs demonstrate the power of transformative program design: not retrofitting programs by adding Indigenous (or any other cultural knowledge frame) content, but creating an entirely new design that positions community knowledges at the center of the program.
Partnerships with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Outside of North America, teacher education for social action often takes place in partnerships between NGOs, governments, and teacher educators. The first example of this is The Institute for Human Rights Education (IHRE): a teacher education program run by an NGO, working in cooperation with the governments of 18 states across India. Through three- to five-day workshops teachers learn to integrate Human Rights Education into their middle-grade classrooms (Bajaj, 2011). The teachers not only bring human rights curriculum into their classrooms, but they also bring human rights education into their home communities. This must be understood as a particularly notable accomplishment, given that the vast majority of the teachers in the study are members of tribal groups or ‘untouchable’ castes, whose voices would normally be ignored (p. 207). The activist work of IHRE teachers includes: working to change school policies of segregating children by caste; ending corporal punishment in disciplining children; being more likely to report child abuse to village and town police, and using documents from the United Nations to stress the importance to police officers of not allowing abuse to continue; talking families out of the infanticide of female children; and female teachers preventing their husbands and mothersin-law from beating them or shaming them. Using the principles and documents they learned in their courses at IHRE and the alliances created, the teachers are working to effect change through greater awareness of human rights across the country, both in and out of schools. Positioning teachers as community activists
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shows how effective human rights education can be in building activist teacher identities. Our second example of NGO involvement in teacher education for social action involves citizenship education in Iran. Understanding what it means to be a citizen is central to various nations’ school curricula and what is meant by citizenship is an important arena for teacher conscientization. Iran is a country where the idea of citizenship is currently synonymous with religious devotion and requires current and prospective teachers to certify that they are adherents of one of the four state-recognized religions. The Online School of Civic Education is a professional development program focused on expanding the definition of citizenship beyond religious adherence, while respecting the necessity of that requirement. The Online School of Civic Education, a collaboration between an NGO and the Iranian government, has a curriculum that centers around increasing teacher awareness of how teachers and students should think about being an Iranian citizen, rather than focusing simply on what content should be taught to students. Furthermore, the Online School encourages teachers to teach citizenship in ways that recognize their students’ voices and experiences, and to engage in self-study of how they implement the critical praxis they are taught in their courses, simultaneously making space for students and teachers to feel empowered to exercise their rights as citizens outside of the classroom (Abolfazli & Alemi, 2013). Another example of teacher professional development for citizenship education for social action is from Albania, where ‘recent policy documents emphasize issues of diversity, tolerance, human rights, equality, and nondiscrimination as norms that students and teachers should now embrace’ (Gardinier, 2012, p. 663). After multiple NGO co-sponsored professional development activities (in partnership with the Albanian government and the European Union) that took up these new ideals of being an Albanian citizen, two teachers were inspired to plan curricula around themes of social justice and equality. Their hopes were that the social justice lessons they were implementing would allow their students ‘to be fully developed in terms of good manners and citizenship and education’ (p. 673). The lessons teachers planned not only taught these new values of citizenship through student-centered pedagogical practices, but also created spaces for teachers and students to do social action work in their wider communities centered around those values. Through collaboration and professional development with NGOs offering teacher education, along with various local and national governmental bodies, the teachers in Iran and Albania are not only rethinking what it means to be a good citizen of their respective countries, but are also challenging their students to rethink how to be active citizens who create a more just world. These two examples of citizenship curriculum in the contexts of Iran and Albania point toward the importance of considering political, socio-historical contexts when studying teacher education for social change and activism. Certainly, in some national
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contexts, such citizenship education would be considered mainstream and would not be considered activist work; yet in these contexts, it most certainly is, as the idea of citizens empowered to take social action is one that has not necessarily been normalized in those settings.
CONCLUSIONS Through all of the projects reviewed – whether initiated by the grassroots, university, or NGOs – it is clear that it was through collaborating across boundaries and roles that dialogic spaces and relationships were created. These dialogic practices invite teachers to imagine possibilities for social action both inside and outside of schools. Though the locations and origins of all the studies we reviewed differ greatly, they have commonalities in their goals: all of these communities work toward building critical consciousness through varying processes of conscientization, whether that is working with activist organizations, partnering with communities, or exposing teachers to ideas and concepts that were counter-hegemonic. Building this critical consciousness opens possibilities for teachers to integrate activism into both the labor process of teaching and their own identities. However, teacher educators often need to employ pedagogical processes to create communities that nurture inclinations to social action; at other times, pedagogical processes cannot be implemented until trusting communities already exist. We understand the development of teacher activist identity to be always grounded in collaboration with others: teachers, families, and/or community members. In contrast to this activist teacher identity is what Judyth Sachs explains is an entrepreneurial identity (2003), which is a lynchpin of neoliberal school reform work associated with managerialist discourses that are most common in many parts of the world today. As she explains, ‘Under managerialist discourses the market will play an important part in how teachers constitute their professional identity collectively and individually. Competition between schools for reduced resources gives rise to a competitive ethos rather than a collaborative one’ (p. 128). However, as can be clearly seen from this review of research on teacher activist identity development, it is only in collaboration with stakeholders – not competition – that teaching and learning is partnered with work for more just communities. Quite clearly, struggles for an activist, rather than an entrepreneurial, teacher identity must be foregrounded in our teacher education work if we are to attract people into activist-oriented curriculum and pedagogy. Teacher educator-scholars must offer exceptionally clear portraits of teacher education for social action to the public, in contrast to the portraits of market-driven high standards based on sorting and ranking schools, children, and teachers. We must be transparent and state explicitly that teacher education based on fostering an activist teacher identity is working against the entrepreneurial, managerial,
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competitive, and individualistic practices, discourses, and rhetoric that are most common in countries where neoliberalism is in full force. Such activist teacher identity work does not rely on evaluating teachers based on test scores nor the logic of international rankings as measures of educational quality. Instead, the collaborations and partnerships profiled in this chapter all organized their teacher education work around the local, deepening teachers’ knowledge of the people and their home communities. As we gleaned from the studies reviewed it is always in particular places that a people’s cultural practices can be known, and it is also in these places that teachers can engage in analysis – sometimes alongside adults, youth, and children – of both the cultural practices and the systemic injustices in which the people live. Thus, by learning people’s histories – both individual and collective – teachers can develop critical consciousness about injustice. Then, by working with others in collective action, teachers can grow pedagogies to continue to build their own activist identities and also bring this work into their pre-K-12 curricula. Finally, we would be remiss if we did not close with a caution we felt while conducting this review. Few teacher educators posed self-reflexive questions about power and imposition. Yet, all pedagogies stem from onto-epistemological commitments and all teachers run risks of using their power to require/persuade students to take up particular knowledges and actions that they might not take up without the teacher as prompt and guide. Teacher education pedagogies for social action are no different in this regard, and we believe all pedagogies require critique. Therefore, we propose that, as more scholarship in teacher education documents efforts to foster teachers to take up activism for social change, teacher educator-researchers complicate their/our stances in regard to our own potential to impose our ways of being and teaching on our students. We acknowledge that this work is in many ways very new and critique is not typically present in early versions of any pedagogical pathway (to use Madden’s [2015] term). We are dealing here with teacher education pedagogies in very early stages of matu ration, but still we must ask: Where is the space for students to disagree? How can we repair the world without more space for critical listening? What will more critical studies for teacher activist identity development look like?
REFERENCES Abdi, A.A. (2001). Identity in the philosophies of Dewey and Freire: Select analyses. Journal of Educational Thought, 35(2), 181–200. Abolfazli, M., & Alemi, M. (2013). Promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings: Transforming the approach and practices of Iranian educators. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 15(2), 53–62. Allard, A.C., & Santoro, N. (2006). Troubling identities: Teacher education students’ constructions of class and ethnicity. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36(1), 115–129. Bajaj, M. (2011). Human rights education: Ideology, location, and approaches. Human Rights Quarterly, 33(2), 481–508.
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Bhabha, H.K. (1994). Frontlines/borderposts. In A. Bammer (Ed.), Displacements: Cultural identities in question (pp. 269–272). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Brayboy, B.M.J., Castagno, A.E., & Solyom, J.A. (2014). Looking into the hearts of Native peoples: Nation building as an institutional orientation for graduate education. American Journal of Education, 120(4), 575–596. Clark, C.T. (2010). Preparing LGBTQ-allies and combating homophobia in a US teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3), 704–713. Dagenais, D., Beynon, J., & Mathis, N. (2008). Intersections of social cohesion, education, and identity in teachers, discourses, and practices. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 3(2), 85–105. Freire, P. (1970). Cultural action and conscientization. Harvard Educational Review, 40(3), 452–477. Freire, P. (2000). Education for critical consciousness. New York, NY: Continuum. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (2005). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. New York, NY: Routledge. Gardinier, M.P. (2012). Agents of change and continuity: The pivotal role of teachers in Albanian educational reform and democratization. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 659–683. Glass, R.D., & Wong, P.L. (2013). Learning to produce knowledge: Reconstructing teacher preparation for urban schools. In J. Noel (Ed.), Moving teacher education into urban schools and communities: Prioritizing community strengths (1st edn, pp. 21–35). New York, NY: Routledge. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Q. Hoare & G.N. Smith, Eds). New York, NY: International Publishers. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kohli, R., Picower, B., Martinez, A.N., & Ortiz, N. (2015). Critical professional development: Centering the social justice needs of teachers. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 6(2), 7–24. Madden, B. (2015). Pedagogical pathways for Indigenous education with/in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 1–15. Mirra, N., & Morrell, E. (2011). Teachers as civic agents toward a critical democratic theory of urban teacher development. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 408–420. Montaño, T., López-Torres, L., DeLissovoy, N., Pacheco, M., & Stillman, J. (2002). Teachers as activists: Teacher development and alternate sites of learning. Equity & Excellence in Education, 35(3), 265–275. Noel, J. (Ed.). (2013). Moving teacher education into urban schools and communities: Prioritizing community strengths (1st edn). New York, NY: Routledge. Olsen, B. (2011). ‘I am large, I contain multitudes’: Teacher identity as useful frame for research, practice, and diversity in teacher education. In A. Ball and C. Tyson (Eds), Studying diversity in teacher education (pp. 257–253). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield. Oyler, C. (2012). Actions speak louder than words: Community activism as curriculum. New York, NY: Routledge. Philip, T.M., & Benin, S.Y. (2014). Programs of teacher education as mediators of White teacher identity. Teaching Education, 25(1), 1–23. Picower, B. (2012). Practice what you teach: Social justice education in the classroom and the streets. New York, NY: Routledge. Ryan, J. (1998). Towards a new age in Innu education: Innu resistance and community activism. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 11(3), 339–353. Sachs, J. (2003). The activist teaching profession (1st edn). Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Seidl, B., & Friend, G. (2002). Leaving authority at the door: Equal-status community-based experiences and the preparation of teachers for diverse classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(4), 421–433. Skinner, E.A., Garreton, M.T., & Schultz, B.D. (Eds). (2011). Grow your own teachers: Grassroots change for teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sleeter, C.E. (2000). Epistemological diversity in research on preservice teacher preparation for historically underserved children. Review of Research in Education, 25, 209–250.
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Strong-Wilson, T. (2007). Moving horizons: Exploring the role of stories in decolonizing the literacy education of White teachers. International Education, 37(1), 114–131. Willis, P. (1981). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. Zeichner, K., & Payne, K. (2013). Democratizing knowledge in urban teacher education. In J. Noel (Ed.), Moving teacher education into urban schools and communities: Prioritizing community strengths (1st edn, pp. 3–19). New York, NY: Routledge.
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SECTION III
Learning Teacher Agency in Teacher Education Lily Orland-Barak
In their daily work, teachers constantly carry out agency through intentional action and commitment to such action (Kelchtermans, 2005). This almost taken for granted assumption embeds an extremely complex construct: ‘teacher agency’. Indeed, teacher agency has become central to our understanding of how teachers assume individual and shared responsibility, generate new ideas, coordinate and test them with each other, implement them in their classrooms and engage in social activism through collaborative efforts to improve schools and schooling (Brydon-Miller & Maguire, 2009). Adopting different conceptual lenses, the chapters in this section represent prominent lines of thought in this area. Each paper unpacks and illustrates a distinctive dimension of teacher agency in teacher education, while critically reflecting on the challenges, dilemmas and gaps that emerge within the complex, dynamic and diverse contexts of schools and schooling. Effie Maclellan’s chapter entitled ‘Shaping Agency through Theorizing and Practicing Teaching in Teacher Education’ develops an argument for agency as being one of teachers’ most important pedagogical resources. Carrying out agency is defined as the capacity to make principled choices, to take action and make that action happen. Specifically, she defines teachers and teacher-educators’ personal agency as their capacity to effect real change through reforming and transforming educational practice for the benefit of learners; as conscious knowledge of
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their contribution to change, and as awareness of their own influences and powers to navigate within the milieu of institutional, political and societal structures. Focusing on the development of five different perspectives on teacher agency over time, the chapter critically examines and discusses the challenges and limitations of each perspective: agency as enacted behavior; agency as implicit theorizing; agency as self-efficacy; epistemic agency; and agency as autonomy. Problematizing traditional perspectives on agency that are individual oriented and whereby the teacher is a solitary decision-maker, Anne Edwards’ provocative chapter entitled ‘The Dialectic of Person and Practice: How Cultural-Historical Accounts of Agency Can Inform Teacher Education’ develops a strong theoretical argument for understanding agency as nested in the dialectic between the individual, the collective, the practice and the culture. In her view, teacher agency is tightly connected to broader values and commitments of the profession, while continuously unfolding in teachers’ actions and in the activity of teaching. She critically examines systemic perspectives to the notion of collective transformative agency, and extends the conceptualization of agency to the informed use of cultural tools, stressing its implications for initial teacher education. Drawing on illustrative studies from different teacher education contexts, she illustrates how expert mentor mediation can help beginning teachers to focus on demands they can meet and, in meeting them, allow for agency to arise. Working agentically also involves working with families and other services. This is elaborated through the notion of relational expertise and relational agency, both of which are discussed in depth in the chapter. Edwards puts forward the notion of collective transformative agency, whereby practitioners-as-agents work on the contradictions identified when systems need changing. Examining agency from the perspective of social theorists, Ryan Flessner and Katherina Payne’s chapter entitled ‘The Impact of Social Theories on Agency in Teacher Education’ also forward a view of agency that moves away from individualistic orientations towards a view of agency as collective. This perspective resonates slightly with Edwards’ conceptualization of collective transformative agents, but it differs in that it promotes the idea of agency as collective social action – not through the use of cultural tools in activity, as in Edwards, but by the engagement of educators, children, families and communities in the work of rehumanizing societies. Their claim is that, as a collective, teachers, teacher educators, and communities can influence the broader struggle for social justice in society. Their chapter examines theoretical and philosophical writings related to agency as collective social action in the field of education. It also provides rich and thought-provoking examples of collaborative efforts in teacher education programs to educate teacher candidates to be aware of social inequalities, of dehumanizing policies and practices, and of the roles schools play in reinforcing or challenging these ideas. In their chapter ‘Narrative Theories and Methods in Learning, Developing, and Sustaining Teacher Agency’ Janice Huber and Ji-Sook Yeom argue that thinking
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with and through telling and retelling stories opens possibilities for living more agentically. This concept of agency involves listening, imagination and openness to change, while taking up the responsibilities of understanding experience as a storied, narrative construction. Their chapter presents future possibilities for agency making in teacher education practice and research, shaped through continuous living, telling, retelling and reliving of storied experience. This kind of agency, they contend, foregrounds the quality of experience and the relationships that are generated and develop over time. The authors argue for developing meaningful and visible connections between and across experiences, knowledge and agency. Lisa Loutzenheiser and Kal Heer’s chapter takes us to a different kind of agentic practice, that which is associated with postcolonial, poststructural and postmodern theories of education. In their chapter ‘Unsettling Habitual Ways of Teacher Education through ‘Post-Theories’ of Teacher Agency’ they critically discuss and theorize agency and its role for teacher educators and teachers across the paradigms of postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism. Specifically, they discuss how each of these paradigms might produce forms of teacher agency to promote particular kinds of change, at the background of limited resources and pressures of teacher accountability. In their interrogating of competing ‘post’ paradigms, they explore the idea of contingent utilization of identity, as a useful internal resource of teacher educators and teachers-as-agents to change the pedagogy and design of curricula. Agency, viewed from a postmodern, postcolonial or poststructural lens, moves away from dualistic relations to suggest, instead, agentic moves that function at intersections between power, knowledge, colonialism, racism and discursive systems.
EMERGENT THEMES AND FURTHER STUDY The different chapters in this section explore similar dimensions of teacher agency (theoretical underpinnings, the purposes it serves and how it can be fostered in teacher education), illuminating a wide range of perspectives, often rooted in competing worldviews, theories and deliberations. For example, Maclellan defines teacher agency as a dynamic, multifarious, action-oriented construct, while Edwards conceives of teacher agency as a socially and culturally mediated construct which is relational, collective and transformative. Flessner and Payne adopt a less dialectical and more collective view of agency as collective social action, while Loutzenheiser and Heer view agency as embedded in tensions between discursive systems, hegemonic agendas and power relations. Taking a different conceptual route, Huber and Yeom suggest the notion of comaking of agency as constructed through narratives of experiences. The chapters present different ways of fostering teacher agency in teacher education such as through instruction and efficacious behavior, through
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theorizing learning and teaching through the use of informal cultural tools or through identifying gaps and connecting stories and experiences. These different forms illuminate a wide range of interpretations of teacher agency, and their integrative reading raises important challenges for future research and exploration.
TEACHER AGENCY AND INSTRUCTION This theme, elaborated in some chapters, sheds light on progressive forms of instruction that teachers-as-agents promote across contexts. Further exploration of this theme invites, for example, inquiry into how new forms of ‘instruction for agency’ might differ from context to context; or how teacher agency might connect to efficacy beliefs about learning and their enactments in the classroom. This theme can be further examined through the lens of teacher reflection, to better understand how various forms of teacher reflection shape different kinds of agentic teaching in the classroom.
TEACHER AGENCY AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT Some chapters address this theme both conceptually and empirically, drawing on examples from a variety of local studies often compared across contexts. Further study in this area can focus on how teachers’ sense of professional agency evolves throughout their careers and how these changes affect student learning and teacher learning; specifically, what conditions and characteristics of the workplace contribute to or hinder the development of agency and what kinds of support are available at the workplace to support teacher agency?
TEACHER AGENCY AND LEARNING TO TEACH This is a recurrent theme in all the chapters and focuses on how future teachers can be prepared to function as transformative agentic teachers. In particular, the chapters consider the kind of learning environments (including social and emotional dimensions) that are conducive for developing student teachers’ professional agency. One aspect developed deals with preparing student teachers as agents that are capable of managing gaps between what teachers espouse, what they actually teach, and the governmental hegemonies dictated from above. Several questions for further inquiry are called for by this theme. For example, in regard to student teachers’ sense of self-efficacy: How do student teachers’ efficacy beliefs and skills contribute to their managing of these gaps and to the construction of their professional agency and how do these differ
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across populations? Furthermore, how do different program orientations develop different ideas about student teachers’ sense of professional agency and about the kind of gaps they see as impacting their work? How does the perceived learning environment in teacher education contribute to the sense of professional agency that develops (and the kind of gaps perceived) amongst student teachers at different stages of their learning? How do different methodologies in learning to teach (such as modelling, observation, shadowing of more experienced teachers or critical reflection in groups or dyads) influence the way in which student teachers think about and manage dilemmas related to their professional agency? Furthermore, do peers play a role in developing student teachers’ sense of agency, and how does the quality of peer and teacher educator/mentor relations influence the kind of professional agency that develops amongst student teachers?
TEACHING-LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHER AGENCY The development of teaching-learning environments for enhancing teacher agency has social, moral and political implications for the reform and transformation of a particular teaching context. This aspect is often discussed thoroughly with suggestions of how to engage in communal, collective action to promote such reforms (such as enhancing the co-making of agency through transactional spaces within teacher education programs which allow for the meeting of the narratives of teacher educators, teachers, children, youth, families and communities). This theme invites important questions for future study. How does one develop collaborative learning environments for both pupils and teachers that promote agency? What kind of social interactions within the learning environment might empower student teachers (in teacher education programs) and teachers (at schools)? How can one create arenas that acknowledge student teachers’ and teachers’ contributions to pedagogical practices and educational innovations that promote teacher agency? The theme of teaching-learning environments for the development of teacher agency also invites extending the focus on teacher agency from ‘outside’ (i.e. conceptual and theoretical arguments as well as external research agendas tested in particular contexts) to the study of teacher agency from ‘within’ (i.e. creating design-based research agendas whereby teaching-learning environments geared to promoting agency are formatively developed and dynamically revised and assessed over time by the actors/participants themselves). The strength of this paradigm lies in its potential for addressing solutions to practical problems while, at the same time, empowering practitioners to become researchers into their own practices as agents of change while also implementing their research in practice.
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REFERENCES Brydon-Miller, M. & Maguire, P. (2009). Participatory action research: Contributions to the development of practitioner inquiry in education. Educational Action Research, Vol 17(1), 79–93. Kelchtermans, G. (2005). Teachers’ emotions in educational reforms: Self-understanding, vulnerable commitment and micropolitical literacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 21(8), 995–1006.
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14 Shaping Agency through Theorizing and Practising Teaching in Teacher Education E ff i e M a c l e l l a n
The construct of agency has a long and rich history, having been explored from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Agency as the capacity to produce effects is a critical idea in understanding human activity. Within teaching, agency as the capacity to make principled choices, take action and make that action happen will be argued here as being our most important pedagogical resource. The teacher’s sense of promoting others’ learning, as distinct from ‘delivering the curriculum’, places upon teachers both a great honour and a great responsibility: both to help, and to be clear about how we help, others to take charge of their own learning. The demand for teachers to be agentic is extensive in the teachereducation literature, though for Pantić (2015) there is a lack of conceptual clarity about the nature and function of teacher agency. For the purposes of this chapter, teachers’ and teacher-educators’ personal agency is stipulatively defined as their: •• capacity to effect real change (in other words to have at their disposal means of reforming and transforming educational practice for the benefit of learners); •• knowledge that they themselves wittingly caused change in others’ learning (in other words a conscious understanding of their precise contribution to change); •• awareness of their own influences and powers to navigate within the milieu of institutional, political and societal structures;
and it is derived from a psychological perspective of people as reflexive and self-conscious individuals who operate in a social world and interact with others (Kögler, 2012). This definition involves not only the self’s implementation of actions but the self’s awareness of detailed contributions, and the self’s
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identification of ‘reach’ and salience in specified social contexts. It also implies that teachers’ and teacher-educators’ intellectual and affective capacities to act in problem-solving situations can change or grow over time, thereby enabling experiences of intellectual professional satisfaction. The exercise of agency is complex and while its relationship to educational practice has been characterised variously, this chapter privileges agency in relation to learner achievement, structuring the content under five headings: agency as enacted behaviour; agency as implicit theorising; self-efficacy; epistemic agency; and agency as autonomy.
AGENCY AS ENACTED BEHAVIOUR Teachers’ capacity to effect improved learning was systematically studied in the process-product studies which were carried out between the 1950s and the 1980s and described in detail (Brophy & Good, 1986; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). These studies sought to identify the instructional procedures which differentiated between teachers whose learners made the highest gains and those whose learners made the lowest gains on standardised tests. Alongside this, classroom observations were made of the types and frequencies of teacher behaviour. The studies had high ecological validity because they occurred in real classrooms; were replicated over successive years; and controlled for socioeconomic status, subject matter and grade levels. The teaching functions derived from the many process-product studies (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986) demonstrated robustly that teaching behaviours were key to improved achievement on standardised tests. To the extent that teachers were able to enact prescribed procedures, they effected improvement in learner achievement, and could therefore be said to have agency. However, the extent to which they understood why their actions affected learner outcomes was not considered, and so agency as enacted behaviour has limited utility in learner achievement. Nevertheless, the corpus of process-product research was significant, and continues to have a place in teacher education today because of its influence on current conceptualisations of ‘direct instruction’ and the need for teachers to provide optimal guidance to support the development of learners’ thinking (Doabler et al., 2015; Lucariello et al., 2016). However, while the process-product studies continue to inform our understandings of teaching factors (Kyriakides, Christoforou, & Charalambous, 2013), they could not help teachers to address the teaching of important but ill-structured tasks like reading (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991) or mathematical problem solving (Mayer, 1998). The dominance of the process-product approach to teaching and its concomitant emphasis in teacher education created little space for either teachers’ role in influencing others, or for the ideas that they themselves had. But the acknowledged limitations of the process-product approach in response to complex learning confirmed that teaching is more than the passive
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employment of teaching skills, and further demands teachers’ cognitive constructions of the teaching and learning milieu within which they are working (National Institute of Education, 1975). Thus research on the importance of teacher thinking (Clark & Peterson, 1986; Winne, 1987) began to unpack considerable variation, so sowing some seeds for the importance of the construct of agency in teacher education.
AGENCY AS IMPLICIT THEORISING Attention to teachers’ own reasoning as to why particular practices and attitudes prevailed acquired greater potency when teachers’ thinking processes were studied as causal in teacher behaviour (Clark & Yinger, 1977). Planning in preparation for teaching and decision-making during teaching were both viewed as mechanisms for accessing teacher thinking and, while not well understood thirty years ago (Clark & Peterson, 1986), continue to be important topics for us to learn about (Long et al., 2016; Lui & Bonner, 2016). The early literature explained teachers’ practice as deriving from their personal knowledge, which was informed by their experiences of being learners and of being teachers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1987; Connelly, Clandinin, & Ming Fang, 1997): knowledge which was not always made explicit by teachers (Cornett, Yeotis, & Terwilliger, 1990). But teachers, in reasoning about practice, draw not only from their implicit or automated knowledge but also from their codified knowledge of formal theory and research, and these two forms of knowledge interact in complex ways that we do not fully understand (Grosemans, Boon, Verclairen, Dochy, & Kyndt, 2015; Kissling, 2014). However, by acknowledging that teachers learn informally and formally, teacher education offers an important site to allow teachers and wider society to understand that professional learning is not just a matter of acquiring professional skills and knowledge but also a conduit through which teachers can shape their practice and thinking. We know that teachers with an enhanced understanding of practice (Carrillo & Climent, 2011) perceive significant features of the situation, and have the knowledge that enables them to choose actions that are appropriate in these circumstances for producing desired consequences. These teachers appear to develop a rich seam of principled practical knowledge (know-how plus know-why) which they use and modify ‘on the fly’, but which we cannot yet explain. Nevertheless, it is teachers’ interpretations of, and professional responses to, a particular situation that can be understood as agentic. Indeed it is teachers’ agency which inhibits unfettered application of prescribed curricular and pedagogical changes because teachers filter what they read/are told through their implicit theorisation. Only if proposed changes are considered to be effective and feasible by teachers themselves (Reeve & Cheon, 2016) will they entertain changing extant practices.
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Key to the development of teachers’ theorisation is reflection: a thinking process in which what is experienced as perplexing is transformed into that which is coherent and meaningful to the person. Although reflection, as a mechanism for supporting teacher agency, is crucial in teacher education, teachers find the process difficult (Gelfuso & Dennis, 2014), especially if they do not have a sophisticated grasp of learning. Moreover, the idea of reflection is ambiguous with conceptual confusions about its focus, implementation and justification (Beauchamp, 2015; Zeichner & Liu, 2010). Supporting others’ reflection requires teacher educators to have deep understanding of reflection as an intellectual achievement on a continuum of epistemological sophistication. Broadly, this continuum traverses description and personal response to a practice issue, through referencing theory and research to explain practice, to interrogating and ultimately transforming the practice. Such transformative reflection is a monological or dialogical interaction in which people ‘define and clarify their beliefs, attitudes and goals, evaluate social circumstances and define projects based on their main concerns’ (Caetano, 2015, p. 62). It is this reflexivity that teachers need to be agentic, because it is this very deep level of reasoning which allows teachers to discard previous practices when these are understood to be less effective than others that can be morally and theoretically justified.
SELF-EFFICACY The premise that teachers can knowingly effect change (and so demonstrate agency) finds support in the construct of efficacy. Efficacy for teaching refers to teachers’ convictions in effecting context-specific pedagogical tasks at a specified level of quality (Dellinger, Bobbett, Olivier, & Ellett, 2008) and involves the extent to which teachers believe that they can: •• exercise instructional strategies (design and implement activities, tasks and assessments) to facilitate student learning; •• provide support (attend to emerging difficulties, structure calibrated support, respect learner autonomy and integrity) to keep learners engaged and motivated; •• manage the classroom to ensure sufficient learning time, minimise interruptions, create and maintain structure and order in the classroom.
Perceptions of self-efficacy stem from experiences of completing tasks on mastery criteria determined by ourselves; emulating the practices of models we respect; following the advice of those who persuade us; and our physiological/ emotional state of readiness (Usher & Pajares, 2008). Our own enactive experience is the most potent source of efficacy, but others’ feedback, either directly or vicariously, can be helpful if the task is novel or the criteria for mastery are ambiguous. Teachers’ self-efficacy influences the classroom ecology in complex ways, predisposing them to be more or less agentic. For example, teachers’
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efficacy interacts with the effects of stress (Helms-Lorenz & Maulana, 2015; Khani & Mirzaee, 2014; Stephanou, Gkavras, & Doulkeridou, 2013). Low selfefficacy will intensify teachers’ feelings of stress while high levels protect their sense of well-being (Fernet, Guay, Senécal, & Austin, 2012; Martin, Sass, & Schmitt, 2012; Pas, Bradshaw, & Hershfeldt, 2012). This in turn is a factor in job satisfaction and teachers’ decisions to leave the profession (Aldridge & Fraser, 2015; Collie, Shapka, & Perry, 2012; Helms-Lorenz & Maulana, 2015; Klassen & Chiu, 2011; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2014). While teachers’ self-efficacy reliably predicts their instruction, learner engagement and classroom management over time (Künsting, Neuber, & Lipowsky, 2016) and is widespread in its agentic effects (Zee, Koomen, Jellesma, Geerlings, & De Jong, 2016), there are questions as to the influence of teacher efficacy on learner achievement (Klassen, Tze, Betts, & Gordon, 2011). Recent studies suggest that highly efficacious teachers enable learner achievement through their substantive domain knowledge: in mathematics (Ekmekci, Corkin, & Papakonstantinou, 2015; Lui & Bonner, 2016; Riconscente, 2014; Skaalvik, Federici, & Klassen, 2015; Tsamir, Tirosh, Levenson, Tabach, & Barkai, 2015); in science (Demir & Ellett, 2014; Kazempour & Sadler, 2015; Knaggs & Sondergeld, 2015; Velthuis, Fisser, & Pieters, 2015; Wang, Tsai, & Wei, 2015); and in literacy (Martinussen, Ferrari, Aitken, & Willows, 2015; Taboada Barber et al., 2014; TschannenMoran & Johnson, 2011). These studies exemplify a current awareness that: •• •• •• ••
interest is necessary for understanding content; learner interest is an important element of achieving domain proficiency; learner interest is stimulated by clear and pertinent explanations from teachers; and the coherence and clarity of teacher’s developmentally-appropriate explanations depend on teachers’ own conceptual knowledge.
It is the depth and detail of the teacher’s conceptual knowledge which lets them provide apt and learner-centred explanations, notwithstanding their pedagogical knowledge of how to support learners generally. Teachers with robust conceptual knowledge believe that they can teach particular curriculum content such that the learners engage cognitively. Such teachers are not afraid to be innovative in devising tasks and activities for learners which challenge learners to invoke prior knowledge and use basic concepts. These teachers consider it appropriate to trigger in learners the cognitive conflict that positions learners to compare similarities and differences and to reflect on their own learning. These teachers routinely require learners to justify answers and solutions by encouraging content-rich classroom discourse. In other words the learners are cognitively activated by teachers who have mastery-oriented goals and high self-efficacy to extend their teaching. As such they seek to engage their learners in the complex processes of understanding, reflection and critical reflection, whilst monitoring learners’ difficulties and providing calibrated support. On the other hand, teachers who have limited conceptual grasp of content are likely to avoid inquiry and
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learner-centred approaches to teaching because they themselves do not have the cognitive resource to deal with the unpredictability and ‘messiness’ of supporting learners as they struggle to revise and construct their understanding (Phan, 2011; Schiefele & Schaffner, 2015; Schiefele, Streblow, & Retelsdorf, 2013). All of this implies that teacher educators must continue to be bold in promoting a constructivist perspective on learning. How teachers think, feel and act is central to their professional agency. The construct of self-efficacy has much to offer in helping teachers believe that they are capable of producing requisite behaviours, a necessary part of teacher agency.
EPISTEMIC AGENCY The acknowledged importance of teachers’ conceptual understanding to support their agency brings into focus the extent of their epistemic cognition: the process of thinking that draws on beliefs and knowledge to reason, to problem solve or to make decisions. We invoke epistemic cognition whenever we need to do more than just memorise information, when we seek to think critically, argue tightly and understand deeply (Greene & Yu, 2016). When we seek to acquire and/or apply new knowledge in response to course curriculum requirements (achieve learning intentions), we pursue epistemic goals: we have a ‘need to know’ (Litman, Hutchins, & Russon, 2005). In satisfying our ‘need to know’ we vary in the extent to which we appreciate the effortful thinking involved in solving puzzles, in extensive deliberation and in thinking abstractly. Some of us relish effortful thinking and others avoid it. Those who engage in more effortful thinking (and so develop more complex cognition) are better able to direct attention to what is salient or significant in a particular situation (Yang, Huang, & Tsai, 2014). It is this epistemic cognition which is at play if/when we: (i) reason and argue a point of view; (ii) question the source of evidence presented; and (iii) revise our knowledge and thinking. Our epistemic cognition develops over three major stages – viewing knowledge as incontrovertible facts, as equally valid but alternative opinions, or as judgements derived from evidence. The gradual realisation that knowledge is construed rather than given grows out of advanced education. Because our knowledge arises from the choices that we make individually to engage or not in effortful thinking, we are responsible for what we know and do not know (Greene & Yu, 2016). This responsibility marks our epistemic agency. Epistemic agency comprises two dimensions: knowledge-related actions (collecting information; sharing ideas and knowledge; structuring ideas to create the basis for further epistemic endeavour; participating in collective discourse) and process-related actions (setting goals and agreeing plans; monitoring progress of the collective activities and addressing the problems that emerge; being interpersonally aware, proactive and sensitive to others less academically skilled). While the epistemic (knowledge-related) dimension
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leads to the creation of the knowledge object or conceptual artefact, agentic conduct through regulative (process-related) action is necessary to bring the desired outcome to fruition (Damşa, Kirschner, Andriessen, Erkens, & Sins, 2010). Because teachers not only learn themselves but also design learning contexts for others, their epistemic cognition is very relevant. If we as teachers and teacher educators accept the charge that we help learners to learn, we need to be able to both think and talk about the content and pedagogical knowledge for teaching others and the way(s) in which our own beliefs, conceptions and assumptions can be altered to improve our agency. Teacher education’s support of enabling teachers to see the connections between their epistemic cognition and their pedagogical practices remains critically important. Historically, teachers have been credited as the epistemic agents – who set the learning goals, monitor learner progress and evaluate the outcomes (Stroupe, 2014). That learners might be epistemic agents has not been a widely held consideration, but is evident in the idea of ‘knowledge-building’ (Bereiter, 2002): a process of creating new conceptual artefacts as a result of common goals, group discussions and synthesis of ideas. These artefacts can be theories, product designs, explanations, marketing plans or other such mental knowledge objects, which can be described, compared, discussed, critiqued and modified. Bereiter and Scardamalia (2014) view knowledge building as a key pedagogical approach involving learners taking collective responsibility for improving their ideas rather than leaving this task for the teacher. Through working collaboratively on problematic tasks that demand novel solutions, learners realise, progressively, that new advances in knowledge open up new problems and new possibilities for further advancement, thereby extending potential epistemic agency. Those teachers who are epistemically agentic take responsibility for their own and their learners’ cognitive advancement, and when they recognise gaps, they take steps to address them. Supporting learners to develop epistemic agency necessitates teachers’ familiarity with, and knowledge of, epistemic cognition (Greene & Yu, 2016), since it is heavily implicated in teaching for conceptual change (Mason, Boscolo, Tornatora, & Ronconi, 2013) and enables us to do more than regurgitate knowledge, allowing us instead to think critically or construct an argument (Sinatra, Kienhues, & Hofer, 2014). Pre-service teachers have been found to be low in epistemic agency because of their own limited knowledge sharing; their lack of engagement with peers to monitor and progress respective understandings; and their derogation of responsibility for maintaining the cognitive centrality and integrity of the task (Erkunt, 2010). And in-service teachers do not respond well to managerially mandated changes which pay lip service to, but do not understand the nature of, teachers’ ability to change their professional situation (Wierenga, Kamsteeg, Simons, & Veenswijk, 2015). Teacher educators thus need to ensure that their own pedagogy is congruent with a knowledge-building approach (Jao, 2016; Kárpáti & Dorner, 2012).
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AGENCY AS AUTONOMY To exercise our agency, we need to experience ourselves as having choice in how to act. It is not therefore surprising that teachers’ agency can be enabled by autonomy. But teachers’ autonomy is a nuanced concept. Autonomy in teaching can be thought of as situational (Eneau, 2012). Teachers engage in practices which engender autonomy: they arrange organisational, procedural and cognitive aspects of the learning environment to give learners more choice and freedom to take ownership of their own thinking (Reeve & Tseng, 2011; Rogat, Witham, & Chinn, 2014). Autonomy supportive teaching improves learner motivation (Ruzek et al., 2016), enhances learners’ emotional engagement (Hospel & Galand, 2016) and increases conceptual learning (Jang, Reeve, & Halusic, 2016). Teachers’ pedagogy is therefore driven by the desire to have learners become intentional, intrinsically motivated learners. But, as Eneau (2012) points out, there is another form of autonomy. Teachers’ epistemological autonomy is their capability to make informed judgments about the contexts and situations that influence their teaching. In exercising their epistemological autonomy teachers appreciate that their individual autonomy to determine teaching materials and pedagogy within the classroom interacts with the curricular and pedagogical policies within the school and is ultimately informed by the governance of the teaching profession in terms of fitness-to-teach (Frostenson, 2015). So autonomy is not some rampant expression of self, independent of authority, the environment, society or peers. Rather it is a balance of individual freedom and the external constraints of other persons and particular situations. This balance may well be difficult for teachers to achieve. On the one hand, there are influences, pressures and mandates to act in particular ways (to which the professionally responsible teacher attends), and on the other, we strive to be self-directed by self-generated or freely internalised rules which act as an inner compass when choice is available. Being a teacher with agency recognises professional responsibilities, but teachers are still autonomous even when complying with external demands, provided the reasoning for an action is consistent with their beliefs (Chirkov, 2014). The nuance of teachers’ authorship of reasoning-to-act is important. Without critical reflection to check that they fully concur with the reasons for so acting, teachers may act independently or intentionally, but not with autonomy. Indeed, without an explicit teacher- education focus on teachers’ autonomy, teachers’ conceptions of their autonomy will continue to be limited (Šteh & Marentič Požarnik, 2005; Wermke & Forsberg, 2016). Epistemological autonomy, like situational autonomy, can be learned but requires deep reflection over extended time (Dworkin, 2015; Eneau, 2012) to achieve the intellectual maturity that enables the teacher not only to think about what improved practice might be but also have the capacity to accept or attempt to change practice in light of higher-order preferences and values. Sophisticated epistemological autonomy is therefore desirable in the achievement of agency.
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At the more prosaic level of situational autonomy, teachers, like the rest of the human race, have a basic psychological need for autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2011). Our psychological health depends on the satisfactions of our needs to make volitional choice, to feel competent and capable, and to socially engage with others. Our need for autonomy is experienced regardless of cultural differences (Chirkov, 2014). Very recent research is beginning to show that professional development in which teachers feel committed to promoting situational autonomy (Aelterman, Vansteenkiste, Van Keer, & Haerens, 2016; Ng, Liu, & Wang, 2015; Reeve & Cheon, 2016) can enable their epistemological autonomy because at the very least the professional development draws teachers’ attention to the effects of their behaviour on that of their learners. Another potential seam to explore is how teacher educators structure novice teacher learning to take account of the role of the cooperating teacher in field experience (Tannebaum, 2015). There is still much to learn about refining teachers’ conception of epistemological autonomy.
WAYS FORWARD Teachers’ agency in promoting learning is shaped by their enactment of instruction, their theorisation (of learning and teaching), their own efficacious behaviour, their personal epistemology and their autonomy. Because these influences are disparate and incomplete in themselves, they merit further attention in teacher education. If teachers are to develop their professional agency, elaborations in respect of the factors shaping agency invite further work on: •• The role of direct or explicit instruction: The demise of the process-product studies gave rise to discovery learning, quickly judged as pedagogically inadequate. Much of what is required to be taught in formal education (literacy, science, mathematics and the other curricular topics) is secondary knowledge which we need for cultural reasons but which (unlike primary knowledge such as speech, face recognition and general problem solving) we are not biologically primed to acquire. To acquire secondary knowledge effectively, we need explicit instruction which takes account of the limitations of our cognitive architecture. How teachers provide authentic tasks, relevant practice and the learner-specific bridging information to support learning are all aspects of teacher’s agency which merit attention in teacher education. •• Teachers’ theorisation: The nexus of educational reform and classroom practice is a troubled one in which ‘others’ view teachers as obtuse in their alleged failure to adopt proposed innovations. Such recalcitrance merely underpins teachers’ agency. Teachers’ perceptions of an innovation’s practicality in the context of their classroom and their group of learners is the actual criterion. This may render the innovation, as manifest in a particular classroom, to be far removed from its original design and conception. Working with teachers to explore the instrumental efficiency of the innovation, the congruence of the innovation in the ecology of their particular classroom and the cost-benefit effects of the innovation would be a window through which to better understand teachers’ theorisation, and hence their agency. •• Teachers’ efficacy: Extant studies cumulatively emphasise that improved instructional practices, learner support and classroom management positively predict increased efficacy, but the longstanding need to know how teacher efficacy predicts learner attainment is less well understood. We know that teachers’ rich conceptual content knowledge is significant. But how teacher
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education helps teachers ensure that their domain knowledge is matched to the demands of constructivist pedagogy such that teachers support both grade increases and refined understanding is still work in progress. Enabling teachers to make their self-efficacy explicit might help our understanding of how teachers use their practical and personal knowledge dynamically to clarify their thinking, and to act on the basis of their reasoning. •• Teachers’ epistemic cognition: The topic of epistemic cognition has only recently been recognised as important in teacher education and so studies are currently limited. But in the current policy climate of demands to prepare learners for our knowledge-infused world, we can no longer teach as though knowledge were certain or given (an assumption unchallenged in entrenched transmission pedagogies). Instead we must value the necessity of engaging in argumentation and reasoning from evidence. Building an epistemically justified pedagogy requires research to gain insights into teachers’ understandings of: ° their own epistemology; ° the epistemic messages embedded in the espoused and enacted curricula, in the resources deployed and in the teaching approaches adopted; ° the epistemic cognition of their learners. •• Teacher agency cannot now be helpful to the education enterprise unless it is epistemically sensitive. •• Teachers’ autonomy: It is inherent as a potentiality but to be become an actuality requires teacher action, research and staff development. Being agentic means that teachers seek to enable learner competence, encourage learners’ self-motivations and enhance learner capacity for critical thinking. For this teachers need to be able to infer learners’ goals and intentions and use this knowledge to make rational, value-driven decisions on how to proceed pedagogically: factors that are worthy of clearer delineation. At the same time, teachers must be personally mindful of, and understand, what provokes the expectations, demands and constraints of their role, so that they can make rational decisions as to whether to follow, ignore or actively resist accountability requirements. The social, moral and political implications of teachers’ agency must therefore be brought into focus through reflection.
The influences on teachers’ agency reported here, together with suggestions for further avenues of investigation, derive from self-report measures such as interviews, written protocols, participant observation and questionnaires (many of which have been psychometrically developed). The objectivity of the resultant findings and the validity of the underpinning constructs have been matters of concern to those of a positivist persuasion, but to understand human action and complex phenomena such as teaching, we must recognise not only that teachers respond and react but that they interpret and create, and act on the basis of their interpretations. It is therefore necessary for teacher educators to have insight into how teachers construe their experiences of teaching, rather than to assume knowledge of what teaching means to individual teachers. This is not to deny that there should be rigorous analyses of self-report data, since it is analysis of raw data that yields meaning and significance. Rather, it suggests that student teachers, teachers, teacher educators and researchers work collaboratively to benefit from the experiences and perspectives of each to improve and generate evidencebased claims about the effects of teachers’ agency on learner achievement.
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CLOSING COMMENTS Notwithstanding the psychological processing that underpins teachers’ agency, it is the interaction of theorising and practising teaching that enables teachers to understand what agency means for them in their classrooms. The ways in which knowledge and practice of ‘teaching about teaching’ are developed and refined are the work of teacher education. These developments and refinements are best supported in coherent, formal teacher education programmes which provide space, iteratively, to revisit agency in relation to learner achievement. The recognition that teaching is problematic because it is an uncertain yet dynamic activity means that decisions are being made by learners and teachers in real time and it is within this real time that learners and teachers negotiate ways forward. The key demand on teachers is to enable learners to transform extant skills and understandings into more sophisticated skills and understandings. Teaching is not bound by a script delivered by an automaton but requires teachers to make informed responses to the varied learning demands of any particular lesson. It is against this complex and uncertain background that teachers do their work: experiencing the demands of competing claims of the curriculum; acutely aware of the limitations of pedagogic technology to guarantee classroom success; and being held accountable for unpredictable learner achievement. But these ‘constraints’ will always be the subject of ongoing debate and contestation: what the curriculum should be is a matter of interest to our politicians, to the general public and to our professionals; how pedagogy is enacted is informed by teachers’ thinking and the impact of research findings on how humans learn; and how learner achievement is defined – given that we know that learning as an internal cognitive event cannot be equated with observable behaviour – is influenced by the intellectual, cultural and economic views that are dominant in particular contexts. In short, teacher education is the crucible for debating, developing and designing ways in which teachers can do the job which society has charged them to do. Availed of teachers’ and teacher educators’ sense of agency as outlined in this chapter, the teachers and the teacher educators have pedagogical resources to support them in their educational practice. Supporting teachers to be agentic remains a challenge for teacher education but a useful start has been made in that teacher-education research has been central in examining and exposing the many ways in which teaching requires sustained thinking, reading and scholarship. Teachers’ and teacher educators’ sense of agency is central to this endeavour.
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teacher training. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 23, 64–72. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. psychsport.2015.10.007. Aldridge, J., & Fraser, B. (2015). Teachers’ views of their school climate and its relationship with teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction. Learning Environments Research, 1–17. doi:10.1007/s10984-0159198-x. Beauchamp, C. (2015). Reflection in teacher education: Issues emerging from a review of current literature. Reflective Practice, 16(1), 123–141. doi:10.1080/14623943.2014.982525. Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (2014). Knowledge building and knowledge creation: One concept, two hills to climb. In S. Tan, H. So, & J. Yeo (Eds), Knowledge Creation in Education (pp. 35–52). Singapore: Springer. Brophy, J., & Good, T. (1986). Teacher behavior and student achievement. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd edn, pp. 328–375). New York: Macmillan. Caetano, A. (2015). Defining personal reflexivity: A critical reading of Archer’s approach. European Journal of Social Theory, 18(1), 60–75. doi:10.1177/1368431014549684. Carrillo, J., & Climent, N. (2011). The development of teachers’ expertise through their analysis of good practice in the mathematics classroom. ZDM, 43(6–7), 915–926. doi:10.1007/s11858-011-0363-0. Chirkov, V. (2014). The universality of psychological autonomy across cultures: Arguments from developmental and social psychology. In N. Weinstein (Ed.), Human Motivation and Interpersonal Relationships (pp. 27–51). Dordrecht: Springer. Clandinin, D., & Connelly, F. (1987). Teachers’ personal knowledge: What counts as ‘personal’ in studies of the personal. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19(6), 487–500. doi:10.1080/0022027870190602. Clark, C., & Peterson, P. (1986). Teachers’ thought processes. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 255–296). New York: Macmillan. Clark, C., & Yinger, R. (1977). Research on teacher thinking. Curriculum Inquiry, 7(4), 279–304. doi:10.2307/1179499. Collie, R., Shapka, J., & Perry, N. (2012). School climate and social–emotional learning: Predicting teacher stress, job satisfaction, and teaching efficacy. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 1189–1204. doi:10.1037/a0029356. Connelly, F., Clandinin, D., & Ming Fang, H. (1997). Teachers’ personal practical knowledge on the professional knowledge landscape. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(7), 665–674. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/S0742-051X(97)00014-0. Cornett, J., Yeotis, C., & Terwilliger, L. (1990). Teacher personal practical theories and their influence upon teacher curricular and instructional actions: A case study of a secondary science teacher. Science Education, 74(5), 517–529. doi:10.1002/sce.3730740503 Damşa, C., Kirschner, P., Andriessen, J., Erkens, G., & Sins, P. (2010). Shared epistemic agency: An empirical study of an emergent construct. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19(2), 143–186. Dellinger, A., Bobbett, J., Olivier, D., & Ellett, C. (2008). Measuring teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs: Development and use of the TEBS-Self. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(3), 751–766. doi:http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.02.010. Demir, K., & Ellett, C. (2014). Science teacher self-efficacy beliefs, change processes, and professional development. In R. Evans, J. Luft, C. Czerniak, & C. Pea (Eds), The Role of Science Teachers’ Beliefs in International Classrooms (pp. 179–190). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Doabler, C., Baker, S., Kosty, D., Smolkowski, K., Clarke, B., Miller, S., & Fien, H. (2015). Examining the association between explicit mathematics instruction and student mathematics achievement. The Elementary School Journal, 115(3), 303–333. doi:10.1086/679969. Dole, J., Duffy, G., Roehler, L., & Pearson, P. (1991). Moving from the old to the new: Research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 239–264. doi:10.3102/ 00346543061002239.
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Knaggs, C., & Sondergeld, T. (2015). Science as a learner and as a teacher: Measuring science self-efficacy of elementary preservice teachers. School Science and Mathematics, 115(3), 117–128. doi:10.1111/ssm.12110. Kögler, H. (2012). Agency and the other: On the intersubjective roots of self-identity. New Ideas in Psychology, 30(1), 47–64. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2010.03.010. Künsting, J., Neuber, V., & Lipowsky, F. (2016). Teacher self-efficacy as a long-term predictor of instructional quality in the classroom. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 1–24. doi:10.1007/ s10212-015-0272-7. Kyriakides, L., Christoforou, C., & Charalambous, C. (2013). What matters for student learning outcomes: A meta-analysis of studies exploring factors of effective teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 36, 143–152. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.07.010. Litman, J., Hutchins, T., & Russon, R. (2005). Epistemic curiosity, feeling-of-knowing, and exploratory behaviour. Cognition & Emotion, 19(4), 559–582. doi:10.1080/02699930441000427. Long, A., Hagermoser Sanetti, L., Collier-Meek, M., Gallucci, J., Altschaefl, M., & Kratochwill, T. (2016). An exploratory investigation of teachers’ intervention planning and perceived implementation barriers. Journal of School Psychology, 55, 1–26. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2015.12.002. Lucariello, J., Nastasi, B., Anderman, E., Dwyer, C., Ormiston, H., & Skiba, R. (2016). Science supports education: The behavioral research base for psychology’s top 20 principles for enhancing teaching and learning. Mind, Brain, and Education, 10(1), 55–67. doi:10.1111/mbe.12099. Lui, A., & Bonner, S. (2016). Preservice and inservice teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and instructional planning in primary school mathematics. Teaching and Teacher Education, 56, 1–13. doi:http://dx. doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.01.015. Martin, N., Sass, D., & Schmitt, T. (2012). Teacher efficacy in student engagement, instructional management, student stressors, and burnout: A theoretical model using in-class variables to predict teachers’ intent-to-leave. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(4), 546–559. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2011.12.003. Martinussen, R., Ferrari, J., Aitken, M., & Willows, D. (2015). Pre-service teachers’ knowledge of phonemic awareness: Relationship to perceived knowledge, self-efficacy beliefs, and exposure to a multimedia-enhanced lecture. Annals of Dyslexia, 65(3), 142–158. doi:10.1007/s11881-015-0104-0. Mason, L., Boscolo, P., Tornatora, M., & Ronconi, L. (2013). Besides knowledge: A cross-sectional study on the relations between epistemic beliefs, achievement goals, self-beliefs, and achievement in science. Instructional Science, 41(1), 49–79. doi:10.1007/s11251-012-9210-0. Mayer, R. (1998). Cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of problem solving. Instructional Science, 26(1), 49–63. doi:10.1023/a:1003088013286. National Institute of Education. (1975). Teaching as Clinical Information Processing. Paper presented at the NIE Conference on Studies in Teaching, Washington, DC. Ng, B., Liu, W., & Wang, C. (2015). A preliminary examination of teachers’ and students’ perspectives on autonomy supportive instructional behaviors. Qualitative Research in Education, 4(2), 192–221. doi:10.17583/qre.2015.146. Pantić, N. (2015). A model for study of teacher agency for social justice. Teachers and Teaching, 21(6), 759–778. doi:10.1080/13540602.2015.1044332. Pas, E., Bradshaw, C., & Hershfeldt, P. (2012). Teacher- and school-level predictors of teacher efficacy and burnout: Identifying potential areas for support. Journal of School Psychology, 50(1), 129–145. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2011.07.003. Phan, H. (2011). Interrelations between self-efficacy and learning approaches: A developmental approach. Educational Psychology, 31(2), 225–246. doi:10.1080/01443410.2010.545050. Reeve, J., & Cheon, S. (2016). Teachers become more autonomy supportive after they believe it is easy to do. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 22, 178–189. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.08.001. Reeve, J., & Tseng, C. (2011). Agency as a fourth aspect of students’ engagement during learning activities. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(4), 257–267. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. cedpsych.2011.05.002.
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Tschannen-Moran, M., & Johnson, D. (2011). Exploring literacy teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs: Potential sources at play. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(4), 751–761. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2010.12.005. Usher, E., & Pajares, F. (2008). Sources of self-efficacy in school: Critical review of the literature and future directions. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 751–796. doi:10.3102/0034654308321456. Velthuis, C., Fisser, P., & Pieters, J. (2015). Collaborative curriculum design to increase science teaching self-efficacy: A case study. The Journal of Educational Research, 108(3), 217–225. doi:10.1080/002 20671.2013.878299. Wang, Y., Tsai, C., & Wei, S. (2015). The sources of science teaching self-efficacy among elementary school teachers: A mediational model approach. International Journal of Science Education, 37(14), 2264–2283. doi:10.1080/09500693.2015.1075077. Wermke, W., & Forsberg, E. (2016). The changing nature of autonomy: Transformations of the late Swedish teaching profession. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 61(2), 155–168. doi:10.1080/00313831.2015.1119727. Wierenga, S., Kamsteeg, F., Simons, P., & Veenswijk, M. (2015). Teachers making sense of result-oriented teams: A cognitive anthropological approach to educational change. Journal of Educational Change, 16(1), 53–78. doi:10.1007/s10833-014-9240-2. Winne, P. (1987). Why process-product research cannot explain process-product findings and a proposed remedy: The cognitive mediational paradigm. Teaching and Teacher Education, 3(4), 333–356. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(87)90025-4. Yang, F., Huang, R., & Tsai, I. (2014). The effects of epistemic beliefs in science and gender differences on university students’ science-text reading: An eye-tracking study. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 14(3), 473–498. doi:10.1007/s10763-014-9578-1. Zee, M., Koomen, H., Jellesma, F., Geerlings, J., & De Jong, P. (2016). Inter- and intra-individual differences in teachers’ self-efficacy: A multilevel factor exploration. Journal of School Psychology, 55, 39–56. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2015.12.003. Zeichner, K., & Liu, K. (2010). A critical analysis of reflection as a goal for teacher education. In N. Lyons (Ed.), Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry: Mapping a Way of Knowing for Professional Reflective Inquiry (pp. 67–84). Boston, MA: Springer US.
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15 The Dialectic of Person and Practice: How CulturalHistorical Accounts of Agency Can Inform Teacher Education A n n e E d w a rd s WHAT IS AGENCY? The question of teacher agency gets straight to the misconceptions, which have made teacher education so frequently a contested area (Cochran-Smith, 2008; Zeichner, Payne & Brayko, 2015). I shall argue that if agency is understood in terms of the part it plays in student teachers’ learning, we might clear up some of the misconceptions that inhibit the development of the teacher education needed for the twenty-first century. The argument will centre on the learning dialectic between person and practice or culture, where individual and collective shape each other and where the professional knowledge and values embedded in practices are important. The discussion will therefore examine both agency and cultural practice; while recognising that they are dynamically intertwined. Some ground-clearing is needed before discussing agency as an analytic construct. The ground here is just a small part of the territory, as I shall focus on approaches to agency that recognise its role in the person–practice dynamic. The two key thinkers informing many analyses of how person and practice interact, G.H. Mead and L.S. Vygotsky, have much in common, but also some significant differences (Edwards, 2007). In brief, the former has explained how identity arises from an interaction between self and the elements of society we value; while the latter more strongly recognises the dialectical nature of the relationship, the mutual shaping of person and the practice in settings. Mead’s insights therefore explain how social expectations work to shape our identities as people who can act within these expectations; while Vygotsky’s cultural-historical analyses
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reach the micro-level detail of how human agency plays into how we learn and act on the world. But what does agency mean within a Vygotskian framing? Most of us in the West rely on translations when reading Vygotsky, and I know of no reference to ‘agency’ in them. But he was very clear that education, and the ability to engage in what he called higher order thinking (Vygotsky, 1997), for example organising our memory so we can work with powerful publicly validated concepts, meant we could control our actions and operate effectively in the world. Again his translators did not use ‘metacognition’ or ‘self-regulation’, but these ideas are implicit in his writings and are the rationale for the value he gave education. Later elaborations of his work have taken overtly Marxist routes in their analyses, emphasising how human labour with cultural tools, which include concepts, can transform society (Engeström, 2015; Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004). Also there have been moves to connect Vygotsky’s attention to volitional action with a collective form of transformative agency, in systemically oriented studies of Change Laboratory formative interventions (e.g., Engeström, 2011; Haapasaari & Kerosuo, 2015; Heli & Seppänen, 2014). In these studies transformative agency arises in collective agentive actions during organisational change, such as criticising the current activity, highlighting the need for change and envisioning new patterns or models of the activity. While collective transformative agency is a fruitful way of discussing agency from a systemic perspective, my focus here is narrower. I shall conceptualise learning as the increasingly informed use of cultural tools, and examine the implications for initial teacher education of the dialectic that arises. As Stetsenko and Arievitch put it, with these tools ‘people not only transform and create their environment; they also transform and create their lives, consequently changing themselves in fundamental ways and, in the process, gaining self-knowledge’ (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004, pp. 482–3). Perhaps because of Vygotsky’s emphasis on forms of self-regulation, culturalhistorical discussions of agency tend to start with the individual, while also keeping an eye on practice. Van Oers, in his cultural-historical account of teacher agency, describes agency as ‘the actual ways in which situated persons wilfully master their own life’ (van Oers, 2015, p. 19). This emphasis echoes Taylor, whose philosophical roots align with cultural-historical approaches. Forty years ago he argued that to be fully human is to be able to make strong evaluations about one’s actions, and he defined agency as follows: ‘We think of the agent as not only partly responsible for what he does, for the degree to which he acts in line with those evaluations, but also as responsible in some sense for those evaluations’ (Taylor, 1977, p. 118). There is an important place for responsible agency in cultural-historical views of personhood, without it there would be no dialectic of person and the opportunities and demands of the practices they inhabit. The overview of cultural-historical theory approaches to the concept of self, by Stetsenko and Arievitch, similarly
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recognises agency as a dimension of an individual. Their aim is to connect individual agency and societal demands, by addressing: ‘both individual (agentive) and social dimensions of the self in a non-dichotomizing way’ (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004, p. 476, italics in the original). This ‘non-dichotomizing’ dialectical relationship weaves its way through other cultural-historical definitions, with Roth perhaps best capturing how agency unfolds in the acts that comprise the actions taken in activities which are themselves located within institutional practices and their demands. In doing so he downplays what he describes as the ‘I can’ aspects of agency in order to point to its ‘moral dimensions’ (Roth, 2006, p. 4) and connections to institutional practices. These moral dimensions and wider connections are also emphasised by Taylor, who continues his theme of responsibility by reminding us how agency is intertwined with responsibility, if it is to be connected to the common good (Taylor 1991). The wider interconnections of person and society are also evident in the anthropological account of identity and agency offered by Holland and her colleagues. Their arguments are in line with both Mead and cultural-historical approaches, pointing to how people identify with particular cultural forms and practices, and suggesting that there is ‘co-development – the linked development of people, cultural forms, and social positions in particular historical worlds’ (Holland et al., 1998, p. 33). These definitions, however, only take us some way towards operationalising agency, recognising it, following it over time in different situations and creating the conditions in which it may arise. Priestley, Biesta and Robinson have taken up this challenge in their ‘ecological approach’ to teacher agency, which reflects the interactionist approach of Mead rather than the dialectics of Vygotsky. They distinguish between ‘agency as a variable, agency as a capacity and agency as a phenomenon’ (Priestley et al., 2015, p. 20). They opt for the latter, describing agency as an emergent phenomenon, which may arise in and through teachers’ work – a line that echoes Roth, but without the detailed cultural-historical attention to act, action and activity in institutional conditions. Their distinctions are nonetheless helpful. The argument against agency as a variable in this chapter is that it would simply function as either cause or effect, missing the dialectics of person and practice. Similarly, describing agency as a capacity risks it being interpreted solely as a within-person attribute, again ignoring the dialectical nature of its unfolding. While ‘phenomenon’ might seem a slippery linguistic side-stepping, it signals how difficult it is to define agency as an analytic construct. Priestley et al.’s definition of agency as phenomenon reveals the difficulty. Having dismissed Taylor’s 1977 definition as oriented to capacity, they give this account of evidencing teacher agency, which is extremely close to his: ‘we would say that teachers achieve agency when they are able to choose between options in a given situation and are able to judge which option is the most desirable, in the light of the wider purposes of the practice in and through which they act’ (Priestley et al., 2015, p. 141).
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This definition arose from their careful analyses of how teachers enacted a pedagogic reform, and does not fully reflect their arguments. Yet engagement and commitment as aspects of agency are perhaps under-played; while the idea of achieving agency suggests agency is an attribute which can be acquired. Let’s first consider engagement and commitment. Taylor talks of ‘engaged agency’ (Taylor, 1995, p. 63), which I take to mean we cannot be disengaged rational thinkers; we are curious sense-makers who are able to contextualise what we observe, to go beyond the information we receive to connect it with wider sets of inferences. This is not a relativist argument that knowledge and knowing is merely situated; rather our knowing involves knowledge of the background from which an event arises and against which it is presented. We are engaged and, importantly, we have preferences and commitments as we make our way in the world, meeting, recognising and responding to demands. Learning therefore involves being able to interpret events or tasks in increasingly informed ways, as well as being able to respond to them. This view of learning indicates what we might expect from teacher education programmes, which do more than give beginning teachers scripts to follow. Archer, writing from a sociological perspective, particularly emphasises commitment as a feature of agency in ways which also resonate with how we might think of teaching as a profession. In common with cultural-historical accounts, Archer pays attention to practice in her explanation of what it is to be a human agent, in particular, how the ‘powers and properties of human beings … emerge through our relations with the world’ (Archer, 2000, p. 7, italics in original). Key to how we relate to our world is our commitments. ‘In short, we are who we are because of what we care about’ (Archer, 2000, p. 10). But it is not enough to simply care; we need to be able to act to take forward what matters for us. While I can’t do justice to Archer’s thesis here, one of her concluding points is relevant to why agency is so crucial to teacher professional learning and development: ‘We learn to monitor ourselves … to determine which achievements are important to us’ (Archer, 2000, p. 213). In that self-monitoring we learn about ourselves and how emotion plays into how we order our priorities, and one outcome of managing our emotions may be that we avoid those activities in which we won’t excel. When agency involves engagement and a commitment to taking forward what matters for us, within the demands of practice, it is difficult to see how it is ‘achieved’ in the sense of reaching a level or goal. Or, if it is successfully enacted, whether its enactment is in response to low levels of demand, because actors deflect their attention away from demands that are too challenging and focus on those they can address with some success. One way of tackling the problem of unreasonable demands in teaching is to create and sustain collective notions of professional standards. Here I refer to standards responsibly created by the profession, echoing Taylor’s interweaving of agency and responsibility. Evetts’ sociological accounts of professionalism are helpful here. Distinguishing between ‘organisational professionalism’ and
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‘occupational professionalism’, she observes that the former ties professional actions to the managerial systems of the organisation, so that being unprofessional is the label given to deviation from these routines; while occupational professionalism ties being a professional to wider understandings of professional values, norms and knowledge (Evetts, 2003, 2009). A key question for twentyfirst-century teacher education is: how do we prepare and support teachers as occupational professionals, who sustain professional standards, while responding to demands in practices? So are we any nearer identifying agency as an analytic construct? I have suggested agency is a crucial element in the dialectic of person and practice and that it may, in some circumstances, unfold when actions are taken in activities, which are themselves located in institutional practices. It is, however, not an entity, so cannot easily be a variable. Archer’s notion of the ‘powers and properties’ of humans is helpful, but carries notions of entity. I have used the term capacity in the past, hoping to capture the inter-relation of person and practice in that inadequate term (Edwards, 2005). One problem is that we lack a coherent theory of the well-spring of agency and can at best only acknowledge either its presence or absence. In the next two sections I shift the focus to the practice aspects of the learning dialectic in teacher education and, in the process, outline the culturalhistorical approach to learning and the importance of expert mediation to it.
AGENCY AND MEDIATION A key contribution to how Vygotsky’s legacy can inform teacher education came from van Huizen and his colleagues. Their analyses reflect the arguments made in the present chapter, while also turning our attention to the need for the mediation to support student teachers’ engagement with public meanings: the close association of action and meaning in Vygotskian theory suggests that apprentices will have to orient themselves towards the meanings of teaching informing the practice in which they become participants. In particular, they will have to orient themselves towards a public standard of teaching that reflects the values and goals in the cultural and political setting of the schooling in which they are engaging. This orientation should not lead them to be recruited into any existing ideology, but clarify and define their own allegiance and commitment to teaching as the core of their professional identity. (van Huizen, van Oers, & Wubbels, 2005, p. 276)
This statement can be translated into Vygotskian terms as an argument that the public standards of teaching and associated values can become a resource, or second stimulus, which teachers can use when working on problems of practice (the first stimulus). It is therefore important that they learn to work with these standards and values during initial teacher education. Mediation of these more subtle aspects of teaching invites attention to the conditions in which student teachers learn. Sannino and Engeström have recently
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explained how what they term the ‘relational infrastructures’ of a collaborative intervention in an Italian primary school allowed for the mediation of knowledge about what young children were capable of doing (Sannino & Engeström, 2017). In this example, teacher educators, teachers and student teachers worked together to build a common understanding of the potential in a set of conceptual and material resources for teaching fractions to pupils. This common understanding of the resources became the second stimulus, which they used when teaching fractions. It allowed the student teachers to work responsively and agentically with the children and to recognise what they could accomplish. The authors note that building conditions for relational work and sharing the knowledge about the resources took time, but the outcomes for teachers, student teachers and pupils were noteworthy. The study’s attention to the conditions in which mediation occurs reminds us that agency is also a function of one’s position within a practice. In the Italian example, the student teachers were positioned as co-enquirers alongside the teachers in the school. The study therefore also addresses a concern I elaborated twenty years ago, when I argued that the emphasis on polished classroom performance in English teacher education inhibited student teachers’ learning. I suggested that, because student teachers are positioned in school practices during their practicums as both learners and teachers, they focused to a great extent on protecting their senses of themselves as teachers. They performed as teachers at the same time as learning to teach. Consequently they did not approach the challenging classroom situations that might stretch them, and from which they might learn. In an attempt to overcome the difficulties arising from this positioning I suggested that programmes should replace a primary focus on individual performance with some team teaching, comprising student teacher and expert mentor (co-operating teacher), so that the student teacher learns to interpret demands and is supported by the mentor in responding to them (Edwards & Collison, 1996). As well as being concerned that student teachers were not learning as much as they might, I was also worried that they were not learning to be responsive teachers (Edwards & Protheroe, 2003). Being a responsive teacher calls for teacher agency, for example, increasing taskdemand for pupils or adding support, based on informed interpretations of how a learner is responding to a classroom task. In brief, as the Sannino and Engeström study has shown, agentic teachers are able to create conditions which allow students to become agentic learners. So let us now examine why agency is so important for learning. To do this, as Sannino and Engeström have observed, we need to pay attention to the environment within which agency unfolds. I suggest that the key concept here is Vygotsky’s idea of the ‘social situation of development’ (SSD), which is central to his developmental psychology. The SSD is not simply the social situation in which a person’s development occurs; rather the dialectic is crucial. Vygotsky described the SSD as ‘a system of relations between a child of a given age and social reality’ (Vygotsky, 1998, p. 199). These relations are built by a learner
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as she takes forward her intentions, meeting and engaging with the possibilities for interpretation and action in a setting. Importantly, the SSD is created by the learner; it is always potential and to be realised it requires the unfolding of agency. The relationship may be problematic: learners may not recognise the demands presented to them, or may find them too uncomfortable to tackle; in both of these situations there is no SSD. From a cultural-historical perspective, student teachers as agentic learners seek out and relish new demands, push themselves to make sense and to connect their sense-making with the public meanings valued in teaching. In the process of connecting their personal sense-making with publicly validated meanings, they reposition themselves, seeing the familiar afresh, making new connections and using them to act in and on the practices they inhabit. Here we revisit another Vygotskian idea. I have already indicated that cultural tools, such as concepts, are used to act on the world. For Vygotsky learning involved both internalisation and externalisation: we take in new ideas and use them as tools as we take forward our intentions. Internalisation and externalisation are key to the dialectic, our minds and behaviours are shaped as we take part in practices, but we can also shape the practices through our actions, through externalising. While Vygotsky developed these ideas to explain how children learn, they apply equally well to adults as learners and appear particularly relevant to the challenge of learning to teach while teaching, where we would expect to find evidence of student teachers’ learning in their actions in the activity of teaching. But how do we deal with how avoiding risk limits how student teachers create SSDs? How do we create for teacher education, the kind of stretching environment that Claxton showed to be effective for promoting student learning (Claxton, 2007)? Claxton’s argument is that teachers should attend to the ‘epi stemic culture’ they offer pupils. These cultures may be prohibiting, affording, inviting or potentiating, but only potentiating environments stretch learners. He explains: ‘Only the fourth kind of epistemic culture, potentiating milieux, make the exercise of learning muscles both appealing and challenging. In a potentiating environment, there are plenty of hard, interesting things to do, and it is accepted as normal that everyone regularly gets confused, frustrated and stuck’ (Claxton, 2007, p. 125). Clearly, student teachers cannot present themselves to pupils as confused, frustrated or stuck, so they avoid situations where that might happen. Much therefore depends on what goes on in mentoring conversations; whether they encourage the potential agency of student teachers and help them connect their sensemaking with publicly validated meanings. Gonzales and Carter have argued that while placed in schools student teachers ‘should have the opportunity to discuss openly their personal histories and understandings of teaching … to help them understand what drives their interpretations and decisions in classroom contexts’ (Gonzales & Carter, 1996, p. 46). They also suggest that the co-operating
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teacher can enable these discussions so that learners can connect their limited understandings quite overtly to the networks of concepts that comprise expert knowledge in teaching. Their suggestion usefully points towards what, in other professions, is called knowledge work. By this I mean the constant connecting of decisions about students and curricula in relation to the wider purposes of schooling. Elsewhere (Edwards, 2010a) I have discussed this process in terms of asking the ‘why’ and ‘where to’ of what is taken for granted in teaching. All too often these kinds of reflective questions are missing from student teachers’ reflections, and instead ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions dominate their self-scrutiny. In some circumstances qualified teachers are able to undertake this kind of knowledge work in their schools. Hermansen analysed the discussions in teacher teams implementing an assessment strategy in Norwegian schools. She examined the ‘epistemic actions’ (Hermansen, 2014, p. 470) taken by teachers as they fashioned new approaches to assessment, to address what mattered for them in their school practices, and found they were engaged, committed, taking action and making strong evaluations about those actions. The teachers’ conversations were clearly knowledge work and could easily have met Claxton’s criteria for ‘potentiating milieux’. The teachers’ epistemic actions involved them in making local meanings explicit and open to questioning, and they connected them, through discussion, with the values that underpin teaching as an informed profession. It may be difficult to include this kind of knowledge work within student teachers’ school placements, though Ellis’ DETAIL project suggests it is not impossible (Ellis, 2010a). It may instead be more feasible to return to the advice of Gonzales and Carter, that student and teacher-mentor discussions enable student teachers to connect their limited understandings to the networks of concepts that comprise expert knowledge in teaching. I take their argument to mean that efforts need to be made to make these networks of concepts visible to student teachers. Here Derry’s work on the ‘space of reasons’ is useful (Derry, 2013, p. 230). Recognising that teacher education programmes usually emphasise learning to teach while teaching in school practicums, I have recently drawn on Derry’s analyses to argue that situations should be contrived for student teachers to learn from experience in school (Edwards, 2014) and summarise the arguments here. Derry’s philosophical argument examines how learners construct systems of inferences, which allow concepts to be connected in powerful ways. She uses Dunne’s notion of ‘the rough ground’ (Dunne, 1993), to suggest that the knowledge held in practices, the rough ground, has been overlooked. She suggests that discursive spaces, where the asking for and giving of reasons is expected, are where what is important, yet perhaps not articulated in the ‘rough ground’ of practice, can be surfaced and scrutinised. This scrutiny allows connections between inferences to be made. Derry’s analysis resonates with the concerns of Gonzales and Carter (1996) that co-operating teachers should overtly enable learners to connect their limited understandings to the networks of concepts that comprise expert knowledge in teaching. Derry points to the latent knowledge that is rarely surfaced in
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the following way: ‘There may be a domain of knowing which is nuanced and not consciously acted on, but which [is] nevertheless rich in conceptual content’ (Derry, 2000, p. 154). She argues that learners are best able to access and work with these latent understandings, in learning environments where their everyday understandings are surfaced and referenced to robust concepts, thereby enriching the system of inferences they construct. For Derry the key to a discursive space, which allows this referencing, is the right to ask for and give reasons. Drawing on Brandom, she explains, in cultural-historical terms, how creating such a space of reasons for learners may produce an environment where systems of inference can be constructed and referenced to both experience in the rough ground and the conceptual systems in which they are located: For Vygotsky concepts depend for their meaning on the system of judgments (inferences) within which they are disclosed. Brandom’s careful study of concept use argues that concepts by their nature are not isolated from one another; ‘to have conceptual content is just for it [a concept] to play a role in the inferential game of making claims and giving and asking for reasons. To grasp or understand such a concept is to have practical mastery over the inferences it is involved in …’ (Brandom 1994, p. 48). (Derry, 2008, p. 17)
In a space of reasons it is legitimate for all participants to ask for and give reasons. In a mentoring discussion this process would involve both student teachers and mentors asking for and giving reasons for actions and decisions. The argument reveals how much a Vygotskian account of learning, often inadequately summarised as occurring through engaging in social relations in practices, actually involves designing an environment which includes both a role for the more expert other and attention to the agency, commitment and intentions of the learner. Derry again explains: a Vygotskian approach doesn’t depend simply on individuals being placed in the required environment where they discover meaning for themselves. The learning environment must be designed and cannot rely on the spontaneous response to an environment which is not constructed according to, or involves, some clearly worked out conceptual framework. For Vygotsky concepts depend for their meaning on the system of judgments (inferences) within which they are disclosed. (Derry, 2008, pp. 60–61)
Derry is pointing to one element of the SSD, highlighting, for the purposes of this chapter, the need for informed mediation to help student teachers connect their sense-making with the meanings valued in the profession. Importantly, this form of mediation also recognises the agency of student teachers and the importance of their efforts after meaning.
AGENCY AND DEMAND IN PRACTICES We now turn to the practice element of the dialectic. As Hedegaard noted, when analysing learning and development we have attended more to learners’ needs
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than to the demands that they meet (Hedegaard, 2012); and this makes little sense in a dialectical view of learning. Let us start with how cultural-historical theory explains practice. I have already indicated that it doesn’t offer a dualistic account which separates person and practice. Instead, practices are inhabited, consist of activities, are situated in institutions such as schools, which are themselves located in wider policy environments and cultural values; they carry histories, values and purposes, are emotionally freighted to contribute to the formation of identity, and are shaped and reshaped by the people who act in them. Almost thirty years ago Lave analysed practice to offer an anthropological account of the relationship between practice and cognition. She explained that cognition is stretched across practices, embedded in routines and artefacts, so that when we engage in practices we make use of the knowledge deposited in the resources available (Lave, 1988). Pea gave a similar account, with a more educational focus, arguing that ‘“mind” rarely works alone’ (Pea, 1993, p. 47), that intelligence is distributed across material resources and there are implications for how educational environments are designed and educational technologies used. These positions do not suggest that we are non-sentient beings and that cognition is merely situated in artefacts and settings. Rather, in any practice there are tools we can deploy and expectations for how we might deploy them, which are inscribed with the meanings gathered over time in the practice. It is therefore no surprise that Lave’s account of how people learn in settings is another way of explaining what Vygotsky described as the SSD. She states: ‘people are also concerned with “making-sense”. And it seems clear that relations among the structuring resources of person, activity and setting, transforming means/end relations seamlessly through gap closing processes, lead to action’ (Lave, 1988, p. 176). Cognition is to an extent situated, but we are active agents within the array of resources, potentially able to make choices and follow commitments. However, the argument in the present chapter is that in contrived and time-limited learning situations, like teacher education programmes, mediation from an expert other is needed. While practices offer distinct affordances and demands; what is learnt will depend on what is recognised as the demands. This is an important point for a cultural-historical framing of teacher education, as it suggests a specific role for mentors as mediators of what matters in the classroom. I will illustrate this point with examples from two recent PhD studies; the first is based in Hong Kong secondary schooling; and the second in an English teacher education programme, also in secondary schools. I’ll take just one example from the Hong Kong study (Chan, 2014). Rosie was in her second year of teaching in a school, which was not engaging with the intensive teaching typical of Hong Kong’s high-stakes testing environment. Unlike the teachers in the comparator school, who recognised and tackled the demands of pupils’ test performance, the demand Rosie faced was student behaviour: students arrived mid-lesson, ate and slept in class, talked off-task and so on. Her older colleague Mabel, also in the study, had been at the school much longer
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and dealt with the behaviour by accepting it and getting through the day without engaging with the students. Her lessons involved delivering the curriculum, regardless of whether students co-operated, and most did not. Rosie could not do that, she was potentially agentic and her agentic actions were directed at the demands she recognised, pupil behaviour. But because she was not able to have any impact on behaviour, she was becoming increasingly less agentic and disenchanted with teaching. There was every sign that she might resign. There are two related points in this example. First, the strength of the demands of poor behaviour meant that Rosie could not enact the primary role of a teacher, engaging with the students as learners. Her interviews revealed that she could not see the students as learners and recognise the demands that might arise from doing so. Interestingly, Chan’s intervention once the study was ending helped Rosie to recognise the pedagogic demands in her lessons and attend to them successfully, but she had been blinded to them by the strength of the demands of behaviour. Second, the strength of the behaviour demands, and Rosie’s inability to deal with them, meant that what agency she tried to bring to bear was diminishing. In the dialectic between agency and demand, demand dominated and there was no sign that Rosie’s agency as a teacher was unfolding in her actions in classroom activities. In the English study Tan followed four student teachers across two extensive school placements during their one-year post-graduate teacher training programme, focusing on how they learnt to carry out formative assessments of pupils (Tan, 2017). Each worked with two mentors, one in each placement. Tan was able to identify the demands recognised by each student in these placements and could compare across settings how mentoring allowed the development of student teachers as agentic learners, who were developing into agentic teachers. He identified mentors who emphasised polished performance and closed down opportunities for student teachers’ agentic actions. Jane, whose first mentor modelled her mentoring on the inspection methods used by the government school inspection system, explained that in her first placement she focused entirely on asking questions of pupils in order to make formative assessments, because she was told she did that well and it ‘kept everyone off my back’. Yet when Jane moved to her second placement, she was with a mentor who encouraged her to try out new ideas and discussed with her how the ideas would help her support pupils as learners. She relished the opportunities for her own learning that arose and, like Mark, another student teacher who had been with that mentor at the start of the year, she began to develop as an agentic teacher, able to work responsively with the students. Tan’s study shows that student teachers, like the pupils they teach, benefit from demands if they are also able to move forward, make sense and undertake the ‘gap-closing’ mentioned by Lave. Jane’s second mentor did not hold back on demands but created conditions in which the student teacher could engage, make choices and allow her agency to unfold in the actions of teaching and assessing.
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Both studies show mediation can help beginning teachers to focus on demands they can meet and in meeting them allow for agency to arise. Chan’s intervention with Rosie helped her tackle demands she could address, such as how to organise group work; while Jane’s second mentor quite overtly created demands and expected them to be addressed in actions in the classroom. School-based experience in teaching is, as Ellis has argued, not a matter of students tapping into the craft knowledge of teachers (Ellis, 2010b); instead, I suggest, it should involve mentors in highlighting the pedagogic aspects of classroom demands and supporting student teachers as they find ways of closing the gap and meeting them. This proposal requires a lot from teacher-mentors, but if they are not providing appropriately demanding learning environments for student teachers, and Tan’s small scale-study found only one of six mentors doing so, then we need to find a solution, and maybe overtly creating spaces of reasons in mentoring conversations is one answer. Vygotsky consistently argued that the teacher’s role is to organise, and be part of, the social environment, so that learners might create relationships with the environment which lead to learning. The role of the more expert other is then to monitor those relationships and assist the learner in connecting their private sense-making with public meanings (Vygotsky, 1997).
WORKING AGENTICALLY WITH FAMILIES AND OTHER SERVICES The reason for highlighting teacher agency is that agentic teachers can do more than deliver curricula: they can interpret the demands that arise when students are stuck or confused or need greater challenge; they can respond in ways that are tailored to the demand; and they encourage students’ agency as enquiring sense-makers who are connecting their personal sense-making with the meanings valued in the discipline. But teaching is rarely limited to classrooms or teacher planning teams. Schools also have a role in collaborating with others to protect children who are at risk of serious harm and to prevent social exclusion. Schools have also been recognised across Europe as a stable universal provision where early intervention to avoid the escalation of problems can happen. Consequently, teachers need to notice early signs of student distress and to be able to work responsively with families and with other services for children in order to give pupils consistent support. Yet despite being able to identify early signs of vulnerability, schools are often heavily boundaried systems, with limited connections with the other professionals who may be working with children and families (Edwards & Downes, 2013). Recognition of the ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992) that learners bring into school situations is now widespread, but some teacher preparation programmes are going further to prepare student teachers to contribute to the consistent support needed by vulnerable children. In one example at the University of Washington, a programme has embraced community
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service (Zeichner et al., 2015) not only to help student teachers understand and respect the backgrounds of their pupils, but also to recognise the resources, both voluntary and statutory, available in the communities where schools are located. Zeichner’s efforts at helping student teachers see beyond school boundaries introduce them to another kind of agency – a more relational kind, which unfolds when working with others on problems that are too complex for teachers to deal with alone. Recently I have developed the ideas of relational expertise and relational agency to explain aspects of inter-professional work with vulnerable children. The ideas are an attempt to label the expertise employed by practi tioners while working across the boundaries of different practices, such as social work, mental health and teaching, on the complex problems that constitute children’s trajectories of risk (Edwards, 2010b, 2012, 2017). By relational expertise I mean the capacity to recognise and work with what matters for other professionals and the ability to be clear about what matters to you as a professional in a collaboration on a child’s trajectory. Relational agency (Edwards, 2005) refers to the agency that arises in collaborations, which: (i) expand interpretations of the problem being worked on, for example the child’s trajectory towards social exclusion, so that its complexity is recognised; and (ii) allow more than one practitioner to work on features of the problem, drawing on their specialist expertise in concert with others from different practices. Relational agency is also relevant to teaching and mentoring (Edwards, in press), particularly when involving expert and learner working alongside each other, expanding interpretations and ways of responding to children as learners, as we saw in the Italian study (Sannino & Engeström, 2017). But here I focus on how relational expertise and relational agency deserves attention in teacher education programmes, which expect student teachers to engage with parental and community involvement and work with other professionals. First, we need to get to grips with the idea of ‘common knowledge’ (Edwards, 2010b, 2011, 2012). Common knowledge consists of knowledge of what matters, the commitments, in the practices of all collaborators. It is not knowledge of how to do each other’s jobs, but a sensitive awareness of what shapes each other’s practices. For example, if a teacher understands that economic survival in the short-term matters to a family and the family recognises that a child’s educational progress matters to the teacher, there may be big differences in their commitments, but the knowledge can be used productively when both are working together, shaping the child’s future trajectory. This example was worked through by Rai, in a study based in Rajasthan. There he has shown how common knowledge was built in respectful discussions between teachers and parents and was then used as a resource within the classroom, helping students make sense of the curriculum (Rai, 2014), and in problem-solving discussions with community members (Rai, 2017). Through building and using common knowledge of what mattered domestically and educationally, parents and teachers were able to work relationally, with their joint
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agency unfolding as they tackled problems, such as external pressure for girls to leave school and marry. Rai’s work is interesting because of how the teachers created a discursive space of reasons with families, where they gave their reasons as well as eliciting and respecting those of parents. The same approach is also evident when teachers collaborate with other professionals to ensure a child is protected from harm or can avoid social exclusion. Here teachers and social workers come to recognise what matters for the other professional as their joint agency unfolds when helping the child (Edwards, 2010b, 2012, 2017). Relational agency is not premised in a belief that teachers should do the work of social workers. Rather, the expectation is that teachers are clear about their professional commitments as teachers, such as ensuring attendance at school, and are able to make those commitments explicit so they are understood by others. Learning to teach while teaching in classrooms is difficult; it is therefore understandable that so few teacher education programmes emphasise community service learning and working relationally and agentically with other professions and parents. But children are embedded in their family and community practices and often agentic within them (Moll & Greenberg, 1990). Just as this chapter has argued that mentors should help student teachers connect their personal commitments with teaching, so teachers will help students, if they are able to do the same with them. Beginning to understand these commitments through getting to know what matters in the practices of families and communities served by schools, and in the practices of other services that work in them, would seem an important part of teacher preparation.
FINAL REFLECTIONS ON A TEACHER EDUCATION FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY This contribution to the collection has offered a narrow focus on agency in teacher education, taking a cultural-historical lens to examine the learning dialectic between person and practice and the importance of the professional knowledge and values embedded in practices. I have argued therefore that the conditions in which this knowledge and the associated values are made explicit and deployed warrant attention. In making the argument my concern has been to identify approaches to supporting the learning of student teachers which offer the potential to realise the professional agency of the teachers being created. Lying behind the arguments has been a fundamental question for teacher education: ‘what kinds of teachers are needed for what kinds of learners?’ The answer here is that we need engaged and committed learners who relish challenge, remain curious and are able to engage responsibly with the values of societal practices. These learners need teachers who are able to support them responsively by creating environments where they meet challenges, but also help in recognising
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and tackling these challenges. This answer asks a lot of teachers, seeing being a teacher as maintaining a strong connection with collectively sustained professional values about learners and society. Connection with the wider profession and its values is crucial, as agentic teachers can form and reform the profession of teaching and its commitments. As I have already indicated, the idea of collective transformative agency, working on the contradictions found when systems need changing, is emerging in culturalhistorical theory and may inform these discussions later. The present chapter is therefore not equating agency with teacher autonomy, where the heroic teacher is a solitary decision-maker, responsible only to herself. Instead, it recognises that the agency of student teachers needs to be released so that it unfolds in their actions in the activity of teaching and is connected to wider professional values and commitments, so that they become active agents, responsibly shaping the profession of teaching. One would hope that this is what governments would also want for schools and the children in them.
REFERENCES Archer, M. (2000) Being Human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brandom, R. (1994) Making it Explicit: Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chan, J. (2014) ‘Teachers’ understandings of the purposes of group work and their relationship with practice’. DPhil Dissertation, University of Oxford. Claxton, G. (2007) ‘Expanding young people’s capacity to learn’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(2) 115–134. Cochran-Smith, M. (2008) ‘The new teacher education in the United States: directions forward’, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 14(4): 271–282. Derry, J. (2000) ‘Foundationalism and anti-foundationalism: seeking enchantment in the rough ground’, in V. Oittinen (ed.), Evald Ilyenkov’s Philosophy Revisited. Helsinki: Kikimora Publications. pp. 147–157. Derry, J. (2008) ‘Abstract rationality in education: from Vygotsky to Brandom’, Studies in the Philosophy of Education, 27: 49–62. Derry, J. (2013) ‘Can inferentialism contribute to social epistemology?’, Journal of the Philosophy of Education, 47(2): 222–235. Dunne, J. (1993) Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘techne’ in modern philosophy and in Aristotle. London: University of Notre Dame Press. Edwards, A. (2005) ‘Relational agency: learning to be a resourceful practitioner’, International Journal of Educational Research, 43(3): 168–182. Edwards, A. (2007) ‘An interesting resemblance: Vygotsky, Mead and American Pragmatism’, in H. Daniels, M. Cole & J. Wertsch (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pp. 77–100). Edwards, A. (2010a) ‘How can Vygotsky and his legacy help us to understand and develop teacher education?’, in V. Ellis, A. Edwards & P. Smagorinsky (eds), Cultural-Historical Perspectives on Teacher Education and Development. London: Routledge (pp. 63–77). Edwards, A. (2010b) Being an Expert Professional Practitioner: The relational turn in expertise. Dordrecht: Springer.
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Edwards, A. (2011) ‘Building common knowledge at boundaries between professional practices’, International Journal of Educational Research, 50(1): 33–39. Edwards, A. (2012) ‘The role of common knowledge in achieving collaboration across practices’, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 1(1): 22–32. Edwards, A. (2014) ‘Learning from experience in teaching: a cultural historical critique’, in V. Ellis & J. Orchard (eds), Learning Teaching from Experience: Multiple perspectives, international contexts. London: Bloomsbury (pp. 47–61). Edwards, A. (ed.) (2017) Working Relationally in and across Practices: Cultural-historical approaches to collaboration. New York: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, A. (in press) ‘Relational expertise: a cultural-historical approach to teacher education’, in M. Peters, B. Cowie & I. Menter (eds), A Companion to Research in Teacher Education. Dordrecht: Springer. Edwards, A. & Collison, J. (1996) Mentoring and Developing Practice in Primary Schools. Buckingham: Open University Press. Edwards, A. & Downes, P. (2013) Alliances for Inclusion: Cross-sector policy synergies and inter-professional collaboration in and around schools. Brussels: European Commission. Edwards, A. & Protheroe, L. (2003) ‘Learning to see in classrooms: what are student teachers learning about teaching and learning while learning to teach in schools?’, British Educational Research Journal, 29(2): 227–242. Ellis, V. (2010a) ‘Studying the process of change: the double stimulation strategy in teacher education research’, in V. Ellis, A. Edwards & P. Smagorinsky (eds), Cultural-Historical Perspectives on Teacher Education and Development. London: Routledge (pp. 95–114). Ellis, V. (2010b) ‘Impoverishing experience: the problem of teacher education in England’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(1): 105–120. Engeström, Y. (2011) ‘From design experiments to formative interventions’, Theory & Psychology, 21(5): 598–628. Engeström, Y. (2015) Learning by Expanding (2nd edition). New York: Cambridge University Press. Evetts, J. (2003) ‘The sociological analysis of professionalism’, International Sociology, 18(3): 395–415. Evetts, J. (2009) ‘New professionalism and new public management: changes, continuities and consequences’, Comparative Sociology, 8: 247–266. Gonzalez, L. & Carter, K. (1996) ‘Correspondence in cooperating teachers’ and student teachers’ interpretations of classroom events’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 12(1): 39–47. Haapasaari, A. & Kerosuo, H. (2015) ‘Transformative agency: the challenges of sustainability in a long chain of double stimulation’, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 4: 37–47. Hedegaard, M. (2012) ‘The dynamic aspects in children’s learning and development’, in M. Hedegaard, A. Edwards & M. Fleer (eds), Motives in Children’s Development: Cultural-historical approaches. New York: Cambridge University Press (pp. 9–27). Heli, H. & Seppänen, L. (2014) ‘Examining developmental dialogue: the emergence of transformative agency’, Outlines: Critical Practices Studies, 15(2): 5–30. Hermansen, H. (2014) ‘Recontextualising assessment resources for use in local settings: opening up the black box of teachers’ knowledge work’, The Curriculum Journal, 25(4): 470–494. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D. & Cain, C. (1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lave, J. (1988) Cognition in Practice. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Moll, L. & Greenberg, J. (1990) ‘Creating zones of possibility: combining social contexts for instruction’, in L. Moll (ed.), Vygotsky and Education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D. & Gonzalez, N. (1992) ‘Funds of knowledge for teaching: using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms’, Theory Into Practice, 31(2): 132–141. Pea, R. (1993) ‘Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education’, in G. Salomon (ed.), Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pp. 47–87).
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Priestley, M., Biesta, G. & Robinson, S. (2015) Teacher Agency: An ecological approach. London: Bloomsbury. Rai, P. (2014) ‘Building common knowledge: a cultural-historical analysis of pedagogical practices in a rural primary school in Rajasthan’. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford. Rai, P. (2017) ‘Building and using common knowledge for building school-community links’, in A. Edwards (ed.), Working Relationally in and across Practices: Cultural-historical approaches to collaboration. New York: Cambridge University Press (pp. 96–112). Roth, M. (2006) ‘Agency and passivity: prolegomenon to scientific literacy as ethico-moral praxis’, in A. Rodriguez (ed.), The Multiple Faces of Agency. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Downloaded from http://web.uvic.ca/∼stemed/assets/PDF/Roth103.pdf 17.9.15. Sannino, A. & Engeström, Y. (2017). ‘Relational agency, double stimulation and the object of activity: an intervention study in a primary school’, in A. Edwards (ed.), Working Relationally in and across Practices: Cultural-historical approaches to collaboration. New York: Cambridge University Press (pp. 58–77). Stetsenko, A. & Arievitch, I. (2004) ‘The self in cultural-historical activity theory’, Theory and Psychology, 14(4): 475–503. Tan, D. (2017) ‘Student teachers’ learning while on school-placement’. DPhil Dissertation, University of Oxford. Taylor, C. (1977) ‘What is human agency?’, in T. Mischel (ed.), The Self. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (pp. 103–135). Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1995) Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. van Huizen, P, van Oers, B., & Wubbels, T. (2005) ‘A Vygotskian perspective on teacher education’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(3): 267–290. van Oers, B. (2015) ‘Implementing a play-based curriculum: fostering teacher agency in primary school’, Learning Culture and Social Interaction, 4: 19–27. Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky. Vol 1, Problems of General Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997) Educational Psychology. Boca Raton, FL: St Lucie Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1998) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky. Vol 5, Child Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Zeichner, K., Payne, K.A. & Brayko, K. (2015) ‘Democratizing teacher education’, Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2): 122–135.
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16 The Impact of Social Theories on Agency in Teacher Education Ryan Flessner and Katherina A. Payne
We live in an age of dehumanization. Market forces are driving decisions that disempower professionals in a variety of fields; refugees seeking asylum from genocidal atrocities are encountering barriers – physical and ideological – in places that have traditionally welcomed them with open arms; and politicians around the globe are gaining popularity through tactics that encourage the assimilated to further ostracize the marginalized. Within this political context, teacher educators must prepare teachers to use their agency to act collectively with students, families, and communities to rehumanize our societies. Despite the forces working against this task of humanization (Bartolomé, 1994; Freire, 1970), there are many educators around the globe working toward agency (Flessner, Miller, Patrizio, & Horwitz, 2012; Pantić, 2015), preparing future teachers to see themselves as actors within a grander social network (Liston & Zeichner, 1990; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), and ensuring that elements of social justice and equity become engrained in schools, classrooms, and curricula (Bekerman, 2009; Lyman, 2007). As discussed in the literature (Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011; Toom, Pyhältö, & Rust, 2015) and in the other chapters in this section of the Handbook, agency manifests itself in a multitude of ways. Rather than restating these many manifestations, this chapter examines the concept of agency from the perspectives of social theorists.1 The primary move in this chapter is away from agency as individualistic and toward agency as collective. Collective agency, influenced by social theories, engages educators alongside children, families, and communities in the work of rehumanizing societies – something sorely needed in these dehumanizing times.
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Examining the history of social theories in education as well as the research and practices of select teachers, teacher educators, and teacher education programs in their entirety (often in collaboration with community partners), this chapter provides examples of collaborative efforts that have been made, or are in the process of making, lasting changes in schools. We begin with an examination of theoretical and philosophical writings related to agency as collective social action in the field of education. After this review, we examine the practical manifestations of these ideas. We conclude with the importance of these ideas for teacher education. In doing so, we envision a teaching profession that prepares all teachers to use their agency to work alongside children, families, and communities in participating fully in just and humanizing societies.
SOCIAL THEORIES AND AGENCY As early as the mid-19th century, scholars such as Horace Mann saw education as ‘the great equalizer of the conditions of man [sic]’ (as cited in Grant & Agosto, 2008). While noble, these words were often used to ensure that those outside the mainstream were assimilated into dominant ways of being in the world (Spring, 2001). Thus, while addressing the notion that agency could, in fact, address the collective need for a strong society, these ideas still focused on addressing the perceived deficits of individuals outside the dominant class. Moving beyond the notion of schools as the great equalizers, educators at the turn of the 20th century began to ask more from schools and from the educational process. John Dewey’s ([1915] 2001) classic statement, ‘What the best and wisest person wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children’ (p. 5) – though contested by some (Gutmann, 1999) – became a motivating force for educators as they imagined quality education for all students. Dewey’s work at the University of Chicago Laboratory School promoted the idea that schools should be more than places where information and skills are simply transmitted from one generation to the next (Dewey, [1938] 1963). Dewey insisted upon a child-centered curriculum: one in which life inside schools represented life outside of schools, the child’s social activities became the center of the curriculum, and studies of literature, science, and mathematics were used not in a successive fashion but in service to – and in connection with – the experiences of children (Dewey, 1929). In Italy, educational philosophies similar to those of Dewey and other early 20th-century scholars were emerging. Following the destruction of the Italian countryside during World War II, citizens in Villa Cella unified around their belief that ‘from the ashes of … war, … justice and democracy would rise up’ (Barazzoni, 2005, p. 17). From these origins, Loris Malaguzzi – the founder of Reggio-inspired practice (Rinaldi, 2001) – led a movement to ensure that the Infant-Toddler Centers of Reggio Emilia revolved around a commitment to an
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education based on relationships (Malaguzzi, 1993) and the importance of connecting schools, children, and curricula to the communities in which schools exist (Reggio Children, 2012). As various educational movements around the world began to implement elements of child-centered curricula, another movement came into existence: the Free School Movement (Neill, 1960; Sudbury Valley School, 1986). Building on the democratic ideal of ‘one person, one vote’ (Reynolds v. Sims, 1964), the vote of any child was equal to the vote of any adult in the school. As with any educational movement, there was wide variation across free schools (Kozol, 1972), and, eventually, many of these schools fell out of favor with those who saw them as havens for children of the elite – ‘social conservatives who masked their social views with child-centered language’ (Urban, 1978, p. ix) – a charge similarly leveled at Dewey and at Reggio-inspired schools around the world (Delpit, 1988; Mardell & Carbonara, 2013). Even as elements of child-centered education gained notoriety around the globe, they were, and continue to be, challenged. Some scholars point to low test scores or the lack of rigor in the curricula (Bestor, 1953; Hirsch, 1996; Norris, 2004). Others have admonished Dewey and his colleagues for failing to truly utilize schools to effect change in society.2 Counts ([1932] 1978), for example, rejected the notion that educators can simply place the child at the center of the curriculum, connect curricula to the communities in which schools exist, or give each stakeholder a vote in the running of a school. These generalizations of social theories – often oversimplified or misapplied in practice (Davies, 2002) – mask the true capacity of schools to play active roles in collaborative efforts to rehumanize society. Scholars later in the 20th century believed these manifestations of social theories within schools could be improved upon by truly embracing schools as sites of change within broader social contexts (Whitty & Young, 1976).3 In the 1960s and 70s, a new generation of scholars criticized earlier social movements for pandering to social elites, accusing their historical forebears of simply attempting to restore social harmony as opposed to truly addressing the needs of marginalized groups (Apple, 1979; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Williams, 1961). Rather than addressing social issues that impacted the education of oppressed groups, this restoration of social harmony – through programs such as compensatory education, school integration, or resource redistribution – simply deflected attention away from the status quo (Dale, Esland, Ferguson, & Macdonald, 1976). Agency in the late 20th century and into the new millennium, then, was built on the idea that educators – teachers, administrators, those working in teacher preparation programs, and o thers – must collectively attend to the unequal social systems in which schools are set. Failure to do so would simply lead to continued dehumanization of children, families, and communities – something all too familiar in the current political and educational landscapes.
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RECENT RESEARCH AND WRITING ON AGENCY FROM SOCIAL THEORY PERSPECTIVES In order to make the shift mentioned above, ideas such as the education of marginalized children (Messiou, 2007; Pare, 2004), culturally relevant/responsive/ sustaining education (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2009a; Paris, 2012; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), Indigenous education (Grande, 2015; Gray & Beresford, 2008; Raum, 1940), Funds of Knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992), anti-oppressive/racist education (Bonnett, 2000; Kumashiro, Baber, Richardson, Ricker-Wilson, & Wong, 2004; Ngo & Kumashiro, 2014), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2009b; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), inclusive education (Artiles, Kozleski, & Waitoller, 2011; Pantić & Florian, 2015), and social justice education (Arnot & Weiler, 1993; Ayers, Quinn, & Stovall, 2009; Mncube, 2008) emerged, as social theorists attempted to open avenues that would allow students to make sense of their education by building on their own, their families’, and their communities’ assets (Nkosi & Daniels, 2007; Zentella, 2005). These practices situated learning in students’ lived experiences and their areas of expertise, that are, often, learned outside of school (Saxe, 1988). Essentially, these ideas offered the power to rehumanize education by identifying and building upon the strengths of students’ families and communities. The following sections examine ways in which educators have built on these theoretical and philosophical ideas as they have utilized their agency, alongside other stakeholders, to work toward justice inside and outside of schools. First, we highlight the work of individual classroom teachers who utilize their agency to address issues that impact the lives of their students. These teachers work collectively with students, families, and community partners to research and write about the ways education can become a site for change. We then turn our attention to the types of teacher education necessary to prepare teachers to work in these ways.
TEACHING INFLUENCED BY SOCIAL THEORIES IN EDUCATION Specific examples of individual teachers exercising their agency afford a glimpse of the possibilities of public education influenced by social theories. For example, Gregory Michie has documented the work lives of teachers from non-dominant backgrounds (2005), identified lessons white teachers can learn from teachers of color (2007), and attended to the mixed messages about teachers in movies and the media (2012). Michie’s writings call attention to the ways in which the popular media has perpetuated the status quo and, thus, dehumanized teachers and their students. These pieces, written from the
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perspective of a practicing teacher, call on all educators to work collectively to reclaim the narrative in an effort to rehumanize teachers, children, families, and communities. In another example, Eric ‘Rico’ Gutstein addresses ideas such as racial profiling (2006a), the mathematical fallacy of the term minority (2006b), or the racist lending practices of mortgage brokers (2013). Gutstein continuously engages his students’ agency in critically examining the world outside of educational institutions while encouraging other teachers and teacher educators to do the same. Gutstein’s constant attention to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice in his teaching models the type of agency that forces others to take notice, gives a face to the marginalized, and rejects the dehumanizing narrative spun by politicians and the media. Educators such as Michie and Gutstein make the outside world not only relevant, but essential to the learning inside classrooms. Conversely, researcher and teacher-activist Bree Picower challenges educators to connect social justice pedagogy and curricula inside classrooms to activism and collective organizing outside classrooms. She argues that ‘teachers must themselves take action to challenge oppressive systems that create educational and societal inequality’ (Picower, 2012, p. 5). By working with communities, Picower highlights possibilities for collective agency among teachers working for equity and justice. Yet, Picower (2012) notes that many teacher candidates entering teacher education programs have ‘little to no recognition that social inequality exists’ (p. 10). This value-neutral view of the world allows the status quo to persist and makes the narrative of dehumanization easier to accept. Teacher educators and teacher education programs that seek to promote social justice and visions of collective agency in education have space here to engage teacher candidates’ initial understanding of social inequities and the role of e ducators as change agents.
TEACHER EDUCATION INFLUENCED BY SOCIAL THEORIES IN EDUCATION Teacher education programs, for their part, have begun to engage in social justice teacher education (Zeichner & Flessner, 2009b).4 These programs accept their role in educating teachers who understand, and are prepared to enact, their agency in the collective endeavor of education. They take responsibility for acknowledging the narrative of dehumanization as well as the work necessary to rehumanize our schools and our societies. In this section, we explore manifestations of practice in three different instantiations. First, we examine how teacher education programs attend to social justice within a program (e.g., within particular courses or experiences meant to shape individual teacher candidates’ understandings of social justice). Second, we examine how teacher education programs work in concert with stakeholders
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outside the university (e.g., school professionals and community members) to broaden teacher candidates’ access to, and connection with, the multiple communities and professionals involved in education. Third, we examine programs in which the community is central to planning and enacting teacher education. In other words, the first instantiation addresses ways that teacher education programs can bring awareness to those whose privilege has allowed the narrative of the status quo to shape their understanding of the world. The second manifestation moves beyond the development of individual agency in order to imagine collaborative efforts in which teachers can establish relationships with other educational stakeholders. Finally, the third group of programs asks, ‘Whose knowledge matters?’ and empowers communities – especially marginalized communities – as they instigate collaborative action within teacher preparation programs in order to undo the damaging effects of dehumanization.
WORKING WITHIN TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS TO EXAMINE SOCIAL THEORIES Many teacher candidates entering programs of study are not fully aware of social inequities and the roles that schools play in either re-inscribing or challenging those inequities (King, 1991; Rothenberg, 2015). For example, the Free Teacher Education (FTE) program in China, which was conceived to push back on the growing inequities between schools in rural and urban settings, found dissonance between the beliefs and goals of university students admitted to the program and the program’s social justice goals (Wang & Gao, 2013). Teacher education programs like the FTE have begun to address these issues through curricular experiences in coursework and field/practicum placements. The goals of these initiatives include expanding teacher candidates’ knowledge of social issues and inequities, interrogating their own positionalities in relation to social justice, and examining their roles as agents of change. One such program, York University’s Urban Diversity Teacher Education Initiative, prepares teachers who are ‘relevant and responsive to [Canada’s] growing racial and ethnocultural diversity’ (Solomon, 2007, p. 2). In order to do this, the program admits a diverse pool of candidates, at least half of whom come from culturally/racially diverse backgrounds. The program teaches future educators about inclusive pedagogy, requires service learning experiences, engages teacher candidates in understanding their own identities/ethno-racial development, and provides other opportunities to examine traditional educational practices from equity and justice-oriented perspectives (Zeichner & Flessner, 2009a). As one example of a socially just teacher education program, York University’s program illustrates possibilities for developing agency in teachers by beginning with the teacher candidate’s positionality and then using coursework and fieldwork opportunities to examine more equitable, inclusive, and just educational spaces.
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This process situates each teacher candidate within a collective space where they can see themselves as partners in the process of rehumanizing education.
TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS WORKING WITH AND IN COMMUNITIES Many teacher education programs located at universities recognize the need not only to prepare teachers to work from a social justice perspective, but to include schools, communities, and other systems that affect the lives of children in that preparation. In this vein, Edwards (2007, 2010) advocates for teachers’ relational agency (i.e., their capacity to work with professionals across systems that support children). Additionally, Pantić and Florian (2015) argue that ‘collective agency can contribute to the transformation of structures and cultures over time as groups and individuals interact exercising their particular abilities, skills, personalities, seeking to advance their purposes and perceived interests’ (p. 338). Teacher educators in this section attend to these deeply relational, contextual, and collective understandings of the work of teaching. Engaging in cross-cultural field experiences affords teacher candidates interactions, and – ideally – relationships, with social and geographical communities that may have been previously unfamiliar to them (Sleeter & Boyle-Baise, 2000; Zeichner & Melnick, 1996). Mediating these experiences is essential (Sleeter, 2001); however, when successful, they expand teacher candidates’ ideas of social justice as well as their relational capacities. At the University of WisconsinMadison, educator Mary Klehr holds a position jointly funded by the university and the local public school district. Klehr’s unique position allows for mediation between theories and practices learned at the university and inside public schools. For example, Klehr (2012) has teacher candidates engage in projects within the communities in which the schools are situated. These community projects range from teacher candidates attending parent – teacher organization meetings or students’ sporting events, to connecting with community activists and inviting them into their classrooms to speak with children, making themselves visible at local neighborhood centers, and engaging in cultural events in the community. Through this engagement, Klehr highlights for her teacher candidates the agency that they possess and implores them to begin using that agency to envision teaching as more than the delivery of academic instruction. Teacher candidates in programs such as this envision teaching as a complex ecology of relationships and sociocultural knowledge. In the Community, Family, and Politics (CFP) strand in the elementary and secondary education programs at the University of Washington-Seattle, this complex ecology is central in developing capacities to learn from, and work collectively with, communities. The CFP strand engages (and employs) local community members in a mentoring capacity through panel presentations,
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small-group conversations, and connections to the fieldwork seminar and coursework, in particular foundations of education coursework (Zeichner et al., 2015). This collaboration between the University of Washington-Seattle and individuals associated with The Multicultural Education Rights Alliance (McERA) resulted in part from the Director of the Teacher Education Program’s (at the time, Dr Kenneth Zeichner) proposal for, and public speaking about, the CFP strand. Zeichner and his colleagues (2015) note that the CFP strand pushed for a ‘community engagement approach’ which emphasizes the knowledge of families and community members as well as an ‘organizing/solidarity approach’, which includes community members as collaborators to negotiate and develop various aspects of teacher education. The CFP strand is still in its infancy as it works to become financially sustainable and better integrate community knowledge across the teacher education program (e.g., in the methods coursework). This program illustrates the possibilities of incorporating community knowledge into teacher education. Teacher education programs like those at the University of WisconsinMadison and the University of Washington-Seattle prepare teacher candidates to partner with parents and other citizens who understand the importance of collective agency. This process encourages deliberate connections between teacher education programs, school-based personnel, and community activists to ensure that inequitable policies and practices are identified, addressed, and discontinued. Thus, teacher candidates are provided tools to enact their agency alongside others to ensure that humanizing forces take root and flourish in order to support a more just society.
COLLECTIVE AGENCY SHAPING COLLABORATIVE WORK These final examples go beyond seeing the community as a site for teacher education; rather, these initiatives begin with the community’s vision for education. To be clear, it is not that universities are absent in these spaces, but that ideas and theories about education – its goals and its implementation – originate from communities’ understandings and that communities have sustained involvement in shaping and reshaping teacher education. In this vein, rather than agency as a goal of teacher education, collective agency becomes the mechanism through which teacher education emerges. While dealing with issues of diversity, equity, and social justice in university coursework is important, it is essential that teacher educators move beyond the boundaries of their institutions of higher education to ensure that agency is seen as a collective endeavor with community partners. Programs such as this are explored below. Building upon the work of the Landless Workers’ Movement, Pedagogia da Terra in Brazil is a prime example of a teacher education program that truly integrates itself with the community and its social movements. While ensuring
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that teachers are prepared to deliver academic content, Pedagogia da Terra insists that students understand the politics of education (Diniz-Pereira, 2005) and the ways that policies and structures outside of schools play a role in dehumanizing students, families, and communities. Teachers are encouraged to link their professional purposes to ideas such as agrarian reform, class consciousness, cooperation, and solidarity – all essential elements of the Landless Workers’ Movement (Zeichner & Flessner, 2009a). This type of teacher education unites teachers, children, families, communities, and social movements in an effort to alleviate the many forms of oppressive education currently faced by children in schools around the globe. Additionally, in North America, there is an extreme demographic disparity between the population of students in schools, and the primarily white teaching force (Cochran-Smith, 2004). The following two examples illustrate how communities and universities collaborated to specifically address this issue of equity that affects both teacher education and the children in schools who, without these efforts, may not see their identities reflected in those who teach them. First, in the city of Chicago in the United States, the Grow Your Own (GYO) Nueva Generacion, is a collaboration between the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) and Chicago State University (CSU). Beginning in 1995, LSNA education organizers established the Parent Mentor Program, which hired and trained local parents to work in schools. Over time, several mentors expressed an interest in becoming teachers, which led LSNA to seek a university partner to create a pipeline of teachers of color who have first-hand cultural competence to work in the Logan Square neighborhood. While creating a pipeline for teachers of color to enter the teaching profession, the GYO program also prepares teacher candidates to understand and resist dehumanizing policies perpetuated within their communities (Skinner, 2013). LSNA has a long history of community organizing, and CSU – as the partnering university – created multiple communityspecific supports for the teacher candidates. Attending to the histories of both communities and teacher education entities is essential for this type of collective approach. Similarly, the Native Indian Teacher Education Program (NITEP) at the University of British Columbia has worked for over forty years to increase the number of Indigenous teachers in British Columbia while also creating a space for Indigenous teacher education. In 1972, the National Indian Brotherhood (now Assembly of First Nations) developed the Indian Control of Indian Education Policy (ICIE), which the Canadian federal government accepted in principle (Archibald, 2015). ICIE emphasized local control of education and parental involvement while stressing programmatic components such as ‘the Indigenous education course component, the use of field centers, a cohort/extended family structure, Indigenous programmatic leadership, and Indigenous community and school-based leadership’ (Archibald, 2015, p. 28). Importantly, all of these components have been developed by Indigenous leaders and are situated within
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Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Like Chicago’s GYO program, NITEP is primarily situated within the community (NITEP students complete their final year of coursework at one of three partnering universities) and has its foundations rooted in the knowledge of the community. Importantly, all these programs represent the time, concerted effort, and attention to both the community and the university knowledge needed to build and sustain collective endeavors in teacher education. Whether integrating themselves into a community and its social movements like Pedagogia da Terra, creating a pipeline for teachers of color to educate the children of their own communities like the GYO program at Chicago State University, or creating a space for Indigenous teacher education like NITEP at the University of British Columbia, teacher education that draws from social theories highlights collective agency. This attention to the collective emphasizes the relational aspects of teaching – from developing teacher candidates’ knowledge of social issues and inequities in relationship to themselves, to providing tools and experiences for teacher candidates to engage in partnerships with communities, to the very relational structures of whose knowledge shapes teacher education.
CONCLUSION This chapter has highlighted the work of those who view their roles as educational activists through the lenses of social theories. Agency, from this perspective, is collective and opens possibilities for educators to engage with a multitude of stakeholders working toward the rehumanization of the societies in which we exist. Agency of this sort requires educators to intentionally philosophize, teach, research, and act toward justice. Importantly, this chapter has highlighted that this is not the solitary endeavor of the educator, but rather occurs in concert with other professionals and communities who are actively working for justice. The chapter has examined the research and practice of teachers, teacher educators, teacher education programs, and other educational activists who have participated in this type of agency work throughout the 20th century and into the new millennium. Specifically, this chapter has suggested three ways that teacher educators and teacher education programs can utilize what is known about agency from the perspective of social theories. First, like the program at York University in Canada, teacher educators and teacher education programs must educate teacher candidates about social inequalities, dehumanizing policies and practices, and the roles schools play in reinforcing or challenging these ideas. Secondly, related to work happening at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Washington-Seattle in the United States, teacher educators and teacher education programs must engage students, families, and other community stakeholders in the programs they offer. In doing so, teacher educators
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and their community partners engage in collective efforts that build toward the rehumanization of schools, communities, and societies. Finally, university-based educators must move beyond institutional boundaries to assist in the creation of teacher preparation programs deeply connected to the communities of which they are a part. Examples such as the work happening at Pedagogia da Terra in Brazil, the GYO program at Chicago State University in the United States, and NITEP at the University of British Columbia in Canada implore teacher educators to build sustainable teacher education programs uninhibited by institutional boundaries in order to counteract dehumanizing policies affecting students, families, and communities. This view of agency facilitates collective endeavors among teacher educators, students, families, and other stakeholders. If we hope to rehumanize our schools, our communities, and our societies, we must enact our collective agency. As noted by Freire (1970), the task of humanization is often ‘thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; [yet,] it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity’ (p. 26). Agency as collective social action recognizes that while individual teachers can make a powerful impact on a single classroom or school, as a collective, teachers, teacher educators, and communities can influence the broader struggle for social justice in society. The work is ongoing, and children deserve nothing other than a collective effort toward change.
Notes 1 It is important to note that this chapter does not examine all social theories. Instead, we focus our attention on social theories that encourage educators to use their agency to work collectively with other stakeholders as they seek equity and social justice for children and their families and communities. Similarly, while terms such as progressive, Marxism, neo-Marxism, liberal, critical, democratic, and feminist are hallmarks of social theory, the intention of this chapter is not to delineate one school of thought from another. Others have discussed the tendency for such delineation as well as the problems inherent in doing so (Apple, 2011; Au, 2006). 2 See Fallace (2015) for a scathing critique of progressive education from one perspective on the political left. Also, see Teitelbaum (1993, 2009) for a discussion of how some educators were, in fact, working toward societal change through schools and schooling practices during the early 20th century (e.g., Socialist Sunday Schools in the United States, anarchist schools in Spain, and workers’ schools and labor colleges in the UK and US). 3 It should also be noted, however, that the ‘educationalization of social problems’ (Lambeir & Ramaekers, 2008, p. 435) is deeply contested. Some scholars argue that education was never meant, nor do governments provide the resources, to address issues on a grander societal scale (Bridges, 2008). Furthermore, Bekerman (2009) argues that, often, addressing social issues may simply ‘further social justice only for those who already enjoy it’ (p. 138). 4 However, ambiguous definitions of social justice (as with the concept of education as the great equalizer described earlier in this chapter) allow a host of teacher education programs to claim a social justice orientation with very different implications for future teachers and their students – many of which contradict ideas central to the social theories described in this chapter (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009).
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REFERENCES Apple, M.W. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. London, England: Routledge Education Books. Apple, M.W. (2011). Education and power (2nd edn). New York, NY: Routledge. Archibald, J. (2015). Indigenous teacher education: Struggle and triumph for justice and more. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association. Chicago, Illinois, April. Arnot, M., & Weiler, K. (Eds) (1993). Feminism and social justice in education: International perspectives. London, England: The Falmer Press. Artiles, A.J., Kozleski, E.B., & Waitoller, F.R. (2011). Inclusive education: Examining equity on five continents. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Au, W. (2006). Against economic determinism: Revisiting the roots of neo-Marxism in critical educational theory. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 4(2). Retrieved August 19, 2015 from http:// www.jceps.com/archives/520 Ayers, W., Quinn, T., & Stovall, D. (Eds) (2009). Handbook of social justice in education. New York, NY: Routledge. Barazzoni, R. (2005). Brick by brick: The history of the ‘XXV Aprile’ people’s nursery school of Villa Cella. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children. Bartolomé, L.I. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64(2), 173–194. Bekerman, Z. (2009). Social justice, identity politics, and integration in conflict-ridden societies: Challenges and opportunities in integrated Palestinian–Jewish education in Israel. In W. Ayers, T. Quinn, & D. Stovall (Eds), Handbook of social justice in education (pp. 138–151). New York, NY: Routledge. Bestor, A.E. (1953). Educational wastelands: The retreat from learning in our public schools. Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press. Bonnett, A. (2000). Anti-racism. London, England: Routledge. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Bridges, D. (2008). Educationalization: On the appropriateness of asking educational institutions to solve social and economic problems. Educational Theory, 58, 461–474. Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Counts, G.S. ([1932] 1978). Dare the school build a new social order? Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Dale, R., Esland, G., Ferguson, R., & Macdonald, M. (Eds) (1976). Schooling and capitalism: A sociological reader. London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Davies, S. (2002). The paradox of progressive education: A frame analysis. Sociology of Education, 75(4), 269–286. Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280–299. Dewey, J. ([1915] 2001). The school and society & the child and the curriculum. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Dewey, J. (1929). My pedagogic creed. Journal of the National Education Association, 18(9), 291–295. Dewey, J. ([1938] 1963). Experience and education. New York, NY: Collier Books. Diniz-Pereira, J.E. (2005). Teacher education for social transformation and its links to progressive social movements: The case of the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 3(2), 91–123. Edwards, A. (2007). Relational agency in professional practice: A CHAT analysis. Actio: An International Journal of Human Activity, 1, 1–17.
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Edwards, A. (2010). Being an expert professional practitioner: The relational turn in expertise. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Fallace, T. (2015). The savage origins of child-centered pedagogy, 1871–1913. American Educational Research Journal, 52(1), 73–103. Flessner, R., Miller, G.R., Patrizio, K.M., & Horwitz, J.R. (Eds) (2012). Agency through teacher education: Reflection, community, and learning. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder & Herder. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (2nd edn). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. González, N., Moll, L.C., & Amanti, C. (Eds) (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. New York, NY: Routledge. Grande, S. (2015). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought (10th anniversary edition). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Grant, C.A., & Agosto, V. (2008). Teacher capacity and social justice teacher education. In M. CochranSmith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D.J. McIntyre, & K.E. Demers (Eds), Handbook of research on teacher education (3rd edn) (pp. 175–200). New York, NY: Routledge. Gray, J., & Beresford, Q. (2008). A ‘formidable challenge’: Australia’s quest for equity in indigenous education. Australian Journal of Education, 52(2), 197–223. Gutmann, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gutstein, E. (2006a). Driving while black or brown: The mathematics of racial profiling. In J.O. Masingila (Ed.), Teachers engaged in research: Inquiry into mathematics classrooms, grades 6–8 (pp. 99–118). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Gutstein, E. (2006b). Reading and writing the world with mathematics: Toward a pedagogy for social justice. New York, NY: Routledge. Gutstein, E. (2013). Home buying while brown or black: Teaching mathematics for racial justice. In E. Gutstein & B. Peterson (Eds), Rethinking mathematics: Teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd edn) (pp. 61–66). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Hirsch E.D. Jr (1996). The schools we need: And why we don’t have them. New York, NY: Doubleday. King, J.E. (1991). Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and the miseducation of teachers. Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 133–146. Klehr, M. (2012). Community engagement as catalyst for reflection and agency within a professional development school clinical setting. In R. Flessner, G.R. Miller, K.M. Patrizio, & J.R. Horwitz (Eds), Agency through teacher education: Reflection, community, and learning (pp. 97–104). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Kozol, J. (1972). Free schools. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Kumashiro, K.K., Baber, S.A., Richardson, E., Ricker-Wilson, C., & Wong, P.L. (2004). Preparing teachers for anti-oppressive education: International movements. Teaching Education, 15(3), 257–275. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 465–491. Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11, 7–24. Ladson-Billings, G. (2009a). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children (2nd edn). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Ladson-Billings, G. (2009b). Race still matters: Critical race theory in education. In M.W. Apple, W. Au, & L.A. Gandin (Eds), The Routledge international handbook of critical education (pp. 110–122). New York, NY: Routledge. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W.F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47–68. Lambeir, B., & Ramaekers, S. (2008). Humanizing education and the educationalization of health. Educational Theory, 58, 435–446.
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17 Narrative Theories and Methods in Learning, Developing, and Sustaining Teacher Agency J a n i c e H u b e r a n d J i - S o o k Ye o m
‘We are all story’, wrote Wagamese (2011, p. 2). He and others show this understanding carried by peoples across time and place (Basso, 1996; King, 2003; Marmon Silko, 1996; Minh-Ha, 1989; Okri, 1997; Sarris, 1993). Even though not all stories or all that is known about stories is written down, story is who people are and are becoming (Battiste & Henderson, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Georgakopoulou, 2007; Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Given the continuous and holistic nature of storied experience, which is both shaped by and reshaped as people interact in and with personal, social, and material environments, agency, too, is negotiated in this midst: in this midst of a life in motion inseparable from identities becoming. These entanglements among story, experience, identity, and agency structure our chapter (Bridwell-Mitchell, 2015; Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, & Paloniemi, 2013; Soini, Pietarinen, Toom, & Pyhältö, 2015; Toom, Pyhältö, & O’Connell Rust, 2015; Van der Heijden, Geldens, Beijaard, & Popeijus, 2015), beginning with attention to experience and agency as narratively constructed and reconstructed across time, place, situations, and relationships. We then explore literature showing aspects of learning, developing, and sustaining teacher agency in teacher education, development, and research, with an emphasis on narrative theories and methods. Discussion of implications and future research concludes the chapter.
EXPERIENCE AND AGENCY AS NARRATIVELY CONSTRUCTED Narrative as a ‘source of insight for all branches of human and natural science’ (Mitchell, 1981, p. ix) is well documented (Bruchac, 1996; Bruner, 1986;
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Cajete, 2000; Charon & Montello, 2002; Coles, 1989; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Crites, 1971; hooks, 1996; Mehl-Madrona, 2007; Polkinghorne, 1988), which in teacher education, development, and research drew attention to aspects such as the narrative construction and reconstruction of teachers’ knowledge, contexts, and identities (Carter, 1993; Clandinin, 1985; Clandinin & Connelly, 1992, 1995; Clandinin, Schaefer, & Downey, 2014; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Craig, 1992; Desrochers, 2006; Driedger-Enns, 2014; ElbazLuwisch, 2005; Gudmundsdottir, 1996, 1997; He, 1998; Huber & Whelan, 2000; Nelson, 2003; Phillion, 1999; Schaefer, 2012; Steeves, 2000; Young et al., 2012). Narrative theories drawing attention to the multiplicity and temporality of experience, the interaction of self, context, and culture, and the ongoing struggle for narrative coherence ground these understandings.
The Multiplicity of Experience Shaping Lives Recounting the experiences of five women across time and place, Bateson (1989) showed their lives as shaped by simultaneous commitments moving them in multiple directions. Heilbrun’s (1988) interest in the availability of multiple storylines for women’s lives noted that a cultural shift shaped through feminism opened possibilities for women to tell more than carefully crafted narratives of idealized lives. Adichie (2009), too, warned of ‘the danger of a single story’.
The Ongoing Temporal Nature of Experience Heilbrun’s (1988) sense of women actively ‘writing’ their lives foregrounded lives as in the making, open to revision. Highlighting the liminality experienced in composing a life in motion, she described finding oneself ‘betwixt and between, neither altogether here nor there, not one kind of person or another, not this, not that’ (Heilbrun, 1999, p. 28). For Bateson (1989), ‘composing a life’ entailed ‘a continual reimagining of the future and reinterpretation of the past to give meaning to the present’ (pp. 29–30).
The Interaction of Self, Context, and Culture Sarris (1993) saw storytelling as a ‘fundamental aspect of culture’ (p. 4). Crites (1971) noted story as a form of cultural expression shaping how ‘people speak, dance, build, dream, embellish’, each of which is ‘culturally particular’ and imprinted by a particular ‘time and a place’ (p. 291). Distinguishing between living with and on the land, Marmon Silko (1996) showed that in the Pueblo tradition ‘human identity, imagination and storytelling were inextricably linked to the land’ (p. 21). Bruner (1990) saw people’s experiences as actively shaped as their intentions interacted with the symbolic systems of a culture: ‘Folk
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psychology is about human agents doing things on the basis of their beliefs and desires, striving for goals, meeting obstacles which they best or which best them, all of this extended over time’ (pp. 42–43).
The Ongoing Struggle for Narrative Coherence Self-understanding, wrote Crites (1971), ‘depends upon the continuity of experience through time’, which bridges the ‘remembered past and projected future. Even when it is largely implicit, not vividly self-conscious, our sense of ourselves is at every moment to some extent integrated into a … story’ (p. 302). For Carr (1986), the struggle for narrative coherence in an unfolding life keeps us ‘telling and retelling, to ourselves and to others, the story of what we are about and what we are’ (p. 97). Bateson (1994) noted the improvisation and struggle experienced in ‘unpredictable and unfamiliar contexts’ as we learn ‘new skills and transmute discomfort and bewilderment’ in ‘becoming someone different’ (p. 66).
AGENCY AS A COMPLEX, ONGOING NARRATIVE PROCESS What these narrative theories bring to learning, developing, and sustaining teacher agency in teacher education, development, or research is the need for understanding experience as narratively constructed and reconstructed through a process in which storied experiences are understood as necessarily entangled, and unfinished, continuously shaped through social, contextual, cultural, and material interactions, and an appreciation that the ongoing struggle for narrative coherence lives at the heart of the complex, often uncomfortable process of becoming. Such work in teacher education, development, or research comes with significant responsibilities, including attentiveness to the ways experience is often viewed ‘as a problem to be solved’ instead of as a ‘situation to be experienced and interacted with’ (Lorde, 1984, p. 5). Acknowledging that it matters how we listen to and learn with stories of experience. Archibald (2008) shared teachings from the Elders who guided her: listening involves ‘three ears: two on the sides of our head and the one that is in our heart’ (p. 8). For Greene (1995), engaging with storied experience required imagination – a ‘looking at things as if they could be otherwise’ (p. 16). Sarbin (2004) focused on ‘imaginings’ as ‘storied constructions’ (p. 9), as ‘as if’ stories that shape openings for taking up ‘agentic action’ (p. 12). Guided by learning alongside the Western Apache, Basso (1996) foregrounded how stories ‘work on’ us: you ‘keep thinking about it. That story is changing you now, making you want to live right. That story is making you want to replace yourself’ (p. 59).
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As a ground for learning, developing, and sustaining teacher agency in teacher education, development, or research these understandings foreground the need for inquiry into all that is meeting in the interactions. Narrative scholars (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Driedger-Enns et al., 2016; Huber, Li, Murphy, Nelson, & Young, 2014; Iftody, 2013; Li, Nelson, Young, Murphy, & Huber, 2011; Schaefer, Lessard, Panko, & Polsfut, 2015) foreground this inquiry as attending to the interaction among the lives meeting in teacher education and school classrooms, in interaction with subject matters, in interaction with the broader milieux shaping schooling and teacher education, development, and research. Such inquiry takes teacher educators, pre-service and graduate students, and teachers into the heart of Clandinin and Connelly’s (1995) notion of teachers as ‘active agents’ as they come to see themselves as ‘knowing persons with their own epistemological relationship to their milieu and to their students, rather than persons merely responsible for transmitting socially valued knowledge’ (p. 26); Zembylas’ (2003) sense of the need to understand agency in its ‘cultural and political context’ as ‘agency cannot be isolated from the dynamics of power from which [it] is constructed’ (p. 225); Guiterrez and Calabrese Barton’s (2015) sense of the ‘structure-agency dialectic’ that requires attending to ways ‘human activity is embedded in structured historicity’, that is, that ‘individual and collective action is enabled and constrained by the social structures-in-motion, both in-the-moment and over time’ (p. 575); and Soini et al.’s (2015) sense that from the outset of teacher education, positioning teachers as active agents and understanding ‘teacher education as a facilitator of agency’ requires ‘intentional emphasis … on the quality of the relationships between teacher students and teacher educators’ (p. 652).
LEARNING, DEVELOPING, AND SUSTAINING TEACHER AGENCY THROUGH NARRATIVE THEORIES AND METHODS Given the interwoven nature of story, experience, identity, and agency, our literature search combined these terms in various ways (i.e. story, experience, identity, teacher agency; narrative, identity, teacher agency; narrative, teacher education, agency; and so on), which revealed a wide range of books, chapters, and peerreviewed articles. Remaining focused on narrative theories and methods, we saw that many sources were outside our focus, particularly when ‘stories’ or ‘narratives’ were merely a way to draw together and represent various forms of data. While we additionally desired to honor international contexts, our language backgrounds limited us to English and Korean. A final consideration was to develop in-depth descriptions of a small number of studies to detail how narrative theories and/or methods were supporting and/or being developed in teacher education, development, or research with emphasis on learning, developing, and sustaining teacher agency.
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Pre-service Teachers’ Awakenings to Agency through Autobiographical Inquiry into Personal Practical Knowledge Reporting on a narrative inquiry with second-year students in the English Teacher Education Program, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina, Sarasa (2015) drew on Pavlenko’s (2007) work on ‘autobiographic narratives’, Bell’s (2002), Connelly and Clandinin’s (1990; Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007), and Trahar’s (2011) conceptualizations of narrative inquiry, Connelly and Clandinin’s narrative conceptualizations of teachers’ ‘personal practical knowledge’ and ‘professional knowledge landscapes’ in their (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) and Nelson’s (2011) research, and earlier narrative research in language teacher education (Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008; Golombek & Johnson, 2004; Liu & Xu, 2011). Situating autobiographical inquiry as liberatory, Sarasa described ways in which this process increased students’ understandings of ‘the past and present global roles of English’ (2015, p. 14). Watching films about heroes was followed by students writing and reading aloud stories of everyday people whom they saw as brave, after which the students completed a survey that showed how their storying of these lives shaped a classroom ‘atmosphere’ that was ‘moving’ and aroused ‘deep-rooted feelings’ (p. 18), from which they learned the importance of careful listening, deep engagement, and trust. Emphasizing how the ‘personal knowledge generated by the class’ interrupted the more common practice of ‘only talking about theory … never talk[ing] about our lives’ (p. 18), Sarasa (2015) highlighted students’ growth in understanding education as encompassing ‘locations … beyond the classroom’, transcending the ‘purely skill-oriented classroom that still predominates’ (p. 19). The students’ ‘experiences of telling and retelling’ were ‘transformative and pedagogically loaded’ as they grew more attentive to ‘learner-focussed teaching and membership within a community of practice’ (p. 20). Seeing this narrative curriculummaking in teacher education, which concentrates on ‘lives in the classroom’, as redressing teacher education, Sarasa noted that such an ‘existential focus [which] allowed the sharing of private, heritage, knowledge that could be recreated as personal practical knowledge’ (p. 21), opens potential for reshaping teaching education and schooling.
Restorying Agency in Teacher Development through Inquiry into Intergenerational Narratives of Trauma Drawing on experiences in peace education and research alongside GreekCypriot teachers for whom the trauma of the north/south division of Cyprus remained strong, Zembylas (2014) focused on ways teacher educators might ‘engage critically with teacher narratives of nostalgia in divided societies,
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particularly when nostalgia is mediated by postmemories’ (emphasis in original, p. 8). Drawing on Hirsch’s (2008) work on postmemories as ‘memories that do not refer to or draw on a person’s actual past experiences, but rather memories generated through the lens of a preceding generation marked by trauma’ (p. 8), and Boym’s (2001) work on ‘reflective nostalgia’, which ‘generates spaces that challenge traditional representations of the past’, alongside his own work (Zembylas, 2011) with ‘counter-memory narratives on loss and trauma that expand the range of spaces in which collective memories of trauma might be engaged’ (p. 8), Zembylas offered ways of inquiring into nostalgia during teacher professional development. Seeing teachers’ sense of loss as influencing their teaching and focusing on the ‘modalities of nostalgia’ (p. 11) in their stories, Zembylas presented three possible readings of the teachers’ narratives: ‘defiant nostalgia’ showed a sense of ‘“defiance” or “resistance” toward the possibility of forgetting their homeland’ (p. 11) as it was prior to 1974; ‘unrooted nostalgia’ showed a ‘softened stance that aims at tracing the past by returning to the places of loss’ (p. 14); and ‘ambivalent nostalgia’ showed the ‘grey zones in the process of nostalgic longing for a place and time that no longer exists’ (p. 15). Important were understandings that ‘teacher educators in conflicted societies can design pedagogical strategies’ attentive to environments supportive of the expression of emotion, where senses of trust and openness support teachers to ‘share the personal biographies of their lost homeland’ (p. 19), critical reflection on their emotions, inquiry into both less contentious and more controversial issues, and the exploration of multiple perspectives.
Supporting Teacher Agency through Negotiating Narrative Research and Ethics Emphasizing researchers who understand teacher identity narratively (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Elbaz-Luwisch, 2005; Rodgers & Scott, 2008; Søreide, 2007; Watson, 2006), that teacher identities are shaped in relation with students, parents, colleagues, administration, and broader social cultural plotlines (Hansen; 1998; Juzwik & Ives, 2010; Noddings, 2001; Shapiro, 2010; Uitto, 2012), and that these interactions entail emotional engagements (Hargreaves, 2002; Kelchtermans, 2009; Nias, 1996; Zembylas, 2007), Uitto, Kaunisto, Syrjälä, and Estola (2015) investigated teachers’ identities as shaped by micropolitical contexts. Exploring the experiences of 11 female teachers in diverse education contexts in Oulu, Finland, they drew on Bamberg and Georgakopoulou’s (2008) small-story approach, making visible ‘how identity construction connects to everyday practices in which people make sense of who they are’ (p. 165). Drawing on narrative methods of ‘oral discussions, case sharing, drama, and writing’ (p. 166), through which teachers discussed their ‘everyday life and experiences as teachers’ (p. 166), Uitto et al. foregrounded the experiences of Tiina, a third-year teacher. Seven years after the group concluded, Uitto et al.
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shared an account with Tiina that highlighted her identity construction in relation to her school colleagues and members of the study group. Reading the account, Tiina recognized that, at that time, she had been ‘acting in her relationships in a more determined way than she had actually felt’ (p. 173). Reflecting on Tiina’s response, Uitto et al. highlighted the significance of narrative processes and ethics (i.e. the sharing back of the account with Tiina) in shaping openings where teachers may ‘recognize different dimensions of their identity, as well as trigger change’ (p. 174), including insights about their present and future selves in relation to others and various contexts.
Exploring through Critical Narrative Inquiry the Interaction between Structures and Teacher Participants’ Senses of Agency Drawing on Hays’ (1994) views of agency as a ‘continuum between structurally reproductive and structurally transformative agency’ (p. 547), Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) understanding of narrative inquiry as attending to people’s lives, and Rivera Maulucci’s (2010) focus on critical narrative inquiry that positions researchers as ‘active participant[s] in the social justice work of redressing equity issues in the classroom’ (p. 548), Rivera Maulucci, Brotman, and Sprague (2015) examined the interaction of teacher agency and structures in a dual language co-teaching third grade classroom.1 Highlighted was a 14-week professional development seminar that included in-service and pre-service teachers in four seminars which emphasized: collaborating in practical partnerships; using the city as a resource for teaching science; building on knowledge students and teachers brought to science teaching and learning; and drawing on evidence in assessing student learning. Following the seminars, the grade three teachers noted above, along with a pre-service student teacher and one teacher educator/ researcher, applied their learning in the classroom, which enabled Rivera Maulucci et al. to highlight ways the teachers transformed themselves from structurally reproductive agents to structurally transformative agents. Detailed were ways the teachers engaged children in drawing pictures and talking about what science meant to them, which continued through soliciting children’s knowledge in relation to a picture book about energy and walking through the community to their writing down forms of energy at use in their everyday lives, followed by a lesson beginning with a video on climate change and a visit to a museum exhibit on climate change, and the children’s development of skits showing ways of reducing and responding to global warming. As the teachers shifted towards teaching in ways that sustained their agency, the children experienced increased agency, engagement, and learning. Rivera Maulucci et al. foreground teacher agency as strongly ‘connected to the contextual conditions within which it is achieved and not … merely a capacity or possession of the individual’ (p. 557).
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Negotiating Relational Agency through Narrative Shifting Li, Conle, and Elbaz-Luwisch (2008) draw on Connelly and Clandinin’s (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) development of narrative inquiry, particularly as it was taken up by Chang and Rosiek (2003), He (2002), Li (2002), and Phillion (2002) in focusing on multicultural and cross-cultural settings, alongside Carter’s (1993), Conle’s (1997), Estola’s (2003), Elbaz-Luwisch’s (2001), Heikkinen’s (1998), Johnson and Golombek’s (2002), and Li’s (2007) use of narrative inquiry as an approach in pre-service and graduate teacher education. Foregrounding work alongside students in cross-cultural and multicultural teacher education in Canada, Israel, and the United States, Li et al. (2008) make visible the dis/ease experienced when teachers are encouraged to understand something of one another’s differing perspectives. Collaborating on questions about ways ‘polarized positions’ might be shifted, seen ‘as an opportunity instead of an obstacle’, and drawn upon to ‘initiate mutual understanding’ (p. 3), Li et al. emphasized ‘the personal’, which was ‘foundational to our work as narrative inquirers’ (p. 4) as students began ‘to view themselves and each other in more complicated and culturally diverse ways’ (p. 5). Naming this multi-layered process as ‘narrative shifting’ (p. 281), they showed its unfolding as students engaged in ‘personal narrative restorying, narrative world traveling, narrative splicing, and narrative creativity’ (p. 281). In this meeting of lives, Li et al. foregrounded ways narrative shifting occurred when ‘polarized positions soften and move closer together’ (p. 323). Central were openings for working ‘across different settings’ in which ‘very different individuals’ felt ‘recognized in their difference’, an aspect entailing ‘not … tolerance but … a unity that is essentially diverse … [and] solidarity among strangers, … people who begin to understand one another and respect one another in their difference’ (p. 323).
Learning Agentic Self Construction in Teacher Education Seeing the disenfranchisement of youth in South Africa as shaped by the reverberations of Apartheid, Gachago, Condy, Ivala, and Chigona (2014) situated teacher education as enabling in schools the continuing ‘asymmetric relations among learners’ (p. 1). Gachago et al. described a digital storytelling project shaped by Boler and Zembylas’ (2003) work on the need for pre-service teachers to be mindful of their beliefs, assumptions, privilege, and comfort zones, Nussbaum’s (2010) feminist conceptualization and Sen’s (2007) capabilities approach to social justice, Bozalek’s (2011) participatory learning techniques that support students to draw on ‘their life journeys and identify critical incidents’ (p. 3), Lambert’s (2013) story circle process, narrative inquiry as understood by Clandinin et al. (2006), Clandinin, Pushor, and Orr (2007), Clandinin and Rosiek (2007), and Connelly and Clandinin (2006), alongside Bamberg and
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Georgakopoulou’s small stories (2008) approach. Believing that ‘for future teachers to facilitate learners’ engagement across racial, linguistic, class and cultural divides’ (Gachago et al., 2014, p. 1), alternative learning spaces are required where the questioning of beliefs and assumptions about the ‘other’ (p. 1) are supported, they reported on ways a compulsory final year course opened up ‘a democratic and inclusive space for … students to share and listen to stories they would usually not hear’ (p. 1). Students began by choosing to focus on a social issue in education; they then worked with peers and a course facilitator to develop ‘story scripts’ (p. 3), followed by their narrating the stories with the inclusion of images and sounds in the making of their digital film. The project closed with a screening of the digital stories, attended by family and friends, and subsequent student debriefing. Based on the transcripts from the debriefing, 30 small stories were identified and analyzed alongside Nussbaum’s (2010) seven capabilities for a healthy democracy,2 with excerpts provided as exemplars. Highlighting the ‘emotionallycharged space of engagement’ shaped as ‘students narrated and shared stories of individual and collective trauma narratives with near-strangers’ (p. 9), Gachago et al. (2014) saw this narrative process as breaking the ‘culture of silence’ (p. 9) that is a common barrier to social justice in education, by positioning students as ‘“agentive self-constructors” with capacities to effect social change within their own classrooms and as a school collective’ (p. 10). Further noted was the importance of ‘creating intellectually and emotionally safe spaces’ where students could ‘share … life narratives’ and where ‘difference was embraced and not feared, where alternative values[,] … emotionality and vulnerability were respected, and where students could position themselves among their peers as powerful agents of hope in their schools’ (p. 10). While the students’ stories did not show examples of Nussbaum’s seventh capability of critical thinking, Gachago et al. (2014) suggested ongoing engagement with students beyond teacher education as supporting their subsequent raising of ‘dissenting voice[s]’ (p. 10). Suggested, too, was further research to understand ways teachers may utilize this pedagogy alongside children and youth.
Supporting the Agency of Children and Families by Co-making a Curriculum Attentive to Their Lives Focusing on teachers and children as co-constructing a caring community with mutual understanding of the diverse cultures in a rural South Korean multicultural classroom, Yeom (2011) engaged in narrative inquiry alongside an early childhood teacher, two Vietnamese mothers, one Cambodian mother, and their children. Attending to their interactions revealed that the teacher was implementing a curriculum shaped by the context of each child’s family background and community culture. For example, in this rural community, there were not many Korean mothers but more immigrant mothers married to
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Korean men, most of whom were very young and lived with their parents-inlaw. Telling the teacher and Yeom that they had little knowledge of Korean ways of raising young children and about regular conflicts with their in-laws, the teacher shared Korean cultural knowledge in terms of child rearing and information to support the mothers as they dealt with stressful situations at home. Implementing an individualized curriculum, which considered each child’s development, was an important aspect of the teacher’s practice, as was her active communication with the children’s parents, especially the immigrant mothers who had little Korean language. Yeom understood the teacher not simply as teaching children but as a central axis in connecting the community because of the ways her agentic practice opened up possibilities for multicultural early childhood education and care through collaboration with parents and community members.
IMPLICATIONS AND POSSIBLE RESEARCH FOR TEACHER EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT The preceding studies make visible present and future teaching and research possibilities for learning, developing, and sustaining teacher agency. Highlighted is that understanding teacher agency narratively requires simultaneous attention to context and identity. Understanding that teachers’ lives are in motion before entry into teacher education, and appreciating their day-to-day experiences as teachers, foregrounds the strong personal, professional, and intergenerational aspects at work in their ongoing making and remaking of agency across time, place, situations, and relationships. Through inquiry into this interwoven nature of teachers’ life making and agency, inquiry into dominant social, cultural, linguistic, racial, historical, ethnic, familial, economic, political, sexual, and institutional plotlines is also opened up. Shown, too, is that co-making with teachers spaces for inquiry into their lives and agency, and, in turn, the lives and agency of the children, youth, families, and communities with whom they interact in classrooms and schools, is neither linear nor static. Additionally, in learning, developing, and sustaining agency shaped through the above noted narrative methods, theories, and processes, teachers need to feel that their stories are respected and cared for, including when differences and tensions exist within, between, and among experiences. Noted, too, was that the inclusion of personal experience in teacher education, development, and research is rare; inquiry into teachers’ personal experiences is even rarer. The inclusion of narrative inquiry into personal experience in teacher education, development, and research is significant not only for teachers, but also for children, youth, families, communities, and teacher educators/researchers, given the links between teacher agency and the agency experienced by children and youth in schools, and with their parents, families, and communities.
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Questions linger about the ongoing influence of narrative theories and methods in learning, developing, and sustaining agency in teacher education, development, or research in the ongoing lives of teachers, and in the lives of children, youth, families, colleagues, and communities with whom teachers interact. Further studies with this focus will be important. Important, too, will be an emphasis in teacher education, development, and research on ways teachers’ agency is learned, developed, and continuously constructed and reconstructed in relation with children, youth, families, and communities. We imagine that understandings shaped by each of the above suggested studies will hold significant potential for remaking teacher education, development, and research, particularly in relation to whose voices and knowledge, and what knowledge, counts.
Notes 1 Two teachers were in the classroom, one a generalist and the other a special education teacher. The languages of instruction were English and Spanish. 2 These capabilities are: ‘1. learners’ capacity to see the world from the viewpoint of other people; 2. learners’ attitudes toward human weakness and helplessness that suggest that weakness is not shameful. Learners therefore learn not to be ashamed of their own and others’ need and incompleteness, but to see these as occasions for cooperation and reciprocity; 3. a genuine concern for others; 4. to learn not to shrink from minorities of various kinds in disgust; 5. to see real and true things about other groups, countering stereotypes and the disgust that often goes with them; 6. learners’ accountability, developed by treating each learner as a responsible agent; and 7. critical thinking, i.e. the skill and courage it requires to raise a dissenting voice’ (Gachago et al., 2014, p. 2).
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Noddings, N. (2001). The caring teacher. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 99–105). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Nussbaum, M.C. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Okri, B. (1997). A way of being free. London, UK: Phoenix House. Pavlenko, A. (2007). Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 28(2), 163–188. Phillion, J. (1999). Narrative inquiry in a multicultural landscape: Multicultural teaching and learning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Phillion, J. (2002). Narrative multiculturalism. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34(3), 265–279. Polkinghorne, D.E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. New York, NY: State University of New York Press. Rivera Maulucci, M.S. (2010). Resisting the marginalization of science in an urban school: Coactivating social, cultural, materials, and strategic resources. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47, 840–860. Rivera Maulucci, M.S., Brotman, J.S., & Sprague, S. (2015). Fostering structurally transformative teacher agency through science professional development. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(4), 545–559. Rodgers, C.R., & Scott, K.H. (2008). The development of the personal self and professional identity in learning to teach. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D.J. McIntyre, & K.E. Demers (Eds), Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (pp. 732–755). New York, NY: Routledge. Sarasa, M.C. (2015). Narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in English teacher education. PROFILE Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 17(1), 13–24. Sarbin, T.R. (2004). The role of imagination in narrative construction. In C. Daiute & C. Lightfoot (Eds), Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society (pp. 5–20). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Sarris, G. (1993). Keeping slug woman alive: A holistic approach to American Indian texts. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Schaefer, L.M. (2012). Shifting from stories to live by to stories to leave by: Conceptualizing early career teacher attrition as a question of shifting identities. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Schaefer, L., Lessard, S., Panko, S., & Polsfut, N. (2015). The table where rich people sit: A turn toward narrative inquiry as method, phenomenon and pedagogy. In M. Baguley, Y. Findlay, & M.C. Kerby (Eds), Meanings and motivation in education research (pp. 17–33). New York, NY: Routledge. Sen, A. (2007). Capability and well-being. In D.M. Hausman (Ed.), The philosophy of economics: An anthology (3rd edn). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sfard, A., & Prusak, A. (2005). Telling identities: In search of an analytic tool for investigating learning as a culturally shaped activity. Educational Researcher, 34(14), 4–22. Shapiro, S. (2010). Revisiting the teachers’ lounge: Reflections on emotional experience and teacher identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3), 616–621. Soini, T., Pietarinen, J., Toom, A., & Pyhältö, K. (2015). What contributes to first-year student teachers’ sense of professional agency in the classroom? Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 641–659. Søreide, G.E. (2007). Narrative construction of teacher identity: Positioning and negotiation. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 12(5), 527–547. Steeves, P. (2000). Crazy quilt: Continuity, identity, and the storied school landscape in transition: A teacher’s and a principal’s works in progress. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
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Toom, A., Pyhältö, K., & O’Connell Rust, F. (2015). Teachers’ professional agency in contradictory times. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 615–623. Trahar, S. (Ed.). (2011). Learning and teaching narrative inquiry: Travelling in the borderlands. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Uitto, M. (2012). ‘Behind every profession is a person’: Students’ written memories of their own teacher– student relationships. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(2), 293–301. Uitto, M., Kaunisto, S., Syrjälä, L., & Estola, E. (2015). Silenced truths: Relational and emotional dimensions of a beginning teacher’s identity as part of the micropolitical context of school. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59(2), 162–176. Van der Heijden, H.R., Geldens, J.J.M., Beijaard, D., & Popeijus, H.L. (2015). Characteristics of teachers as change agents. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 681–699. Wagamese, R. (2011). One story, one song. Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre. Watson, C. (2006). Narratives of practice and the construction of identity in teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 12(5), 509–526. Yeom, J. (2011). One educator’s teaching practice aimed at the constructing of a caring community in an early childhood multicultural classroom. The Journal of Korea Open Association for Early Childhood Education, 16(5), 87–108. Young, M., Joe, L., Lamoureux, J., Marshall, L., Moore, D., Orr, J.L., Parisian, B.M., Paul, K., Paynter, F., & Huber, J. (2012). Warrior women: Remaking post-secondary places through relational narrative inquiry. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing. Zembylas, M. (2003). Emotions and teacher identity: A poststructural perspective. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 9(3), 213–238. Zembylas, M. (2007). The power and politics of emotions in teaching. In P.A. Schutz & R. Pekrun (Eds), Emotion in education (pp. 293–309). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Zembylas, M. (2011). Reclaiming nostalgia: Counter-memory, aporetic mourning, and critical pedagogy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32, 641–655. Zembylas, M. (2014). Nostalgia, postmemories, and the lost homeland: Exploring different modalities of nostalgia in teacher narratives. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 36, 7–21.
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18 Unsettling Habitual Ways of Teacher Education through ‘Post-Theories’ of Teacher Agency Lisa Loutzenheiser and Kal Heer INTRODUCTION Educators, including teacher educators and teacher candidates, have myriad demands placed upon them as their careers are often defined through measurements of student achievement and success. The contexts of schooling are burdened by ‘commonsense’ beliefs that understand schooling as the meritocratic, fair, colorblind road to advancement. This is particularly true in the current climate of standards, accountability and high stakes testing. It is not surprising, then, that most mainstream teacher education programs are laden with anxiety and fear, juxtaposed with the hope of success and desire to make a difference (Britzman, 2007). The goal of this chapter is a heady one: to articulate the theorizing of agency and its role for teacher educators, researchers and teachers across the paradigms of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcoloniality. Our desire is to offer the reader an entry into the tensions and conversations, with an invitation, and we would suggest an imperative, to delve deeper than this short chapter allows. Theorists within each paradigm are often in conflict and tension with each other. As Coloma (2009a) suggests when discussing postcoloniality, and this is equally true of that which is considered postmodern and poststructural, the central concepts are complex, intentional and ‘fraught with multiple and competing definitions’ (p. 4). Yet, the posts (-modern, -structural and -colonial) also have much in common as they engage normativities, are explicitly political, question dualistic binaries and theorize teacher and student action and reaction. We understand that
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some of the language and ideas might be new to the reader and ask for some patience to think and work with what may be perceived as intangible concepts. However, we argue that the space for thinking through change is in the abstract, which necessarily turns the tangible on its head in order to alter the commonsense and normative understandings most have been trained to hold. Reading with and across postmodern, poststructural and postcolonial epistemologies, this chapter focuses on how the questioning of agency, normativity and subjectivity, singularly and in concert, come together within teacher education. How do these paradigms inform particular readings and performances? What are the possibilities and limitations of teacher agency or teacher action in the context of neoliberalism? This chapter outlines how theorists in these schools of thought understand the distinctions and tensions that shape the borders of poststructural, postmodern and postcolonial theories. The concept of agency fills many articles, books and dissertations, and teacher identity is often tied to an analysis of educational or organizational action/inaction (Buchanan, 2015; Sloan, 2006). Therefore, we begin with discussions of agency and move to how postmodernists and poststructuralists think about the subject, power and knowledge as important contributions to conceptions of agency within teacher education and research. We follow with a section discussing postcoloniality and its educational applications and close with a section that outlines an agentic practice and theory that brings together the ‘posts’. Working through the theoretical precepts of each paradigm, in a general and limited manner, is necessary to situate the educational consequences and implications for teacher education research. While we introduce postmodernism and poststructuralism somewhat separately, in contemporary accounts, ‘[t]he epithets “post-structuralist” and “postmodern” are increasingly interchangeable’ (Fox, 2014, p. 1855). The oftconflated use of postmodern and poststructural theories within education makes clear and discrete theoretical renderings impossible, and, we would argue, unproductive. Within the chapter we ask how theories and concepts of postmodernism/poststructuralism and postcoloniality increase teacher agency in a time of exceedingly limited resources and mounting pressures of teacher accountability measures. How does thinking generated through the theories and concepts of the ‘posts’ produce new ways of approaching how teachers might ‘make’ change and how researchers of teacher education analyze teaching and learning? How might these explorations across paradigms aid in understanding the gaps between what happens in teacher education programs, teacher intent and teacher becoming in daily experiences in educative settings? One key question across frameworks is how knowledge is conceptualized and applied. How are knowledges understood to function within teacher education and educative settings? Each paradigm under discussion suggests that school knowledges are ‘produced, taught, learned, lost, and re-negotiated through power relations, and across time and space’ (Daza, 2013, p. 208). If power is key in agency,
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what counts as knowledge and what are the implications of how knowledge is defined? We are most interested in how new forms of knowledge production such as postmodern, poststructural and postcolonial theorizing create generative pathways for teacher agency for teachers and teacher educators, and new analytical frameworks for researchers. Further to this, we ask how knowledge is interrogated and deployed within specific poststructural/postmodern (Britzman, 2007; Butler, 1993; Ellsworth, 1997) and postcolonial (Andreotti, 2011; Coloma, 2009b; Dimitriadis & McCarthy, 2001; Subedi & Daza, 2008) projects, and how do these projects aid in conceptualizing educator agency, or lack thereof?
AGENCY: EASILY DEFINED, IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPREHEND Within education in general, and teacher education in particular, agency is a critical concept as the potential for educational change is often thought to hinge on teacher action/in-action. Like postcoloniality and postmodernism/poststructuralism, the concept of agency is tension-filled and contradictory, its meaning variable to the theorist, educator and/or researcher’s paradigmatic commitments. Agency, in its most basic conceptualization, is an individual’s power to act or choose one’s actions. In the popular imaginary, agency is often conceived as ‘a feature of each sane, adult human being … [c]losely linked to this understanding is the celebration of the individual who is seen to stand out from the collective’ (Davies, 1991, p. 5). Consequently, agency is often defined as a personal attribute of educators, and the capacity to act or not resides solely within the educator body (Priestley, Edwards, Priestley, & Miller, 2012). If action is primarily located in the individual, then the responsibility to act is also rooted in teachers. Are, then, teachers autonomous beings who can fundamentally and independently choose to act, regardless of potential barriers? For example, in North America there is a long history of the majority of teachers being white, middle-class women, often teaching children and youth from marginalized communities. The socio-cultural complexities of this relationship are often articulated as the young teachers’ deficit, a shortfall that teacher education must ‘fix’. In this formulation, if the ‘fixing’ is done well, and culturally ‘appropriate’ teaching is incorporated correctly, then logic implies that students from marginalized communities ought to succeed. This model largely precludes connections to institutional responsibility for change, disregards discursive practices supporting the status quo and often ignores the strictures and neoliberal impediments individual teachers face. Certainly, systemic oppression is a hindrance to the expression of agency, and ‘the posts’ offer insight into possible teacher agency as more than an individualized problem, and more than an issue only embedded within the systemic. Hence allowing for more nuanced understandings of both agency and teacher identities/subjectivities. This begs a vital question: is teacher action the same as agency, and is agency merely an individual teacher/educator’s will to act?
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In the recent past, agency has been most often employed through critical pedagogies that advocate for a Gramcian organic intellectual, such as the teacher/ educator as catalyst (Freire, 1970), or an empowered and agentic individual (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2008). A major critique of critical education is that it has finite conceptualizations of reason and democracy, ignores subjectivity and ‘neglect[s] the importance of the body, gender, race, sexuality’ (Kellner, 2003, p. 53). Postmodern, poststructural and postcolonial theorizing about agency seeks to address this neglect in particular ways.
POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH: WORKING AND RE/WORKING MODERNISM AND STRUCTURALISM As noted above, the challenge in thinking through theories of postmodernism and poststructuralism is that there are few defining lines, and the two terms are often used synonymously. There is disagreement as to whether poststructuralism is a type of a broader postmodernism, or clearly separate (Sarup, 1997). The confusion is compounded by proponents of the theories, who often reject the very categorizations of postmodern or poststructural. Prominent theorists such as Foucault and others are assigned to both frameworks, with terminology often considered transposable. In this section, we attempt to briefly outline a few distinctions between postmodernism and poststructuralism, despite their overlapping and porous boundaries. Sarup (1997) suggests that ‘[m]odernity can be taken as a summary term, referring to that cluster of social, economic and political systems brought into being in the West from somewhere around the 18th century onwards’ (p. 130). The era of modernity is characterized by a rejection of the laws of the church and an acceptance of the advancement of knowledge through rational, autonomous, critical thought. Reason is understood as possible; Truth is knowable and discoverable. Therefore, reason and truth emanate from the foundational understanding that knowledge is objective and accessible to the individual. Both postmodernism and poststructuralism challenge aspects of modernity and structuralism. Each has often divergent spheres of theoretical influence – postmodernism in the political, cultural, social and aesthetic realms and poststructuralism in psychological, discursive and linguistic domains. It is critical to note that post here, is not after; poststructuralism and postmodernity exist contemporaneously or alongside, structuralism and modernity.
The Implication of Truth, Regimes of Truth and the Loss of the Subject for Teacher Education Postmodernism marks a set of social shifts, industrial/technological changes and disruptions of political processes, ideologies and practices of modernity. Early
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postmodernism in the arts developed through a practice-based interrogation of modernism, and a skepticism of emancipatory grand narratives. Grand narratives produce the preponderance of a single story that is understood as ‘true’ or ‘real’. For example, a grand narrative about education is the idea that if a child works hard enough, they will succeed because schools are perceived as meritocracies. Similarly, another single story is that if teachers instruct well, all students will learn and demonstrate that learning as expected. Grand narratives presume a Truth that is coherent, and as such, are the stories that dominant cultures tell themselves about their beliefs and the practices that confirm these very beliefs and practices. The postmodern moment offers the possibility of questioning nature, Truth and God, and rejecting the singular metanarrative (Lyotard, Bennington, & Massumi, 1984). Returning to the educative examples above, the lens of analysis here might be placed on what ‘hard work’, ‘success’, ‘meritocracy’ and ‘instruct well’ mean and how they function within classrooms and teacher education research. In modernity the parts comprise the whole, while postmodernism suggests that the whole is more than the sum of its parts; it is fragmented and partial. Instead of the ‘certainty of progress … there is now an awareness of contingency and ambivalence’ (Sarup, 1997, p. 130). Lyotard et al. (1984) argued that ‘scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge’ (p. 135). From a postmodern interpretation, knowledge is socially constructed and its construction is understood through the lenses and filters of the knower’s understanding. Knowledge is fragmented, partial, not whole, conscious or rational in the scientific sense. Lyotard and others suggest that action emerges through the very questioning that postmodernism demands. Where modernism might talk about purpose; postmodernism might speak about play. Modernism focuses on the finished piece (the outcome of a process), and postmodernism emphasizes process, performance and participation. Technocratic rationality in education is firmly rooted in modernity, and is evident in the theories of social efficiency and a ‘scientific approach to curriculum making’ (Bobbitt, 1918). Modernity, via Bobbitt, Tyler (1949) and others who have followed, stresses particular static developmental models focused on the outcome of learning (the test), including an explication of skills to be learned, goals and objectives, and concrete steps for learning and assessment. Foucault, who is often discussed within both postmodernism and poststructuralism, questioned the possibility of an autonomous, empowered subject (thinker, learner, speaker) of modernity. Foucault’s own concepts often seem difficult and abstract because his thinking pushes the reader beyond the comfortable single story. A Foucauldian reading of the subject is that it (the subject) is a function of discourse. This means that while statements are connected to a subject, there is no elemental individual who employs reason and independent self-awareness to make sense of the world or to take action. That is, agency and action reflect not merely an individual teacher/educator’s will to act, but also how the individual is produced with and through the discourses they function within, and
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are therefore produced by. There cannot be individual teacher agency if there is no autonomous subject. This freeing of the individual from fixed and unchangeable identities creates space for the questioning of the status quo and an opening up of normative categories. For example, the fixed nature of ‘teacher’ roles and dispositions, then, becomes productively fragmented, allowing ‘teacher’ to move away from the pedagogical and curricular status quo. Agency, here, is not complete, as in moving toward fully realized empowerment; rather it is an agency offering incompleteness as its possibility, terminally intertwined with, and produced through, the discursive systems and relationships within which teachers and teacher educators operate.
Teacher/Educator/Researcher Intellectual Foucault argued that the role of intellectuals, and therefore teacher/educators is ‘to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions’ (Foucault & Lotringer, 1996, p. 462). Similar to interrogations of the single subject, the very foreclosure of an emancipatory Truth opens up opportunities for examining and altering normalizing practices. Each society has its own ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1980), which are the seemingly commonsense understandings of a society, which often go unanalyzed. Regimes of truth are operational mechanisms, authorized by governments and other institutions of power that often re-substantiate that power; in other words, processes and stories that are repeated so often that they become commonsense understandings and the grand narrative. For example, there is a regime of truth that if a student tests high on a quiz or exam they know the material and are ‘good’ students. Through this knowledge, the idea of who is a ‘good’ student is continually produced and reproduced (a good student is one who performs well on an exam). How might be useful for teacher education researchers to view teachers in the complicated relational constellation that invites a different sort of interrogation of educational change. The alternative interrogation cannot be articulated outside of the context of a study, but would necessarily question why and how teachers are asked to take up educational change and how particular normative renderings of achievement, collaboration, reflection, etc., are reproduced. Teacher education faces a cadre of teachers and teacher candidates who are often not of the same class, racial, religious, language or other backgrounds as their students; teacher educators, often with the best intentions, see themselves as altering the thinking of teachers and teacher candidates to better understand or empathize with their students. Foucault would argue that this is not possible or desirable. The work of the intellectual (teacher/educator/researcher) is, according to Foucault (Foucault, 1988), ‘not to shape the political will of others, but to analyse one’s own practice and one’s own field, to scrutinize assumptions, re-evaluate the rules and participate in the formation of a political will, field or
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citizenship’ (pp. 305–306). Accordingly, the work of the teacher/educator is not changing the consciousness of their students, or even ‘what is in their heads’ but ‘altering the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 133). Exploring regimes of truth by teacher educators, teacher candidates and practicing teachers, and those who research these groups, can un-layer how truth and knowledge work in conjunction with power to, for example, make achievement more possible for students with privilege. In teacher education, researcher understanding that regimes of truth exist and how they function can be central to analyzing how the teacher, teacher educator or teacher candidate’s questioning of the neutrality and/or technocratic rationality of contemporary schooling can or might occur.
To be Made through Language Poststructuralism is a movement that grew out of the political struggles of the 1960s, particularly in France. Weedon (1999) notes that the term poststructuralist is ‘like all language, plural. It does not have one fixed meaning’ (p. 19). She suggests that the term is applied to, and developed from, the works of Derrida (1976), Lacan (2002), Kristeva (1980), and Foucault (1977), who are, as she notes, diverse and divergent. Structuralism views the individual as a fully formed, Descartian ideal of the ‘I’, the knowing self, able to think itself into existence. For the self to be knowable requires coherence, or an essential ‘I’. Poststructuralism views the subject, ‘the self’ as partial, situated and fragmentary – unknowable. This subject is unstable and constantly changing, a construction that is politically and culturally based, never able to be fully conscious, and here the ties between postmodern and poststructural notions of the subject are evident. According to Weedon, poststructuralists, even in their disagreement, ‘share certain fundamental assumptions about language, meaning and subjectivity’ (1999, p. 20). Those who work in areas deemed poststructural are often interested in issues such as investigations of subjectivity and the body, identity and normativity, and the power of language. Poststructuralism wrestles with the notion of the text, the stability of language and subjectivity. What is key here is how language is thought to be constructed and understood. Linguist Saussure ([1916] 1974) formulated an understanding of language as being understandable as signs. Signs, he said, were made up of the signifier and the signified. To say ‘teacher’ has no inherent meaning. We only understand what teacher is, and has come to be understood as, through the processes of signification. That is, when one says the word ‘teacher’ (the form the sign takes), there is an image or symbol of a teacher in one’s mind. Through this, and the repetition of teacher as being understood similarly, the concept of teacher becomes recognizable as teacher (becomes signified). This conceptualization aids in questioning how a teacher came to be understood as [good] teacher; and how the teacher is constructed by and through language. In education, for example,
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poststructural theorists are most interested in the ways that ‘teacher’ becomes or is understood as a cohesive known subject. The knowing of what a teacher is or should be through signification includes who is a teacher, how a teacher is ‘made’, how a ‘good’ teacher is constructed, etc. To think of ‘teacher’ as a thing made (Ellsworth, 2004) rather than a static and knowable identity asks researchers of teachers to look beyond the individual action, or even the will to act, to the process of teacher making.
Return to the Subject Butler (1992) argues that the desire to question the subject is not the same as dismissing the subject altogether; rather, exploring how a subject is constructed historically and discursively suggests the subject is active. That is, the act of deconstruction signals a continuing use of dominant terms and concepts, but means ‘to repeat them subversively, and to displace them in the contexts in which they have been deployed as instruments of oppressive power’ (p. 17). It is in this language that claims of poststructuralism as abstraction can be heard. Butler, and others placed under the poststructuralist umbrella must turn language inside out in order that meanings might be questioned and reconceived, or in Butler’s language ‘used subversively’. If language is left as it is normally understood, the normative single story is too easily left in place. Through ongoing recomposition and interrogation of how subjects are ‘produced time and again’, there comes an agentic ‘permanent possibility of a certain resignifying process, one which gets detoured and stalled through other mechanisms of power, but which is power’s own possibility of being reworked’ (p. 13). Through this investigation and resignification, Butler points the way for teacher education classroom discussions and teacher educator researcher analyses of identity, politics, subjectivity and social change, where one is not discarding the potential for change because one calls into question the stability of normative categories. Language, then, does not reflect truth; rather it reflects an already given social reality (Weedon, 1987, p. 22). Subjectivity is produced in a range of discursive practices, including economic, socio-political, and cultural; language constructs an individual’s subjectivity in ways that are socially specific. Subjectivity, then, is a momentary, partial and situated awareness of self in relation to others. Through an understanding of subjectivity as neither unitary nor fixed, the subject can become a site of disruption and struggle (Butler, 1993), and opens space for challenging structures, normativities and the taken-for-granted conditions. If the subject is fluid, then it is more difficult for educational institutions to attach student or family behaviors to racial constructs, for example. While there are certainly material realities to being racialized in North America, the idea that schools, researchers or teacher education programs can speak of Black youth or Indigenous communities as having particular immutable characteristics for which schools can offer singular solutions becomes disputable. Postmodern and
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poststructural frameworks theorize an expansive view of educative spaces where teachers and teaching are analyzed beyond totalizing and fixed identities such as ‘at-risk’, or as stereotypical representations of racialization. Similarly, poststructuralism can also disrupt the binary of good child, or innocent child and the misbehaving, or non-normative child. If identities are understood as fluid and a production of the prevailing normative discourses, then educators may begin to see a child or youth as complex and emergent – not as an individual per se but as complex and ever-changing, agentic within the discursive systems they occupy (Green & Reid, 2008). For the researcher, the impossibility of solidifying a particular group, be it teacher, racial group, etc., demands that the research generate and analyze data through a historicized lens that can account for the ways subjectivities are constructed, through which a complicated subject emerges that resists a reduction to a single explanation of action or individual will.
Who is Regulating Whom? Foucault (2007) examines how power is employed in the modern State, understood through the concept of governmentality, which is a key way to think about agency. Here ‘agency is never freedom from discursive constitution of self but the capacity to recognise that constitution and to resist, subvert and change the discourses themselves through which one is being constituted’ (Davies, 1991, p. 51). Understood thusly and as largely discussed above, teacher educators and researchers can read how discourse and agency come together, recognize the constructed nature of language, and analyze and discuss how these understandings of language encourage or hinder change. However, agency is also bound up in power and knowledge, and the manner in which individuals can be both agentic and complicit; this is where governmentality is a useful analytical frame. Government is, according to Foucault, not external but rather how people govern themselves in specific ways and within particular ways of thinking. Power, and institutional power in particular, are not mechanisms external to the individual but those that become internalized as a form of self-regulation. Here notions of governmentality and regimes of truth come together. In this understanding of power, the strength of governmental and institutional rule is not its direct control over its citizens or subjects’ actions, but in the creation of a reality through regimes of truth that demonstrate and reinforce how particular ways of being or acting are the ways of being or acting. For example, pre-service and in-service teachers are both productions of schooling systems of which they have chosen to be a part. There are multiple understandings of the ‘proper’ ways of educating and ways of becoming as an educator; thus, there are proper ways of educating pre- and in-service teachers. Often these include concepts such as professionalism, neutrality, standards, knowledge certainty and control of classroom spaces. Schools are organized in such a way as to shore up specific behaviors – what Foucault would call regulation and control. Educators most often govern
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themselves and individuals are disciplined by these internalized regimes of truth or dominant discourses and, in turn, compel others to do the same. Yet, individuals often do not recognize how they are implicated in the very behaviors and actions that limit their own and others’ agency. Certainly teacher education researchers are in a position to analyze the way school settings and teacher education programs reward those who aid in reinforcing the status quo, because they are often enough situated outside the reward system in order to have a different kind of analytical lens. For example, in a study exploring teacher identity and teacher becoming, Janzen (2015) highlights how one new teacher talks about the regulation and structure imposed on her by what she calls ‘curriculum’. This new teacher feels burdened by what she sees as the external pressure of experienced teacher colleagues and ensuring that ‘the curriculum’ content is covered. She says ‘[these pressures] confine how much creativity and how much in different directions you can actually go in’. A colleague responds ‘Free yourself, Sister! Let that burden pass you by’ (p. 120). Here, the expression ‘free yourself’ highlights the construction of agency as being individually constituted and controlled. There is both an assumption of the individual’s capacity for freedom, alongside the knowledge that, as Janzen notes, freedom is impossible because action in schools, by teachers, is always regulated. Janzen underlines the conflicts between teacher desire and intent and the pressures they feel to conform to curriculum standards and accountability measures. In dominant understandings of rational agency, teachers ought to be able to resist pedagogical mandates they believe are unsound. However, educators feel constrained to participate or suffer the consequences if they do not. As ‘real’ teachers they view themselves as knowing more and better than those who impose the exams, but the power embedded through systems induces actions that in the end buttress accountability and government desires. This analysis offers teacher educators and teachers in training a rudimentary glimpse into how a regime of truth – agency is driven through individual choice and action – fails in the face of school-based disciplinary pressures. Janzen, through a poststructural analytical construct, is able to reveal how an individual teacher’s will to act is constrained by the teacher’s own self-regulation and fear of surveillance and by educational regulation. The possibility of agency, in this example, prospers in the relational; that is, in the growing awareness of the teacher and her colleagues’ exhortations. Thinking through these concepts and discerning dominant knowledge may encourage teacher educators and researchers to explore the pressures of neoliberalism in an increasingly overburdened system. Returning to Foucault’s call for teacher/intellectuals to engage in questioning their own fields, governmentality, subjectivity and change through an employment of subjectivities offer another avenue to uncover regimes of truth embedded in status quo understandings of schools, currently understood as change occurs when individual teachers and administrators will it.
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MOVING THE POSTS OUTSIDE THE NORTH AND WEST The ‘contested terrain’ (Dimitriadis & McCarthy, 2001, p. 6) of postcolonial theory renders a singular definition necessarily impossible. Even the ‘post’ in postcolonial has a different meaning and indicates dissimilar epistemological commitments for scholars in the field (Crossley & Tikly, 2004). For some scholars ‘post’ is understood as the end result of the colonial project and what comes in its aftermath, while other approaches are invested in examining forms of evolving oppressions which manifest in the present (Bhabha, 1983). Postcolonial scholars analyze the unequal power relations inherent in the normalization of Western knowledges, and offer major critiques of discourses which suggest ‘non-Western civilizational deficits’ (Shirazi, 2011, p. 279). Postcolonial theorists thus highlight how notions of non-Western inferiority solidify social and political positionings and reify the centrality and power of the West, even as the West is understood as diverse and unstable. Notably, Edward Said’s (1978) groundbreaking work points to the many ways that knowledge about the people, art, geography and cultures of formerly colonized nations has been continually represented through the gaze of the ‘Occidental’ West to the detriment of the ‘Oriental’ other. As Gandhi (1989) reiterates, ‘postcoloniality effectively reveals the story of an ambivalent and symbiotic relationship between coloniser and colonized’ (p. 11), and, according to Kanu (2006), postcoloniality is: ‘a framework for the study and analysis of the power relations that inscribe race, ethnicity, and cultural production and relations, of which education and schooling … are components’ (p. 7). Kanu is not relying on a Foucauldian understanding of power; rather she is utilizing the concept of hegemony which suggests the application of a Gramscian framework of capital (Williams, 1977). Yet, some researchers suggest that postcolonial theory is, at its foundations, a ‘poststructuralist and cultural perspective, linking imperialism and agency to discourse and the politics of representation’ (Kapoor, 2002, pp. 647–648), while others argue the appropriate lexicon is anticolonial (Dei & Doyle-Wood, 2006; Patel, 2014). The wide variety of conceptualizations of postcoloniality underline the varied epistemological underpinnings of those who are organized under a postcolonial framing which is far more multifaceted than can be addressed in these few pages. Hence, we follow Coloma’s (2009a) suggestion that although ‘postcolonial’ is ‘fraught with multiple and competing definitions it is mobilized here to attend to the discourses, structures, and relations of colonialism, neocolonialism, and anticolonialism in various temporal contexts within and across the geographies of metropoles and peripheries’ (p. 9). Amongst the most utilized postcolonial theorists (after Said) is Gayatri Spivak; in this chapter, we focus on her theorizing of the subaltern and strategic essentialism (discussed below). Spivak (1988) questions and then discards the possibility
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that the subaltern can speak, because the very construction of the subaltern requires elitist renderings and male Western voices to speak her name and/or take her place. This subaltern, who might be teacher or student, is never the subject of their own history or, as Spivak argues, never has the possibility of directing their emancipation. Drawing upon postmodernism, Spivak is skeptical of empowerment; yet she advocates for strategic essentialism as a method for oppressed, particularly non-Western peoples, to make political demands through the provisional utilization of universalized political identities around which political power can coalesce. While wishing to reject an essentialized identity construct, Spivak and Harasym (1990) argue that ‘strategically we cannot’ (p. 11). Here, she is suggesting that the essentialized identity is fundamentally important to the political project and therefore, the only avenue to agency. According to strategic essentialism, then, teachers may coalesce as ‘teacher’ or even, ‘marginalized teacher’ because it is politically important. This political essentialism relies on the idea that teacher/educators’ will to act is the first step in taking action and making change – a postcolonial agency. Critiques of strategic essentialism imply that marginalized identities can be taken up monolithically and then discarded when decided. Returning to Butler’s resignification, strategic essentialism would seem to reify the very subject categories that postcolonial scholars ultimately want to dismantle. Subedi and Daza (2008) suggest that postcolonial theory is applicable to education in three ways. First, it is interested in a larger project of decolonizing knowledge and the production of knowledge within a broad geographical field including local/global interrelationships. Secondly, it uncovers the limitations of universal applications of history, experience and difference in educative realms; and lastly, postcolonial theory requires a questioning of the pervasive discourses of nationalism in education. By bringing to light the binary constructions of the colonial citizen – subject, postcolonial theory and education reveal how imperialism, national identity and citizenship are intertwined with prevailing frameworks of race, sexuality, gender identity, etc. To incorporate postcolonial theories into teacher education and teacher education research demands an explicit acknowledgment of the impacts of colonialism and racism as a starting point. Significantly, teacher educators who use various iterations of postcolonial theory exhibit ‘a tolerance for multiplicities and ambiguities, a rejection of simplistic ways of viewing the world that are devoid of complexity’ (Viruru, 2005, p. 141). Postcolonial educators engage with the discourses of knowledge production and power, revealing the relations of domination between colonizer and colonized. Contesting forms of domination which have various deleterious effects on the colonial ‘other’ is key to many postcolonial teacher education initiatives notwithstanding their diverse approaches. What is of central importance is challenging Eurocentric epistemologies that center on the liberal notions of simply making room for difference, or empowering the ‘other’ (Dimitriadis, 2006).
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Postcolonial scholars, such as Andreotti (2011), deem postcolonial work ‘actionable’ because agency is required on the part of teacher/educators to disrupt, shift and challenge dominant forms of knowing inscribed upon the colonial subject in Western discourses, and similarly ask researchers to scrutinize how ways of teachers’ ‘knowing’ impact teaching and teacher education. Educator action is a prerequisite to directly interrogate discourses that uphold colonial powers’ ability to maintain the production of knowledge by ‘estranging, contaminating or misreading the master discourse’ (Kapoor, 2002 p. 8). Yet, the teacher/education systems also serve as major societal institutions complicit in the reiteration of the knowledge production of the colonial encounter; the ‘neo-colonial and imperialistic practices of curriculum and pedagogy’ (Kim & Cho, 2014, p. 26) are intimately connected to the knowledge production of the colonial ‘other’, and the global South. According to postcolonial scholars in education, grappling with these practices becomes critical if teacher/educators desire to upend the normative humanist/Eurocentric discourses of objectivity, colorblindness and equality. Agency, then, takes on a definitive social justice angle to address ‘new forms of colonialism’ (Heer, 2015, p. 359), and classrooms become the venues for a continued struggle which ‘influences how learners mediate and negotiate phenomena such as curriculum, communication patterns, [and] instructional approaches … in the classroom’ (Kanu, 2005, p. 469). Teacher educators who introduce postcolonial theories actively encourage teachers to consider their own complicities, contradictions and negotiations with colonization and ‘to trace the possible discursive origins and implications of assumptions, as a product of ideological discourses which constitute both the text and the subjectivity of the interpreter’ (Andreotti, 2011, p. 88). Teachers and researchers are thus deeply implicated in understanding agency as being imbued in reflexivity and other postcolonial strategies, discourses and practices. A pedagogical move in the direction of ‘an ethical responsibility towards the other’ (Spivak, in Andreotti, 2011, p. 177) may open spaces for change and responds to a call to support learners in ‘the stories they tell, and the forces they exercise in a nonjudgmental environment’ (pp. 180–181). Here, the teacher educator’s role is to create pedagogical possibilities ‘without the colonial spaces of judgment’ (p. 180), and for researchers to study these alternate pedagogies and think with postcolonial theories. Yet, this not straightforward. Middleton (2005) argues that ‘from childhood our minds, bodies, and emotions have been “inscribed” with the colonial legacy in the texts we read, the institutions we “inhabit,” and the regimes of surveillance that monitor, regulate, classify, discipline, punish, and reward’ (p. 512). Tuck and Yang (2012) connect the postcolonial project and the decolonizing project and caution that while decolonization is the language used by many postcolonial scholars, addressing coloniality is not the same as engaging settler-colonialism. The erasure of Indigeneity ‘recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future’ (p. 3). Complicity often denotes individual action and decisionmaking, but these
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theorists emphasize how shifting individual understandings are formed through on-going colonial effects.
BUILDING BRIDGES AND MOVING FORWARD Agency, in the postmodern, postcolonial and poststructural, is never a binary of action/inaction, nor is action understood as subject solely to individual desires. Depending upon which theoretical framing is employed, teacher/educators’ agentic moves are subject to and function within power/knowledge, colonialism, racism and discursive systems. Agency, here, is not easily conceptualized or applied in teacher education or in teacher education research. The messiness and nonlinearity of this agency is its strength, requiring complexity and multiple layers and lenses. For postcolonial scholars, agency is closest to teacher action and individual will to change; however, at its root teacher action is never only individual. Agency is action but action that is fundamentally relational and contextualized within the colonizer and the colonized. Governmentality demonstrates that teacher action occurs within systems that encourage and reward self-regulation and peer discipline. ‘Posts’ theorizing causes agency as a concept to be understood as change at the confluence of a non-autonomous individual teacher, the exposure of commonsense and normative understandings, and systemic oppressions, constraints and incentives. Individual will to act understood as agency assumes that will functions in a vacuum which is dehistoricized and outside the systemic. While there is a desire to understand agency as a thing to be fostered, each of these framings demonstrate the larger milieu in which teachers, teacher educators and teacher education researchers function. Each of the frameworks explored here, often in concert with others, offers readings of the gaps between what is learned in educational settings, teacher’s desire and will, the pull of hegemony, grand narratives, governmentality and discursive productions. We invite teacher education researchers to analyze the gaps within the projects they undertake. We end with Phelan and Sumsion’s (2008) call to learn ‘to perceive what is not there to be perceived … and how might we begin to perceive it in its absence?’ (p. 1), and wonder what perceiving an absence might introduce into teacher education, teacher education research and education itself.
REFERENCES Andreotti, V. (2011). Actionable postcolonial theory in education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bhabha, H.K. (1983). The other question … Homi Bhabha reconsiders the stereotype and colonial discourse. Screen, 24 (November–December), 18–36. Bobbitt, F. (1918). The curriculum. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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Britzman, D.P. (2007). Teacher education as uneven development: Toward a psychology of uncertainty. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 10(1), 1–12. Buchanan, R. (2015). Teacher identity and agency in an era of accountability. Teachers and Teaching, 21(6), 700–719. Butler, J. (1992). Contingent foundations. In J. Butler & J.W. Scott (Eds), Feminists theorize the political (pp. 3–21). New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. New York: Routledge. Coloma, R.S. (2009a). Palimpsest histories and catachrestic interventions. In R.S. Coloma (Ed.), Postcolonial challenges in education (pp. 3–22). New York: Peter Lang. Coloma, R.S. (Ed.). (2009b). Postcolonial challenges in education. New York: Peter Lang. Coloma, R.S., Means, A., & Kim, A. (2009). Palimpsest histories and catachrestic interventions. Counterpoints, 369, 3–22. Crossley, M., & Tikly, L. (2004). Postcolonial perspectives and comparative and international research in education: A critical introduction. Comparative Education, 40(2), 147–156. Darder, A., Baltodano, M.P., & Torres, R.D. (Eds.). (2008). The critical pedagogy reader (2nd edn). New York: Routledge. Davies, B. (1991). The concept of agency: A feminist poststructuralist analysis. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 30, 42–53. Daza, S.L. (2013). Reading texts, subtexts, and contexts: Effects of (post)colonial legacies in/on curricular texts in different contexts. Qualitative Research in Education, 2(3), 206–212. Dei, G., & Doyle-Wood, S. (2006). Is we who haffi ride di staam: Critical knowledge/multiple knowings – possibilities, challenges, and resistance in curriculum/cultural contexts. In Y. Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial imaginations (pp. 151–180). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G.C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Dimitriadis, G. (2006). On the production of expert knowledge: Revisiting Edward Said’s work on the intellectual. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 27(3), 369–382. Dimitriadis, G., & McCarthy, C. (2001). Reading and teaching the postcolonial: From Baldwin to Basquiat and beyond. New York: Teachers College Press. Ellsworth, E. (1997). Teaching positions: Difference, pedagogy and the power of address. New York: Teachers College Press. Ellsworth, E. (2004). Places of learning: Media, architecture, pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: A. Lane. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1988). ‘The concern for truth’. In L.D. Kritzman (Ed.), Politics, philopsophy, culture: Interviews and other writings, 1977–1984. New York: Routledge Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the collège de France 1977–1978 Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M., & Lotringer, S. (1996). Foucault, live: Collected interviews, 1961–1984 (L. Hochroth & J. Johnston, Trans.). New York: Semiotex(e). Fox, N.J. (2014). Poststructuralism and postmodernism. The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of health, illness, behavior, and society (pp. 1855–1860). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Gandhi, L. (1989). Postcolonial theory: A critical introduction. New York: Columbia University Press. Green, B., & Reid, J. (2008). Method(s) in our madness? Poststructuralism, pedagogy and teacher education. In A. Phelan & J. Sumsion (Eds), Critical readings in teacher education: Provoking absences (pp. 17–31). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Heer, K. (2015). I thought you were one of us: Triumphs and tragedies when teaching your own. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 37(4), 359–372.
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Janzen, M.D. (2015). ‘Free yourself, sister!’ Teacher identity, subjection, and the psyche. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 43(2), 117–127. Kanu, Y. (2005). Tensions and dilemmas of cross-cultural transfer of knowledge: Post-structural/postcolonial reflections on an innovative teacher education in Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Development, 25(5), 493–513. Kanu, Y. (2006). Introduction. In Y. Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial imaginations (pp. 1–32). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Kapoor, I. (2002). Capitalism, culture, agency: Dependency versus postcolonial theory. Third World Quarterly, 23(4), 647–664. Kellner, D. (2003). Toward a critical theory of education. Democracy & Nature, 9(1), 51–64. Kim, J., & Cho, Y. (2014). Re-imagining multicultural education: Postcolonial approach. SNU Journal of Education Research, 23, 25–48. Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art. New York: Columbia University Press. Lacan, J. (2002). Ecrits: A selection (B. Fink, Trans.). New York: Norton and Company. Lyotard, J.F., Bennington, G., & Massumi, B. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Middleton, S. (2005). Pedagogy and post-coloniality: Teaching ‘education’ online. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(4), 511–525. Patel, L. (2014). Countering coloniality in educational research: From ownership to answerability. Educational Studies, 50(4), 357–377. Phelan, A., & Sumsion, J. (2008). Introduction: Lines of articulation and lines of flight in teacher education. In A. Phelan & J. Sumsion (Eds), Critical readings in teacher education: Provoking absences (pp. 1–16). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Priestley, M., Edwards, R., Priestley, A., & Miller, K. (2012). Teacher agency in curriculum making: Agents of change and spaces for maneuver. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 191–214. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Routledge. Sarup, M. (1997). An introductory guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Saussure, F.D. ([1916] 1974). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.). London: Fontana/Collins. Shirazi, R. (2011). When projects of ‘empowerment’ don’t liberate: Locating agency in a ‘postcolonial’ peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 277–294. doi: 10.1080/17400201.2011.621370 Sloan, K. (2006). Teacher identity and agency in school worlds: Beyond the all-good/all-bad discourse on accountability-explicit curriculum policies. Curriculum Inquiry, 36(2), 119–152. Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Mespm & L. Grossberg (Eds), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. London: Macmillan. Spivak, G.C., & Harasym, S. (1990). The post-colonial critic. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. Subedi, B., & Daza, S.L. (2008). The possibilities of postcolonial praxis in education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(1), 1–10. Tuck, E., & Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Viruru, R. (2005). Postcolonial theory and the practice of teacher education. In S. Ryan & S.J. Grieshaber (Eds), Practical transformations and transformational practices (pp. 139–160). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Weedon, C. (1999). Feminism, theory and the politics of difference. Oxford, UK: Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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SECTION IV
Learning Moral and Ethical Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education R o b e r t V. B u l l o u g h , J r
This section presents six lenses for thinking about the moral and ethical dimensions of teacher education. Sanger’s chapter (Chapter 19) helpfully frames the entire section by focusing on the need to determine what educators believe about the ‘moral work of teaching’ and then to create educational conditions that will ‘allow’, or enable, teachers and students to ‘meaningfully realize which beliefs are worth adopting, and which need modification or rejection’. Sanger concludes that teaching is generally believed to be a ‘morally significant endeavor’ but there is a ‘lack of clarity’ about the entire domain. More specifically, teachers ‘typically do not develop a sophisticated professional knowledge base, skills, or vocabulary related to the [moral work of teaching] in their teacher education programs’. These issues run across the chapters as does the need for teachers and teacher educators to develop and to be able to articulate a clear moral position. Seeking to ‘advance research’ to achieve greater ‘convergence’ of findings, Sanger argues for creation of a common language and more large-scale studies ‘suitable for use in a broad range of contexts over time’, that are supported by ‘shared databases … that can be used to track and compare teacher beliefs across place and time’.
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Developed from their own work in teacher education and illustrated by a case, Cook-Sather and Baker-Doyle (Chapter 20) present a three-part framework for developing an ‘explicitly moral stance on teaching [that] is grounded in principles of democratic participation and equity and nurtures the development of responsible citizens’. The framework involves the formation of ‘liminal spaces’ that enable the practice of democracy, collective inquiry, and the ‘co-construction of work’ to enrich the ‘moral imagination’. Like Boylan (Chapter 21), these authors note how listening and not just speaking is central to the practice of democracy. Noting that ethical issues arise when differing values and world views clash and produce ‘contradictions’, Boylan calls for a ‘critical teacher education’, one that supports ‘encounters’ across differences and involves the interrogation of ‘prevailing norms, ideologies, discourses and structures’. The aim is the disruption of ‘normativity’ in pursuit of greater social justice. Challenging ‘world views’ and their supporting epistemologies, Boylan suggests, is emotionally charged work and, roughly similar to Cook-Sather and Baker-Doyle’s description of ‘liminal spaces’, requires development of teaching spaces that are safe yet dialectically charged. Suggesting that ‘within teacher education moral education appears to be reactive and unplanned’ and hoping for more powerful engagement with moral and ethical issues, Gasser and Althof (Chapter 22) argue against separate classes and for the integration of moral education across programs. To this end they offer 10 ‘competence profiles’, representing sets of ‘competencies’ to focus teacher education in the moral domain. Moreover, they hold that measurable standards of moral teaching practice need to be created to enable ‘conclusions about the actual quality of moral teaching practice’ and suggest the means for achieving their vision, a view that finds support in Sanger’s desire for large and shared databases. Donning a social constructivist lens, Thornberg (Chapter 23) concludes: ‘Moral functioning is … a mediated action, and thus includes the moral agent and the moral mediational means, i.e., the cultural tools … (words, language, and forms of discourse) the agent employs in responding to the moral problem, conflict or dilemma’. Accordingly, ‘morals … are not universal truths independent of humans and their societies, but are considered as moral languages that have emerged in specific sociocultural contexts’. Hence, ‘morality [is] a “discursively mediated practice or activity that facilitates human interaction in community” [Tappan, 2006, p. 367]’. Drawing on Vygotsky, Thornberg explores the implications for moral functioning of three zones of development: the ‘zone of proximal development’, ‘the zone of collaborative development’, which, supporting dialogue, ‘refers to a process of collaborative problem-solving of real-life moral dilemmas’, and, finally, a ‘zone of proximal teacher development’. Across the zones, language is a problem; there is need for a ‘professional meta-language … [for] moral development and moral education’. Finally, exploring the ethical implications of social constructivism, Thornberg warns of the dangers of ‘simply and uncritically adopting relativism’, arguing for
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a ‘qualified’ over a ‘vulgar relativism’, a position that supports dialogue, pluralism, fallibilism, and the inevitability of changing practices over time. Focused on virtue ethics and human flourishing (Eudaimonia), like the other section authors, Cooke (Chapter 24) reminds us that teaching is a peculiar kind of relationship that brings with it special moral responsibilities, including to m odel morality. Her example is compelling: ‘If a selfish, lazy, arrogant person can teach algebra well, what right does society have to comment on [the teacher’s] personal dispositions? The answer lies within the question: a selfish, lazy or arrogant person might be able to impart subject knowledge, but it is unlikely they could motivate, inspire, and encourage the learner …’. Accordingly, virtue ethics demand more of teacher education than do professional ethics. With professional ethics, ‘teacher education should aim to encourage novice teachers to recognize, understand and consider ethical matters, but not necessarily to develop their own character’. Virtue ethics concerns character. Thinking about future research, the authors locate several significant issues, not the least being that so little is known about the domain. The authors are in agreement: educators need help learning how to think and talk about ethical and moral matters in teaching, including their beliefs and world-views. Noting how moral issues are ever present in teaching, such talk needs to cut across programs and become a common experience. Cook-Sather and Baker-Doyle’s concern with listening as well as finding voice resonates, as Dodson (2014) argues: ‘The [greater] problem is not one of speaking truth to power, but of getting the powerful to listen’ (p. 92). Moral talk needs to be abundant, critical, dialogical, but also situated in safe spaces. Thornberg’s discussion of the problem of relativism in social constructivism is well taken. Looking across the chapters for what is both present and absent, several thoughts come to mind. As Thornberg argues, the dangers of vulgar relativism get in the way of creating the moral atmosphere needed to support dialogue. Recent research in evolutionary psychology seems helpful here. As Hauser (2006) suggests: ‘all humans have a moral faculty’ (p. 36), an ‘innate capacity that allows each child to build a specific moral grammar’ (p. 49). There is, then, a disposition toward moral behavior awaiting development. The desire for large and shared data sets and for identification of moral competencies is concerning. Big data sets may unleash assessor deontological aspirations in support of algorithmic forms of best ethical practice, thereby reducing morality to a set of measurable skills (Bullough, 2014a). The ‘Global Doing Democracy Research Project’ may offer an alternative (Zyngier, 2013). Generation of standards is less an empirical matter, as is often suggested, than a matter of social philosophy (Bode, 1937), of determining how people want, ought, and need to live together. Hence, as Thornberg highlights, ‘morality [is] a “discursively mediated practice or activity that facilitates human interaction in community” [Tappan, 2006, p. 367]’. To stay vibrant, every community must keep critically but sympathetically discussing their forms of life. Virtue ethics raises questions about program aims. Recently, for example, interest in the nature
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of wisdom has grown (Hall, 2010), although seldom does wisdom find a place in discussions of teaching or learning. It should. As Aristotle argued, ‘it is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good’ (Nicomachean Ethics, book 6, chapter 12). Along a parallel line: despite its growing influence (Noddings, 1984), no mention is made of care ethics, often seen as a form of virtue ethics. Both virtue and care ethics are concerned with character, but there are differences: ‘Both are concerned with moral relations [but] care theory puts greater emphasis on the relation, virtue theory on the moral agent’ (Noddings, 2010, pp. 125–126). Lastly, given the dominance of neoliberalism worldwide, there is a growing body of important research related to the difficulty of making wise choices that has farreaching implications for teaching and learning, what used to be called matters of ‘will’, often understood as a virtue (see Ainslie, 2001). The democratic consequentialism of the modern pragmatists is missing. Bode (1937), a close friend of Dewey’s, argued that schools represent an ‘artificial community’ (p. 82) wherein young people participate in and learn about a particular way of life, a Weltanschauung, whatever that way of life might be. The task, as Dewey (1916) argued, is to extend and deepen the range of common interests among people and to forge generous and empathetic social sensibilities out of humans’ innate moral capacity. As is evident in the chapters, much of this work involves enlivening the moral imagination (see Johnson, 1993), the ability to recognize moral issues, and to see ourselves when facing others, as Levinas (1994) suggested, as being in ‘an ethical relation’ (p. 93). Justice, after all, is a form of shared vulnerability. As noted, multiple moral languages and methods are needed to support and sustain such engagement. Education for everyone (Goodlad et al., 2004) and the Agenda for Education in a Democracy come to mind, as does Moral Sphere Theory, both of which offer rich and imaginative metaphors for shaping thought and focusing critique (Bullough, 2014b; Kane, 2010). There is an urgency to this work. In market-driven societies where schooling for jobs and working to consume dominates discussion, where Homo economicus encases human aspirations and defines the good, the being of humans shrinks into selfishness and becomes morally small, walled in. As Bauman (2008) states, ‘the consumer is an enemy of the citizen’ (p. 190). In contrast, the moral charge of education and of teacher education speaks to the need for more generous and socially active forms of citizenship, ones that reach beyond tolerance as an aim and toward the creation of conditions that support deep engagement with otherness and a genuine caring for difference, as each of the chapter authors suggest.
REFERENCES Ainslie, G. (2001). Breakdown of will. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bauman, Z. (2008). Does ethics have a chance in a world of consumers? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Bode, B.H. (1937). Democracy as a way of life. New York: Macmillan. Bullough R.V. Jr (2014a). Toward reconstructing the narrative of teacher education: A rhetorical analysis of preparing teachers. The Journal of Teacher Education, 65(3), 251–263. Bullough R.V. Jr (2014b). The way of openness: Moral Sphere theory, education, ethics, and classroom management. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 20(3), 251–263. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan. Dodson, A. (2014). Listening for democracy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Goodlad, J.I., Mantle-Bromley, C., & Goodlad, S.J. (2004). Education for everyone. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Hall, S.S. (2010). Wisdom: From philosophy to neuroscience. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hallie, P. (1994). Lest innocent blood be shed. New York: Harper Perennial. Hauser, M.D. (2006). Moral minds. New York: Harper Perennial. Johnson, M. (1993). Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kane, R. (2010). Ethics and the quest for wisdom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Levinas, E. (1994). Outside the subject. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Noddings, N. (2010). The maternal factor: Two paths to morality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Tappan, M.B. (2006). Mediated moralities: Sociocultural approaches to moral development. In M. Killen & J.G. Smetana (Eds), Handbook of moral development (pp. 351–373). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zyngier, D. (2013). Democracy will not fall from the sky. World Studies in Education, 14(2), 5–23.
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19 Teacher Beliefs and the Moral Work of Teaching in Teacher Education Matthew N. Sanger
INTRODUCTION In this chapter I review the literature on the nature and significance of teacher knowledge and beliefs, and their role in teacher education. Having laid that foundation, I then examine the literature on teacher beliefs in preparing teachers for, and supporting them in, the moral work of teaching (henceforth ‘MWT’; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2011). I close with a look toward future needs and opportunities to advance research on MWT in the context of teacher education through working with teacher beliefs. Throughout, I will address research that includes teachers and/or preservice teacher education students (i.e. candidates), but I take the main points to generally apply to both groups.
CONCEPTIONS OF TEACHER BELIEFS AND KNOWLEDGE AND WHY THEY MATTER For some, it may seem obvious that what a teacher believes about herself and her students, the content of the curriculum, and/or the relative value of the courses of action she might take in her classroom, will (somehow) influence what she does, the motivation and manner in which her actions are carried out, as well as the quality of her experience in doing so and its role in future practice. But as intuitively appealing as these ideas may be, just what influences what, and how
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that influence occurs, have been the subject of extensive debate dating back at least to the mid-20th century (see Ashton, 2014). While this section cannot fully map out, let alone settle, all the relevant issues of language, theory, evidence, and practice related to teacher knowledge and beliefs, it would be well to review a few fundamental elements of the history of research in this domain, as they will prove quite relevant to the examination of literature on the MWT below. To begin, my assignment was to address ‘teacher knowledge and beliefs’ in this chapter, which raises a number of questions, including just what these two constructs are, how they are related, and what might distinguish one from the other. Taking the latter first, belief has long been viewed as a ‘messy construct’ (Fives & Buehl, 2012; Pajares, 1992). This is perhaps necessarily so, given the complexity of human psychology and the variety of things that might reasonably be labeled a belief, or that might influence or be influenced by beliefs. Thus it should come as no surprise that the academic literature contains an extensive range of commonly overlapping constructs that researchers have tried to link to, equate with, or distinguish from beliefs, including: attitudes, understandings, conceptions, values, commitments, judgments, etc. (Pajares, 1992). But despite the complexities of what beliefs might be and what we should call them, major reviews of the research in this domain offer some common themes (see Fives & Buehl, 2012; Kagan, 1992; Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992; Richardson, 1996; Rokeach, 1968). First and most fundamentally, beliefs appear to involve some cognitive content (which implies they are intentional or are about something). In addition, many descriptions offered by psychologists include some sort of affective loading toward that cognitive content, described as some sort of approval, endorsement, or commitment – conscious or otherwise. In turn, affect is commonly linked to motivation and possible action (see Pintrich, 1990). But while, and perhaps because, beliefs are linked in complex ways to action, they may not be neatly accounted for in what people actually do (Buehl & Beck, 2014; Fives & Buehl, 2012). Summarizing the extant literature, Fives & Buehl (2012) suggest that there are ‘three functions that beliefs serve related to action: as (a) filters for interpretation, (b) frames for defining problems, and (c) guides or standards for action’ (p. 478). Therefore, while a number of studies provide evidence of gaps between belief and action, it makes some sense that those gaps (or complex links) exist. Further, psychologists often discuss how beliefs are not held in isolation, but form networks or systems (Rokeach, 1968). Thus, we might view any belief as existing in a psychological ecosystem, related in varying ways to other beliefs or belief networks. What’s more, some beliefs appear to be more ‘central’ than others, having been formed through longer periods of significant life experience, and having greater influence on other beliefs, thought, and action, as well as being more resistant to change (Rokeach, 1968). Similarly, many commentators note that beliefs can vary in the degree to which a person holding them might actually have (accurate, clear) access to their content, making beliefs more or less explicit or tacit, conscious or unconsciously held (Fives & Buehl, 2012). All
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of the above sets up the possibility, emphasized by Green (1971), that while any given belief may be related to a number of others, we seem capable of holding contrary beliefs at the same time, suggesting some beliefs remain isolated from some others. A similar point is made by Rokeach (1968), who suggests that a belief system contains representations of beliefs ‘in some organized psychological but not necessarily logical form’ (p. 2). Beliefs are also widely recognized as being contextual in their activation or influence (Fives & Buehl, 2012), including their influence in mediating each other’s effects on motivation and action. Further adding to their complexity are their varying levels of specificity, whereby one might hold a general belief about, say, student grouping, but hold beliefs about specific groupings that are not entirely consistent with one’s more general belief. Given the above, it is understandable that the conduct and reporting of research on beliefs is fraught with challenges (see Hoffman & Seidel, 2014; Pajares, 1992; Skott, 2014). In an early attempt to identify those challenges, and ‘clean up’ the messy construct of beliefs, Pajares (1992) suggested that: ‘when specific beliefs are carefully operationalized, appropriate methodology chosen, and design thoughtfully enacted, their study becomes viable and rewarding’ (p. 308). Complementing this point, he continued by claiming that: ‘A community of scholars engaged in the research of common areas with common themes … has a responsibility to communicate ideas and results as clearly as possible using common terms’ (1992, p. 315). Twenty years later, reviews continue to make similar pleas, e.g.: ‘We cannot emphasize enough the need for clarity in characterizing the specific belief or belief system under investigation’ (Fives & Buehl, 2012, p. 487). These commentators are, in part, addressing the often idiosyncratic nature of teacher beliefs research, which remains marked by a large number of small individual case studies that, in the view of some, are not well linked to other works (Fives & Buehl, 2012). Commentators have frequently claimed that these features limit, and/or make it difficult to assess, their contribution to our collective understanding and the advance of research on beliefs. Extending his critique, Pajares also noted that the nature of beliefs requires that research ‘must take into account the ways that individuals give evidence of beliefs: belief statements, intentionality to behave in a predisposed manner, and behavior related to the belief in question’ (1992, p. 315). Again, subsequent reviews suggest research on teacher beliefs has yet to address these challenges on a broad scale, noting that there remains a need for the greater use of multiple measures within studies (rather than relying solely on single measures, particularly self-reports) (Hoffman & Seidel, 2014; Fives & Buehl, 2012; Skott, 2014). Such reviews also continue to recommend greater collaboration among scholars in developing not only shared definitions, but also measures and analytic frameworks, including larger-scale studies that provide a stronger basis for possible generalization, more longitudinal studies to address belief dynamics over periods longer than a semester or year, and greater attention to the linkages between beliefs and conduct.
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At this point it would be well to note that both psychologists and philosophers have also spent substantial time and effort analyzing the relationship and possible distinction between beliefs and knowledge. Some psychologists point to affective loading as distinguishing belief from knowledge, while a long line of philosophers distinguish the two on epistemic grounds, with belief being something a person takes to be true or likely to be the case, while the term knowledge is reserved for beliefs that have sufficient warrant or justification (beyond a person’s believing it) to support a claim of truth (see e.g. Fenstermacher, 1978, 1986). In the latter case, beliefs serve as the broader category or genus, of which knowledge is a (justified, true) species. Following the philosophical tradition of considering knowledge as a category of belief, I will proceed by referring only to belief from here on out. To partially summarize, it is apparent that the often mentioned complexity of beliefs seems to be explained largely by how they vary in so many ways in addition to their content – in their degree of connections to other beliefs; in their connections to motivation and action; in the extent to which they are explicit or tacit, accessible or hidden; in their stability and changeability over time; in the contexts which activate or make them relevant. These qualities raise thorny issues of how they might be assessed and potentially changed, and that brings us to our next topic, that of teacher beliefs in teacher education.
THE ROLE OF TEACHER BELIEFS IN TEACHER EDUCATION The role of teacher beliefs in teacher education research has been substantial over the past fifty years, particularly under the influence of the ‘constructivist revolution’ (Richardson, 2003a) and the concomitant influences of social interactionism, schema theory, and the Chicago school of pragmatism (see Phillips, 2000). This development also followed the predictions of Fenstermacher (1978), who presaged a shift from behaviorist and materialist perspectives that viewed educational research as identifying practices that teacher educators would train teachers to perform, to what he called an intentionalist perspective. The latter has a number of distinctive features that are instructive to explore here. First, it assumes that education essentially involves what Green (1971) describes as the transformation of beliefs. The fundamental educational task on this view is to understand what learners believe and engage them in activities/experiences that add to, enrich, and/or refine those beliefs. Applied to teacher education research and practice, the implications are that we want not only to understand what teachers believe, why they believe those things, and how context influences their beliefs (on the research side), but to then make substantive use of that research in practice. In doing so, the goal is not to derive directives, rules, or practices for teachers to take in and master, but for evidence provided by teacher educators to inform teachers’ beliefs in meaningful and contextually sensitive ways. All of
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this happens under the assumption that (facilitated) inquiry and discourse allow participants to meaningfully realize which beliefs are worth adopting, and which need modification or rejection. Subsequent theorizing and research on teacher beliefs in teacher education has often reflected the spirit, if not always the details of Fenstermacher’s intentionalist account, and research on teaching and teacher education increasingly became framed in terms of ‘learning to teach’ and the process of ‘teacher change’. These research agendas commonly featured teacher beliefs (Carter, 1990; Richardson, 1996; Richardson and Placier, 2001; see also Ashton, 2014; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2008). In addition to research on teacher education explicitly focused on teacher beliefs, we might also view as related a number of lines of research that place the mental life of teachers, and what they bring to the practice of teaching and the process of teacher education, at the center of their work. Included among these are the vast number of published works on teacher reflection (e.g. Korthagen & Wubbels, 1995; Van Manen, 1991; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). While studies of teacher reflection often do address what teachers believe, and the processes of eliciting and processing those beliefs, the size of that literature, and the inconsistent and often implicit manner in which it does address beliefs, force me to set it aside for now. Several themes emerge from the literature explicitly framed in terms of teacher beliefs (or closely related belief-like constructs) in teacher education. Many of those themes recapitulate those related to the study of teacher beliefs noted above. Key among these are questions regarding the extent to which beliefs actually influence practice and the extent to which teacher education has much influence on either beliefs or subsequent practice (see Buehl & Beck, 2014; Wideen, Mayer-Smith & Moon, 1998). Criticisms commonly point to conflicting results from teacher interviews and observations, including documentation of initial belief change followed by backsliding during classroom practice. Summarizing studies that have documented change in teachers’ beliefs, Richardson (2003b) points out that critical factors for success include a process of making held beliefs explicit, along with an active and engaging dialectic between beliefs held by teachers and those espoused in a program of study, all carried out in the context of relevant practice (real or represented in case studies or simulations). Further responding to views critical of the prospects for belief change and its effects on practice, Fives and Buehl (2012) have argued that given the preponderance of evidence, it makes sense to move beyond the question of whether or not teacher beliefs influence practice and whether teacher education can change them, to asking in more refined and systematic ways which teacher beliefs are related to various practices, how those beliefs play a role in practice (e.g. as filters, frames, and guides), and what in turn influences the complex interactions of beliefs and action in the context of teaching practice and in teacher education. This chapter generally follows this latter view. Finally, it would be well to note that the current discourse in teacher education has more recently become framed as a policy issue rather one of learning to
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teach (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2008). In the process, the study of teacher beliefs and how to enrich them often takes a backseat to identifying effective teaching practices and training teachers to implement them. Ironically, it was the criticism of such a skills-training approach that helped to launch the study of teacher beliefs (e.g. Fenstermacher, 1978). Despite this macro-level shift in discourse, I follow the many commentators who assume that we still have much to learn about and from teacher beliefs that can enhance the practice of teaching and teacher education.
TEACHER BELIEFS, TEACHER EDUCATION, AND THE MORAL WORK OF TEACHING I have spent some time reviewing the broader literature on teacher beliefs, in part because research at the nexus of teacher beliefs, teacher education, and the MWT reflects many of the characteristics of the more general domain. My main purpose in the remaining sections is to identify key contributions to our understanding made by relevant research on the MWT, as well as its limitations and how they might be overcome, informed by the review above. I begin with some general observations regarding why teacher beliefs might be considered particularly important to our understanding of the MWT. I then move on to address some common features of, and themes within, the literature in this sub-domain, before closing with recommendations for advancing it.
WHY TEACHER BELIEFS MATTER FOR THE MORAL WORK OF TEACHING AND TEACHER EDUCATION While all the reasons justifying the study of teacher beliefs in general apply to those about MWT, it is worth noting why beliefs might be particularly significant to this sub-domain (see Osguthorpe & Sanger, 2013a, 2013b; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2011, 2013a; Sanger, Osguthorpe, and Fenstermacher, 2013). The first reason is highlighted in studies of the characteristics of teachers and teaching candidates (e.g. Brookhart & Freeman, 1992; Farkas, Johnson, & Foleno, 2000; Watt & Richardson, 2007b). These reports repeatedly document that the majority of people who join the teaching profession do so for reasons that appear altruistic in nature – to help others, to make a difference in their lives, and to contribute to the good of society. Those reasons (or expressed beliefs) can in turn be viewed as fundamentally moral in nature. Further, it seems plausible that the animating reasons for being a teacher might have implications for teaching practice, and for teacher education. For example, those reasons may help to explain teacher satisfaction and persistence, or, on the other hand, their frustration, demoralization, and attrition in an age in which the operation of schools can
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appear at odds with teachers’ moral reasons for joining the profession (see Kelchtermans, 2007; Sanger 2012; Santoro, 2011; Watt & Richardson, 2007b). Building on these ideas, perhaps the most obvious reason why teacher beliefs are relevant to the MWT is that teachers have substantive beliefs about it (Sanger, 2001). And as Richardson reminds us (1996, 2003a; Richardson & Placier, 2001), teacher education would do well to understand and meaningfully address teacher beliefs – especially those that are psychologically central – that is, beliefs that are deeply held and grounded in substantive and extensive life experience (see Rokeach, 1968). Richardson’s point is a pedagogical one regarding the importance of understanding and explicitly addressing beliefs relevant to the work of teaching as a fundamental part of teacher education. Drawing on this point, Sanger and Osguthorpe (2011) suggest that ‘few domains harbor more deeply held beliefs, based upon life experience, than those at the nexus of teaching and morality’ (p. 572). Further, following Green (1971) and Fenstermacher and Richardson (1993), Sanger and Osguthorpe (2011) provide a moral (in addition to the pedagogical) argument for an educational process grounded in the transformation of beliefs in persons whom we know are capable of adding to and/or changing their beliefs based upon reasoning, evidence, and experience. Respect for such persons, they argue, would entail that ‘even if we assume that the content of educators’ beliefs are far from sufficient for predicting practice … the explicit discussion of what educators believe, why they hold those beliefs, and the practical implications of the beliefs held, must serve as the primary currency of teacher education’ (p. 572).
RESEARCH ON TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MORAL WORK OF TEACHING IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHER EDUCATION While I focus on research that addresses teacher beliefs related to the MWT and teacher education, we have seen that what might count as falling within these boundaries isn’t entirely clear. And this lack of clarity is understandable, given the variations in the central terms used and how those terms are defined. In the literature examined for this section, several labels are used, including beliefs, opinions, knowledge, attitudes, conceptions, perceptions, and feelings. A number of studies use two or even three of these labels within a single study, often with little theorizing of the central concepts used, or the instruments and frameworks developed. Research on reflective teaching is again related (but not examined here). This seems to particularly be the case in the literature from a number of northern European countries, notably Finland (see Tirri, Toom & Husu [2013] for an overview) and the Netherlands (e.g. de Ruyter & Kole, 2010; Kelchtermans, 2009; Willemse, Lunenberg, & Korthagen, 2008). Additional domains of research closely related to teacher beliefs and the MWT include those addressing teachers’ moral dispositions (e.g. Johnson & Reiman, 2007), and moral reasoning
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(see Cummings, Harlow, & Maddux, 2007). Setting these aside, it would be well to note the potential relevance of these works for conducting research on teacher beliefs related to the MWT and teacher education. Continuing to look at research explicitly targeting belief-like constructs with substantive linkages to the MWT and teacher education, what we find is that much like the broader domain of research on teacher beliefs, many studies in this literature are fairly small in scale (e.g. Boyd & Arnold, 2000; Chubbuck, Burant, & Whipp, 2007; Devine, Fahie, & McGillicuddy 2013; Richardson & Fallona, 2001; Sanger, 2001; Thornberg, 2007). The most common methods of data gathering are surveys and interviews, with surveys understandably becoming more frequent in studies with larger numbers of participants. Some studies use multiple measures, including participant essays, observations, and video recordings of practice, or surveys combined with interviews. Typically, unique instruments and protocols were generated for each study, and implemented cross-sectionally. One of the most common purposes put forth by authors working in this domain was that of exploration – gaining an initial sense of what a group of teachers or candidates believes about some aspect of the MWT. While one could argue that this is a developing sub-domain of inquiry, and thus we should expect to see high proportions of exploratory studies, it was interesting to see examples of (thoughtful and insightful) studies conducted at either end of the past two decades espousing the nearly identical exploratory purposes in investigating very similar teacher beliefs (i.e. Laletas & Reupert, 2016; Weinstein, 1998). With these patterns noted, there are also exceptions. In particular, there are a few relatively large-scale studies that provide an opportunity to begin to address themes within the content of research findings in this sub-domain in a general way. And while a number of smaller studies support, extend, and complexify the themes addressed below, space limitations prevent me from tracing all of their specific contributions here. To begin, Revell and Arthur (2007) describe one of the largest surveys of what they describe as the ‘attitudes’ of student teachers in England toward character education, and their comments regarding their experiences and expectations related to character education in their teacher education programs. The 1,013 participants replied to questionnaires designed for the study showing that they had extensive interest in character education, thought it was important, expected it to be a substantive part of their programs, and were often disappointed when those expectations were not met. Revell and Arthur’s findings are consistent with a number of other studies, dating back at least to Bergem’s (1992) study of 284 teacher candidates in Norway. The themes from across these studies suggest that teachers commonly believe that teaching is indeed a morally significant endeavor and that moral education is an important part of teaching and schooling, but that they typically do not develop a sophisticated professional knowledge base, skill set, or vocabulary related to the MWT in their teacher education programs, despite being engaged by moral
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questions related to teaching (see Campbell, 2013; Mathison, 1998; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013b; Sockett & LePage, 2002; Thornberg, 2007; Willemse, Lunenberg, and Korthagen, 2005, 2008). LePage, Akar, Temli, Sen, Hasser, and Ivins (2011) provide another example of a large-scale project. Reporting the first phase of their longitudinal study comparing over one thousand teachers’ views of morality and moral education in the US and Turkey, the authors found a number of substantive points of both commonality and divergence between the participant groups. While the construct of ‘views’ was not extensively theorized, and the terms ‘attitudes’ and ‘beliefs’ were also used in describing the objects of the investigation, the data shed light on what can be considered teacher beliefs relevant to the MWT. Themes included the belief that moral education should be addressed in schools, its relevance for classroom management, and the importance of modeling as a means of moral education. While participants varied somewhat in what they took to be most central in their own moral views, emphasis was commonly placed on the values of respect and fairness. Complementing the above studies, and providing some further exceptions to the general pattern, are a small number of studies on teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs related to moral and character education. Notably on the exception front, these studies not only target a particular set of beliefs, those beliefs were defined by extending one of the more well developed constructs in beliefs research – that of self-efficacy (see Bandura, 1997; Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, & Hoy, 1998). Making use of that base, researchers have sought to develop instruments that can be widely used to measure beliefs that teachers and candidates hold about their own abilities to successfully serve as moral educators in classrooms. One of these was the Character Education Efficacy Beliefs Inventory (CEEBI), as described by Milson (2003). Results from administering the CEEBI to 930 teachers suggested that while teachers expressed high levels of self-efficacy for serving as role models, they were less confident in moral education practices that extended beyond that unavoidable role. The latter was especially the case with students whose morals were thought to differ from those sought by the teachers/ schools. Addressing concerns regarding issues of validity in the CEEBI, Narvaez, Kmehlkov, Vaydich, & Turner (2008) subsequently developed the Teacher Efficacy for Moral Education measure, and administered it to 76 middle-school teachers. Their analysis of the results focused on the psychometric properties of the instrument, with an emphasis on the need for further validation across teacher populations, and the study of the links between measures of self-efficacy for moral education to teacher behaviors in the classroom. Working with both the essays of 267 preservice teachers and questionnaire responses from 97 additional teacher candidates, Osguthorpe and Sanger (2013a, 2013b) found themes that complement and extend those listed above. They developed their questionnaire based upon their Moral Work of Teaching Framework (Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2005, 2011), which was designed as a tool for analyzing approaches to the MWT and its study, and used it for targeting categories of beliefs
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relevant to that work. They too found that candidates commonly expressed that they were becoming teachers in hopes of making a difference in the lives of their students. Like LePage et al. (2011), they also found a range of overlapping beliefs about the nature of morality, as well as some degree of moral subjectivism and/or relativism. Like Milson (2003), they found candidates expressed confidence in their abilities to serve as role models, and that modeling was a primary means of moral education (see also Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013a). Similarly, participants also expressed reservations about their role in overcoming the values students brought with them from their home lives that conflicted with those of the classroom. For many participants, moral education was believed to involve direct instruction, in addition to modeling. In their analysis, the authors agreed with Milson (2003), who suggested that these data should provide both a rationale and a direction for teacher educators in addressing the learning needs of candidates related to the MWT, as discussed further below.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? While leaving out a great deal of research that sheds light on the mental lives of teachers related to the MWT (particularly those not represented in Englishlanguage journals), what we find is that across the variations in terminology, definitions, and designs, the literature suggests that teachers and candidates commonly believe that their work: •• is morally significant •• inevitably includes some sort of moral instruction •• prominently involves their serving as role models.
Teachers and candidates also report: •• believing that morality varies and is subjective to some degree •• being conflicted about whether and how to address differences between the values supported in the classroom and those students bring from their home and community •• being poorly prepared by their teacher education experience for carrying out the MWT •• having a high sense of self-efficacy for serving as role models.
Researchers also report finding that teachers and candidates: •• often struggle to articulate moral beliefs and to explain practices addressing the MWT in ways that reflect sound professional training •• hold moral beliefs that commonly share many features, while also varying to some degree across individuals and contexts •• often find inquiries into the moral aspects of their work engaging.
Considering the above in light of the idea that beliefs function as filters, frames, and guides, researchers and teacher educators working in this domain might be
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well served by considering these functions, using these findings in the process. For example, take the repeated observation that candidates commonly view themselves as role models (e.g. Milson, 2003; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013a). This observation sets up a line of inquiry for teacher educators and researchers of teaching and teacher education: How might holding such a belief affect how candidates and teachers interpret phenomena in their classroom and what might count as evidence for that filtering effect? How might believing that you are a role model serve to frame a response to those same phenomena, and how might subsequent actions be guided by that belief? But this is just the beginning – as beliefs are not held in isolation, and evidence suggests not only that candidates are confident in their ability to serve as moral role models, but that they also have misgivings about their capacity to address the influence of students’ home lives in helping them to act in morally good ways and become good people. Thus, shedding light on the filtering, framing, and guiding functions of this suite of beliefs (and others) seems enormously complex. And it is because of this complexity that in order to really bear down on and make collective progress in understanding how teacher beliefs about modeling act as filters, frames, and guides, we would benefit from first developing a clear, shared understanding of just what we take these beliefs to be. That initial issue is quickly followed by how researchers go about documenting these beliefs, and returns us once again to the limitations of the research in this sub-domain.
FURTHER LESSONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVANCEMENT To advance research in this sub-domain, it would be well to note that small-scale studies using idiosyncratic constructs and instruments might be most appropriate for many researchers, particularly those investigating the beliefs of the candidates in their own programs for use in tailoring those programs to address the needs and interests of their candidates (see Bullough & Gitlin, 2001). Thus, we would expect them to continue to be a part of the literature. However, viewed on broader scale, if such studies constitute the primary body of research in this sub-domain, we will continue to have an array of potentially useful interpretations of beliefs relevant to the MWT and related practices, but they will have limited applicability to other studies, due to the idiosyncratic nature of the phenomena under investigation and their limited bases for making claims regarding what might be the case beyond the context studied. While not addressing all of the concerns regarding research on teacher beliefs (e.g. the need for greater use multiple measures of beliefs), my chief concern here is for what might be called a lack of convergence in the literature. That is, while we all conduct literature reviews, develop theoretical frameworks, and discuss findings with some reference to extant knowledge in the field, there is often little in the way of substantive and systematic linkages among studies, and the development of the bases for those linkages. Foremost among these is the repeatedly called-for use
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of well-specified, sound, and shared belief constructs, so that we can have greater confidence that we are actually examining and discussing meaningfully similar phenomena across studies. Applying this call to the work on beliefs about modeling discussed above, there is clearly room for further specification of just what a teacher belief about modeling is, the nature and scope of its variations, and what construct(s) we should take as normative for fostering belief change, as well as just what other beliefs are and/or should be linked to beliefs about modeling in classrooms. Given greater clarity along these lines – along with shared used of these specified and clarified belief constructs – analogous points again follow regarding the tools used to access, interpret, and inform the beliefs being studied in systematically addressing questions about the filtering, framing, and guiding functions of the beliefs under investigation. Further, we can and should also consider how other known characteristics of beliefs might inform our inquiries into beliefs about modeling, such as how they might vary with the level of specificity of the context of discussion or application, not to mention how such variations might have implications for efforts to change and add to held beliefs (and so on). This line of thought can be extended to consider the possibility of further convergence as researchers come together to identify a range of beliefs and belief networks relevant to the MWT that we need to better understand, and that multiple parties then go on to investigate in collaborative ways (e.g. the beliefs, often viewed as being as common as they are vexing, expressing some form of moral subjectivism or relativism). In doing so, convergence can again be advanced by developing shared tools for investigating the identified belief constructs, suitable for use in a broad range of contexts over time. However, we need not stop there, but may press on to more literally converge our research through the building of shared databases (à la Watt & Richardson, 2007a) that can be used to track and compare teacher beliefs across place and time. Again, while not a panacea, working toward greater convergence directly addresses many of the long-standing criticisms of the teacher beliefs research, by developing our shared understanding of what and how teachers believe about the MWT, and how those beliefs might change and influence practice. ‘Our shared understanding’ here importantly includes teacher educators, who might be well served by (and contribute to) clear and well-grounded research findings that shed light on the nature and significance of the beliefs candidates commonly hold about the MWT, and that so often serve as central motivations for their becoming teachers in the first place.
REFERENCES Ashton, P. (2014). Historical overview and theoretical perspectives on teachers’ beliefs. In H. Fives & M. Gregoire Gill (Eds), International handbook of research on teachers’ beliefs (pp. 31–47). New York: Routledge. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
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Bergem, T. (1992). Teaching the art of living: lessons learned from a study of teacher education. In F.K. Oser, A. Dick, & J.-L. Patry (Eds), Effective and responsible teaching: The new synthesis (pp. 349–364). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Boyd, D. & Arnold, M. (2000). Teachers’ beliefs, antiracism and moral education: problems of intersection. Journal of Moral Education, 29(1), 23–45. Brookhart, S. & Freeman, D. (1992). Characteristics of entering teacher candidates. Review of Educational Research, 62(1), 37–60. Buehl, M. & Beck, J. (2014). The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and teachers’ practices. In H. Fives & M. Gregoire Gill (Eds), International handbook of research on teachers’ beliefs (pp. 66–84). New York: Routledge. Bullough, R. & Gitlin, A. (2001). Becoming a student of teaching (2nd edn). New York: Routledge. Campbell, E. (2013). Cultivating moral and ethical professional practice: interdisciplinary lessons and teacher education. In M. Sanger & R. Osguthorpe (Eds), The moral work of teaching and teacher education: Preparing and supporting practitioners (pp. 29–43). New York: Teachers College Press. Carter, K. (1990). Teachers’ knowledge and learning to teach. In W.R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 291–310). New York: Macmillan. Chubbuck, S., Burant, T., & Whipp, J. (2007). The presence and possibility of moral sensibility in beginning pre-service teachers. Ethics and Education, 2(2), 109–130. Cochran-Smith, M. & Fries, K. (2008). Research on teacher education: changing times, changing paradigms. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D. McIntyre, & K. Demers (Eds), Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (pp. 1050–1093). New York: Routledge. Cummings, R., Harlow, S., & Maddux, C.D. (2007). Moral reasoning of in-service and pre-service teachers: a review of the literature. Journal of Moral Education, 36(1), 67–78. de Ruyter, D. & Kole, J. (2010). Our teachers want to be the best: on the necessity of intra-professional reflection about moral ideals of teaching. Teachers and Teaching, 16, 207–218. Devine, D., Fahie, D., & McGillicuddy, D. (2013). What is good teaching? Teacher beliefs and practices about their teaching. Irish Educational Studies, 32(1), 83–108. Farkas, S., Johnson, J., & Foleno, T. (2000). A sense of calling: Who teaches and why. New York: Public Agenda. Fenstermacher, G. (1978). A philosophical consideration of recent research on teacher effectiveness. In L.S. Shulman (Ed.), Review of research in education (vol. 6, pp. 157–185). Itasca, IL: Peacock. Fenstermacher, G. (1986). Philosophy of research on teaching: Three aspects. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd edn) (pp. 37–49). New York: Macmillan. Fenstermacher, G. & Richardson, V. (1993). The elicitation and reconstruction of practical arguments in teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 25(2), 101–114. Fives, H., & Buehl, M. M. (2012). Spring cleaning for the ‘messy’ construct of teachers’ beliefs: What are they? Which have been examined? What can they tell us? In K. R. Harris, S. Graham, T. Urdan, S. Graham, J. M. Royer, & M. Zeidner (Eds), APA educational psychology handbook. Vol. 2: Individual differences and cultural and contextual factors (pp. 471–499). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Green, T. (1971/1998). The activities of teaching. Troy, NY: Educator’s International Press. Hoffman, B. & Seidel, K. (2014). Measuring teachers’ beliefs: For what purpose? In H. Fives & M. Gregoire Gill (Eds), International handbook of research on teachers’ beliefs (pp. 106–128). New York: Routledge. Johnson, L. & Reiman, A. (2007). Beginning teacher disposition: examining the moral/ethical domain. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 676–687. Kagan, D. (1992). Implications for research on teacher beliefs. Educational Psychologist, 27, 65–90. Kelchtermans, G. (2007). Teachers’ self-understanding in times of performativity. In L. Deretchin & C. Craig (Eds), International research on the impact of accountability systems: Teacher education yearbook XV (pp. 13–30). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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Kelchtermans, G. (2009). Who I am in how I teach is the message: self-understanding vulnerability and reflection, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15(2), 257–272. Korthagen, F. & Wubbels, T. (1995). Characteristics of reflective practitioners: towards an operationalization of the concept of reflection. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1, 51–72. Laletas, S. & Reupert, A. (2016). Exploring pre-service secondary teachers’ understanding of care, Teachers and Teaching, 22(4), 485–503. LePage, P., Akar, H., Temli, Y., Sen, D., Hasser, N., & Ivins, I. (2011). Comparing teachers’ on morality and moral education, a comparative study in Turkey and the United States. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 366–375. Mathison, C. (1998). How teachers feel about character education: a descriptive study. Action in Teacher Education, 20(4), 29–38. Milson, A. (2003). Teachers’ sense of self efficacy for the formation of students’ character. Journal of Research in Character Education, 1, 89–106. Narvaez, D., Kmehlkov, V., Vaydich, J., & Turner, J. (2008). Measuring teacher moral self-efficacy. Journal of Research in Character Education, 6(2), 3–16. Nespor, J. (1987). The role of beliefs in the practice of teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19, 317–328. Osguthorpe, R. & Sanger, M. (2013a). Teacher candidate beliefs regarding the moral work of teaching. In M. Sanger & R. Osguthorpe (Eds), The moral work of teaching and teacher education: Preparing and supporting practitioners (pp. 14–25). New York: Teachers College Press. Osguthorpe, R. & Sanger, M. (2013b). The moral nature of teacher candidate beliefs about the purposes of schooling and their reasons for choosing teaching as a career. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(2), 180–197. Pajares, M. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62, 307–332. Phillips, D. (Ed.) (2000). Constructivism in education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pintrich, P. (1990). Implications of psychological research on student learning and college teaching for teacher education. In W.R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 826– 857). New York: Macmillan. Revell, L. & Arthur, J. (2007). Character education in schools and the education of teachers. Journal of Moral Education, 36(1), 79–92. Richardson, V. (1996). The role of attitudes and beliefs in learning to teach. In J. Sikula (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 102–119). New York: Macmillan. Richardson, V. (2003a). Constructivist pedagogy. Teachers College Record, 105(9), 1623–1640. Richardson, V. (2003b). Preservice teachers’ beliefs. In J. Raths & A. McAninch (Eds), Teacher beliefs and classroom performance: The impact of teacher education (pp. 1–22). Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Richardson, V. & Fallona, C. (2001). Classroom management as method and manner. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(6), 705–728. Richardson, V. & Placier, P. (2001). Teacher change. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th edn) (pp. 905–947). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Rokeach, M. (1968). Beliefs, attitudes, and values: A theory of organization and change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sanger, M. (2001). Talking to teachers and looking at practice in understanding the moral dimensions of teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(6), 683–704. Sanger, M. (2012). The schizophrenia of contemporary education. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 285–307. Sanger, M. & Osguthorpe, R. (2005). Making sense of moral education. Journal of Moral Education, 34(1), 57–71. Sanger, M. & Osguthorpe, R. (2011). Teacher education, preservice teacher beliefs, and the moral work of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(3), 579–578.
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Sanger, M. & Osguthorpe, R. (2013a). Modeling as moral education: documenting, analyzing, and addressing a central belief of teacher candidates. Teaching and Teacher Education, 29, 167–176. Sanger, M. & Osguthorpe, R. (2013b). The moral vacuum in teacher education research and practice. In H. Sockett & R. Boostrom (Eds), A moral critique of contemporary education: National Society for the Study of Education yearbook, 112(1), pp. 41–60. Sanger, M., Osguthorpe, R., & Fenstermacher, G. (2013). The moral work of teaching in teacher education. In M. Sanger & R. Osguthorpe (Eds), The moral work of teaching and teacher education: Preparing and supporting practitioners (pp. 3–13). New York: Teachers College Press. Santoro, D. (2011). Good teaching in difficult times: demoralization in the pursuit of good work. American Journal of Education, 118, 1–23. Skott, J. (2014). The promises, problems, and prospects of research on teachers’ beliefs. In H. Fives & M. Gregoire Gill (Eds), International handbook of research on teachers’ beliefs (pp. 13–30). New York: Routledge. Sockett, H. & LePage, P. (2002). The missing language of the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(2), 159–171. Thornberg, R. (2007). The lack of professional knowledge in values education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1791–1798. Tirri, K., Toom, A., & Husu, J. (2013). The moral matters of teaching: a Finnish perspective. In C. J. Graig, P. C. Meijer, & J. Broeckmans (Eds.), From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community (pp. 223–239). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Tschannen-Moran, M., Hoy, A., & Hoy, W. (1998). Teacher efficacy: its meaning and measure. Review of Educational Research, 68(2), 202–248. Van Manen, M. (1991). Reflectivity and the pedagogical thinking and acting. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 23(6), 507–536. Watt, H. & Richardson, P. (2007a). FITCHOICE. Monash University. Retrieved from http://users.monash. edu.au/∼hwatt/FITindex.htm. Watt, H. & Richardson, P. (2007b). Motivational factors influencing teaching as a career choice: development and validation of the FIT-Choice Scale. The Journal of Experimental Education, 75, 167–202. Weinstein, C. (1998). I want to be nice, but I have to be mean: Exploring prospective teachers’ conceptions of caring and order. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14, 153–163. Wideen, M., Mayer-Smith, J., & Moon, B. (1998). A critical analysis of the research on learning-to-teach. Review of Education Research, 68(2), 130–178. Willemse, M., Lunenberg, M., & Korthagen, F. (2005). Values in education: a challenge for teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 205–217. Willemse, M., Lunenberg, M., & Korthagen, F. (2008). The moral aspects of teacher educators’ practices. Journal of Moral Education, 37(4), 445–466. Zeichner, K. & Liston D. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. New York: Routledge; Erlbaum.
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20 Developing Teachers’ Capacity for Moral Reasoning and Imagination in Teacher Education A l i s o n C o o k - S a t h e r a n d K i r a J . B a k e r- D o y l e Teaching is inherently a moral endeavor (Ball & Wilson, 1996; Campbell, 2008; Goodlad, 1992; Hansen, 1998; Hargreaves, 1998; Sanger, 2008; Tom, 1980). As those responsible for guiding the development of young people’s minds, bodies, and spirits during the time they spend in school, teachers make innumerable decisions every day that shape the moral compass those students develop and influence the kind of citizens students will become. While a range of studies (Goodlad, 1990, 1992; Hansen, 1998; Sockett & LePage, 2002) has demonstrated that the majority of pre-service teachers feel ‘called to teach’ because of its moral enterprise, other studies (Joseph & Efron, 1993; Sanger, 2001, 2008) have shown that few new teachers have an explicit awareness of their pedagogical values or of the moral decisions they make every day. Scholars around the world have long recogized that there are moral and ethical conflicts in the teaching profession (e.g., Colnerud, 1997), and with the rise of the more autonomous ‘teacher-as-professional’ paradigm in schools, policy makers in many countries have recently taken more of an interest in moral and ethical development in teacher education (Boon, 2011; Forster, 2012; O’Flaherty & McGarr, 2014). For instance, in Australia, the standards set by the New South Wales Institute of Teachers ‘require that courses of teacher education ensure “teachers adopt professional ethics with regard to their own conduct and that of others”’ (Kim, 2013, p. 12). Although early attempts to develop formalized ‘codes of ethics’ have been criticized for not considering the multidimensionality of the ethical dilemmas and choices that teachers make when they teach (Chapman,
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Forster, & Buchanan, 2013; Forster, 2012), numerous scholars argue that teacher educators must provide a rich set of learning experiences and critical frameworks that help to foster teachers’ ‘moral imagination’ (Joseph, 2003) and develop the skills necessary to understand and navigate the moral dimensions of teaching (Bullough, 2011; Gholami & Husu, 2010; Joseph, 2003; Warnick & Silverman, 2011). This research and interest in the moral dimensions of teaching come at a critical time for today’s prospective teachers, who will work amid a complex social and political landscape of standardization with high-stakes accountability, neoliberal marketization of schools, changing access to information and modes of communication, and rising xenophobic rhetoric in media that is re-inscribed by increasing network homogeneity and isolation in digital spaces. Those who begin their work with little critical understanding of how to negotiate the moral dilemmas they face can become demoralized (Hargreaves, 1998; Nias, 1996; Santoro, 2011), burnt out (Collie, Shapka, & Perry, 2012; Hoigaard, Giske, & Sundsli, 2012; Jones & Youngs, 2012; Van Veen & Sleegers, 2006; Zembylas, 2005), or serve to reinforce systems of marginization and injustice (Emdin, 2016; Finney & Orr, 1995; Goldstein, 2001; Schick & St Denis, 2003). High rates of teacher turnover (Ingersoll, 2001; Ingersoll & Smith, 2003) and evidence of growing disillusionment (Metlife Foundation, 2013) with the teaching profession underscore the significance of this issue for young people’s educational experiences, teachers’ personal and professional development, and the future of the teaching workforce. Striving to contribute to the ‘development of moral understanding and ethical sensitivity among teachers’ (Bullough, 2011, p. 27) through creating a ‘reflective critical space’ within which prospective teachers can develop ‘ethical literacy’ (Mahoney, 2009, p. 984), we provide in this chapter a framework for supporting the development of pre-service teachers’ capacity for moral reasoning and imagination. We argue that teacher education programs can cultivate this capacity by (1) constructing liminal spaces for exploration and development, (2) supporting collective inquiry, and (3) inviting the co-construction of work. After a brief discussion of what we mean by developing moral reasoning and imagination, we explicate and offer a brief case study of how a framework composed of the three components listed above can support the development of these capacities in pre-service teachers. We conclude with current challenges to and possibilities for realizing such moral purpose in teaching.
DEVELOPING MORAL REASONING AND IMAGINATION An explicitly moral stance on teaching is grounded in principles of democratic participation and equity and nurtures the development of responsible citizens. Such nurturing begins and is sustained, in countries such as Finland, through
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providing ‘a coherent path that supports child development and well being’ (The Ministry of Education and Culture, 2012, quoted in Brown & White, 2013, p. 60). A teacher with well-developed moral reasoning and imagination cultivates a learning environment that nurtures student development and well-being and that fosters critical thinking, discussion, and a sense of agency in order to support and promote democratic practices. Cultivating such an environment necessitates that teachers be ‘transformative intellectuals’ (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985) and professional, rather than technical, agents in their work (Goodlad, 1990; Sockett 1990); a teacher must have deep knowledge of her subject, the agency to make decisions, the capacity to collaborate with others, and a commitment to engaging in continuous learning (Baker-Doyle, 2012; Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995; Lieberman & Miller, 1999; Little, 2001). Teacher professionalism is uniquely situated within the constraints of the bureaucratic nature of the school organization (Bull, 1990; Soder, 1990), and these limits can sometimes obscure the moral nature of teachers’ work to the public, including pre-service teachers. To support the development of pre-service teachers’ capacity for moral reasoning and imagination, teacher educators must design programs that fuse professionalism with a moral and ethical commitment to equity and democratic principles and practices. Such complex concepts require authentic experiences working in the field, because they are revealed through critical reflection of lived experiences and ‘can be learnt only through and by actual living’ (Bloom, 1952, quoted in Fielding, 2015). It is particularly challenging for teacher educators to discuss moral and ethical issues with pre-service teachers because of the lack of clear language around morality in teaching. While many scholars argue that teacher knowledge is inseparable from moral stance (Ball & Wilson, 1996; Gholami & Husu, 2010; Goodlad, 1992; Lyons, 1990), others acknowledge that because teacher educators do not have a practiced language for talking about morality in teaching, discussions on teaching problems can easily fall into technical, narrow, ‘learnified’ (Sanger, 2012, p. 295) examinations of the issues, devoid of moral sensibilities and ethical considerations altogether. Sanger (2012) calls the tension between talking about teaching as technical and experiencing the moral dilemmas without a clear language the ‘schizophrenia’ of ethical teaching. Furthermore, there are competing notions of what it means to be a ‘proper teacher’ (Kelchtermans, 1996). Within this confusing context, teacher educators must work to bring clarity to the moral stances and choices that pre-service teachers will face. To support the development of pre-service teachers’ capacity for moral reasoning and imagination, then, teacher educators must help pre-service teachers to continually develop an awareness of, language for, and experience with enacting their moral stance and decisions in teaching. Joseph (2003) describes this cultivation of ‘moral imagination’ as pre-service teachers developing the ability to think creatively within the constraints of what is morally possible, evaluate issues from a moral point of view, project themselves into the situations of others’ lives, be
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empathic, and be affirming. She suggests that these complex cognitive strategies and affective dispositions can be developed through collaborative inquiry and reflection processes that attend to perception, rationality, reflection, emotion, and self-care. Furthermore, based on findings from their study of 142 pre-service teachers in Ireland, O’Flaherty and McGarr (2014) contend that the capacity for moral reasoning is a cognitive, developmental trait that can be nurtured through a coached, case-based learning process involving personal reflection and analysis. The work of these scholars suggests that pre-service teachers can develop a greater capacity for moral decision-making and perception, given appropriate time and contexts for learning.
SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ CAPACITY FOR MORAL REASONING AND IMAGINATION We offer below three foundational elements of a framework for supporting the development of pre-service teachers’ capacity for moral reasoning and imagination: (1) construction of liminal spaces for exploration and development; (2) support of collective inquiry; and (3) invitation to the co-construction of work. Each aspect of this framework plays a role in creating a social ecology for developing a critical understanding of morality in teaching. The construction of liminal spaces provides the setting or context of this framework, collective inquiry constitutes the activity that unfolds within the liminal spaces, and co- construction is the transitional and ultimate purpose. Following our discussion of these elements, we offer an example that illustrates how they can provide, when employed in combination, an engaging and supportive yet challenging context in which pre-service teachers can work to uncover and identify moral dimensions of teaching and how to enact them.
(1) Construction of Liminal Spaces Liminal spaces provide arenas set apart from standard structures and relationships within which people can try new ways of being and interacting and gather, reaffirm, and extend moral commitments. Such spaces not only ‘offer us solidary support’; in addition, ‘the diversity of culture and context they embody help us to remain open to creative possibility and challenge us to continue to learn and develop in ways which are expressive and supportive of democracy as a way of living and learning together’ (Fielding, 2015). Typically, liminality describes a condition between two periods of active social participation, a transitional or indeterminate state between culturally defined stages of a person’s life (OED online). ‘On the threshold of “teacherdom”’ (McNamara et al., 2002, p. 864), ‘marginally situated in two worlds’ (Britzman, 1991, p. 13), pre-service teachers occupy a liminal space in which they are ‘no
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longer just students but nor are they fully teachers’ (Head, 1992, p. 94). This ‘inbetweenness’ holds unique potential to support pre-service teachers and those with whom they interact within liminal spaces to challenge deep-seated assumptions about how a community or society works and constitutes a space within which to live the commitments the pre-service teachers hope to carry forward (Cook-Sather, 2006). Intentionally creating liminal spaces during teacher preparation within which pre-service teachers, students, and others are invited to participate in dialogue about teaching and learning and try new ways of being and interacting can nourish pre-service teachers’ capacity to resist education as ‘training human capital’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 4) and support, instead, engagement in explorations of identities and of ethical practice prior to those pre-service teachers entering classrooms of their own. As the case study presented toward the end of this chapter illustrates, within such intentionally developed liminal spaces, pre-service teachers can cultivate ‘expanded moral sympathies, deepened democratic dispositions, and a serious sense of responsibility for the world’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 4).
(2) Support of Collective Inquiry Sustained, authentic, and systematic collective teacher inquiry helps pre-service and beginning teachers to cultivate an awareness of the moral facets of teaching and develop a sense of agency to support their ethically informed pedagogical choices. Collective teacher inquiry is the collaborative act of examining a question or problem of practice or (re)developing pedagogical approaches to meet students’ needs (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Schön, 1983) that embodies certain key characteristics including authentic, shared purposes and participatory processes. The characteristics that are key to authentic collective inquiry are also the features that support teachers’ moral development. For example, the characteristic of shared purposes grows from group discussions of issues that are important to teachers in their practice. When teachers choose to work together on issues that have emerged from their own practice, these problems are usually complex constellations of moral, emotional, and pedagogical issues (Baker-Doyle & Gustavson, 2015; Chapman, Foster, & Buchanan, 2013; Joseph, 2003; Nieto, 2003). Teachers’ – and teachers’ and students’ – collective work in investigating such issues necessitates conversations on beliefs, morals, and professional judgments. Through engaging in such conversations, teachers gain practice in talking about their beliefs, see connections between their beliefs and practices, and witness others’ struggles and successes (Bieler & Burns-Thomas, 2009). Another characteristic of authentic collective inquiry is the participatory process. Groups that work intentionally to invite participation from all members and develop processes to support ongoing participation foster a deep sense of belonging and agency (Baker-Doyle & Gustavson, 2015; Cobb & McClain, 2006; Hord, 1997; Kahne & Westheimer, 2000; Lieberman & Miller, 2001). Collective agency
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(Flesher Forminaya, 2010; Polletta & Jasper, 2001; Snow, 2001) is developed through social processes that provide safe spaces for participants to share their questions, take risks, and try new ideas. One study of collective inquiry found that the collective agency that teachers developed through their inquiry work provided them with agentive tools to articulate their beliefs about teaching and resist the neoliberal pedagogical norms of their school (Baker-Doyle & Gustavson, 2015). Collective agency, then, can support pre-service and beginning teachers in developing a sense of ‘safety in numbers’ to develop and sustain their moral stance in teaching. Finally, collective teacher inquiry positions teachers as intellectuals (CochranSmith & Lytle, 1999; Lieberman, 1995; Pointer Mace, 2009; Sears, 2004). Collective teacher inquiry groups that make their work public through writing, presentations, and the use of social media help to shift societal perceptions about teachers’ work and professionalism. Therefore, an important characteristic of collective teacher inquiry is documentation and publication of work. This characteristic is critical to the moral development of pre-service teachers because public sharing helps teachers make connections between their personal moral challenges and broader societal issues of social justice and equity (Pointer Mace, 2009; Sears, 2004; Shiller, 2015; Warren & Mapp, 2011).
(3) Invitation to the Co-construction of Work Building, making, and constructing a work together comprise the third aspect of our framework. When groups come together, they require a reason – a shared interest – to sustain their collaboration and energy. Co-construction (of a plan, a curriculum, an idea, a work, or an approach) focuses individuals on a shared task that is important to all members of a group. The act of making is also empowering; it is a real demonstration of the group’s ability to make change. In recent years the terms ‘Maker Education’ and ‘DIY’ have come into fashion as the centerpiece of participatory practices and learning (Ito et al., 2008; Jenkins, 2009; Kafai & Peppler, 2011). These terms and ideas are far from new. The educational ideology of creating opportunities to master a craft, create together, and build is rooted in progressive education, as Dewey’s (1929) renowned text, Art and Education, attests. Yet the landscape of learning has changed since Dewey; today individuals can connect, collaborate, and share their work more rapidly and with more forms of media than at any point in history. We know that teachers develop community and agency through collective making (Anderson, 2010; Baker-Doyle & Gustavson, 2015; Kahne & Westheimer, 2000; Paris, 1993; Priestley, Edwards, Priestley, & Miller, 2012), and the societal changes that have emerged through shifts in media and technology require a reexamination of the role and importance of co-construction, making, and production in teaching, particularly in regards to the development of liminal spaces and communities of inquiry.
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In liminal spaces, individuals with disparate views and experiences come together. Teacher educators must find an anchor to connect pre-service teachers with other members of their community. Co-construction and making, such as collective curriculum development, can provide a shared enterprise through which individuals can feel connected (Adams, 2000; Fecho, 2000; Mullen & Diamond, 2002). Early career teachers often struggle with constructing the curriculum and materials necessary to support their practice (Kauffman, Johnson, Kardos, Liu, & Peske, 2002), and thus have a particular stake in communities of inquiry that have making and co-constructing at their center. At the center of any co-construction is a dialogic discourse in which diverse ideas and perspectives are exchanged that exercise facets of collaborators’ ‘moral imagination’, such as perspective-taking, empathy, and affirmation. Furthermore, the object, idea, or practice that is produced through such co-construction becomes a physical manifestation of the discursive process in which the collaborators engaged; a powerful symbol and reminder of this process (Ratto & Boler, 2014). Co-production provides the purpose for constructing liminal spaces and engaging in communities of inquiry and results in an important symbolism of the ethos and work of the community. As the ways in which we can connect continue to multiply, it is important to understand how different modes of making and sharing mediate our social spaces. With increased understanding of these modes, and of the centrality of making and co-production within them, teacher educators can take advantage of the affordances of various approaches to engage pre-service teachers in critical dialogue with others in order to promote their sense of moral awareness and agency.
THE TEACHING AND LEARNING TOGETHER PROJECT: AN EXAMPLE OF THE APPROACH IN ACTION Based in the Curriculum & Pedagogy Seminar, the penultimate course required for state certification to teach at the secondary level offered through the bi- college Education Program at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges in the midAtlantic United States, Teaching and Learning Together (TLT) constructs liminal spaces that support collective inquiry and invite the co-construction of work. TLT brings secondary students and pre-service teachers together in both literal and virtual liminal spaces where they are invited to realize critical moral purpose in fostering equity, democracy, and social justice in education (Cook-Sather, 2002; Cook-Sather & Youens, 2007). This 22-year-old project positions secondary students who attend a public school in Philadelphia as ‘dialogue partners’ to the pre-service teachers enrolled in the Curriculum & Pedagogy Seminar. Through semester-long, one-on-one email exchanges between each certification candidate and his or her secondary student partner and whole-group discussions among the secondary students
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facilitated by a school-based teacher that are audiotaped, uploaded as podcasts, and assigned as required reading to the pre-service teachers, both groups draw on the experience and expertise they have in their respective, daily roles, and also meet to share their identities and insights between the two worlds they inhabit (Britzman, 1991). This project is situated within a wider set of assignments for the pre-service teachers, including reading theoretical and practical texts and shadowing their student partners at the students’ schools for a full school day. It also informs a comprehensive portfolio that articulates what they believe based on all of the collective inquiry and construction of knowledge they have achieved and that serves as an important final step in ‘producing’ the co-authored thinking and learning that has occurred, even as they are poised to enter a teaching world in which the terrain of moral purpose in teaching is necessarily an individualized endeavor (see Cook-Sather, 2007, 2010; Cook-Sather & Curl, 2014, 2016; CookSather & Youens, 2007). When pre-service teachers have such opportunities to develop their commitments and capacities in liminal spaces, prior to undertaking the full responsibilities of teaching, they prepare themselves to be teachers who will work to create classrooms in which ‘democracy shapes the way we live and learn together’ (Fielding, 2015) – in which, in one pre-service teacher’s words, ‘student voices are heard, where students feel safe, and students do not feel as if they are being treated as simply one of many’ (quoted in Cook-Sather & Curl, 2014, p. 95). Through their collective inquiry and co-creation with secondary students of approaches to developing inclusive learning environments, lessons, and forms of assessment, pre-service teachers come ‘face-to-face’, as one pre-service teacher put it, with ‘assumptions, biases and understandings of the real diversity of schools, culture, power and social class’ (quoted in Cook-Sather & Curl, 2014, p. 93), and they learn to co-create educational experiences – including curriculum – based on empathy and a strong sense of moral purpose. Finally, the pre-service teachers who participate in TLT engage in various forms of co-production, sharing their work at conferences and in co-authored publications (e.g., Cook-Sather & Reisinger, 2001; Dunderdale et al., 2001). Pre-service teachers integrate the commitments and practices they develop through their participation in the TLT program into their ways of being as teachers; they not only forge their moral compasses but acclimate to the world of teaching with those compasses as their guides. For example, reflecting on her participation in TLT, a teacher with 11 years of teaching experience wrote about how she began her teaching ‘with a student-centered rather than a teacher focused perspective’ that allowed her to ‘create a question-based classroom and an inquiry stance within a school district curriculum that valued a “skills” based approach’. She was, in her words again, ‘literally able to teach against the grain because I felt like I had a way of connecting with students in ways that simply telling them the “whats” of the curriculum would not allow’. Participation in TLT has supported this and other pre-service teachers in developing models
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and strategies to sustain and continually reflect upon their moral purpose amid challenging ‘regimes’ (Zembylas, 2005) that can work against teachers’ sense of moral and ethical responsibility. Both formal and informal feedback on their experiences in TLT suggests that pre-service teachers develop mindsets and capacities to sustain a moral stance in teaching. Through participating in the ‘reflective critical space’ of TLT, preservice teachers develop ‘ethical literacy’ (Mahoney, 2009, p. 984) that prepares them to navigate the complex social and political landscape of standardization with high-stakes accountability, neoliberal marketization of schools, and other realities of schools, and to forge relationships based on respect and reciprocity in teaching and learning. Developing a commitment to creating democratic spaces in which all student voices are heard, coming face to face with biases and assumptions, and creating student-centered, question-based classrooms are examples of what Joseph (2003) calls developing moral imagination: thinking creatively within the constraints of what is morally possible, evaluating issues from a moral point of view, projecting oneself into the situations of others’ lives, being empathic, and being affirming. Pre-service teachers who have such extended, deeply collaborative experiences within the liminal spaces of TLT are thus prepared to realize moral purpose through a professionalism fused with a moral and ethical commitment to equity and democratic principles and practices – principles and practices that ‘can be learnt only through and by actual living’ (Bloom, 1952, quoted in Fielding, 2015).
CONCLUSION: CHALLENGES TO AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS Creating spaces and structures within which pre-service teachers can discover and sustain their capacity for moral reasoning and imagination is difficult for teacher educators not only because of the dearth of clear language around morality in teaching and the ‘schizophrenia’ of ethical teaching (Sanger, 2012) but also because of particular social and political forces and current paradigms in education. One social issue that has become increasingly significant in recent times of increased mass migration and greater awareness of gender and sexual diversity is marginalization and xenophobia in relation to minority groups. Pre-service teachers must learn to recognize and address issues of discrimination and marginalization in their classrooms, schools, and communities (Nieto, 2003; Sleeter, 2001; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Furthermore, pre-service teachers who are themselves marginalized due to race, ethnicity, gender, or other identity constructs must learn to navigate circumstances that degrade them and deny them agency (Cole & Stuart, 2005). Therefore, they must develop a critical understanding of their own identities, power, and positionality, as well as a well-rounded awareness of the current social issues and contexts that shape students’ experiences.
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There are also more specific institutional issues that pose a challenge to preservice teachers’ ability to develop and sustain critical moral reasoning and stance. The political, economic, and social emphases on privatization, standardization, and marketization of schools position both teachers and students as commodities to be measured within the constructs of a few narrow categories (Lipman, 1997), and teachers are pressured to focus primarily on test scores and not attend to moral dimensions of teaching such as culture and equity (see Goodlad, 1990) during their ‘professional’ collaboration and development time. Such commodification of the student (and the teacher) focuses teachers’ attention and efforts on limited measurable outcomes and away from the cultivation of ethical, engaged democratic citizens (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2006; Meier & Wood, 2004; Menken, 2006). The development of pre-service teachers’ capacity for moral reasoning and imagination can therefore be disrupted by policies and practices including high-stakes testing, techno-surveillance of students and teachers, and the commodification of public education. Pre-service teachers who have explored the moral dimensions of education and developed capacities for moral reasoning and imagination in their teacher education programs are better prepared to grapple emotionally and morally with issues of marginalization and injustice and school systems that constantly re-situate them as technicians and commodities. However, once pre-service teachers graduate from their programs, they must also be able to resist demoralization as teachers. The ways in which a school administration’s ‘emotional regime’ (Zembylas, 2005, p. 474), or what is considered the appropriate way to act and think, can cause emotional suffering in teachers is akin to a sense of ‘de-moralization’ described by Nias (1993, 1996) and Hargreaves (1998, 2001) when the school’s policies and practices conflict with teachers’ moral stances. Thus, teacher educators must not only help pre-service teachers uncover and understand the moral dimensions of teaching, they must also support pre-service teachers in developing capacity to sustain moral reasoning and imagination and continually reflect upon their moral purpose amid challenging ‘regimes’ when they are teachers. The tensions and mixed messages about the role of the teacher, the variously conceptualized moral aspects of the profession, and the social and political forces that shape schools pose significant challenges to teacher educators’ efforts to support pre-service teachers’ developing capacity for moral reasoning and imagination. As interest in moral and ethical development in teacher education increases, it is essential that teacher educators design approaches to providing learning experiences and critical frameworks that help to foster teachers’ ‘moral imagination’ (Joseph, 2003) and develop the skills necessary to understand and navigate the moral dimensions of teaching (Bullough, 2011; Gholami & Husu, 2010; Joseph, 2003; Warnick & Silverman, 2011). As the example of Teaching and Learning Together suggests, approaches that include liminal spaces, collective inquiry, and co-construction/production can support the development of pre-service students’ sense of moral purpose in teaching and the agency to resist demoralization. When
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teacher educators support sustained collaborations between prospective teachers and school-aged students, the pre-service teachers are nurtured in developing commitments and practices that move toward greater equity, democracy, and social justice in education and develop the capacity to resist demoralization. Facilitating conversations and authentic experiences that examine issues of moral choice requires teacher educators not only to know how to engage effectively in such facilitation, but to be able to take risks in their teaching to do so. Research on student evaluations of teacher education courses that interrogate sensitive issues of identity and power reveals a pattern of negative reviews, which has been attributed mainly to student resistance to engaging in difficult conversations (Brown, 2004). Nast (1999) has suggested that in order to support teacher educators in taking risks as they, in turn, support the moral and ethical development of teachers, teacher education programs must explicitly affirm this type of work through the ways they construct and speak about school policy and institutional goals. Indeed, fostering in pre-service teachers the capacity for moral reasoning and imagination is not solely the work of teacher educators. Rather, it is the job of institutions of teacher education on the whole to support this challenging, yet critical work.
REFERENCES Adams, J.E. (2000). Taking Charge of the Curriculum: Teacher Networks and Curriculum Implementation. New York: Teachers College Press. Anderson, L. (2010). Embedded, emboldened, and (net)working for change: Support-seeking and teacher agency in urban, high-needs schools. Harvard Educational Review, 80(4), 541–573. Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. (1985). Radical education and transformative intellectuals. CTheory, 9(3), 48–63. Baker-Doyle, K.J. (2012). First-year teachers’ support networks: Intentional professional networks and diverse professional allies. The New Educator, 8(1), 65–85. Baker-Doyle, K.J., & Gustavson, L. (2015). Permission-seeking as an agentive tool for transgressive teaching: An ethnographic study of teachers organizing for curricular change. Journal of Educational Change, 17(1) 51–84. Ball, D.L., & Wilson, S.M. (1996). Integrity in teaching: Recognizing the fusion of the moral and intellectual. American Educational Research Journal, 33(1), 155–192. Bieler, D., & Burns Thomas, A. (2009). Finding freedom in dialectic inquiry: New teachers’ responses to silencing. Teachers College Record, 111(4), 1030–1064. Bloom, A. (1952). Learning through living. In M. Alderton Pink (Ed.), Moral Foundations of Citizenship (pp. 135–143). London: London University Press. Boon, H. (2011). Raising the bar: Ethics education for quality teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(7), 76–93. Britzman, D. (1991). Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. New York: State University of New York Press. Brown, E.L. (2004). What precipitates change in cultural diversity awareness during a multicultural course: The message or the method? Journal of Teacher Education, 55(4), 325–340. Brown, M.A., & White, J. (2013). Exploring Childhood in a Comparative Context: An Introductory Guide for Students. Abingdon: Routledge.
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Bull, B.L. (1990). The limits of teacher professionalism. In J.I. Goodlad, R. Soder, & K.A. Sirotnik (Eds), The Moral Dimensions of Teaching (pp. 87–129). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bullough, R.V. (2011). Ethical and moral matters in teaching and teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1), 21–28. Campbell, E. (2008). The ethics of teaching as a moral profession. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(4), 357–385. Chapman, A., Forster, D., & Buchanan R. (2013) The moral imagination in pre-service teachers’ ethical reasoning. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(5), 131–143. Cobb, P., & McClain, K. (2006). The collective mediation of a high-stakes accountability program: Communities and networks of practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 13(2), 80. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1993). Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S.L. (1999). The teacher research movement: A decade later. Educational Researcher, 28(7), 15–25. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (2006). Troubling images of teaching in No Child Left Behind. Harvard Educational Review, 76(4), 668–697. Cole, M., & Stuart, J.S. (2005). ‘Do you ride on elephants’ and ‘never tell them you’re German’: The experiences of British Asian and black, and overseas student teachers in south-east England. British Educational Research Journal, 31(3), 349–366. Collie, R.J., Shapka, J.D., & Perry, N.E. (2012). School climate and social–emotional learning: Predicting teacher stress, job satisfaction, and teaching efficacy. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 1189–1204. Colnerud, G. (1997). Ethical conflicts in teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(6), 627–635. Cook-Sather, A. (2002). Re(in)forming the conversations: Student position, power, and voice in teacher education. Radical Teacher, 64, 21–28. Cook-Sather, A. (2006). Newly betwixt and between: Revising liminality in learning to teach. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 37(2), 110–127. Cook-Sather, A. (2007). What would happen if we treated students as those with opinions that matter? The benefits to principals and teachers of supporting youth engagement in school. NASSP Bulletin 91(4), 343–362. Cook-Sather, A. (2010). Students as learners and teachers: Taking responsibility, transforming education, and redefining accountability. Curriculum Inquiry, 40(4), 555–575. Cook-Sather, A., & Curl, H. (2014). ‘I want to listen to my students’ lives’: Developing an ecological perspective in learning to teach. Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter. Cook-Sather, A., & Curl, H. (2016). Positioning students as teacher educators: Preparing learners to transform schools. In A. Montgomery & I. Kehoe (Eds), Reimagining the Purpose of Schools and Educational Organisations: Developing Critical Thinking, Agency, Beliefs in Schools and Educational Organisations (pp. 65–76). Cham, Switzerland: Springer Publishers. Cook-Sather, A., & Reisinger, O. (2001). Seeing the students behind the stereotypes: The perspectives of three pre-service teachers. The Teacher Educator, 37(2), 91–99. Cook-Sather, A., & Youens, B. (2007). Repositioning students in initial teacher preparation: A comparative case study of learning to teach for social justice in the United States and in England. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 62–75. Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M.W. (1995). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi Delta Kappan, April. Dewey, J., & Barnes, A.C. (1929). Art and Education. Barnes Foundation Press. Dunderdale, K., Tourscher, S., Yoo, R.J., Reisinger, O., & Cook-Sather, A. (2001). What’s your bias? Cuts on diversity in a suburban public school. In J. Shultz & A. Cook-Sather (Eds), In Our Own Words: Students’ Perspectives on School. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Emdin, C. (2016). For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
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Fecho, B. (2000). Developing a critical mass: Teacher education and critical inquiry pedagogy. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 194–199. Fielding, M. (2015). Lighting the slow fuse of possibility: A celebration of Jean Rudduck’s contribution to student voice as a transformative educational force. Keynote Address, 5th Annual Student Voice Seminar, University of Cambridge, England, June. Finney, S., & Orr, J. (1995). ‘I’ve really learned a lot, but …’: Cross-cultural understanding and teacher education in a racist society. Journal of Teacher Education, 46(5), 327–333. Flesher Forminaya, C. (2010). Collective identity in social movements: Central concepts and debates. Sociology Compass, 4(6), 393–404. Forster, D. (2012). Codes of ethics in Australian education: Towards a national perspective. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(9), 0–17. Gholami, K., & Husu, J. (2010). How do teachers reason about their practice? Representing the epistemic nature of teachers’ practical knowledge. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1520–1529. Goldstein, T. (2001). ‘I’m not white’: Anti-racist teacher education for white early childhood educators. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2(1), 3–13. Goodlad, J.I. (1990). The occupation of teaching in schools. In J.I. Goodlad, R. Soder, & K.A. Sirotnik (Eds), The Moral Dimensions of Teaching (pp. 3–34). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Goodlad, J.I. (1992). The moral dimensions of schooling and teacher education. Journal of Moral Education, 21(2), 87–97. Hansen, D.T. (1998). The moral is in the practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(6), 643–655. Hansen, D.T. (2014). Cosmopolitanism as cultural creativity: New modes of educational practice in globalizing times. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(1), 1–14. Hargreaves, A. (1998). The emotional practice of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(8), 835–854. Hargreaves, A. (2001). Emotional geographies of teaching. Teachers College Record, 103(6), 1056– 1080. Head, F.A. (1992). Student teaching as initiation into the teaching profession. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 23, 89–107. Hoigaard, R., Giske, R., & Sundsli, K. (2012). Newly qualified teachers’ work engagement and teacher efficacy influences on job satisfaction, burnout, and the intention to quit. European Journal of Teacher Education, 35(3), 347–357. Hord, S.M. (1997). Professional learning communities: Communities of continuous inquiry and improvement. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 211 East Seventh Street, Austin, TX 787601. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno= ED410659 Ingersoll, R. (2001). Teacher turnover and teacher shortages: An organizational analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 38(3), 499–534. Ingersoll, R., & Smith, T.M. (2003). The wrong solution to the teacher shortage. Educational Leadership, 60(8), 30. Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Herr-Stephenson, B., Lange, P.G., Pascoe, C.J., Robinson, L. et al. (2008). Living and learning with new media: Summary of findings from the Digital Youth Project. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jones, N., & Youngs, P. (2012). Attitudes and affect: Daily emotions and their association with the commitment and burnout of beginning teachers. Teachers College Record, 114(2). Joseph, P. (2003). Teaching about the moral classroom: Infusing the moral imagination into teacher education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 31(1), 7–20. Joseph, P.B., & Efron, S. (1993). Moral choices/moral conflicts: Teachers’ self-perceptions. Journal of Moral Education, 22(3), 201–220.
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Kafai, Y.B., & Peppler, K.A. (2011). Youth, technology, and DIY developing participatory competencies in creative media production. Review of Research in Education, 35(1), 89–119. Kahne, J., & Westheimer, J. (2000). A pedagogy of collective action and reflection. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(5), 372–383. Kauffman, D., Johnson, S.M., Kardos, S.M., Liu, E., & Peske, H.G. (2002). ‘Lost at sea’: New teachers’ experiences with curriculum and assessment. Teachers College Record, 104(2), 273–300. Kelchtermans, G. (1996). Teacher vulnerability: Understanding its moral and political roots. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26(3), 307–323. Kim, M. (2013). Cultivating teachers’ morality: The pedagogy of emotional rationality. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), article 2. Available at: http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol38/iss1/2 Lieberman, A. (1995). Practices that support teacher development. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(8), 591–596. Lieberman, A., & Miller, L. (1999). Teachers – Transforming their World and their Work. New York: Teachers College Press. Lieberman, A., & Miller, L. (2001). Teachers Caught in the Action: Professional Development that Matters (Vol. 31). New York: Teachers College Press. Lipman, P. (1997). Restructuring in context: A case study of teacher participation and the dynamics of ideology, race, and power. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 3–37. Little, J.W. (2001). Professional development in pursuit of school reform. In A. Lieberman & L. Miller (Eds), Teachers Caught in the Action: Professional Development that Matters (pp. 23–44). New York: Teachers College Press. Lyons, N. (1990). Dilemmas of knowing: Ethical and epistemological dimensions of teachers’ work and development. Harvard Educational Review, 60(2), 159–181. Mahoney, P. (2009). Should ‘ought’ be taught? Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(7), 983–989. McNamara, O., Roberts, L., Basit, T.N., & Brown, T. (2002). Rites of passage in initial teacher training: Ritual, performance, ordeal, and Numeracy Skills Test. British Educational Research Journal, 28(6), 863–878. Meier, D., & Wood, G. (Eds). (2004). Many Children Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act is Damaging our Children and our Schools. Boston: Beacon Press. Menken, K. (2006). Teaching to the test: How No Child Left Behind impacts language policy, curriculum, and instruction for English language learners. Bilingual Research Journal, 30(2), 521–546. Metlife Foundation. (2013). The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership (No. ED 542202). New York: MetLife Foundation. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/ED542202.pdf Mullen, C.A., & Diamond, P.C.T. (2002). The postmodern challenge: Using arts-based inquiry to build a community of teacher collaborators and selves. In H. Christiansen & S. Ramadevi (Eds), Re-Educating the Educator: Global Perspectives on Community Building (pp. 107–124). Albany: SUNY Press. Nast, H.J. (1999). ‘Sex’, ‘race’ and multiculturalism: Critical consumption and the politics of course evaluations. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 23(1), 102–115. Nias, J. (1993). Changing times, changing identities: Grieving for a lost self. In R.G. Burgess (Ed.), Educational Research and Evaluation: For Policy and Practice (pp. 139–156). London: Falmer Press. Nias, J. (1996). Thinking about feeling: The emotions in teaching. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26(3), 293–306. Nieto, S. (2003). What Keeps Teachers Going? New York: Teachers College Press. O’Flaherty, J., & McGarr, O. (2014). The use of case-based learning in the development of student teachers’ levels of moral reasoning. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(3), 312–330. Paris, C.L. (1993). Teacher Agency and Curriculum Making in Classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Pointer Mace, D.H. (2009) Teacher Practice Online: Sharing Wisdom, Opening Doors. New York: Teachers College Press. Polletta, F., & Jasper, J.M. (2001). Collective identity and social movements. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 283–305.
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Popkewitz, T. (2008). Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform. New York: Routledge. Priestley, M., Edwards, R., Priestley, A., & Miller, K. (2012). Teacher agency in curriculum making: Agents of change and spaces for manoeuvre. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 191–214. Ratto, M., & Boler, M. (2014). DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sanger, M. (2001). Talking to teachers and looking at practice in understanding the moral dimensions of teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(6), 683–704. Sanger, M. (2008). What we need to prepare teachers for the moral nature of their work. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(2), 169–185. Sanger, M. (2012). The schizophrenia of contemporary education and the moral work of teaching. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 285–307. Santoro, D.A. (2011). Good teaching in difficult times: Demoralization in the pursuit of good work. American Journal of Education, 118(1), 1–23. Schick, C., & St Denis, V. (2003). What makes anti-racist pedagogy in teacher education difficult? Three popular ideological assumptions. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 49(1). Schön, D.A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. Sears, J.T. (2004). The curriculum worker as public moral intellectual. In J.T. Sears & R.A. GaztambideFernandez (Eds), Curriculum Work as Public Moral Enterprise. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Shiller, J. (2015). Speaking back to the neoliberal discourse on teaching: How US teachers use social media to redefine teaching. Critical Education, 6(9). Sleeter, C.E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94–106. Snow, D. (2001). Collective identity and expressive forms. Center for the Study of Democracy. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2zn1t7bj Sockett, H. (1990). Accountability, trust, and ethical codes in practice. In J.I. Goodlad, R. Soder, & K.A. Sirotnik (Eds.), The Moral Dimensions of Teaching (pp. 224–250). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sockett, H., & LePage, P. (2002). The missing language of the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(2), 159–171. Soder, R. (1990). The rhetoric of teacher professionalism. In J.I. Goodlad, R. Soder, & K.A. Sirotnik (Eds), The Moral Dimensions of Teaching (pp. 35–86). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Tom, A.R. (1980). Teaching as a moral craft: A metaphor for teaching and teacher education. Curriculum Inquiry, 10(3), 317–323. Van Veen, K., & Sleegers, P. (2006). How does it feel? Teacher’s emotions in a context of change. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(1), 85–111. Villegas, A.M., & Lucas, T. (2002). Educating Culturally Responsive Teachers: A Coherent Approach. New York: SUNY Press. Warnick, B.R., & Silverman, S.K. (2011). A framework for professional ethics courses in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(3), 273–285. Warren, M.R., & Mapp, K.L. (2011). A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zembylas, M. (2005). Beyond teacher cognition and teacher beliefs: The value of the ethnography of emotions in teaching. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(4), 465–487.
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21 Disrupting Oppressive Views and Practices through Critical Teacher Education: Turning to Post-Structuralist Ethics Mark Boylan INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I examine teacher education that is informed by social justice, post-colonial, feminist and post-structural standpoints – critical teacher education – and consider how post-structuralist ethics can support this perspective. Whilst there are important distinctions made by teacher educators working from these different theoretical positions, such critical perspectives all interrogate prevailing norms, ideologies, discourses and structures of education (including teacher education), as well as society more generally. Thus, critical teacher education attends to the structural and relational construction of oppression and injustice in and beyond education. The chapter is based on an extensive review of literature. However, for reasons of space, I discuss a selection of exemplar accounts. Next, I consider different orientations to social justice in teacher education and contrast critical teacher education with other stances. Following this, I describe the methodological approaches and methods used in researching these practices. I then discuss concerns and pedagogy of critical teacher education and so identify challenges for the practice of critical teacher educators. I argue that, as one response to these challenges, critical teacher education can find philosophical support in post-structuralist ethics as an alternative to theories of justice which are often cited in critical teacher education literature.
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ORIENTATIONS TOWARDS JUSTICE Much of the teacher education practice discussed in this chapter is framed through the language of social justice – a malleable term with multiple meanings (Chubbuck, 2010; Cochran-Smith, 2009). For clarity, some educators have introduced philosophical concepts of justice to educational discussion (for example, Cochran-Smith, 2009; Mills, 2012), leading to the articulation of the importance of principles of distribution, recognition and participation (Fraser, 2008). Whilst introducing explicit discussion of the philosophy of justice into teacher education research and course design helps to foreground justice (CochranSmith, 2009), the meaning of these principles is contested. For example, a concern for addressing distributive justice can be limited to addressing inequity in access to educational resources or more radically can seek to surface and then counter relations of power enmeshed in privilege and oppression. A principle of recognition can be evoked to support ‘awareness days’ such as the ‘Day of Pink’ that aims to challenge homophobic bullying or to interrogate heteronormativity by recognising diverse sexual and gender orientations as valid (Martino and Cumming-Potvin, 2016). Participation can have more or less democratic meanings and address ways that social and economic relationships silence some voices and amplify others. Social justice, then, may be framed in less or more radical terms. Various typologies have been formulated to describe this (see Chubbuck, 2010; Gorski, 2009; Kumashiro, 2000). These can be synthesised by considering three orientations. •• Conservative (adopting this term from Gorski, 2009): The focus in this orientation is on improving learning opportunities and outcomes for those who experience injustice in education (Chubbock, 2010), based on teaching about the other (Gorski, 2009; Kumashiro, 2000). •• Socially liberal: This orientation recognises that educational structures and practices need transforming (Chubbock, 2010), that teaching should be culturally sensitive and multiculturally competent (Gorski, 2009), and that othering and privilege should be challenged (Kumashiro, 2000). •• Critical: This orientation recognises that for social justice to be realised in schools, social structures beyond school need transforming (Chubbock, 2010), socio-political contexts need to be recognised and teaching needs to be a counter-hegemonic practice (Gorski, 2009); education, thus, seeks to change students and society (Kumashiro, 2000).
Teacher educators and researchers focusing on specific oppressions have drawn parallel distinctions in relation to school practices and teacher beliefs, for example the differences between safe, positive and queering moments (Goldstein, Russell & Daley, 2007) or – in relation to disability – inclusion as privilege, as compromise or as social justice (Lalvani, 2013). These three orientations are summarised in Table 21.1 through the lens of the three elements of a theory of justice – distribution, recognition and participation (Fraser, 2008). The table also serves to identify the scope and meaning of critical teacher education as considered in this chapter. Later, I argue that a consideration
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Table 21.1 Orientations towards social justice in teacher education Elements of a theory of justice
Orientation Distribution
Recognition
Participation
Conservative: Equal Tolerance, Paternalistic education for and opportunity acceptance of about the other identities Social liberal: Affirmative Multiculturalism Liberal democratic by emphasising cultural action culturally relevant unitary individuals sensitivity and pedagogy multicultural competency Recognising and Interrupts ‘othering’, Social reconstruction, Critical: critical mutuality and addressing socio-political, multiculturalism, solidarity, privilege and counter-hegemonic oppression embraces multiple practice and social intersectionality subjectivities transformation
of ethics rather than justice may provide an alternative basis for informing the practice of critical teacher educators and teachers that may better address the complexity of critical teacher education practice.
RESEARCH IN/ON CRITICAL TEACHER EDUCATION In this section, I consider the research practices of critical teacher educators. Borko (2004) offers a map for considering research on teacher professional learning in terms of three phases: studying programmes on a single site; studying a single programme enacted at more than one site; or comparing different programmes at different sites. This mapping can be usefully applied to critical teacher education research, which has usually involved the study of single programmes on single sites. The research cited in this chapter reflects this. A further limit is that most programmes reported are with beginning rather than experienced teachers. The following research methodologies and methods are used: •• teacher educator self-study (Thompson, 2012) and auto-ethnography (Hyland, 2010; Jones and Vagle, 2013; Vavrus, 2006); •• ethnographically informed research, including individual and group interviews focused on teacher practices (Asher, 2007; Farnsworth, 2010, Martino and Cumming-Potvin, 2016; Smith, 2015; Zahur et al., 2002); •• practitioner research focused on understanding and evaluating outcomes of practices (Asher, 2005; Boylan, 2009; Boylan and Woolsey, 2015; de Freitas, 2008; de Freitas and McAuley, 2008; Francis and Msibi, 2011; Hyland, 2010; Jones, 2012; Richardson, 2004; Sykes and Goldstein, 2004; Vavrus, 2009);
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•• action research (Aveling, 2006); •• longitudinal programme evaluation using varied methods (Mitton-Kukner et al., 2016; Payne and Smith, 2012).
Later, I return to consider the limitations of focusing on single programmes and mainly on beginning teacher education, and possibilities for extending research in this area.
EXPANDING SOCIAL JUSTICE TEACHER EDUCATION Critical teacher educators challenge an apparent hierarchy of priorities in social justice teacher education. I will take as an example multicultural education courses in the United States. Having courses specifically to address these issues indicates that they are considered important, relative to other education systems where issues of multiculturalism and social justice are more marginalised. However, such courses may also form a means of excluding issues of injustice from integration into the core curricula focused on practice. Thus, multicultural education courses can in turn be marginalised. In any case, they differ in the extent to which different marginalised groups and identities are considered and in what way (Gorski, 2009; Gorski et al., 2013). Race is explicitly mentioned in nearly all syllabi (although largely in conservative or liberal ways), sexuality and socio-economic status in half, but disability only included in a third. Responding to current presences and absences, critical teacher educators argue for attention also to be paid to: •• challenging gendered constructions of ideal body image (Jones, 2012; Jones and HughesDecatur, 2012); •• LGBTQ1 identities and oppression (for example, Bhana, 2014; Goldstein, Russell and Daley, 2007; Martino and Cumming-Potvin, 2016; Mitton-Kukner et al., 2016; Richardson, 2004; Robinson and Ferfolja, 2008; Smith, 2015; Sumara, 2007; Vavrus, 2009); •• disability (Blum et al., 2015; Lalvani, 2013; Lalvani and Broderick, 2013; Thompson, 2012); •• social class (Jones and Vagle, 2013); •• violence in school and society (Watts and Erevelles, 2004), including abuse and trauma arising from socio-economic and gendered oppression (Jones, 2012); •• more critical approaches to racism informed by critical race theory (for example, Juárez and Hayes, 2010) and addressing whiteness and white privilege (for example, Asher, 2005, 2007; Aveling, 2006; de Freitas and McAuley, 2008).
In addition, critical teacher educators argue for a socio-political approach that considers the relationships between privilege and oppression and promotes social reconstruction. This contrasts with the more prevalent conservative and liberal approaches found in many courses (see Gorski, 2009).
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SITUATED CURRICULA There are important differences between countries in terms of how issues of social justice manifest in education, rooted in their diverse socio-political, economic and cultural histories. Here, I provide examples of ways in which curricula are situated. I use the term situated curricula to point to the ways in which priorities for critical teacher education differ from context to context, suggesting that a universal or global critical teacher education curriculum is unrealisable. McConaghy (2004) considers ways to address specific ‘cartographies’ of social and cultural attitudes to sexuality in rural Australia. Such cartographies are distinct from those found, for example, in South Africa in which homophobia is enmeshed in religious beliefs and colonial myths that Africa was exclusively heterosexual prior to colonialisation (Francis and Msibi, 2011). In countries where same sex marriage is legal or same sex parenting is at least tolerated, the reality of diversity in families is both a resource for teacher educators and a motivation for teachers to examine their beliefs and practices (Bower and Klecka, 2009; Martino and Cumming-Potvin, 2011), including in relation to literature used in the classroom. However, in other contexts where heterosexuality is maintained legally or through cultural rigidity (Bhana, 2014), for example in Turkey, the scope for addressing teacher beliefs is more limited (Dedeoglu et al., 2012). Addressing difference is also important in relation to race and racism; for example, developing the capacity of teachers from largely monocultural white rural communities in Atlantic Canada to embrace ethnic diversity (de Freitas and McAuley, 2008). Similarly, Zembylas (2010) identifies ways in which the location in a conflict-ridden society is implicated in Greek Cypriot teachers’ constructions of Turkish-speaking minority children’s identities. This includes an avowed and open racism on the part of some teachers, justified by reference to recent conflicts, something that might be rarely expressed in other situations. As most literature on social justice in education has originated from and about the economically advantaged parts of the world, this influences the issues of concern. In low-income countries pressing issues of social justice are the basic quality of education and access to it – particularly in rural areas (see Bullough and Hall-Kenyon, Chapter 43, this volume) – and teacher supply and professional autonomy (Aikman and Rao, 2012; Tikly and Barrett, 2009; Weber, 2007). Zahur, Barton and Upadhyay (2002) studied the practices of a teacher educator – Haleema – in Pakistan, whose practice focused on science education for the very poor. The literacy rate for such groups is around 10 per cent, and oppression through poverty intersects with gender discrimination in education and society. Here, critical pedagogy entails addressing social concerns through health and environmental science. In this context an orientation to social justice can find expression in the planting of a community garden in order to connect
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science education to the lived needs of the poor and as means of empowering women. Thus, practices are developed to understand and then address how prejudiced or oppressive beliefs and practices manifest in situated ways, and so action towards social justice may be context specific.
PEDAGOGICAL DIVERSITY TO PROMOTE ENCOUNTER In this section, I consider the pedagogical practices of critical teacher educators, understood as fostering encounters with and about society, others and the self. Important to facilitating encounters with society is bringing the concerns of the marginalised into the curriculum (Jones and Vagle, 2013), for example by addressing issues of social class and addressing the knowledge gaps of teachers in relation to oppressed groups (Aveling, 2006). This supports locating and disrupting systems and structures of hierarchy and privilege and the effects of oppression (Jones, 2012; Jones and Vagle, 2013; Kumashiro 2004). A second focus of enquiry is ‘encounter with others’. A theoretical basis for the importance of this is found in psychoanalytical theory, which suggests that for aggression and hatred to be maintained, separation is necessary and the lives of the ‘other’ are fictionalised (Goldstein, et al., 2007; Sumara, 2007). Encounter with others may occur indirectly through media focused on marginalised groups, or directly, for example by dialogue with guest indigenous speakers in Australia (Aveling, 2006) and LBGTQ identified presenters in South Africa (Richardson, 2004). More problematic and ethically challenging is provoking or creating space for encounters with others to occur within the student body, I return to this below. Autobiographical and auto-ethnographic writing is used to foster encounter with the self. This can situate personal histories in relation to broader structures and difference (Asher, 2005) in relation to: •• •• •• •• ••
disability (Gabel, 2001); constructions of ability (Jones, 2012); body and body image (Jones and Hughes-Decatur, 2012); social class (Jones and Vagle, 2013; Vavrus, 2009); and ethnicity (Asher, 2005, 2007; de Freitas and McAuley, 2008).
In relation to all three forms of encounter – with society, others and self – teacher educators use media created outside the academy focused on oppression such as auto/biographical narratives of indigenous experience (Aveling, 2006). Critical reflection is promoted by the use of media drawn from popular and literary cultures such as films, sketch shows and graphic novels (Asher, 2005, 2007; de Freitas and McAuley, 2008; Jones, 2012; Jones and Hughes-Decatur, 2012; Vavrus, 2009), as well as critique of visual representations and discursive practices used in advertising (Jones and Hughes-Decatur, 2012). Others emphasise
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the power of art-based approaches as means of enquiry, including drama (Boylan, 2009), performed ethnography (Sykes and Goldstein 2004) and multimedia collages (Jones, 2012). Unsurprisingly, teacher educators also encourage engagement with research and academic theory (Asher, 2005, 2007; de Freitas and McAuley, 2008; McConaghy, 2004; Mitton-Kukner et al., 2016; Richardson, 2004; Thompson, 2012; Vavrus, 2009). In teacher education literature informed by conservative and social-liberal orientations towards social justice, much is made of the importance of field experiences, including service learning (see, for example, Carter Andrews, 2009). Yet this is under explored in critical teacher education literature concerned with those issues such as disability and sexuality that are relatively absent from multicultural education texts. Possibly related to this is a relative absence of accounts of engaging teachers in the production of curriculum resources that the teachers might use in their teaching to address these absences. An exception is Thompson’s (2012) account in relation to disability.
CHALLENGING NORMATIVITY In this section I consider ways that critical teacher educators interrogate ‘normativity’ across a range of concerns. These include challenging heteronormative binaries and the consequent production of gender and sexual normalcy (Bower and Klecka, 2009; Goldstein et al., 2007; Gorski et al., 2013; Martino and Cumming-Potvin, 2016; McConaghy, 2004; Robinson and Ferfolja, 2008; Smith, 2015). Goldstein et al. (2007) contrast the creation of ‘positive schools’ that seek to normalise LGBTQ students within heteronormative worldviews with an alternative that recognises that sexuality is constructed, performed, shifting and unstable, and intersects with other social markers and identities. Teachers and teacher educators can enact ‘queer moments’ – transgressions which disrupt heteronormativity. For example, in an activity focused on homophobic name calling, students are asked to juxtapose derogatory terms with their own names and then reflect on their emotional and cognitive responses. This is not only an exercise in empathy but a moment in which students may have the opportunity to consider the construction of their own identities. Parallel to challenges to heteronormativity is the interrogation of ableism (Blum et al., 2015; Lalvani and Broderick, 2013; Thompson, 2012). Lalvani and Broderick (2013) challenge notions of normalcy in relation to body and cognitive capacity and argue that too often the way disability is addressed can reinforce stereotypes, invoke pity rather than respect, and affirms that to be disabled is an intrinsically unsatisfying way to live. Alternative practices focused on the oppression of those identified/identifying as disabled can support insight into the discursive and structural production of disability (Thompson, 2012).
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‘Disrupting normativity’ is also applicable to other issues, including responding to and promoting transgression of social expectations and norms that are ethnically or religiously specified, for example a Jewish student choosing to fast during Ramadan (Bekerman et al., 2009). Others disrupt normalised constructions of body image through interrogation of media images and personal stories (Jones and Hughes-Decatur, 2012). An important specific arena relates to those teachers and beginning teachers who are themselves members of oppressed groups. Some teacher educators have recognised, variously, the issue and risks of coming out in school contexts for LGBTQ identified teachers (Sumara, 2007; Sykes and Goldstein 2004), challenges for disabled teachers (Gabel, 2001), and the experience of those who are positioned as minorities in the ‘whiteness’ of teacher education (Brown, 2014). Further, teachers face the task of translating anti-oppressive theory into practice (Agarwal et al., 2010; Chubbock and Zembylas, 2008; Smith, 2015; Young, 2010). This is particularly so in contexts where teachers themselves fear transgressing norms, for example, in relation to sexuality where a fear of surveillance is felt both by heterosexual identified and LGBTQ identified teachers (Martino and Cumming-Potvin, 2016). The prevailing conditions of performativity can mean that diversity may be posited as ‘a problem and spectacle of difference to be managed and tolerated by the beginning teacher’ (Allan, 2004, p. 420)
IDENTITY AND INTERSECTIONALITY Various researchers have pointed to the importance and complexity of teacher identity in relation to social justice teacher education (for example, Agarwal et al., 2010; Boylan and Woolsey, 2015; Chubbuck, 2010; de Freitas, 2008; Farnsworth, 2010; Vavrus, 2006). From these critical perspectives, identity is not something ‘out there’ – a social category that pertains only to those who are disadvantaged, to the ‘other’. It is something that is lived, including by teachers. Alternative notions of identity are invoked such as Boylan and Woolsey’s (2015) construct of smooth and striated identity or ecological perspectives on identity that draw on both discursive and complexity theories (Sumara, 2007). Critical teacher educators challenge conservative and/or liberal responses to those who experience discrimination that construct them as ‘victims’ or ‘problems’ (Payne and Smith, 2012). Further, attention is paid to how identities intersect in complex ways (Annamma et al., 2013; Asher 2005, 2007; Hyland, 2010; Sumara, 2007; Watts and Erevelles, 2004) and how, given this, the ideal of unitary citizens as sometimes conceived in critical pedagogy is untenable (Pittard, 2015). Such perspectives provide insight into the way privileged teachers may have structural, epistemological and social psychological investments in maintaining identifications that may be unconscious, for example in relation to ‘whiteness’
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(Aveling, 2006) and heteronormativity (McConaghy, 2004). There are internal conflicts as well as external conditions that shape and legitimate homophobic refusal of social-justice-orientated pedagogy. Repetition of homophobic statements by beginning teachers may ‘comfort’ (McConaghy, 2004) existing identifications. Incorporating lived identity into theorising about social justice in teacher education suggests the need for paying attention to social-psychological forces that shape identities and behaviours (Vavrus, 2006). The concept of ‘identity’ has also been used more positively to conceptualise the purpose of critical teacher education as developing activists for change, including the idea of a generic social justice teacher identity (for example, Boylan and Woolsey, 2015) or more specifically in the concept of the LGBTQ ally (Smith, 2015).
EMBRACING EMOTIONALITY I now turn to a distinctive feature of critical teacher education – embracing emotionality. Emotionality is intertwined with socially just teaching (Boylan, 2009). This necessitates the development of a critical emotional praxis (Chubbuck and Zembylas, 2008) that has three aspects: •• a recognition of the relationship between emotion and unjust systems and practices as experienced by students and teachers; •• an understanding of the relationship between emotion and action towards social justice; •• attention to emotional cultures in classrooms, schools and other educational sites as implicated in social justice.
Thus, critical teacher educators frequently embrace emotions and emotionality as important to engagement in issues of social justice and fostering action towards it. They develop pedagogical spaces in which a range of emotions can be expressed and explored. These include emotions such as anger that potentially mobilise teachers or beginning teachers into action against injustice (Boylan, 2009; Zembylas, 2007). However, discomforting and challenging privilege can also provoke anger or at least negative emotions directed at teacher educators (Aveling, 2006). Asher (2007) describes catalysing teacher education students’ disapproval when engaging them in examining texts used to address sexuality with elementary school children. Examining oppression can also provoke sadness, for example when discourses of body image are deconstructed (Jones, 2012). This has implications for the role of teacher educators in facilitating pedagogical spaces in which strong emotions may be expressed. Asher (2007) notes the importance of creating ‘safe spaces’. However, how teacher educators do this and how to develop their capacity to do this have not yet been fully explicated in the research literature. Another implication is that critical teacher education necessitates a degree of emotional labour for teachers (Asher, 2007; Boylan, 2009;
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Chubbuck and Zemblylas, 2008) and for teacher educators (Asher, 2005; Hyland, 2010; Jones, 2012; McConaghy, 2004; Taylor, 2002). I return to this below in considering ethical dilemmas that arise through such practices.
DISRUPTING EPISTEMOLOGIES Discomforting experiences also help to challenge hegemonic taken for granted beliefs and prejudices (Asher, 2007; Boler and Zembylas, 2003; Boylan, 2009; de Freitas, 2008). World views are challenged by engaging with the discursive and structural production of injustice through interrogation of texts, personal narratives or dramatic enactments. Jones (2012) theorises that such pedagogical practices disrupt the nomos of teacher education that privileges certain ways of coming to know. If this is so, then the diversity in pedagogical practice, discussed earlier, may challenge dominant epistemologies. What is ‘known’ and certain may be reconstituted as belief, provisional and contested. This can lead to uncertainty about knowledge itself and requires the development of a critical epistemology (Povey, 1997) that interrogates how knowledge is produced, one’s own epistemological positioning, and embraces paradox (Kumashiro, 2004, 2015). Teachers may experience a ‘crisis of truth’ (Jones, 2012; Kumashiro, 2002, 2015). Knowledge, for example, about LGBTQ lives is ‘difficult knowledge’ (McConaghy, 2004; Robinson and Ferfolja, 2008), whether introduced into a course through encounters with guest speakers, through video material or through directly considering students’ and tutors’ diverse identities. Such knowledge is difficult because it challenges teachers’ ideas about sexuality, but also more generally about society, others and self. This requires learning to unlearn and potentially accept that what we have learnt to perceive as good and ideal is only one perspective (Andreotti, 2010). Pursuing a dialogic epistemology also requires learning to listen to and recognise both the effects and limits of our perspectives, as well as learning to be receptive to those of others. Teacher educators need to be mindful that the future activity of critical teachers entails working and living with contradictions and not necessarily knowing what to do in advance or immediately in concrete situations (Allan, 2004; Jones, 2012). I return to this below in discussing post-structuralist ethics. It is important also to recognise the challenges in undertaking practices focused on disrupting epistemologies. Critical teacher education is enacted in the current context of the hegemony of neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies that threaten the possibility of critical and social justice focused teacher education (Chubbuck, 2010). Part of this hegemony includes the propagation of alternative certification routes, including on-line courses that mitigate against the sort of relational encounter identified in this chapter as important to developing a critical sensibility.
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TURNING TO POST-STRUCTURALIST ETHICS As noted at the start of the chapter, reference to social justice frames much of the discussion about teacher education for social change. Earlier I contrasted a critical teacher orientation with conservative and liberal orientations towards justice by considering their relationship to elements of a theory of social justice (Fraser, 2008). However, the issues and tensions discussed above suggest that principles of recognition, distribution and participation may not always help in guiding moment-to-moment actions by critical teacher educators or critical teachers. This suggests the need for a turn towards ethics. Explicit discussion of ethics is rare in teacher education literature (though see Bullough 2011 for a recent review). However, engagement, in particular with post-structuralist and similar ethical thought, has much to offer to critical teacher education. Fostering emotional spaces entails a degree of ethical ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty (Bauman, 1993; Boylan, 2016). To navigate through the ethical dilemmas that can arise, teachers and teacher educators need to frame reflection using other concepts than those found in theories of justice. To illustrate this I will take addressing issues of sexuality as a focus where this intersects with other oppressions. Hyland (2010) provides an example of potential ethical conflict between immediate actions and possible longer-term outcomes. She narrates an account of an ‘epiphanic moment’ in which race, sexuality and religion intersect in a US teacher education course. She describes the development of a strong sense of community amongst a diverse group of beginning teachers forged around a common sense of teacher identity and solidarity, which developed in part from an acceptance by white students that US society and education are structurally racist. This sense of solidarity and unity is fractured when some religious black students reject that heterosexism is an issue of social justice. When another student then identifies herself as a lesbian they respond homophobically to her. The encounter led to some of the religious protagonists later reflecting on their beliefs and indicating possibilities of these changing – a positive outcome. However, it disrupted the sense of community and, more importantly, cemented the oppression of the woman who became the focal point of the conflict. Moreover, three other women, in course journals or by email, later disclosed to the tutor that they too did not identify as heterosexual, but that the event increased their reluctance to disclose their sexuality to other teachers or in their communities. Similarly, Taylor (2002) describes working with teachers who were committed to social justice in relation to most issues but who held homophobic beliefs. The expression of these offended the teacher educator and other students. In these situations the different responsibilities of teacher educators are highlighted: to the beginning teachers present in the room – both those engaging in homophobic repetitions and those potentially offended by them – and to those school students, including LGBTQ students, who may be taught by them in the future.
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Both Hyland and Taylor’s narratives draw attention to the complexity and challenge of facilitating dialogue about beliefs and multiple subjectivities in teacher education and thus the choices critical teacher educators make when seeking to surface and encourage dialogue and critical reflection about sexuality. The same argument can be extended to other issues. Principles of justice alone do not guide such choices where the issues addressed, of sexuality, ethnicity, class, gender, and constructions of ability, are not ‘out there’ but are the lived experience of teachers. Kumashiro (2004) argues that for homophobic beliefs to be countered space must be given for their expression, although there is a danger that other antioppressive voices or those of teacher candidates who experience oppression are silenced. He argues that a way to address this is to bring further reflexivity to discussions and to place the pedagogical enterprise itself as a focus. To use the language of a theory of social justice, this would extend the principle of participation so that the teacher educator engages with the teachers in the form and construction of the learning experience. Taylor (2002) evokes the possibility of living together in a community of dissensus where agreement cannot be reached but in which respect for difference may be possible. This allows a move beyond appeals to empathy for those experiencing injustice to a sense of mutuality and solidarity that all of us, whatever our relationships to oppression, benefit when difference is respected. Similarly, a turn to ethics provides another means to support teacher criticality by engaging with philosophical principles directly (Boylan and Woolsey, 2015). This might include interrogating the principles of recognition, distribution and participation and their relationship to teaching as well as engaging with ethical thought. This approach is aligned with and supports a reconfiguration of teacher education pedagogy to place values and teacher identity development at the heart of its purposes, as proposed by many teacher educators (see for example, Korthagan, 2004). There are three aspects that may be particularly worthwhile for future development. The first is the notion of social praxis, understood as a concern for action for collective change (Kemmis, 2010). The second, following Levinas and Bakhtin, is to inform practice with an ethical concern for the other. The scope of this responsibility to others is extendable to the dimensions of self and society (Boylan, 2016). Encounter with others calls for a deeper ethical embrace with diversity and difference that can inform a reconceptualisation of teachers as cultural workers who are ‘weavers of difference’ (Kozleski and Waitoller, 2010). A third area to consider is Foucault’s notion of ethical self-care (Boylan, 2016; Clarke, 2009). This is notwithstanding the need to interrogate and reconceptualise Foucault’s meaning of ‘self’ to embrace a fuller sense of mutuality, solidarity and interdependence (Boylan, 2016). Ethical self-care refers to practices to support resistance to social forces which otherwise define subjectivity, with the aim
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of becoming an ethical actor. One aspect of this would be the development of the critical emotional praxis discussed above (Chubbuck and Zemblylas, 2008).
EXTENDING PEDAGOGICAL SPACES Here, I turn to possibilities for extending pedagogical spaces. Often attempts to enact critical teacher education are only interruptions to prevailing practices – relatively brief, temporarily occupied and fragile curriculum spaces that often are identified by educators as too short or fragmented. Programmes may last hours rather than the days needed and time limits can mean educators make difficult choices about which issues to prioritise and how to address them. However, an alternative, grounded in post-structuralist ethics, is not only to focus on specific oppressions but to foreground themes common across oppressions. Potential examples are the three themes identified earlier in this chapter: challenging normativity, identity and intersectionality, and the situated nature of oppression and injustice. Pedagogical space may also be extended by fostering collaboration between teacher educators who work in different settings and whose curriculum development and research tends to focus on different oppressions. This offers the possibility of providing mutual support to critical teacher educators to continue in their endeavours although they are often isolated in their workplaces (Robinson and Ferfolja, 2008). Collaboration can also extend to the sharing and co-development of materials. There is scope for creating similar programmes or interventions and using them in multiple places, notwithstanding the importance of situatedness discussed earlier. Such collaborations might also foster dialogue between teacher education researchers and teacher educators across different critical perspectives. An example of the potential richness of such dialogues can be found in the development of ‘Dis/Crit’ (Annamma et al., 2013) that brings together insights from disability studies and critical race theory. As yet, the implications of this synthesis for practice in teacher education are unexplored. However, this development points to ways in which intersectionality may be theorised. More practically, tasks used in teacher education for culturally responsive teaching may be extended or adapted as models for other areas, such as sexuality and disability, which are relatively newer areas attended to in teacher education. As well as investigating specific pedagogical practices, frameworks for conceptualising critical teacher education pedagogy need to be developed and interrogated, such as the model of pedagogies of discomfort, enquiry, compassion and respect (Boylan and Woolsey, 2015) or pedagogies for crisis, uncertainty, healing and activism (Kumashiro, 2015). Part of this interrogation, in relation to such conceptualisations as well as critical teacher education more generally, should be informed by post-structuralist ethics.
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CONCLUSION Critical teacher educators interrupt prevailing practices by addressing multiple oppressions and developing curricula and pedagogical practices to develop teachers’ awareness and practice in relation to these through encounters with society, self and others. Important themes are challenging normativity, considering identity and intersectionality, situating curricula, embracing emotionality and disrupting epistemology. As noted, currently most research in critical teacher education is concerned with programmes in single sites (Borko, 2004). New possibilities exist for research and practice in critical teacher education through linking or developing programmes across multiple sites, reframing interventions around themes that are common across forms of oppression, and extending practices in ways indicated above, such as service learning and teacher creation of anti-oppressive curriculum materials that consider intersectionality. However, it is important also to recognise a tension with the need to provincialise academic enquiry and for research methods and tools to be more locally and culturally specific as urged by post-colonialist writers (Andreotti, 2010). The development of research that takes a more evaluative stance needs to be balanced with more extended ethnographies and similar approaches that can inform practice. The latter would represent a positive extension to teacher education self-study and similar research that is limited in terms of developing more systemic change, whilst commendable in sharing examples of what is possible. Another possibility is for researchers to engage in deeper investigations of pedagogical practices and their efficacy. Arguably, two weaknesses in many current accounts is that these are briefly described (though there are exceptions, see, for example, Jones, 2012; Sykes and Goldstein 2004) and generally undertheorised. A further gap is the development of programmes and, thus, attendant research focused on experienced teachers. A turn to post-structuralist ethics can support teacher educators to extend both their pedagogical and research practices. Arguably, up to now critical teacher educators, at least those informed by post-structuralist and similar perspectives, have offered interruptions that have tended to be isolated and somewhat fragmented. There is scope for weaving together and learning from diverse practices to develop curriculum, pedagogy and research in this area that, seemingly paradoxically, embraces uncertainty in epistemology and ethics with a certitude that teacher educators share in the responsibility to address oppression in its multiple and intersecting forms.
Note 1 The acronym LGBTQ is used here meaning Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning and is in keeping with the most common form used by critical teacher educators discussed in the chapter.
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REFERENCES Agarwal, R., Epstein S., Oppenheim, R., Oyler, C. and Sonu, D. (2010) ‘From ideal to practice and back again: Beginning teachers teaching for social justice’, Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3): 237–247. Aikman, S. and Rao, N. (2012) ‘Gender equality and girls’ education: Investigating frameworks, disjunctures and meanings of quality education’, Theory and Research in Education, 10(3): 211–228. Allan, J. (2004) ‘Deterritorializations: Putting postmodernism to work on teacher education and inclusion’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(4): 417–432. Andreotti, V. (2010) ‘Postcolonial and post-critical global citizenship education’, in G. Elliott, C. Fourali and S. Issler (eds), Education and social change: Connecting local and global perspectives. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 238–250. Annamma, S.A., Connor, D. and Ferri, B. (2013) ‘Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability’, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16(1): 1–31. Asher, N. (2005) ‘At the interstices: Engaging postcolonial and feminist perspectives for a multicultural education pedagogy in the South’, The Teachers College Record, 107(5): 1079–1106. Asher, N. (2007) ‘Made in the (multicultural) USA: Unpacking tensions of race, culture, gender, and sexuality in education’, Educational Researcher, 36(2): 65–73. Aveling, N. (2006) ‘Hacking at our very roots: Rearticulating white racial identity within the context of teacher education’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 9(3): 261–274. Bauman, Z. (1993) Postmodern ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Bekerman, Z., Zembylas, M. and McGlynn, C. (2009) ‘Working toward the de-essentialization of identity categories in conflict and postconflict societies: Israel, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland’, Comparative Education Review, 53(2): 213–234. Bhana, D. (2014) ‘Ruled by hetero-norms? Raising some moral questions for teachers in South Africa’, Journal of Moral Education, 43(3), 362–376. Blum, G., Wilson, M. and Patish, Y. (2015) ‘Moving toward a more socially just classroom through teacher preparation for inclusion’, Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, 5(1): 4–14. Boler, M. and Zembylas, N. (2003) ‘Discomforting truths: The emotional terrain of understanding difference’, in P. Trifonas (ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social change, New York: Routledge Falmer. pp. 110–136. Borko, H. (2004) ‘Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain’, Educational Researcher, 33(8): 3–15. Bower, L. and Klecka, C. (2009) ‘(Re) considering normal: Queering social norms for parents and teachers’, Teaching Education, 20(4): 357–373. Boylan, M. (2009) ‘Engaging with issues of emotionality in mathematics teacher education for social justice’, Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 12: 427–443. Boylan, M. (2016) ‘Ethical dimensions of mathematics education’, Educational Studies in Mathematics, 92(3): 395–409. Boylan, M. and Woolsey, I. (2015) ‘Teacher education for social justice: Mapping identity spaces’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 46: 62–71. Brown, K.D. (2014) ‘Teaching in color: A critical race theory in education analysis of the literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 17(3): 326–345. Bullough, R.V. (2011) ‘Ethical and moral matters in teaching and teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1): 21–28. Carter Andrews, D.J. (2009) ‘“The hardest thing to turn from”: The effects of service-learning on preparing urban educators’, Equity & Excellence in Education, 42(3): 272–293. Chubbuck, S. (2010) ‘Individual and structural orientations in socially just teaching: Conceptualization, implementation, and collaborative effort’, Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3): 197–210.
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Chubbuck, S. and Zembylas, M. (2008) ‘The emotional ambivalence of socially just teaching: A case study of a novice urban schoolteacher’, American Educational Research Journal, 45(2): 274–318. Clarke, M. (2009) ‘The ethico-politics of teacher identity’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(2): 185–200. Cochran-Smith, M. (2009) ‘Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice’, in A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan and D. Hopkins (eds), The second international handbook of educational change. Springer international handbooks of education, Volume 23, Part 2. New York: Springer. pp. 445–467. Dedeoglu, H., Ulusoy, M. and Lamme, L.L. (2012) ‘Turkish preservice teachers’ perceptions of children’s picture books reflecting LGBT-related issues’, The Journal of Educational Research, 105(4): 256–263. de Freitas, E. (2008) ‘Troubling teacher identity: Preparing mathematics teachers to teach for diversity’, Teaching Education, 19(1): 43–55. de Freitas, E. and McAuley, A. (2008) ‘Teaching for diversity by troubling whiteness: Strategies for classrooms in isolated white communities’, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 11(4): 429–442. Farnsworth, V. (2010) ‘Conceptualizing identity, learning and social justice in community-based learning’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 26: 1481–1489. Francis, D. and Msibi, T. (2011) ‘Teaching about heterosexism: Challenging homophobia in South Africa’, Journal of LGBT Youth, 8(2): 157–173. Fraser, N. (2008) Scales of justice, reimagining political space in a globalizing world. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gabel, S.L. (2001) ‘“I wash my face with dirty water”: Narratives of disability and pedagogy’, Journal of Teacher Education, 52(1): 31–47. Goldstein, T., Russell, V. and Daley, A. (2007) ‘Safe, positive and queering moments in teaching education and schooling: A conceptual framework’, Teaching Education, 18(3): 183–199. Gorski, P.C. (2009) ‘What we’re teaching teachers: An analysis of multicultural teacher education coursework syllabi’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2): 309–318. Gorski, P.C., Davis, S.N. and Reiter, A. (2013) ‘An examination of the (in)visibility of sexual orientation, heterosexism, homophobia, and other LGBTQ concerns in US multicultural teacher education coursework’, Journal of LGBT Youth, 10(3): 224–248. Hyland, N.E. (2010) ‘Intersections of race and sexuality in a teacher education course’, Teaching Education, 21(4): 385–401. Jones, S. (2012) ‘Trauma narratives and nomos in teacher education’, Teaching Education, 23(2): 131–152. Jones, S. and Hughes-Decatur, H. (2012) ‘Speaking of bodies in justice-oriented, feminist teacher education’, Journal of Teacher Education, 63(1): 51–61. Jones, S. and Vagle, M.D. (2013) ‘Living contradictions and working for change: Toward a theory of social class-sensitive pedagogy’, Educational Researcher, 42(3): 129–141. Juárez, B.G. and Hayes, C. (2010) ‘Social justice is not spoken here: Considering the nexus of knowledge, power and the education of future teachers in the United States’, Power and Education, 2(3): 233–252. Kemmis, S. (2010) ‘Research for praxis: Knowing doing’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 18(1): 9–27. Korthagen, F.A. (2004) ‘In search of the essence of a good teacher: Towards a more holistic approach in teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(1), 77–97. Kozleski, E.B. and Waitoller, F.R. (2010) ‘Teacher learning for inclusive education: Understanding teaching as a cultural and political practice’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(7): 655–666. Kumashiro, K.K. (2000) ‘Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education’, Review of Educational Research, 70(1): 25–53. Kumashiro, K.K. (2002) Troubling education: Queer activism and antioppressive pedagogy. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Kumashiro, K.K. (2004) ‘Uncertain beginnings: Learning to teach paradoxically’, Theory into Practice, 43(2): 111–115.
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Kumashiro, K.K. (2015) Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Lalvani, P. (2013) ‘Privilege, compromise, or social justice: Teachers’ conceptualizations of inclusive education’, Disability & Society, 28(1): 14–27. Lalvani, P. and Broderick, A.A. (2013) ‘Institutionalized ableism and the misguided “Disability Awareness Day”: Transformative pedagogies for teacher education’, Equity & Excellence in Education, 46(4): 468–483. Martino, W. and Cumming-Potvin, W. (2011) ‘“They didn’t have out there gay parents – they just looked like normal regular parents”: Investigating teachers’ approaches to addressing same-sex parenting and non-normative sexuality in the elementary school classroom’, Curriculum Inquiry, 41(4): 480–501. Martino, W. and Cumming-Potvin, W. (2016) ‘Teaching about sexual minorities and “princess boys”: A queer and trans-infused approach to investigating LGBTQ-themed texts in the elementary school classroom’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(6): 807–827. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/01596306.2014.940239 McConaghy, C. (2004) ‘On cartographies of anti-homophobia in teacher education (and the crisis of witnessing rural student teacher refusals)’, Teaching Education, 15(1): 63–79. Mills, C. (2012) ‘When “picking the right people” is not enough: A Bourdieuian analysis of social justice and dispositional change in pre-service teachers’, International Journal of Educational Research, 53: 269–277. Mitton-Kukner, J., Kearns, L.L. and Tompkins, J. (2016) ‘Pre-service educators and anti-oppressive pedagogy: Interrupting and challenging LGBTQ oppression in schools’, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 44(1): 20–34. Payne, E.C. and Smith, M.J. (2012) ‘Safety, celebration, and risk: Educator responses to LGBTQ professional development’, Teaching Education, 23(3): 265–285. Pittard, E. (2015) ‘Who does critical pedagogy think you are? Investigating how teachers are produced in critical pedagogy scholarship to inform teacher education’, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 10(4): 328–348. Povey, H. (1997) ‘Beginning mathematics teachers’ ways of knowing: The link with working for emancipatory change’, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 5(3): 329–343. Richardson, E.M. (2004) ‘“A ripple in the pond”: Challenging homophobia in a teacher education course’, Education as Change, 8(1): 146–163. Robinson, K.H. and Ferfolja, T. (2008) ‘Playing it up, playing it down, playing it safe: Queering teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(4): 846–858. Smith, M.J. (2015) ‘It’s a balancing act: The good teacher and ally identity’, Educational Studies, 51(3): 223–243. Sumara, D.J. (2007) ‘Small differences matter: Interrupting certainty about identity in teacher education’, Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education, 4(4): 39–58. Sykes, H. and Goldstein, T. (2004) ‘From performed to performing ethnography: Translating life history research into anti-homophobia curriculum for a teacher education program’, Teaching Education, 15(1): 41–61. Taylor, C. (2002) ‘Beyond empathy: Confronting homophobia in critical education courses’, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 6(3–4): 219–234. Thompson, S.A. (2012) ‘Thrice disabling disability: Enabling inclusive, socially just teacher education’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(1): 99–117. Tikly, L. and Barrett, A. (2009) Social justice, capability and the quality of education in low income countries: Edqual working paper No. 18. Bristol: University of Bristol. Vavrus, M. (2006) ‘Teacher identity formation in a multicultural world: Intersections of autobiographical research and critical pedagogy’, Self-study and Diversity, 2: 89–115. Vavrus, M. (2009) ‘Sexuality, schooling, and teacher identity formation: A critical pedagogy for teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3): 383–390.
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Watts, I.E. and Erevelles, N. (2004) ‘These deadly times: Reconceptualizing school violence by using critical race theory and disability studies’, American Educational Research Journal, 41(2): 271–299. Weber, E. (2007) ‘Globalization,”glocal” development, and teachers’ work: A research agenda’, Review of Educational Research, 77(3): 279–309. Young, E. (2010) ‘Challenges to conceptualizing and actualizing culturally relevant pedagogy: How viable is the theory in classroom practice?’, Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3): 248–260. Zahur, R., Barton, A.C. and Upadhyay, B.R. (2002) ‘Science education for empowerment and social change: A case study of a teacher educator in urban Pakistan’, International Journal of Science Education, 24(9): 899–917. Zembylas, M. (2007) ‘Mobilizing anger for social justice: The politicization of the emotions in education’, Teaching Education, 18(1): 15–28. Zembylas, M. (2010) ‘Greek-Cypriot teachers’ constructions of Turkish-speaking children’s identities: Critical race theory and education in a conflict-ridden society’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(8): 1372–1391.
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22 Developing Teachers’ Cognitive Strategies of Promoting Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education L u c i a n o G a s s e r a n d Wo l f g a n g A l t h o f Teaching is a moral endeavor in two different but related ways: it involves being a moral person as well as being a moral educator, or, as rephrased by Fenstermacher, Osguthorpe, and Sanger (2009), it involves ‘teaching morally’ – being fair, caring, tolerant, and truthful in all aspects of a teacher’s responsibilities – and ‘teaching morality’ – providing students with the opportunities and means to become a good person. One affects the other: teachers influence students’ morality not only in instructional contexts but also by being models, for good or for bad, in how they demonstrate or lack honesty, fairness, tolerance, care, respect, or courage. Teaching, in contrast to indoctrination, commanding, or persuasion, has the goal of fostering the development of knowledge, competences, skills, attitudes, and dispositions that allow students to develop their potential as human beings, and grow and flourish in intellectual and moral as well practical terms. While the scholarly discourse leaves no doubt that teaching is a moral activity, teachers often have no moral language to describe their responsibilities and decisions (Sockett & LePage, 2002) and student teachers become worried or skeptical when they are introduced to the notion that teaching has moral dimensions, thinking they are going to be expected to inculcate a certain set of values in students from very diverse cultural backgrounds (Hansen, 1998). How can prospective teachers be prepared for ‘the moral work of teaching’ (Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013)? This chapter will focus on effective strategies in moral education from the perspective of cognitive-developmental approaches and what it would mean to train moral educational competences in teacher education programs.
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THE STATUS OF MORAL EDUCATION IN TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS National curricula in a number of countries include expectations of teachers that reach beyond technical teaching competence for reaching academic goals, such as supporting discursive competences, autonomous moral judgment, and tolerance or respect (Veugelers & Vedders, 2003). Hence, institutions for teacher education are challenged to prepare student teachers for their role as moral educators. To what degree are moral educational goals explicit elements of teacher education programs and how do student teachers feel prepared for moral educational tasks? Jones, Ryan, and Bohlin (1999) surveyed 212 from a total of 600 deans and department chairs from teacher education institutions in the United States about their practices concerning the preparation for moral education. Overall, there was a strong acceptance that schools and teachers play an important role in moral education. Despite this, only 24 percent of the respondents indicated that moral education is given high priority in the teacher education curriculum. A study on the perceptions of more than one thousand English student teachers about moral educational practices in their institutions revealed a similar picture (Revell & Arthur, 2007). The students judged their role as future moral educators as important and accordingly expected preparation through their teacher education institutions. However, only 34 percent of the student teachers felt well prepared and 61 percent wished they had had better preparation for moral educational tasks. Similar results were reported from a study in Sweden (Bergdahl, 2006, as cited by Thornberg, 2008). The qualitative case studies of Willemse and colleagues allow for a more indepth analysis of the moral educational practices in teacher training institutions (Willemse, Lunenberg, & Korthagen, 2005). Interviews with teacher educators in the Netherlands revealed no shared understanding of moral education among teacher educators. Moral educational activities mostly depended on the initiatives of individual teacher educators. Generally, within teacher education, moral education appears to be reactive and unplanned, often confusing moral goals with ideas about techniques useful for controlling students and encouraging ‘nice behavior’ (Thornberg, 2008). This confusion is problematic because from a cognitive-developmental viewpoint the goal of moral education is to promote autonomous and critical moral thinking. But this is not likely to happen without an explicit and consistent focus on theories that explain, and corresponding practices that support, moral development. In teacher training, the teaching of educational practices remains on an intuitive basis and lacks professional reflectivity (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Hansen, 1998). Typically, expectations are unclear and evaluations do not happen with regard to students’ teaching practice. As a result, teachers experience uncertainty and low
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self-efficacy with regard to their roles as moral educators (Nucci, 2008). Little wonder that many beginning teachers fail to see the deep moral implications of their work.
THE COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO MORAL EDUCATION The cognitive-developmental approach to moral education has a strong conceptual and empirical basis, providing the potential to represent a solid and practiceoriented framework for effective teacher education in the moral domain. It focuses on moral reasoning and is based on the premise that moral actions are motived by the understanding of why something is right or wrong, good or bad. In that respect, it differs from the traditional focus on cultivating virtues by direct teaching and learning by observation. We briefly review the theory and practice of the cognitive-developmental approach to moral education.
Kohlberg’s Moral Developmental Theory In a research program spanning more than two decades, Kohlberg (1927–1987) examined the development of moral judgment through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983). Kohlberg confronted subjects with hypothetical moral dilemmas, studying their line of reasoning in justifying their choice of one of the options that stand, like in each true dilemma, in irreconcilable opposition to each other. The content of individuals’ choices in such conflicts does not say much about the maturity of their moral reasoning because very different arguments can lead to the same decision. Kohlberg’s developmental model, hence, focuses on the structure or form of moral reasoning and not so much the content. His developmental theory claims that individuals move through an invariant series of stages of moral reasoning, each with specific structures or organizational modes of moral thought processes (pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional levels with two stages each) that are increasingly complex, balanced, and appropriate to solve moral dilemmas and that show a growing sense of moral autonomy. Justice is considered the key moral principle in this approach; the moral stages represent increasingly adequate conceptions of justice. Typically, elementary school children will think in categories of stage 2 (focus on prudence, self-interest, and simple exchange). Secondary-level students will typically use stage 3 reasoning (which is oriented to interpersonal harmony, good reputation, and conformity to expectations) and occasionally stage 4 reasoning (which extends the concern for justice to the social order and is strongly focused on maintaining the societal system). The stage model has been criticized for a number of reasons, such as that the stages are insensitive to contextual issues, that the pre-conventional stages
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do not adequately characterize early moral development (Turiel, 1983), or that centering on justice reasoning suppresses the emotional and relational aspects of moral development (Gilligan, 1982). Despite this, Kohlberg’s work continues to provide the foundation of much systematic moral developmental research. It has induced – as any strong theory – a variety of extensions, revisions, and new developments. Kohlberg’s cognitive development approach to moral education, based on his moral psychology, developed into a forcefully grounded and influential counterweight to traditional, conformist virtue education and relativistic approaches like values clarification in the 1970s. Many of his psychological and pedagogical assumptions have received empirical support and continue to be of high practical value for teacher education (Snarey & Samuelson, 2014).
Moral Dilemma Discussion According to Kohlberg’s approach, discussion of value conflicts in moral dilemmas is a major way of stimulating moral reasoning development. Moral dilemmas are conflicts in which a decision is required between two or more courses of action that can each be morally justified. Any action choice means violating the values or moral principles that would be preserved by the alternative decision(s). Typically in classroom dilemma discussions, students are introduced to a scenario in which a central character is facing a decision about which action choice is morally most adequate. The dialogue centers on what the character should do and why. Students discuss the implications of potential actions on other persons or groups and thereby exercise their perspective-taking or perspective-coordination skills (as well as their communication skills); and they reflect on what they personally believe is right or wrong and what reasons they can put forward to justify their view. In developmental terms, dilemma discussions provide opportunities to reflect on the persuasiveness and, in consequence, the range and consistency of individuals’ lines of argument, i.e. their current reasoning structure which makes them ‘more likely to develop more complex ways of thinking about and resolving such conflicts’ (Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977, p. 57). The primary role of teachers is to facilitate students’ dialogues among each other. There is good evidence that such peer dialogues can be developmentally even more effective than discussions between children or adolescents and adults, because of the symmetric nature of peer relationships compared to adult–child relationships (Kruger & Tomasello, 1986). Meta-analyses of a large body of research have demonstrated the effectiveness of moral dilemma discussion in fostering moral reasoning development across a wide range of ages and contexts (e.g., Schlaefli, Rest, & Thoma, 1985).
Just Community The main goal of the Just Community approach is to promote both individual moral reasoning and a disposition for moral action by addressing real-life conflicts
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in the school, and to create a culture of participation by including students in decisions about the social and moral functioning of classroom and school. Moral education merges with education for democracy by changing the school as an institution to a community with a moral atmosphere – i.e. a normative structure and values – that emphasizes fairness and democratic procedures. The approach ‘focuses on transforming the culture of the school through democratic deliberation and a commitment to building community’ (Power & Power, 2012, p. 189). Students participate in problem solving at different levels, possibly including curricular aspects, and are provided the time and space for democratic procedures in class meetings and school assemblies. Such participation is expected to strengthen students’ discursive competencies, their sense of school belonging, their experience of a fair and caring school community, their understanding and skills of democratic procedures, and shared responsibility for all relevant aspects of school life (for discussions of the theory and practice of Just Community programs see, e.g., Kohlberg, 1985; Oser, Althof, & Higgins-d’Alessandro, 2008). While the Just Community approach was initially developed for high schools, the concept was transferred to the elementary level in a couple of schools in the USA (Lickona, 1977; Murphy, 1988; Sadowsky, 1992) and as ‘just and caring communities’ in a number of schools in Europe, mostly in Switzerland (Althof, 2008); also, cognitive-developmental principles have been successfully applied to kindergarten children (DeVries & Zan, 2012). The Just Community approach requires a radical rethinking of teachers’ roles by introducing strong participatory structures. Hersh, Paolitto, and Reimer illustrate the difficulty of this task when describing the first Just Community, the ‘Cluster School’ within Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School in Cambridge, MA: A democratically based community meeting … is a hard show to run. It requires several conditions: (1) student interest must be maintained; (2) there must be a clear but flexible procedural order; (3) issues must be raised clearly so that the pros and cons of concrete proposals can be discussed; (4) students and staff must discuss issues by voicing reasons for their stands and not by attacking one another on personal grounds; (5) everyone has to feel that the decisions of the community will be carried out and will not be subverted by higher authorities or dissenting minorities. (1979, p. 237)
In the first generation of Just Community schools, the specifics of the implementation of the concept were learned on the job; later school projects could benefit from the experiences of pioneer schools. The structure of Just Community programs revolved around the following elements (some of which were not used in some cases): (1) the community meeting or ‘town hall’ is the institutional core of the participatory democracy. It establishes behavioral rules (concerning absences, drugs, theft, etc.) and defines consequences for transgressing these rules as issues arise, leading step-by-step to a ‘constitution’ considered binding for all, students, faculty, and staff. (2) Community meetings are prepared by agenda committees comprised of student representatives from all grades and teacher advisors. At least
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in the beginning program phase, it might be a good idea to give the principal and/ or the teacher team the right to veto certain topics suggested for the plenary meeting because they would infringe, for example, laws or the rights of minorities or would be way over the head of the younger children. (3) Small group meetings are used in different ways in various programs. In the Cambridge Cluster School, for instance, they were mainly used to prepare and debrief community meetings, in order to make the discussion in the community meetings more informed, thoughtful, and engaging; other programs (Althof, 2008) went a step further and used a large portion of time during the community meeting for mixed-grade small group discussions in order to make sure that, ideally, every single student has a chance to be heard. (4) Advisor groups in many programs consist of students assigned to a teacher; they meet on a regular basis and are mostly used for the discussion of personal or academic problems. (5) The ‘fairness committee’ is composed of faculty and students, with representation from all advisor groups. The purpose of this committee is to enforce rules and to deal with rule-breaking, mirroring the idea that individuals are responsible to the community and, hence, would not be sanctioned by the teacher or sent to the principal in the first place.
Integration of Moral Education into the Regular Curriculum Efforts in moral education cannot be expected to be effective if they occur occasionally (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011) but, rather, only by way of a systematic integration of social and moral learning into the teaching of regular subject matters. Based on the social domain theory, Larry Nucci developed the approach of domain-based moral education (DBME), which has the aim of supporting teachers in systematically reflecting possibilities for fostering students’ thinking about moral, social, and personal issues within the subject curriculum (‘2 for 1’). The main principle of DBME is that of domain concordant instruction, meaning that ‘the domain of issues under consideration is matched with the focus of discussion and written assignments’ (Nucci, Creane, & Powers, 2015). An academic topic in the moral domain requires reflection about fairness, whereas a topic in the social-conventional domain should involve discussions about social order, rules, or hierarchies and their functions within society. In discussions about multifaceted events, i.e. events which require coordination of considerations from multiple domains (moral, social-conventional, personal), students should be encouraged to coordinate considerations from different domains. This way, students learn to integrate different perspectives on complex problems and to find solutions which consider moral criteria and social context as well as personal preferences. Hence, an important goal of DBME is to sensitize students to solutions which take the complexity, the ambiguity, and the specificity of social conflicts into account.
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The way teachers instruct and facilitate discussions has an impact on children’s development within different domains, on their domain-appropriate understanding of specific academic issues as well as on their ability to coordinate considerations from different domains in the case of multifaceted issues (Nucci, 2008). In a recent evaluation study of DBME, it was found that students of teachers who were trained to facilitate discussions on moral, social-conventional, and mixeddomain issues within the regular curriculum showed higher levels of moral and social-conventional reasoning as well as more domain coordination than students from control classes (Nucci et al., 2015).
Classroom Management through Developmental Discipline Marilyn Watson’s approach describes strategies simultaneously serving classroom management and moral learning (e.g., Watson, 2014; Watson & Ecken, 2003). While it merges multiple theoretical sources, including attachment theory and self-determination theory in addition to developmental theory and research, we refer to this approach as cognitive-developmental because it gives a central role to providing opportunities to discuss and reflect on moral values and suggests classroom management strategies that teach children to do the right thing for intrinsic reasons and not because they expect rewards or fear sanction. Developmental discipline supports children’s social and moral understanding and their intrinsic motivation by enhancing positive teacher–child relationships, stimulating moral reflection, and encouraging students’ autonomy and participation. Developmental Discipline has received extensive empirical validation within the Child Developmental Project and revealed long-lasting positive effects on a variety of social, moral, and academic outcomes (e.g., Battistich, Solomon, Watson, & Schaps, 1997; Watson, Beson, Daly, & Pelton, 2013).
MODELING, MEASUREMENT, AND TRAINING OF MORAL EDUCATIONAL COMPETENCES To date, teacher education programs have mainly focused on preparing teacher students for subject matters and didactics and have largely neglected teacher preparation for moral educational competences. Narvaez and Lapsley (2008) identified two main reasons for this deficit. First, moral education is considered another add-on to teacher education curricula that are overcrowded already. Second, there is a general reservation about explicitly teaching values because of their conflict potential. Narvaez and Lapsley make the case that reflecting conflictual values (e.g., between selection and social inclusion) is much more preferable to leaving them to the hidden curriculum. Indeed, the social life in school and classrooms is one of the most important predictors not only for social and moral development, but also for children’s academic growth (Brown, Jones,
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LaRusso, & Aber, 2010; Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009). There is a clear need for teacher education institutions to engage in a dialogue about what it means to effectively and intentionally support (student) teachers’ competences in moral education and begin implementing corresponding curricula.
Moral Educational Competences Intentional teacher training in the moral domain is only possible on the basis of a clear understanding about the competences which are necessary for moral education, including coping with morally relevant classroom situations (Oser & Heinzer, 2010). The discussion about competence models in teacher education was guided by concerns that content knowledge and instructional knowledge about how to teach content – ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ as introduced by Lee Shulman (1986) – are insufficient for reaching professional standards in teaching and that consequently teacher education curricula should be more oriented towards the development of the competences necessary for daily teaching practice (Shavelson, 2013). While several moral psychological competence models have been developed on the student level (e.g., Narvaez & Rest, 1995), there are no systematic approaches on the teacher level. Oser and Heinzer (2010) called for research which develops moral competence models through a bottomup strategy, for instance by interviewing expert teachers. Shields, Althof, Berkowitz, and Navarro (2013) proposed a list of competences for moral (or character) education on the basis of a literature review. These competences differ from general and pedagogical knowledge and moral dispositions (e.g., moral sensitivity). On the basis of these contributions and the moral educational strategies discussed above, we propose 10 competence profiles (i.e. bundles of competences) which attempt to specify and clarify the moral educational task of teachers (see Table 22.1). We organize these competence profiles into (a) general social and moral educational competences (competences 1–5) and (b) specific moral educational competences (competences 6–10) (see Narvaez & Lapsley 2008 for a similar distinction between the ‘minimalist’ and ‘maximalist’ approach to teacher education).
Measurement of Moral Educational Competences Oser and Heinzer (2010) claim that teacher educators should train moral educational competences with the same methods and strategies they use for teaching subject matters and instructional competence. Knowledge about moral development and education remains abstract and irrelevant if student teachers are not systematically trained to apply their knowledge in contexts which are closely related to their future practice. This requires operationalization of moral educational competences and establishing standards which allow conclusions about the actual quality of moral teaching practice. Schuitema, ten Dam, and Veugelers
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General moral educational competences
1 The teacher creates supportive teacher–child and peer relationships (DeVries & Zan, 2012; Watson, 2014). He/she uses strategies to enhance social inclusion and cohesion in the classroom. 2 The teacher encourages dispositions for prosocial and cooperative action (Eisenberg, 2000). He/she models prosocial and cooperative behavior and provides extended opportunities for the students to practice these behaviors. 3 Student behavior is managed in a way that supports positive relationships and moral understanding (Watson, 2014). Direct instruction and extrinsic motivators, rewards and punishment, are minimized because they undermine students’ intrinsic understanding and motivation. 4 The teacher encourages student autonomy, participation, and responsibility. He/she engages students in democratic participation and decisions about school and classroom rules. The teacher supports student expression, consistently incorporates students’ ideas, and shows a genuine interest in students’ perspectives. 5 The teacher shows an increased sensitivity towards students at risk (Oser, 1994). The teacher knows how he/she can increase social inclusion of these students through discussion and cooperative learning settings.
Specific moral educational competences
Table 22.1 Moral educational competence profiles
6 The teacher knows how to intervene and to object when moral transgressions (e.g., aggression) occur (Oser & Heinzer, 2010). The teacher intervenes when he/she observes unfair and disrespectful behavior, provides explanations, encourages discussion, and models positive behavior alternatives. 7 The teacher applies strategies for discursive problem solving (Oser & Althof, 1993). Assuming that students are interested in fair treatment, he/she uses procedures such as the ‘round table’ and encourages students’ participation in problem solving. 8 The teacher intentionally facilitates students’ role-taking abilities and moral reflections. He/she uses hypothetical as well as real moral dilemmas and applies strategies to facilitate focused moral discussions in the classroom. Discussions fit the content’s epistemic domain (moral, social-conventional, personal) (Nucci et al., 2015). 9 The teacher systematically includes moral educational goals in lesson preparations (Nucci, 2008; Schuitema et al., 2008). For example, the teacher uses literature to elicit emotional concerns and engage students in moral reflections which they can relate to their own lives. 10 The teacher uses development-appropriate teaching. He/she anticipates moral responses typical for certain developmental levels and adapts instructional strategies to students’ emotional, social, and cognitive developmental possibilities and needs.
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(2008) make the point that current research says little about the ‘how’, i.e. the instructional processes and classroom interactions which separate high from low competences in moral education. However, observation of performance on task generally is a core aspect of testing and improving competence in higher education (Shavelson, 2013). Observation instruments such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) (Pianta & Hamre, 2009) not only focus on aspects of classroom organization or instructional support but also include dimensions in the social and emotional domain (i.e. positive climate, teacher sensitivity, and regard for students’ perspectives) and demonstrate that these aspects of classroom interaction can be assessed reliably. The CLASS observer manuals define concrete and observable behavioral markers for different teaching dimensions which are exemplified by several short best-practice video clips (e.g., Pianta, Paro, & Hamre, 2008). The package includes a two-day observation training and an online reliability test to ensure that users apply dimension codes accurately and consistently across classrooms. The instrument is sensitive to students’ social and cognitive development; grade-specific versions for K-3, upper elementary, and secondary grades are available. An important next step for research on teacher education in the moral domain would consist of the development and validation of observational instruments which allow for training in moral educational competencies in more specific ways. In practical terms, the development of such observation instruments in the moral domain would offer several advantages for teacher education: •• •• •• ••
Process-related feedback to moral educational practices and measurement of progress; Coaching and mentoring on the basis of valid and reliable observation instruments; Evaluation of the effectiveness of professional development programs in the moral domain; Systematic research on relations between (a) professional development programs, (b) observed classroom processes, and (c) students’ moral outcomes (e.g., moral reasoning or social behavior) (e.g., Nucci et al., 2015).
Examples of Effective Instruments to Promote Moral Educational Competences In order to help pre-service teachers relate the knowledge acquired in teacher education courses to the actual practice in real classroom contexts, research on teacher education developed powerful instruments and methods which strengthen the theory–practice relationship. Video case studies help student teachers to analyze classroom interactions in specific ways and to draw concrete and situated inferences about how to implement effective teaching strategies (Pianta & Hamre, 2009). Nucci (2013) describes the use of video-recording to promote student teachers’ reflections about domain-concordant responses and effective strategies to support children’s social and moral development. Watson and colleagues (2013) stimulated reflection on best-practice videos about several aspects of developmental discipline
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and connected student teachers to practitioners who successfully implemented developmental discipline and included social and moral learning in the regular academic curriculum. These types of observation training help pre-service teachers to enhance their knowledge and skills about how to apply moral educational strategies under concrete classroom conditions. Despite these important examples, there is a lack of more systematic research on how to use videos for moral education purposes. Videos can be used for various learning goals – e.g., understanding best practices serves different purposes than analyzing typical practice – and can be based on divergent instructional approaches (Blomberg, Renkl, Gamoran Sherin, Borko, & Seidel, 2013; Seidel, Blomberg, & Renkl, 2013). In the context of moral education, the selection of video material will evidently be informed by assumptions about necessary moral educational competences. According to our model above (see Table 22.1), the documentation of general classroom teaching to enhance competences 1–5 would be combined with videos that help facilitate reflection about interventions in moral conflicts (competences 6–7) or about how to lead moral discussions (competences 8–10). Important research-based heuristics about how to use videos in teacher education have been developed in recent years. Strategies for video reflection such as the ‘lesson analysis framework’ (Santagata & Guarino, 2011) allow students to contextualize their academic knowledge and to improve their lesson planning and teaching practice (Borko, 2004; Seidel et al., 2013). The lesson preparation method, introduced by Van der Valk and Broekman (1999) as a source for the study of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in science education, represents another ‘window to practice’ which allows teacher educators to understand student teachers’ ways of conceptualizing teaching and learning processes and to scaffold their sensitivity to K-12 students’ ways of reasoning in a succession of teaching situations, from simple to complex, i.e. without immediately being exposed to the whole complexity and dynamics of real classrooms. Student teachers are required to anticipate typical developmental responses to the lesson on the basis of what they know about child and adolescent development. In the case of moral education, in-depth knowledge about children’s and adolescents’ moral reasoning is an important precondition for planning thought- provoking activities and discussions throughout the lesson (Borko, 2004; Nucci & Turiel, 2009; Penuel et al., 2007). Nucci, in relating his domain-based approach to moral education to teacher education programs, discusses lesson preparation accordingly (Nucci, 2008): groups of student teachers analyze the content material with regard to opportunities for moral education, reflect on children’s typical developmental responses to the lesson, and plan strategies to facilitate children’s social and moral understanding. These reflections are most effective if they are practiced within a community of learners which is characterized by strong interpersonal trust as well as critical dialogue (Borko, 2004). Pre-service
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teachers who experienced these types of reflection achieved higher scores on moral knowledge and educational practices and demonstrated a higher efficacy with regard to moral educational tasks compared to students without such experiences (Nucci, 2008, 2013). This example shows that just as training in science instruction should include extensive opportunities to explore students’ naïve theories and concepts, reflections about children’s and adolescents’ social and moral concepts should be a necessary part of every teacher education program.
INTEGRATION OF MORAL EDUCATION IN PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS As discussed above, moral education in schools can only be successful when it is interwoven with the regular subject curriculum throughout. The same holds for teacher education: teaching activities targeting moral educational goals need to be integrated into subject matter and pedagogical studies (Berkowitz, 1999; Nucci, 2013). Introductory courses alone do not seem to have a significant effect on student teachers’ moral educational competencies (Nucci, Drill, Larson, & Browne, 2006), probably because they do not allow for situated learning. In the following, we summarize some of the main conclusions of three systematic approaches to integrating moral education into pre-service teacher education programs (Nucci, 2013; Shields et al., 2013; Watson et al., 2013). 1 Teacher education curricula are notoriously overcrowded. Instead of introducing new courses, the existing courses should be reviewed for possibilities to expand the focus on moral development and education. This requires a careful investigation of the personal and curricular resources of the institution. A deliberate incorporation of study elements from the introductory and subject courses into field experiences such as lesson preparations, classroom observations, and student teaching is essential for successful transfer into professional practice. 2 The strategic implementation of moral education in teacher education programs requires a broad reform agenda, which has implications for the whole teacher training curriculum. The goals and content of courses such as their conceptual basis, depth, or methodology must be opened to weaker and stronger adaptations. To enhance faculty members’ acceptance of moral educational goals, it may be wise to consistently emphasize that education for social and moral development is not an ‘add-on’ but shares many principles with what is known about good teaching. 3 To legitimize the initiative and to provide the necessary resources, a strong commitment to the moral education of deans and the department chairs is necessary (Schwartz, 2008). Cooperation between faculty stakeholders from different study fields (school subjects, pedagogy, student teacher placement and supervision) must be institutionalized. Strengthening moral education as an integral part of the teacher education program should not be a project for just a few faculty members but needs a broad base of support and shared responsibility. Effective leadership teams should be connected with faculty and provide diverse perspectives and areas of expertise. 4 An alternative approach or an added initiation stage would be to establish an expert team with in-depth knowledge of the domains of moral development, moral education, and the inner workings of the given teacher education program to coordinate initiatives to infuse moral education into the teacher education curriculum. This expert team would determine the conceptual basis of the initiative, analyze the existing curriculum, identify gaps, and discuss possible curricular
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adaptions and extensions with the department representatives and the course coordinators. Moreover, the expert team would be able to select relevant readings and develop a set of appropriate student material. Finally, the expert team would provide high-quality resources such as professional development courses for teacher educators, consultation, and study materials (e.g., readings, videos, or websites). 5 Meaningful communication about moral education within teacher training institutions requires a shared ‘moral language’. A clear theoretical framework facilitates mutual understanding among faculty members as well as between instructors and students. Due to scarce temporal resources it may be necessary to prioritize a narrower in-depth theoretical focus over superficial discussions of a wide range of theoretical approaches.
CONCLUSIONS We began this chapter by reviewing research which showed that moral education does not have sufficient weight in teacher education programs. We argued that cognitive-developmental approaches to moral education provide a theoretically sound and empirically validated framework for teacher educators. These approaches attempt to unify social and academic goals. Apart from some best-practice examples, there is an obvious lack of systematic research on teacher education in the moral domain (Willemse et al., 2005). We know relatively little about how teacher educators can support strong connections between what pre-service teachers learn in university courses and how they reflect about moral education and act in actual classroom contexts. We argued that establishing this connection requires a competence-oriented moral education curriculum. If at all, pre-service programs and professional development focus on general moral reflection (e.g., Oser, 1994; Sockett & LePage, 2002) and typically lack a direct link to actual classroom teaching. The analysis of observational data could be one way to bridge this gap. ‘[S]ystematic classroom observation systems provide a standard way of measuring and noting teachers’ strengths and weaknesses and evaluating whether professional development activities are actually helping improve classroom interactions’ (Pianta & Hamre, 2009, p. 110). Reliable and valid observation instruments can build the basis for successful mentoring and coaching programs. A critical evaluation of how well existing observational measures fully capture the moral dimension of teaching and learning and where adaptions are necessary would represent an important next step. In recent years, innovative concepts for professional teacher development have been established and significant progress has been made in providing teachers with in-service training that works. Hence, a stronger integration of the literature on moral education theory and practice with research on effective teacher education is a promising area for development. In doing so, it may be worth examining research findings and innovative concepts and procedures which have been developed for other subject areas, such as science education (e.g., Penuel et al., 2007). Research on how to use video analyses in teacher education (Blomberg
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et al., 2013) or effective concepts regarding mentoring or community professional development (Borko, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 2006) need stronger consideration when designing teacher education curricula in the moral domain.
REFERENCES Althof, W. (2008). The Just Community approach to democratic education: Some affinities. In K. Tirri (Ed.), Educating moral sensibilities in urban schools (pp. 145–156). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Althof, W. (2015). Just Community sources and transformations: A conceptual archeology of Kohlberg’s approach to moral and democratic schooling. In B. Zizek, D. Garz, & E. Nowak (Eds), Kohlberg revisited (pp. 51–89). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1997). Caring school communities. Educational Psychologist, 32, 137–151. Bergdahl, L. (2006). Om gemensamma värden i ett pluralistiskt samhälle: Lärarutbildares syn påoch arbete med gemensamma värden i den nya lärarutbildningen [About common values in a pluralistic society: Teacher educators’ view on and work with common values in the new teacher education]. Journal of Research in Teacher Education, 13, 17–39. Berkowitz, M.W. (1999). Obstacles to teacher training in character education. Action in Teacher Education, 20(4), 1–10. Berkowitz, M.W., Oser, F., & Althof, W. (1987). The development of sociomoral discourse. In W.M. Kurtines & J.L. Gewirtz (Eds), Moral development through social interaction (pp. 281–300). New York: Wiley. Blomberg, G., Renkl, A., Gamoran Sherin, M., Borko, H., & Seidel, T. (2013). Five research-based heuristics for using video in pre-service teacher education. Journal for Educational Research Online, 5, 90–114. Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33, 3–15. Brown, J.L., Jones, S.M., LaRusso, M.D., & Aber, J.L. (2010). Improving classroom quality: Teacher influences and experimental impacts of the 4rs program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 153. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). The new teacher education: For better for worse? Educational Researcher, 34(7), 3–17. Cohen, J., McCabe, E.M., Michelli, N.M., & Pickeral, T. (2009). School climate: Research, policy, practice, and teacher education. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 180–213. Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), 48(1–2), 1–124. Darling-Hammond (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley. DeVries, R., & Zan, B. (2012). Moral classrooms, moral children: Creating a constructivist atmosphere in early childhood (2nd edn). New York: Teachers College Press. Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D., & Schellinger, K.B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82, 405–432. Eisenberg, N. (2000). Emotion, regulation, and moral development. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 665–697. Fenstermacher, G.D., Osguthorpe, R.D., & Sanger, M.N. (2009). Teaching morally and teaching morality. Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(3), 7–29. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hansen, D.T. (1998). The moral is in the practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(6), 643–655.
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Hersh, R.H., Paolitto, D.P., & Reimer, J. (1979). Promoting moral growth: From Piaget to Kohlberg. Oxford: Longman. Jones, E.N., Ryan, K., & Bohlin, K. (1999). Teachers as educators of character: Are the nation’s schools of education coming up short? Washington, DC: Character Education Partnership. Kohlberg, L. (1985). The Just Community approach to moral education in theory and practice. In M.W. Berkowitz & F. Oser (Eds), Moral education: Theory and application (pp. 27–87). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Kohlberg, L., & Hersh, R. (1977). Moral development: A review of the theory. Theory into Practice, 16, 53–59. Kruger, A.C., & Tomasello, M. (1986). Transactive discussions with peers and adults. Developmental Psychology, 22(5), 681–685. Lickona, T. (1977). Creating the just community with children. Theory Into Practice, 16(2), 97–104. Murphy, D.F. (1988). The just community at Birch Meadow elementary school. Phi Delta Kappan, 69(6), 427–428. Narvaez, D., & Lapsley, D.K. (2008). Teaching moral character: Two alternatives for teacher education. The Teacher Educator, 43, 156–172. Narvaez, D., & Rest, J. (1995). The four components of acting morally. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Moral behavior and moral development: An introduction (pp. 385–400). New York: McGraw-Hill. Nucci, L. (2008). Nice is not enough: Facilitating moral development. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Nucci, L. (2013). Reflections on preparing preservice teachers for moral education in urban settings. In M.N. Sanger & R.D. Osguthorpe (Eds), The moral work of teaching and teacher education: Preparing & supporting practitioners (pp. 148–163). New York: Teachers College Press. Nucci, L., & Turiel, E. (2009). Capturing the complexity of moral development and education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 3, 151–159. Nucci, L., Creane, M.W., & Powers, D.W. (2015). Integrating moral and social development within middle school social studies: A social cognitive domain approach. Journal of Moral Education, 44, 479–496. Nucci, L., Drill, K., Larson, C., & Browne, C. (2006). Preparing preservice teachers for character education in urban elementary schools: The UIC initiative. Journal for Research in Character Education, 3, 81–96. Oser, F. (1994). Moral perspectives on teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond (Ed.), Review of research in education, 20, 57–127. Oser, F., & Althof, W. (1993). Trust in advance: On the professional morality of teachers. Journal of Moral Education, 22, 254–275. Oser, F., & Heinzer, S. (2010). Was die Lehrerbildung vergisst: Kompetenzprofile für erzieherisches Handeln. Beiträge zur Lehrerbildung, 28, 361–378. Oser, F.K., Althof, W., & Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. (2008). The Just Community approach to moral education: System change or individual change? Journal of Moral Education, 37, 395–415. Penuel, W.R., Fishman, B.J., Yamaguchi, R., & Gallagher, L.P. (2007). What makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 921–958. Pianta, R.C., & Hamre, B.K. (2009). Conceptualization, measurement, and improvement of classroom processes: Standardized observation can leverage capacity. Educational Researcher, 38, 109–119. Pianta, R., Paro, K.M., & Hamre, B.K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System: Manual K-3. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing. Power, F.C., & Power, A.M. (2012). Moral education. In P. Brown, M.W. Corrigan, & A. Higgins-D’Alessandro (Eds), Handbook of prosocial education, Vol. 1 (pp. 179–196). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Revell, L., & Arthur, J. (2007). Character education in schools and the education of teachers. Journal of Moral Education, 36, 79–92. Sadowsky, E. (1992). Taking part: Democracy in the elementary school. In A. Garrod (Ed.), Learning for life: Moral education theory and practice (pp. 247–258). Westport, CT: Praeger. Sanger, M.N., & Osguthorpe, R.D. (Eds) (2013). The moral work of teaching and teacher education: Preparing and supporting practitioners. New York: Teachers College Press.
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Santagata, R., & Guarino, J. (2011). Using video to teach future teachers to learn from teaching. ZDM: The International Journal of Mathematics Education, 43, 133–145. Schlaefli, A., Rest, J.R., & Thoma, S.J. (1985). Does moral education improve moral judgment? A metaanalysis of intervention studies using the Defining Issues Test. Review of Educational Research, 55, 319–352. Schuitema, J., ten Dam, G., & Veugelers, W. (2008). Teaching strategies for moral education: A review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(1), 69–89. Schwartz, M. (2008). Teacher education for moral and character education. In L. Nucci & D. Narvaez (Eds). Handbook of moral and character education (pp. 583–600). New York and London: Routledge/ Taylor & Francis. Seidel, T., Blomberg, G., & Renkl, A. (2013). Instructional strategies for using video in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, 56–65. Shavelson, R.J. (2013). On an approach to testing and modeling competence. Educational Psychologist, 48, 73–86. Shields, D.L., Althof, W., Berkowitz, M.W., & Navarro, V. (2013). What are we trying to achieve? Developing a framework for preparing character educators. In M.N. Sanger & R.D. Osguthorpe (Eds), The moral work of teaching and teacher education. Preparing & supporting practitioners (pp. 164–180). New York: Teachers College Press. Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–31. Snarey, J.R., & Samuelson, P. (2014). Moral education in the cognitive-developmental tradition – Lawrence Kohlberg’s revolutionary ideas. In L. Nucci, D. Narvaez, & T. Krettenauer (Eds). Handbook of moral and character education (2nd edn, pp. 61–83). New York and London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Sockett, H., & LePage, P. (2002). The missing language of the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 159–171. Solomon, D., Battistich, V., Watson, M., Delucchi, K.L., Schaps, E., & Battistich, V. (1988). Enhancing children’s prosocial behavior in the classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 25, 527–554. Thornberg, R. (2008). The lack of professional knowledge in values education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1791–1798. Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Van der Valk, A.E., & Broekman, H. (1999). The Lesson Preparation Method: A way of investigating preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. European Journal of Teacher Education, 22(1), 11–22. Veugelers, W. & Vedders, P. (2003). Values in teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 9, 377–389. Watson, M. (2014). Developmental discipline and moral education. In L. Nucci, D. Narvaez, & T. Krettenauer (Eds). Handbook of moral and character education (2nd edn, pp. 159–179). New York and London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Watson, M., & Ecken, L. (2003). Learning to trust: Transforming difficult elementary classrooms through developmental discipline. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Watson, M., Beson, K.D., Daly, L., & Pelton, J. (2013). Integrating social and ethical development into the preservice curriculum: Building on the Child Development Project. In M.D. Sanger & R.D. Osguthorpe (Eds), The moral work of teaching and teacher education: Preparing & supporting practitioners (pp. 129–147). New York: Teachers College Press. Willemse, T.M., Lunenberg, M.L., & Korthagen, F.A.J. (2005) Values in education: A challenge for teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 205–217.
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23 Strengthening Sociocultural Ways of Learning Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education Robert Thornberg Contemporary constructive theories on moral development and education, with their roots in the cognitive-developmental psychological work of Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1969), assume that children’s moral development takes place through active reciprocal bi-directional relationships with adults and other children in their everyday lives, and emphasize the individual child’s construction of moral knowledge (see Killen & Smetana, 2015; Turiel, 2015). However, critiques of the cognitive-developmental tradition of moral development and education may be raised. For example, these theories assume, and take for granted, a deontological perspective on morality (Campbell & Christopher, 1996). This leaves out other possible normative ethical perspectives such as virtue ethics, consequentialism, social contract theory, and ethics of care, as well as other research approaches that are more descriptive and sensitive to culture, and more common among anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural psychologists. In contrast to these widespread cognitive constructivist theories, this chapter will focus on a social constructivist approach to moral development and education. In the next section I introduce the terms social constructivism and sociocultural theory, followed by a presentation of Tappan’s sociocultural perspective on moral development and learning. I will then describe moral education in teacher education from a social constructivist framework. In particular, the zone of proximal teacher development, critical pedagogy, and moral relativism are discussed. At the end, I will conclude that the zone of proximal development, guided participation, multiple voices, and dialogue are vital in a sociocultural approach to moral education in teacher education programs.
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SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM AND SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY Social constructivism emphasizes the critical importance of culture and the social context in learners’ knowledge development, and in how ‘culture provides the child cognitive tools needed for development such as language, cultural history and social context’ (Narayan et al., 2013: 171). Social constructivism has its roots in the early work of Vygotsky (1978, 1986), and has continued to be developed further by the works of Lave, Rogoff, Wenger, Wertsch, and others (e.g., Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 2003; Wertsch, 1991). This tradition is also termed the sociocultural perspective, and I will therefore use the terms interchangeably. It emphasizes the main role of language and the social-historical and cultural contexts. Co-construction of meaning, cultural mediation, and shared activity are viewed as central. While Vygotsky’s original work and moderate contemporary versions of sociocultural perspectives include psychological accounts and concepts such as internalization, other contemporary and more radical versions of sociocultural perspectives reject the dualism between an inner life and a social life, viewing knowledge as constructions between people rather than in their heads, and replacing the concept of internalization with appropriation.
A SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION In the current chapter, I will focus on the sociocultural perspective on moral development and education. Mark B. Tappan (1991, 1992, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2006a, 2006b) is one of its most prominent scholars, and my review of how moral development and education are understood within this theoretical framework is therefore based largely on his work.
Moral Functioning as Mediated Action Because higher mental functioning is assumed to be mediated by words, language, and forms of discourse, which function as ‘psychological tools’, this is also the case with moral functioning (Tappan, 1997, 2006a). According to Tappan (2006a: 355), moral functioning is the higher psychological process (in Vygotsky’s terms) that a person invokes to respond to and resolve a specific problem, conflict, or dilemma that requires a moral decision and a moral action – that is, when one is faced with the question “What is the ‘right’ or ‘moral’ thing to do in this situation?”
Moral functioning is viewed as a mediated action, and thus includes the moral agent and the moral mediational means, i.e., the cultural tools or means (words,
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language, and forms of discourse) the agent employs in responding to the moral problem, conflict, or dilemma (Tappan, 2006b). This means that morals, such as of justice and care, are not universal truths independent of humans and their societies, but are considered as moral languages that have emerged in specific sociocultural contexts (Tappan, 2006a). Therefore, moral development does not occur in the same way for all humans, with everyone around the world moving toward a universal, transcultural, and ahistorical moral endpoint, but instead has to be considered as being specific to unique social, cultural, and historical contexts which can vary both between and within larger societies (Tappan, 1997, 2006a). Tappan (2006a: 367) suggests that morality has to be understood as a ‘discursively mediated practice or activity that facilitates human interaction in community’, which in part is reminiscent of Durkheim’s (1961) status quo view on morality and moral education. At the same time, Tappan argues that a sociocultural perspective seeks to remain open to all forms of moral functioning, which could be associated with moral relativism. Because morality can be understood as social constructions that are situated in historical, cultural, and social contexts, power, privilege, and authority play an important role. Therefore, a sociocultural perspective ‘opens new links to critical sociological and anthropological studies of morality and moral development’ (Tappan, 2006b: 15).
Moral Development through Social Dialogue and Participation in Social Practices According to Tappan (1997, 2006b), moral functioning has its origins in social relations, and such ‘intermental’ processes between people gradually become internalized as ‘intramental’ processes within people. If moral functioning is mediated by words, language, and forms of discourse, then ‘inner speech’ (selftalk to think and regulate action) has to play a primary role in that process. This inner speech, in turn, takes place as inner moral dialogue, and individuals solve practical, including moral, problems with the help of their inner speech. Tappan (1999: 118) argues that the moral self is situated neither psychologically nor socially, but dialogically – in other words, ‘as a function of the linguistically mediated exchanges between persons and the social world that are the hallmark of lived social experience’. The self never consists of a single, monotonic voice but is always a combination of many voices and dialogues between different voices. By being dialogical, the self is a relationship of simultaneity between self and other. The development of the moral self or identity emerges from ongoing dialogue and relationship with others, shaped by cultural tools and ideological resources, and thus is about a process of ideological becoming where the learner selectively appropriates the moral mediational means of others with whom he or she is in dialogue (Tappan, 1999). By participating and communicating in various social practices, individuals appropriate language and other cultural tools that they can use to understand
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and address moral problems, conflicts, and dilemmas (‘psychological tools’ and ‘cultural tools’ can be viewed as interchangeable terms, but the choice of words depends on the scholars’ closeness to a more moderate or a more radical version of sociocultural perspective). Moral development is therefore always shaped by the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which it takes place (Tappan, 1997, 2006a). It has to be understood as shared and distributed rather than as individual. It is about what is going on between people in their interactions, relationships, and conversations, and is situated in particular contexts (Day & Tappan, 1996). Hence, moral learning refers to appropriating cultural tools and resources to conduct mediated moral actions. Tappan (2006b: 15) defines moral development as ‘the process by which persons gradually appropriate a variety of “moral mediational means”’. Because a sociocultural perspective, according to Tappan (2006b: 15–16), focuses on dialogue and sociocultural context, moral education becomes less about teaching the learners ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and more about ‘ensuring that the social world provides just and compassionate moral mediational means for the young to appropriate’, which however might be interpreted as less relativistic. There is a tension between descriptive and prescriptive accounts of morals in the sociocultural perspective. Tappan (2006b) emphasizes a critical stance in which moral development and moral education are understood as political practices. Teachers have to be conscious of what kinds of messages they communicate to learners so as to avoid mediating oppressive and debilitating cultural norms, stereotypes, and ideologies. Even though learners are active in constructing and orchestrating their inner moral dialogues, and hence do not necessarily accept everything they hear, teachers have to consider the power of their voices to provide language and discourses that shape the moral functioning of the rising generation (Tappan, 1992).
The Zone of Proximal Development and Guided Participation Tappan (1998) also refers to Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the zone of proximal development, which Vygotsky (1978: 86) defines as ‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’. Higher levels of moral functioning should not be understood as a superior, objective, and universal morality but as the cultural practice of morality in the particular sociocultural context. From a sociocultural perspective, moral education includes a process of guided participation in which students are helped, supported, and guided by teachers, other adults, and more competent peers to acquire a richer and more multifaceted moral language and functioning (Balakrishnan & Claiborne, 2012). In contrast
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to traditional cognitive-developmental stage theories, such as Piaget’s (1932) and Kohlberg’s (1969) theories, which consider morality as developing a moral autonomy based on universal deontological ethics and rule-based or principlegoverned behavior, moral development has to be, according to Crawford (2001), understood as morality in the context of social learning processes that recognize a fundamental interdependence rather than something accomplished by independent individuals.
The Zone of Collaborative Development From a sociocultural perspective, Balakrishnan and Claiborne (2012) suggest the importance of extending Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, which focuses on the individual learning and development in a social context, to a zone of collaborative development, which recognizes a more collective learning and achievement for an entire group. In the field of moral education, the zone of collaborative development refers to a process of collaborative problem-solving of real-life moral dilemmas, in which students’ cultural backgrounds also provide an important setting for the discussion of moral complexities. ‘Students share their real-life moral dilemmas and use the open discussions within their groups to analyse the conflicts from different perspectives. Capable peers help in bringing the discussions to greater heights’ (Balakrishnan & Claiborne, 2012: 239). In addition to exploring cognitive processes, the zone of collaborative development also includes examining emotions and actions, and taking into account wider cultural meanings and debates. This process provides an opportunity for the students to learn from each other’s experiences and cultures, to reflect, compare, and contrast suggested arguments and resolutions, and to develop a shared moral language rather than ‘correct’ solutions. The zone of collaborative development needs a safe environment for the students, in which moral dilemmas can be analyzed in a context of respectful, caring relationships.
MORAL EDUCATION IN TEACHER EDUCATION Although social constructivism is a vital and widespread perspective in the field of educational research, empirical research on moral development and education is still dominated by a range of cognitive approaches (for reviews, see Killen & Smetana, 2015; Nucci, Narvaez, & Krettenauer, 2014). This might, at least in part, explain the lack of sociocultural studies on moral education in teacher education. Nevertheless, sociocultural theory and its concepts as well as sociocultural studies on moral development and education in school offer us some guidelines on how to apply a social constructivist approach to ethical issues and moral education in teacher education.
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The Zone of Proximal Teacher Development Warford (2011: 253) talks about educating student teachers within the zone of proximal teacher development, which he defines as ‘the distance between what teaching candidates can do on their own without assistance and a proximal level they might attain through strategically mediated assistance from more capable others’. Learning is a fundamentally dialogic process in which student teachers’ prior experiences as learners, and often their tacit beliefs about pedagogy, have to be brought into an active conversation with the pedagogical content of the teacher education program. Vygotsky’s (1986) well-known distinction between scientific and spontaneous concepts is important to recognize. While spontaneous concepts are everyday concepts that arise from day-to-day experiences, scientific concepts originate in formal schooling and represent more formal and abstract systems of symbols that help us to think more abstractly and act more consciously and deliberately. Research has indicated that teachers tend to use an everyday language (i.e., spontaneous concepts) when they describe morals and moral education, while they display a lack of a professional meta-language (i.e., scientific concepts), including concepts and theories within the field of moral philosophy and theories and research within the fields of moral development and moral education (Sockett & LePage, 2002; Thornberg, 2008b; Thornberg & O˘guz, 2013). Warford (2011: 253) argues that a dialogue has to be created between spontaneous and scientific concepts in teacher education. A situated learning ‘blends the scientific discourse of the college classroom with the experiential discourse of local classrooms’. The zone of proximal teacher development has to start with student teachers’ reflection on their prior experiences and assumptions. In addition, ‘teacher educators should acknowledge and validate candidates’ prior experiences of teaching and learning, while employing the future tense in discussing new lenses through which they will consider the same phenomena’ (Warford, 2011: 254). Thus, in the field of moral education, student teachers’ assumptions of ethics, moral development and psychology, and moral teaching and education (cf. Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2005), as well as their prior experiences as students and student teachers considering these issues, have to be used as starting points. In addition, in order to promote a more critical perspective on their assumptions and practices throughout the zone of proximal teacher development, student teachers should also have the opportunity to construct a more formal meta- language of their beliefs (Warford, 2011), and thus a professional language in which theory and practice have been well integrated. In the pedagogic interplay between prior beliefs and assumptions, critical analysis of contemporary teaching practices, and the scientific language of moral educational literature, teacher educators need to support student teachers in constructing a coherent knowledge base. In line with the notion of situated learning and guided participation, it is essential to include field observation and participation in all coursework in order
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to bridge the artificial gap between theory and practice, between academic and field-based cultures. A number of studies have shown the importance of teacher education programs that are coherent and seek to create stronger links between courses and field placement (see Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005). Furthermore, to facilitate the proximal zone of teacher development and guided participation, teacher educators have to be moral role models themselves, who intentionally promote and exemplify moral language, virtues, and practices.
A Critical Pedagogy in Teacher Education to Focus on Mediated Morals in School While explicit moral education refers to schools’ official curricula of what and how to teach morality, including teachers’ explicit intentions and practices of moral education, implicit moral education is associated with a hidden curriculum and implicit values embedded in school and classroom practices (Cox, 1988; Halstead, 1996). Because a sociocultural perspective emphasizes that moral development occurs when gradually appropriating various moral mediational means by participating in social practices (Tappan, 2006b), the multifaceted everyday moral life of school (cf. Jackson, Boostrom, & Hansen, 1993) has to be addressed in teacher education. Morals are expressed in the way teachers organize and manage classroom activity and in the way teachers present, value, and choose educational content, and are more or less implicitly embedded in the school subjects and learning materials (Bills & Husbands, 2005; Cekaite, 2013; Gudmundsdottir, 1990; Jackson et al., 1993; Vestø, 2011). Morals are mediated in classroom conversations (Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002; Cekaite 2013; Margutti, 2011; Piirainen-Marsh, 2011; Thornberg, 2006, 2007, 2010), in school and classroom rules, and in how teachers work with rules and address rule transgressions (Brint, Contreras, & Matthews, 2001; Cekaite 2013; Doherty, 2015; Jackson et al., 1993; Margutti, 2011; Raby, 2012; Thornberg, 2006, 2007, 2009). Students are not simply passive recipients but have an active role in co-constructing the moral practice in the classroom (Cekaite, 2013; Stone, Kerrick, & Stoeckl, 2013) and in their peer discourses on moralities (Ellwood & Davies, 2010), which in turn could result in criticism of teachers, rules, and the official moral order of school, as well as in various hidden and open resistance (Cekaite, 2013; Devine, 2002; Murphy, Acosta, & Kennedy-Lewis, 2013; Raby, 2012; Taylor, 1996; Thornberg, 2006, 2007, 2008a). Furthermore, morals are mediated among students themselves in their everyday interactions and conversations, such as in teasing practices (Tholander, 2002a; Tholander & Aronsson, 2002), gossiping (Tholander, 2003), subteaching (Tholander & Aronsson, 2003), participation practices (Tholander, 2007, 2011), and bullying (Ellwood & Davies, 2010; Thornberg, 2015).
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A social constructivist approach to moral education in teacher education attracts student teachers’ attention to, and promotes their critical reflection upon, language and discourses in order to become more conscious about how morals, identities, social categories, privileges, normativity–deviancy, prejudices, oppressions, etc. are mediated, constructed, and maintained, but also changed by language and discursive practices embedded in historical and cultural social processes and in everyday interactions. Moral assumptions cannot simply be taken for granted but have to be scrutinized and discussed. Teacher educators have to help student teachers to contextualize moral assumptions and normative ethics and relate them to social studies, culture, power, politics, discourses, and ideologies. This is also the case when dealing with the school context, the classroom, and teacher practice. Thus, in order to prepare student teachers to engage in a forthcoming moral education that provides a just and compassionate moral mediational means for children and adolescents to appropriate (Tappan, 2006b), student teachers should study and scrutinize the hidden moral curriculum in field placements and various school and classroom cases, and develop self-reflexivity and a critical stance toward their own forthcoming classroom practice. They have to make sure that, in their future position as teachers, they contribute to co-constructing an everyday school life as a social practice of social justice, care, and compassion, in order to follow the less relativistic and more prescriptive aspect of Tappan’s (2006b) notion of moral education. Moreover, teacher educators have to take a self-critical stance and scrutinize the implicit moral education embedded in their own teacher education program and in how they approach student teachers. The everyday moral life in teacher education has to be addressed, examined, and discussed together with the student teachers as well. ‘Through group norming processes, weekly seminar meetings, and building-based collegial clusters, teacher candidates develop their professional identities within a community of practice’ (Fallona & Canniff, 2013: 79), including their moral assumptions and practices.
Educational and Moral Problems with Moral Relativism Because social constructivism assumes that morals are social constructions situated in historical-cultural and local contexts, it tends to adopt a relativist view on morality. Moral relativism has in turn attracted several criticisms, and this debate has to be included in courses on teacher ethics, moral development, and moral education in teacher education programs, if we are to take social constructivism seriously. Moral relativism creates educational and moral problems in school as well as in teacher education and cannot therefore simply be taken for granted with reference to social constructivism. We need to seriously discuss moral relativism in teacher education, and this is why I discuss it in this section. Rachels (1999) draws our attention to some problematic consequences if we fully adopt cultural moral relativism. We would, for example, not be able to say
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that a society tolerant of minorities is better than a racist society because that would imply a kind of transcultural standard of comparison (denied by cultural moral relativism). Slavery, racism, misogyny, genocide, persecution of non- heterosexuals, and other forms of oppression of and violence against certain groups would be immune from criticism from outside the particular culture. Moreover, the idea of moral progress such as social reforms would be called into doubt. ‘Progress means replacing a way of doing things with a better way. But by what standard do we judge the new ways as better? If the old ways were in accordance with the social standards of their time, then Cultural Relativism would say it is a mistake to judge them by the standards of a different time’ (Rachels, 1999: 26). Thus, we cannot, for instance, claim that the Holocaust produced by the Nazi-German society during World War II, and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, were wrong, or that the fight for and adoption of women’s suffrage in Western societies and the works of reformers such as Martin Luther King, Jr led to morally better societies. Such consequences of cultural relativism have led many thinkers to reject it as implausible on its face (Rachels, 1999). Although it challenges various forms of moralism, moral cocksureness, ethnocentrism, and absolutism, which would be healthy educational efforts in teacher education, uncritically adopting relativism seems to counteract any intention of preparing and educating student teachers to work with moral education in school to promote social justice, security, compassion, caring, and human rights. Furthermore, there is a growing body of psychological and anthropological studies showing commonalities across cultures and variations within cultures, and that cultural practices that construct inequalities and unfair treatment are not uncritically accepted (for reviews, see Turiel, 2002, 2015; Wainryb & Recchia, 2014). Turiel (2015) concludes that critiques, conflicts, resistance, and struggles for change arise from human reflections on social relationships including judgments about welfare, fairness, dignity, and rights. For example, in studies conducted in non-Western patriarchal cultures, the large majority of females judged the privileges of men and the restrictions of women as unfair, even though they conformed their conduct to their subordinate positions for pragmatic reasons since opposition was expected to have excessively serious negative consequences for them (e.g., Conry-Murray, 2009; Neff, 2001; Wainryb & Turiel, 1994). Other studies have revealed how women resist and use strategies, often hidden from men, to deal with the inequality (e.g., Abu-Lughod, 1993; Wikan, 1996). These empirically identified commonalities across cultures may be considered as examples of what Berger and Luckmann (1966) call anthropological constants. Kekes (1999) argues that there exist universally human, historically constant, and socially invariant needs created by human nature: (a) physical needs such as food, shelter, and rest; (b) psychological needs such as hope and the absence of terror in one’s life; and (c) social needs such as security and some order and predictability in one’s society. He calls the satisfaction of these basic human needs primary values, which he contrasts with secondary values.
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The rules, customs and principles protecting people in their pursuit of primary values will be called ‘deep conventions’. It follows then that any morally acceptable tradition must protect people belonging to it by means of deep conventions. (Kekes, 1999: 171)
Further empirical cross-cultural research is needed to carefully and systematically examine moral commonalities or primary values across cultures. Even if we prematurely reject this universalism, the co-constructions of more or less universally recognized social contracts of morals, such as the UN universal declaration of human rights, may be seen as a pragmatic approach to dealing with issues of survival, security, welfare, and social justice, which, however, are in need of continual critical evaluation. Thus, although social constructivism tends to adopt a relativist view on morality, this has to be seriously addressed and problematized in teacher education. Hansen (2008) argues that neither absolutism nor relativism is adequate in teacher education, since neither of them seems to be tolerable or sustainable in a democratic society, which is dependent on education. Absolutism is not tolerable because a democracy, understood through a Deweyan lens, generates a multiplicity of points of view. It presumes that new values, aims, and hopes are constantly surfacing. Relativism is not tolerable because democracy rejects the premise that anything goes; it assumes that with rights come obligations and responsibilities. (Hansen, 2008: 23)
Qualified Relativism, Pluralism, and Dialogue in Teacher Education There are diverse competing theories of ethics, moral development, and moral education, which student teachers have to be aware of and learn. Berkowitz (1997) relates this theoretical pluralism in moral development and education with the problem of the blind men around the elephant. Thayer-Bacon (2001) uses the same metaphor to approach the diversity within social and educational research. In this well-known poem, the blind men explored an elephant from different positions and described it as a rope, a fan, a tree, a snake, a spear, or a wall, depending upon which part of the elephant each man touched. ThayerBacon argues that knowers are fallible, that our knowledge and our criteria for its justification or plausibility are situated and socially constructed, and therefore corrigible and continually in need of critique and reconstruction. Thayer-Bacon talks about vulgar relativism as the claim that it does not matter what one’s perspective is, in relation to the elephant, for all perspectives are right (‘true’). Instead of vulgar relativism or blindly clinging to one voice, she argues that the blind men should start talking to each other and share the information and conceptions they each had. ‘Only by acting as a community of inquirers can they hope to gather a more complete understanding of elephants’ (ThayerBacon, 2001: 401). Thus, Thayer-Bacon contrasts vulgar relativism with what she calls a qualified relativism, which: (a) insists on the need for pluralism, i.e.,
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a conversation between different perspectives in order to reach a more qualified understanding; (b) accepts fallibilism, i.e., that we can never attain knowledge that is certain because we are fallible, limited, and contextual beings; and (c) claims that knowledge is a cultural embedded social process of knowing that is continually in need of re/adjustment, correction, and re/construction. In order to address a relativist possibility in moral education, Day and Tappan (1996: 77) take a pragmatic stance, and argue that dialogue itself constitutes a prescriptive as well as a descriptive element. On pragmatic grounds, dialogue serves to multiply resources for solving problems, whether the site of the problem in question is a self, a couple, a community, a nation or the world at large. Dialogue is what makes responsibility as answerability, as responsivity, possible.
In this sense, they refer inter alia to Habermas. This approach to ethics, moral development, and moral education would be reasonable in teacher education if we, in accordance with a sociocultural perspective, assume knowledge, including moral knowledge, as social constructions. As suggested by Blumenfeld-Jones, Senneville, and Crawford (2013), a starting point might be to let small groups of student teachers make choices between opposite poles like ‘ethics as natural vs. ethics as learned’, ‘ethics as absolute vs. ethics as relative to situations and culture’, and ‘ethics as intuited/emotions vs. ethics as rational’, and then explain and discuss their choices. A next step would be to introduce student teachers to various ethical theories or systems, including ‘how one needs to think from within a system in order to live that sort of ethical life’ (Blumenfeld-Jones et al., 2013: 64). The aim is that they appropriate ethical theories as more or less advanced but still limited and fallible cultural tools to use in order to (a) solve moral problems as future teachers, and (b) teach and facilitate their future students to identify and solve moral problems. As a third step, Blumenfeld-Jones et al. (2013: 64) propose small-group discussions based on various ethical systems to adjudicate ethical dilemmas in real-world classrooms, such as ‘asking how a consequentialist or deontologist or care ethicist might act in a particular situation’. Creating a moral atmosphere together with student teachers in which they can participate actively in dialogue on moral dilemmas reflecting the complexity of teachers’ work and everyday school life would be essential to promoting moral awareness, reasoning, and competence in student teachers. They need to learn not only about a sociocultural approach to moral education but also about other approaches, including various perspectives on normative ethics and moral development. They have to examine underlying assumptions, rationales, and arguments behind different positions and contrast them in dialogue and reflection. With roots in Dewey and Habermas, Englund (2016) highlights the importance of deliberative communication in moral education, which I would consider as a way of qualifying the social constructivist dialogue as a pedagogical tool in teacher education. Here, ‘different views are confronted with one another and arguments
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for these different views are given time and space to be articulated and presented’ (Englund, 2016: 62). Englund stresses that in deliberative communication, there must be tolerance and respect for the concrete other. In these argumentative discussions, authorities and traditional views, including one’s own assumptions and traditions, can be questioned. Participants learn to listen to others’ arguments, and collectively seek for consensus, shared understanding, or at least draw attention to differences. Furthermore, teacher educators must engage student teachers in the practices of discerning and exposing those features of teaching that can be seen and developed as moral qualities of teaching. They also have to make student teachers aware of, discuss, and problematize how implicit moral education is always present and embedded in everyday school and classroom life. From a sociocultural perspective (Tappan, 2006b), if student teachers begin to appropriate normative ethical cultural tools from moral philosophy classes as moral mediational means, their moral functioning-as-mediated-action will change (or develop), and their responses to moral dilemmas and challenges in their forthcoming role as teachers may become more complex and sophisticated. Their moral dialogue will include several and more elaborated moral voices. At the same time, it is important to realize that the field of normative ethics in which various positions ascribe to morality a theory-like status might easily lead to ‘a decontextualized notion of morality, which leaves out the most salient feature of the “lived” morality of everyday life’ (Bergmann, 1998: 281). The interplay between the more formal abstract theories in academia and the everyday life of school practice, in which the former are adopted as fallible cultural tools of reflective inquiry and in need of dialogue, is thus essential in teacher education.
CONCLUSIONS A social constructivist approach to moral education invites teacher educators to embrace the full complexity and diversity of this field, and to build a critical stance into teacher education. Although morals are viewed as contextually situated social constructions, which easily lead to moral relativism, Thayer-Bacon (2001) offers us a qualified relativism to address the complexity and diversity. Kekes’ (1999) moral pluralism suggests the idea of primary values associated with universal human needs created by human nature. As Hansen (2008: 23) concludes, ‘a core purpose of teacher education is to cultivate an open mind toward multiple views of educational purpose, and yet without lapsing into an uncritical or bland relativism’. A social constructivist approach emphasizes the importance of dialogue, the multiplicity of voices, and mutual exchanges, which may lead to more or less successful social contracts within and between communities. In any case, the zone of proximal development, guided participation, multiple voices, and dialogue are essential components in a sociocultural
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approach to moral education both in school and in teacher education. We need to create stronger links between courses and field placement to support student teachers’ situated learning and guided participation in the teaching practice of moral education. The sociocultural approach has a strong focus on language, discourses, and discursive practices, both in formal theories (scientific concepts) and in everyday classroom practice (spontaneous concepts). It emphasizes a critical pedagogy in teacher education to help student teachers to develop a critical stance toward taken-for-granted values, assumptions, and practices. It offers them a culturally sensitive and, at the same time, critical approach to moral education committed to social justice, caring, compassion, and solidarity, and to challenging inequality, oppression, harassment, and biases such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. It relates moral education to the community, the society, and the global world.
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Piirainen-Marsh, A. (2011). Irony and the moral order of secondary school classrooms. Linguistics and Education, 22, 364–382. Raby, R. (2012). School rules: Obedience, discipline, and elusive democracy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rachels, J. (1999). The elements of moral philosophy (3rd edn). Boston: McGraw-Hill College. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sanger, M., & Osguthorpe, R. (2005). Making sense of approaches to moral education. Journal of Moral Education, 34(1), 57–71. Sockett, H., & LePage, P. (2002). The missing language of the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 159–171. Stone, L.D., Kerrick, M.R., & Stoeckl, R.F. (2013). Practical-moral knowledge: The social organization of regulatory processes in academic contexts. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 30, 372–392. Tappan, M.B. (1991). Narrative, language and moral experience. Journal of Moral Education, 20(3), 243–256. Tappan, M.B. (1992). Texts and contexts: Language, culture, and the development of moral functioning. In L.T. Winegar & J. Valsinger (Eds), Children’s development within social context (pp. 93–117). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tappan, M.B. (1997). Language, culture and moral development: A Vygotskian perspective. Develop mental Review, 17, 78–100. Tappan, M.B. (1998). Moral education in the zone of proximal development. Journal of Moral Education, 27(2), 141–160. Tappan, M.B. (1999). Authoring a moral self: A dialogical perspective. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 12, 117–131. Tappan, M.B. (2006a). Mediated moralities: Sociocultural approaches to moral development. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds), Handbook of moral development (pp. 351–373). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tappan, M.B. (2006b). Moral functioning as mediated action. Journal of Moral Education, 35(1), 1–18. Taylor, M. (1996). Voicing their values: Pupils’ moral and cultural experience. In M. Halstead & M. Taylor (Eds), Values in education and education in values (pp. 121–142). London: The Falmer Press. Thayer-Bacon, B. (2001). An examination and redescription of epistemology. In J.L. Kincgeloe & D.K. Well (Eds), Standards and schooling in the United States: An encyclopedia (pp. 397–418). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Tholander, M. (2002a). Cross-gender teasing as a socializing practice. Discourse Processes, 34(3), 311–338. Tholander, M. (2002b). Doing morality in school. Linköping: Linköping University Press. Tholander, M. (2003). Pupils’ gossip as remedial action. Discourse Studies, 5(1), 101–129. Tholander, M. (2007). Students’ participation and non-participation as a situated accomplishment. Childhood, 14(4), 449–466. Tholander, M. (2011). Student-led conferencing as democratic practice. Children and Society, 25(3), 239–250. Tholander, M., & Aronsson, K. (2002). Teasing as serious business: Collaborative staging and response work. Text, 22(4), 559–595. Tholander, M., & Aronsson, K. (2003). Doing subteaching in school group work: Positionings, resistance, and participation frameworks. Language and Education, 17(3), 208–234. Thornberg, R. (2006). Hushing as a moral dilemma in the classroom. Journal of Moral Education, 35, 89–104. Thornberg, R. (2007). Inconsistencies in everyday patterns of school rules. Ethnography and Education, 2, 401–416. Thornberg, R. (2008a). ‘It’s not fair!’ – Voicing pupils’ criticisms of school rules. Children and Society, 22, 418–428.
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Thornberg, R. (2008b). The lack of professional knowledge in values education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1791–1798. Thornberg, R. (2009). The moral construction of the good pupil embedded in school rules. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 4, 245–261. Thornberg, R. (2010). School democratic meetings: Pupil control discourse in disguise. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 924–932. Thornberg, R. (2015). School bullying as a collective action: Stigma processes and identity struggling. Children and Society, 29, 310–320. Thornberg, R., & O˘guz, E. (2013). Teachers’ views on values education: A qualitative study in Sweden and Turkey. International Journal of Educational Research, 59, 49–56. Turiel, E. (2002). The culture of morality: Social development, context, and conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turiel, E. (2015). Moral development. In R.M. Lerner (Editor-in-Chief), W.F. Overton, & P.C.M. Molenaar (Vol. Eds), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science: Vol. 1. Theory and method (7th edn, pp. 484–522). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Turner, V.D., & Chamber, E.A. (2006). The social mediation of a moral dilemma: Appropriating the moral tools of others. Journal of Moral Education, 35(3), 353–368. Vestø, J.M. (2011). Moral education and the role of cultural tools. Journal of Moral Education, 40(1), 37–50. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language (newly revised and edited by A. Kozulin). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Wainryb, C., & Recchia, H. (2014). Moral lives across cultures: Heterogeneity and conflict. In M. Killen & J.G. Smetana (Eds), Handbook of moral development (2nd edn, pp. 259–278). New York: Psychology Press. Wainryb, C., & Turiel, E. (1994). Dominance, subordination, and concepts of personal entitlements in cultural contexts. Child Development, 65, 1701–1722. Warford, M.K. (2011). The zone of proximal teacher development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 252–258. Wertsch, J.V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wikan, U. (1996). Tomorrow, God willing: Self-made destinies in Cairo. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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24 The Moral Work of Teaching: A Virtue-Ethics Approach to Teacher Education Sandra Cooke
INTRODUCTION Teachers, research suggests, may acknowledge the moral and ethical aspects of their work, but in practice remain ambivalent and uncertain about how to translate that responsibility into practice (Sockett and LePage, 2002). The ethical preparation of teachers is the central question for this chapter. A neo-Aristotelian approach assumes the link between personal virtue and human flourishing, in achieving the best excellence they can within given situations. A virtue-ethics approach to preparing for moral and ethical teaching starts from an unapologetic standpoint: that who someone is as a person, and the virtues they hold, shapes who they are as a teacher. As the activity of teaching demands the participation of both teacher and learner, so the character of the teacher is part of the puzzle of what makes a moral and ethical teacher. Asking what right society has to expect positive personal dispositions from its teachers, doctors and lawyers remains contentious. If a selfish, lazy, arrogant person can teach algebra well, what right does society have to comment on their personal dispositions? A selfish, lazy or arrogant person might be able to impart subject knowledge, but it is unlikely they could motivate, inspire and help the learner, because good teaching requires generosity of spirit, perseverance and a degree of humility. It is argued therefore, that precisely because the person teaching is integral and constitutive of the teaching relationship (Carr, 2007), it is necessary for them to have, and to cultivate, the personal dispositions needed to imbue that relationship with the appropriate virtues. However, research suggests that the
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moral work of teaching is often unconsciously enacted, unplanned and reactive (Thornberg, 2008: 1797) and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) fails to offer appropriate preparation for newly qualified teachers (Willemse et al., 2008: 446). Global discourses around teaching have focused on competencies, subject knowledge and the professional attributes of teachers (Campbell, 2011; Furlong et al., 2000). At best, teachers’ epistemology, how they see knowledge and how they apply that knowledge in practice, have been foregrounded (Clandinin, 1985; Sockett, 2012), but even then is drowned by the cacophony that surrounds modern concerns for performance and measurement (Benninga et al., 2011; Santoro, 2011). Indeed, some argue that teachers resist a focus on teaching as a moral activity, in part through their insecurities around their capacities to deliver such an education (Sanger and Osguthorpe, 2013b; Sockett and LePage, 2002). Yet teachers are unable to escape the moral implications of their work, since, whether they embrace their role as exemplar or not, young people in their care will learn from their manner, behaviour, attitudes and dispositions (Carr, 2000; Fenstermacher et al., 2009). The question remains for future educators of teachers: how to develop moral character and virtues in novice and experienced teachers so they are able to enact virtue in their teaching? Having sketched the crucial aspects of a virtue-ethics approach to understanding good teaching and thus ITE, the evidence from empirical research will be examined. First, it is necessary to situate the discussion in the wider literature on what motivates teachers before discussing the evidence concerning the preparation of teachers, and the development of virtues needed for the moral work of teaching. This order is deliberate: a new teacher first has to want to do ethical work; they need to know what ethical work looks like, be prepared for that work, and put that knowledge in to practice. The emphasis in research is on ITE and novice teachers, yet a key question remains regarding how to sustain experienced teachers in the moral work of teachers. Thus, throughout, we focus on ITE but career-long learning must follow in the argument.
WHY VIRTUE ETHICS? Professional work is characterised by complexity, specialist knowledge and a commitment to beyond-the-self attention (Pellegrino, 2007: 62) – a commitment to service within self-defined ethics (Shulman, 1998). Teaching, as professional work, requires constant, practical judgement (Dunne, 2007: 13) to ensure that the moral requirements of everyday practice are met. Philosophically, the teacher may take three broad approaches: deontological, broadly construed as following principles; consequentialist, often seen as utilitarianism; or virtue ethics, grounded in virtue and practical wisdom. A virtue ethicist would argue that a reliance on principles cannot provide an adequate framework to cope with the moral complexities of the situation unless the rules are themselves so fluid and
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broad as to render them almost useless (Carr, 2000). Principles do not necessarily help the teacher in the very specific circumstances they face, but serve to safeguard the child, to provide guiding standards for action, and may not make the moral good their aim. Similarly, virtue ethicists would argue that there are limitations within a consequentialist approach, since seeking to avoid harm, or simply promoting the good of the majority, does not necessarily result in the promotion of good or right action (Higgins, 2011). The virtue ethicist would argue that their approach offers the imaginative scope needed for the teacher to appropriately adapt their response to the circumstances and specific needs of the people involved. It is important at this stage to differentiate between a generic form of professional ethics and specific approaches such as virtue ethics. A standard approach to professional ethics requires an awareness of ethical principles, what codes of conduct and norms frame the work, and what the appropriate limits and boundaries to the professional role are (Strike, 1990). On this view, teacher education aims to encourage novice teachers to recognize, understand and consider ethical matters, but not necessarily to develop their own character. The connection between the professionalism of the individual and their integrity is the significant aspect (Strike and Soltis, 2009: 120). The argument for some is that, once it is accepted that the teacher has the responsibility to teach children moral and ethical considerations, therein lies the danger of indoctrination (Bailey, 2000). This is particularly important within the context of the multi-cultural classroom whereby diverse communities may place value and emphasis on different virtues. A virtue-ethics approach instead argues that the professional is personal, and a focus simply on norms or consequences is insufficient. It is argued that virtues are universal; without the striving for excellence in virtue to drive practice, whatever the results they will be a hollowed out form of engagement, a missed opportunity for achieving the highest standard of ethical conduct (Kristjánsson, 2011: 114). For some, there is no issue with describing teaching as a moral endeavour. Fenstermacher (1990), for example, argues that precisely because teaching is relational and concerns other human beings, matters of fairness, justice, right and wrong cannot be avoided. Fallona (2000) sees manner as being the enactment of moral virtue and argues that by understanding the moral implications of teaching, it is possible to observe how those virtues are used in practice, and thence learn how to improve upon that (moral) practice. The significance here is the implicit enactment of virtue, in part in relation to the authority held as a teacher (Buzzelli and Johnston, 2001) and in part through the teachers’ own conceptions of their subject and the integrity of their knowledge within it (Sockett, 2012). Higgins (2011) argues that in order to cultivate the self in pupils, one needs to cultivate the self as teacher, because one needs a well-grounded selfhood to be able to develop that in others and because pupils will emulate their teacher’s character. For Higgins, developing an ethics of teaching means exploring the connections between the teaching life (why teach?) and the good life (how should
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I live?) and ensuring that the teaching environment is conducive to the two being in alignment (2011: 10).
WHAT IS A VIRTUE? Virtues are seen as excellences of character that contribute to the flourishing, or well-being of individuals and society (Kristjánsson, 2015). They are stable character traits that are desired for their own good, not extrinsically motivated. Scholars conceptualise the virtues within different frameworks, but there is agreement that virtues fall within domains, the most common of which are moral and intellectual virtues. Sockett (2009: 293) describes dispositions as virtues having three conditions: they are the property of the agent, evidenced only in intentional action, and they are the predictors of human action, not the cause. In relation to teaching, he identifies three categories of dispositions as virtues of character, intellect and care. For Roberts and Wood (2007: 22) intellectual virtues are aimed at epistemic goods in themselves. Using the example of Love of Knowledge, they identify three criteria that have to be met for this virtue: it must have significance, or make a difference; it must have worthiness, particularly in relation to moving towards flourishing; and it must have relevance to current concerns. Baehr (2013) describes a two-level structure to intellectual virtues: they must have epistemic motivation (as Roberts and Wood argue) and include the disposition to act. As such, they have both a normative and descriptive dimension. These are thick concepts and contribute to the complexity in understanding the nature of virtues in novice and experienced teachers and their contribution to teaching as a practice.
EMOTIONS, EUDAIMONIA AND PHRONESIS Three fundamental ideas in virtue ethics are relevant to understanding ethical and moral teaching, dating back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (1999): the link between emotions, cognition and action; the concept of Eudaimonia, or human flourishing; and the virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom, as the guiding meta-virtue. In contrast to Kohlberg’s theory of moral functioning based upon a staged development of reasoning (Colby and Kohlberg, 1987), virtue ethics builds upon Aristotle’s emphasis on the place of emotion in deciding the right course of action (Kristjánsson, 2007, 2011). Not only is it necessary to recognise and understand the moral dimensions of a situation, it is also necessary to feel appropriate emotions which drive the compulsion to act. Without the correct emotional impetus, the action will not constitute a virtuous act in any Aristotelian sense of the word. As Carr (2017, forthcoming) argues, virtue ethics following Aristotle offers ‘an integrated conception of moral experience’ that includes
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rational and cognitive, affective and emotional, and dispositional and pro-active factors, guided and shaped by phronesis. Central to a virtue-ethics approach to teaching is the concept of Eudaimonia, or human flourishing. Aristotle saw human flourishing as the pinnacle of living well, in the sense that one had achieved excellence (arête) through the pursuit of virtue, in accord with reason, to the highest possible degree. This is more than simply the pursuit of happiness, or well-being, it has a distinctly normative dimension concerning what is the right, or virtuous, thing to do. The more someone strives to virtue, the closer they move to flourishing. Ultimately, the goal of education should be the pursuit of Eudaimonia, to allow people to become the best they can be, educated in the virtues and striving for excellence themselves. However, it is not only the goal of education to do this, it is a necessary condition for the teachers themselves to flourish, or at least to pursue flourishing within their profession, in order to fulfil their (moral) obligations as teachers (Bullough, 2009). Linked to this pursuit is the importance of well-being for teachers, arguably to create the conditions within which the pursuit of arête succeeds. ForemanPeck identifies three elements of that well-being: emotional, psychological and social (2015: 159). Without paying due attention to these elements, the ability of the teacher to flourish is diminished, yet too often, she argues, policy and practice fails to pay that attention, choosing instead to focus on the techniques and behaviours of teachers and their pupils. The third concept is the meta-virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom. For Aristotle, there is an unavoidable connection between phronesis and virtue of character – someone cannot reach Eudaimonia without phronesis, but equally they could not possess phronesis without the virtue of good character (Kristjánsson, 2014: 155). Despite a plethora of writings on the subject of phronesis, there is still some misunderstanding of its nature (Cooke and Carr, 2014). In discussion of professional education, it is often referred to as a form of professional know-how whereby the practitioner weighs a situation, considers alternatives, and makes an informed, essentially professional, decision about the course of action (Ellet, 2012; Shulman, 2007). Under such a view, the moral dimension is lacking and in Aristotelian terms is not an example of phronesis, which is to be called upon when there is the need for the adjudication of competing virtues, in a specific situation. The question then, is how to balance the demands for virtue, which requires what Kristjánsson describes as to ‘deliberate finely’ about what will promote the good in life (2015: 88). For example, a teacher may face a situation that calls for both courage and kindness, and phronesis enables the teacher to assess how brave and how kind to be to achieve a result that is most likely to encourage the flourishing of both the pupil and the teacher. In essence, the virtues that are required in teaching are the same virtues that are required by physicians, lawyers, in fact any profession or work (Cooke and Carr, 2014); what is different is the context and therefore the particular application of those virtues to achieve the highest good within the practice of teaching.
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A rather neglected area of discussion about the moral nature of teaching is how phronesis develops, particularly in beginning teachers (Kristjánsson, 2014). Here, the Aristotelian concept of habituation is important. Virtues are not everpresent; they are nurtured and may be lost through neglect. To become virtuous, one has to learn about the virtues, to understand their use and then to practise acting virtuously. Thus, for Aristotle, a novice is inevitably going to be lacking in phronesis, because practical wisdom takes time, instruction and guidance and then practice. Phronesis may not be something one can easily learn, but learn it one can. The important question is how should this best be done? A modern interpretation in the revival of Aristotelian philosophy is found in After Virtue (1984), in which MacIntyre sought to rehabilitate the virtues as a way of understanding what is needed for a good life. A key argument here is the concept of ‘goods’ which he saw as being the reason why one acts, what one gets out of an action that makes it meaningful and worthwhile. He did not mean the material outcomes, or external goods such as money or status, rather the intrinsic worth of an action, which he describes as being the goods internal to the practice. Goods relate closely to the (socially established) standards of excellence derived from within the practice, and which relate solely to that practice. It follows from this that practices are, in themselves, ethical sources, and hold within them the possibilities of flourishing for the practitioner. Higgins (2011: 48) sums this up, arguing that a practice is a place where practitioners: ‘not only do good, but where they encounter the good’. There has been an ongoing debate amongst philosophers as to whether teaching can be considered a practice; MacIntyre himself argued it could not because the internal goods would be found within the subject discipline itself (e.g., a mathematics teacher would get their intrinsic rewards through developing expertise and excellence in mathematics, not through teaching it). Others challenge this view, arguing that teaching is an ethical practice, with its own standards of excellence, which are derived from within the teaching profession and apply solely to teaching (for a full discussion of this argument, see Dunne and Hogan, 2004). However construed, within virtue ethics, teaching is seen as a moral and ethical enterprise, where teaching is perceived as more than the inculcation of knowledge but as about developing moral human beings and working for the flourishing of the child, the teacher, and society as a whole.
LEARNING TO BE AN ETHICAL TEACHER IN THE 21ST CENTURY Before examining the research evidence on how teachers learn to be ethical teachers, it is worth briefly reviewing the current state of education policy and the dominant discourses in teaching. There is a growing concern that education, or at least schooling, has become hollowed out and reductionist in response to economic priorities and changing workplace demands (Pring, 2013), global
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turmoil, and a ‘multitude of crises’ (Lee & Lee Manning, 2013). Schools are facing growing accountability pressures that have dramatically increased standardisation, and severely limited teacher autonomy and workplace discretion (Ball, 2003). In contrast, through a professional lens, autonomy coupled with accountability are regarded as defining principles: having control over practice and defending that practice based on recognised standards are what sets the professions apart from other forms of labour. This somewhat idealised view sustains, despite the reality of professionals being expected to operate within codes of conduct as conditions to their employment that have skewed teacher education in order to prepare teachers for this changed environment. The autonomous professional is thought to be one who rightfully, and with appropriate input, determines courses of action based upon shared standards and deep knowledge, free from unwarranted outside authority. This autonomy is a crucial aspect of professionalism since it is not the knowledge itself that sets the professional apart, but the application of that knowledge in a complex, fluid situation in an ethical manner (Carr, 2011). The growing pressure to evidence the outcomes of teaching in quantifiable forms has led to increased concerns that teaching, and thus teacher education, has now come to be a morally neutral, technical exercise, requiring merely skills of behavioural and classroom management, specific subject knowledge and of having met demonstrable performance indicators (Howard, 2005). Generally, evidence suggests a loss of confidence in the professional ethical judgement of teachers (Heilbronn, 2008). In response, teachers may experience disjuncture between their working environment and their own moral and personal motivations to teach (Sanger, 2012).
Teacher Motivation, Calling and Practice In their study of 205 pre- and in-service teachers in the USA, Bullough and HallKenyon (2011: 127) concluded that teachers ‘overwhelmingly … feel called to teach and have high levels of hope’. They use the term ‘calling’ quite deliberately and see the call as encompassing a wish to become, a moral imperative, and inseparable from the question of who one is. The result of fulfilling that calling will be a sense of well-being, satisfaction and alignment between the person one is and the activity one is engaged in. Hansen (1995) describes the call to teach as a vocation, in his view a strong and persistent disposition to be of service to others. He too argues that the person is as important as the role they play, and crucially that teachers grow into the moral, social and emotional responsibilities of teaching through practical experience in the classroom. Empirical research demonstrates repeatedly that teachers have high ideals upon entry to ITE, citing working with children and young people, wanting to ‘make a difference’ and inspiring youngsters in their chosen subject as the main reasons for becoming teachers (Arthur et al., 2015; Manuel and Brindley, 2005). Nevertheless, there may be socio-cultural dimensions to pre-service teacher motivation. Uncovered
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in research by Klassen et al. (2011), in a study of 200 pre-service teachers from Canada and Oman, they found that Canadian participants were more likely to make self-references and refer to social justice or utility than their Omani counter parts, who were more likely to cite career goals. Some would argue that this is too lofty an ambition and inevitably leads to disappointment (Hansen, 2002), and seems at odds with other research that suggests students entering pre-service teacher education are ambivalent (at best) about the chances of them entering the teaching profession (Roness, 2011). This is where the nuances of Bullough and Hall-Kenyon’s (2011) notion of hopefulness become significant, as they argue that teachers report themselves as being hopeful people, even when their work as teachers challenges their high ideals. Sadly, however, globally, teaching as a profession has high attrition rates, particularly amongst new teachers (Guarino et al., 2006) and therefore it is important to consider the link between calling, hopefulness and the preparation needed for the moral demands of teaching.
Preparing to Do Good Work in the Classroom The best ITE can hope to do is to provide a framework, lay the foundations and equip the novice with critical faculties to pay attention to, care about and work at developing virtuous practice. Research with pre-service and qualifying teachers suggests the moral aspects of teaching are missing from ITE across different national settings (Cummings et al., 2007; Willemse et al., 2008). It is argued that ITE rarely offers systematic treatment of such issues, leading to what Sanger and Osguthorpe describe as a moral vacuum (2013b). There are very few specific ethics courses within ITE (Warnick and Silverman, 2011) and such issues are often unconscious, reactive and unplanned (Thornberg, 2008), despite teachers reporting that they expect their initial education to cover such content (Temli et al., 2011). It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that teachers report confusion over their role as moral educators (Mahoney, 2009) and feel they lack the moral language to fulfil their obligations (Sockett and LePage, 2002). To fill the void left by their ITE, teachers report having to fall back upon their own moral foundations and make judgements according to their own understandings of what is right and wrong (Campbell, 2011). Campbell argues that this void leaves the moral input in ITE to chance and there is thus a ‘missed opportunity’ to guide and support new teachers. The void is more than filled with the technical and practical work of teaching (Benninga et al., 2011), with meeting qualification standards and, too often, with simple survival in the classroom (Bullough, 2011). How then do new teachers come to know what good, moral teaching is?
Knowing and Doing the Good As Campbell (2013) observes, teaching novice teachers about ethical aspects of their work requires making those dimensions explicit and equipping students
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with the ability to notice the moral implications of their work and how their actions as teachers will impact their pupils. Through critical reflection on their practice, the belief is that better, more ethical, choices will be made in action. Campbell argues that it is often ‘about making the familiar more obvious’ (2013: 30) rather than necessarily introducing new knowledge. So while novice teachers may not talk in the language of moral implications, once these are highlighted in class, research suggests they quickly recognise and endorse their importance (Strike, 1993). It is important to remember that in virtue ethics the concept is thick, encompassing not just the relevant legal or ‘professional’ framework, but also the capacity to draw upon the virtues in practice. For example, merely following a code of conduct may not reflect deep understanding of the moral significance of practice, or the need for a nuanced and situated response. Campbell concludes that, despite a usual preference for infused, embedded teaching about ethical practices, to avoid the ‘missing language’ problem (Sockett and LePage, 2002), all ITE should include a mandatory component, called ‘ethics’, clearly identifiable as such within the curriculum and with clear goals. This must sit alongside a curriculum that pays attention to the moral dimensions of practice wherever and whenever they arise, thus avoiding the danger that ethics becomes an add-on, rather than a central foundation upon which good teaching is built. Previous research offers some indication about how explicit ethics teaching should be framed to promote both the development of virtues and thus moral teaching. There are three main clues in the literature: knowledge about the virtues, critical ethical reflection on experiences, and role modelling or learning from exemplars. The first of these, knowledge about the virtues, is relatively straightforward, and concepts such as practical wisdom and habituation can be directly taught within teacher education. Although diminishing in importance in teacher education in some parts of the world, philosophy and sociology remain critical to building solid theoretical foundations for teaching. These studies do not in themselves help students develop the virtues, but they begin a process of understanding and recognition from which the learning begins. The relevant codes of conduct, for example the Teachers’ Standards in the UK, and expected professional etiquette can be used to frame the qualification standards required of student teachers. More often than not though, these come to be seen as a ‘tickbox’ exercise that loses its complexity and meaning beyond a simple demonstration of meeting externally imposed requirements for appropriate practice (Southgate et al., 2013: 13). The much harder problem relates to moving from simply knowing the good to understanding sufficiently how to put that knowledge into practice, and, from there, doing the good. To achieve this aim, one of the most promising approaches is through the use of ethical dilemmas in a neo-Kohlbergian framework (Rest et al., 1999). These offer a bridge between theoretical knowledge and practice, based in the particularity of teaching, and act as a catalyst for critical reflection. Shapira-Lishchinsky (2011) recruited 50 teachers to explore ethical dilemmas found in ‘critical incidents’
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as a way of potentially improving future responses to such situations. Although critical incidents are often seen as something to be avoided, a source of disruption and threat, nevertheless they can be a powerful tool for encouraging discussion of moral conflicts. Through such discussions, moral language can be used and developed, ethical and moral implications highlighted, and critical reflection may be used to determine how different responses affect the (moral) outcomes of any given situation. In a similar vein, Strike and Soltis (2009) report on the use of ethical dilemmas in ITE, arguing they provide a gateway into the kinds of dilemmas teachers actually face. Within the safety of university classrooms, complex and sensitive issues can be explored openly and without fear. While such exploration may have limitations in its extent, it nevertheless alerts the novice teacher to the kinds of dilemmas they will learn from practice. A different form of critical, ethical reflection is described by de Ruyter and Kole (2010) who argue that teachers themselves must take responsibility for intraprofessional reflection around the moral challenges of teaching. Teachers need to be encouraged to develop and raise their own awareness of these issues such that debate and discussion becomes commonplace and moral language familiar. The promise is that such practices will prove energising and empowering for teachers. The third approach described within the literature to promote the learning of virtue is through modelling and good mentoring. Just as research suggests the pupil in class learns from the modelling of the teacher (Hansen et al., 1994), so the student teacher learns from their educators (Campbell, 2003; Sanger and Osguthorpe, 2013a). Research has shown the importance of this learning as the novice teacher seeks to make sense of theoretical knowledge and its translation into practice (Beck and Kosnik, 2002; Cheng et al., 2010). Yet research suggests that here again the conception of professional virtue is centred on the more superficial aspects of behaviour, such as dress or punctuality, rather than on virtue per se, such as kindness, courage or compassion (Arthur et al., 2015). This conclusion suggests that educators need educating in virtue before they can hope to develop virtue within their students. Finally, it is the importance of good mentoring that is highlighted in the literature by Richter et al. (2013), who argue that for the mentee to benefit from the relationship, a constructivist approach is needed, whereby the novice works with the mentor to co-construct knowledge through shared enquiry, practice and reflection. It seems logical that for the novice teacher to learn good habits and develop desired virtues, the mentor must possess and exhibit those qualities. This tri-partite approach of explicit content, critical reflection on practice dilemmas (real or constructed) and modelling and mentoring provides a framework within which the novice teacher can learn to be a good or virtuous teacher. Such a framework does not guarantee the development of practical wisdom, but it provides the pedagogical conditions within which it might be developed. The missing ingredient may be experience, which provides teachers with the reflective memory to improve their practice (Field and Latta, 2001).
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Putting Ethics Back into Reflection The importance of reflection in practice is well recognised and has been conceptualised in different ways in ITE. However, research suggests that too often reflection is merely directed towards technical matters, on what works or not (Biesta and Miedema, 2002). What appears to be missing from such debates has been the emphasis on ethical deliberation (Shortt et al., 2015). Reflection must encompass some notion of the moral in it, such that one of the questions being asked is whether action taken was ‘good’ or virtuous. For ethical deliberation to be part of the reflective process, the teacher must first have ethical knowledge, to know what the moral thing to do is. They will need to understand why that is the right thing to do, and how to act in order to maximise the virtues. Through the combination of experience, critical ethical reflection and guidance from more experienced mentors, the teacher can repeat the action in a new setting in an improved way. Thus, within the virtuous circle of recognising the need for virtue, feeling the impetus to act, acting, reflecting critically about the ethical dimensions to the case, and learning from doing, the process of habituation continues.
Challenges to Virtue Ethics There are two thorny issues that require some mention before concluding. The first is the extent to which it is fair and proper to consider the character, or virtue, of the teacher, and the second is the extent to which it is possible to ‘measure’ such character or virtue. Once one accepts the premise of a virtue-ethics approach to teaching, one has to give consideration to the character and virtue of the teacher. While other approaches, such as Kantianism, might acknowledge the character of the teacher as important, they would see character in relation to the understanding and application of guiding principles, different to the focus on virtues that form character in a virtue-ethics sense. The second point is worth a brief discussion, although others provide an in-depth analysis (Kristjánsson, 2015: Chapter 3). Social scientists have grappled with the measurement of character for years and the best approaches to date centre around psychometric tests, mostly self-report instruments, moral dilemmas, observations and, more recently, implicit measures. While none of these are fully satisfying, a judicious mixture may provide some useful insights, but of much greater significance is the purpose for which such measurements are designed. If, as Snow (2014) advises, the outcome is moral transformation or reformation through a better understanding of ourselves and others, then the use of measurement may be justified.
CONCLUSION Understanding the importance of the personal virtues of teachers potentially offers a rich vision of the teacher as professional. By focusing on the kind of
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person needed to teach well, and by paying attention to the importance of nurturing flourishing in both teacher and pupil, a framework for educating and supporting new and experienced teachers emerges. It is not enough to learn techniques and subject knowledge: the person matters. Focusing on the relational aspects of teaching, of shared learning and critical ethical reflection to strive for excellence in the virtues, directs us to understanding the importance of virtue knowledge, practice and habituation for all teachers. The aim of ITE becomes to develop the virtues appropriate to teaching, such as compassion, perseverance, fairness, so that they inform practice. Above all, the development of phronesis, practical wisdom, should be the ultimate aim. A teacher who makes wise judgements, balances competing virtues and moderates her practice will be an ethical teacher. Within the curriculum, teaching ethics is important, perhaps by addressing real or imagined dilemmas. Critical reflection will involve asking: did I do the kind/ fair/just thing in that situation? Through modelling and mentoring from more experienced, virtuous practitioners, that drive for excellence is more likely to lead to flourishing in teaching for teacher and taught alike.
REFERENCES Aristotle (1999) Nicomachean ethics, 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. Arthur, J., Kristjánsson, K., Cooke, S., Brown, E. and Carr, D. (2015) The good teacher: Understanding virtues in practice. Birmingham, UK: Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. Baehr, J. (2013) ‘Educating for intellectual virtues’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47(2): 248–262. Bailey, R. (2000) ‘Indoctrination’, in R. Bailey, R. Barrow, D. Carr and C. McCarthy (eds), The SAGE handbook of philosophy of education. London: Sage. pp. 269–282. Ball, S. (2003) ‘The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity’, Journal of Education Policy, 18(2): 215–228. Beck, C. and Kosnik, C. (2002) ‘The importance of the university campus programme in preservice teacher education’, Journal of Teacher Education, 53(5): 420–432. Benninga, S., Sparks, R.K. and Tracz, S.M. (2011) ‘Enhancing teacher moral judgement in difficult political times: Swimming upstream’, International Journal of Educational Research, 50(3): 177–183. Biesta, G. and Miedema, S. (2002) ‘Instruction or pedagogy? The need for a transformative conception of education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(2): 173–181. Bullough R.V. Jr (2009) ‘Seeking Eudaimonia: The emotions in learning to teach and mentor’, in P. Schutz and M. Zembylas (eds), Advances in teacher emotion research: The impact on teachers’ lives. New York: Springer. pp. 33–53. Bullough R.V. Jr (2011) ‘Ethical and moral matters in teaching and teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1): 21–28. Bullough, R.V. and Hall-Kenyon, K.M. (2011) ‘The call to teach and teacher hopefulness’, Teacher Development: An International Journal of Teachers’ Professional Development, 15(2): 127–140. Buzzelli, C. and Johnston, B. (2001) ‘Authority, power and morality in classroom discourse’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 17: 873–884. Campbell, E. (2003) The ethical teacher. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Campbell, E. (2011) ‘Teacher education as a missed opportunity in the professional preparation of ethical practitioners’, in D. Carr, L. Bondi, C. Clark & C. Clegg (eds), Practical wisdom in the people’s professions. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 81–94.
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Campbell, E. (2013) ‘The virtuous, wise, and knowledgeable teacher: Living the good life as a professional practitioner’, Educational Theory, 63(4): 413–429. Carr, D. (2000) Professionalism and ethics in teaching. Abingdon: Routledge. Carr, D. (2007) ‘Character in teaching’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(4): 369–389. Carr, D. (2011) ‘Virtue, character and emotion in people professions’, in D. Carr, L. Bondi, C. Clark and C. Clegg (eds), Practical wisdom in the people’s professions. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 97–110. Carr, D. (2017, forthcoming) ‘Education’, in Nancy Snow (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cheng, M.H.M., Tang, S.Y.F. and Cheng, A.Y.N. (2010) ‘Closing the gap between conceptions and practices of teaching: Implications for teacher education programmes’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(1): 91–104. Clandinin, D.J. (1985) ‘Personal practical knowledge: A study of teachers’ classroom images’, Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4): 361–385. Colby, A. and Kohlberg, L. (1987) The measurement of moral judgment: Vol. 1. Theoretical foundations and research validation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cooke, S. and Carr, D. (2014) ‘Virtue, practical wisdom and character in teaching’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(2): 91–110. Cummings, R., Harlow, S. and Maddux, C.D. (2007) ‘Moral reasoning of in-service and pre-service teachers: A review of the research’, Journal of Moral Education, 36(1): 67–78. de Ruyter, D.J. and Kole, J.J. (2010) ‘Our teachers want to be the best: On the necessity of intra-professional reflection about moral ideals of teaching’, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 16(2): 207–218. Dunne, J. (2007) ‘“Professional wisdom” in practice’, in D. Carr, L. Bondi, C. Clark and C. Clegg (eds), Practical wisdom in the people’s professions. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 13–26. Dunne, J. and Hogan, P. (2004) Education and practice: Upholding the integrity of teaching and learning. Oxford: Blackwell. Ellett F.S. Jr (2012) ‘Practical rationality and a recovery of Aristotle’s “phronesis” for the professions’, in E.A. Kinsella and A. Pitman (eds), Phronesis as professional knowledge. Rotterdam: Sense. pp. 13–33. Fallona, C. (2000) ‘Manner in teaching: A study in observing and interpreting teachers’ moral virtues’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(7): 681–695. Fenstermacher, G.D. (1990) ‘Some moral considerations on teaching as a profession’, in J.I. Goodlad, R. Soder and K. Sirotnik (eds), The moral dimensions of teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. pp. 95–108. Fenstermacher, G., Osguthorpe, R. and Sanger, M. (2009) ‘Teaching morally and teaching morality’, Teacher Education Quarterly, 3: 7–19. Field, J.C. and Latta, M.M. (2001) ‘What constitutes becoming experienced in teaching and learning?’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 17: 885–895. Foreman-Peck, L. (2015) ‘Towards a theory of well-being for teachers’, in R. Heilbron and L. Foreman-Peck (eds), Philosophical perspectives on teacher education. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 152–166. Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S., Whiting, C. and Whitty, G. (2000) Teacher education in transition: Re-forming professionalism? Buckingham: Open University Press. Guarino, C.M., Santibañez, L. and Daley, A.G. (2006) ‘Teacher recruitment and retention: A review of the recent empirical literature’, Review of Educational Research, 76(2): 173–208. Hansen, D.T. (1995) The call to teach. New York: Teachers College Press. Hansen, D.T. (2002) ‘The moral environment in an inner-city boys’ high school’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 18: 183–204. Hansen, D.T., Boostrom, R.E. and Jackson, P.W. (1994) ‘The teacher as moral model’, Kappa Delta Pi Record, 31(1): 24–29. Heilbronn, R. (2008) Teacher education and the development of practical judgement. London: Continuum.
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Higgins, C. (2011) The good life of teaching? An ethics of professional practice. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Howard, R.W. (2005) ‘Preparing moral educators in an era of standards-based reform’, Teacher Education Quarterly, 32(4): 43–58. Klassen, R.M., Al-Dhafri, S., Hannok, W. and Betts, S.M. (2011) ‘Investigating pre-service teacher motivation across cultures using the Teachers’ Ten Statements Test’, Teaching And Teacher Education, 27(3): 579–588. Kristjánsson, K. (2007) Aristotle, emotions and education. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kristjánsson K (2011) ‘Some Aristotelian reflections on teachers’ professional identities and the emotional practice of teaching’, in L. Bondi, D. Carr, C. Clark and C. Clegg (eds), Towards professional wisdom: Practical deliberation in the ‘people professions’. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 111–123. Kristjánsson, K. (2014) ‘Phronesis and moral education: Treading beyond the truisms’, Theory and Research in Education, 12(2): 155–171. Kristjánsson, K. (2015) Aristotelian character education. London: Routledge. Lee, G-L. and Lee Manning, M. (2013) ‘Introduction: Character education around the world: Encouraging positive character traits’, Childhood Education, 89(5): 283–285. MacIntyre, A.C. (1984) After virtue: A study in moral theory, 2nd edn. London: Duckworth. Mahoney, P. (2009) ‘Should “ought” be taught?’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(7): 983–989. Manuel, J. and Brindley, S. (2005) ‘The call to teach: Identifying pre-service teachers’ motivations, expectations and key experiences during initial teacher education in Australia and the United Kingdom’, English in Australia, 144: 38–49. Pellegrino, E.D. (2007) ‘Professing medicine, virtue based ethics, and the retrieval of professionalism’, in R.L. Walker and P.J. Ivanhoe (eds), Working virtue: Virtue ethics and contemporary moral problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 61–85. Pring, R. (2013) The life and death of secondary education for all. London: Routledge. Rest, J., Narveaz, D., Bebeau, M.J. and Thoma, S.J. (1999) Postconventional moral thinking: A neoKohlbergian approach. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Richter, D., Kunter, M., Lüdtke, O., Klusmann, U., Anders, Y. and Baumert, J. (2013) ‘How different mentoring approaches affect beginning teachers’ development in the first years of practice’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 36: 166–177. Roberts, R.C. and Wood, W.J. (2007) ‘Love of knowledge. Intellectual virtues: An essay in regulative epistemology’, Oxford Scholarship Online, DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283675.001.0001 (accessed 5 April 2016). Roness, D. (2011) ‘Still motivated? The motivation for teaching during the second year in the profession’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 27: 628–638. Sanger, M. (2012) ‘The schizophrenia of contemporary education and the moral work of teaching’, Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2): 285–307. Sanger, M. and Osguthorpe, R. (2013a) ‘Modelling as moral education: Documenting, analysing, and addressing a central belief of pre-service teachers’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 29: 167–176. Sanger, M. and Osguthorpe, R. (2013b) ‘The moral vacuum in teacher education research and practice’, National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook 2013, 112(1): 41–60. Santoro, D.A. (2011) ‘Good teaching in difficult times: Demoralization in the pursuit of good work’, American Journal of Education, 188(1): 1–23. Shapira-Lishchinsky, O. (2011) ‘Teachers’ critical incidents: Ethical dilemmas in teaching practice’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 27: 648–656. Shortt, D., Reynolds, P., McAteer, M. and Hallett, F. (2015) ‘To believe, to think, to know – to teach? Ethical deliberation in teacher education’, in R. Heilbron, and L. Foreman-Peck (eds), Philosophical perspectives on teacher education. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 89–108. Shulman, L.S. (1998) ‘Theory, practice and the education of professionals’, Elementary School Journal, 98(5): 511–526.
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Shulman, L.S. (2007) ‘Practical wisdom in the service of professional practice’, Educational Researcher, 36(9): 560–563. Snow, N.E. (2014) ‘Virtue intelligence’. Keynote speech presented at the Jubilee Centre Conference Can virtue be measured? Oriel College, Oxford, January. Retrieved November 11 2015, from http://www. jubileecentre.ac.uk/485/conferences/can-virtue-be-measured. Sockett, H. (2009) ‘Dispositions as virtues: the complexity of the construct’, Journal of Teacher Education, 60(3): 291–303. Sockett, H. (2012) Knowledge and virtue in teaching and learning: The primacy of dispositions. New York: Routledge. Sockett, H. and LePage, P. (2002) ‘The missing language of the classroom’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(2): 159–171. Southgate, E., Reynolds, R. and Howley, P. (2013) ‘Professional experience as a wicked problem in initial teacher education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 31: 13–22. Strike, K.A. (1990) ‘Teaching ethics to teachers: What the curriculum should be about’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 6(1): 47–53. Strike, K.A. (1993) ‘Teaching ethical reasoning using cases’, in K.A. Strike and P.L. Ternasky (eds), Ethics for professionals in education: Perspectives for preparation and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. pp. 112–116. Strike, K. and Soltis, J. (2009) The ethics of teaching, 5th edn. New York: Teachers College Press. Temli, Y., Sen, D. and Akar, H. (2011) ‘A study on primary classroom and social studies teachers’ perceptions of moral education and their development and learning’, Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 11(4): 2061–2067. Thornberg, R. (2008) ‘The lack of professional knowledge in values education’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(7): 1791–1798. Warnick, B. and Silverman, S. (2011) ‘A framework for professional ethics courses in teacher education’, Journal of Teacher Education, 62(3): 273–285. Willemse, M., Lunenberg, M. and Korthagen, F. (2008) ‘The moral aspects of teacher educators’ practices’, Journal of Moral Education, 37(4): 445–466.
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SECTION V
Learning to Negotiate Political, Social, and Cultural Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education R o l a n d W. M i t c h e l l
This book is being written at a pivotal moment in global affairs in which the political, social, and cultural responsibilities of teaching present never before seen challenges. The rapid pace of technological advancement paired with an expanding human population and the increasing malleability of formerly static national and geographic boundaries have caused our world and the very language that we use to conceptualize it to radically shift. Historicizing this moment draws attention to the fact that this Handbook and its resulting inquiry into teaching exists at the transition from the ‘International’, a term coined by philosopher Jeremey Bentham in 1789 in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, to the era of ‘Globalism’, a term in circulation since the 1930s and most recently popularized by marketing professor Theodore Levitt in his 1983 Harvard Business Review article ‘The Globalization of Markets’. Bentham introduced the term international to describe relationships primarily associated with business and law exchanges between countries in a manner relative to the rigid nation-state boundaries of the late 18th century. Globalism, according to Levitt,
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reflects the evolutionary changes in technology and social behaviors that allow multinational companies an array of market-driven exchanges absent many of the constraints of historic nation-state-informed boundaries. In the end, both concepts are at the core of the expansion of neoliberal market values that organize human communities to maximize the production and accumulation of capital. According to Levitt, the nuance between the two is that as a result of technological enhancements, globalism signals the end of accustomed differences in national or regional preferences. For the purposes of this Handbook, despite historic depictions of education as inherently liberatory, the rise of globalism has worked to increasingly co-opt education, as well as numerous other critical societal goods, e.g., transportation, labor, food production, entertainment and the arts, in a manner that disproportionally orients them to the interests of those who have the most influence over the market. In some regards this should come as little surprise in that there is not presently, and never has been, a moment when what we as a society have chosen to include in formal education is not political and governed by imbalanced power relations (Fanon, 1967; Freire, 1970; hooks, 2003; Memmi, 1965; Scheurich, 2002). Consequently, if unchecked, globalism risks a more efficient manner of replicating century-old divides between historic ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, paired with creating a socially homogeneous global culture in the interests of allowing multinational companies like McDonald’s to sell the same products worldwide, with the only contours being dictated by the needs of the market. Against this admittedly bleak backdrop, this section of the Handbook affords numerous illustrations of thoughtful educators and passionate researchers exploring the ways that teachers as agents of social change, and correspondingly teacher education programs, are preparing educators to critically engage the intersection of education and the excesses of globalism. Chapter 25, Kelchtermans and Vanassche’s ‘Micropolitics in the Education of Teachers: Power, Negotiation, and Professional Development’, takes up this charge by critically inquiring into the ways that social identity formation and the theoretical foundations within teacher education programs influence teacher preparation. The chapter opens with the provocative question, what has the international research literature to tell us about micropolitics in the ongoing process of becoming a teacher? The authors introduce the term micropolitics to draw attention to the individual and political character of the choices that educators make daily. As they highlight in the chapter, these choices have material consequences for an increasingly diverse 21st-century student population and are directly impacted by specific teacher perceptions and worldviews. Through this line of inquiry the chapter powerfully surfaces the formal and informal power relations within school contexts as well as the ways that an educator’s identity impacts their daily task of judging, acting, and taking responsibility for one’s actions. The chapter concludes by suggesting that as opposed to seeking the anesthetized neo liberal
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approach to multi/interculturalism, teacher education programs need to build upon the growing literature on emotions in teaching and becoming a teacher (Kelchtermans & Deketelaere, 2016; Schutz & Zembylas, 2009; Zembylas & Schutz, 2016). This assertion and micro-social analysis challenges a one-sizefits-all homogeneous approach to practice that subtly advances the dangerous excesses of global capitalism. Chapter 26, Gomez and Johnson Lachuk’s ‘Teachers Learning about Themselves through Learning about “Others”’, challenges teacher education programs to make a critical assessment of the taken-for-granted notions that undergird teacher practice. This direct challenge to objective considerations of pedagogical engagement places the moral and social consequences of teaching, and more specifically what a community chooses to include in formal education, lucidly on display for critique. Further, it complements the previous chapter, which considered the micropolitical nature of teacher identity and engagement, by exploring the macro-social-level, socially constructed, and eminently embodied aspects of schooling. The chapter forwards a praxis-laden approach to teacher preparation through three central questions: How have teacher educators attempted to change the ways teachers talk, think, and act? What dimensions of teacher education and schooling constrain or encourage these? And what have been the outcomes of these practices for teachers and students? This embodied approach to teacher education is theoretically grounded in the work of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and anthropologist Dorothy Holland. By applying Bakhtin’s (1981) ideas on the value attributed to socially and culturally constructed realms of interpretation to Holland et al.’s (1998) assertion that the self and social practices are inseparable, the authors conclude by asserting that establishing pedagogically responsible dialogical relationships not only increases empathy but also goes hand in hand with imparting subject matter knowledge. Consequently, the challenge that teachers are increasingly faced with is not only how to teach mathematics, for example, but more importantly how to increase knowledge of their own positionality in relation to that of their students, and in so doing, model compassion for their students. Chapter 27, authored by Vavrus, ‘A Decolonial Alternative to Critical Approaches to Multicultural and Intercultural Teacher Education’, opens with a brief review of the literature on multicultural or intercultural education as an entry into considerations of the manner in which majority and minority populations interact. The author provides a brief overview of key ideas on sociocultural identity formation, including racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and neoliberal identity constructions. Through this introductory overview the chapter poignantly surfaces the ways that dominant ideologies have attempted to influence and ultimately co-opt the language of multi/interculturalism. Next, the chapter considers the potential impact of decolonialism on teacher education as a means to historicize the roots of globalism and trace what the author refers to as the ‘long process of colonial domination’. Through this critical inquiry of
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education’s role in shaping social interactions, readers are afforded a particularly cutting analysis of the engagement between the conservative roots of teacher education juxtaposed against a critical, decolonial approach to teacher education. The chapter concludes with the author forwarding the proposition that the power of a decolonial perspective for teacher education is that it ‘can work to expose deep historical roots of identity hierarchies’. Chapter 28, the concluding chapter in this section of the Handbook, Mitchell, Wooten, Landry-Thomas, and Mitchell’s ‘Recruitment and Retention of Traditionally Underrepresented Students in Teacher Education’, connects the themes across each chapter by proposing that an essential part of nurturing the critical sensibilities discussed across the chapters resides in communities of often overlooked and undervalued people whose very lives are rife with counterhegemonic sensibilities. The challenges that are posed concern how to recruit these individuals and, next, how to invite not only their bodies, but the full ways of knowing and being associated with these historically marginalized groups, into teacher education programs. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the lynchpins for necessitating these types of engagement are: nurturing/maintaining critical linkages between formal schooling and local social-justice-oriented approaches to practice; resisting the deficit framework of educational inclusivity politics; and encouraging creative partnerships that expand traditional boundaries of schooling. The authors assert that this approach to teacher preparation is sorely needed for addressing the ‘neoliberal conundrum’ and ultimately preparing teachers to practice in this pivotal moment in global affairs. Despite the challenges that have been the primary focus of this introduction, the malleable boundaries between 21st-century communities in this transitionary moment, if critically engaged, present never before seen opportunities as well. The balance that contemporary teacher education programs are challenged to achieve to establish this more optimistic outcome consists of educating teachers for participation in the global market while simultaneously infusing the curriculum with the insights of, and respect for, indigenous knowledge systems. Not engaging in the work to strike this balance risks economic, societal, and cultural uncertainty. Therefore, teachers and teacher education programs have to be fluid in a manner that, as opposed to looking for opportunities to assimilate marginalized populations to the needs of the market or fix students from historically underrepresented groups, is in a state of constant evolution, with the aim of inviting more ideas and communities to be fully engaged. Fluidity, responsiveness, and movement are a central part of this recommendation because the global and local landscapes are constantly in flux. These fluctuations are power laden with dire consequences for disenfranchised communities. For example, similar to Rosiek and Kinslow’s (2015) analogy that racism is a living being that will evolve to advance its interests, so too is the market, and I would add that in response to these changes teacher education must also always be evolving and in the making. In this making, teacher learning is a search for
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situated understanding that places ideas and events in their social, historical, and cultural contexts as opposed to the homogeneous market-controlled framing that most drastically threatens the infrastructure of schooling in the so-called ‘developing world’. Chapters in this section focus on social commitments/ responsibilities, institutional structures, targeted course contents, and pedagogical processes that support prospective teachers. They aim to clarify how issues related to teacher education are often political and contentious among people with different ideologies, interests, and perspectives. At this moment in human history a more substantive understanding of diversity is essential. And as we come to this more substantive moment, education is critical to striking the balance between sociopolitical interconnectedness and the rapid expansion of a worldwide assimilationist culture under the auspices of globalism.
REFERENCES Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bentham, J. (1907). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York, NY: Grove. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group. Holland, D., Lachicotte W. Jr, Skinner, D., & Cain C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York, NY: Routledge. Kelchtermans, G., & Deketelaere, A. (2016). The emotional dimension in becoming a teacher. In J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (Eds), International handbook of teacher education (pp. 429–461). Dordrecht: Springer. Levitt, T. (1983). The globalization of markets. Harvard Business Review, May–June. http://www.lapres .net/levit.pdf Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. New York, NY: Orion Press. Rosiek. J., & Kinslow, K. (2015). Resegregation as curriculum: The meaning of the new racial segregation in US public schools. New York, NY: Routledge. Scheurich, J.J. (2002). Anti-racist scholarship: An advocacy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Schutz, P., & Zembylas, M. (Eds) (2009). Advances in teacher emotion research: The impact on teachers’ lives. Dordrecht: Springer. Zembylas, M., & Schutz, P. (Eds) (2016). Methodological advances in research on emotion and education. Dordrecht: Springer.
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25 Micropolitics in the Education of Teachers: Power, Negotiation, and Professional Development G e e r t K e l c h t e r m a n s a n d E l i n e Va n a s s c h e INTRODUCTION Although teaching and education aim at achieving relevant learning outcomes and personal development in students, their purpose cannot be reduced to an instrumental issue of efficiently linking means to ends. Since education concerns human beings, it requires value-laden choices, ethical judgement, personal commitment, and care on the part of the teachers or educators. It is about doing justice to the educational needs of the children and young people who have been confined to their care and for whom they feel responsible. Yet, people will continue to differ in their answer to the question of what is in the best educational interest of the pupils and students. Any moral stance taken can be questioned and might trigger discussion and debate. As a consequence, educational practices are by nature also political, since they involve issues of influence, power, and negotiation. Understanding the latter at the level of the school as an organization is the core interest of the so-called ‘micropolitical perspective’ on teaching and schools (Ball, 1987; Blase, 1991; Hoyle, 1982). Hoyle (1982) defined micropolitics as ‘those strategies by which individuals and groups in organisational contexts seek to use their resources of power and influence to further their interests’ (p. 88). In 1997, Joseph Blase concluded his chapter in the International Handbook of Teachers and Teaching stating that although teacher education programs may give some attention to the cultural and social dimensions of teaching, the micropolitics of teaching has been virtually ignored. This point
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is particularly significant, since micropolitics is pervasive in the classroom, the school, and the community … [M]ore than ever before, teachers will be required to understand and use power and authority in the interest of student learning. (pp. 963–964)
In line with Blase’s (1997) conclusion, our chapter seeks to answer the question: what has the international research literature to tell us about micropolitics in the ongoing process of becoming a teacher? In order to systematically map and analyze this body of literature we searched Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Web of Science for conceptual and empirical studies in teacher education that implicitly or explicitly draw on the micropolitical perspective. We analyzed these databases online for work published between 1971 and 2015 using the following key words in conjunction with ‘micropolit*’ or ‘micro-polit*’: preservice/initial teacher education, preservice/initial teacher preparation, preservice/initial teacher training, preservice teachers, student teachers, and teacher induction and early career teachers. We looked primarily for relevant research in pre-service or initial teacher education, but also included the work on the induction phase. The varied meanings of ‘internship’, ‘induction programs’, ‘student teaching’, and ‘practicum’ in different national educational systems make it difficult to strictly distinguish pre-service teacher education from teacher induction. Occasionally we will also refer to work on in-service training. We complemented our search with a backward snowballing technique by screening the bibliography of relevant publications to include older important work. Finally, we conducted a manual search of the Handbooks of Research on Teaching (Richardson, 2001; Travers, 1973; Wittrock, 1986) and the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (CochranSmith et al., 2008), looking for work drawing on the micropolitical perspective. In the following paragraphs we first elaborate on the particular meaning of the micropolitical perspective as well as our conceptual stance on teacher development. We then discuss the notion of ‘micropolitical literacy’, which metaphorically links the micropolitical perspective to teacher development. This is followed by a comprehensive presentation of the identified research literature, organized in three broad themes: (1) micropolitics in the practical component of the teacher education curriculum; (2) micropolitics, mentoring, and teacher leadership; and (3) micropolitics in processes of collaboration and reform. We conclude the chapter with a discussion on how to incorporate (i.e., ‘teach’) micropolitics in teacher education.
THE MICROPOLITICAL PERSPECTIVE AND TEACHER DEVELOPMENT The micropolitical perspective is to be understood as a critique on the systems models of organizations which over-emphasized the structural elements in an organization as well as their goal consensus, rational efficiency, and effectiveness in processes of decision-making and problem solving (Ball, 1994; Blase,
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1991). Since educational practice inevitably reflects particular moral choices, the probability of differences in opinion or conflicts is high and, as a consequence, so is the relevance of or need for micropolitical action to influence the situation (see also Achinstein, 2002; Altrichter & Salzgeber, 2000; Malen, 1994). In essence, political theorists have argued that rational and systems models of organizations have failed to account for complexity, instability, and conflict in organizational settings. They contend that such models also ignore individual differences, for example, in values, ideologies, choices, goals, interests, expertise, history, motivation, and interpretation – factors central to the micropolitical perspective. (Blase, 1991, p. 3)
Ball (1994) argues that: ‘Micropolitics is about relationships rather than structures, knowledge rather than information, skills rather than positions, verbal interaction rather than minutes and memos’ (p. 3822). Understanding the dynamics of power in schools therefore demands going beyond their structural characteristics as organizations and explicitly focusing on processes of sense-making and negotiation as the basis for action. It is important to emphasize – following Blase (1991, 1997) and Ball (1994) – that power and influence should not exclusively be associated with conflict, struggle, and rivalry, but also encompass collaboration, coalition building, and common action for what are seen as valuable goals (see also Kelchtermans, 2007; Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, 2002b). Micropolitics are a natural part of schools as organizations, their internal operation as well as their interactions with the external environment (Altrichter & Salzgeber, 2000; Ball, 1994). Teacher educators as well as (future) teachers need to develop insight into micropolitics in schools and classrooms to become critically aware of the power and interests that actually drive or are at play in their professional practice (and that of their colleagues) (Ball, 1987; Brubaker, 2016; Conway, Hibbard, & Rawlings, 2015; Kelchtermans, 2007; Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a; Murray and Maguire, 2007). We take the view that the education of teachers is a career-long process. Becoming a teacher is rooted in one’s own past experiences as pupil and student (‘apprenticeship of observation’, Lortie [1975]). It gets focus and intensifies during initial teacher education, and continues afterwards during the later stages of the career (induction and in-service training). In other words, becoming a teacher is a lifelong process of learning and development, for which we use the term ‘teacher (professional) development’, stressing that this process results from the meaningful interactions between the (student) teacher and his/her professional environments over time (Kelchtermans, 2009).
MICROPOLITICAL LITERACY The concept of ‘micropolitical literacy’ metaphorically integrates the micropolitical perspective with that of teacher development. The notion was first used by
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Blase and Anderson (1995) in their work with principals, but then adopted and empirically developed by Kelchtermans and his colleagues (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, 2002b; Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, 1996) as a dimension of teachers’ professional learning and development. Based on their studies of beginning teachers, Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002a) distinguished three aspects in micropolitical literacy: The knowledge aspect concerns the knowledge necessary to acknowledge (‘see’), interpret and understand (‘read’) the micropolitical character of a particular situation. In other words, the ‘micro-politically literate’ teacher is capable of politically ‘reading’ situations, because s/he owns the necessary ‘grammatical’ and ‘lexical’ knowledge on processes of power and struggles of interests. … The instrumental or operational aspect encompasses the repertoire of micro-political strategies and tactics a teacher is able to apply effectively … in order to establish, safeguard or restore desirable working conditions. … The operational aspect thus refers to the political efficacy of the teacher: to what extent and under what conditions is the teacher capable of effectively influencing the situation, either proactively or reactively. This political efficacy is thus always context-bound. The experiential aspect, finally, refers to the degree of (dis)satisfaction the teacher feels about his/her micro-political literacy. … The experience of the micro-political reality quite often triggers intense emotions. (pp. 117–118)
The concept found resonance in the work of others who further contributed to its empirical grounding and development in relation to beginning teachers and mentors (among others, Achinstein, 2006; Brubaker, 2016; Christensen, 2013; Curry et al., 2008) and internships (among others, Conway, Hibbard, & Rawlings, 2015; Ehrich & Millwater, 2011; Wu & Chen, 2013). We will discuss this work in more detail below. Other authors subscribe to the idea of micropolitical literacy but conceptualize it somewhat differently. Brosky (2011), for example, argues in favor of the concept ‘political skill’. Hong (2010) treats micropolitics as one of the six constitutive parts of professional identity, which he in turn relates to teachers’ decisions on turnover or retention.
MICROPOLITICS IN PRACTICAL TEACHER EDUCATION: INTERNSHIP AND INDUCTION It is hardly surprising to find that most of the research on micropolitics in teacher education centers around the introduction of (student) teachers in the reality of the professional practice. The different forms and structures in which (student) teachers start enacting their professional expertise in an authentic practice constitute the moments of truth, the ‘praxis shock’, as a positive challenge for their developing professional identity. Apart from the pupils they are working with, (student) teachers automatically find themselves in professional relationships with the school (cooperating teachers or mentors), on the one hand, and the staff members from their teacher education institution, on the other. From the very moment they enter practice the fundamentally relational nature of the teaching job becomes evident. The same holds true in the case of induction programs
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where the beginning teacher – although formally qualified to teach – is positioned in a supportive structure (e.g., an experienced mentor-colleague) (OrlandBarak, 2016). Micropolitical research on internship and induction can be organized around three themes: negotiation, professional interests, and communication.
Negotiation Negotiating personal beliefs and practices is a first theme in micropolitical studies of internship and induction. For example, Goodman’s (1988) early work on micropolitics and teaching identified five political strategies student teachers use to navigate and negotiate their socialization into the school as well as their instructional strategies. These strategies reflect a continuum from adaptation to transformation, with ‘overt compliance’ (the desire to fit the existing practices) at the adaptation end of the continuum and ‘transformative action’ (adopting purposeful and pervasive innovative teaching strategies) at the transformation end. The strategies ‘critical compliance’, ‘accommodative resistance’, and ‘resistant alteration’ reflect different positions in between those extremes. In a single case-study of a beginning physical education teacher, Smyth (1995) further illustrated teacher socialization as a process of active reading and sensemaking of the social, cultural, and structural conditions in the school as an organization. Although she did not explicitly mention the concept of micropolitics, Smyth’s (1995) account of the beginner coming to understand the organizational culture, the relative ‘weight’ and reputation of the different subjects in the curriculum, and the symbolic meaning of spatial arrangements illustrated that beginning teachers need to learn ‘about the sociopolitical structures of their schools’ (p. 211). In the same line of argument, Ehrich and Millwater (2011) analyzed the reflective reports written by 150 Australian student teachers at the end of their internships. The authors looked for the micropolitical strategies in interns’ collaboration with their mentors and identified both conflictual and consensual strategies, as well as strategies reflecting ‘power with’ (empowering), ‘power over’ (coercion, cooption), and ‘power through’ (a combination of both) (as defined by Blase & Anderson, 1995). Although not specifically designed as micropolitical studies, research on power and shifting alliances between mentor, student teacher, and university supervisor during internships (e.g., Bullough & Draper, 2004a, 2004b; Slick, 1998; Valencia et al., 2009) vividly illustrates the micropolitical dynamics in such collaborative partnerships. Drawing on positioning theory, Bullough and Draper (2004a), for example, described the asymmetries of power and position in a ‘failed’ triad. Discourse analysis of supervisory conference interactions revealed how each member of the triad sought to accomplish desired aims, profoundly shaping and eventually interfering with the intern’s induction into teaching. Caught in the
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middle between the cooperating teacher and the university supervisor who both had different views about how the intern should teach algebra, the student teacher ultimately aligned with the cooperating teacher, leading the university supervisor to step back. Taken together, these studies problematize the naïve view of mentoring as the ‘road to success in beginning teacher development, novice teacher retention, and mentor teacher improvement’ (Bullough & Draper, 2004a, p. 418). Student teachers’ socialization into the profession (as well as mentoring as a formal support structure to facilitate socialization) is a political phenomenon, serving to advantage some goals, interests, needs, and values, and disadvantage others.
Professional interests In an early study on micropolitics during induction, Schempp, Sparkes, and Templin (1993) concluded that ‘the classroom responsibilities facing the inductees had less to do with teaching children and more to do with juggling the multiple demands of a functioning institution’ (p. 459). Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002a, 2002b) operationalized these different demands in terms of professional interests. Teachers (i.e., student teachers as well as principals, cooperating teachers, and teacher educators) hold more or less explicit ideas about what they need or want to be able to do a ‘proper’ job. This means not only an effective job, achieving the educational goals one strives for, but also a satisfying job, providing contentment, a sense of efficacy and well-being. ‘These desirable or necessary working conditions operate as professional interests for the people involved. Through micro-political actions teachers and principals will strive to establish the desired working conditions, to safeguard them when they are threatened or to restore them if they have been removed’ (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, p. 108; see also Kelchtermans, 2007). In their studies Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002a, 2002b) identified five categories of professional interests: self-interests (related to the beginner’s sense of professional self and beliefs about teaching), organizational interests (related to role, position, structural conditions, like for example job description or contract terms), social-professional interests (referring to the quality of the social-professional relationships in the school), cultural-ideological interests (referring to shared normative ideas about good education and the school’s mission), and material interests (like for example teaching materials and resources, infrastructure, or time). The study described how beginning teachers got caught in different micropolitical agendas (for example, having to cope with visibility and judgement by others, while striving for recognition and appreciation, or with vulnerability, as a structural characteristic of the job – see also Kelchtermans [2009]). This work also inspired Wu and Chen (2013) in their study on the micropolitical literacy of science intern teachers in Taiwan. Apart from confirming the categories of professional interests,
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the study identified interns’ career development interests in completing smoothly their internships and achieving future teaching careers, which extensively influenced their micropolitical literacy. … [I]n order to cope with their vulnerability and low self-confidence due to the lack of positional authority and role ambiguity in their practicum sites, the pursuit of social-professional interests was the most important concern for the science interns. (p. 449)
Wu and Chen (2013) further rightly raise the issue of whether and to what extent the micropolitics in teaching and teacher education would be different in Western and non-Western cultures.
Communication The third theme in micropolitical studies on teacher induction deals with communication in and between groups. For example, Curry et al. (2008) analyzed the ‘talk’ of beginning teachers when meeting in inquiry groups, as part of an induction program in the US. Their analysis unraveled micropolitics as the discourse of groups and the development of micropolitical literacy as a social process. By using their facilitators and each other as sounding boards, these beginning teachers collectively examined their schools as organizations; in the course of sharing their knowledge, they shifted from an individualistic orientation toward an institutional orientation. … [W]e saw our participants helping each other to explore and understand: colleagues’ interests (material, ideological, professional, organizational); schoolwide norms for public discourse/dialogue; institutional traditions; power relationships and alliances; cues and warning signs in the environment that signaled danger; and leverage points to introduce proposals/changes. (p. 672)
More recently Uitto, Kaunisto, Sÿrjälä, and Estola (2015) in Finland used videotapes of peer group meetings of beginning teachers to demonstrate how the beginning teachers’ narratives reflect the micropolitical reality in which they develop a sense of professional identity, negotiating the relational and emotional aspects of the work. Christensen’s (2013) analysis of the micropolitical staffroom stories told by beginning physical education teachers in Australia adds to this line of work. Using the methodology of narrative inquiry, she presents two extensive accounts of how new teachers negotiate their own place and position in and through the staffroom. Her work challenges the portrayal of formal support during the induction of beginning teachers as an unqualified good. There is a need, as Christensen (2013) argues, to remain aware of the pervasive influence of the ‘informal and often complex and messy micropolitical relationships and interactions in the staffroom’ (p. 82) on teacher induction.
BALANCING STRUCTURES AND INTERACTIONS The micropolitical perspective stresses the importance of looking beyond the formal power structures, leadership positions, and hierarchies in order to
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understand the actual processes of influence in organizations. However, this should not blind us to the fact that formal positions and structures do also remain relevant and have a part in the micropolitics of the school organization (Altrichter & Salzgeber, 2000). Particularly relevant in relation to educating teachers are the different positions and roles of mentors. For interns and student teachers in their practical training, the word mentor (and the verb ‘mentoring’) refers to the senior, more experienced colleague who is formally mandated to support new colleagues in a school. In most induction programs the mentor is the central steering actor (Orland-Barak, 2016). Mentors are thus key players in the micropolitical dimension of student teachers’ professional development. As such, they themselves need micropolitical know-how in order to do their supportive work. In a study aimed at identifying and describing that micropolitical expertise, Achinstein (2006) combined openended questionnaire data from 31 mentors of an induction program in the US with a one-year in-depth case-study of one mentor. Her analysis confirmed the need for mentors to read the organizational and political system of the school in order to help the mentee develop insight into the organizational reality beyond the classroom. Secondly, mentors need to be able to navigate the micropolitical reality and as such operate effectively in this context. Finally, mentors need to be advocates of change, supporting innovative motivations and beliefs in the mentee, as an important part of the moral and identity aspects of their professional development. The latter, however, was far from evident in the restrictive wider policy environment (high stakes testing; scripted curricula). Achinstein’s analysis not only exemplifies the interplay of macro- and micropolitics, but also demonstrates the pervasive emotional aspect as well as the moral tensions and dilemmas in mentoring. Her study further provides empirical evidence for the importance and relevance of the micropolitical literacy of mentors, as argued for by Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002a). Similar issues, but focusing on student teachers, are exemplified in the older work by Hodkinson and Hodkinson (1997) in the UK. Their study unraveled the micropolitics in the guidance and evaluation of one student teacher during his practicum, and revealed more, in particular, of the tensions and conflicts (e.g., around definitions of professional behavior or good teaching) occurring in a collaborative university–school partnership for teacher education. Partnership schemes involve many people, as students, pupils, mentors and teachers. … These people have different perceptions of each other, of schools, of education and of individual incidents and actions within an experience. Such perceptions are located within different sub-cultural and micro-political groupings, related to different forms of influence and access to power. The interactions between these people can take many forms, including agreement, acquiescence and negotiation. But they can sometimes result in struggle and conflict. (pp. 126–127)
Such collaborative partnerships – especially for practical teacher education – are widely used and self-evidently argued for, yet demand that one also understands,
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acknowledges, and deals with the micropolitics that inevitably are at play in it. This requires, among other things, ‘the need to accept and deal with the inevitability of conflict in schools, universities and ITE [Initial Teacher Education] schemes, and to distance ourselves from the rhetoric that conflicts are always dysfunctional demonstrations of system failure’ (Hodkinson & Hodkinson, 1997, p. 128). Empirical studies like these align with the critical conclusions in the literature review by Blase and Blase (2002) on the micropolitics in different forms of supervision. Their analysis also emphasized the relationship and interaction between the actors in different positions (supervisor, principal, and mentor), but the authors concluded that supervision theory and practice seem relatively naive and ill-formed with regard to the political nature of schools; the existing knowledge base is scant, despite the fact that use of a micropolitical perspective holds great potential for understanding critical elements of supervisory processes in schools such as teacher development, student learning, and collaboration among educators for school improvement. (p. 17)
Both from research and experience, the evidence is clear for the importance and relevance of a micropolitical understanding of supervision and mentoring processes. Therefore, it is rather surprising to observe that they have still received only limited systematic attention from educational researchers. This is even more striking given the fact that in recent years many countries saw processes of enlargement of scale in their educational system, with larger and organizationally more complicated schools and an increase of different teacher leadership roles and positions enacted in them (Alexandrou & Swaffield, 2012). It can be expected that this increased complexity in structure and role will further intensify the micropolitics of the schools and, as such, be part of the organizational reality in which (student) teachers have to start their career and develop professionally. Furthermore, as Brosky (2011) has rightly argued and demonstrated, teacher leaders need to develop the political skill and the competence to strategically influence others and deal with the strong egalitarian nature of teaching (i.e., all teachers are considered to be equal, so the teachers who take the lead automatically create a challenge to this teacher equality) in order to successfully enact their roles. Using the ‘Political Skill Inventory’, Brosky (2011) measured the effectiveness of teacher leaders’ political skill on four dimensions (e.g., social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity). In line with this, Neumann, Jones, and Webb (2012) argue for the need to integrate leadership knowledge in teacher education curricula. Failure to do so ‘denies teachers an understanding of the activities they practice daily. More important, knowledge of leadership will enable teachers to accurately label what they see and do. Such knowledge would also help teachers understand and navigate the micropolitical environments of their work at a local level’ (p. 10). That way, teachers can reclaim the expertise and leadership for curriculum and instruction,
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instead of having other actors (e.g., principals) taking on instructional leadership and imposing decisions upon them.
COMPLICATING COLLABORATION AND REFORM The studies we discussed previously already demonstrated that professional relationships in schools have a central role in the micropolitical dynamics. At the same time, it became clear that collaboration among team members is a very complicated issue that should not be simplistically romanticized. It is in collaborative practices that different views, normative stances, or deeply held beliefs about good teaching become apparent and publicly known. This is even more intensively the case if the collaboration aims at reforming or innovating existing practices (Kelchtermans, 2006). Any initiative to change or reform a particular practice contends with existing internal cultures always seeking to promote and protect the organization’s status quo (Blase & Blase, 2002). At moments when this status quo is challenged (for example, because of new members entering the organization) micropolitical actions and interactions tend to intensify and become visible in the everyday life and functioning of the organization (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, 2002b; Schempp et al., 1993). The ‘messiness’ of collaboration is clearly documented in a study of Adamson and Walker (2011) in China. They analyzed a cyclical collaborative project on lesson study between school teachers and participating teacher educators/ researchers from a local institution. The detailed analysis of the interactions during meetings revealed how the different frames of sense-making between the participants resulted in micropolitical tension and conflict between the two groups of scholars. These tensions were further intensified because of their incarnation in two very different hierarchic positions and bodies of knowledge in the project (i.e., the academic ‘expert’ knowledge versus the knowledge grounded in everyday classroom reality). ‘There was exclusion of the dissonant voice; erection of barriers to critical reflection on existing beliefs; and a lack of willingness to countenance alternative approaches to pedagogical content knowledge, resulting largely in the maintenance of the status quo’ (p. 35). Haag and Smith (2002) provide evidence that similar processes might be at play in attempts to reform teacher education curricula. In a single case-study, they examine the efforts of a university college to reform its undergraduate teacher education program. In contrasting a rational, ordered, ‘systemic’ view of curriculum reform with a micropolitical view, the authors highlight that ‘change is not something done to people and organizations, but is an expected byproduct in social systems fragmented by diverse ideologies’ (p. 3). The reform process disrupted the status quo because – as a consequence of discussing the direction of the new curriculum – it became very clear that within the institution there existed different constituencies, all holding discrepant and conflicting views on
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the purpose and content of teacher education programs, as well as on the role of the teacher, pupil, and classroom curriculum. These different normative views explain the diverse emotions and levels of interest (e.g., resistance, apathy, curiosity) of the different stakeholders when they were asked to engage in a process of creating a common vision and educational mission for the university college. Haag and Smith’s work further resonates with the self-study research of Yendol-Hoppey et al. (2013) on their experiences as new, tenure-earning faculty members in a research-intensive institution seeking working conditions that would support their interest in working more closely with and in schools. Each of them possessed a strong identity as a teacher educator committed to clinically rich field experiences in teacher education and a desire to engage in collaborative research with schools. Focus group interviews and artifact analysis showed how their search for social recognition of their identities involved ‘articulation, negotiation, persuasion, perseverance, and relationship building’ (p. 24) in order to navigate the micropolitics they experienced. They actively negotiated their identity in institutions that have the power (because they were not tenured yet) to legitimate some identities and delegitimize others. Their findings resonate with the early self-study writings of the Arizona group (among others, Guilfoyle et al., 1995). Although not explicitly labeling their work through the lens of micropolitics, this group of teacher educators demonstrates the importance of both professional identity (norms, values, and beliefs) and formal positions and structures in understanding the micropolitics of organizational life. After all, the major source of vulnerability for new faculty members is the fact that they don’t have tenure and feel torn between their personal norms and beliefs, on the one hand, and complying with the contested but nonetheless dominant forms of academic scholarship on the other in order to secure their future job situation.
TEACHING MICROPOLITICS? Micropolitics are a self-evident and pervasive part of the reality in which future teachers will have to live their professional lives. Their education should thus properly prepare them for that reality and support them in becoming micropolitically literate. However, the question of how that should or could be achieved is not a simple one to answer. Not only is the research-based knowledge on ‘pedagogies’ of micropolitics non-existent, it is also a very complex issue that requires more than technical or instrumental answers. When reflecting on the consequences for the curriculum and pedagogy of teacher education, all aspects of micropolitical literacy need to be acknowledged and taken into account. The knowledge aspect of learning how to ‘read’ situations in terms of interests, different value-laden stances, or possibly competing goals can be explicitly included in the content of the curriculum. Yet it is of crucial importance that teacher education institutions themselves take a clear stance and make explicit
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the normative frames that constitute their curriculum. Both for the teacher educators having to enact it, and for the student teachers having to ‘study’ it, it needs to be clear what kind of teacher the program prepares for, which ideas on good education/being a good teacher run through its curriculum and pedagogy. This is also where micropolitics can meet ‘macropolitics’, or the development in student teachers of a critical, thorough understanding of the larger power structures, discursive hegemonies, and structural injustices in society, deeply affecting children, their lives and educational opportunities. Recently Chubbuck and Zembylas (2016) concluded a review on teaching for social justice with the claim that: [W]e need to increase political awareness in our preservice teachers and ourselves if we are to understand forces that may prove antithetical to our goals of social justice in education. While we need to teach knowledge and skills that allow all children to achieve economic stability, and we need to respond to the tensions of cultural pluralism and tradition, we equally must remain separate and able to critically analyze and wisely select our response to both economic and cultural demands. (p. 493)
The teacher education curriculum should help student teachers to critically interrogate the political and societal discourses that pervade and frame their working conditions, as Nayler and Keddie (2007) argue. By making this stance explicit, providing arguments for one’s choices as well as indicating how these choices are reflected in the curricular content and pedagogy, the teacher education program should not impose this frame on student teachers, but rather invite them to critically position themselves – to become aware of possible tensions and disagreements, and of the necessary political character of those choices. Doing justice to the educational needs of the pupils who are entrusted to one’s care is not a simple behavioral guideline but rather a daily task of judging, acting, and taking responsibility for one’s actions. It implies openness as well as the courage to confront and possibly endure differences in opinion (Kelchtermans, 2009), and engage in what Achinstein (2002) has labeled ‘constructive controversy’. This organically leads into the second aspect of micropolitical literacy: the capacity to become strategically active and ‘play the political game’ (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002b). The literature on internship and induction reviewed in this chapter problematizes the traditional view on socialization as novices simply having to develop a fit with the dominant culture or that micropolitics pressures ‘new teachers to forsake their ideals and education and accept the conditions and standards of the schools as they presently existed’ (Schempp et al., 1993, p. 469). Attention to the instrumental aspect of micropolitical literacy in teacher education might raise student teachers’ awareness of the fact that they actually have the potential for agency, despite their vulnerable position (i.e., no tenure, little experience in the job). Explicitly discussing the different micropolitical strategies or interests identified in the literature can help student teachers to systematically interrogate themselves, their practices, and their organizational positions during
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practicum and field placements: how do they deal or cope with the micropolitical realities of schools, and why and with what consequences? Critical analysis of one’s practice should go together with taking different perspectives, empathy, considering the possible unintended side-effects, but also explicitly training in the particular skills to communicate one’s own position, question those of others, problematize assumptions, etc. Achinstein’s (2006) call ‘to read, navigate, and advocate in the political climate of school and district’ (p. 50) could be a useful guideline in this, as well as the concept of ‘principled resistance’ (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006). The latter understands teacher resistance not as a personal characteristic of conservatism, negativism, or laziness, but rather as driven by deep moral commitments to the profession and a political stance in defending and living up to these normative beliefs and identity as a teacher. Developing micropolitical skills might further benefit from the (limited) research on pupils’ use of micropolitical strategies in the classroom (Spaulding, 1997). We also need to strongly stress the third – experiential – aspect. It goes without saying that developing micropolitical literacy is emotionally intense, mentally challenging, and demanding. As Bullough and Draper (2004b) argued, the technical aspects of the teaching job (i.e., classroom management, mastering content knowledge) are often in the forefront of student teachers’ concerns at the start, but these technical aspects quickly turn out to be far less intrusive than the emotional labor involved in dealing with the political aspect of the profession. That is, technical aspects often (more or less consciously) disguise a micropolitical agenda of selfpresentation and self-preservation. Being caught in the middle between the mentor and teacher educator, experiencing the hierarchy between one’s position as intern and that of more experienced colleagues, having to deal with collegial relationships that may fundamentally contradict one’s own expectations and beliefs, as well as experiencing that many of the desired working conditions (including a secure future job) escape one’s personal control, can be deeply disturbing, paralyzing, and demotivating, eventually leading to burnout and attrition. Thinking about ‘teaching’ micropolitics therefore needs to be informed by the growing literature on emotions in teaching and becoming a teacher (Kelchtermans & Deketelaere, 2016; Schutz & Zembylas, 2009; Zembylas & Schutz, 2016) or by the different lines of narrative research on teacher education and development, demonstrating the link between the personal and the political (see, among others, Clandinin, 2006). Finally, we need to acknowledge that teacher educators (as well as mentors) are deeply immersed in a micropolitical world themselves. Here too, the developing research base suffers from a lack of theoretical and empirical work on the fundamentally political nature of teacher educators’ professional lives. Apart from making micropolitics an explicit part of the teacher education curriculum, teacher educators’ role modeling in the management of micropolitics constitutes another important condition. Teacher educators themselves need to be advocates of change, to navigate the micropolitical reality, and operate effectively in this context, but also engage in more conscious forms of public modeling
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(Brubaker, 2016; Loughran, 2006) of their management of micropolitics. Equally important is raising awareness of the fact that they have an important role to play as micropolitical advocates on behalf of student teachers. Experienced teacher educators/mentors usually know who has the power in a specific school to get things done or to positively affect working conditions. They can use this knowledge to maximize opportunities for student teachers’ learning. Moreover, they have the obligation to do so and to act in the best interests of their student teachers since their relationship with them is quintessentially a moral one. And the responsibility the latter brings is a deeply political one.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Karen Vermeir (KU Leuven) in the identification and selection of the relevant literature for this chapter.
REFERENCES Achinstein, B. (2002). Conflict amid community: The micropolitics of teacher collaboration. Teachers College Record, 104, 421–455. Achinstein, B. (2006). New teacher and mentor political literacy: Reading, navigating and transforming induction contexts. Teachers and Teaching: Theory & Practice, 12, 128–138. Achinstein, B., & Ogawa, R. (2006). (In)fidelity: What the resistance of new teachers reveals about professional principles and prescriptive educational policies. Harvard Educational Review, 67(1), 30–63. Adamson, B., & Walker, E. (2011). Messy collaboration: Learning from a learning study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1), 29–36. Alexandrou, A., & Swaffield, S. (2012). Teacher leadership and professional development: Perspectives, connections and prospects. Professional Development in Education, 38, 159–167. Altrichter, H., & Salzgeber, S. (2000). Some elements of a micro-political theory of school development. In H. Altrichter & J. Elliott (Eds), Images of educational change (pp. 99–110). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Ball, S. (1987). The micro-politics of the school: Towards a theory of school organisation. London, UK: Methuen. Ball, S. (1994). Micro-politics of schools. In T. Husén & T. Postlethwaite (Eds), The international encyclopedia of education. Second edition (Vol. 7, pp. 3821–3826). Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Blase, J. (1991). The politics of life in schools: Power, conflict, and cooperation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Blase, J. (1997). The micro-politics of teaching. In B.J. Biddle, T.L. Good, & I.F. Goodson (Eds), International handbook of teachers and teaching (pp. 939–970). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Blase, J., & Anderson, G. (1995). The micro politics of educational leadership: From control to empowerment. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Blase, J., & Blase, J. (2002). The micropolitics of instructional supervision: A call for research. Educational Administration Quarterly, 38, 6–44. Brosky, D. (2011). Micropolitics in the school: Teacher leaders’ use of political skill and influence tactics. The International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 6(1), 1–11. Brubaker, N. (2016). Building more democratic communities. Preparing novice teachers to navigate political complexity in schools. In L. Putney & N. P. Gallavan (Eds), Teacher Education Yearbook XXIV
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Establishing a sense of place for all learners in 21st century classrooms and schools (pp. 40–51). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Bullough R.V. Jr, & Draper, R. (2004a). Making sense of a failed triad: Mentors, university supervisors, and positioning theory. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 407–420. Bullough R.V. Jr, & Draper, R. (2004b). Mentoring and the emotions. Journal of Education for Teaching, 30(3), 271–288. Christensen, E. (2013). Micropolitical straffroom stories: Beginning health and physical education teachers’ experiences of the staffroom. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 30, 74–83. Chubbuck, S.M., & Zembylas, M. (2016). Social justice and teacher education: Context, theory, and practice. In J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (Eds), International handbook of teacher education (pp. 463–501). Dordrecht: Springer. Clandinin, D.J. (Ed.) (2006). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cochran-Smith, M., Feiman-Nemser, S., McIntyre, D., & Demers, K. (Eds) (2008). Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts. New York, NY/London, UK: Routledge/Taylor and Francis. Conway, C., Hibbard, S., & Rawlings, J. (2015). The potential use of micropolitics in examining personal and professional experiences of music teachers. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 25(1), 23–36. Curry, M., Jaxon, K., Russell, J., Callahan, M., & Bicais, J. (2008). Examining the practice of beginning teachers’ micropolitical literacy within professional inquiry communities. Teaching and Teacher Education: An international Journal of Research and Studies, 24(3), 660–673. Ehrich, L., & Millwater, J. (2011). Internship: Interpreting micropolitical contexts. Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 467–481. Goodman, J. (1988). The political tactics and teaching strategies of reflective, active preservice teachers. The Elementary School Journal, 89, 22–41. Guilfoyle, K., Hamilton, M.L., Pinnegar, S., & Placier, M. (1995). Becoming teachers of teachers: The paths of four beginners. In T. Russell & F. Korthagen (Eds), Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections on teacher education (pp. 35–55). London, UK: Falmer. Haag, S., & Smith, M. (2002). The possibility of reform: Micropolitics in higher education. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(16), 1–20. Hodkinson, H., & Hodkinson, P. (1997). Micro-politics in initial teacher education: Luke’s story. Journal of Education for Teaching, 23(2), 119–130. Hong, J. (2010). Pre-service and beginning teachers’ professional identity and its relation to dropping out of the profession. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1530–1543. Hoyle, E. (1982). Micro-politics of educational organisations. Educational Management and Administration, 10(2), 87–98. Kelchtermans, G. (2006). Teacher collaboration and collegiality as workplace conditions. A review. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 52(2), 220–237. Kelchtermans, G. (2007). Macropolitics caught up in micropolitics: The case of the policy on quality control in Flanders. Journal of Education Policy, 22, 471–491. Kelchtermans, G. (2009). Who I am in how I teach is the message: Self-understanding, vulnerability and reflection. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15, 257–272. Kelchtermans, G., & Ballet, K. (2002a). The micropolitics of teacher induction: A narrative-biographical study on teacher socialization. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(1), 105–120. Kelchtermans, G., & Ballet, K. (2002b). Micropolitical literacy: Reconstructing a neglected dimension in teacher development. International Journal of Educational Research, 37, 755–767. Kelchtermans, G., & Deketelaere, A. (2016). The emotional dimension in becoming a teacher. In J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (Eds), International handbook of teacher education (pp. 429–461). Dordrecht: Springer.
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Kelchtermans, G., & Vandenberghe, R. (1996). Becoming political: A dimension in teachers’ professional development. A micropolitical analysis of teachers’ professional biographies. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY. Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding teaching and learning about teaching. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge. Malen, B. (1994). The micropolitics of education: Mapping the multiple dimensions of power relations in school politics. Journal of Educational Research, 9(5/6), 147–167. Murray, J., & Maguire, M. (2007). Changes and continuities in teacher education: International perspectives on a gendered field. Gender and Education, 19(3), 283–296. Nayler, J., & Keddie, A. (2007). Focusing the gaze: Teacher interrogation of practice. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(2), 199–214. Neumann, M., Jones, L., & Webb, P. (2012). Claiming the political: The forgotten terrain of teacher leadership knowledge. Action in Teacher Education, 34(1), 2–13. Orland-Barak, L. (2016). Mentoring. In J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (Eds), International handbook on teacher education (pp. 105–141). Dordrecht: Springer. Richardson, V. (Ed.). (2001). Handbook of research on teaching. Fourth edition. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Schempp, P.G., Sparkes, A.C., & Templin, T.J. (1993). The micropolitics of teacher induction. American Educational Research Journal, 30(3), 447–472. Schutz, P., & Zembylas, M. (Eds) (2009). Advances in teacher emotion research: The impact on teachers’ lives. Dordrecht: Springer. Slick, S. (1998). A university supervisor negotiates territory and status. Journal of Teacher Education, 49, 306–315. Smyth, D.M. (1995). First-year physical education teachers’ perceptions of their workplace. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 14, 198–214. Spaulding, A. (1997). The politics of primaries: The micropolitical perspectives of 7-year-olds. In A. Pollard (Ed.), Children and their curriculum: The perspectives of primary and elementary school children (pp. 101–120). London, UK: Falmer. Travers, R. (Ed.). (1973). Second handbook of research on teaching. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Uitto, M., Kaunisto, S.L., Sÿrjälä, L., & Estola, E. (2015). Silenced truths: Relational and emotional dimensions of a beginning teacher’s identity as part of the micropolitical context of school. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59, 162–176. Valencia, S., Martin, S., Place, N., & Grossman, P. (2009). Complex interactions in student teaching: Lost opportunities for learning. Journal of Teacher Education, 60, 304–322. Wittrock, M.C. (Ed.). (1986). Handbook of research on teaching. Third edition. New York, NY: American Educational Research Association. Wu, Y., & Chen, C. (2013). Examining the micropolitical literacy of science intern teachers in Taiwan. Journal of Baltic Science Education, 12, 440–451. Yendol-Hoppey, D., Hoppey, D., Morewood, A., Hayes, S., & Graham, M. (2013). Micropolitical and identity challenges influencing new faculty participation in teacher education reform. Teachers College Record, 115(7), 1–31. Zembylas, M., & Schutz, P. (Eds) (2016). Methodological advances in research on emotion and education. Dordrecht: Springer.
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26 Teachers Learning about Themselves through Learning about ‘Others’ Mary Louise Gomez and Amy Johnson Lachuk
… the social theorist’s task is to situate a practice within a broader causal and moral context than those engaged in the practice ordinarily aren’t aware of. (Haslanger, 2012, p. 20)
What do Haslanger’s words mean for teacher educators who are concerned with enacting social justice?1 On one hand, Haslanger encourages teacher educators to consider how they can make more transparent and clearer the moral and social contexts and consequences of their practices. On the other hand, Haslanger calls teacher educators to action in encouraging prospective and practicing teachers to examine critically the personal and institutional structures that ground their daily interactions with students, their families, and community members. Toward this end, teacher educators can call attention to how teachers’ ‘identities, the imaginings of the self in worlds of action [are] social products and … lived in and through activity’ (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998, p. 5). Identities also are shaped by the ways in which people are socially and historically located, and how they adopt various cultural customs and ideals. In calling attention to these dimensions of teachers’ identities, teacher educators can show how such identities are allied with particular ideologies which ‘include habits of thought, unconscious patterns of response, and inarticulated background assumptions’ (Haslanger, 2012, p. 18). As Haslanger argues these ‘enable both the reproduction and disruption of social inequality by guiding our perceptions and responses to existing social conditions’ (p. 19). For example, teachers may consider how particular viewpoints can further their development of relationships with those persons seen as like themselves and further estrange them from those seen as ‘others’ or unlike themselves, and not worthy of their empathetic respect and
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attention (Boesch, 2007; Jones & Jenkins, 2003). We think the latter is one of the most fundamental challenges of contemporary teacher education. All too often, the everyday discourses and practices of teaching remain taken for granted and unexamined within teacher education classrooms. In this chapter we ask: How have teacher educators attempted to change the ways teachers talk, think, and act? What dimensions of teacher education and schooling constrain or encourage these? And what have been the outcomes of these practices for teachers and students?
TWO INTERTWINED CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS Two frameworks for critically analyzing talk and actions are those of anthropologist Dorothy Holland and colleagues, and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998) argue that the ‘self’ always is ‘embedded in social practice, and is itself, a kind of social practice’ (p. 28). Allied with the sociohistorical school of psychology (as developed by Bakhtin, Leontiev, Voloshinov, Vygotsky), a self acts in ‘socially and culturally constructed realm[s] of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others’ (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998, p. 54). These are imaginary worlds – sometimes called figurative, narrativized, or dramatized– that mediate persons’ behavior and inform how people see the contexts in which they are located, and view ourselves and others’ behaviors. As Holland and colleagues explain: ‘The dialect we speak, the degree of formality we adopt in our speech, the places we go, the emotions we express, and the clothes we wear are treated as claims to and identification with social categories and positions of privilege relative to those with whom we are interacting’ (1998, p. 127). In other words, persons position themselves in relation to others via how they are viewed within established hierarchies. Murphy (1999) and others contend that it is preferable to engage institutional reform rather than ‘uncoordinated’ individual reforms (p. 252). We, too, argue that teacher education programs need to take up such institutional reform at the programmatic level, as, otherwise, individual teachers are left to ground their practices from their own idiosyncratic knowledge, beliefs, and past experiences. Further, we advocate that teacher educators need to take into account potentially conflicting national policies and legislative mandates, cross-national accords, and long-standing, taken-for-granted practices. Teacher educators can draw on Holland et al.’s concept of ‘figured worlds’ to explain how they might modify teachers’ thoughts, talk, and behavior for how teachers view and interact with those they see as ‘others’. Holland et al. posit that: Figured worlds in their conceptual dimensions supply the contexts of meaning for actions, cultural productions, performances, disputes, for the understandings that people come to make of themselves, and for the capabilities that develop to direct their own behavior in
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these worlds. Materially, figured worlds are manifest in people’s activities and practices; the idioms of the world realize selves and others in the familiar narratives and everyday performances that constantiate relative positions of power and prestige. Figured worlds provide the contexts of meaning and action in which social positions and social relationships are named and conducted. (1998, p. 60)
That is, if teacher educators can alter the ways in which people conceive of themselves and their relationships with others, teachers might ‘alter their performances’ or practices of teaching for the betterment of everyone concerned. Because figured worlds rely on voluntary participation, teachers can modify their allegiances to existing practices and potentially develop new ideals, habits, and behaviors. Attention to where and whom teachers are educating is paramount in altering teaching practices. Bakhtin explained that the spatial and temporal contexts in which persons are situated are key to what persons know, do, and understand. Because persons are in continual dialogic relations with others, we all need to examine our identities in relation to how we imagine who we are and why we behave in ways we do. He argued that: in order to see ourselves, we must appropriate the vision of others. Restated in its crudest version, the Bakhtinian just-so story of subjectivity is the tale of how I get myself from the other: it is only the other’s categories that will let me be an object for my own perception. I see my self as others might see it. In order to forge a self, I must do so from outside. In other words, I author myself. (Holquist, 1990, p. 22)
Bakhtin believed that as selves, persons inhabit two concurrent but different spaces, ‘I’ and those who are different from me. Persons understand themselves through this fluid and ever-changing set of events, and envision themselves against a milieu of those referred to as ‘others’. Positioning this as a relationship grounded in ‘an excess of seeing’ or as a ‘surplus of sight’, Bakhtin (Holquist, 1990) argued that: For each given moment regardless of the position and proximity to me of this other human being whom I am contemplating, I shall always see and know something that he, from his place outside and over me, cannot see himself, parts of his body (his head, his face and its expression), the world behind his back, and a whole series of objects and relations are accessible to me and not him. As we gaze at each other, two different worlds are reflected in the pupils of our eyes. (pp. 22–23)
In other words, persons require the viewpoint of another individual to see what they cannot comprehend with their own eyes. These viewpoints are complex, multiply dimensioned, and informed by many speech communities of which persons are members. As these memberships change over time and across occasions, discourses allied with them may be altered. Some of these discourses may be authoritative and reflect what may be considered ‘the words of the fathers’, or those passed down as originating with persons’ religious affiliations, family members, governments, political parties, and/or employers. Some of the discourses in which persons participate may become internally persuasive. Indeed ‘the internally
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persuasive word is half ours and half someone else’s’; these ideas are available in the world at large and can be ‘tried on’ for their utility for persons’ thinking and practices (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). Bakhtin emphasizes that there is an ‘intense struggle within us for hegemony among various available verbal and ideological points of view, approaches, directions, and values’ (1981, p. 346). Persons must make decisions about which of these viewpoints to assimilate into their worldviews and which to discard. Some of these are assessed as ‘truths’ and maintained for a long time (Morson, 2004, p. 319); others simply are borrowed from other people for shorter periods. Bakhtin emphasizes both the primacy of others’ viewpoints for our self-understandings, and the appropriation of various discourses through which people imagine and re-imagine themselves and those with whom they interact. Below, we discuss US-based and international programs of teacher education that are specifically aimed at restructuring teachers’ talk, thoughts, and practices. We begin by discussing what partnerships with communities have to offer prospective and practicing teachers, and then move to a discussion of service learning for disrupting prospective teachers’ notions concerning putative ‘others’. Next, we discuss how faculty in various universities have attempted to disrupt authoritative discourses that university students bring to campus via differing interventions. Later, we write about how national contexts may affect practices of teacher education and teaching around the world.
RETHINKING TEACHER EDUCATION: HOW HAVE TEACHER EDUCATORS ATTEMPTED TO CHANGE HOW TEACHERS TALK, THINK, AND ACT? Partnerships with Schools and Communities While Zeichner (2010) names his concerns as originating neither with Bakhtin nor with Holland and her colleagues, he calls attention to how teacher candidates have been imbued with authoritative discourses and habituated to their everyday practices in considering whose knowledge counts. Zeichner hopes that teacher educators can better connect faculty members and prospective teachers with surrounding communities and schools, working toward what he terms a ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 2004) for teachers’ learning. Third spaces acknowledge the primacy of what Bhabha terms the ‘inter – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the inbetween space’ (p. 56, italics in the original). Zeichner laments the divide between practicing teachers’ classrooms as sites for field placements for prospective teachers and the privileged places that the ‘academic knowledge’ on-campus faculty and staff offer in contrast to them. He argues that teacher education requires rethinking these hierarchical binaries of communities and campus, instead taking up dialogic ways of thinking about partnerships that benefit prospective teachers from multiple perspectives.
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A growing concern exists globally for partnerships that develop college/university students’ knowledge and skills while building their capacities for critical thinking and community service. Such partnerships often take place in communities rather than in campus settings and are directed and supervised by community partners. In the United Kingdom, for example, Annette (2002) describes the work of the Council for Citizenship and Learning in the Community (CCLC), which links community organizations with higher education partners to develop students’ citizenship and meet identified community needs. Working in concert with over two hundred programs in higher education institutions, Annette sees such partnerships as preparing students for participation in a ‘global civil society’ (2002, p. 83), where they can see the interconnected nature of work conducted with communities and academic knowledge offered in universities. He argues that in developing personal relationships with community members, university students can see how all persons are connected in mutual humanity. In Australia, Gorodetsky and Barak (2008) describe what they call transitional environments grounded in models of ‘ecological edges’ that encourage more egalitarian partnerships between universities and schools. Gorodetsky and Barak explain that edge communities are ‘future-oriented’ partnerships concerned with democratic principles and the privileging of multiple viewpoints – schools, teachers, and spaces inhabited by families and other community members. By providing spaces for reciprocal dialogues with persons beyond campus, prospective teachers may gradually develop more democratic classrooms where all persons’ voices are respected and heard. Symmetrical with Zeichner’s thinking, such partnerships disrupt the authority of ‘academic knowledge’ and position the authority of others, such as school- and community-based partners, as equally legitimate. And, on the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, Camacho (2004) describes what could be called an ‘edge’ community partnership between a university and three Mexican community agencies. This partnership promotes mutual understandings of privileged university students and migrant people who work on their campuses as low-wage university service providers (groundskeepers, cooks, cleaners, etc.). Camacho developed a community-based program linking university students and migrant workers in sharing meals and telling stories about their lives on Sunday afternoons. In this way, she aims to disrupt authoritative stereotypes about Mexican border-crossers as criminalized persons who serve privileged Whites, and re-story university students’ understandings of migrant people and how they came to live and work in the United States. Following Gorodetsky and Barak’s (2008) principles of practice for edge communities, the program ‘provides a respectful and legitimizing culture for reflection and re-evaluation of [its] practice’, while ‘[it] involves moral judgments’ and helps university students consider new ways of thinking (p. 1909). These programs all differ. Some are large-scale efforts, such as that described by Annette (2008), and others are smaller, person- and community agencyfocused, such as that developed by Camacho (2004). Some focus on schools as
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sites for field experiences for teacher education (Gorodetsky & Barak, 2008); others take more of a community and service focus (Annette, 2008; Camacho, 2004). Elaborating on Bhabha’s notions of hybridity, Yazdiha (2010) states that partners in different enterprises may reimagine ‘an interconnected collective’ that can ‘shift individuals’ orientations, our feeling towards others’, and potentially redefine ‘our exclusionary systems of labeling’ (p. 37). So, what Zeichner (2010) and others call for breaks in the presumed ‘social given boundaries that so stubbornly limit our capacity for thought and discussion, but we must take the time to join in a collective critique of the knowledge we ingest and disperse’ (p. 37). We join Zeichner and colleagues in calling for greater boundary breaking between reified knowledge centers such as universities, and those that have been seen as more tangential to teacher education students’ learning, such as schools and community organizations. Mitchell (2013) elaborates Zeichner’s argument for boundary breaking between schools and communities by asking all educators to recognize how schools as institutions are responsible for enabling some communities to thrive and prosper and others to fail economically and socially. Mitchell asks that all teachers: should be required to do the difficult work of first recognizing the role of formal schooling in privileging some communities and disenfranchising others. And then they must perform the gut-wrenching and laborious task of looking inward to assess their ‘implicatedness’ in this disenfranchisement. (2013, p. 126)
When teachers see themselves and the institutions where they work as integral to the fate of children, families, and communities, they begin the important introspective journey for which Mitchell calls. In the sections that follow we illustrate how service learning with community centers can support prospective teachers in pursuing what Mitchell calls the ‘gut-wrenching and laborious task’ of acquiring the knowledge, skills, and roars of dissonance and complexity required to rethink who they are and what they require to be good teachers of everyone’s children.
Partnerships in Service Learning Service learning and providing support in the form of tutoring, meal preparation, and after-school care has become another avenue for potentially altering how teachers consider those who live in poverty, who are also often those from marginalized groups. Service learning has been rightly criticized (Butin, 2006; Cruz & Giles, 2000; Jacoby, 2009) for its enabling of privileged groups to learn from, not always with, those less fortunate than they are. However, it provides prospective teachers with potentially valuable insights into the challenging lives of some students and families who wrongly are considered as less capable than their peers. Two international service learning partnerships match undergraduates with community organizations aimed at disrupting students’ existing authoritative
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discourses around who people living in poverty are. One of these is located at Brock University in Canada (Sharpe & Dear, 2013). This collaboration links Brock with a non-governmental organization in Cuba and two Cuban universities. While initially there were misunderstandings around what service would be conducted and how it would be done, these challenges were eliminated with greater communication and planning. Another is a partnership developed in Australia at the Queensland University of Technology (Carrington & Iyer, 2011; Carrington et al., 2008, 2010a, 2010b) where prospective teachers work in homework support for refugees, respite centers for terminally ill children, and meal preparation and service for older adults. A key aim of this program is working toward more caring and socially interactive experiences with persons less privileged than prospective teachers, understanding that mutual benefit can accrue from such interactions.
College/University Courses Aimed at Interrupting Teachers’ Thoughts, Talk, and Practices Another way to interrupt teachers’ ways of thinking, talking, and practicing is through courses that are part of prospective teachers’ programs of teacher preparation and help prospective teachers interrogate their previously held authoritative discourses. Such courses may be a venue for interrupting teachers’ pre-conceived notions about so-called ‘others’ and potentially replacing these with internally persuasive discourses that question previous assumptions about persons who are seen as less skilled, able, and well-intentioned than themselves. What such programs try to do is what Holland and Lave (2001) call disrupting the work of ‘societal institutions and discourses that disproportionately distribute symbolic and material resources to favored racial, ethnic, class, and gendered groups’ (p. 13). As can be seen in the following paragraphs, teacher educators have attempted varying strategies to disrupt thinking that prospective teachers bring to campus. In the United States, Gomez (2014), Lachuk (2010), Wiest (1998), Xu (2000), and Seiki (2014) all describe the potential power of college courses to alter prospective teachers’ thinking about their students. Gomez (2014) teaches a course featuring a service learning component for undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a US university with a majority White population of students. The 3-credit course contains a 75-minute lecture and a 75-minute discussion, and includes readings, videos, and guest speakers illuminating histories and contemporary understandings of a wide variety of persons from marginalized groups. It also features a 25-hour service learning component conducted at one of several sites populated by high numbers of students who are struggling in school, are students of color, and are from low-income families. Lachuk (2010) also was intrigued by the possibility of integrating service learning within an elementary literacy methods course for practicing and prospective
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elementary teachers at the University of South Carolina, and partnered them with recent immigrants from Latin and/or Central America who were parents of elementary school aged children. She had three goals for the course: that it offer (1) a foundation in teaching reading to diverse elementary school aged learners; (2) an opportunity for students to take on viewpoints of persons culturally and linguistically different from themselves; and (3) the creation of a ‘third space’ for students so that their literacy teaching pedagogies could be expanded to include multiple perspectives. Sharing meals and co-authoring bilingual stories (in Spanish and English) for the adult learners’ children bonded the group. Wiest (1998) teaches a course at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas aimed at disrupting White prospective teachers’ thinking about persons from marginalized groups. Called a cultural immersion project and located in her course ‘Sociocultural Concerns in Education’, she asks students to go alone to a place for an hour or two where they imagine being with unfamiliar ‘others’ and feeling uncomfortable in the setting. Post-visit, they write a brief paper and discuss how the experience made them feel and think. Wiest believes that her students gain increased empathy, enhanced ability to look at a situation from another’s perspective, and heightened compassion for persons’ common humanity from the experience. At Texas Tech University, Xu (2000) teaches a field-based literacy methods course where she asks students to carry out a multi-pronged approach to understanding young people marginalized in school. This includes: writing an autobiographical essay; writing a biography of a case-study student in their classroom and describing the student’s literacy development; conducting a cross-cultural analysis of differences between themselves and their case-study students; and teaching a minimum of two lessons to a group of children of which the casestudy student is a member. Xu notes that her students show limited understandings of their diverse students’ backgrounds, as often they do not understand that children can take charge of their learning with activities such as choosing their own books or the topics of the compositions they write. Seiki (2014) describes a course called ‘Cross Cultural Studies for Teaching’ that she teaches at Illinois Wesleyan University. Hearing a student’s story of the redevelopment and decimation of a Japanese neighborhood in San Francisco, Seiki was reminded of such impacts on the neighborhoods surrounding her university with large numbers of Mexican immigrant students. Using a text written by Bigelow (2006) on how the North American Federal Trade Agreement similarly affected Tijuana, Mexico, and asking students to view a film, Which Way Home (2009), by director Rebecca Cammisa, documenting unaccompanied children crossing the border between the United States and Mexico, Seiki helps students to examine the human impact of gentrification projects. She asks them to conduct a multi-generation family movie project where they investigate the historical background of their family’s immigration and document their language loss or maintenance. These courses are examples of programs that provide prospective teachers with opportunities to consider who they are in relation to the young people whom
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they teach and their families. If teachers see young people who differ from themselves as deficient rather than as full of promise, an achievement gap that persists around the world only can grow.
National Legislation and Cross-National Accords for Teacher Education and Teaching Further, national legislation and cross-national accords for teacher education and schooling require consideration of their impact on teacher education and educating various populations of students. These include, for example, the Salamanca Statement, agreed upon by 92 governments and 25 international organizations (UNESCO, 1994), which recognized the necessity of providing education to all children via inclusive practices of schooling. Later, Spain and, so far, 46 other nations signed the Bologna Declaration (1999), creating the European Higher Education Commission by 2010–2011, which attempts to make academic degree standards and time to degree completion more comparable across Europe. These accords support prospective teachers in viewing inclusion as a basic student right, but Cardona (2009) acknowledges Spanish teacher candidates’ (at the University of Alicante) reluctance to educate students with special educational needs as workloads increase, and skills, course work and other resources are lacking. This is one example of how crossnational teacher education accords affect teacher education, schooling, and what prospective teachers believe are student rights, but they may also see as difficult to enact. In a comparative study of prospective teachers in two nations, Australia and Singapore, Sharma, Ee, and Desai (2003) viewed legislation, funding for schools, and courses focused on inclusivity as impacting groups of prospective teachers differently. The authors found that Australians were more favorable to educating persons with disabilities in fully integrated inclusive settings as opposed to those from Singapore. They speculate that decades-long national legislation (in Australia) and incorporation of teacher education coursework around persons requiring special education may influence candidates’ attitudes. With no legislative mandates, few students with disabilities are educated in public settings in Singapore. Rather, they most often are educated in segregated settings, led and minimally half-funded by voluntary welfare organizations (VWOs), likely preventing the greater population from having contact with persons who have special needs (Lim & Tam, 2000). Additionally in Nigeria, Ololube (2007) asserts that insufficient government funding of teacher education programs impacts their overall effectiveness: The consequences of the under-funding of this sector are immediate; for example, it results in the inability to purchase instructional materials to effectively prepare pre-service teachers[,] like computers, text books, laboratory equipment, audio visual aids, slides, video clips, electronic white boards, electronic conferencing materials, enough chairs and desks in
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c lassrooms to keep students from having to stand to receive lectures[,] to mention a few. (2007, p. 9)
Finally, in an exploration of teacher education in India, Ratnam (2015) contrasts the decades-old heritage of the British colonial system and its stratified tiers of education for elites and so-called ‘others’ with new cries for critical reflection, social justice pedagogies, and multiculturalism. Demonstrating the challenges of thinking and acting in new ways with increasingly diversely populated classrooms, Ratnam mentors a new teacher who is fighting both norms instantiated years earlier and her own terrible prejudices about who can learn and how. Through mentoring forged through relationship-building with the teacher and her class, Ratnam demonstrates how a gently questioning pedagogy can slowly achieve powerful, positive results, where no student feels that they are ‘stupid’ and cannot do the work. Ratnam, too, believes that change must permeate every sector of a nation’s teacher education system, from ideology to program reform, coursework, field experiences, and contexts for schooling, or no change is possible. These are a number of examples of how national context, teacher education practices (for example, how many required courses exist for teachers of various groups), and school funding influence how teachers are educated, what programs are developed, and how teachers are deployed with various student constituencies. It is not only the content of teacher education programs, but also the contexts in which these are located that portend their outcomes for prospective teachers and their future students.
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE OUTCOMES OF TEACHER EDUCATORS’ EFFORTS TO ALTER TEACHERS’ THINKING, TALK, AND ACTIONS? A key finding of literature on international service learning is articulated by Parker and Altman Dautoff (2007), arguing that scholarship on service learning programs is ‘primarily descriptive, context-specific, and often unsystematic’ (p. 40). We concur, and have found that service learning and course interventions we reviewed both internationally and in the United States offer little research evidence of teachers changing their talk, thinking, or actions. Much of what has been published is descriptive of teacher educators’ behaviors and anecdotal. Two exceptions can be found. The first is Gomez’s (2014; Gomez, Carlson, Foubert, & Powell, 2014) life history research of students in her class, which requires service learning for prospective teachers. Gomez found (through multi-hour interviews and analyses of students’ papers) that prospective teachers can only begin the hard work of becoming more self-aware about how they think, talk about, and behave with putative ‘others’. She found two outcomes: that when university students are themselves persons of color and come from similar backgrounds as their students, they may
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continue to hold negative stereotypes of who students and families are; and, second, that university students often may consider one dimension of children’s backgrounds, such as economic challenges or racial prejudices, but may ignore other dimensions when these do not resonate with their own personal experiences. The second exception is Lachuk’s research (2017) concerning outcomes of her service-learning project embedded within a literacy methods course. Lachuk analyzed her students’ work artifacts (e.g., classroom assignments, entrance and exit slips, in-class engagements) and classroom discourse in order to better understand the impact that her service-learning project had on teacher candidates. From her qualitative analysis, she found that teacher candidates felt the service learning gave them an opportunity to take on different perspectives from people different from themselves. She also found that teacher candidates reported that working one-on-one with adult learners and coming to understand their personal experiences enabled them to develop more empathic stances toward learners’ lives. We advocate that more teacher educators conduct research about how the interventions they design affect both prospective teachers and those with whom they interact. We can create better and more effective ways to interrupt authoritative discourses about supposed ‘others’ only when we know more about which interventions are effective and in what contexts.
Questions around Interventions for Prospective and Practicing Teachers’ Thinking and Actions Additionally, we offer five sets of questions for teacher educators who are considering employing interventions in their courses: (1) whether or not leading one, two, or a few discussions or writing assignments about one’s potentially changing thinking may be adequate for teachers’ learning; (2) about where and with whom one should conduct one’s service or teaching; (3) how one chooses mentors for one’s teaching; (4) how to take into account partnerships that privilege community members’ and families’ perspectives and concerns; and (5) how we might consider the intersections of national contexts, cross-national accords, and school funding policies and procedures for their effect on how teacher education is crafted and practiced. How does leading one or two conversations focusing on what university students learn from their course assignments and/or related service provide adequate scaffolding for their emerging understandings about people different from themselves? Dewey (1938) argued that experience is critical for all learning, but that it could mis-educate as well as educate us. Ladson-Billings (2001) furthers this argument, saying that engaging in experiences with ‘others’ who may be unfamiliar to us may only serve to reinforce university students’ existing stereotypes. Through talking together, with teacher educators’ and mentor teachers’ guidance, prospective teachers may develop internally persuasive discourses and a more compassionate stance toward others. However, this is only a beginning and does
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not necessarily change the long-held beliefs and authoritative discourses driving university students’ thinking. Further, such conversations need to be conducted in an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect. Prospective teachers should feel comfortable in voicing their own discomfort and uncertainty about what they are learning, saying, and doing. The compassion teacher educators hope to develop in their students toward ‘others’ also must be practiced with them. Where should aspiring teachers conduct their service and teaching? What factors need to be taken into account? Gomez suggests that the locations where prospective teachers learn most are those where there are substantial differences between them and the racial, ethnic, social class, and language backgrounds of young people and their families. Placements require development of relationships with young people over time and across occasions. We have found that serving in settings where teachers can foster complexity of thinking about race, social class, and language background is best. What qualities of mentoring are best for teachers to engage in while conducting their service or community interactions? We believe a key quality in a mentor is the disposition to voice confusion about the complexity of work they are conducting, and their willingness to be questioned about their behavior. These often are puzzling for prospective teachers to sort out, and willingness to speak openly about them signals mentors’ own inclination to be self-reflective. How can we privilege community members’ and families’ voices in teacher education course projects, developing clarity for prospective teachers concerning authoritative discourses and biases they bring to teacher preparation? Zeichner and others have cautioned that multiple voices require careful listening and understanding. Sensitively integrating families’ and community members’ voices into conversations with teacher educators and prospective teachers necessitates careful planning and working with community leaders to negotiate such conversations. How might we think about national contexts, including legislation and accompanying mandates, as well as cross-national accords and school funding as affecting what prospective and practicing teachers see as possible and doable for them? If teachers are not offered strategies to enact inclusive schooling, for example, educating all students well will not come to fruition. If teachers are not enabled to see all students as having promise to achieve to high standards, and provided with materials and a classroom environment that enables engaging teaching, some students will fail. Teachers require beliefs that they can enact amazing things, but they also require the tools to get there.
DISCUSSION Interrogating one’s thoughts, talk, and practices needs to be accompanied by compassion, empathy, introspection, and self-awareness. We view compassion as
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understanding someone’s suffering and desiring to ease that pain, while empathy is the experience of seeing another’s difficulties from their viewpoint. Contemporary theorists who write about compassion and empathy come from diverse backgrounds, including Buddhist (e.g., Chodron, 2000, 2002; His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 2002), Roman Catholic (e.g., Armstrong, 2010; Boyle, 2010), and feminist traditions (Noddings, 1989, 1995). Whatever traditions they embrace, all assert that one’s compassion should not be grounded in pity for another’s plight. Rather, persons should ‘cultivate an informed empathy’ and ‘feel her pain as though it were our own, and to genuinely enter his point of view (Armstrong, 2010, p. 7). Armstrong seems to be saying that if persons are genuinely willing to engage with others’ dilemmas, they might understand others’ challenges as if they were ones in which they, too, are enmeshed. Or, as the Dalai Lama (2002) argues: ‘Compassion enables us to refrain from thinking in a self-centered way’ and to ‘put others’ needs and desires before our own’ (p. 105). Nussbaum (1997) calls this putting of others’ needs and desires before one’s own part of cultivating ‘the narrative imagination’. She argues: ‘This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have’ (pp. 10–11). And Noddings (1995) writes: ‘We do not merely tell them to care and give them texts to read on the subject, we demonstrate our caring in relation to them’ (p. 190). In other words, persons cannot mandate someone to think in a more compassionate and empathetic manner regarding persons they formerly thought about as ‘others’. This needs to be achieved with continual critical selfexamination and by ‘adopting an international perspective in which [we see] all human lives are connected’ (Andrews, 2014, p. 78). Teacher educators might point out that persons whom we serve not only deserve compassion and empathy, but also might question who is enabled to feel these emotions and who is the recipient of them. Much as with service learning, all too often able-bodied, middle-class, White, and English-speaking persons can feel compassion and empathy for those who they see as deserving of their concern. However, as teacher educators, we see such concern as having a dialogical relationship between who gives and who receives the benevolence of another person. This, too, needs to become a part of our conversations with teachers. Further, Andrews (2014) reminds teacher educators that we need to include in talking with prospective and practicing teachers that they are models for their students’ development of kindness to and consideration of one another. She writes: How can we as teachers encourage our students to develop compassionate understanding … enhancing their ability to feel with another, even while recognizing their differences? First, we must have a sense of our own vulnerability, from this position we are more open to the worlds of others. … [T]he attempt to distance ourselves from ourselves, however difficult it might be gives us a new platform from which to view not only our own situation, but the world of others, both near and far. (pp. 79–80)
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So, too, must teacher educators model such compassion for their own students. We cannot forget as teachers and teacher educators that it is our job not only to impart content knowledge but also to affect students’ abilities to understand the plight of those who may seem different from ourselves, yet are in reality so similar.
Note 1 Brantmeier (2011) offers a definition of social justice as ‘fair and just structural arrangements and personal/social/professional relationships that provide access, opportunity, and inclusion of historically marginalized or oppressed individuals and/or groups of people’ (p. 432). Bell (1997) argues that: ‘Social justice includes a “vision of society” … [where] members are physically and psychologically safe and secure’ (p. 3).
REFERENCES Andrews, M. (2014). Narrative imagination and everyday life. New York: Oxford University Press. Annette, J. (2002). Service learning in an international context. Frontiers: An International Journal of Study Abroad, 8, 83–93. Armstrong, K. (2010). Twelve steps to a compassionate life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bell, L.A. (1997). Theoretical foundations for social justice education. In M. Adams, L.A. Bell, & P. Griffin (Eds), Teaching for diversity and social justice (pp. 3–15). New York: Routledge. Bhabha. H. (2004). The location of culture. New York: Routledge. Bigelow, B. (2006). The line between us: Teaching about the border and Mexican immigration. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Boesch, E. (2007). Reconsidering identity politics: An introduction. In L.M. Alcoff, M. Hames-Garcia, S. Mohanty, & P.M. Moya (Eds), Identity politics reconsidered (pp. 1–9). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Boyle, G. (2010). Tattoos on the heart: The power of boundless compassion. New York: Free Press. Brantmeier, E.J. (2011). Towards maintaining critical peace education in US teacher education. In C.S. Malott & B. Porfilio (Eds), Critical pedagogy in the 21st century: A new generation of scholars (pp. 430–435). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Butin, D.W. (2006). The limits of service learning in higher education. The Review of Higher Education, 29(4), 473–498. Camacho, M.M. (2004). Power and privilege: Community service learning in Tijuana. Michigan Journal of Service Learning, 10(3), 31–42. Cammisa, R. (2009). Which way home. New York: HBO Documentary Films. Cardona, C.M. (2009). Teacher education students’ beliefs of inclusion and perceived competence to teach students with disabilities in Spain. The Journal of the International Association of Special Education, 10(1), 33–41. Carrington, S., & Iyer, R. (2011). Service learning within higher education: Rhizomatic connections between the university and the community. Australian Journal of Higher Education, 36(6), 1–14. Carrington, S., & Sagger, B. (2008). Service-learning informing the development of an inclusive ethical framework for beginning teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(3), 794–806. Carrington, S., Mercer, M., & Kimber, M. (2010a). Service learning in teacher education. In R. Toomey, T. Lovat, N. Clement, & K. Dailey (Eds), Teacher education and values pedagogy: A student well-being approach (pp. 75–95). Terrigal, NSW, Australia: David Barlow Publishing.
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Carrington, S., Mercer, L., Bland, D., & Kimber, M. (2010b). Critical social theory and transformative learning: Evidence in pre-service teachers’ reflective logs. Higher Education Research and Development, 29(1), 45–57. Chodron, P. (2000). When things fall apart: Heart advice for difficult times. Boston: Shambhala. Chodron, P. (2002). Comfortable with uncertainty: 108 teachings on cultivating fearlessness and compassion. Boston: Shambhala. Cruz, N., & Giles, D.E. Jr (2000). Where’s the community in service-learning research? Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 7, 28–34. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan. Gomez, M.L. (2014). Examining discourses of an aspiring teacher of color. Teacher Education Quarterly, 41(1), 45–62. Gomez, M.L., Carlson, J.R., Foubert, J., & Powell, S.N. (2014). ‘It is not them, it’s me’: Competing discourses in one aspiring teacher’s talk. Teaching Education, 25(3), 334–347. Gorodetsky, M., & Barak, J. (2008). The educational-cultural ecological edge: A participatory learning environment for co-emergence of personal and institutional growth. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1907–1918. Hargreaves, A. (2000). Mixed emotions: Teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with students. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 811–826. Haslanger, S. (2012). Resisting reality: Social constructionism and social critique. New York: Oxford University Press. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2002). An open heart: Practicing compassion in everyday life. New York: Little, Brown, & Company. Holland, D., & Lave, J. (2001). History in person: An introduction. In D. Holland & J. Lave (Eds), History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities (pp. 3–33). Santa Fe, NM and Oxford, UK: School of American Research Press and James Currey. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr, Skinner, D., & Cain C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism. New York: Routledge. Jacoby, B. (2009). Facing the unsettled questions about service learning. In J.R. Strait & K.M. Lima (Eds), The future of service-learning (pp. 90–105). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Jones, A., & Jenkins, K. (2003). Rethinking the indigenous-colonizer hyphen. In N.K. Denzin, Y.S. Lincoln, & L.T. Smith (Eds), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 471–486). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lachuk, A.J. (2010). Instructional methods for teaching literacy. Unpublished course syllabus. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. Lachuk, A.J. (2017). Unpublished manuscript. Ladson-Billings, G. (2001). Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lim, L., & Tam, S.S. (2000). Special education in Singapore. The Journal of Special Education, 34(2), 104–109. Mitchell, R. (2013). The long hard look. In K. Fasching-Varner (Ed.), Working through whiteness: Examining White racial identity and profession with pre-service teachers (pp. 99–125). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Morson, G.S. (2004). The process of ideological becoming. Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Learning, 200, 317–332. Murphy, L. (1999). Institutions and the demands of justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27(4), 251–291. Noddings, N. (1989). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Noddings, N. (1995) Philosophy of education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Ololube, N.P. (2007). The relationship between funding, ICT, selection processes, administration and planning, and the standard of science teacher education in Nigeria. Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teacher, 8(1), pp. 1–29. Retrieved on 22 July 2016 from: http://www.ied.edu.hk/apfslt/ download/v8_issue1_files/ololube.pdf Parker, B., & Altman Dautoff, D. (2007). Service-learning and study abroad: Synergistic learning opportunities. Michigan Journal of Service Learning, 12(2), 40–52. Ratnam, T. (2015). Pedagogies of teacher education for social justice: An Indian case. In L. Orland-Barak & C.J. Craig (Eds), International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (pp. 255–282). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Seiki, S. (2014). Embodying shared history: Narrative inquiry as shared pedagogy. Teacher Education Quarterly, 41(1), 29–44. Sharma, U., Ee, J., & Desai, I. (2003). A comparison of Australian and Singaporean pre-service teachers’ attitudes and concerns about inclusive education. Teaching and Learning, 24(2), 207–217. Sharpe, E.K., & Dear, S. (2013). Points of discomfort: Reflections on power and partnerships in international service learning. Michigan Journal of Service Learning, 19(2), 49–57. UNESCO (United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization). (1994). The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education. New York: UNESCO. Wiest, L.R. (1998). Using immersion experiences to shake up preservice teachers’ views about cultural differences. Journal of Teacher Education, 49, 338–365. Xu, S.H. (2000). Preservice teachers in a literacy methods course consider issues of diversity. Journal of Literacy Research, 32(4), 505–531. Yazdiha, H. (2010). Cultural hybridity: Reimagining the collective. Journal of Social Research, 1(1). Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in collegeand university-based teacher education programs. Journal of Teacher Education, 89(11), 89–99.
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27 A Decolonial Alternative to Critical Approaches to Multicultural and Intercultural Teacher Education M i c h a e l Va v r u s Internationally teacher education policies and practices differ over the meaning, value, and purpose of multiculturalism, especially in relation to national identity and citizenship rights (Banks, Suárez-Oroco, and Ben-Peretz, 2016; Koopmans, 2013). Significant differences in interpretation and intentions range from viewpoints that believe multiculturalism is underpinned by actions allowing for an individual’s assimilation into a common national culture, to positions that advocate recognition of cultural groups and redistribution of material opportunities for historically marginalized populations through a critical social reconstruction (Grant & Sleeter, 1993). Whereas English-speaking nations use the term multicultural education, Europe generally references intercultural education (Alleman-Ghionda, 2012). Both expressions in teacher education are responses to an acknowledgement of cultural diversity within nations. Banks (1993) broadly defined multicultural education as ‘a total school reform effort designed to increase educational equity for a range of cultural, ethnic, and economic groups’ (p. 6, emphasis in original). Most teacher education programs report that they incorporate multicultural content (Bennett, 2012). By the mid-2010s, research revealed, however, that only a few programs ‘fundamentally challenge the current arrangements of social, economic, and institutional power’ (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015, p. 118). Finnish critical educators Dervin and Tournebise (2013) further noted ‘the apparent lack of concern for justice’ in normative intercultural education (p. 541). Hence, critical approaches in teacher education are needed, according to Ladson-Billings (2004), to ‘argue against the ways dominant ideologies are able to appropriate multicultural discourse’
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and to ‘interrupt the diversity discourse that emerged to supplant and subvert the original intentions of theorists who set out to create a pedagogy of liberation and social justice’ (p. 52). A primary goal of critical multicultural teacher education is capacity building for teachers to gain a sense of their agency to change oppressive conditions in schools (Howard & Aleman, 2008; Liggett, 2011). This chapter surveys capacity-building conceptual and pedagogical approaches and challenges for critical teacher education. This overview includes critical approaches to sociocultural identity formation, including racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, and neoliberal identity constructions. The chapter concludes with decolonialism and its potential to reorient critical teacher education approaches.
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING A purpose of multicultural teacher education is to graduate culturally responsive teachers (Nieto, 2009). The expectation for culturally responsive teachers is to design ‘learning environments that allow students to use cultural elements, cultural capital, and other recognizable knowledge from their experiences to learn new content and information to enhance their schooling experiences and academic success’ (Howard, 2012, pp. 549–550). Underlying the education of culturally responsive teachers is intercultural education to develop cultural competence. The goal of intercultural teacher education is ‘to train individuals to perceive and recognize linguistic and sociocultural diversity by increasing sensitivity to socially and ethnically based prejudice, conflict, and misunderstanding; xenophobia; and racism’ (Alleman-Ghionda, 2012, p. 1213). Within intercultural education cultural competence refers broadly to knowledge and skills ‘which enable professionals to work respectfully and effectively with individuals, families, and communities from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds’ (De Jesús, 2012, p. 504). Cultural competence and intercultural communication involve developing an internalized self-awareness of how racial and ethnic discrimination operates. Gay (2010) documents how attention to social psychology can help teachers to understand their own cultural attitudes and identities in relation to their interactions with culturally diverse student populations. The importance of social psychological factors for culturally responsive pedagogy was highlighted in Yang and Montgomery’s (2011) study of 793 North American preservice teachers. Preservice teachers who had internalized ‘a high degree of personal control in developing their cultural awareness’ felt more effective in implementing a culturally responsive pedagogy (p. 12). Nieto (2009) cautioned, however, that a culturally responsive teacher education framework ‘can become problematic if culture is viewed as deterministic and static rather than as elastic and changeable’ (p. 89). Critical teacher education, therefore, builds on culturally responsive
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teaching by incorporating concepts from critically oriented theories and practice (Vavrus, 2008).
CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL TEACHER EDUCATION Critical educators draw on critical theory that has roots in a ‘quasi-Marxist theory of society … of “the totally administered society,”… which analyzed the increasing power of capitalism over all aspects of social life and the development of new forms of social control’ (Kellner, 2005, p. 509). From legal studies critical education also incorporates critical race theory (Sleeter, 2012), which begins with the premise that ‘racism is normal, not aberrant’ (Delgado, 1995, p. xiv). Within this critical orientation, critical teacher education references Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a foundational text. Freire’s purpose, as explained by McLaren (2015), was to help learners understand the politics of knowledge construction and the daily operation of ideologies to transform ‘structures of oppression to pathways to emancipation’ (p. 149). Hence, in response to normative multiculturalism in teacher education, the merging of critical into multiculturalism developed as critical theory became associated with social action (see Kellner, 2005). Critical teacher education aligns with a social justice academic-activist position. Critical education is ‘not simply an “intellectual” one’; instead its purpose is ‘to engage in analyses that are aimed at interrupting the relations of exploitation and domination in the larger society and in education’ where schools can serve as a ‘site for resistance to bourgeois hegemony’ (Au & Apple, 2009, pp. 87, 93). Critical teacher education encourages a teacher-activist identity that challenges oppressive practices in schools and society (Zeichner & Flessner, 2009). This approach necessitates a transformative multicultural and intercultural teacher education that ‘problematizes the structures of history that embody who we are and have become’ (Popkewitz, 1999, p. 3; Vavrus, 2002). Drawing from Freire, critical teacher education applies critical pedagogy, which is described next.
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY Critical pedagogy is a methodology that both deconstructs and reconstructs factors that affect the learning and life opportunities of young people. According to Darder, Baltodano, and Torres (2003) and McLaren (1989), critical pedagogy in teacher education emphasizes: •• political economy of schooling and the concept of class; •• historical context of knowledge construction;
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•• critiques of ideologies; •• dialogue and development of critical consciousness; •• hegemony as ‘a process of social control that is carried out through the moral and intellectual leadership of a dominant sociocultural class over subordinate groups’ (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2003, p. 13); and •• counter-hegemony as ‘moments of resistance, through establishing alternative structures and practices that democratize relations of power, in the interest of liberatory possibilities’ (p. 14).
Critical pedagogy is a dialectical process that tests assumptions and assertions for accuracy as part of an ongoing interrogation of political and historical claims, a process that can lead to social justice action by teachers (McLaren, 2015). The dialectical process draws from Marx (1932/1973) who considered lived human experience in the context of objective material conditions and the subjective social relations and identities produced under capitalism. The use of the dialectic involves an examination of contradictions, which ‘refers to the nature of those conflicting elemental processes that are believed to constitute the essence of reality itself’ (Heilbroner, 1980, p. 35). The dialectic in critical pedagogy stresses an activist production of knowledge rather than knowledge as a passively consumed object. Critical pedagogy was evident for a group of Australian preservice teachers who were instructed in how to dialectically examine state curriculum documents ‘by highlighting contradictions and inconsistencies’ (Johnson, 2007, p. 363). Bartolomé (2010) applied critical pedagogy’s dialectic with prospective teachers to consider how ideologies affect ‘linguistic-minority schooling’ (p. 520). Bartolomé cites Freire in how her curriculum helps preservice teachers ‘comprehensively construct the problem’ and then ‘analyze the problem critically – to deconstruct it’ (p. 521, emphasis in original). Finally, Bartolomé has students ‘reconstruct the problem’ by considering ‘alternative possibilities’ for ‘implementing more humane and democratic solutions’ (p. 521, emphasis in original). The reconstructing aspect of critical pedagogy’s dialectical process for problem-posing and -solving (Freire, 1970) has been described as a critical imagination process (Cartwright & Noone, 2006). When using critically reflective writing assignments for teacher candidates, Cartwright and Noone (2006) found that their effectiveness increased student engagement to use a critical imagination to consider non-dominant schooling possibilities for equity. Stenhouse and Jarrett (2012) reported that critical pedagogy in service learning ‘empowered’ preservice teachers by holding space for critical imagination or ‘a pedagogy of possibility that shifts service to advocacy’ for a more equitable society (p. 74, emphasis in original). An intention of the dialectic in critical pedagogy is to develop critical consciousness (Freire, 1970). Application of critical consciousness requires praxis. Freire (1970) claimed that the discovery of oppressive conditions ‘cannot be purely intellectual but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism, but must include serious reflection: only then will it be a praxis’ (p. 52, emphasis added).
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Critical Reflection and Critical Consciousness In critical teacher education critical reflection is an approach that is a prerequisite to developing cultural competence for culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010). Through a critical examination of feature-length movies that portray teaching in culturally diverse settings, Columbian teacher educators Morales and Holguín (2011) found it possible to move education students from normative pedagogical reflections on observed teaching methodologies to a critical reflection stance on how social issues differentially affect students in both their classrooms and communities. When Durden and Truscott (2013) observed elements of critical reflection in a study of preservice teachers, however, and ‘delved into the thinking that grounded a particular practice or action, we discovered that the critical consciousness necessary to support [critical responsive pedagogy] was missing’ (p. 79, emphasis added). Critical consciousness or conscietização for learners, according to Freire (1970), develops when critical reflection leads to a more complete grasp of the barriers that dispossessed and marginalized populations can face. Au (2012), who notes how he was introduced to Freire’s concept of critical consciousness through his teacher preparation program, explains that ‘critically reflecting on our own consciousness … necessitates critical reflection on the social structures that shape our consciousness’ (p. 24). However, when teacher educators assume teacher candidates hold a critical reflection disposition to interrogate oppressive conditions in schools, preservice teachers tend to ‘generalize their own perspectives without realizing that their worldviews are culturally and socially founded’ (Carrigan, Sanders, & Pourdavood, 2005, p. 13).
Critical Democracy in Situated Learning Community-based, situated learning in teacher education with a participatory democratic orientation can develop ‘critical self-awareness’ in culturally diverse settings (Seidl, 2012, p. 2136). Mirra and Morrell (2011) use the concept of critical democracy developmentally for education students becoming teacher-activist citizens. This approach questions ‘the applicability of individualistic models of citizenship in a social context in which citizens occupy positions on opposite sides of huge chasms of race- or class-based inequality’ (p. 412). Teacher educators McInerney, Smyth, and Down (2011) provide an example of the development of a critical democracy disposition through a community-based model that presented ‘relevant knowledge and experiences to participate actively in democratic processes … to connect local issues to global environmental, financial and social concerns, such as climate change, water scarcity, poverty and trade’ (pp. 4, 11). This approach shares characteristics with what Shor (Shor & Freire, 1987) noted as situated learning in which ‘the learning process’ is located ‘in the actual conditions of each group’ (p. 26). In such participatory community experiences, Mirra
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and Morrell (2011) noted the importance of providing teachers with the necessary skills to engage in critical democracy (see also Stenhouse & Jarrett, 2012). Application of a funds-of-knowledge strategy in situated learning can help culturally responsive teachers learn more about their students, apply this new cultural knowledge to the curriculum, and discover the heterogeneity within cultural groups (Moll & González, 2004). Saathoff (2015) reports how preservice teachers at the University of Arizona applied a funds-of-knowledge approach. Education students used ‘critical questioning skills … to be able to examine situations in both schools and society through a critical lens’ in learning about the history of their region in combination. This methodology involved the essential step of teacher candidates democratically connecting with Mexican American communities through home visits (p. 38). Whether in or out of an education classroom, though, such experiences often result in cognitive dissonance, a topic that follows.
Critical Engagement with Cognitive Dissonance In a study of preservice teachers, Barrón (2008) found how ‘cognitive dissonance created discomfort and destabilized their existing beliefs and allowed the participants to sustain a heightened consciousness about race, culture, and oppression and actively seek information about these topics’ (p. 197). Barrón set conditions so that ‘cognitive dissonance and its accompanying discomfort created opportunities for the participants to shift some of their earlier beliefs’ (p. 197). However, when teacher educators do not anticipate cognitive dissonance as a formative outcome of critical pedagogy, teacher candidates can become alienated and disengage (see Allen & Rossatto, 2009). Cutri and Whiting (2015) concluded that ‘such emotional work is a structural characteristic of multicultural teacher education’ although ‘emotional work in academia often remains invisible but is also disincentivized’ (p. 1022). In a two-year ethnographic study of teachers in three Greek-Cypriot primary schools with an increasing culturally diverse student population, Zembylas (2010) analyzed ‘teachers’ emotional experience’ in culturally diverse schools (p. 707). Given unresolved and negative emotional reactions of both teachers and administrators, Zembylas recommended that critical teacher education engage an ‘ethic of discomfort’ that purposefully focuses on how uncomfortable ‘emotions and affects can be transformed into productive, positive expressions that promote social justice’ (p. 714, emphasis added). Zembylas’ research found that an ethic of discomfort ‘can illuminate the role of emotions and affects in sustaining and dismantling structures of power, privilege, racism, and oppression’ (p. 715). In this way preservice and inservice teachers ‘can use their own discomfort to create empathy’ to open up ‘the possibility of greater hope in teaching’ ethnically diverse student populations (p. 715; also De La Mare, 2014). In a doctoral program for teacher educators, Vescio, Bondy, and Poekert (2009)
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proactively introduced cognitive dissonance in their first class meeting. Using a strategy ‘to help students make connections between familiar and unfamiliar concepts’ by questioning their initial assumptions, these prospective teacher educators reported ‘the normalization of a sense of dissonance and conflict as an essential feature of the course pedagogy’ (pp. 15, 16).
IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN CRITICAL TEACHER EDUCATION Grant and Zwier (2011) call on teacher education to help preservice teachers to ‘embody an intersectionally-aware teacher identity’ that addresses race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and class (pp. 186–187). To meet this expectation, critical teacher education uses intersectionality as a methodological frame to provide more complex explanations for the production of identities when addressed within ‘the larger ideological structures in which subjects, problems, and solutions were framed’ (Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013, p. 791). Critical multicultural education also incorporates poststructuralism for its questioning of essentialized identities. According to poststructuralism, differences in identities are never fixed but are contingent on particular temporal and spatial differences (Belsey, 2013). Poststructuralism includes deconstruction, a branch of an analysis designed to reveal layers or structures of meaning that were previously masked as unified and singular although a conclusive meaning is illusionary (Benjamin, 2013). In using approaches reflective of poststructuralism, Shim (2014) notes that ‘conversations between critical multicultural education and psychoanalysis – two seemingly incompatible perspectives in which one advocates rational critical thinking while the other emphasizes the importance of unconscious – does matter’ (p. 134), a process embedded in critical personal narratives.
Critical Personal Narratives Critical personal narratives are used to engage education students in learning about their own identity constructions and histories. The process of writing critical autoethnographies can involve a variety of multicultural topics, such as issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class. This writing process dialectically deconstructs and reconstructs a teacher’s identity and in turn aids teachers to better locate themselves within contested diversity issues (Vavrus, 2002, 2015). Critical reflection in the form of personal narratives also involves a curriculum with critical texts that education students analyze through dialogue and supplemental lectures (Camp & Oesterreich, 2010; Danielewizc, 2001; Dervin & Hahl, 2015). Finnish teacher educators Dervin and Hahl (2015) reported that when teacher candidates wrote personal essays, ‘students were sometimes astonished at their own stories of how they had behaved previously and now understood that, for
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example, stereotypes and prejudice can completely change our preconceptions and expectations of people and our behavior and actions toward them’ (p. 107). Among the findings of 250 ‘student teachers’ pre- and post-multicultural autobiographies’ collected over a four-year period, Li’s (2007) analysis found that the cultural identity of teacher candidates was extended ‘to the broader referent groups in multicultural education’ and increased their critical reflections ‘about themselves in solving controversial real-life problems’ (p. 42). Recent research indicates that in general even structured conversations ‘about a memory of personal vulnerability and its relevance to a social issue’ can produce ‘substantive and durable’ prejudice reductions (Paluck, 2016, p. 147). Important in critical perspectives on identity formation is a poststructural concept of how language differentiates and signals that which is not necessary there, the Other, who in relation to dominant subject positions is critically understood ‘as the marginal, the ex-centric, the different’ (Hutcheon, 2013, p. 124). In a study of four critical teacher educators who used intersectionality and contested identity formation, Attwood’s subjects (2011) began with a poststructural assumption that ‘[i]dentity is dynamic, multifaceted, and shaped at the intersection of family, social group membership (gender, race, class, sexual orientation), history, and politics’ (p. 125), issues considered next.
Contested Racial and Ethnic Identities In the process of analyzing contested racial and ethnic identities, critical teacher education critiques post-racial and color-blind discourse that can mask politically constructed racial identities (Crenshaw, 1998) and how color-blindness can negatively affect educational experiences of racially and ethnically diverse populations of children and youth. For example, critical teacher educators who Attwood (2011) studied stated that a goal for their students was an understanding that ‘[r]ace is a historically and socially constructed system that gives social power to whites as a group’ (p. 125). Critical teacher education prepares teachers to be color conscious by recognizing the discriminatory social production of racial and ethnic identities so that teachers can then move beyond skin-color identification to provide an equity-centered education (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016; Valli, 1995). McLaren and Farahmandpur (2005) caution, however, that when teacher education is silent about the racialized roots of the nation-state in promoting a common culture, programs can in effect ‘legitimize the social order’ through an assimilationist color-blind concept of ‘racial harmony and a national identity’ for ‘marginalized cultures’ (p. 114). Critical multicultural teacher education instead serves as an alternative to mainstream approaches that can essentialize and exotify identities of immigrants and students of color in the absence of critical historical perspectives on the residual effects of colonialism on identity constructions (Poulter, Riitaoja, & Kuusisto, 2016), a decolonial topic discussed later in this chapter.
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Gender and Sexual Identities Critical teacher education deconstructs patriarchy – a system of heteronormative male dominance (Whisnant, 2013) – for its oppressive effects on gender and sexual identity expressions. Patriarchy in mainstream teacher education is associated with (a) limits on non-dominant expressions of gender and sexuality and (b) a form of policing as to what is considered appropriate for a teacher to discuss with students in regards to gender and sexual identities (Vavrus, 2015). A study of Canadian teachers who expressed a commitment to inclusive education nevertheless revealed a reluctance to address student gender and sexual identities. Participants in this study observed that their preservice education and inservice training lacked preparation to attend to gender and sexual identities (Malins, 2016; also Wickens & Sandlin, 2010). Critical multicultural teacher educators who provide education students opportunities to reflect on their own construction of gender and sexual identities can assist teachers to constructively engage with young people with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations (Vavrus, 2009). Nevertheless, in a program that was a proponent of social justice, critical teacher educator Schieble (2012) encountered strong resistance to transforming preservice teacher patriarchal dispositions of sexual identity, stating that her ‘findings are disturbing to me as a teacher educator who strives to interrupt racist, classist, sexist, and homophobic discourses that permeate the educational system writ large’ (p. 219). When not provided a critical background in the construction of patriarchy, for example, men who enter teacher education can hold to an identity in masculinity that limits their engagement in effective pedagogical practices perceived as ‘feminine’ (Weaver-Hightower, 2011). Kreitz-Sandberg’s (2013) research on Swedish teacher educators highlighted that within the curriculum ‘a gender perspective is not necessarily perceived as an integrated part of teacher educators’ course planning’, but rather as an additive element, a condition ‘reflected upon too little in international research’ (pp. 454, 456). To counter the influence of patriarchal ideology, introducing teachers to the concept of queering the curriculum can be advantageous, especially with the aim of supporting mainstream school youth with non-dominant sexual and gender identifications (e.g., Asher, 2007; MacIntosh, 2007; Zacko-Smith & Smith, 2010). The application of queer theory serves as ‘an inquiry into the nature and workings of heteronormativity, along with the “queer” sexualities that heteronormativity produces by stigmatizing, silencing and or proscribing them’ (Cameron & Kulick, 2006, p. 10). This particular critical approach points to the necessity of teacher education assisting teachers in the design of school-wide policies that name and act to eliminate sources of group-based discrimination (Loutzenheiser & Moore, 2009).
Religious Identities Teacher education research is limited in how dominant and non-dominant religious identities and topics are addressed, including how religion intersects with other
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identities. In a Canadian study examining the extent to which elementary teachers address gender and sexuality, Malins (2016) found that teachers restricted their curriculum because they were ‘sensitive … to not disrupt[ing] religious foundations that had been established at home’ (p. 134). When citizenship education was included in Denmark’s educational policy in 2007, the state required a new teacher education course: ‘Christianity studies, life enlightenment and citizenship’ (Haas, 2008, p. 59). In making a ‘citizenship agenda of the new subject of Danish teacher education’, the aim of policy makers, according to Haas (2008), was the ‘assimilation of Muslims and the ethnic “others” into the Christian Danish nation’ (p. 68). Critical pedagogy remains a methodology for teacher education to deconstruct nationalistic ‘collective religiosity’ (Jaime-Castillo, Fernandez, Valiente, & Mayrl, 2016) of a dominant Judeo-Christian identity for how it restricts non-dominant religious expressions, especially in an era of Islamophobia or ‘anti-Muslim racism’ (Bayrakli & Hafez, 2015, p. 7). Even when critical teacher education deconstructs Judeo-Christian nationalistic discourse and introduces teachers to curricular resources about Islam and Arab cultures, it remains uncertain whether the actual acceptance and implementation of these materials in public schools will overcome Islamophobia (King, 2012).
Neoliberal Effects on Identity Critical teacher education emphasizes how neoliberal policies affect teacher education governance and shape teacher and student identities. Economist Kotz (2015) explains that neoliberalism is a ‘particular institutional form of capitalism’ that promotes ‘privatization’ based on ‘a core principle … that the government is inherently inefficient while private for-profit companies are optimally efficient’ (pp. 9, 12, 22). Internationally teacher education has experienced a ‘shift to a knowledge society with neoliberal economics as the dominant paradigm of education policy and practice [that] comprises the larger historical and social context in which teacher preparation is currently situated’ (CochranSmith & Villegas, 2015, p. 9, emphasis added). Contrary to the aims of critical intercultural and multicultural teacher education, the neoliberal educational policy of the European Commission’s strategic plan Europe 2020 ‘conceives of education as a means to produce graduates capable of producing business benefits in an increasingly competitive market … rather than promot[ing] democratic social values that are critical and participatory’ (Muñoz, 2015, p. 36) Identity formation of ‘the neoliberal individual is in essence an individual free from the constraints of social, economic, historical, institutional, and cultural structures’, an identity reducible to a ‘free’ market commodity (Au, 2016, p. 48). Besides eroding democratic governance in teacher education programs, the effects of neoliberalism can marginalize critical multicultural courses in favor of shaping teacher identities to match the increased surveillance of school children and teachers themselves through high-stakes testing and classroom management techniques (Au, 2016; Hope, 2015). Neoliberal identity discourse of
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teacher ‘professionalism’ contrasts with how ‘practice often reflects the reality of greater external controls and surveillance … which erodes teachers’ abilities to exercise their judgment in the classroom’ (Zeichner, 2010, p. 1546). In this neoliberal context, McLaren (1989, 1994, 2015) has consistently argued that critical multiculturalism does not adequately incorporate the negative effects of capitalism in creating academic differentials. He advocates instead for an anti-capitalist political economy alternative approach under various nomenclatures – critical and resistance multiculturalism, revolutionary multiculturalism, and revolutionary critical pedagogy. McLaren’s position is congruent with Freire’s (1970) revolutionary advocacy for social relations based on economic cooperation and redistribution rather than capitalistic competition. Drawing from Freire, Apple (2013) cautions that ‘any work in education that is not grounded in these [political economy] realities may turn out to be one more act of colonization’ (p. 35), a topic discussed next.
REORIENTING CRITICAL TEACHER EDUCATION THROUGH DECOLONIALISM Peruvian sociologist Quijano (2000), who formulated the concept of coloniality of power, explains, ‘What is termed globalization is the culmination of a process that began with the constitution of America and colonial/modern Eurocentered capitalism as a new global power’ (p. 533). The process of Eurocentrism pronounced colonized people as existing outside of history and knowledge construction and not possessing a history, a coherent culture, and an epistemology worthy of recognition. Mignolo (2011) refers to this origin of Western hegemony as ‘the epistemology of the zero point’ (p. 80, emphasis added). Zero point epistemology of a coloniality of power ‘distorts Indigenous peoples’ self-images and aspirations’ and leads to internalized oppression (Hopkins, 2015, p. 125). Coloniality, therefore, invites decolonial pedagogies that reject structures and discourses associated traditionally with colonialism as relics of the past, as the concepts of postmodern and postcolonial can imply (Marzagora, 2016). According to critical educator De Lissovoy (2015), ‘This means starting from outside the discourses of Eurocentric reasoning, and even its familiar dialects of revolution and recognizing the historical dignity and generativity of indigenous communities, the poor, and the excluded’ (pp. 102–103, emphasis added). The Eurocentric concept of modernity – and therefore modern teacher education (Baker, 2012) – is based on a foundational ‘myth’ that ‘the idea of the history of human civilization as a trajectory … departed from a state of nature and culminated in Europe’ (Quijano, 2000, p. 542). The United Nations (2013) documented the effects of contemporary education as ‘a way of indoctrinating indigenous youth with the dominant culture while denying them access to their indigenous culture’ (p. 6). Correlated with the UN’s observation, Indigenous youth in Mexico, Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand have extremely high drop-out rates from public
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schools in comparison to other ethnic groups (Hopkins, 2015; Tippeconnic & Faircloth, 2010). Hence, because multiculturalism and interculturalism are rooted in Western ways of interpreting the world, Aman (2013) cautions that ‘interculturality in the West may reproduce coloniality by appealing to modernity as a means of achieving global tolerance, as is argued to be the case with other theories of differentiation, such as multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism’ (p. 284). Critical teacher education approaches presented thus far in this chapter approximate engagement with decolonialism. Despite the permeability of trans-historical colonial practices into public education, documented critical approaches toward globalization and coloniality are rare in teacher education (Vavrus, 2002; Zeichner, 2010). Higher education institutional resistance in general can impede the incorporation of a decolonial orientation in the preparation of teachers (Nakata, Nakata, Keech, & Bolt, 2012). Research from Germany and South Africa indicates that a confounding factor is a belief among mainstream teacher educators and education students that they exist outside the effects and practices of coloniality (Glock & Krolak-Schwerdt, 2013; le Roux, 2014). Lopes Cardozo (2015) noted that even when a nation such as Bolivia makes a national commitment to decolonize teacher education, a history of embedded conservatism and coloniality in teacher education programs can remain an institutional barrier. With substantive collaboration between governmental officials and Indigenous and non-Indigenous decolonial educators, however, more accurate representations of Indigenous cultures, histories, and identities in the school curriculum can occur (Dei, 2011; Hopkins, 2015; Nakata et al., 2012). Although such collaboration remains uncommon internationally, an example of a decolonial approach is a New Zealand teacher education program where steps were taken as an equity approach to incorporate the culture and Indigenous language of Maori populations into the curriculum (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016). Penetito (2009) explains this change in orientation as part of a decades-long process of an ‘emerging consensus’ about Maori education that ‘is as much about the healing of past and present injustices as it is about forging paths for a new and better future’ (p. 298). As the Maori example suggests, Indigenous language restoration programs globally are ‘profoundly linked to issues of educational equity’ (McCarty & Nicholas, 2014, p. 107). Other examples of language restoration as an aspect of decolonial teacher education are the Mohawk in Canada and the US, Hawaiians in the Pacific region, and Hopi and Navajo in the US southwest (McCarty & Nicholas, 2014). One of the more robust movements toward a decolonial teacher education is in the US state of Montana where a rewriting of the state’s constitution in 1972 impacted the school curriculum in stating, ‘The state recognizes the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians and is committed to its educational goals to the preservation of their cultural integrity’ (as cited in Deyhle & Comeau, 2009, p. 271). In 1999 the Montana legislature codified the constitutional intent into the American Indian Education for All (IEFA) law (Deyhle & Comeau, 2009). A challenge for Montana teacher education has been a demographic
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condition where most teachers are White and non-Indigenous, and their reactions have ranged from hopeful regarding the possibilities of the IEFA to ‘considerable anxiety, if not outright resistance’ (Hopkins, 2015, p. 159). Decolonial teacher education is best understood overall as a relatively recent 21st-century development. Madden’s (2015) international review of 23 studies of decolonialism in teacher education revealed a developing commitment in teacher preparation responsiveness ‘to the educational needs of Indigenous students and communities’ (p. 2). In this comprehensive review, Madden identified ‘four pedagogical pathways that reflect the diversity of theories and approaches being utilized to engage teachers in university-based Indigenous education’ (p. 3): 1 2 3 4
‘Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching’; ‘Pedagogy for decolonizing’; ‘Indigenous and anti-racist education’; and ‘Indigenous and place-based education’ (see pp. 3–12).
With the exception of Indigenous teaching models, the other pathways ‘have theoretical roots in a critical paradigm’ (p. 12). The future status of this evolving critical approach to teacher education is captured by Madden’s conclusion: ‘How this theory building may aid in (analysis of) teaching across difference both within and beyond the boundary of Indigenous/non-Indigenous is also an area that has been marked for further attention’ (p. 13).
CLOSING COMMENT Critical multicultural and decolonial education exists in a curricular borderland of ‘pedagogies in creating classrooms where social justice is the foundation and deconstruction of dominant ideologies is the goal’ (Hardee et al., 2012, p. 217). The fusion of decolonialism and critical multiculturalism can offer theorists and practitioners a set of critical lenses to envision future teachers capable of deconstructing standard epistemologies and challenging institutional systems of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class (De Lissovoy, 2015; Madden, 2015). Teacher education approaches that incorporate critical multiculturalism and decolonialism can serve the development of teachers who can work alongside historically marginalized young people – regardless of their specific socially produced identities – to resist and overcome the oppression these students regularly experience in and out of schools.
REFERENCES Alleman-Ghionda, C. (2012). Intercultural education. In J.A. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 2, pp. 1212–1217). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Allen, R.L., & Rossatto, C.A. (2009). Does critical pedagogy work with privileged students? Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(1),163–180. Aman, R. (2013). Bridging the gap to those who lack: Intercultural education in the light of modernity and the shadow of coloniality. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(2), 279–297. doi: 10.1080/14681366.2012.759139. Apple, M.W. (2013). Can Education Change Society? New York: Routledge. Asher, N. (2007). Made in the (multicultural) USA: Unpacking tensions of race, culture, gender, and sexuality in education. Educational Researcher, 36(2), 65–73. Attwood, P.F. (2011). The power of collaboration: Learning to teach antiracist content. Multicultural Perspectives, 13(3), 122–129. doi: 10.1080/15210960.2011.594373. Au, W. (2012). Critical Curriculum Studies: Education, Consciousness, and the Politics of Knowing. New York: Routledge. Au, W. (2016). Meritocracy 2.0: High-stakes, standardized testing as a racial project of neoliberal multiculturalism. Educational Policy, 30(1): 39–62. doi:10.1177/0895904815614916. Au, W., & Apple, M.W. (2009). Rethinking reproduction: Neo-Marxism in critical education theory. In M.W. Apple, W. Au, & L.A. Gandin (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (pp. 83–95). New York: Routledge. Baker, M. (2012). Modernity/coloniality and Eurocentric education: Towards a post-Occidental selfunderstanding of the present. Policy Futures in Education, 10(1), 4–22. Banks, J.A. (1993). Multicultural education: Characteristics and goals. In J.A. Banks & C.A.M. Banks (Eds), Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (2nd edn) (pp. 3–28). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Banks, J.A., Suárez-Orozco, M.M., & Ben-Peretz, M. (Eds) (2016). Global Migration, Diversity, and Civic Education: Improving Policy and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Barrón, N.L. (2008). Reflections beneath the veil: Mainstream preservice teachers (dis)covering their cultural identities. In L.I. Bartolomé (Ed.), Ideologies in Education: Unmasking the Trap of Teacher Neutrality (pp. 181–205). New York: Peter Lang. Bartolomé, L.I. (2010). Preparing to teach newcomer students: The significance of critical pedagogy and the study of ideology in teacher education. National Society for the Study of Education, 109(2), 505–526. Bayrakli, E., & Hafez, F. (2015). Introduction. In E. Bayrakli & F. Hafez (Eds), European Islamophobia Report, 2015 (pp. 5–8). Istanbul: Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research. Retrieved from http://www.islamophobiaeurope.com/reports/2015/en/EIR_2015.pdf Belsey, C. (2013). Poststructuralism. In P. Wake & S. Malpas (Eds), The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory (2nd edn) (pp. 51–61). London: Routledge. Benjamin, A. (2013). Deconstruction. In P. Wake & S. Malpas (Eds), The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory (2nd edn) (pp. 87–95). London: Routledge. Bennett, C.I. (2012). Multicultural teacher education. In J. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 3, pp. 1564–1569). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cameron, D., & Kulick, D. (2006). General introduction. In D. Cameron & D. Kulick (Eds), The Language and Sexuality Reader (pp. 1–12). New York: Routledge. Camp, E.M., & Oesterreich, H.A. (2010). Uncommon teaching in commonsense times: A case study of a critical multicultural educator and the academic success of diverse student populations. Multicultural Education, 17(2), 20–26. Carrigan, N., Sanders, M., & Pourdavood, R.G. (2005). Racism and ethnocentrism: Social representation of preservice teachers in the context of multi- and intercultural education. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 4(3), 1–17. Cartwright, P., & Noone, L. (2006). Critical imagination: A pedagogy for engaging pre-service teachers in the university classroom. College Quarterly, 9(4), n.p. Cho, S., Crenshaw, K.M., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, application, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 785–810. Cochran-Smith, M., & Villegas, A.M. (2015). Framing teacher preparation research: An overview of the field, part I. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1): 7–20.
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Cochran-Smith, M., Ell, F., Grudnoff, L., Haigh, M., Hill, M., & Ludlow, L. (2016). Initial teacher education: What does it take to put equity at the center? Teaching and Teacher Education, 57, 67–78. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2016.03.006. Cochran-Smith, M., Villegas, A.M., Abrams, L., Chavez-Moreno, L., Mills, T., & Stern, R. (2015). Critiquing teacher preparation research: An overview of the field, part II. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2): 109–121. Crenshaw, K.W. (1998). Color blindness, history, and the law. In W. Lubiano (Ed.), The House that Race Built (pp. 280–288). New York: Vintage Books. Cutri, R.M., & Whiting, E.F. (2015). The emotional work of discomfort and vulnerability in multicultural education. Teachers and Teaching, 21(8), 1010–1025. doi: 10.1080/13540602.2015.1005869. Danielewicz, J. (2001). Teaching Selves: Identity, Pedagogy, and Teacher Education. Albany: State University of New York Press. Darder, A., Baltodano, M., & Torres, R.D. (2003). Critical pedagogy: An introduction. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R.D. Torres (Eds), The Critical Pedagogy Reader. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. De Jesús, A. (2012). Cultural competence. In J. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 1, pp. 504–505). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. De La Mare, D.M. (2014). Communicating for diversity: Using teacher discussion groups to transform multicultural education. The Social Studies, 105, 138–144. doi: 10.1080/00377996.2013.859118. De Lissovoy, N. (2015). Education and Emancipation in the Neoliberal Era: Being, Teaching, and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dei, D.J.S. (Ed.) (2011). Indigenous Philosophies and Critical Education: A Reader. New York: Peter Lang. Delgado, R. (1995). Introduction. In R. Delgado (Ed.), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (pp. xiii–xvi). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Dervin, F., & Hahl, K. (2015). Developing a portfolio of intercultural competencies in teacher education: The case of a Finnish international programme. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59(1), 95–109. doi: 10.1080/00313831.2014.904413. Dervin, F., & Tournebise, C. (2013). Turbulence in intercultural communication education (ICE): Does it affect higher education? Intercultural Education, 24(6), 532–543. doi:10.1080/14675986.2013.866935. Deyhle, D., & Comeau, K.G. (2009). Connecting the circle in American Indian education. In J. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education (pp. 265–287). New York: Routledge. Durden, T.R., & Truscott, D.M. (2013). Critical reflectivity and the development of new culturally relevant teachers. Multicultural Perspectives, 15(2), 73–80. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (M.B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Seabury Press. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (2nd edn). New York: Teachers College Press. Glock, S., & Krolak-Schwerdt, S. (2013). Does nationality matter? The impact of stereotypical expectations on student teachers’ judgments. Social Psychology of Education, 16(1): 111–127. Grant, C.A., & Sleeter, C.E. (1993). Race, class, gender, and disability in the classroom. In J.A. Banks & C.A.M. Banks (Eds), Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (2nd edn) (pp. 48–67). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Grant, C.A., & Zwier, E. (2011). Intersectionality and student outcomes: Sharpening the struggle against racism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, nationalism, and linguistic, religious, and geographical discrimination in teaching and learning. Multicultural Perspectives, 13(4), 181–188. Haas, C. (2008). Citizenship education in Denmark: Reinventing the nation and/or conducting multiculturalism(s)? London Review of Education, 6(1), 59–69. doi:10.1080/14748460801889902. Hardee, S.C., Thompson, C.M., Jennings, L.B., Aragon, A., & Brantmeier, E.J. (2012). Teaching in the borderland: Critical practices in foundations courses. Teaching Education, 23(2): 215–234, doi:10.1080/ 10476210.2012.668672 Heilbroner, R.L. (1980). Marxism: For and Against. New York: W.W. Norton. Hope, A. (2105). Governmentality and the ‘selling’ of school surveillance devices. The Sociological Review, 63, 840–857. doi:10.1111/1467-954X.12279.
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Hopkins, J. (2015). Conversations that Matter: Decolonizing the Inclusive Discourse of American Indian Education Reform. Unpublished dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle. Howard, T.C. (2012). Culturally responsive pedagogy. In J. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 1, pp. 549–552). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Howard, T.C., & Aleman, G.R. (2008). Teacher capacity for diverse learners. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, & D.J. McIntyre (Eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (3rd edn) (pp. 157–174). New York: Routledge. Hutcheon, L. (2013). Postmodernism. In P. Wake & S. Malpas (Eds), The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory (2nd edn) (pp. 120–130). London: Routledge. Jaime-Castillo, A.M., Fernandez, J.J., Valiente, C., & Mayrl, D. (2016). Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990–2008. Social Science Research, 57, 17–30. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.01.009. Johnson, R. (2007). Dominant discourse and teacher education: Current curriculum or curriculum remembered? Asian-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 35(4), 351–365. Kellner, D. (2005). Critical theory. In M.C. Horowitz (Ed.), New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (vol. 2, pp. 507–511). Detroit: Charles Scribner Sons. Retrieved from Gale Virtual Reference Library. King, E.W. (2012). Islamophobia in US society and schools, recognizing and countering. In J.A. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 2, pp. 1281–1284). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Koopmans, R. (2013). Multiculturalism and immigration: A contested field of cross-national comparison. Annual Review of Sociology, 39: 147–169. Kotz, D.M. (2015). The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kreitz-Sandberg, S. (2013). Gender inclusion and horizontal gender segregation: Stakeholders’ strategies and dilemmas in Swedish teachers’ education. Gender and Education, 25(4), 444–465. doi:10.1080/ 09540253.2013.772566. Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). New directions in multicultural education. In J.A. Banks & A.M. Banks (Eds), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (2nd edn) (pp. 50–64). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. le Roux, A. (2014). ‘We were not part of apartheid’: Rationalisations used by four white pre-service teachers to make sense of race and their own racial identities. South African Journal of Education, 34(2): 1–16. Li, X. (2007). Multiculturalize teacher identity: A critical descriptive narrative. Multicultural Education, 14(4), 37–44. Liggett, T. (2011) Critical multicultural education and teacher sense of agency. Teaching Education, 22(2), 185–197. doi: 10.1080/10476210.2011.566603. Lopes Cardozo, M.T.A. (2015). Bolivian teachers’ agency: Soldiers of liberation or guards of coloniality and continuation? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(4). doi.10.4507/epaa.v23.1713. Loutzenheiser, L.W., & Moore, S.D.M. (2009). Safe schools, sexuality, and critical education. In M.W. Apple, W. Au, & L.A. Gandin (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (pp. 150–162). New York: Routledge. MacIntosh, L. (2007). Does anyone have a Band-Aid? Anti-homophobia discourses and pedagogical impossibilities. Educational Studies, 41(1), 33–43. Madden, B. (2015). Pedagogical pathways for Indigenous education with/in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 1–15. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2015.05.005. Malins, P. (2016) How inclusive is ‘inclusive education’ in the Ontario elementary classroom? Teachers talk about addressing diverse gender and sexual identities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 128–138. Marx, K. (1973). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. In R.C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (pp. 52–106). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (originally published in 1932). Marzagora, S. (2016). The humanism of reconstruction: African intellectuals, decolonial critical theory and the opposition to the ‘posts’ (postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism). Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(2), 161–178, doi:10.1080/13696815.2016.1152462.
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McCarty, T.L., & Nicholas, S.E. (2014). Reclaiming Indigenous languages: A reconsideration of the roles and responsibilities of schools. In K.M. Borman, T.G. Wiley, D.R. Garcia, & A.B. Danzig (Eds), Review of Research in Education (vol. 38, pp. 106–136). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. McInerney, P., Smyth, J., & Down, B. (2011). ‘Coming to a place near you?’ the politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 3–16. McLaren, P. (1989). Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education. New York: Longman. McLaren, P. (1994). White terror and oppositional agency: Towards a critical multiculturalism. In D.T. Goldberg (Ed.), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (pp. 45–74). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. McLaren, P. (2015). Pedagogy of Insurrection: From Resurrection to Revolution. New York: Peter Lang. McLaren, P., & Farahmandpur, R. (2005). Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Mignolo, W.D. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mirra, N., & Morrell, E. (2011). Teachers as civic agents: Toward a critical democratic theory of urban teacher development. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 408–420. Moll, L., & González, N. (2004). Engaging life: A funds-of-knowledge approach to multicultural education. In J.A. Banks & C.A.M. Banks (Eds), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (2nd edn) (pp. 699–715). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Morales, J.A., & Holguín, B.R. (2011). Fostering skills to enhance critical educators: A pedagogical proposal for pre-service teachers. HOW: A Colombian Journal for Teachers of English, 18, 169–197. Muñoz, R.A. (2015). European education policy: A historical and critical approach to understanding the impact of neoliberalism in Europe. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 13(1): 19–42. Retrieved from http://www.jceps.com/archives/2454 Nakata, N.M., Nakata, V., Keech, S., & Bolt, R. (2012). Decolonial goals and pedagogies for Indigenous studies. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 120–140. Retrieved from http:// decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18628 Nieto, S. (2009). Multicultural education in the United States: Historical realities, ongoing challenges, and transformative possibilities. In J. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education (pp. 79–95). New York: Routledge. Paluck, E.L. (2016). How to overcome prejudice. Science, 352(6282), 147. Penetito, W. (2009). The struggle to educate the Maori in New Zealand. In J. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education (pp. 288–300). New York: Routledge. Popkewitz, T.S. (1999). Introduction: Critical traditions, modernisms, and the ‘posts’. In T.S. Popkewitz & L. Fendler (Eds), Critical Theories in Education: Changing Terrains of Knowledge and Politics (pp. 1–13). New York: Routledge. Poulter, S., Riitaoja, A., & Kuusisto, A. (2016). Thinking multicultural education ‘otherwise’ – from a secularist construction towards a plurality of epistemologies and worldviews. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 14(1), 68–86, doi:10.1080/14767724.2014.989964. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepentla: Views from the South, 1(3): 533–580. Retrieved from http://www.unc.edu/∼aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf Saathoff, S.D. (2015). Funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth: Exploring how pre-service teachers can work effectively with Mexican and Mexican American students. Critical Questions in Education, 6(1), 30–40. Schieble, M. (2012). A critical discourse analysis of teachers’ views on LGBT literature. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 33(2), 207–222. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2011.620758. Seidl, B. (2012). Teacher preparation pedagogy: Community-based. In J.A. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 4, pp. 2135–2136). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Shim, J.M. (2014). Multicultural education as an emotional situation: Practice encountering the unexpected in teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(1), 116–137. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Sleeter, C.E. (2012). Critical race theory and education. In J.A. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (vol. 1, pp. 490–494). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stenhouse, V.L., & Jarrett, O.S. (2012). In the service of learning and activism: Service learning, critical pedagogy, and the problem solution project. Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter, 51–76. Tippeconnic, J.W., & Faircloth, S.C. (2010). The education of Indigenous students. In P. Peterson, E. Baker, & B. McGaw (Eds), International Encyclopedia of Education (3rd edn) (pp. 661–666). Retrieved from ScienceDirect database. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-044894-7.00123-8. United Nations. (2013). Indigenous Youth: Identity, Challenges and Hope. Social and Economic Council, March 12. Retrieved from https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/indigenous-youth-un-identitychallenges-and-hopes Valli, L. (1995). The dilemma of race: Learning to be color blind and color conscious. Journal of Teacher Education, 46(2), 120–129. Vavrus, M. (2002). Transforming the Multicultural Education of Teachers: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Vavrus, M. (2008). Culturally responsive teaching. In T.L. Good (Ed.), 21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook (vol. 2, pp. 49–57), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Vavrus, M. (2009). Sexuality, schooling, and teacher identity formation: A critical pedagogy for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3), 383–390. Vavrus, M. (2015). Diversity and Education: A Critical Multicultural Approach. New York: Teachers College Press. Vescio, V., Bondy, E., and Poekert, P.E. (2009). Preparing multicultural teacher educators: Toward a pedagogy of transformation. Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(2), 5–24. Weaver-Hightower, M.B. (2011). Male preservice teachers and discouragement from teaching. Journal of Men’s Studies, 19(2), 97–115. doi:10.3149/jms.1902.97. Whisnant, R. (2013). Feminist perspectives on rape. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/feminism-rape/ Wickens, C.M., & Sandlin, J.A. (2010). Homophobia and heterosexism in a college of education: A culture of fear, a culture of silence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(6), 651–670. doi:10.1080/09518390903551035. Yang, Y., & Montgomery, D. (2011). Behind cultural competence: The role of causal attribution in multicultural teacher education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(9), 1–21. Zacko-Smith, J.D., & Smith, G.P. (2010). Recognizing and utilizing queer pedagogy: A call for teacher education to reconsider the knowledge base on sexual orientation for teacher education programs. Multicultural Education, 18(1), 2–9. Zeichner, K. (2010). Competition, economic rationalization, increased surveillance, and attacks on diversity: Neo-liberalism and the transformation of teacher education in the US. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26: 1544–1552. Zeichner, K., & Flessner, R. (2009). Educating teachers for critical education. In M.W. Apple, W. Au, & L.A. Gandin (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (pp. 296–311). New York: Routledge. Zembylas, M. (2010). Teachers’ emotional experiences of growing diversity and multiculturalism in schools and the prospects of an ethic of discomfort. Teachers and Teaching, 16(6), 703–716. doi: 10.1080/13540602.2010.517687.
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28 Recruitment and Retention of Traditionally Underrepresented Students in Teacher Education R o l a n d W. M i t c h e l l , S a r a C . Wo o t e n , K e r i i Landry-Thomas and Chaunda A. Mitchell INTRODUCTION The recruitment and retention of teachers from historically underrepresented populations presents one of the most enduring challenges for 21st-century teacher education. Our conceptualization of underrepresented populations refers to those racial and ethnic groups historically excluded from well-funded, White educational spaces through the law, as with Blacks in the USA or South Africa, and those subjected to White schooling as a form of cultural genocide, as with native tribal communities in the USA and Canada. Such historical underrepresentation has affected the demographic makeup of schools themselves to this day, along with the lack of racial and ethnic diversity of teacher education programs. Among the most pronounced issues fueling the recruitment and retention of teachers from historically underrepresented populations are: (1) a shortage of teachers in some regions and a surplus in others; (2) uncertainty about the most impactful approaches for educating teachers to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population; and (3) a lack of clarity about how to provide the best types of support for retaining teachers (Musset, 2010). Educational researcher Eleonora Villegas-Reimers (2003) categorizes these distinct challenges along an overarching continuum of initial teacher education, meaningful induction programs, and ongoing professional development. Further, these elements have to be thought of conjointly – ‘The professional development of teachers is a lifelong process which begins with the initial preparation that teachers receive and continues until retirement’ (Villegas-Reimers, 2003, p. 8). The undergirding
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complexity that the contemporary issue of diversity brings to these challenges is a deep-seated tension concerning the relationship between participation in the international education marketplace, or what economist Gary Becker (1993) termed as the global knowledge economy, juxtaposed against developing an educational system that meets the unique needs of specific communities. Critical considerations of the impact of global economic and political norms on teacher recruitment and retention are imperative (Bowles & Gintis, 2002) given the ways that intersectional oppressions (Crenshaw, 1989) associated with race, nation, class, and gender have impacted on who has access to education (Sleeter, 2003), as well as the implicit/explicit curricular content that structures formal schooling (Watkins, 2001). A hegemonic merger of schooling and global capitalism risks replicating historic power relationships in which a select group of primarily North American and European external nations indirectly control the political and economic systems of other nations – often former colonies (Horowitz de Garcia, Katz-Fishma, Ketchum, & Scott, 2002). Against this geopolitical backdrop, this chapter opens with a brief discussion of globalism’s impact on education to ground our exploration of the importance of recruiting and preparing teachers whose life experiences have equipped them with a particularly rich set of tools for negotiating the political, social, and cultural responsibilities of 21st-century schooling (Collins, 2009; Mitchell & Rosiek, 2006). From there we examine the continuum of latent possibilities and limitations associated with addressing educational equity with a particular focus on the types of knowledge to include in teacher preparation and the reasons that this inclusion of critical content must move beyond surface-level diversity through the recruitment of teachers from underrepresented communities. Specifically, through this chapter we support the establishment of teacher preparation programs where the often overlooked communal wisdom of traditionally underrepresented populations pervades all aspects from recruitment to professional development and continuing education. Finally, this chapter concludes with suggestions for transformational approaches to education that foster engagement with historically underrepresented communities for recruitment and retention purposes.
GOING GLOBAL: TEACHER EDUCATION As historic national boundaries are blurred critical considerations of the impact of education in relation to, as opposed to under the direction of, the global market are essential. Specifically, the recruitment and retention of a diverse teacher population has to be critical of how nation-states that have historically exerted global influence are continuing to do so, and how this marginalization of educational frameworks, voices, epistemologies, and ontological perspectives has been much more efficient in recent times when coupled with globalism.
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Further, we believe that a disproportionate focus on global economy, to the detriment of considerations of how to build more inclusive communities once we bring new groups together, are the root cause of many of the challenges discussed in this portion of the Handbook. Therefore in the upcoming section we will highlight the importance of what we describe as humanizing education to the extent that the technologies affording the opportunity to connect individuals are not confused with the critical insights, experiences, and understandings of the actual people who are the drivers of the vital types of educational engagement needed to support a diverse community of educators.
Humanizing Education Recognition of the challenges educational systems endure as they attempt to balance regional and global influences affords a more nuanced understanding of the significance of 21st-century considerations of the relationship between diversity and schooling. In this increasingly complex environment, teacher preparation programs must shoulder the weight of balancing schooling for a profession and schooling for greater humanity in a manner in which these vitally important aims are not framed as mutually exclusive. Over a century ago philosopher W.E.B. Du Bois famously stated, ‘I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men [and women] carpenters, it is to make carpenters men [and women]’ (1903, p. 9). The ability of technology to breach national boundaries has increased the need for the humanizing aspect of true education that DuBois references. In fact there are numerous indicators that education with a particular focus on cultural diversity is in dire need. In 2011, a gunman opened fire and killed 67 people in Norway. This gunman indicated that he was outraged over the ‘softening of European culture’ and that he believed that the mass immigration of Muslims was threatening Europe’s Christian heritage (Nackstrand, 2013). Also in 2011, France and numerous other European countries implemented a ban on the full-face veil, or niqab. Where the niqab has traditionally been worn by Muslim women for religious purposes, these bans rendered them unable to do so in public (BBC news, 2014). Further, North American public discourse has continually been dominated by discussion on immigration policies and, most recently, the influx of children from Central America (Alba & Foner, 2015). This rush of people fleeing regions destabilized by civil unrest and to regions with more stable municipal bases highlights the necessity of cultural understanding transmitted by education as our world becomes more intimately connected.
Teacher Education in the Midst of Globalization From the advancement of Civics as a state-mandated course of study at the end of the US Civil War as a means to establish a particular type of united citizenry,
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to the William J. Clinton Foundation’s current global initiative to provide civic education to the children of Afghanistan, using education to produce a particular worldview is fairly common. In the wake of these nationalists’ uses of education, teachers around the world are living and working across school landscapes that are being dramatically impacted by globalization, demographic shifts, and economic disparities (Clandinin, Downey, & Huber, 2009; Sleeter, 2001; Taubman, 2007). However, as student populations become more diverse, in many cases the teacher population is becoming less so (Futrell, 1999). For example, the teaching force in North America is overwhelmingly female, White, and middle class. The National Center for Education Statistics (2005) estimates that 85 to 92 percent of the US teaching force is female and White. Research indicates that having an over representation of White middle-class female teachers in an ethnically diverse student population in the US has contributed to a growing cultural gap between teachers and students (Sleeter, 2000). Ryan, Pollock, and Antonelli (2009) found that the rate of elementary and secondary school teachers of color in Canada has declined, while the number of students of color has risen. Other Western countries have also failed to produce a teaching force that has kept pace with an increasingly diverse student population (Goddard, 1995; Howard, 2010). For example, despite an explosion in racial and ethnic diversity since the 1980s, New Zealand’s teaching force has remained overrepresented by those of Anglo-European descent (Howard, 2010). The necessity of a teaching force that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of its community cannot be overstated. The recruitment and retention of non-White teachers must be prioritized, as we discuss below.
JUSTIFYING A DIVERSE TEACHER WORKFORCE Racial realism asserts that despite the fact that race and racism are social constructs, they have ontological impact (Lynn & Parker, 2006). Subsequently, racial realism historicizes the roots and material impact of racial oppression. Racial realism suggests not only that racism has been a global structuring force over the last 500 years (Mills, 1997), but that it is a chronic social malady for the foreseeable future. To many this recognition seems pessimistic and unproductive. However, we would like to push against what we understand to be a Pollyannaish position. Specifically, for people of color who have endured generational racism, there is nothing particularly groundbreaking about this assertion (Marable & Mullings, 2000). However, for teachers from majority communities who enter teaching with the charge of serving an increasingly diverse student population with abstract notions of ‘loving children’, ‘duplicating the experience they had in school’, or ‘fixing children’ (Fasching-Varner & Mitchell, 2013), we find this aspect of racial realism to be extremely important.
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A particularly telling example of this application of racial realism occurred when a well-respected White colleague remarked that he values working with pre-service teachers of color because he rarely has to convince them that oppression exists and plays an active role in schooling. In this assertion we believe the depth of inclusion of the wisdom/knowledge/understanding of underrepresented communities is on full display. Lacking this understanding, pre-service teachers of all races are sent into schools that have historically been structured by race, class, and gender oppression, blind to the impact of these oppressions on their practice and most importantly on the schooling of increasingly diverse student populations. The increased danger that globalism presents to this blindness is the potential erasure of potent local understandings that have served as deep reservoirs of resistance to these pervasive social ills in the name of establishing a one-size-fits-all approach to schooling. The literature sets forth several themes in support of the need for the diversification of the teacher workforce. These themes include the importance of role modeling, cultural synchronicity, and the impact of a general teacher shortage (Ingersoll & May, 2011; Villegas & Irvine, 2010) on student outcomes. Below we will briefly highlight the benefits/challenges posed by each. Role Modeling: Considerations of role modeling provide a compelling case for diversifying the teacher workforce. Research supports the benefit of role modeling, or more specifically the presence of a diverse teaching population, academically and symbolically for both minority and majority student populations. For students of color having a teacher of color increases academic achievement (Bireda et al., 2011; Dee, 2004; Villegas, Strom, & Lucas, 2012). Similarly, an analysis of data from Tennessee’s Project STAR experiment in the US found a correlation between racially similar teachers and improved test scores for both Black and White students (Dee, 2004). Psychologist Claude Steele (Steele and Aronson, 1995) coined the phrase stereotype threat to describe the negative impact that an individual or group may experience relating to their fear that their performance may confirm existing negative perceptions about their group. Dee (2004) argues that teachers of the same ethnicity, race, or gender identity as students from traditionally underrepresented populations have significant influence on countering stereotype threat. Given the current relevance of standardized testing, the ability of a diversified teaching force to ease the impact of stereotype threat as it relates to testing and academic achievement among minority students is critical (Arbuthnot, 2011). Consequently, the relationship is more than simple role modeling; instead teachers from traditionally underrepresented populations add a complexity of perspective and worldview for all students with distinct yet interrelated provisions for minority and majority student populations. Cultural Synchronicity: Beyond role models, Villegas, Strom, and Lucas (2012) argue that minority teachers are needed because they bring with
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them an understanding of the student’s culture and experiences or cultural synchronicity. Achinstein and Ogawa (2012) suggest that minority students and teachers are exposed to the use of language, interactions, and ways of approaching tasks that are different from majority teachers. This insight into racial inequalities and understanding of the cultural background of the students affords minority teachers more credibility than their majority counterparts in the eyes of students from traditionally underrepresented populations (Achinstein & Aguire, 2008; Delpit, 1988). Mitchell and Rosiek (2006) suggest that the search for this perceived credibility should not be read through an essentialist lens which dictates that only teachers of color can teach students of color. Instead, in accord with insider/outsider theories of social science research (Collins, 2009), Mitchell and Rosiek propose that the unique experiences of teaching and learning as a member of a traditionally underrepresented community affords a distinct perspective that when introduced into the practice of skilled educators serves as a valuable pedagogical resource. In general, the literature indicates that minority teachers, even those from different backgrounds, are likely to share in the cultural understandings of their minority students and that these understandings are beneficial to the academic achievement of minority students. Teacher Shortages: Difficulty associated with finding teachers to work in the schools that house predominantly low-income, minority students is well documented (Achinstein et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2008). At the same time, minority teachers are more likely to work in schools that house low-income, minority students (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Quiocho & Rios, 2000). Achinstein et al. (2010) found that minority teachers are more likely to be motivated by ‘humanistic commitment’ to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged students. Thus, increasing the participation of minorities in teacher workplaces will potentially help to alleviate the shortage of teachers in hard to staff schools. However, it is clear that while insights that a minority teacher may possess are an asset to teaching a culturally diverse student body, it is unrealistic to expect teachers of color to develop culturally relevant practices without the benefit of professional preparation (Villegas, Strom, & Lucas, 2012). In instances where we find a diverse teaching force, the needed curriculum is most often lacking or is highly contested when introduced into school curriculums (Brown, 2002; Sleeter & DelgadoBernal, 2004). Consequently, intersecting issues associated with the importance of role modeling, greater cultural synchronicity, and attention to an increasing shortage of minority teachers has led researchers to concur that regardless of the context, the overarching impact of structural and cultural barriers to the recruitment of teachers from traditionally underrepresented populations cannot be overstated (Achinstein et al., 2010; Ingersoll et al., 2011). Below we will briefly outline the most prominent of these structural barriers and highlight specific challenges that they pose.
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STRUCTURAL BARRIERS TO THE RECRUITMENT OF A DIVERSE TEACHING POPULATION Recognition of the importance of the recruitment of teachers from traditionally underrepresented groups is not new. In fact, over the past twenty years, many urban school districts have aggressively focused on minority recruitment (Haberman, 1999). However, globally researchers have found that racism and discrimination continue to present a significant structural barrier to the recruitment of a diverse teaching force (Beynon, Toohey, & Kishor, 1998; Howard, 2010; Wilkins & Lall, 2011). Key among these barriers is that regardless of the fact that educational administrators may eventually recognize the importance of a diverse teaching force, in many cases recruiters know little if anything about the population they are seeking to recruit. This ignorance, steeped in a lack of recognition of the importance of cross-cultural relationship building, undergirds additional structural barriers including inadequate academic preparation for college entrance and graduation (Futrell, 1999), inconsistencies in teacher exam passage rates along racial divisions (Arbuthnot, 2011), and increased opportunities for people of color to pursue other career choices (Gordon, 2002). Below we will briefly elaborate on each of these barriers. Cross-Cultural Relationship Building: The recruitment of Asian American teachers in the US provides a compelling illustration of the challenges associated with establishing a diverse teaching force. As the US educational system has sought to break out of its African American/European American racial binary with a particular focus on the recruitment of Asian American teacher candidates, there has historically been a lack of meaningful cross-cultural relationships between recruiters and potential teacher candidates of Chinese and South Asian ancestry (Beynon, Toohey, & Kishor, 1998). Asian Americans are less attracted to language-dependent careers in the social sciences, communications, and the arts (Gordon, 2002). Howard (2010) describes this phenomenon as being grounded in a fear of not being accepted based on race, language, or other factors that make someone a visible minority. Additionally, Howard (2010) hypothesized that these fears serve as a deterrent to entering the teacher pipeline. These and similar challenges call for an intentional approach to recruitment that draws on theoretical frames that disrupt model minority depictions that homogenize and create an ‘exotic other’ portrayal of Asian Americans (Chou & Feagin, 2008). On the surface, the importance of familiarity with the culture of an individual’s home community, or simply establishing a particular type of relationship for recruitment purposes, should come as little surprise. However, the legacy of colonialism (Fanon, 1967), de-culturalization (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013), cultural subordination (Ani, 1995; Watkins, 2001), and race-based deficit theories (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986), coupled with a tenuous balance between establishing educational systems informed by local ways of knowing juxtaposed
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against neoliberal global forces about curriculum and schooling, necessarily leads to a blind spot. The void caused by this blind spot undergirds a perceived lack of interest by individuals who would potentially serve as teacher candidates, as well as an uneasiness on the part of individuals from traditionally underrepresented communities who do enroll in teacher preparation programs. In the case of the latter, participation in a space that seems only partially welcoming necessitates ongoing concerns about retention and an overall dissatisfaction with their decision to become teachers. Inadequate Academic Preparation: Many minority students attend large, poorly funded and underserved schools (Gordon, 1994; Torres et al., 2004). By attending these schools, minority students are undereducated and often inadequately prepared for higher education and specifically the battery of standardized tests needed to enter teacher education programs (Irvine, 1988, as cited by Madkins, 2011; Taubman, 2007). Research indicates that the use of entrance exams for admissions to schools of education has created a disparity in the number of minority teachers in the US entering into the teacher pipeline (Murnane et al., 1991). Tyler et al. (2011) found that between 2005 and 2009, there was a 41.4 percent pass rate gap between African American and European American test-takers in mathematics and a 40.8 percent pass rate gap between African American and European American test-takers in reading. This disparity may deter some African American teacher candidates from entering the teacher pipeline, at least through traditional channels (Madkins, 2011). Where there has been success at increasing the minority teaching force, Ingersoll and May (2011) found that the attrition rate for minority teachers was higher than for White teachers. Specifically, between 1988 and 2008, the US minority teacher population increased by 96 percent, while the White teacher population increased by 41 percent. Further, the overall percentage of minority teachers increased from 12.4 percent to 16.5 percent. However, from the late 1980s until 2009, the overall teacher turnover rate increased as well, and this was especially true for minority teachers who had a turnover rate of 28 percent. Thus, inadequate preparation for higher education and high attrition rates are no doubt significant factors, but even after diverse candidates enter the teaching pipeline, research indicates that they are often in majority environments in which they are acculturated into the profession in a manner that strips them of vital communal understandings that are sorely needed in contemporary schooling contexts (Fasching-Varner, 2012). In the UK, for example, Wilkins and Lall (2011) found that although there was an increase in Black and minority ethnic recruitment into initial teacher programs, there was a lower completion rate than among White students. The data indicated that while the participants had some positive experiences, they expressed concerns with social isolation, stereotypical bias by White peers, and overt racism. Consequently, it should come as little surprise that the combination of subpar preparation in segregated schools, coupled with hegemonic curriculum and an
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implicitly unwelcoming environment would lead to a disproportionality White female and middle-class group of teacher candidates who make it through the teacher pipeline (Hanushek & Pace, 1995). Increased Opportunities for Other Career Choices: In the early decades of the 21st century, employment options are broader and minority graduates are entering fields they perceive to offer more financial and psychological rewards (Irvine, 1988; Madkins, 2011). Among immigrant populations, while language is one aspect of the cultural barrier, family perceptions are yet another impactful variable (Beynon, Toohey, & Kishor, 1998). The value placed by family and community on high-paying professions has played a part in the lack of minority students in the teacher pipeline. Moreover, while research suggests that pressure from parents to enter a certain profession is a significant factor in minorities not entering the teaching pipeline, there is also an indication that assimilation plays a significant role as well. In fact, Gordon (2002) asserts that immigrants, migrants, and visible ethnic minorities in their attempt to assimilate pick up the norms of the larger society. In instances where society at large does not value teaching, then those looking to assimilate tend not to hold teaching in high regard either. However, beyond declining perceptions of prestige, research suggests countervailing forces associated with time spent in school compared to economic return, paired with a ratcheting up of standards and declining professional autonomy, have collectively made teaching a less appealing profession (Shulman, 2005). The recruitment of teachers from underserved communities is complicated by numerous interrelated racial, cultural, class-based, and linguistic disparities. In this section we have specifically highlighted the impact of racism prior to entering and then once pre-service educators are enrolled in teacher preparation programs, as well as a perceived lack of prestige, inconsistencies associated with the passage of teacher licensure exams, and cultural values that place teaching low on the career totem pole. Contrastingly, in our conclusion we will outline the type of investments, disposition, and critical understandings that we believe are essential for attracting and preparing educators for local and global 21st-century schooling.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? Education equips us with the sort of critical thinking necessary for questioning authority, deconditioning our ‘mental bad habits,’ and dispelling false beliefs and illusory ideas bequeathed to us by society. (Popova, 2014)
The above remarks were penned by Maria Popova concerning John Dewey’s ideas about the purpose of teaching as they relate to natural human curiosity in his highly influential book How We Think (1910). We drew heavily from Dewey’s ideas on this topic to ground our recommendations about the recruitment and retention of traditionally underrepresented students. For Dewey,
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education is a social activity with the potential to inform an individual’s perception of self and society. This consideration of education highlights discernment about the functioning of power and its relationship to the potential wisdom/prejudice passed down from one generation (in this case potentially across global boundaries) to the next, packaged as education. Dewey’s critical sensibilities draw us to two interrelated points. First, that the very nature of determining what to include in formal schooling, or ‘ideas bequeathed to us by society’, is a vital part of equipping students with understandings for negotiating the political, social, and cultural responsibilities of teaching in the 21st century. And next, while increasing the inclusion/retention of underrepresented individuals among the teaching core is important, when a grounding in ‘critical thinking necessary for questioning authority’ is lacking, this more diverse teaching force may potentially take on and perpetuate ‘mental bad habits’ associated with existing societal prejudice. As we have discussed throughout this chapter, a dangerous outcome of the establishment of a geopolitical market culture is that if left unchecked it has the potential to use education as an instrument to achieve human capital objectives in a manner that reproduces the referenced mental bad habits on a scale never before seen. Consequently, contextualizing these two issues, what knowledge to include and how this inclusion moves beyond surface-level diversity, presents specific challenges. We find the most significant of these challenges to be that the dominant paradigm in teacher education undervalues the need for teacher training to be directly informed by the distinct racial, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity of individuals from traditionally underrepresented populations. Further, while we consider Lee Shulman and his colleagues at the Carnegie Foundation’s Scholarship of Teaching movement, in which educators document and collectively build upon the accumulated knowledge of classroom teachers, to be taking a step in the right direction, even their considerations of teacher knowledge remain apolitical for the most part. It is our belief, along with numerous other critical educators (Delpit, 1988; Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2005; Petrovic & Rosiek, 2003), that color/linguistic/socioeconomically blind approaches to teaching rob educators of the tools necessary for communicating their subject-matter expertise in ways that are relevant to the community of students they serve. On a much more profound level, it ignores the fact that education is and always has been a deeply political activity (Freire, 2004), and a deferral to the status quo is actually an affirmation of the hegemony of the existing order. To this end we have compiled the following primary recommendations for addressing these challenges as they relate to the recruitment, training, and continued retention of a diverse teaching core: (1) nurturing/maintaining critical linkages between formal schooling and local social-justice-oriented approaches to practice; (2) resisting the deficit framework of educational inclusivity politics; and (3) avoiding rigid binary approaches to schooling that pit the needs of regional communities against critical global exchanges. Through the remainder of this chapter we will
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briefly comment on each of these points and present illustrations of how they help support the aim of recruiting, training, and retaining a diverse teaching core.
STRATEGIES FOR RECRUITING AND MAINTAINING A DIVERSE TEACHING FORCE We concur with the commonly accepted teacher preparation standards that new teachers need strong subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical skills, and the ability to work with a wide range of students/colleagues/administrators (Shulman & Shulman 2004; Huber & Hutchings, 2005). Additionally, countries like Australia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Norway, and Sweden include the development of research skills in their initial teacher education curriculum as well as in some cases conceptual foundations in the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences, and research-based knowledge of child development (Musset, 2010). However, in an effort to push further for radical divestment from White supremacist understandings of schooling and curriculum, we offer what we consider to be three transformational strategies for fostering relationships between education-as-a-historically-White-institution and historically underrepresented racial and ethnic communities. We understand these strategies to be integral for the recruitment and retention of teachers from such communities.
(1) Nurturing/Maintaining Critical Linkages between Formal Schooling and Local Social-Justice-Oriented Approaches to Practice In the South African context, teachers of color who endured the inequities of segregated schooling during the nation’s Apartheid era provide a vital set of experiential understandings/wisdom concerning equity and education. Just as in our earlier discussion concerning the challenges that US schools are experiencing in recruiting teachers of East Asian descent, before we can recruit, prepare, and retain teachers from diverse backgrounds we need to have meaningful relationships – the types of relationships grounded in mutual respect and exchange where each party values the contribution of the other. Further, most recently in Resegregation as Curriculum: The Meaning of the New Racial Segregation in U.S. Public Schools, Rosiek and Kinslow (2016) document the significance of the ground-level perspective of 21st-century US students who are currently suffering the ills of resegregation because decision makers have failed to incorporate the accumulated knowledge of marginalized communities in a fashion that we are describing. If schooling is to resist its White supremacist history and neoliberal impulses, the epistemologies of those who have been suppressed must be prioritized. Universities in Canada have recently offered an example of what this approach might look like. The University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University have
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mandated indigenous studies as a part of their core curriculum. Students must complete at least one course in indigenous studies to graduate. While there are limitations to this approach, including the lasting impact of one course in permanently altering a student’s perspective, this implementation of such a plan accomplishes a number of goals. First, recognizing the positive impact of indigenous studies for all university students further legitimizes the field of indigenous studies in Canada and creates potential avenues for expansion. Second, exposing all students to non-White, non-Western epistemologies and ontologies shakes, however slightly, the stability of the colonial perspective they have traditionally been taught. Finally, the institutional recognition of the importance of indigenous studies may signal to non-White educators that these are institutions that may prove to be sound academic homes from within which to continue pushing against the neoliberalization and marketization of education. Higher education institutions often have the benefit of being primary sites for such curricular shifts as those taking place in Winnipeg. The larger goal, then, is to bring such shifts to the K-12 educational arena. A mandate for an indigenous studies curriculum, designed and written by indigenous activists and scholars, for primary and secondary students holds tremendous possibilities for instituting the critical linkages necessary for true educational transformation. Such an initiative would signal, just as within higher education institutions, that K-12 schools can be sites of critical engagement and resistance to White colonial narratives. This model of schooling begs the participation and knowledge power of teachers from underrepresented communities and the building of strong ties to social justice approaches to practice.
(2) Resisting the Deficit Framework of Educational Inclusivity Politics When teachers from racially and ethnically underrepresented communities enter the predominantly White realm of schooling, their representation in such spaces is often held up as a marker of inclusivity politics. The distinct epistemological and ontological frameworks of these teachers may be suppressed in favor of a traditional homogenization attitude of White supremacy. Those outsider teachers are pushed to model Whiteness in their modes of dress, curricular approaches, and attitudes toward the broader meanings and purposes of education. Inclusivity in historically White, Western spaces is often predicated on an assumption that those from non-White communities will nevertheless comport with White, ruling-class standards of ‘respectability’. We recognize that discussions of responsibility, and specifically ‘respectability politics’ (Washington, 1904), are hurled at traditionally marginalized communities, and it is asserted that they should ‘pull themselves up by their boot straps’. According to this flawed deficit-based philosophy, regardless of whether it is the Inuit community in Canada or the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, their supposed insistence
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to hold on to primitive worldviews is at the root of their disenfranchisement. Therefore, interaction with an external community – typically in a subordinate position – will improve their stock. However, they are not in a position to determine the nature of interaction or to benefit from democratic participation. However, we would like to turn this analysis on its head and assert that an appeal to critical epistemologies rooted in theoretical traditions of marginalized communities will counter these narratives and establish the type of intercultural footing needed to institute viable global relations. In the case of teachers from underrepresented populations, as members of diverse communities they must be fully included. This inclusion means recognition as influential partners in curriculum development, leadership, and training that moves beyond simply having diverse bodies who have been socialized to assimilate to the norms of majority culture. Therefore the type of inclusion that we are advocating is beyond mere surface-level inclusion. This is the responsibility that we are seeking on the part of educators and administrators, regardless of race, gender, class, or creed – not an empty affirmative-action approach to inclusion that somehow presents integration as recompense for past treatment, but instead a recognition that diversification of bodies and ideas in schooling enhances the learning for all students (Mitchell & Rosiek, 2005).
(3) Encouraging Creative Partnerships that Expand Traditional Boundaries of Schooling In Globalization of Education (2009b), Joel Spring outlines the collaboration between the producers of Sesame Street and the United Nations to broadcast televised educational programing to poor children and children of war. The broadcasts are prepared with special adaptations to local cultures in places like Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Palestine, and Russia. The curriculum is built around a fictional floating island with no national boundaries named Panwapa. According to Spring, ‘Panwapa is a continuation of what the creators of Sesame Street envisioned as a preschool television program that would aid in ending poverty and promote peaceful multicultural societies while teaching basic skills’ (p. 78). The curriculum associated with Panwapa seeks to teach children five basic principles. The fifth and arguably1 most distinct from neoliberal uses of schooling that Panwapa forwards is educating students to have an understanding of and responsiveness to economic disparities. Spring (2009b) describes this critical distinction as promoting ‘An understanding that all people share certain basic needs; that disparities in resources affect individuals’ abilities to fulfill these needs; and that there is a desire to address these disparities’ (p. 78). This example of a creative partnership demonstrates the power of instituting critical linkages with underrepresented communities, social justice frameworks of education, and the rejection of assimilationist principles of schooling. Under such a model, students are taught to be global citizens, and educators are able to
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apply critical analyses to global problems. Such an approach is removed from the more typical ‘world tour’ curricular investment in other countries, in which students are treated to sample foods, styles of dress, and languages of other peoples. While the Sesame Street example used here is on an exceedingly large scale, it nevertheless demonstrates the positive potential of thinking outside the brick and mortar walls of schools and the use of the expert power of teachers to engage in meaningful community building between their students and the larger world. Teachers from underrepresented communities have survived White supremacy in part through the development of intricate networks of resources and alternative literacies. We believe it is well past time to prioritize the engagement of those networks and resources and their application for the education of all students.
CONCLUSION Malleable boundaries between people and communities in the 21st century present never before met challenges and opportunities. In this chapter we considered the role of teacher education programs in socializing educators to participate in this rapidly evolving global community. Singularly educating teachers for participation in the global market absent sufficient inclusion of indigenous knowledge systems is shortsighted. Contrastingly, establishing teacher preparation programs exclusively for indigenous sustainability absent considerations of international exchange is also inadequate. Further, framing the two as mutually exclusive or oppositional categories risks economic, societal, and cultural uncertainty. Consequently, the primary issue that we have sought to engage through this chapter considers the ways that the recruitment and retention of a diverse teaching force forwards innovative approaches for addressing the intersections of these pressing issues. It is our contention that often overlooked yet valuable understandings about negotiating complex settings reside in traditionally marginalized communities. And further, that these critical sensibilities are sorely needed for addressing the aforementioned neoliberal conundrum. As we argued in the chapter, it is our belief that knowledge about negotiating the political, social, and cultural responsibilities of teaching must be interwoven in recruitment, preparation, and ongoing retention efforts. More precisely, the recruitment and comprehensive inclusion of not only the bodies, but also the communal ways of being of traditionally underrepresented communities is the lynchpin for attracting, training, and retaining a more diverse core of teachers whose life experiences are the starting point for the critical engagements that we are advocating. The three areas that we highlighted in the chapter to necessitate these types of engagement are: (1) nurturing/maintaining critical linkages between formal schooling and local social-justice-oriented approaches to practice; (2) resisting the deficit framework of educational inclusivity politics; and (3) encouraging
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creative partnerships that expand traditional boundaries of schooling. Clearly these are starting points and must be tailored to meet the distinct needs of varying educational contexts. However, a dangerous outcome of the establishment of a geopolitical market culture lacking these critical sensibilities is that, if left unchecked, it has the potential to use education as an instrument to achieve human capital objectives in a manner that reproduces historic oppressions.
Note 1 Panwapa’s agenda is to create activist global citizens who get along with others of different cultures and language groups. To this end their outlined goals are: 1) Instilling an awareness of the wider world; 2) Educating citizens who can function in a multicultural and multilingual global society and who understand the worldwide interconnectedness between people; 3) Teaching players the impact of their actions on others and to take responsibility for personal actions; 4) Being an active citizen who participates in solving local and global issues; 5) Understanding of and responsiveness to economic disparities.
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Brown, D. (2002). The role of work and cultural values in occupational choice, satisfaction, and success: A theoretical statement. Journal of Counseling & Development, 80(1), 48. Chossudovsky, M. (2011). Somalia: The real cause of famine. Global Research Center for Research on Globalization, http://www.globalresearch.ca/somalia-the-real-causes-of-famine/25725 Chou, R.S., & Feagin, J.R. (2008). The myth of the model minority: Asian Americans facing racism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Clandinin, D.J., Downey, C.A., & Huber, J. (2009). Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37(2), 141–154. doi:10.1080/13598660902806316. Collins, P.H. (2009). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140, 139–167. Dee, T.S. (2004). Teachers, race, and student achievement in a randomized experiment. Review of Economics & Statistics, 86(1), 195–210. Dee, T.S. (2005). A teacher like me: Does race, ethnicity, or gender matter? The American Economic Review, 95(2), 158. Delpit, L. (2012). ‘Multiplication is for white people’: Raising expectations for other people’s children. New York, NY: The New Press. Delpit, L.D. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280–298. Dibble, N., & Rosiek, J. (2002). White-out: A connection between a teacher’s White identity and her science teaching. International Journal of Educational and the Arts, 5(3). http://www.ijea.org/v3n5/ Douglas, E. (2014). 8 promising practices for recruiting diverse educator talent. Retrieved from Education week. http://blogs.edweek.org/topschooljobs/k-12_talent_manager/2014/09/8_practices_recruiting_ diverse_talent.html Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). The souls of Black folk. New York, NY: The Modern Library. Eurydice. (2004), The teaching profession in Europe: Profile, trends and concerns. Report IV: Keeping teaching attractive for the 21st century. Brussels: Eurydice. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, White masks. New York, NY: Grove. Fasching-Varner, K. (2012). Working through whiteness: Examining White racial identity and profession with pre-service teachers. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Fasching-Varner, K.J., & Mitchell, R. (2013). CRT’s challenge to educator’s articulation of abstract liberal perspectives of purpose. In A. Dixson & M. Lynn (Eds), Handbook of critical race theory in education (pp. 355–367). New York, NY: Routledge. Fordham, S., & Ogbu, J.U. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the ‘burden of “acting white”’. Urban Review, 18, 176–206. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. New York, NY: Second Vintage Books Edition. Futrell, M.H. (1999). Recruiting minority teachers. Educational Leadership, 56(8), 30–33. Freire, Paulo (2004). Pedagogy of indignation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Goddard, J.T. (1995). The ethnocultural preparation of teachers. A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Gordon, J.A. (1994). Why students of color are not entering teaching: Reflections from minority teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 45, 346–353. Gordon, J.A. (2002). Part 1: Advancing the conversation: The color of teaching revisited. Multicultural Perspectives, 4(2), 3–7, doi:10.1207/S15327892MCP0402_2.
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Popova, M. (2014). John Dewey on the true purpose of education and how to harness the power of our natural curiosity. Retrieved from brainpickings https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/19/johndewey-purpose-of-education/ Quiocho, A., & Rios, F. (2000). The power of their presence: Minority group teachers and schooling. Review of Educational Research, 70(4), 485–528. Rosiek, J., & Kinslow, K. (2016). Resegregation as curriculum: The meaning of the new racial segregation in U.S. public schools. New York, NY: Routledge. Ryan, J., Pollock, K., & Antonelli, F. (2009). Teacher diversity in Canada: Leaky pipelines, bottlenecks, and glass ceilings. Canadian Journal of Education, 32(3), 591–617. Shulman, L., & Shulman, J. (2004). How and what teachers learn: A shifting perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(2), 257–271. Shulman, L.S. (2005). To dignify the profession of the teacher: The Carnegie Foundation celebrates 100 years. Change, 37(5): 22–29. Sleeter, C.E. (2000). Epistemological diversity in research on pre-service teacher preparation for historically underserved children. Review of Research in Education, 25, 209–250. Sleeter, C.E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: Research and the overwhelming presence of Whites. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94–106. Sleeter, C.E. (2003). Teaching globalization. Multicultural Perspectives, 5(2), 3–9. Sleeter, C., & Delgado-Bernal, D. (2004). Critical pedagogy, critical race theory, and antiracist education: Implications for multicultural education. In J.A. Banks and C.A. McGee Banks (Eds), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd edn) (pp. 240–258). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Spring, J. (2009a). Deculturalization and the struggle for equity: A brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States (2nd edn). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Spring, J. (2009b). Globalization of education: An introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Steele, C.M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811. Taubman, P. (2007). Teaching by the numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. New York, NY: Routledge Press. Torres, J., Santos, J., Peck, N.L., Cortes, L., & Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Lab at Brown University (2004). Minority teacher recruitment, development, and retention. Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory (LAB). Tuck, E., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2013). Curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 29(1), 72–89. Tyler, L., Whiting, B., Ferguson, S., Eubanks, S., National Education Association, Steinberg, J., Scatton. L., Bassett, K., & Educational Testing Service. (2011). Toward increasing teacher diversity: Targeting support and intervention for teacher licensure candidates. Educational Testing Service. Villegas-Reimers, E. (2003). Teacher professional development: An international review of the literature. Paris: UNESCO, International Institute for Educational Planning. Villegas, A.M., & Irvine, J.J. (2010). Diversifying the teaching force: An examination of major arguments. Urban Review, 42(3), 175–192. Villegas, A.M., Strom, K., & Lucas, T. (2012). Closing the racial/ethnic gap between students of color and their teachers: An elusive goal. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(2), 283–301. Washington, B.T. (1904) A protest against the burnings and lynchings of Negroes. Birmingham Ageherald, February 29. Watkins, W.H. (2001). The White architects of Black education: Ideology and power in America 1865– 1954. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Wilkins, C., & Lall, R. (2011). ‘You’ve got to be tough and I’m trying’: Black and minority ethnic student teachers’ experiences of initial teacher education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 14(3), 365–386. Woodson, C.G, (1988). The mis-education of the Negro (6th edn). Trenton, NJ: Africa Word Press.
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SECTION VI
Learning through Pedagogies in Teacher Education Juanjo Mena
If we accept that teaching is a complex activity, teaching about teaching is, in that sense, doubly complex! (Prestage and Perks, 2003: 1)
In the last decades, research in teacher education has advanced towards empirically based foundations to understand how learning to teach should be better accomplished. Pedagogies of teacher education have emerged to organize knowledge, skills and experiences in order to understand practice and to take up challenges in teaching and teacher education. These pedagogies are ways to respond to the complexities of teaching resulting from singular contexts and unpredictable courses of action. The purpose of this section is to present an overview of the research into the approaches, theories and assumptions that underpin teacher education pedagogies and their impact on teachers’ ways of learning in relation to curriculum, students’ needs and instruction. Teacher education emerges from the sum of teachers’ ideas, beliefs and attitudes about the students, curriculum and teaching (Alexander, 2001). Teacher education is embedded in social, cultural and political contexts and these contexts shape both teacher education pedagogies and the research into teacher education pedagogies. The chapters in Section VI, written by 15 international scholars from different universities around the world, reveal the enduring challenges that shape both
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practical issues and field experiences. Each chapter defines positions, guides research, establishes particular methodological designs and brings divergent interpretations of pedagogies in teacher education situated in knowledge bases in psychological, sociological and educational research. Each chapter both summarizes major learning perspectives in teacher education and echoes a body of evidence from different research trajectories and studies from a range of educational contexts to report major findings and limitations and to propose future directions for teacher education. In Chapter 29 Juanjo Mena, Paul Hennissen and John Loughran present an overview of developmental approaches in teacher education. Those theories have largely focused on exploring teachers’ learning processes and determining how they change over time (a key aspect of learning to teach). Two recurring developmental approaches to teacher learning are the epistemological thinking model (absolutist to relativist notions) and the novel-to-expert model by which teacher learning is assumed to move from lower to higher levels of proficiency (Novice–Beginner–Competent–Proficient–Expert). Major limitations highlight that becoming an expert is a process that requires time and effort, and the acquisition of relativist notions of practice is dependent upon personal developmental processes. In Chapter 30, Fred Korthagen stresses the relevance of situated learning cognition theories for learning to teach in the context of practice. He delimits a clear pedagogical framework to guide teachers’ actions through the ‘realistic approach’, a three-level model (gestalt-schemata-theory) that describes how teachers progressively learn from practice by emphasizing the relation between teacher learning and teacher behavior, where cognitive, emotional and motivational dimensions are at play. The major challenge arises when teacher education programs try to translate models from the theory level to the schema level – backwards direction – to guide pre-service teachers’ actions in practice. He names this level reduction, something particularly relevant to understanding how theories of situated learning can be integrated in teachers’ routines. The transition from learning to teaching is the core of Chapter 31. Gary Harfitt and Cheri Chan position the approaches of constructivist learning theories as ways to understand how multiple teachers’ identities are forged within teacher education programs. Within such theories, becoming a teacher comes through exposure to experiences and carefully designed constructivist activities. The way to bridge theory and practice is by helping pre-service teachers to turn inward to their experiential knowledge (reflection) in those moments during practice that have impact on their personal and professional development. The major challenge stresses the difficulty of guaranteeing professional growth only through reflection and engagement in learning. Chapter 32 highlights the importance of subject matter theories and peda gogical content knowledge (PCK) in teaching. Jan van Driel and Amanda Berry offer an extensive review of studies of teaching and learning practices used in
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teacher education programs to stimulate PCK. Their review leads to an interesting discussion that emphasizes the importance of relating pre-service teachers’ knowledge to their teaching experiences in method courses, fieldwork and school-based supervisions. Limitations to this approach underline that PCK has been narrowly conceptualized and has a static conception. The variety of contexts where PCK is studied along with its ample target population (i.e., graduate/undergraduate students, teachers, teacher educators) makes it difficult to ascertain whether some pedagogical approaches are more helpful than others in promoting PCK. Doron Zinger, Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer describe the importance of teacher pedagogical practices in promoting digital literacy in technologically rich learning environments in Chapter 33. As techno-centrist programs have failed in school contexts, it is now understood that technological pedagogy needs to be grounded in the practitioner (teacher) as well as in the tool (technology). Only by connecting technology with the pedagogy of teacher education is there a balance between teaching theories and teachers’ experiences. They argue for a conceptualization of technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) to argue for a way to make this connection. The use and misuse of digital technology in classrooms is discussed under the challenges of lack of resources such as computers and internet access (first-order barriers) as well as teachers’ attitudes in the use of technology in their classrooms (second-order barriers). Chapter 34 poses an interesting debate about how critical pedagogy is positioned in teacher education. Approaches to the education of teachers over the last forty years have drawn on theoretical traditions arising from varieties of Marxism, feminism, and critical race and queer theories. Viv Ellis and Meg Maguire structure the chapter to serve a threefold purpose: to prove the unattainability of the pedagogical critical approaches in day-to-day teaching realities; to address the critiques of critical pedagogies; and to explore a critical understanding of social justice. One major challenge to this approach is the struggle with the romanticized idea of change that claims social justice. Critical approaches need to openly recognize the inherent power imbalances in social relations in educational systems. Jae Major and Jo-Anne Reid present a conceptualization of teacher education pedagogies in Chapter 35 in order to comprehensively attend to the learning of culturally diverse students. Cultural diversity is a reality, so differences related to social class, ethnicity, culture and language are increasingly present in schools. Equity and cultural sensitivity are the conceptual frames that can reduce the distance between mainstream theories of education and contexts of practice. Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) goes beyond acknowledging diversity and attempts to take action for equal educational opportunities. The authors argue that CRP has frequently been understood simplistically and pre-service students are rarely invited to reconsider socio-political decisions in their practices. Across the seven chapters, I identify three main themes. Firstly, all chapters describe teacher learning according to key aspects of each pedagogy with the
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ultimate purpose of considering what teachers should be prepared for in teacher education programs. Secondly, all chapters embrace the theory–practice divide as a foremost concern and question how to connect theory to practice, that is, how teaching models can better adapt to changing classrooms. The chapters tackle the theory–practice gap debate from different standpoints. Thirdly, the chapters consider a number of puzzles and challenges that arise from these approaches when used as frames to understand teaching practices. Certain limitations such as time and effort, translating theoretical models to teachers’ practice, static theoretical conceptions, power imbalances, and teachers’ attitudes become visible. While the chapters in Section VI point to a clear research direction, that is, the need to articulate a body of valid research-based knowledge around the pedagogies of teaching and learning in order to advance in teacher education, the chapters also draw attention to understanding that learning to teach is not just matter of mirroring concepts and applying decontextualized skills (Britzman, 1991). Learning from experience – and bridging it to the pedagogies of teacher education – is relevant to fully comprehend the nuances of practice. Both ways reduce the gap between what we know and what we do as teacher educators. The absence of learning-to-teaching frameworks may lead to little significant contribution to teacher education. However, relying on multi-pedagogical approaches may provide plausible answers.
REFERENCES Alexander, R.J. (2001). Culture and pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. Britzman, D. (1991). Practice makes practice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Prestage, S. & Perks, P. (2003, February). Towards a pedagogy of teacher education: From a model for teacher transformation. Paper presented at the Third Conference of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME 3), Bellaria, Italy.
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29 Developmental Learning Approaches to Teaching: Stages of Epistemological Thinking and Professional Expertise Juanjo Mena, Paul Hennissen and John Loughran INTRODUCTION Developmental perspectives on teachers’ learning assume a particular view on knowledge and knowing as constructs that change over time. They basically set two principles that neatly distinguish them from other approaches to teaching. First, professional learning is defined as a sequential process that takes time and implies evolution through stages of development. Second, knowledge acquisition occurs while teachers gradually gain expertise from practice; moving from novice to expert. The first principle aligns with the view that knowledge is constructed through one’s own activity (Ammon & Levin, 1993; Piaget, 1970). Teachers move from one developmental stage to another by inferring information from the assignments they perform (i.e., behaviors), which in turn influence their systems of beliefs and thoughts (i.e., attitudes). The second principle invokes sociocultural theories through which support from others may accelerate the process of becoming an expert (Rogoff, 1984; Vygotsky, 1997; Wertsch, 1998) as novice teachers ‘appropriate’ expert teachers’ practical knowledge through a process of internalization (Leontiev, 1981). This chapter explores how teachers’ knowledge is understood when viewed from a developmental perspective through a consideration of development
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theories and models. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the implications for teacher education practices.
TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE AS UNDERSTOOD IN DEVELOPMENTAL TEACHER LEARNING THEORIES From the beginning of the 1980s, the cognitive turn in psychology supported a shift in research focus in teacher education to learning to teach research (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005). Before then learning to teach was viewed as a training problem, and the research imperative was to identify training procedures that impacted pre-service teachers’ behavior. As developmental-oriented perspectives focused attention on the development of pre-service teachers’ professional knowledge, researchers such as Calderhead (1991) and Furlong and Maynard (1995) noted how teachers’ thinking and beliefs were central to their development. Thus, with the pre-service teacher at the center of knowledge construction, learning to teach can be viewed as a form of individual development; the individual developing through stages. Each stage can be characterized by specific patterns, which are reflected in pre-service teachers’ concerns and behaviors and how they think about the same things in different ways at different stages. Although teachers’ professional knowledge has been described in many different ways (Ben-Peretz, 2011; Rosiek & Atkinson, 2005), the tacit nature of that knowledge (Polanyi, 1966) was well recognized as comprising meaningful events, memories, associations and abstract generalized structures recorded in a teacher’s mind. Such ‘chunks of knowledge’ ultimately constitute patterns of knowledge – or schemata (Bruer, 1993) – that give meaning to experiences by chunking them into cognitive items that have been recurrently observed in practice. The collection of memories, associations and generalizations are then interpreted according to different personal assumptions and beliefs (i.e., epistemologies) and ultimately constitute the process of gaining expertise. Developmental theories typically inquire into the mechanisms of teachers’ knowledge construction (i.e., sets of ideas, thoughts, beliefs and arguments) in order to sort them into discrete stages of professional development. The basic assumption of developmental learning approaches to teaching is that professional knowledge is gradually learned from practice contexts. Pre-service teachers need opportunities to experience practice (Grossman, 2005) as eventstructured, context-based and practice-oriented (e.g., Kessels & Korthagen, 2001). Therefore, discussions based on teaching experiences can be seen to have considerable influence on how and what pre-service teachers learn through reflection and mentoring (Feiman-Nemser, 2001), from which their knowledge of practice may be constructed. Mentoring then supports learning about practice through ‘unpacking’ the professional knowledge inherent in their teaching
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experiences. Productive and effective field experiences offer guidance by, and cooperation with, an experienced teacher, who supervises pre-service teachers in their classroom, operating as a mentor (Bartell, 2005). As a consequence, teachers’ professional knowledge may be gradually learned through practice and constructed as a result of the learner’s own activity (individual development) aided by an expert teacher or mentor (Verloop, Van Driel & Meijer 2001).
DEVELOPMENTAL TEACHER LEARNING APPROACHES: EPISTEMOLOGICAL THINKING AND NOVICE-TO-EXPERT MODELS Developmental approaches to teaching (as change over time) typically examine: (1) the inner psychological processes that trigger any social behavior rather than behaviors themselves; and (2) the identification of evolving stages for those processes (i.e., beliefs, attitudes, cognitive skills, etc.). These stages ‘have become reified as milestones for describing typical behavior of person[s]’ (Volkova, 2013, p. 82). Developmental teacher learning approaches are typically described as comprising a progressive continuum with two major approaches: an epistemological thinking model (Perry, 1970), and a novice-to-expert model (Ericsson, 2002).
Epistemological Thinking Model The epistemological thinking model explores how teachers think about the nature of knowledge and learning; in other words, how knowledge and knowing are perceived. It offers insights into how teachers interpret their experiences (e.g., how they deal with contradictory information), and how their conceptions change over time. In this regard, teachers’ epistemological thinking is subjected to both cognitive and emotional factors, which led researchers to differentiate between knowledge and beliefs (Pajares, 1992). Knowledge, under this approach, represents a cognitive approach to making sense of experiences that influence decision making and thought, and is emotionally neutral. Conversely, beliefs represent the affective aspect of thinking, the part filtered by feelings that intuitively give insight into that which is perceived to be right or wrong (i.e., personal viewpoints). Interestingly, no clear-cut criteria can be delineated in classifying epistemological thinking models, as discrepancies in defining their constructs have led to overlapping categories (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997) and research has tended to focus attention on reasoning and argumentation processes (thinking) or personal viewpoints (beliefs) (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; Labbas, 2013). Thus, studies tend to describe teachers’ perceptions, as well as the cognitive mechanisms of change, across a range from absolutist to relativistic notions as both thinking processes (knowledge and beliefs) are considered part of the same construct (see Table 29.1).
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Table 29.1 Epistemological thinking model based on teachers’ knowledge and beliefs Object of study
Dimension
Focus
Main argument Proponents
Teachers’ Cognition knowledge
Teachers’ beliefs
Types of From absolutist Perry (1970); King reasoning and positions (1978); Kuhn (1991); argumentation Baxter-Magolda (1992, 1996); King & Kitchener (1994, 2002) Emotion Subjective To relativistic Schommer (1990, (affection) viewpoints positions 1994); Chan & Elliott (2002, 2004)
The epistemological thinking model has been widely used in teacher education, which in turn is often influenced by the view that teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about teaching impact practice (Richardson, 1997). At the same time, pre-service and novice teachers’ initial beliefs about the profession may significantly differ from those of expert teachers – and may even be contradictory to that which was espoused in their teacher education program (Wang & Odell, 2002). Similarly, teaching performance can be viewed as directly related to the stage of epistemological thinking through which, in more advanced stages, the teacher may become more capable at implementing innovative methods and solving complex situations of practice (Sprinthall, Reiman & Theis-Sprinthall, 1996). Epistemological reasoning
It has been suggested that the different ways teachers use to think about teaching lead to particular understandings of practice (Kuhn, Cheney & Weinstock, 2000) and that teachers change their thoughts in a sequenced manner (Perry, 1970; Tanase & Wang, 2010). Perry (1970) developed a scheme of intellectual development of college-age students comprising nine positions which were later clustered into three stages. Those stages have been used in teacher education to classify how pre-service teachers learn about the profession with studies in mathematics (Tharp & Lovell, 1995), science (Olson & Finson, 2009) and early childhood education (Akerson & Buzzelli, 2007). The stages can be described as: •• Stage 1: Modifying dualism (three first positions: duality view of knowledge; perception of multiple answers; legitimation of diversity). Pre-service teachers receive knowledge from scholars and expert teachers as true and it therefore needs to be learned. •• Stage 2: Realizing relativism (three middle positions: advanced perception of diversity in opinions; thinking about knowledge in context; making decisions according to relativistic contexts). In this stage pre-service teachers understand that all knowledge about teaching is contextual and relativistic.
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•• Stage 3: Responsibilities of commitment (three last positions: making an initial commitment in some area; experiencing the implications of commitment and responsibility; commitment is an ongoing activity). In this stage pre-service teachers show their commitment to educational values, while relationships with colleagues develop their professional identity.
King (1978) reworked Perry’s scheme into four stages – which later became the dominant pattern, represented as: (1) dualism (positions 1 and 2: right and wrong view of the world. Truth is sought and authorities hold it); (2) multiplicity (positions 3 and 4a: recognition of uncertainty and diverse truths outside the dualistic view and question of the authority figures. There is no tolerance to alternative points of view); (3) relativism (positions 4b, 5 and 6: knowledge is perceived as contextual and relative); and (4) commitment in relativism (positions 7, 8 and 9: commitment to values, relationships and personal identity). Kuhn (1991) later condensed King’s third and fourth stages into one (labeled evaluative), thus returning to three overall categories of epistemological views: (1) absolutist (knowledge is perceived as certain); (2) multiplist (there is more than one single certainty from experts: there are inconsistences and disagreements among them); and (3) evaluative (viewpoints can be compared to evaluate expertise and merit). Kuhn’s evaluative stage introduced the idea that relying on expert criteria and evidence led to gains in, or the development of, a more sophisticated understanding of practice. In a similar vein Baxter-Magolda (1992, 1996) extended the developmental model of stages of knowing offered by Perry (1970) into: (1) absolute (preservice teachers’ knowledge is certain and there are always answers. Authority figures play an important role in this stage); (2) transitional – similar to multiplicity (some knowledge can be questioned since multiple perspectives can be held to explain a single event); (3) independent – similar to relativisim (most knowledge is uncertain and therefore relativity is the key stance to understanding reality); and (4) contextual – akin to evaluative (knowledge is constructed from a plurality of explanations but explanations are based on evidence). Finally, King and Kitchener (1994) described three different levels of reflective judgment in young adults which comprised seven successive stages characterized by assumptions about knowing. The stages were: (1) pre-reflective thinking (stages 1–3) – knowledge is assumed to be absolutely certain and it is ‘gained through the word of an authority figure or through a firsthand observation’ (King & Kitchener, 2002, p. 39); facts and judgment are not differentiated. Teachers who hold those assumptions need no justification and their beliefs are unexamined; (2) quasireflective thinking (stages 4–5) in which knowledge is uncertain, contextual and subjective. Teachers in this level justify their thinking by giving reasons that are often idiosyncratic or are situated within a particular context; and (3) reflective thinking (stages 6–7) whereby teachers accept that knowledge is constructed from a variety of sources – relativism – and the justifications for their decisions are directly based on evidence and arguments.
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Epistemological beliefs
Beliefs are considered to comprise subjective viewpoints (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997) and represent the affective component of thinking and attitudes (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). They constitute our existential presumptions (personal truths) and their connotations are emotionally loaded and episodic in nature (Nespor, 1987). They are basically personal, not altered by persuasion (not universal) and are formed by chance and/or the accumulation of experiences (Pajares, 1992). Schommer (1990, 1994) presented a typology based on a continuum of epistemological beliefs ranging from: (1) omniscient authority (the source of knowledge is administered by authorities); (2) certainty of knowledge (evolving knowledge); (3) simple knowledge (knowledge is integrated in interrelated structures, not compartmentalized); (4) control of learning (knowledge is acquired through experience); to finally (5) speed of learning (learning is a gradual process). It has been suggested that such a system of beliefs influences cognition when performing academic and professional tasks (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). Chan and Elliott (2002, 2004) endorsed Schommer’s typology, describing four dimensions of epistemological beliefs: ‘innate ability’; ‘learning effort and process’; ‘authority knowledge’; and ‘certainty knowledge’. As the preceding makes clear, baseline argumentation in all of the models of epistemological thinking situates the teacher as moving from absolutist to relativist positions in order to more fully understand – and make informed interventions in – the complex scenarios that comprise the world of practice.
Novice-to-Expert Approach The novice-to-expert model explains how learners acquire skill and proficiency of performance through practice and instruction. A novice is understood as a learner who has no experience of a given domain of knowledge and the expert as highly skilled in that domain (Bruer, 1993). The model is based on two premises: (1) the development of expertise in teaching consists of the completion of several stages of skill development (Berliner, 1994; Dreyfus, 1981); and (2) reaching the level of expert does not rely upon talent or innate abilities, but rather is the result of deliberative efforts in practice to improve performance – enabling task- performers to overcome limitations (Ericsson, 2009). The first premise (development of expertise through skill development) typically stresses five stages in the process of gaining expertise (Benner, 1984; Berliner, 1994; Dreyfus, 1981): 1 Novice: The novice learns a set of context-free rules that guide performance in the required tasks. Those rules can be applied practically in every classroom situation since they are inferred independently from particular cases, e.g., give praise to correct answers. 2 Advanced beginner: Similarities across contexts are made and meaningful components of experience are identified. The learner demonstrates some expertise by relying on principles that
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guide actions. However, specific context starts guiding performance and experience is mixed with verbal knowledge, e.g., ‘giving praise does not always have the desired effect’ (Berliner, 1994, p. 3). 3 Competent: Competent learners establish goals and set priorities acting in a rational way. They know what to pay attention to and what to ignore because some classroom situations are predictive or even controlled. 4 Proficient: Learners start understanding practical situations as a whole. The processes of decision-making are improved and they develop the ‘know-how’ of the profession. Nuance and an intuitive sense of situations become part of teachers’ in situ understanding and they act in a deliberative manner. 5 Expert: Expert teachers show fluid performance whilst barely being aware of the choices they are making; this is akin to that which Schön (1983) described as knowledge-in-action. Experts have an intuitive grasp of practical situations and act in flexible and highly proficient ways informed by past experiences.
Fitts and Posner (1967) proposed these phases based on three moments: (1) the cognitive phase (learners perform the task by following protocols or guides step by step); (2) the associative phase (learners associate stimulus with actions in practice); and (3) the autonomous phase (performers base their actions in practice on automatic decisions). Each level builds on the previous one as abstract principles are refined, made more complex and adapted for new practice situations. The second premise (development through deliberative acts to improve performance) views the development of expertise as comprising an ‘extensive experience of activities in a domain … [in order] to reach very high levels of performance’ (Ericsson et al., 2006, p. 685). Although ‘attainable performance is constrained by one’s basic endowments, such as abilities, mental capacities, and innate talents’ (Ericsson et al., 2006, p. 685), becoming an expert requires one to memorize representative situations in order to highly perform any task. Simon and Chase (1973) argued that experts must have in the order of 50,000 patterns or ‘chunks of representative situations’ to perform at the top level. Such expertise building is a direct consequence of lengthy experience over ten years of full engagement in the activity complemented by prerequisites including completed education, accumulated accessible knowledge and reputation. Deliberate practice is therefore different from routine work and simple repetition of activities as it requires effort and design of tasks by advancing from ‘introduction to activities (instruction)’ through to ‘preparation (pursuing of activities)’ and then ‘commitment (full-time engagement)’, which aligns with the expectations associated with learning to teach during the practicum (professional experience). The concept of deliberate practice extends the notion that practice can inform theory and consequently has largely been used as a conceptual framework for understanding how social learning in educational contexts is constructed (Ericsson, 2002). In the novice-to-expert approach the role of an external facilitator is crucial to becoming an expert. Developmental teacher education models focus on observing
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and monitoring teachers’ learning at different levels of performance but also on how it can be improved by the action and support of a mentor. Mentoring is therefore positioned as a process that assists in gaining expertise by means of the action of external sources (i.e., experienced teacher or instructor). The guidance of mentors supports significant improvement in performance and accelerates acquisition of professional knowledge. Korthagen (2001) stated that at the heart of ‘reflection is the mentor process of trying to structure or restructure an experience, a problem or existing knowledge or insight’ (p. 58), a view which closely aligns with Schön’s (1983) notion of reframing. To encourage pre-service teachers to begin to reflect on teaching and learning situations, mentor teachers need to attend to pre-service teachers’ concerns (Kwakman, 2003), which can help them to problematize situations and initiate reflection (Loughran, 2002). Conversations about teaching experiences during the practicum therefore offer the opportunity for mentors to support preservice teachers in linking their learning from reflection to the development of their professional knowledge of practice.
IMPLICATIONS OF DEVELOPMENTAL LEARNING APPROACHES TO TEACHER EDUCATION Probably one of the most acknowledged contributions of developmental teacher learning approaches to teacher education programs is the assumption that teacher development occurs through a process of gaining expertise. Only by building up a repertoire of strategies, a system of beliefs and know-how knowledge through instruction (by others) or by one’s own actions (by experience) do pre-service teachers progress in their development (or what some describe as their apprenticeship). As a consequence, a particular understanding of practice influences what it means to be, and how to become, a more effective teacher (Akerlind, 2007). This process of gaining expertise and mastering a profession takes place in the context of the practice setting – in teacher education that it is typically initiated through the practicum (field experience/professional experience) – and extended further through peer guidance (i.e., induction) or institutional supervision through in-service development. A substantial body of research has emphasized the value of the practicum for learning ‘the basics’ as a consequence of the direct connection to actual practices (Zollo & Winter, 2002), and, as is clear in teacher education programs across the globe, it is often viewed as central to learning about how to teach. There is little doubt that the practicum experience is considered to be one of the most significant sources of learning for pre-service teachers (Marable & Raimondi, 2007). It is seen as paving the way for professional learning through the advice and guidance of mentor teachers and by facilitating the development
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of the knowledge and skills of teaching. Through the practice setting, the knowledge of expert teachers can be accessed by pre-service teachers, and this is seen as crucial to supporting the development of their skills, to enhancing their critical learning, and for embracing social transformation (Hudson, 2013). Developmental perspectives have long emphasized that learning to teach through the practicum is based on coming to understand, accept and apply expert knowledge through successive attempts at improving the act of teaching through practice. Thus, in some instances, a developmental view of teacher education can be seen as encouraging pre-service teachers to learn through developmental learning principles such as: 1 Retrieve and remember more information from the situation: Since experts are able to recognize items more easily than novices (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1985), pre-service teachers need to learn how to identify conflicting learning issues in their students when, for instance, explaining a difficult concept. 2 Organize meaningful information into more sophisticated patterns: For instance, expert mathematics teachers can see particular problem types that involve different kinds of mathematical solutions when facing a complex task of problem solving. Pre-service teachers are taught those patterns to easily deal with conflicting situations in the classroom. 3 Construct ad hoc knowledge by making use of concepts, not by listing attributes: Expert teachers solve problems by relying upon concepts, principles, laws and core ideas rather than compiling information from facts, events or past experiences. Revealing those ad hoc principles and concepts is also the main objective of teacher training programs. 4 Make simplifications of their knowledge to solve problems: Expert teachers have a vast repertoire of knowledge that is relevant in their domain but they usually reduce top-down strategies and develop short-cuts to solve practical problems according to the actual situation (Cross, 2004). These short-cuts may also be part of the syllabus of the teacher training programs. 5 Adapt their knowledge to new situations according to present demands: Pre-service teachers are encouraged to try to make use of experts’ ‘conditionalized knowledge’ (Simon, 1980) in the practicum, a type of knowledge that specifies the conditions to be successfully used depending on the context. 6 Offer quicker solutions: Initially pre-service teachers may be encouraged to ‘imitate’ the way expert teachers solve practical problems in a fluent way, i.e., without taking too much time to make decisions.
Recently there has been renewed interest in studying how expertise in teaching changes over time in such things as instructional activities (Shagrir, 2012), lesson planning, contextual decision-making process, teaching quality and classroom management (Choy, Wong, Lim & Chong, 2013). Although mastering any teaching process requires time (Maulana, Opdenakker, den Brok & Bosker, 2011), it has been argued that it is possible to ‘train for expertise’ in controlled environments outside the actual educational context, and that learning protocols and sequences of training may decrease the time needed to develop expertise in practice (Loh, Sheng & Li, 2015). Some teacher education programs have organized experiences for their preservice teachers designed to respond to various stages during the process of
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learning to teach (Brouwer & Korthagen, 2005; Furlong & Maynard, 1995). For example, within a four-year primary teacher education program in Sittard (the Netherlands), pre-service teachers are faced with authentic tasks during their practicum. The nature of the challenge in the tasks becomes increasingly complex in terms of elements such as duration, inside-outside, other people involved and additional tasks. For example, in the first year of the Sittard program a concrete task may be ‘Design a rich learning environment for a whole class in which children are actively engaged in learning for one hour’. By the second year a concrete task is ‘Design an educational activity for a whole class outside the school, in which parents are involved for two hours duration’. In the third year the task becomes ‘Design an attractive, activating, appropriate and goal-directed educational activity for a whole class that encompasses one week’. Other implications of developmental learning approaches for teacher education practices relate to the relevance of teachers’ thinking and beliefs in terms of students’ learning, improved performance (Schommer, 1994), the development of teaching strategies (Chan, 2003) and conceptual change (Qian & Alvermann, 2000). However, research has shown that skill acquisition in pre-service teachers is not always linear (Lord et al., 2006) as teachers simultaneously deal with multidimensional representations of the different realities they find in school contexts. Therefore, depending on the situations they face, pre-service teachers may hold thoughts, beliefs and arguments that could belong to two or more stages of epistemological thinking at a time. Further to this, research by White (2000) and Brownlee (2001) has shown that pre-service teachers are able to reach a high level of epistemic beliefs (those that are based on evidence), just as expert teachers do. Similarly, Chan and Elliot (2002) and Chai, Deng, Wong and Qian (2010) reported on a sample of Chinese pre-service teachers who believed that knowledge was constructed through learning processes and not from authority figures. Schraw and Olafson (2002), for example, found from a sample of teachers they interviewed that only a small percentage showed absolutist beliefs, with the majority holding relativist stances. What is clear in this research is that when teachers regularly face the complex and multifaceted situations of practice they begin to see beyond simple and singular solutions. There is also a line of research which suggests that teacher education might affect pre-service teachers’ conceptions of practice. Pedagogies of teacher education based on developmental approaches lead students to think in relativistic rather than absolutist terms. Chai et al. (2010) demonstrated that pre-service teachers can hold relativistic beliefs about teaching but not about their own knowledge. In other words, their pedagogical beliefs differed from their epistemological beliefs. Despite what the literature may suggest, Hofer (2001) was of the view that determining progression through stages is challenging because of discrepancies and disparate research results in actual field-evidence. The intricate details of epistemological thinking strongly limit the construction of a solid knowledge-base,
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especially when considered in light of the common Likert-type questionnaires which may oversimplify the complexity of the field of study (Hofer, 2008).
CONCLUSION Developmental models of teacher learning are perhaps best understood as explanatory tools that help to depict the teaching profession as a sequenced learning process whose ultimate purpose is the attainment of progressively complex understandings of practice and, subsequently, the achievement of teaching quality and excellence. Developmental approaches to teacher learning can be seen to offer a set of universal characteristics or fixed patterns of reasoning, beliefs and expertise; patterns which a teacher moves through during a career. The major strength of developmental models is that the stages, or levels, are not limited by context, age or domain of knowledge, and so can be understood as offering an indication about the nature of overall development. Further to this, when considered in terms of approaches to structuring teacher education programs, a clear implication of a developmental model is the need to identify the conceptual stages that teachers are considered to go through in order to better align instructional design to the characteristics and nuances associated with each stage (Kagan, 1992). Moreover, studies that have embraced novice–expert comparisons have provided evidence to suggest that as regular teaching activities such as lesson planning, decision making, problem solving and assessment are carried out, ways to better learn these processes tend to emerge. For instance, as a result of developmental studies on teachers’ expertise, approaches to learning through prototypical phases following teaching a class – i.e., pre-active, interactive (Jackson, 1968) and post-active (Clark & Peterson, 1986) – have been identified and described. With respect to learning to teach through field experiences, novice teachers are generally able to easily access their mentor experts’ knowledge. Since experts’ knowledge has a particular configuration that is well adapted to solving practical situations, it may well be that through illustrating the applicability of an expert’s knowledge (Mena & Clarke, 2015; Mena, García, Clarke & Barkatsas, 2016) clear examples of how to use the appropriate concepts, skills or protocols within the setting of practice can be grasped. In so doing pre-service teachers may learn how to ‘conditionalize’ (Simon, 1980) their knowledge to classroom situations by reflecting on their use of principles, rules, personal knowledge and beliefs within the practice setting. Finally, in relation to the role that supervision plays in the professional development of teachers, sustained collaboration and assistance from a mentor teacher or faculty advisor can aid in recognition of the differences, and learning possibilities available, through the differences apparent between a novice and expert. In
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so doing, the development of pre-service teachers’ knowledge and professional beliefs, as well as the way they make sense of classroom experiences, may be enhanced through the effective support of a mentor.
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Korthagen, F. (2001). A reflection on reflection. In F.A.J. Korthagen, J.P.A.M. Kessels, B. Koster, B. Lagerwerf, & T. Wubbels. Linking practice and theory: The pedagogy of realistic teacher education (pp. 108–130). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Korthagen, F.A.J., & Kessels, J. (1999). Linking theory and practice: Changing the pedagogy of teacher education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 4–17. Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn, D., Cheney, R., & Weinstock, M. (2000). The development of epistemological understanding. Cognitive Development, 15(3), 309–328. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(00)00030-7 Kwakman, K. (2003). Factors affecting teachers’ participation in professional learning activities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19, 149–170. Labbas, R. (2013). Epistemology in education: Epistemological developmental trajectory. International Journal of Education and Leadership, 3(2), 1–10. Larkin, J.H. (1981). Enriching formal knowledge: A model for learning to solve problems in physics. In J.R. Anderson (Ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition (pp. 311–334), Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Leontiev, A.A. (1981). Psychology and the language learning process. Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Loh, C.S., Sheng, Y., & Li, I.-H. (2015). Predicting expert-novice performance as serious games analytics: Objective-oriented vs. navigational action sequences. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, 147–155. Lord, C., Wagner, A., Rogers, S., Szatmari, P., Aman, M., Charman, T., et al. (2005). Challenges in evaluating psychosocial interventions for autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 35(6), 695–708. Loughran, J.J. (2002). Effective reflective practice: In search of meaning in learning about teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 33–43. Marable, M.A., & Raimondi, S.L. (2007). Teachers’ perceptions of what was most (and least) supportive during their first year of teaching. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 15(1), 25–37. Maulana, R., Opdenakker, M.C., den Brok, P., & Bosker, R. (2011). Teacher–student interpersonal relationships in Indonesia: Profiles and importance to student motivation. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 31, 33–49. Mena, J., & Clarke, A. (2015). Eliciting teachers’ practical knowledge through mentoring conversations in practicum settings. In H. Tillema, G.J. Van Der Westhuizen, & K. Smith (Eds), Mentoring for learning: ‘Climbing the mountain’ (pp. 47–78). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Mena, J., García, M., Clarke, A., & Barkatsas, A. (2016). An analysis of three different approaches to student teacher mentoring and their impact on knowledge generation in practicum settings. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 53–76. http://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2015.1011269 Nespor, J. (1987). The role of beliefs in the practice of teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19, 317–328. Olson, J., & Finson, K.D. (2009). Developmental perspectives on reflective practices of elementary science education students. Journal of Elementary Science Education, 21(4), 43–52. doi:10.1007/ BF03182356. Pajares, M.F. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307–332. Perry, W.G. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Piaget, J. (1970). Genetic epistemology. New York: Columbia University Press. Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Qian, G., & Alvermann, D.E. (2000). Relationship between epistemological beliefs and conceptual change learning. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 16, 59–74. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play: Constructing an academic life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rogoff, B. (1984). Introduction: Thinking and learning in social contexts. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds), Everyday cognition: Its development in social context (pp. 1–8). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Rosiek, J., & Atkinson, B. (2005). Bridging the divides: The need for pragmatic semiotics of teacher knowledge research. Educational Theory, 55(4), 421–442. Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R.M. (1985). Categorization (restructuring) and automatization: Two separable factors. Psychological Review, 92(3), 424–428. Schommer, M. (1990). Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(3), 498–504. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.3.498 Schommer, M. (1994). Synthesizing epistemological belief research: Tentative understandings and provocative confusions. Educational Psychology Review, 6(4), 293–319. http://doi.org/10.1007/ BF02213418 Schön, D.A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Schraw, G., & Olafson, L. (2002). Teachers’ epistemic world views and educational practices. Issues in Education, 8(2), 99–149. Shagrir, L. (2012). How evaluation processes effect the professional development of five teachers in higher education. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12(1), 23–35. Simon, H.A. (1980). Problem solving and education. In D. Tuma and F. Reif (Eds), Problem solving and education: Issues in teaching and research (pp. 81–96). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Simon, H.A., & Chase, W.G. (1973). Skill in chess. American Scientist, 61, 394–403. Sprinthall, N.A., Reiman, A.J., & Theis-Sprinthall, L. (1996). Teacher professional development. In J. Sikula, T.J. Buttery, & E. Guyton (Eds), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 666–703). New York: Simon-Schuster Macmillan. Tanase, M., & Wang, J. (2010). Teaching and teacher education: Initial epistemological beliefs transformation in one teacher education classroom: Case studies of four preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1238–1248. Tharp, M.L., & Lovell, C. (1995). Achieving cognitive equity in the mathematics classroom. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 21–24 October (pp. 3–8). Columbus, OH: The ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education. Tsui, A.B.M. (2003). Understanding expertise in teaching: Case studies of second language teachers. New York: Cambridge University Press. Verloop, N., Van Driel, J., & Meijer, P.C. (2001). Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5), 441–461. Volkova, E.V. (2013). Developmental learning: Theoretical and empirical considerations. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 82, 81–86. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997). The collected works (Ed. R.W. Rieber). New York: Plenum Press. Wang, J., & Odell, S.J. (2002). Mentored learning to teach according to standards-based reform: A critical review. Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 481–546. Wertsch, J.V. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, B.C. (2000). Pre-service teachers’ epistemology viewed through perspectives on problematic classroom situations. Journal of Education for Teaching, 26(3), 279–305. Zollo, M., & Winter, S.G. (2002). Deliberate learning and the evolution of dynamic capabilities. Organization Science, 13, 339–351.
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30 A Foundation for Effective Teacher Education: Teacher Education Pedagogy Based on Situated Learning F re d A . J . K o r t h a g e n INTRODUCTION The aim of this chapter is to offer a theoretical basis for the pedagogy of teacher education by building a framework describing (student) teacher learning. This seems important, as before the turn of the century the area of teacher learning had been almost overlooked by educational researchers (Beijaard, Korthagen, & Verloop, 2007). Although many studies showed that the outcomes of teacher learning were generally disappointing, the process of (student) teacher learning was seldom studied in depth. Still the question of how (student) teachers learn may be fundamental to the development of effective approaches in teacher education. In this chapter, two seemingly opposite perspectives will be integrated, namely the traditional cognitive perspective and the situated learning perspective. The integration of these two perspectives will make it possible to build a framework for teacher learning that can serve as the basis for a successful pedagogy of teacher education, as will be shown in this chapter.
TEACHER LEARNING A large number of research studies on beginning and experienced teachers has led to a disappointing picture of the impact of teacher education on teachers’
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classroom behavior (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Hawley & Valli, 1999; Webster-Wright, 2009; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). The cause seemed to lie in the traditional approach to teacher education, which was based on the assumption that theory can be taught to (student) teachers with the effect that they apply this theory within the school context. Clandinin (1995) suggested this was based on a view that theory drives practice, a kind of sacred theorypractice story. A fundamental problem with this approach was that the theory was often taught in isolated courses, with little connection to practice (Barone, Berliner, Blanchard, Casanova, & McGowan, 1996). As Grossman and McDonald (2008) stated, various studies showing the meager results of this traditional model created a crisis in teacher education, and promoted an awareness that not only the content of teacher education programs should be research-based, but also the pedagogy used in teacher education. Researchers started to realize that if we wish to develop a more effective pedagogy of teacher education, we need to have a clear view of the intended processes of teacher learning and of the kind of learning that actually takes place (Knight, Lloyd, Arbraugh, Gamson, McDonald, Nolan, & Whitney, 2015). Hence, attempts to improve teacher education became linked to the issue of teacher learning. For example, in the 1990s an important line of research focused on the beliefs student teachers have when entering teacher education programs and on the development of these beliefs during teacher education (e.g. Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; King & Kitchener, 1994; Pajares, 1992). This research revealed the difficulty of changing beliefs, for example because these beliefs have been formed during the many years the students have spent in education. Although this was an important contribution to our understanding of what happens in teacher education (and what does not happen!), most of this research strand focused on the outcomes of student teacher learning in terms of their beliefs, and less on the learning processes and the various positive and negative influences on these processes. The process of teacher learning did become a more central focus when teacher education became more school-based and researchers started to study workplace learning (Fuller & Unwin, 2004). The overall insight stemming from this type of research is that practical experience, reflection, and the role of context are important factors in (student) teacher learning (Webster-Wright, 2009). Leeferink, Koopman, Beijaard, and Ketelaar (2015) emphasize that the relational aspect is also very important, as new insights are often developed by student teachers after relevant teaching situations, in interaction with others, for example mentors or peers. In addition, as Leeferink and his colleagues noted, teaching experiences often become sources of student teacher learning through the connections that student teachers make with previous experiences in other contexts, but rarely with experiences gained in their teacher education programs. These authors conclude: ‘It was this circular process of moving back and forth between past and present experiences through which the student teachers gave meaning to their practical experiences’ (p. 345).
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Leeferink et al. (2015) are also critical of the research on workplace learning, as the focus of this research is often limited to one specific aspect, such as the role of mentoring or the quality of written reflections. A more general theory of (student) teacher learning is missing and this is a serious threat to the development of effective approaches in teacher education. Although during the last decades new and well-elaborated pedagogical strategies have been developed, such as the promotion of teacher research and the use of portfolios, there is a need for a coherent framework describing student teacher learning.
TWO CONTRASTING VIEWS OF LEARNING A helpful step could be to look at more general theoretical frameworks about human learning and apply these to teacher learning. Two important frameworks that we will focus on in this chapter are situated learning theory and traditional cognitive theory. The first fits in well with the current emphasis on practical experience in school contexts as the basis for teacher learning, whereas the traditional cognitive model seems to offer important guidelines for building cognitive representations of theory as well as practice. However, it is not immediately clear how to connect these two perspectives, let alone to understand how to help teachers link theoretical knowledge about education to practice. Hence, as Wideen et al. (1998) stated, we need an integrated view, in which all the aspects influencing teachers’ professional development are taken into account. In order to develop such an integrated view, we will first take a closer look at each of the two perspectives and their significance for teacher learning. Greeno (1997) refers to them as the ‘situative perspective’ and ‘the cognitive perspective’ (p. 6); these are the terms we will use below.
The Situative Perspective As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) and Knight et al. (2015) conclude, (student) teacher learning is relational (experiences take place in social contexts), temporal (experiences are framed through previous experiences and influence new experiences), and situational (experiences are grounded in situations). This view concurs with what Lave and Wenger (1991) described as situated learning within communities of practice. It implies a significant shift away from the traditional view of teacher education and the habit of presenting theories to prospective or in-service teachers within isolated courses. Greeno (1997) summarizes this shift by stating that within the situative perspective ‘knowledge’ is seen as a misleading term ‘because it attributes something like a substance or structure to the knower’ (p. 11). As Webster-Wright (2009) notes, this shift has led to ‘the introduction of innovative pedagogical practices, such as problem-based learning, action learning,
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and practice-focused service learning and the use of collaborative, flexible, and interdisciplinary teaching strategies’ (p. 708), and to an increased focus on field experiences (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), 2010). It has gradually made the traditional view of teacher learning feel outdated, i.e. the view based on ‘the assumption that learning consists of discrete finite episodes with a beginning and end’, as Webster-Wright puts it, with a reference to Wenger’s (1998) critique on this view. Discussing the situative perspective, Lave and Wenger (1991) maintain that learning emerges from and is intertwined with our actions and those of others. It is an ongoing process of participation in social practice (Wenger, 1998), and ‘an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 35). As Greeno (1997) notes, this leads to important pedagogical consequences. Related to the situative perspective is the cognitive apprenticeship model (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989), in which a novice is placed with a more experienced professional and learns the essential aspects of the profession within authentic contexts. This view concurs with most recent approaches towards school-based teacher education.
The Cognitive Perspective Concurrent with Greeno (1997), Cobb and Bowers (1999) conclude that the situative perspective is a radical move away from the traditional cognitive model of learning. According to this latter, mainly mentalist, model, people build representations in their brains of phenomena in reality. These representations are seen as maps of reality and are called cognitive schemata (Ausubel, 1968). According to the traditional cognitive view, new knowledge, also knowledge gained from a lecture or a book during an individual activity, can be assimilated in these schemata and can then be applied to new contexts, perhaps after some practice (Novak, 1977). Although cognitive learning theory encompasses a variety of different models, each stressing other aspects of the theory (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996), always the underlying assumption is that people build knowledge through maps of reality (schemata) and that it is possible to ‘transfer’ knowledge. Cobb and Bowers (1999) called this the idea of ‘the transportation of knowledge’. The cognitive perspective has led to numerous applications in education. For example, it has led to the insight that students in school need strong conceptual frameworks, but also that they come to the classroom with preconceptions about the world and that teachers should build on those preconceptions when trying to develop deeper conceptual knowledge (Donovan, Bransford, & Pellegrino, 1999). The cognitive perspective has been critiqued for not adequately describing the complexity of experiential learning and the social interactions determining
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what is being learned from experience (Cobb & Bowers, 1999; Greeno, 1997). As a result, traditional didactic approaches, such as lecturing, are often seen as pedagogically wrong, and many consider experiential and interactive modes of instruction as crucial in education, both in schools and in teacher education. However, before abandoning the traditional cognitive perspective and embracing the situative perspective too rapidly, it seems important to take a closer look at this issue. For example, it is certainly possible to learn things in a non-experiential setting and without much social interaction. This is noted by Greeno (1997), who adheres to the situative perspective, as well as by Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1997), who defend the cognitive perspective. Indeed, it is not difficult to find examples of situations in which a lecture or book changed a person’s perspective and even this person’s behavior. Returning to our topic, teacher education, this elicits the question of whether it is really true that knowledge transfer is such a wrong pedagogical approach when teaching teachers. What seems needed is a more encompassing view of teacher learning, as already noted above. Developing such a view is the aim of the next section.
AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL Although Cobb and Bowers (1999) maintain that the different metaphors underlying situated learning and cognitive theory are incompatible, we will now introduce a model integrating the situative perspective and the traditional cognitive perspective in a way that can be helpful for making teacher education successful. This concurs with a position defended by Bereiter (1997) and Greeno (1997), who both stated that the two perspectives may be integrated in a fruitful way. Our starting point is a model that distinguishes three levels in teachers’ professional learning (Korthagen et al., 2001). It is an elaboration of a theory on three levels in mathematics learning (Van Hiele, 1986), which in turn is based on Piagetian notions about levels of cognition, but also differs from the Piagetian approach. The most important difference is that Piaget considered the levels in cognitive development that he defined as age-dependent (Siegler, 1991), whereas Van Hiele emphasizes the influence of experience and education on level transitions. The three levels in our model are named the gestalt level, schema level, and theory level (Figure 30.1). Empirical data supporting the model are discussed in Korthagen and Lagerwerf (2001, pp. 185–190) and Korthagen (2010a). We will also present some illustrative data below.
The Gestalt Level The first level deals with the processes in teachers guiding their classroom behavior when there is not much conscious awareness of what is actually going
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Experiences with concrete examples
Gestalt formation
Schematization Gestalt (holistic) Reflection
Schema (network of elements and relations)
Theory formation
Reflection
Theory (a logical ordering of the relations in the schema)
Level reduction
Figure 30.1 The three-level model and the accompanying learning processes (Korthagen et al., 2001)
on. Several authors (e.g. Beck & Kosnik, 2001; Eraut, 1995) have emphasized that so many things happen during a lesson that it is impossible for teachers to be aware of all of them, let alone of all of their behavior and the reasons for and implications of this behavior. There is simply not enough time to be consciously reflective about all this. Hence, many researchers consider automatic (routine) behavior as crucial in teaching. Dolk (1997) speaks about the frequent occurrence of immediate teaching behavior, i.e. behavior that takes place instantaneously and without reflection. Already decades ago, Epstein (1990) introduced the notion that automatic, unconscious behavior is mediated by the so-called intuitive-experiential bodymind system, which processes information rapidly (for a recent discussion, see Sladek, Bond, & Phillips, 2010). Korthagen and Lagerwerf (2001) and Korthagen (2010a) discuss empirical data suggesting that such automatic behavior is momentarily triggered in teachers by images, feelings, notions, values, needs, or behavioral inclinations, and often by combinations of these factors. They form an internal, unconscious conglomerate of cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavior-oriented factors, based on previous experiences. Korthagen and Lagerwerf (2001) called such a conglomerate a gestalt. As in Gestalt psychology the gestalt concept was originally used to describe the organization of the visual field (Köhler, 1947), this implies a broadening of this classical concept, which concurs with Lecky (1945) and Korb, Gorrell, and Van de Riet (1989). In this broader conceptualization a gestalt encompasses the whole of a teacher’s perception of the here-and-now situation, i.e. both the sensory perception of the environment as well as images, thoughts, feelings, needs, values, and behavioral tendencies evoked by the situation. In line with views proposed by Lemke (1997), Hargreaves (1998), and Sutton and Wheatly (2003), the gestalt concept helps to consider the cognitive, affective, motivational and behavioral aspects of teacher’s functioning as thoroughly interrelated. This concurs with insights from brain research about the close connections between various aspects of the internal processes in human beings (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).
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With an example from an empirical study on an experienced teacher, Hoekstra and Korthagen (2011, 2013) illustrated how the influence of gestalts can be counterproductive to teacher learning. A biology teacher, named Nicole, wished to encourage her students’ intrinsic motivation so that they would become more capable of independent learning. Hence, she wanted to reduce direct instruction time. However, in several lessons Nicole slipped back into her old routine of giving frontal instruction, which is an example of the strong influence of a previously formed gestalt. This gestalt was especially triggered when Nicole perceived her students as being uncertain. She reported (translated from Dutch): I noticed that they liked it that I put them back on track. I gave them a feeling of certainty about the exams next week, because they really don’t look forward to that. (Hoekstra & Korthagen, 2013, p. 97)
The Schema Level Nicole did not critically examine her immediate behavior until a coach helped her become aware of the influence of her own feelings of uncertainty and her preconception about ‘supporting students’. Only then did she develop a framework for understanding the relation between her educational goals and her teaching, which in turn started to influence her decisions during her lessons. This can be illustrated by her own words during the coaching she received: In moments that students seem to give up, you have the tendency to solve this for them, by encouraging them to keep working. … Would it be possible that students themselves learn to see within themselves what is happening to them? And that they think about whether they want to continue like this? You may explain to them that if they don’t learn how to do this and motivate themselves, they may fail at school. That way you would be coaching them in how to be self-directed learners. (Translated from Dutch, and published in Hoekstra & Korthagen, 2011, p. 85; this publication presents a detailed description of the coaching process leading to these insights)
During the coaching process Nicole has become aware that a teacher can talk with students about their feelings of uncertainty, can help them become aware that these are a natural part of a process towards becoming more independent learners, and can challenge the students to accept these feelings. She developed a schema, which included notions such as ‘a behavioral tendency [of herself]’, ‘solving issues for the students’, ‘promoting students’ thinking about themselves’, and ‘self-directed learners’, as well as relations between these notions. This is characteristic for a schema: it consists of a network of relations between concepts or notions. A schema differs from a gestalt in a fundamental way. Whereas a gestalt is an unconscious whole of cognitive, emotional, and motivational factors triggering a certain type of routine behavior, a schema is a conscious mental map, easily accessible for introspection.
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For the transition from the gestalt level to the schema level, people use what Epstein (1990) called the rational system. This means that external phenomena and internal reactions to these phenomena become more conscious to the person, as reflection takes place. The transition is characterized by a process of desituating the knowledge derived from various specific situations (cf. Hatana & Inagaki, 1991; Lauriala, 1998). Still, it is important to note that teachers’ schemata are very much colored by the desire to know how to act in specific situations, instead of having an abstract understanding of these situations. In the example, Nicole’s schema was mainly aimed at knowing what to do to overcome her struggle with situations in which her students became uncertain or tended to give up.
The Theory Level If teachers develop more and more knowledge in a certain area, they may become experts in those areas. This often means that their schemata are full of concepts and relations that help them understand a wide variety of practical phenomena in a deeper way. If so, they may start to become aware of if-then connections (logical relations) in their own schemata, as shown by Copeland, Birmingham, DeMeulle, D’Emidio-Caston, and Natal (1994). These researchers asked teachers to reflect on classroom vignettes on video and found that experienced teachers were able to formulate more if-then relations than less experienced teachers. In this way, people may gradually grow towards the theory level. This is the level at which a logical ordering is constructed within the schema formed beforehand. The Van Hiele theory states that the relations in the schema now become objects of reflection, and an analysis of the logic within these relationships leads to a theoretical framework. The theory level makes it possible to logically understand and analyze a certain category of situations and answer why questions about these situations (why does this happen?). Characteristic for this level are if-then-because relations, such as: ‘If a student has to become an independent learner, then this student will regularly encounter feelings of uncertainty, because support by the teacher is diminished. If this causes too much of a challenge for the student, then the teacher should use a more gradual scaffolding approach, because otherwise learning may stop altogether. These rules are based on the following principles from theories on self-directed learning, meta-cognition and scaffolding: … (etc.)’. Although scholars in a certain field may generally function at the theory level, it is not common for teachers to reach this level, as Hoekstra (2007) found in an in-depth study of the learning of experienced teachers. The explanation presented by Hoekstra is that teachers generally wish to know what to do in practical situations, and for this aim the gestalt and schema level are generally sufficient. On the contrary, a scholar’s schema will be more aimed at understanding the crucial concepts in a certain area and the relations between these concepts, and hence for scholars it is fruitful to reflect on a logical ordering within their schemata.
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In order to decide whether someone has reached the theory level, one can ask the person to draw a mind map of the logical relations in his or her schema. In one study, Korthagen and Lagerwerf (2001) did so, and they present a complex drawing with many relations, made by a respondent showing his theory on teacher– student interactions (p. 189). It is significant that this particular respondent was a professor of education who specialized in interpersonal relations in the classroom, and that it appears difficult to find similar examples among teachers.
LEVEL REDUCTION We already noted that Hoekstra (2007) found that the teachers in her study were generally focused on what to do in certain situations they were concerned about. In general they did not reach the theory level, although teacher educators or researchers might feel this would help these teachers to find more fundamental and evidence-based solutions to their concerns. In order to bridge the gap between what the teachers are focused on and the theory level, a translation of theoretical knowledge is needed that makes the teachers feel more able to deal with practical issues. This requires a kind of knowledge aiming more at the schema level than the theory level, but ideally this knowledge is based on the theory level and is concurrent with research findings. In other words, what is needed is what Clandinin (1985) named practical knowledge, but preferably practical knowledge based on research-based theoretical frameworks. Hence, translating frameworks from the theory level to the schema level is an important challenge for teacher educators if they wish to successfully connect theory and practice. This process is called level reduction (Van Hiele, 1986, p. 46). After some time, a person’s schema can become self-evident, and the schema can then be used in a less conscious way. It is as if the whole schema has been reduced to one gestalt. This is an important form of further level reduction, as only then will the teacher’s everyday behavior be influenced (see Figure 30.1). In the case of Nicole, the teacher described above, level reduction took place after several weeks of deliberate application of her newly developed schema. At first she consciously resisted her tendency to start explaining the subject matter as soon as her students showed uncertainty. Instead she took more of the role of a coach for individual students or small groups, and talked with her students about the fact that such uncertainty is a regular part of the process of learning to become self-directed learners. This means that she developed metacognitive awareness in her students not only of this purpose of the learning process, but also of the feelings involved, and she challenged her students to not be carried away by these feelings. Although initially this new behavior felt somewhat awkward to her, as she did not yet feel completely competent at having such conversations, she gradually started to feel more comfortable with the new approach. After some time Nicole’s old habit of explaining in front of the classroom disappeared, and
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she developed a routine of walking around in her classroom, checking with her students how they were doing, and helping them to become aware of their own learning process. This now felt to her like a natural thing to do. Her schema had gradually become a gestalt: I learned that if you point out their feelings when you see how the student is doing [emotionally], and when you point that out, that part of her [the student’s] frustration disappears, because I acknowledge those feelings. … [Talking about the past:] When a student didn’t do what I wanted, I quit. … I thought like: ‘it doesn’t work. The whole strategy doesn’t work, it is clear, they don’t feel like it.’ I looked at a student from the perspective of ‘he doesn’t do anything, and that is wrong’. Now I see: ‘he is doing something else’. Now I look at what they are doing instead, when it’s not what I want them to be doing. That opens a world of possibilities to start a conversation with them. When you ask them the right questions, they will be more open, and will start doing their work. (Hoekstra & Korthagen, 2013, pp. 102–104)
As a result of level reduction, the relevant schema or theory needs less attention during one’s actions. This allows the individual to concentrate on other things. The phenomenon of level reduction concurs with Berliner’s (1986) model of professional growth, in which the expert level is the level at which the professional can act fluidly on the basis of an intuitive grasp of the situation.
REALISTIC TEACHER EDUCATION The three-level model can serve as an important basis for effective approaches in teacher education. For example, the model is basic to the so-called realistic approach described by Korthagen et al. (2001). For decades this approach has been used in a one-year postgraduate teacher education curriculum at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Realistic Experiences as the Starting Point Fundamental to the realistic approach is that the teacher education program builds on practical experiences that feel authentic to the student teachers. At the beginning of the program, these are not necessarily experiences with teaching in schools, for early experiences with classroom teaching tend to trigger ‘survival gestalts’. This means there is a risk that the gestalt formation process is rapidly shaped by undesirable habits and norms (Feiman-Nemser & Buchman, 1986). Therefore, in the Utrecht program there is a focus on other types of experiences, for example the coaching of one secondary school student once a week, during six weeks (the so-called one-to-one experience). Another example from the beginning of the program is giving a ten-minute lesson to the peer group of student teachers, with the assignment to make these peers active during the lesson. Such experiences focus the attention on learning processes, rather than on classroom discipline.
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Creating alternative methods of action
4
Awareness of essential aspects
3
5
Trial
1
Action
2 Looking back on the action
Figure 30.2 The ALACT model (Korthagen et al., 2001)
Promotion of Reflection and Schematization In the case of the one-to-one teaching experience, each lesson is recorded on audio, and after the lesson the student teacher reflects on interesting episodes, with the aid of a logbook. The intended learning process follows a model that helps to structure this reflection (Figure 30.2). This reflection model is named the ALACT model, after the first letters of the phases (Korthagen et al., 2001). The third phase is crucial, as it gets to the essence of what is happening in the lesson, and thus to schematization. Often the student teachers become aware that they did not really listen to their student, or were explaining something that did not seem to come across. There can be considerable differences between the learning processes within any group of student teachers. This is important as it allows student teachers to develop their own gestalts and schemata, based on their personal concerns, with regular support from a teacher educator.
Interaction with Peers The situative perspective emphasizes the social aspect in learning. This points towards the need for opportunities of peer supported learning in a realistic teacher education program. During the whole program, many interactions with peers are organized, promoting the sharing of experiences, discussions and joint reflection processes aimed at schematization. For example, during the one-to-one teaching period, the student teachers form pairs. Part of the one-to-one lessons are discussed in each pair (with written reports to the teacher educator) and the remainder of the lessons by the teacher educator and the pair together. The
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teacher educator can then bring in theoretical notions that fit in with the processes the student teachers are going through, thus supporting schematization.
Cohort Groups In a realistic program the students work together in cohort groups (of 15–25 student teachers), serving as ‘communities of practice’. One or two teacher educators are responsible for one cohort group and bring in theoretical notions if these seem to match the needs and gestalts of the student teachers triggered by their practical experiences. These can be principles from general psychology, classroom management, subject matter methods, and so forth, depending on what is needed in the here-and-now. This implies that the teacher educators need to be flexible ‘generalists’ who are able to tune in to the student teacher’s concerns.
A Focus on Practical Knowledge rather than Theory-with-a-Capital-T As explained above, theoretical notions are not so much aimed at building academic knowledge (Theory-with-a-capital-T), but at deepening and structuring gestalts and developing schemata characterized by practical knowledge that helps to guide perception and action in practice. It requires a translation and adaptation of academic theory to the specifics of the situation at hand. This concurs with Aristotle’s metaphor of an architect who cannot work from fixed rules, but has to apply his knowledge to the specific situation at hand (Kessels & Korthagen, 1996, pp. 25–26). Similarly, teacher educators in a realistic program work more like flexible architects than as scholars sticking to their fixed academic knowledge, although of course, this academic knowledge helps to bring quality and validity into the practical knowledge.
The Place of Theory As we have seen, the presentation of theory, either by teacher educators or through books, can have a significant place in teacher education, for it can help to support the transition from the schema level to the theory level. However, not every moment in the process of learning to teach is suitable for the presentation of theory. The three-level model helps to identify those moments in which a transition to the theory level can be fruitful, namely only after the student teacher has developed the wish for a deeper understanding. This is why at the end of the one-year realistic teacher education program, several theoretical workshops are given by experts in certain areas. These workshops are partly programmed parallel to each other. Hence, the student teachers can make choices based on their interests. This strategy helps to bring them to the theory level in specific areas.
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Research on the Realistic Approach A variety of qualitative and quantitative research studies have been carried out on the Utrecht program (see Brouwer and Korthagen, 2005; Korthagen, 2010b; Korthagen et al., 2001). Although the present chapter does not allow an extensive discussion of these studies, we wish to emphasize the main findings, namely that graduates of the program reported a seamless connection between theory and practice, and that classroom observations showed specific effects on their teaching behavior, concurrent with program goals. Hence, as Brouwer and Korthagen (2005) put it, teacher education can make a difference by building on the principles discussed above.
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION This chapter described an integrated view of teacher learning, based on both the situative and the cognitive perspective. Concurrent with the situative perspective, a basic principle underlying the three-level model is that all knowledge is grounded in personal encounters with concrete situations and is influenced by social values, the behavior of others, and implicit perspectives embedded in practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Traditional cognitive theory, as discussed by authors such as Ausubel (1968) and Novak (1977), is helpful for describing the learning process after a teacher has reached the schema level and the need for a deeper understanding or cognitive reorganization presents itself. The three-level model emphasizes that there is a difference in the way knowledge can be used (cf. Anderson & Herr, 1999; Fenstermacher, 1994). If the focus is more on using knowledge for action, the first two levels of the model are more relevant than if knowledge aims at a deeper understanding of a category of situations. An important implication of the model is that only in the latter case does the theory level become important. The need for this level is not self-evident in teachers and is generally only triggered after a sufficiently rich schema has been developed, and the teacher develops the wish to reduce the complexity of this schema, or to reorganize the schema using a logical ordering. At this stage, the cognitive perspective explains that it is certainly possible to ‘transfer’ theoretical knowledge to a teacher. The three-level model also highlights that teacher behavior is to a large degree grounded in gestalts and explains why – without serious attention for level reduction – theory does not easily have an influence on practice. Another implication of the three-level model is that both researchers and teacher educators may be too strongly focused on the conscious and rational sources of teacher behavior (cf. Hargreaves, 1998; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). They might take immediate teacher behavior more seriously, as well as the gestalts unconsciously and automatically directing much of a teacher’s behavior. As teaching
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is to a large degree a gestalt-driven activity, the kind of professional learning needed in teacher education is not so much characterized by conceptual development, but rather by what Marton and Booth (1997) called the development of awareness of what is going on during one’s teaching. This includes awareness of one’s own feelings, values, needs, images, and, most of all, of their relations with one’s behavioral tendencies, as the case of Nicole clearly showed. This implies a transition from the gestalt level to the schema level based on reflection. Next, level reduction is important, so that the heightened awareness can start to influence the teacher’s daily routines. For teacher educators, the fundamental question becomes: what kind of experiences can be organized that will both effectively shape student teachers’ gestalts, and elicit concerns in them that can serve as a good starting point for reflection and the development of adequate schemata? This question is completely different from the more traditional question of what theory can best be presented. The latter question focuses the attention on the right side of the three-level model, instead of the important and more natural process from left to right. In line with a view proposed by Bereiter (1997) and Greeno (1997), the situative perspective and the traditional cognitive perspective represent two valuable, complementary ingredients for an integrated model describing professional learning. The integrated view presented in this chapter points to the need for a pedagogy of teacher education different from the traditional theory-to-practice approach (cf. Clandinin, 1995). Basically, a didactic approach based on the presentation of theory starts from the wrong side of the three-level model and thus tends to create a gap between theory and practice. As shown, an alternative approach, such as the realistic model, can influence teacher education in a more successful way. Research has shown that this does make a difference for the graduates’ practices (Brouwer & Korthagen, 2005). It would be important to design more applications of the three-level model and study the outcomes, not only in terms of effects on teacher cognition and behavior, but also in terms of the actual learning processes taking place. For one important message of this chapter is that it is important to deepen our knowledge on the relation between (student) teacher learning and interventions in teacher education.
REFERENCES American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). (2010). The clinical preparation of teachers: A policy brief. Washington, DC: AACTE. Anderson, G.L. & Herr, K. (1999). The new paradigm wars: Is there room for rigorous practitioner knowledge in schools and universities? Educational Researcher, 28(5), 12–21, 40. Anderson, J.R., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (1996). Situated learning and education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5–11.
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Anderson, J.R., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (1997). Situated versus cognitive perspectives: Form versus substance. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 18–21. Ausubel, D.P. (1968). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Barone, T., Berliner, D.C., Blanchard, J., Casanova, U., & McGowan, T. (1996). A future for teacher education. In J. Siluka (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (2nd edition) (pp. 1108–1149). New York: Macmillan. Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2001). Reflection-in-action: In defence of thoughtful teaching. Curriculum Inquiry, 31(2), 217–227. Beijaard, D., Korthagen, F., & Verloop, N. (2007). Understanding how teachers learn as a prerequisite for promoting teacher learning. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(2), 105–108. Bereiter, C. (1997). Situated cognition and how to overcome it. In D. Kirshner & J.A. Whitson (Eds), Situated cognition: Social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives (pp. 281–300). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Berliner, D.C. (1986). In pursuit of the expert pedagogue. Educational Researcher, 15(7), 5–13. Brouwer, N. & Korthagen, F. (2005). Can teacher education make a difference? American Educational Research Journal, 42(1), 153–224. Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42. Clandinin, D.J. (1985). Personal practical knowledge: A study of teachers’ classroom images. Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4), 361–385. Clandinin, D.J. (1995). Still learning to teach. In T. Russell & F. Korthagen (Eds), Teachers who teach teachers (pp. 25–31). London/Washington: Falmer Press. Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cobb, P. & Bowers, J. (1999). Cognitive and situated learning perspectives in theory and practice. Educational Researcher, 28(2), 4–15. Cochran-Smith, M. & Zeichner, K.M. (Eds). (2005). Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Copeland, W.D., Birmingham, C., DeMeulle, L., D’Emidio-Caston, M., & Natal, D. (1994). Making meaning in classrooms: An investigation of cognitive processes in aspiring teachers, experienced teachers, and their peers. American Educational Research Journal, 31(1), 166–196. Dolk, M. (1997). Onmiddellijk onderwijsgedrag [Immediate teaching behavior]. Utrecht: WCC. Donovan, M.S., Bransford, J.D., & Pellegrino, J.W. (Eds) (1999). How people learn: Bridging research and practice. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Epstein, S. (1990). Cognitive-experiential self-theory. In L.A. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality, theory and research (pp. 165–192). New York: The Guilford Press. Eraut, M. (1995). Schön shock: A case for reframing reflection-in-action? Teachers and teaching: Theory and Practice, 1(1), 9–22. Feiman-Nemser, S. & Buchman, M. (1986). Pitfalls of experience in teacher preparation. In J.D. Raths & L.G. Katz (Eds), Advances in teacher education, Vol. 2 (pp. 61–67). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Fenstermacher, G.D. (1994). The knower and the known: The nature of knowledge in research on teaching. Review of Research in Education, 20, 3–56. Fuller, A. & Unwin, L. (2004). Young people as teachers and learners in the workplace: Challenging the novice–expert dichotomy. International Journal of Training and Development, 8(1), 31–41. Greeno, J.G. (1997). On claims that answer the wrong questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17. Grossman, P. & McDonald, M. (2008). Back to the future: Directions for research in teaching and teacher education. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 184–205. Hargreaves, A. (1998). The emotional practice of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(8), 835–854. Hatana, G. & Inagaki, K. (1991). Sharing cognition through collective comprehension activity. In L. Resnick, J. Levine, & S. Teasky (Eds), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 331–348). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
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Hawley, W. & Valli, L. (1999). The essentials of effective professional development: A new consensus. In G. Sykes & L. Darling-Hammond (Eds), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 127–150). San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Hoekstra, A. (2007). Experienced teachers’ informal learning in the workplace. Utrecht: Utrecht University. Hoekstra, A. & Korthagen, F.A.J. (2011). Teacher learning in a context of educational change: Informal learning versus systematic support. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(1), 76–92. Hoekstra, A. & Korthagen, F.A.J. (2013). Coaching based on core reflection makes a difference. In F.A.J. Korthagen, Y.M. Kim, & W.L. Greene (Eds), Teaching and learning from within: A core reflection approach to quality and inspiration in education (pp. 93–107). New York: Routledge. Hofer, B.K. & Pintrich, P.R. (1997). The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research, 67(1), 88–140. Immordino-Yang, M.H. & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain and Education, 1(1), 3–10. Kessels, J.P.A.M. & Korthagen, F.A.J. (1996). The relationship between theory and practice: Back to the classics. Educational Researcher, 25(3), 17–22. King, P.M. & Kitchener, K.S. (1994). Developing reflective judgement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Knight, S.L., Lloyd, G.M., Arbraugh, F., Gamson, D., McDonald, S.P., Nolan J. Jr, & Whitney, A.E. (2015). School-based teacher learning. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(4), 301–303. Köhler, W. (1947). Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright. Korb, M.P., Gorrell, J., & Van de Riet, V. (1989). Gestalt therapy, practice and theory (2nd edition). New York: Pergamon Press. Korthagen, F.A.J. (2010a). Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behavior and teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 98–106. Korthagen, F.A.J. (2010b). How teacher education can make a difference. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(4), 407–423. Korthagen, F. & Lagerwerf, B. (2001). Teachers’ professional learning: How does it work? In F.A.J. Korthagen, J. Kessels, B. Koster, B. Lagerwerf, & T. Wubbels (Eds.), Linking practice and theory: The pedagogy of realistic teacher education (pp. 20–51). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Korthagen, F.A.J., Kessels, J., Koster, B., Lagerwerf, B., & Wubbels, T. (2001). Linking practice and theory: The pedagogy of realistic teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lauriala, A. (1998). Reformative in-service education for teachers (RINSET) as a collaborative action and learning enterprise: Experiences from a Finnish context. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(1), 53–66. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lecky, P. (1945). Self-consistency: A theory of personality. New York: Island Press. Leeferink, H., Koopman, M., Beijaard, D., & Ketelaar, E. (2015). Unraveling the complexity of student teachers’ learning in and from the workplace. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(4), 334–348. Lemke, J.L. (1997). Cognition, context, and learning: A social semiotic perspective. In D. Kirshner & J.A. Whitson (Eds), Situated cognition: Social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives (pp. 37–55). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Marton, F. & Booth, S. (1997). Learning and awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Novak, J.D. (1977). A theory of education. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pajares, M.F. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307–332. Siegler, R. (1991). Children’s thinking. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sladek, R.M., Bond, M.J., & Phillips, P.A. (2010). Age and gender differences in preferences for rational and experiential thinking. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 907–911. Sutton, R. & Wheatley, K. (2003). Teachers’ emotions and teaching: A review of the literature and directions for further research. Educational Psychological Review, 15, 327–358. Van Hiele, P.M. (1986). Structure and insight. Orlando: Academic Press.
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Webster-Wright, A. (2009). Reframing professional development through understanding authentic professional learning. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 702–739. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wideen, M., Mayer-Smith, J., & Moon, B. (1998). A critical analysis of the research on learning to teach: Making the case for an ecological perspective on inquiry. Review of Educational Research, 68(2), 130–178.
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31 Constructivist Learning Theories in Teacher Education Programmes: A Pedagogical Perspective Gary Harfitt and Cheri Chan INTRODUCTION In recent decades, a constructivist worldview has gone some way to explaining how knowledge is produced in the world, how students learn and how to better support teachers through teacher education (see Beck & Kosnik, 2006; Johnson, 2006; Nuthall, 2015; Rainer, 2002; Richardson, 1997). Our intention in writing this chapter is to present a particular conceptual perspective on teacher education and then to share how we model and apply this concept on initial and in-service teacher education programmes in one particular sociocultural context, namely Hong Kong, where constructivist and reflective thinking across all educational sectors have been described as influential (Cheng et al., 2009). A comparison of constructivist teacher education programmes with more conventional programmes revealed that the former were more successful in ‘helping experienced teachers transform their role’ and had a ‘high impact upon teaching practices’ (Tatto, 1998, p.76) while in-depth case studies of exemplary teacher training programmes in the United States based on constructivist views have been well documented (see Darling-Hammond, 2006a, 2006b). In this chapter we propose salient constructivist pedagogies that also allow for the empowerment of student teachers to enact their identities as ‘curriculum makers’ (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992) during initial teacher education (ITE), their field experiences and full-time teaching careers.
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Learning to teach is a complex, developmental process, but we concur with Darling-Hammond’s (2006a, 2006b) view that teacher education matters for the sake of teacher effectiveness. We choose to outline constructivist pedagogy in teacher education through the educational philosophy of John Dewey. Dewey’s (1933, 1938) notion of knowledge for teaching suggests that by inquiring into problems of practice we are building the foundations for professional judgement that are rooted in theoretical and practical knowledge. His (1938) view of direct experience as the key to learning and for forging connections with our own contexts is of central importance here. We also draw on Cochran-Smith and Fries’s (2011) theory of teacher education for social justice – whereby practice must be theorised as an amalgam of knowledge, interpretative frameworks, teaching strategies, methods, skills, and advocacy with and for students, parents, colleagues and communities. In this chapter, we highlight closely interwoven teacher education courses where these aspects are exemplified and where practice underpins all learning. Students move between theories derived from books and lectures to direct experiences based on the well-established premise that we construct knowledge through a combination of direct experience, reflection and guided learning. Our pedagogical perspectives include the modelling and promotion of a diverse range of learning contexts for student teachers to experience during their time on teacher education courses, and the careful alignment of classroom activities with assessment practices. We also support a move towards more authentic student engagement in situated learning within local schools and other community enterprises. Finally, we advocate the importance of offering student teachers caring but systematic support by creating space for critical reflection on both their practices and their sense of self. This attends to the concept of teaching as emotional work (Noddings, 2005) so that pre-service teachers are encouraged to experience learning that will help them critically examine their own emotional landscapes. We aspire to engaging student teachers in confronting and problematising issues concerning social and educational injustice in the classroom, school and community so that they can situate these issues in their inquiry as teachers in training. Many of these approaches are consistent with the common features of powerful and successful teacher education programmes described by Darling-Hammond (2006a) in her case studies and with Rainer’s (2002) definition of dimensions that shape constructivist teacher education: learning and development; authority and facilitation; action and reflection; autonomy and community; process and content; power and empowerment; critical thinking and multiple perspectives. However, as teacher educators, we also understand that there are challenges when implementing constructivist practices. Richardson (2003) reminds us that to increase the legitimacy of the theory among learner teachers we must model the same constructivist theories in our own classes. Tensions still persist though, with some suggesting that a constructivist approach might be interpreted as a ‘hands off’ or an ‘anything goes’ relativist model of teaching in the classroom
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(Gordon, 2009). The reality, too, in many contexts is that education is provided in a university setting, where traditional approaches to teaching and learning operate, making it challenging to implement alternative practices authentically (Beck & Kosnik, 2006). We contend, instead, that a constructivist classroom is one in which there is a careful balance between teacher- and student-directed learning and where teachers still engage in formal teaching through an active role in the learning process. In short, learning experiences must be carefully selected and structured (Dewey, 1938). Our chapter is framed around two overarching questions: first, what types of pedagogical practices facilitate constructivist learning theories on teacher education programmes? And, second, what are the challenges of enacting a constructivist approach to teacher education programmes in neoliberal times?
What Types of Pedagogical Practices Facilitate Constructivist Learning Theories IN Teacher Education Programmes? Constructivist approaches to teacher education are understood in this chapter as essentially practices that encourage pre-service teachers to view direct experience as key to learning, and our role as teacher educators in this practice is to stimulate a continuous intellectual curiosity in our students to transform those experiences into meaningful learning opportunities. Informed by the seminal work of theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky and Freire, constructivism has helped to re-position the way in which knowledge is understood and assessed. Vygotsky’s theory linked social interaction and its relationship with the surrounding cultural environment to cognitive development in humans as long as that interaction occurred within the zone of an individual’s potential development. It is through this type of interaction that ‘cultural meanings are shared within the group, and then internalized by the individual’ (Richardson, 1997, p. 8). Whilst acknowledging the distinctions between these crucial theories (see Oxford, 1997), we contend that they are underpinned by the premise that meaningful learning takes place when students are engaged in discursive meaning making and the construction of knowledge. We commence by examining the ways in which teacher education institutions (TEIs) prepare their students for practice using constructivist learning theories.
Addressing the Theory–Practice Divide in Teacher Education Programmes We start by addressing the theory–practice dilemma, where teachers-to-be are positioned as consumers of educational research in lecture halls or tutorials, read course books and academic papers on teaching, and observe university and
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school experts before applying the same acquired theories and practices in their own classes. To forge a link between theory and practice (or praxis) adopting a social constructivist stance, learners are required to be actively engaged if meaningful learning is to take place because constructivism must be seen as a learning or meaning-making theory. We advocate the view of learning as an ‘authority of experience’ (Munby and Russell, 1994) and research on constructivist teaching emphasises the central role of learning from experience and social interactions as a way for teachers and students to co-construct knowledge (Kolb 1984; Mezirow, 2000). Experiential learning opportunities allow students to connect conceptual understanding with classroom practice and help to shape their beliefs and practices (Chen, 2001). We argue that aspects of this construct should be fundamental on ITE programmes. For one thing, these boundary crossings between universities and local or regional organisations allow novice teachers to see the community as a powerful knowledge space where they encounter different types of learners than they might in traditional practicum models. They also expose them to a more authentic experience of genuine collaboration with peers and within professional groups, seen as crucial in facilitating constructivist teaching (Fosnot, 1996).
Bridging Initial Teacher Education Programmes with the Wider Community By encouraging teachers-in-training to enact social action through communitybased field experience, new teachers can build a contextualised understanding of culturally and socially responsive teaching (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Evidence from global research on boundary crossings between organisations and TEIs (see, for example, Edwards, 2010) shows the importance of building new ‘interspaces’ between universities and local communities to foster teacher learning (Hartley, 2007). One example of these community-based learning experiences in our education programmes at the University of Hong Kong is a literature course that includes a link to a community-based non-government organisation (NGO) that promotes reading to young children from underprivileged families who cannot afford to buy books. This ‘community bridge’ between theory and practice has enabled student teachers to become more knowledgeable about how young learners acquire literacy through lived experiences consistent with the constructivist models mentioned earlier. Other research has reported similar schemes and with similar consequences (see, for example, Fang and Ashley, 2004; Skinner, 2010). Examples from our teacher education courses involve field trips to local early childhood contexts for pre-service teachers to see co-enrolment of deaf children learning in sign language and speech in English language lessons. These ‘inverted’ classes enable the university tutor to surrender her identity as the ‘expert’ and afford student teachers a critical space to reflect on theories and analyse their own beliefs about
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practices of inclusion as well as exclusion, their assumptions and experiences as teachers-to-be. There is a global trend for more internationalisation through overseas study and immersion (see, for example, the American Council on Education (2002) and the Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship (2005)) and studies of these projects show students benefiting from linguistic development, but also heightened cultural awareness and intercultural competency (Barkhuizen & Feryok, 2006; Lee, 2009). Recognising that knowledge is contextualised, we have established multiple internships and field experiences in our own undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education courses with international NGOs as well as local ones. It is our belief that these kinds of situated instruction provide teachers-to-be with the opportunity to implement and apply the more research-based pedagogies that they are exposed to in the university classroom and which they will then use in their own teaching upon entering full-time employment in schools. These experiences also encourage pre-service teachers to problematise some of the taken-for-granted educational ‘truths’ (Foucault, 1991), and to confront their own deep-rooted beliefs and assumptions on teaching and learning as well as gain experiences of people and cultures different to their own. We have seen at first-hand how our student teachers are better able to critically examine educational practices from a more sociocultural perspective (e.g. causes of social injustice, inequity and so on) as a result of participating in these community-based learning projects. This heightened awareness of the ‘social, cultural, political embeddedness of teaching-learning is essential’ (Gallagher, 2003, p. 132) and facilitates the development of transformative educators who not only harness the required technical skills necessary for life in the classroom context, but also foster crucial ethical aspects that assist in their understanding of teaching as a moral practice as well as a technical one (Falkenberg, 2007). In sum, this leads to the type of adaptive expertise that successful teachers need to possess (Darling-Hammond, 2006b).
Facilitating a More Powerful Field Experience for Student Teachers Lave and Wenger (1991) would view student teacher learning as being part of a process of participation in social practice, and especially social practice in schools, so it is timely to discuss the role of field experience or practicum within a constructivist framework. Zeichner (2012) tells us that very little success is achieved in coordinating what is carried out in the course and field components of ITE courses. Indeed, the long-term impact of the practicum might be described as negligible given Zeichner and Tabachnick’s (1981) assertion that many notions and educational concepts developed during teacher education are ‘washed out’ during the practicum.
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Nevertheless, the benefits of fostering a partnership model for educational knowledge production that includes university teachers, schools and distributed networks of teachers and schools have been well documented. In Singapore, for example, partnerships with expert teachers and schools have led to the establishment of ‘signature pedagogies’ (Hogan, 2010). Professional development school (PDS) models in the United States have also been lauded by Darling-Hammond (2005) for offering a powerful and supportive structure for on-going professional development among novice as well as experienced teachers. Indeed, DarlingHammond (2006b) notes that teacher educators must facilitate the bridging of theory and practice through more carefully designed field experiences that bind local schools with universities in a ‘mutual transformation agenda’. Her professional development schools provide the context for embedding and linking theoretical concepts to tangible teaching practice. So, from a constructivist stance it is important to recognise the importance of cultivating a sense of community within the academy, with local teachers and mentors. We have also tried to attend to the problem of ‘superficial school–university partnership’ during field experiences in our preparation courses by inviting selected in-service teachers to act as practicum supervisors. This represents another form of boundary crossing as these in-service teachers observe our undergraduate and graduate student teachers working in neighbouring schools. These observations provide our student teachers with high-quality feedback and advice from professionals in the field. We also believe such a link fosters a professional sense of community, and builds the collective capital of the teaching profession, something which Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) claim is the key to transforming teaching in schools. Oldenburg’s (1999) concept of levelling describes a relationship between university academics and school mentors that does not normally apply to typical models of teacher education even when both claim to be engaged in some sort of institutional partnership. In sum, it leads to the creation of places where different stakeholders in teacher education can fully engage as communities, but detached and different from their status within those communities. Another constructivist pedagogy that achieves such a levelling effect enables student teachers to observe their teacher educators or professors actually using some of the pedagogies that they lecture about with students in a class or school before they themselves get the chance to plan and co-construct strategies that are used in lessons and then reviewed by peers, their university teacher and the school teachers (Kazemi, Lampert & Franke, 2009). Microteaching will be familiar to readers as a professional development tool for student teachers to trial and master pedagogical strategies and trigger professional reflection. Although the practice is a well-established training technique it has still attracted criticism, largely due to its rather artificial nature (Stanley, 1998). However, some studies have reported positive effects when microteaching takes on a more constructivist perspective. Smith (2007) reports on her experiences of getting students to think about multiple theories that inform multiple
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practices, so that they are not simply looking for a fixed way (or correct way) of teaching grammar. By placing the emphasis for learning on the students it is they who construct their own teaching strategies based on their research and experience. In our teacher training programmes we try to strengthen connections with local schools through an initiative which involves inviting alumni of our programmes to bring a class of their own students to the university for a micro teaching session with our learner teachers. Feedback to our learner teachers is provided by the visiting students as well as the invited in-service teachers, so apart from adding a layer of authenticity to the practice of peer-teaching, this experience also translates into a valuable tool of inquiry whereby student teachers are able to reflect on the subject of their own teaching. The collaborative group work that goes into the sessions from the lesson planning (which is done through online dialogue with the school-based teacher over a period of weeks ahead of the visit) draws on Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’, whereby human learning, development and knowledge are all intertwined in a particular social and cultural context. In a similar approach, Chiang’s (2008) research in Taiwan focused on the incorporation of ‘fieldwork’ during her lecture-based methodology sessions, whereby her novice teachers could trial what they had learned and become more familiar with classroom realities. Although our experiences have been largely positive, we do not attempt to idealise these learning communities. Occasionally a visiting teacher oversteps their role as ‘equals’ in the lesson planning stage and resorts to telling the less experienced student teachers what they should do rather than co-constructing solutions or negotiating collectively. It is crucial to acknowledge the inherent power relationships between the perceived knowledge-holder (the in-service teacher or mentor, in this case) and the learner (the student teacher). It is just as vital that student teachers maintain agency in this initiative because the notion of mentoring by ‘experts’ in the field can produce tensions if it is allowed to promote a top-down model where the voice and experiences of the student teacher are undervalued or dismissed even. Nevertheless, from our experience with this practice, the experienced school teachers characterised the sense of community in the microteaching group and worked with their younger peers rather than assuming a hierarchical role in the group. The benefit of this integrated culture has been that novice teachers become full members of a wider community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Attempts have also been made at our university to create a holistic integration of theoretical and practical aspects of teacher preparation at postgraduate level. This innovative programme includes interlocking components that link theory and practice through integrated inquiry cycles built around weekly school experience days as well as a credit-bearing block of community-based experiential learning. It is believed that such a model will assist in overcoming the inherent issues in the apprenticeship of observation model (Lortie, 1975) and attend to the ‘problem of enactment’ (Kennedy, 1999), so that teachers have the chance to
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think like teachers and then act like teachers through these learning cycles. This brings us to the crucial aspect of reflection which can further narrow the gap between theory and practice (Attard & Armour, 2005).
The Importance of Reflection in Teacher Education Programmes Reflective teaching principles are at the heart of constructivist pedagogies (Kincheloe, 2003; Zeichner & Liston, 1996) because they remind teachers to constantly problematise their daily practices in order to understand more about their work. The reflective process, including both reflecting-in-action and reflecting-on-action (Schön, 1983), allows a teacher to create meaning out of practice. Dewey outlined key intellectual tools of inquiry that can transform experience into learning opportunities: having an open mind about different ways of promoting learning; taking responsibility for one’s actions; and engaging in ongoing reflection (1933). We use the term ‘reflection’ in the same way as Dewey did, namely as active, persistent and careful consideration. In Dewey’s eyes, teacher education programmes should produce not only teachers who are proficient in practical instructional skills, but teachers who are also keen students of teaching. With this in mind TEIs must offer students experiences that allow them the chance to become active, scholarly participants in the learning-to-teach process. Farrell (2007, 2008) prepares Singaporean student teachers for the transition from course to classroom reality by employing cases constructed from the narratives of novice teachers and also taps into his undergraduate students’ critical incidents as they are asked to describe them in writing before exchanging interpretations of the incidents through cooperative negotiation. Tan (2006) reports on how she makes her novice teachers reflect on lessons from multiple perspectives (as learners as well as teachers). Such reflective action and teaching might be seen as a cycle of critical praxis intended to transform beliefs and practices over the course of a teacher education programme. We also see the value of promoting self-directed learning (SDL) in teacher education courses (Silén & Uhlin, 2008), but SDL is sometimes misinterpreted to mean students learning alone without help. This interpretation is problematic. When SDL was first introduced in our postgraduate courses, students com plained that it was a waste of their time because they saw sessions as unplanned and unfocused. This prompted continual reflection on our part to try and make students’ learning experience more meaningful and collective. We encouraged our students to work in small teams and help each other learn as a class. So by shifting SDL from the self to the class, the students immediately felt they were connected to an authentic learning community providing them with a communal arena to learn together within the teacher training course (Butler, et al., 2004; Freese, 2006).
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Another way to promote reflection is through the employment of action research in training and in schools. Reasons for teachers to do action research have been discussed extensively in the literature on teacher education (Burns, 1999; Grundy, 1994) and the principles of action research align with the key ideas underpinning constructivist learning theories. For example, action research encourages critical reflection, promotes professional dialogues with other teachers, and leads to professional growth and social change. This type of professional learning also puts the decision-making process into the hands of teachers so that learning is relevant and embedded in practice (Darling-Hammond, 2006a; Whelan, 1999). Furthermore, critical reflection through action research enables teachers to unpack and problematise some of the educational discourses, the ‘golden philosophies’ of teaching and learning, in the broader sociocultural context. We try to empower teachers on our in-service courses to carry out small-scale action research projects whereby they explore their own teaching within the framework of our courses. On one in-service teacher training course our English language teachers are encouraged to identify an area in their teaching which they would like to improve or change. The teachers are encouraged to work collaboratively and actively discuss ideas before and during the action research cycles with peers through social media resources including a social media platform or an online class blog. The intention is to make the teachers’ learning journey a less lonely one because they all teach in different schools and only meet infrequently. The creation of the online community for the class of action researchers encourages them to share what they are doing in their individual schools and promotes collective learning in a mutually supportive environment. Encouraging in-service teachers to ‘narrate’ their journeys on a regular basis during the action research process also triggers deeper thinking and promotes ongoing reflection. Such a safe online community of practice (Wenger, 1998) allows learners to make meaning from their lived experiences as teacher-researchers. Although action research is advocated as a beneficial professional practice for in-service teachers, it has been noted that some teachers can find negotiating their identities as researchers a complicated process. So it is even more imperative that schools provide a space for teachers to reflect on their identity construction as they engage in classroom research (Chan & Clarke, 2014), which brings us to the importance of promoting a sense of ‘self’ in teacher training courses.
Connecting ‘Self’ to the Community So far we have tried to show that constructivist pedagogy in teacher training programmes promotes active learning and participation in social practice; through these approaches new teachers may become more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and more mindful of themselves. Noddings (2005) writes that ‘possibly no goal of education is more important – or more neglected – than selfunderstanding’ (p. 10) while Cook-Sather (2003, 2006) notes that when students
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learn, they not only construct knowledge, but they also construct and transform themselves. Becoming more aware of ‘self’ is especially crucial for new teachers trying to negotiate the wide range of challenges they encounter in their classrooms and schools. Pre-service teachers bring with them their own worldviews, other identities, their own beliefs and assumptions about teaching and learning when they join the programme, and they will acquire new ones as they progress through their ITE programmes, so there is a need to provide teachers-in-training with activities that will help them move in and out of these identities comfortably (Faulkner, 2011). Negotiating the dual identities of teacher and learner can be challenging for preservice teachers (Faulkner, 2011; Whelan, 1999; Woodward, 2002) because in ITE programmes their identity shifts between being ‘student teachers’ in the university classroom to ‘teachers of students’ when they undertake field experiences. Gordon (2008) draws on the work of Parker Palmer to state how TEIs must take responsibility for cultivating the inner terrain of teachers-in-training and nourish the capacity for connectedness from which she argues good teaching comes. Gordon (2008) identifies a potential problem in over-emphasising the technical aspects of constructivism at the expense of Palmer’s (1998) notion of connectedness. One source of this tension is the notion that teaching cannot be seen as a technical profession, and pedagogy courses must be established whereby teacher educators present a variety of methods and then demonstrate how to connect with their subject, their students and their sense of self. Connelly and Clandinin (2004) argue that ‘the most important aspects of teacher education are often ephemeral, passionate, shadowy and significant (and) for the most part reflect teachers’ lives’ (2004, p. 42). Such a view marks the emergence and development of narrative inquiry in teacher education, and how teacher education is inextricably linked to teachers’ lives (see Craig & Ross, 2008).
What are the Challenges of Enacting Constructivist Teaching Pedagogies in Neoliberal Times? The focus of this chapter has been set against a rather disconcerting backstory with Cochran-Smith & Zeichner (2005) suggesting that teacher education might not make very much difference at all because of the paucity of evidence showing the concrete benefits of approaches adopted by TEIs in North America. At the same time constructivist learning theories have also been caught in the crossfire; in an era of testing and accountability, the effectiveness of constructivist approaches at all levels of education has been keenly observed (see Matthews, 2003). Van Huizen, Van Oers and Wubbels (2005) have described the impact of constructivism in teacher education as rather limited, but other studies have suggested more positive outcomes (see, for example, Baines & Stanley, 2000; Fang & Ashley, 2004; Gordon & O’Brien, 2007; Marlowe & Page, 2005).
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It might be claimed that government policies and pervasive neoliberal values along with other political ideologies have shaped the professional formation of teachers as well as the curricula implemented in schools (Day & Sachs, 2004). Part of this neoliberal narrative is that in order to address acute problems caused by a global shortage of teachers, more fast-track teacher education programmes need to be established (see US Department of Education, 2002). However, this move has stimulated a fierce debate about the quality of such courses and with it the quality of graduating teachers (see Darling-Hammond, 2006a; DarlingHammond & Sykes, 2003). There can be little doubt that the professional landscape is constantly shifting, thereby intensifying the problems of complexity for anyone choosing to embark on a teaching career. High levels of attrition among early-career teachers around the world are evidence too, perhaps, of how these layers of complexity can trigger young educators’ decisions to leave the profession so soon after joining it fresh from TEIs (Guarino, Santibanez & Daley, 2006; Schaefer & Clandinin, 2011). Ironically, these observations come at a time when a powerful and wide-ranging discussion on teacher education is most certainly warranted and a transformative dialogue with teachers is vital, particularly given that the demands on teachers around the world are increasing exponentially. It is no longer true that only a small minority of school students need to be prepared for more challenging intellectual work via university and professional channels. Educational reforms in South East Asia, China, Australia, the United Kingdom and North America demonstrate the expectations placed on teachers to raise standards across schools. The introduction of National Curricula, league tables for schools, districts and countries, various types of teacher appraisal schemes, and the attention given to all-powerful international comparative evaluations of students’ achievement scores, such as those carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have all combined to challenge traditional conceptions of autonomy in the teaching profession. It can be seen, too, that economic necessity often underpins curriculum reform and even shapes the teaching that takes place in classrooms. In South East Asia, for example, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have all implemented wide-ranging educational reforms since the year 2000 as a vital part of their efforts to achieve success in trade and commerce in regional and global markets and to compete with existing economic forces in the west as well as emergent forces like mainland China. The importance of teaching and teachers is clear to see, so how should we best prepare our future educators? Heggarty (2000) informs us that approaches to standardising knowledge of pedagogy through teaching standards competencies have resulted in teaching being positioned as a ‘craft’ rather than a knowledgebased activity. Do TEIs want to produce teacher graduates who are just enactors of research and theories or teachers who are encouraged to follow their own aspirations of who and what type of teachers they want to be through a sustained and
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dynamic interaction with experience and guided study? Are TEIs training new teachers or educating them? We argue that the constructivist approach to teacher education achieves the latter in a reflective and intellectual process (Orchard and Foreman-Peck, 2011).
SUMMING UP In this chapter we have illustrated different teacher education activities all underpinned by constructivist theories. We have tried to demonstrate that the act of teaching cannot be distinguished from the act of learning, and when teacher educators adopt a constructivist approach they position themselves as co-learners with their students. These pedagogical strategies are aimed at articulating the central tenets of constructivist learning theories: recognising our student teachers developing as individuals but within a social context; triggering ongoing reflection; and providing multiple learning experiences in and out of the university classroom. That said, some of the examples presented in this chapter show that in practice, promoting and modelling constructivist models of teacher education can be a rather messy process. We should not underestimate the complexities involved (see Holt-Reynolds, 2000; Matthews, 2003). One reality of constructivist teacher education is that it functions in a university setting, and this traditional context can provide challenges for teacher educators and teachers (Beck & Kosnik, 2006), but we have presented some pedagogical approaches that take participants out of the institutionalised setting and place them in community settings to acquire meaningful learning experiences and bridge the theory–practice divide. Another challenge might be to do with the nature of the constructivist model itself, where the tenets which underpin it may seem abstract to some student teachers. Some teacher educators might even misconstrue the constructivist approach. When such problems arise teacher educators must reflect on their own roles. They might be able to provide stronger facilitation support to resolve conflicts arising from collaborative learning experiences, but there is also an important aspect whereby teacher educators have to try and co-construct the solution to any problem with colleagues and students. Reflection and discussion are often the precursors to change and understanding, so talking about teaching and the successes and challenges teacher educators face on a daily basis is a vital first step in enacting that change. The pedagogical perspectives proposed in this chapter embrace diversity and invite pre-service and in-service teachers to experience alternative practices of teaching and learning. These practices also inspire teachers to learn and grow as teaching professionals. We hope our pedagogical propositions help to guide the practice of teacher educators and the design of learning environments in and out of TEIs.
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REFERENCES American Council on Education (2002). Beyond September 11: A comprehensive national policy on international education. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Attard, K., and Armour, K.M. (2005) ‘Learning to become a learning professional: Reflections on one year of teaching’. Journal of Teacher Education, 28(2), 195–207. Baines, L.A., & Stanley, G. (2000). We want to see the teacher: Constructivism and the rage against expertise. Phi Delta Kappan, 82, 327–330. Barkhuizen, G., & Feryok, A. (2006). Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of a short-term international experience programme. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 34(1), 115–134. Beck, C., & Kosnik, C. (2006). Innovations in teacher education: A social constructivist approach. New York: SUNY Press. Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative action research for English language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butler, D.L., Lauscher, H.N., Jarvis-Selinger, S., & Beckingham, B. (2004). Collaboration and self-regulation in teachers’ professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 435–455. Carlson, H.L. (1999). From practice to theory: A social constructivist approach to teacher education. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 5(2), 203–218. Chan, C., & Clarke, M. (2014). The politics of collaboration: Discourse, identities and power in a school– university partnership in Hong Kong. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 42(3). Chen, S. (2001). Constructing a constructivist teacher education: A Taiwan experience. In Y. Cheng, K. Chow & K. Tsui (Eds), New teacher education for the future: International perspectives (pp. 261–290). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Cheng, M., Chan, K, Tang, S., & Cheng, A. (2009). Pre-service teacher education students’ epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 319–327. Chiang, M-H. (2008). The effects of fieldwork experience on empowering prospective foreign language teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(5), 1270–1287. Clandinin, D.J., & Connelly, M.F. (1992) Teacher as curriculum maker. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum. New York: Macmillan, 363–401. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005a) The new teacher education: For better or for worse? Educational Researcher, 34(3), 3–17. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005b). Teacher educators as researchers: Multiple perspectives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 219–225. Cochran-Smith, M., & Fries, K. (2011). Teacher education policy and social justice. In P.M. Earley, D.G. Imig & N.M. Michelli (Eds), Teacher education policy in the United States: Issues and tensions in an era of evolving expectations. New York: Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K.M. (Eds). (2005). Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship. (2005). Global competencies and national needs: One million Americans studying abroad. Retrieved from http://www.aplu.org/library/ global-competence-and-national-needs-one-million-americans-studying-abroad/file Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2004). Canadian teacher education in transition. In Y.C. Cheng, K. W. Chow & M.C. Magdalena Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium: Trends and challenges (pp. 35–43). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Cook-Sather, A. (2003). Education as translation: Students transforming notions of narrative and self. College Composition and Communication, 55(1), 91–114. Cook-Sather, A. (2006). Education is translation: A metaphor for change in learning and teaching. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Craig, C., & Ross, V. (2008). Cultivating teachers as curriculum makers. In F.M. Connelly (Ed.), Sage handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 282–305). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Darling-Hammond, L. (2005) Teaching as a profession: Lessons in teacher preparation and professional development, Phi Delta Kappan, 87, 3 Darling-Hammond, L. (2006a). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006b). Constructing 21st-century teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 300–314. Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (2006). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L., & Sykes, G. (Eds). (1999). Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L., & Sykes, G. (2003). Wanted: A national teacher supply policy for education: The right way to meet the ‘highly qualified teacher’ challenge. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 11(33). Day, C., & Sachs, J. (2004). Professionalism, performativity and empowerment: Discourses in the politics and purposes of continuing professional development. In C. Day & J. Sachs (Eds), International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. New York: Heath and Co. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books. Edwards, A. (2010). Being an expert professional practitioner: The relational turn in expertise. Dordrecht: Springer. Edwards, R., & Usher, R. (1998). ‘Moving’ experiences: Globalisation, pedagogy and experiential learning. Studies in Continuing Education, 20(2), 159–174. Fang, Z., & Ashley, C. (2004). Preservice teachers’ interpretations of a field-based reading block. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 39–54. Falkenberg, T. (2007). On the grounding of teacher education in the human condition. Journal of Educational Thought, 41(3), 245–262. Farrell, T.S.C. (2007). Promoting reflection in language teacher education through case-based teaching. The New English Teacher 1, 61–70. Farrell, T.S.C. (2008). Critical incidents in ELT initial teacher training. ELT Journal 62(1), 3–10. Faulkner, J. (2011). Teacher as learner. In G. Lantham, M. Blaise, S. Dole, J. Faulkner & K. Malone (Eds), Learning to teach: New times, new practices (Second Edition). Melbourne: Oxford. Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparation to practice: Designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching. Teachers College Record, 103(6), 1013–1055. Fosnot, C.T. (1996). Teachers construct constructivism: The center for constructivist teaching/teacher preparation project. In C.T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, perspectives and practices (pp. 175–192). New York: Teachers College Press. Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin. Freese, A.R. (2006). Reframing one’s teaching: Discovering our teacher selves through reflection and inquiry. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22, 100–119. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Gallagher, S. (2003). Educational psychology: Disrupting the dominant discourse. New York: Peter Lang. Gordon, M. (2008). Between constructivism and connectedness. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(4), 322–331. Gordon, M. (2009). The misuses and effective uses of constructivist teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15(6), 737–746. Gordon, M., & O’Brien, T. (Eds). (2007). Bridging theory and practice in teacher education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Grundy, S. (1994). Action research at the school level: Possibilities and problems. Educational Action Research, 2(1), 23–37. Guarino, M.G., Santibanez, L., & Daley, G. (2006). Teacher recruitment and retention: A review of the recent empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 76, 173–208.
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Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. New York: Teachers College Press. Hartley, D. (2007). Education policy and the ‘inter-regnum’. Journal of Education Policy, 22(6), 695–708. Heggarty, S. (2000). ‘Teaching as a knowledge-based activity’, Oxford Review of Education, 26, 451–465. Hogan, D. (2010). Current and future pedagogies in Singapore. Conference presentation made at TE21 Summit, Singapore, November 2010. Holt-Reynolds, H. (2000). What does the teacher do? Constructivist pedagogies and prospective teachers’ beliefs about the role of a teacher. Teacher and Teaching Education, 16(1), 21–32. Johnson, K.E. (2006). The sociocultural turn and its challenges for second language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 235–257. Kazemi, E., Lampert, M., & Franke, M. (2009). Developing pedagogies in teacher education to support novice teachers’ ability to enact ambitious instruction. In R. Hunter, B. Bicknell & T. Burgess (Eds), Crossing divides: Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (Vol. 1, pp. 12–30). Palmerston North, New Zealand: Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia. Kennedy, M.M. (1999). The role of preservice teacher education. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 54–85). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kincheloe, J.L. (2003). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment (Second Edition). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Columbus: Prentice Hall. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Lee, J.F.K. (2009). ESL student teachers’ perceptions of a short-term overseas immersion programme. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 1095–1104. Lortie, D.C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marlowe, B.A., & Page, M.L. (2005). Creating and sustaining the constructivist classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Matthews, W.J. (2003). Constructivism in the classroom: Epistemology, history and empirical evidence. Teacher Education Quarterly, 30, 51–64. Mezirow, J. (Ed.) (2000). Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Munby, H., & Russell, T. (1994) The Authority of experience in learning to teach: Messages from a physics methods class. Journal of Teacher Education, 18, 149–158. Noddings, N. (2005). Critical lessons: What our schools should teach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nuthall, G. (2015). Social constructivist teaching and the shaping of students’ knowledge and thinking. In Social constructivist teaching: Affordances and constraints (pp. 43–79). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Oldenburg, R. (1999). The great good place: Cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts in the heart of a community (Second Edition). Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Orchard, J., & Foreman-Peck, P. (2011). Philosophical perspectives on the future of teacher education. Research Intelligence, 116, 26–27. Oxford, R.L. (1997). Constructivism: Shape-shifting, substance, and teacher education applications. Peabody Journal of Education, 72, 36–67. Palmer, P.J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Rainer, J. (Ed.). (2002). Reframing teacher education: Dimensions of a constructivist approach. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt Publishers.
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Richardson, V. (Ed.). (1997). Constructivist teacher education: Building a world of new understandings. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Richardson, V. (2003). Constructivist pedagogy. Teachers College Record, 105(9), 1623–1640. Schaefer, L., & Clandinin, D.J. (2011). Stories of sustaining: A narrative inquiry into the experiences of two beginning teachers. Learning Landscapes, 4, 275–295. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. London: Ashgate. Silén, C., & Uhlin, L. (2008). Self-directed learning – a learning issue for students and faculty. Teaching in Higher Education, 13(4), 461–475. Skinner, N. (2010). Developing a curriculum for initial teacher education using a situated learning perspective. Teacher Development, 4(3), 279–293. Smith, E.R. (2007). Integrating theory and practice in an English methods course: Developing a teaching stance. In M. Gordon & T. O’Brien (Eds), Bridging theory and practice in teacher education (pp. 31–45). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Smith, J. (2001). Modeling the social construction of knowledge in ELT teacher education. ELT Journal, 55(3), 221–227. Stanley, C. (1998). A framework for teacher reflectivity. TESOL Quarterly, 32(2), 584–591. Tan, B.T. (2006). Looking at teaching through multiple lenses. ELT Journal, 60(3), 253–261. Tatto, M. (1998). The influence of teacher education on teachers’ beliefs about purposes of education, roles and practice. Journal of Teacher Education, 49(1), 66–76. US Department of Education. (2002). Meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: The secretary’s annual report on teacher quality. Washington, DC: Office of Postsecondary Education. Van Huizen, P., Van Oers, B., & Wubbels, T. (2005). A Vygotskian perspective on teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(3), 267–290. Villegas, A.M., & Lucas, T. (2002) Preparing culturally responsive teachers: Rethinking the curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 20–32. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (Revised translation by A. Kozulin, Ed.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whelan, K. (1999). Traveler on a journey. In F.M. Connelly & D.J. Clandinin (Eds), Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Woodward, K. (2002). Concepts of identity and difference. In K. Woodward (Ed.), Identity and Difference. London: Sage. Zeichner, K. (2010). ‘Competition, economic, rationalization, increased surveillance and attacks on diversity: Neo-liberalism and the transformation of teacher education in the US. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1544–1552. Zeichner, K. (2012). Two visions of teaching and teacher education for the twenty-first century. North Dartmouth: Social Policy, Education and Curriculum Research Unit, Centre for Policy Analyses. Zeichner, K., & Liston, D. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Zeichner, K., & Tabachnick, B.R. (1981). Are the effects of university teacher education washed out by school experiences? Journal of Teacher Education, 32, 7–11.
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32 Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Jan H. van Driel and Amanda K. Berry
INTRODUCTION In his presidential address to the American Educational Research Association in 1985, Lee Shulman introduced the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to emphasize the importance of subject matter in teaching and learning processes. Shulman argued that teachers need PCK to transform particular subject matter in ways that enable, and promote, student learning (Shulman, 1986). PCK is the knowledge that distinguishes teachers of subject matter from other subject matter experts. In Shulman’s conception of PCK, two components are central, that is, knowledge of strategies to represent specific subject matter (e.g., through schemes and analogies) and knowledge of students learning, or failing to learn (e.g., through forming misconceptions), that same subject matter. Shulman’s notion of PCK connects with a tradition in the European literature on teaching and teacher education. The German word ‘Fachdidaktik’, which may be translated as ‘the pedagogy of subject matter’, is often used to refer to this tradition. This tradition is mostly manifest in programs for pre-service teacher education. However, empirical research on Fachdidaktik has not focused on the ways that teachers transform subject matter knowledge, or how they relate their transformations to student learning. Instead, much of the work in this tradition has focused on the relationship between a school subject and an academic discipline. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to elaborate on Fachdidaktik – however, the interested reader is referred to Westbury, Hopmann and Riquarts (2000), which includes English translations of several seminal papers that were originally published in German (cf. Kansanen, 2009).
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Although PCK has become a central concept in research on teaching and teacher education in a variety of disciplines (e.g., natural sciences, mathematics, physical education), Shulman’s conceptualization of PCK has been critiqued on several grounds (Depaepe, Verschaffel & Kelchtermans, 2013). These critiques include the lack of an empirical grounding for Shulman’s claim about the importance of PCK as a component of teachers’ knowledge, and its ‘fuzzy boundaries’ (Marks, 1990) with other categories of teachers’ knowledge, such as their subject matter knowledge, and Shulman’s narrow conceptualization of PCK in terms of teachers’ knowledge of instructional strategies and representations, and their knowledge of students’ conceptions, misconceptions and learning difficulties. This conceptualization has also been critiqued as it seems to present PCK as a form of factual knowledge that can be acquired and applied independently from the classroom context (Settlage, 2013). However, in a recent publication, Shulman reflected that ‘PCK was not to be construed as “something” that teachers had in their heads but was a more dynamic construct that described the processes that teachers employed when confronted with the challenge of teaching particular subjects to particular learners in specific settings’ (Shulman, 2015, p. 9). In this chapter, we define PCK as ‘the knowledge of, reasoning behind, and enactment of the teaching of particular topics in a particular way with particular students for particular reasons for enhanced student outcomes’ (Carlson, Stokes, Helms, Gess-Newsome & Gardner, 2015, p. 24). In this chapter we focus on the development of pedagogical content knowledge in the context of pre-service teacher education programs. A review of the international research literature was conducted to provide a basis for examining the specific impact of certain program elements on PCK development. In particular, we focus on the impact of institutional courses and fieldwork, and we discuss the pedagogies applied within these contexts to promote PCK, that is, whenever these were included in the literature.
METHOD Recently, we conducted a systematic literature review, focusing on pedagogical content knowledge and pre-service/initial teacher education, using articles indexed in the Web of Science, ERIC and PyschInfo, between 1985 and August 2014. A total of 321 unique studies were identified which were then further reduced by including only English-language, peer-reviewed articles, so as to ensure studies were of a scholarly nature and in a language accessible to the authors. Further articles were excluded where the focus was on variants of PCK (e.g., Technological PCK), or on other components of teachers’ knowledge (e.g., curriculum knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge), resulting in a final set of 66 articles. This set included studies with a focus on the development of PCK in relation to, or alongside, the development of subject matter
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knowledge in the context of pre-service teacher education. We did not include studies that focused exclusively on pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge. Such studies are quite common, in particular in the domain of science teacher education, and are often based on concerns about the lack of understanding of science content, especially by pre-service elementary teachers (Van Driel, Berry & Meirink, 2014). Taken together, these 66 studies reveal that the large majority of empirical studies of PCK in the context of pre-service teacher education have taken place in the domain of science and mathematics, complemented by a small number of studies in physical education, language, drama, geography and history. Many studies investigated pre-service teachers’ PCK in a single context, at a specific point in time, while other studies aimed to compare pre-service teachers’ PCK across countries or teacher education programs. These studies are described in detail elsewhere (Berry, Depaepe & Van Driel, 2016). In this chapter, we draw from that review focusing on studies of the development of pre-service teachers’ PCK in the course of teacher education programs, including both elementary and secondary education. This focus resulted in a selection of 36 studies out of the set of 66. We discuss these studies according to the impact of specific features of these programs on PCK development, that is, coursework provided by institutes of higher education (section 3), fieldwork or practicum at schools (section 4), a combination of institutional courses and fieldwork (section 5), and supervising or mentoring (section 6).
IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONAL COURSEWORK ON PCK DEVELOPMENT Studies in this section typically were conducted within the framework of a discipline-specific methods course. Studies varied in their scope, from investigating the impact of short-term interventions or workshops, including the use of particular tools or scaffolds aimed at PCK development, through to longer-term studies aimed at capturing the development of PCK over an entire program. In most of these studies, both subject matter knowledge and PCK of pre-service teachers were investigated at multiple moments, typically in a pre-test post-test design.
Impact of Specific Courses and Workshops Several studies in the domain of mathematics examined the effects of specific courses on pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge and PCK (Burton, Daane & Giessen, 2008; Davis, 2009). For example, Tirosh (2000) examined the development of subject matter knowledge and PCK of elementary pre-service teachers (n = 30) in a one-semester mathematics methods course in Israel.
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The course in particular aimed to improve pre-service teachers’ understanding of students’ errors and the sources of these errors in the division of fractions. Pedagogies revolved around pre-service teachers (PSTs) solving mathematical expressions and word problems (subject matter knowledge) and exploring common student mistakes and possible sources of these mistakes (PCK). The course seemed to be successful in fostering pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge and PCK. For example, in a post-test, PSTs were able to predict more possible student mistakes and did not refer only to algorithmically based errors (as in the pre-test), but also to intuitively based mistakes. Other studies investigated the impact of methods courses on the subject matter knowledge and PCK of PSTs in the domain of science (Hume, 2012; SperandeoMineo, Fazio & Tarantino, 2006). For example, Davis and Petish (2005) worked with elementary PSTs, who tend to have very limited science subject matter knowledge. They developed a pedagogical approach around bringing a rich set of real-world experiences (i.e., about the topics ‘sound’ and ‘plants’) to a methods course. These authors found that their PSTs benefited from this approach, and suggested that because of their limited subject matter knowledge, elementary PSTs need to develop their subject matter knowledge and PCK simultaneously, and making real-world representations appeared to promote that development. In another study of pre-service elementary teachers, Nelson and Davis (2012) incorporated a unit in their science methods course to support PSTs in evaluating student-generated scientific models. They focused on four PSTs’ changing knowledge, scientific model evaluation skills and self-efficacy for evaluating scientific models as aspects of their developing PCK of scientific models. Findings from the study indicated that having multiple, scaffolded opportunities to engage in the work of modelling was instrumental in developing the pre-service teachers’ PCK. Some studies focused on pedagogies using particular tools in scaffolding and documenting pre-service teachers’ PCK development. For instance, Adadan and Oner (2014) investigated the PCK development of two secondary pre-service teachers in the context of a one semester chemistry methods course in Turkey. These authors used the Content Representation (CoRe) tool of Loughran et al. (2004) which is structured around a set of prompts related to some of the elements of Shulman’s knowledge base, in particular teachers’ understanding of specific aspects that represent and shape the content for teaching. The PSTs produced CoRes at the beginning and end of the semester on the topic ‘behavior of gases’, followed by individual interviews to elicit further details about their written CoRe responses. While both PSTs entered the program with strong subject matter knowledge of the topic, their PCK development differed noticeably by the end of semester. The authors suggest that differences in self-efficacy of the PSTs at least accounted for some of these differences. The CoRe tool was identified as very useful for explicitly focusing PSTs’ attention on what is important in designing lessons. Nilsson and Loughran (2012) successfully used a modified
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version of CoRes as part of an elementary science methods course in Sweden, to stimulate the development of pre-service teachers’ PCK and to create an awareness of the value of PCK for teaching. Kinach (2002) designed a heuristic as a pedagogical tool to guide secondary PSTs’ transformation of their subject matter knowledge for mathematics teaching. The heuristic was used with 21 PSTs in a one-semester mathematics methods class in the US. PSTs carried out three tasks designed to elicit, assess, challenge and develop their instructional explanations for addition and subtraction of integers. The findings of this study demonstrated that transformation of subject matter knowledge into PCK could be seen as a dialectical ‘conversation’ between pre-service teachers’ conceptions of subject matter and appropriate pedagogy. As a result, the emergence of PCK coincides with changes in knowledge of subject matter itself. In another study in the US, Jo and Bednarz (2014) aimed to develop the PCK of PSTs in geography (n = 24) through a one-off workshop. PSTs were introduced to the topic of ‘spatial thinking’, along with strategies to incorporate this topic into teaching practice, and a taxonomic tool to assess elements of spatial thinking. The authors reported positive effects of the workshop on pre-service teachers’ PCK: in addition to improved understanding of spatial concepts, PSTs’ confidence about teaching these concepts had increased, and they had incorporated these concepts prominently in their lesson plans. In particular, analysis of a video of exemplary teaching from a content perspective, in combination with the use of a ‘taxonomy of spatial thinking’ tool, were effective pedagogical components of the workshop.
Pedagogical Content Knowledge Development over an Entire Teacher Education Program Only a few studies investigated PCK development over the course of an entire teacher education program. Lim-Teo, Chua, Cheang and Yeo (2007) studied the PCK development of PSTs (n = 80), focusing on mathematics, in a two-year elementary teacher education program in Singapore. A 16-item PCK test was administered at the beginning and end of the program. The test consisted of four PCK components: mathematical subject matter knowledge; knowledge of a range of different representations; knowledge of cognitive demands of mathematical tasks on learners; and knowledge of students’ learning difficulties and misconceptions. Although scores improved on three of these four components, the authors concluded that at the end of the teacher education program, the PCK of these PSTs, overall, remained low. Blömeke, Buchholtz, Suhl and Kaiser (2014) investigated the PCK and beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics of secondary mathematics PSTs (n = 183; Germany), at the end of the first, second and third years of their teacher education program. PCK was measured using a standardized test, while beliefs about teaching were surveyed using a Likert-type scale to distinguish between ‘transmission’ and ‘constructivist’
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views. Among other findings, these authors reported that prior performance on PCK predicted later performance on PCK. Also they found evidence for a causal relationship between PCK and beliefs: higher scores on the PCK test predicted more constructivist beliefs in later assessments. Buchholtz and Kaiser (2013) compared the development of pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge and PCK across various elementary mathematics teacher education programs in Germany. Subject matter knowledge and PCK tests were administered among pre-service teachers (n = 167) in each year of their three-year program. The authors found a significant gain in subject matter knowledge and PCK in all programs from the first to the third year. Also, at every occasion, there was a significant, moderately positive correlation between PSTs’ scores on the subject matter knowledge and PCK tests. In summary, studies on pedagogies to enhance PCK and subject matter knowledge in the context of institute-based coursework in teacher education programs typically show a positive impact on PCK development at the level of both individual courses and entire programs. Studies on the effects of specific interventions demonstrate the successful use of tools and heuristics with an explicit focus on the teaching and learning of specific subject matter. For instance, such studies report that PSTs improved their understanding of specific student learning difficulties, or designed more articulate lesson plans. In many studies, the development of PCK and subject matter knowledge appear to be intertwined, rather than PCK development following up, or being built on, subject matter knowledge. Moreover, in some studies the development of PCK was combined with the development of beliefs about teaching and learning, and their sense of selfefficacy. Typically, development of PCK goes hand in hand with PSTs’ increased confidence to teach specific subject matter.
IMPACT OF FIELDWORK OR PRACTICUM ON PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT In a few studies, the impact of practical teaching experiences on PCK development was central. In this section, we use the term ‘fieldwork’ to refer to all components in teacher education programs during which PSTs spend considerable time in schools, observing, teaching and talking with students and teachers. Within the domain of biology, Friedrichsen et al. (2009) examined the effect of prior teaching experience on pre-service secondary teachers’ PCK, focusing on the topic of genetic variation. These researchers constructed PCK profiles of a sample of PSTs entering a US alternative certification teaching program, comparing two PSTs with two years of prior teaching experience with two PSTs without experience. The authors found that, when asked to design lessons on genetic variation, both pairs mainly drew on general pedagogical knowledge and possessed little PCK about the topic. The researchers concluded that teaching
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experience, in the absence of teacher education, does not necessarily contribute to PCK development. A few studies applied an experimental design to test the assumption that fieldwork in teacher education is important to develop pre-service teachers’ PCK. Capraro, Capraro, Parker, Kulm and Raulerson (2005) investigated the impact of the duration of field experience in two elementary teacher education programs within one US university. In this study, the impact of a teacher education program with four days per week of fieldwork was compared with a program that had two days per week of field experiences on both the development of pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge and PCK. Pre- and post-tests were administered to 193 PSTs in the two different programs. Participating in a four days per week or two days per week field-based assignment did not have any significant differential effect on the development of PCK and subject matter knowledge. The authors concluded that it is not the duration of the fieldwork as such that matters, but rather the quality of the fieldwork, for instance, how PSTs are supervised in schools. Additionally, the authors found that PSTs with high scores on subject matter knowledge tests showed a larger gain in their PCK scores between pre- and post-test. In another experimental study in the US, Strawhecker (2005) investigated the effects of four different conditions on the development of PCK about mathematics among elementary PSTs (n = 86). All conditions included a semester of coursework; however, two of them also had a fieldwork component (i.e., 20 hours of one-to-one meetings with elementary-school students, focusing on mathematics). Whereas the groups did not score significantly differently on the pre-test measures, the PSTs who were exposed to field experiences in mathematics significantly outperformed the other two groups on the PCK post-test. In summary, these studies suggest that fieldwork, organized as part of a preservice teacher education program, potentially contributes to the development of PCK. There is no straightforward relationship, however, between the amount of fieldwork and PCK development.
IMPACT OF A COMBINATION OF INSTITUTIONAL COURSES AND FIELDWORK ON PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT Since many pre-service teacher education programs combine fieldwork with methods courses, a relatively large number of studies focused on the PCK development that results from this combination. In a series of studies in the domain of science, Van Driel and colleagues applied a pedagogical design consisting of workshops, where secondary PSTs analyzed research literature and designed a series of lessons (i.e., on the topic of models and modeling), followed by teaching these lessons and writing a reflective report (De Jong et al., 2005; Van Driel et al., 2002), or conducting an action research project (Justi & Van Driel, 2006)
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and discussing PSTs’ experiences within their institutions. In these studies, significant gains in the growth of PCK were reported. It was found that, in particular, reflective activities (such as writing reports and sharing experiences in collective meetings) stimulated the development of PCK, both in terms of enhancing PSTs’ understanding of student learning as well as developing their knowledge of adequate teaching strategies. In addition, and connected with this, pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge often increased. Other studies also reported successes in developing PCK alongside subject matter knowledge in the course of a teacher education program (Bektas et al., 2013; Nilsson, 2008). Brown, Friedrichsen and Abell (2013) found that as PSTs (n = 4) progressed through a one-year biology teacher education program in the US, their PCK, in terms of their knowledge of learners and their knowledge of instructional sequences, became more integrated. Some studies used specific pedagogical tools or scaffolds, such as CoRe design, as a means of connecting field and institutional experiences. For example, Aydin et al. (2013) studied the use of CoRes designed by PSTs within a chemistry methods course in Turkey. The designed CoRes were used as a basis for lesson planning and subsequent teaching in PSTs’ fieldwork experiences. Institute-based mentors provided feedback and engaged PSTs in reflective discussion during their fieldwork placement using prompts from the CoRe. The authors reported that this pedagogical design helped participants (n = 3) to develop a more integrated form of PCK. In a similar study with chemistry PSTs in New Zealand, Hume and Berry (2013) focused on PSTs who designed CoRes on topics they were teaching in fieldwork. PSTs subsequently refined their CoRes based on their teaching experiences and through ongoing discussions with their school-based mentors. Findings indicated that the CoRe task provided a useful framework for focused conversations about chemistry teaching between PSTs and their mentor teachers. Michalsky (2012) introduced a scaffolding tool to promote Israeli secondary PSTs’ (n = 188) development of self-regulated learning, PCK and selfefficacy for science inquiry teaching. Using a quasi-experimental design, PSTs were organized according to four different groups which differed on prompts that PSTs received while completing tasks. While all four groups improved in their PCK, significant gains were found in the group receiving cognitive, metacognitive and motivational prompts. Studies in the domain of mathematics teacher education also demonstrate the importance of teaching practice in combination with institute-based input and reflective activities for PCK development. For instance, Stump (2001) examined the effects of a secondary methods course that incorporated fieldwork on the development of PCK on the topic of slope. The pedagogical design included PSTs making lesson plans as part of the methods course. Moreover, as part of their fieldwork, PSTs were required to interview a high school and a university student on their understanding of slope, and compare the interviews through a written analysis. The development of pre-service teachers’ PCK was monitored
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through an analysis of their prior knowledge on PCK (e.g., ‘What difficulties do you think pupils might have with slope?’), the knowledge demonstrated during the course (e.g., the interview assignment, the lesson plans), and finally, knowledge demonstrated in the actual teaching of a lesson on slope during the semester after the course. The results indicated that the development of PCK of the PSTs (n = 3) followed very different pathways, but in all cases the integrated course had been effective in challenging and developing their initial PCK. Combining fieldwork and classroom activities provided opportunities for PSTs to relate theory to practical situations. Applying a similar pedagogical design, Karp (2010) also found that integrating a methods course and fieldwork was helpful in promoting pre-service teachers’ PCK, in terms of enhancing their knowledge of content, students, teaching and curriculum, and their mutual relations. Studies in teacher education programs in other subject domains, such as physical education, history and language, have also investigated the development of PCK as a result of the interaction between institute-based method courses and fieldwork. For example, Rovegno (1992) studied the PCK development of physical education PSTs (n = 7) in the US during a semester that combined a methods course with fieldwork in elementary schools. PCK development was described in terms of PSTs’ increased ability to focus on a detailed, rather than a general level of content. In addition, PSTs were increasingly able to explicate relations between knowing ‘that’ (i.e., knowing about teaching content) and knowing ‘how’ (i.e., teaching and observing children learning that content). In the domain of language, Atay, Kaslioglu and Kurt (2010) studied the PCK development of Turkish secondary PSTs (n = 18) of English language. In their pedagogical design, PSTs first wrote a reflective narrative after reading a novel (i.e., ‘The Giver’ by L. Lowry), followed by fieldwork, which included planning and teaching lessons about this novel. After this task, PSTs were interviewed in focus groups of six. It was found that the combination of a methods course with the experiential task contributed to the development of their PCK, specifically to PSTs’ understanding of ‘how to unpack and present the content so that students can learn with understanding’ (Atay et al., 2010, p. 1425). Also in the domain of language, Spear-Swerling (2009) investigated the PCK development of 45 pre-service elementary teachers in the US, in a study that combined university-based instruction in literacy instruction with PSTs working with individual second-grade students in a school tutoring program. PSTs’ knowledge of literacy instruction was assessed via a questionnaire prior to and following the intervention. Findings from the study showed that this pedagogical approach resulted in a significant improvement in PSTs’ PCK of literacy instruction. Finally, MonteSano and Budano (2013) studied the PCK development of two beginning secondary history teachers in the US, not only during teacher education, but also two years after graduation. The authors observed lessons and interviewed the two teachers, and collected classroom artefacts (such as lesson plans) over a period of three years. Findings indicated that specific features of the teacher education
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program, the school context and individual teachers’ abilities all contributed to the development of PCK. It appeared that both teachers’ PCK continued to grow after their initial teacher education, although the pace and content of this development varied between the two participants. In particular, attending to students’ ideas about history remained one of the more challenging aspects of PCK for these novice teachers. In summary, the studies in this section suggest that a combination of institute-based coursework and field experiences in the context of pre-service teacher education may contribute significantly to PCK development. Obviously, specific changes in PCK are related to the subject matter and the focus of each study; however, PSTs typically gain a better understanding of student learning of subject matter, and, related to this, an increased knowledge of particular teaching strategies and materials that may effectively promote student learning. The pedagogical design of such programs typically revolves around specific activities in schools (e.g., teaching a series of lessons on a certain topic, interviewing students about a topic), bookended by institutional activities, aimed at preparing for fieldwork on the one hand, and sharing and reflecting on PSTs’ experiences in the field, on the other hand.
IMPACT OF MENTORS OR SUPERVISORS ON PCK DEVELOPMENT Relatively few studies focused on the role of mentors (Nilssen, 2010; Pitfield, 2012), supervisors (McDuffie, 2004) or peer coaches (Jenkins & Veal, 2002), as actors to promote pre-service teachers’ PCK development. Nilssen (2010) studied how a school-based mentor teacher made use of elementary PSTs’ field experiences to support their simultaneous development of Cochran, DeRuiter and King’s (1993) four components of pedagogical content knowing. Nilssen found that the mentor’s use of guided questioning as a pedagogical strategy helped PSTs to see possibilities when, during their fieldwork, they ‘struggle with problems or dilemmas, or there [...] is something they misunderstand or do not understand at all’ (Nilssen, 2010, p. 440). Through interaction with PSTs, the mentor played a key role in supporting the integrative development of their PCK, showing them how knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy, context and students in the class are integrated in teaching. Similarly, Pitfield (2012) emphasized the role of mentors in the process of PCK development in a study of British secondary PSTs in drama education. Pitfield characterized PCK development as ‘a debate’ that follows from tensions between PSTs’ previous experiences as drama experts, and their experiences in the context of learning to teach drama. During fieldwork, PSTs were mentored by experienced, specialist drama teachers in schools who turned out to be essential facilitators of this debate. Pitfield concluded: ‘Mentors have demonstrated, enabled, allowed experimentation, and
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encouraged collegial reflective practice, thus supporting the student-teachers in arriving at a model of practice and a set of positions around pedagogical content knowledge to which they can subscribe’ (Pitfield, 2012, p. 440). McDuffie (2004) argued that university-based supervisors, rather than schoolbased mentors, are pivotal in PCK development of pre-service teachers. In a study of two elementary PSTs during their fieldwork over the course of one semester, McDuffie investigated the role of PSTs’ emerging PCK, both in planning lessons and in actual teaching. Findings indicated that both PSTs applied strong PCK in planning their lessons, whereas despite this careful planning, limitations in PSTs’ PCK were observed in the actual teaching. In particular, PSTs had difficulties in reflecting on their instructional behavior while in the act of teaching (reflectionin-action). This inspired McDuffie to suggest that delayed reflection-on-action may help to further develop the pre-service teachers’ PCK. For this purpose, university supervisors should support PSTs’ development of PCK by providing ‘opportunities to discuss in depth the teaching and learning issues for specific lessons to pose various problematic scenarios, both after teaching episodes and well in advance of lessons’ (McDuffie, 2004, p. 56). According to McDuffie, schoolbased mentors, rather than supporting PCK development, should mainly support PSTs’ learning of the daily work of a teacher. Finally, Jenkins and Veal (2002) conducted a study on peer coaching in the context of a physical education pre-service program in the US. During a semester that included a methods course plus extensive field experiences in elementary schools, eight PSTs worked in pairs, alternating the roles of ‘coach’ and ‘teacher’. Focusing on the development of pedagogical content knowing (Cochran et al., 1993), the authors found that in the role of ‘teacher’, the integration of two knowledge components, that is, student characteristics and pedagogy, was central. In this role, the focus therefore seemed to be on classroom management; however, in the role of ‘coach’, PSTs seemed able to move beyond classroom management to identify context and subject matter concerns. The authors concluded: ‘since the roles of coach and teacher were complementary in the development of teacher knowledge and [PCK], we believe it is vital that PSTs have opportunities to learn about and engage in both roles’ (Jenkins & Veal, 2002, p. 65). In summary, school-based mentors play a key role in ensuring the impact of field experiences on pre-service teachers’ PCK development. Specific pedagogical activities of mentors, such as guided questioning, can encourage PSTs’ reflection on their field experiences, and, consequently, contribute to PCK development. In particular, school-based mentors may help PSTs to integrate knowledge of various components (e.g., subject matter, pedagogy, context and students) into PCK. At the same time, institute-based supervisors may also have an important role in linking theory to practice through in-depth discussions with PSTs about the teaching and learning of specific topics, both before and after teaching lessons.
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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In summary, the previous studies give important insights into teacher education contexts and pedagogies that promote pre-service teachers’ PCK. Collectively, these studies also highlight both new and persistent issues in PCK research, and its impact and value in teacher education. Such issues relate to definitional boundaries, the contexts and systems in which learning to teach occurs, disciplinary and methodological approaches applied to PCK research, and matters of voice and perspective in representing PCK research. We outline these insights and issues below. In terms of teacher education pedagogies at course level that support PCK development, the reviewed studies report a variety of practices, approaches and tools. Practices involve encouraging PSTs to become learners as well as teachers: learning about themselves through developing awareness of their own learning processes, and examining their own subject matter knowledge and their beliefs about teaching, as well as learning about their students, through becoming aware of students’ ideas and misconceptions in their subject domain. Pedagogical approaches contributing to PCK development include activities such as examining samples of student work, designing and carrying out lessons on specific topics, video analysis and conducting action research. In addition, scaffolding tools (e.g., CoRes, criteria to analyze lessons) can foster PCK development by providing PSTs with learning opportunities to develop more sophisticated and integrated conceptions regarding how to teach particular subject matter. At the level of program design, studies have shown that being enrolled in methods courses in teacher education institutes, in combination with fieldwork, positively impacts the PCK development of pre-service teachers. Importantly, research shows that it is not the quantity, but mainly the quality of fieldwork that seems to promote PCK development. School-based mentors as well as institutebased supervisors can play a key role in ensuring the quality of field experiences, and, consequently, their PCK development. Both mentors and supervisors can help PSTs to see that there is never a ‘one size fits all’ or ‘correct’ answer to the problems of teaching and learning subject matter. Rather, they may contribute to PSTs’ understanding of teaching as a complex activity that requires continuous inquiry into practice and is dependent on reasoning and decision-making (Feiman-Nemser, 1998). Given the increasing emphasis on the role of schools in preparing new teachers, and persisting issues related to the integration of theory and practice in teacher education, we suggest that future research efforts could be directed more towards examining the role of school-based mentors and institutebased supervisors in supporting PCK development of pre-service teachers. From a methodological perspective, we found differences in the ways PCK development was studied. Some studies applied a pre-test, post-test design with standardized instruments to compare pre-service teachers’ PCK at different moments in time. Implicitly, in such studies PCK is considered a (normative)
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body of knowledge that teachers need to master (cf. knowledge for teachers; Fenstermacher, 1994). In other studies, the development of PCK was monitored, over a certain period of time, by collecting written and oral data from pre-service teachers (e.g., lesson plans, written reflections, interviews), and making sense of these data in terms of PSTs’ emerging PCK. Such studies seem to adopt the view that PCK is knowledge of teachers (Fenstermacher, 1994), which develops on the basis of personal and contextual factors. Interestingly, although these different methodologies reflect rather fundamental differences in how PCK is conceptualized, the abovementioned conclusions about contexts that effectively promote PCK development seem independent of the way PCK was investigated. These differences and their associated views of knowledge link to ongoing issues in PCK research (and in teacher education research, generally) about which disciplinary and methodological perspectives are most likely to yield outcomes that have far-reaching implications and whose voices and perspectives are considered legitimate in researching teaching. In reviewing the research on pedagogies to promote PCK development of preservice teachers, several limitations became apparent. First, since the reported studies were conducted in a variety of settings, in different subject domains and with different types of pre-service teachers (fast-track, graduate, undergraduate), it is not possible to compare whether certain kinds of pedagogical approaches are more helpful than others in promoting PCK development. Second, not all studies were explicit or detailed about the pedagogies that were used. Typically, studies that investigated PCK development over an entire program were rather vague about the use of specific pedagogies. Also, there is a lack of studies on PCK development in domains other than mathematics and science education. Finally, no studies were found that tried to relate pre-service teachers’ PCK to student learning outcomes. Future studies could examine the impact on PCK development of providing PSTs with evidence of what their students learned about a certain topic, after it was taught to them by PSTs. For instance, mentors can present PSTs with observational data and student work to help them uncover concealed or overlooked issues that affect student learning. To conclude, while we acknowledge that many questions remain about what kinds of pedagogical approaches and experiences effectively support the PCK development of pre-service teachers, the research reviewed in this chapter offers many useful ideas for the design of pre-service teacher education programs that aim at learning to teach in ways that promote student learning of specific subject matter.
REFERENCES Adadan, E., & Oner, D. (2014). Exploring the Progression in Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Representations: The Case of ‘Behavior of Gases’. Research in Science Education, 44, 829–858.
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Atay, D., Kaslioglu, O., & Kurt, G. (2010). The Pedagogical Content Knowledge Development of Prospective Teachers through an Experiential Task. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 1421–1425. Aydın, S., Demırdogen, B., Tarkın, A., Kutucu, S., Ekiz, B., Akın, F.N., Tuysuz, M., & Uzuntiryaki, E. (2013). Providing a Set of Research-Based Practices to Support Preservice Teachers’ Long-Term Professional Development as Learners of Science Teaching. Science Education, 97, 903–935. Bektas, O., Ekiz, B., Tuysuz, M., Selcan Kutucu, E., Tarkin, A., & Uzuntiryaki-Kondakci, E. (2013). Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of the Nature of Science in the Particle Nature of Matter. Chemistry Education Research & Practice, 14, 201–213. Berry, A.K., Depaepe, F., & Van Driel, J.H. (2016). Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Teacher Education. In J.J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (Eds), International Handbook of Teacher Education (Volume 1) (pp. 347–386). New York: Springer. Blömeke, S., Buchholtz, N., Suhl, U., & Kaiser, G. (2014). Resolving the Chicken-or-Egg Causality Dilemma: The Longitudinal Interplay of Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Beliefs. Teaching and Teacher Education, 37, 130–139. Brown, P., Friedrichsen, P., & Abell, S.K. (2013). The Development of Prospective Secondary Biology Teachers’ PCK. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24, 133–155. Buchholtz, N., & Kaiser, G. (2013). Improving Mathematics Teacher Education in Germany: Empirical Results from a Longitudinal Evaluation of Innovative Programs. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 11, 949–977. Burton, M., Daane, C.J., & Giessen, J. (2008). Infusing Mathematics Content into a Methods Course: Impacting Content Knowledge for Teaching. Issues in the Undergraduate Mathematics Preparation of School Teachers, 1, 1–12. Capraro, R.M., Capraro, M.M., Parker, D., Kulm, G., & Raulerson, T. (2005). The Mathematics Content Knowledge Role in Developing Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 20, 108–124. Carlson, J., Stokes, L., Helms, J., Gess-Newsome, J., & Gardner, A. (2015). The PCK Summit: A Process and Structure for Challenging Current Ideas, Provoking Future Work, and Considering New Directions. In A. Berry, P. Friedrichsen & J. Loughran (Eds), Re-examining Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science Education (pp. 14–27). New York: Routledge. Cochran, K.F., DeRuiter, J.A., & King, R.A. (1993). Pedagogical Content Knowing: An Integrative Model for Teacher Preparation. Journal of Teacher Education, 44, 263–272. Davis, E.A., & Petish, D. (2005). Real-world Applications and Instructional Representations among Prospective Elementary Science Teachers. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 16, 263–286. Davis, J.D. (2009). Understanding the Influence of Two Mathematics Textbooks on Prospective Secondary Teachers’ Knowledge. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 12, 365–389. De Jong, O., Van Driel, J.H., & Verloop, N. (2005). Developing Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Models and Modelling. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42, 947–964. Depaepe, F., Verschaffel, L., & Kelchtermans, G. (2013). Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Systematic Review of the Way in which the Concept has Pervaded Mathematics Educational Research. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, 12–25. Feiman-Nemser, S. (1998). Teachers as Teacher Educators. European Journal of Teacher Education, 21, 63–74. Fenstermacher, G.D. (1994) The Knower and the Known: The Nature of Knowledge in Research on Teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond (Ed.), Review of Research in Education (pp. 3–56). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Friedrichsen, P.J., Abell, S.K., Pareja, E.M., Brown P.L., Lankford, D.M., & Volkmann, M.J. (2009). Does Teaching Experience Matter? Examining Biology Teachers’ Prior Knowledge for Teaching in an Alternative Certification Program. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46, 357–383. Hume, A. (2012). Primary Connections: Simulating the Classroom in Initial Teacher Education. Research in Science Education, 42, 551–565.
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Hume, A., & Berry, A. (2013). Enhancing the Practicum Experience for Pre-service Chemistry Teachers through Collaborative CoRe Design with Mentor Teachers. Research in Science Education, 43, 2107–2136. Jenkins, J.M., & Veal, M.L. (2002). Preservice Teachers’ PCK Development during Peer Coaching. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 22, 49–68. Jo, I., & Bednarz, S.W. (2014). Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Spatial Thinking through Geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 38, 301–313. Justi, R., & Van Driel, J.H. (2006). The Use of the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth for Understanding the Development of Science Teachers’ Knowledge on Models and Modelling. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22, 437–450. Kansanen, P. (2009). Subject-matter Didactics as a Central Knowledge Base for Teachers, or Should It Be Called Pedagogical Content Knowledge? Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 17, 29–39. Karp, A. (2010). Analyzing and Attempting to Overcome Prospective Teachers’ Difficulties during Problem-Solving Instruction. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 13, 121–139. Kinach, B.M. (2002). A Cognitive Strategy for Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the Secondary Mathematics Methods Course: Toward a Model of Effective Practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 51–71. Lim-Teo, S.K., Chua, K.G., Cheang, W.K., & Yeo, J.K.K. (2007). The Development of Diploma in Education Student Teachers’ Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 5, 237–261. Loughran, J.J., Mulhall, P., & Berry, A. (2004). In Search of Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science: Developing Ways of Articulating and Documenting Professional Practice. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41, 370–391. Marks, R. (1990). Pedagogical Content Knowledge: From a Mathematical Case to a Modified Conception. Journal of Teacher Education, 41, 3–11. McDuffie, A.R. (2004). Mathematics Teaching as a Deliberate Practice: An Investigation of Elementary Pre-service Teachers’ Reflective Thinking during Student Teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 7, 33–61. Michalsky, T. (2012). Shaping Self-regulation in Science Teachers’ Professional Growth: Inquiry Skills. Science Education, 96, 1106–1133. Monte-Sano, C. & Budano, C. (2013). Developing and Enacting Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching History: An Exploration of Two Novice Teachers’ Growth over Three Years. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 22, 171–211. Nelson, M.M., & Davis, E.A. (2012). Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Evaluations of Elementary Students’ Scientific Models: An Aspect of Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Scientific Modeling. International Journal of Science Education, 34, 1931–1959. Nilssen, V.L. (2010). Guided Planning in First-year Student Teachers’ Teaching. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 54, 431–449. Nilsson, P. (2008). Teaching for Understanding: The Complex Nature of Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Pre-service Education. International Journal of Science Education, 30, 1281–1299. Nilsson, P., & Loughran, J.J. (2012). Exploring the Development of Pre-service Science Elementary Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 23, 699–721. Pitfield, M. (2012). Transforming Subject Knowledge: Drama Student Teachers and the Pursuit of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 17, 425–442. Rovegno, I.C. (1992). Learning to Teach in a Field-based Method Course: The Development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Teaching and Teacher Education, 8, 69–82. Settlage, J. (2013). On Acknowledging PCK’s Shortcomings. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24, 1–12. Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching. Educational Researcher, 15, 4–14.
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Shulman, L.S. (2015). PCK: Its Genesis and Exodus. In A. Berry, P. Friedrichsen & J. Loughran (Eds), Re-examining Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science Education (pp. 3–13). New York: Routledge. Spear-Swerling, L. (2009). A Literacy Tutoring Experience for Prospective Special Educators and Struggling Second Graders. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42, 431–443. Sperandeo-Mineo, R.M., Fazio, C., & Tarantino G. (2006). Pedagogical Content Knowledge Development and Pre-service Physics Teacher Education: A Case Study. Research in Science Education, 36, 235–268. Strawhecker, J. (2005). Preparing Elementary Teachers to Teach Mathematics: How Field Experiences Impact Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Issues in the Undergraduate Mathematics Preparation of School Teachers, 4, 1–12. Stump, S.L. (2001). Developing Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Slope. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 20, 207–227. Tirosh, D. (2000). Enhancing Prospective Teachers’ Knowledge of Children’s Conceptions: The Case of Division of Fractions. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 31, 5–25. Van Driel, J.H., Berry, A., & Meirink, J.A. (2014). Research on Science Teacher Knowledge. In N.G. Lederman & S.K. Abell (Eds), Handbook of Research on Science Education, Volume II (pp. 848–870). London: Routledge. Van Driel, J.H., De Jong, O., & Verloop, N. (2002). The Development of Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ PCK. Science Education, 86, 4, 572–590. Westbury, I., Hopmann, S., & Riquarts, K. (2000). Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition. Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.
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33 Learning and Teaching with Technology: Technological Pedagogy and Teacher Practice D o ro n Z i n g e r, Ta m a r a Ta t e a n d M a r k Wa r s c h a u e r In this chapter, we examine technology-enhanced pedagogy in the context of teacher learning and classroom practice. We define and discuss technologyrich environments, which encompass a complex combination of tools, curricula, contexts, and teachers. We will point out that technocentrist approaches (see discussion in Papert, 1990) persist in the classroom and note their counterproductive nature. We then conceptualize technological pedagogy within the framework of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) (Koehler & Mishra, 2009), which presents a useful way to situate technology and teacher knowledge. Finally, we broaden our view to examine technological contexts across a number of settings and the impact of sociocultural factors on the use of technology and the enactment of technological pedagogy. In exploring varied teaching contexts, we identify emerging characteristics that support or hinder teacher learning of technological pedagogy and implementation of high quality instruction. In particular, we examine barriers that teachers and schools are likely to confront in developing teacher technological pedagogy and practice. We consider both pre-service teacher education programs and in-service teacher professional development (PD), and their roles in promoting teacher technological pedagogy and improved classroom practice. We look at affordances in existing pre-service and in-service programs, and make recommendations for productive approaches to improve teacher technological pedagogy.
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BACKGROUND Technological Literacy, a Global Priority Preparing today’s global workforce for the information and communication technologies (ICT) used daily in commerce is a national priority for many countries; arguably, developing a competitive ICT workforce is most important for developing countries (Jhurree, 2005). Most national governments look to educational systems to address the need for digital literacy, which places the responsibility for preparing students on schools and teachers (Epstein, Nisbet, & Gillespie, 2011). The approach to meeting this need for an ICT-conversant workforce varies widely by country and region (Ayanso, Cho, & Lertwachara, 2014), as do the barriers, challenges, and limitations to access, skills, and usage of digital technology (ITU, 2009). Nonetheless, the challenge to educate a digitally literate populace is broadly faced globally.
Technocentrist Approaches to Classroom Technology Use Despite the breadth of literature arguing against them (Jimoyiannis & Komis, 2007; Warschauer, Cotten, & Ames, 2011), technocentrist (Papert, 1990) approaches continue to be employed across the globe with poor outcomes (OECD, 2015), often attracting a great deal of publicity (e.g., Sugata Mitra’s $1 million TED prize for his school in the cloud). The technocentrist approach views technology access as its own end (Papert, 1990). The technological device itself is viewed as the solution to an instructional challenge. Moving away from technocentrist approaches requires a significant change in thinking by policy makers and those in leadership positions. Nonetheless, it is an important step to conceptualizing technology-rich environments that are likely to improve teacher practice and student learning. Globally, this shift continues to be a challenge, as decades-old calls to consider pedagogy as an integral part of technology (Watson, 2001) continue to go unheeded. Indeed, publicized failures of large-scale technology projects such as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) iPad program (Cuban, 2013) and Turkey’s FATIH program (Gamze Isci & Besir Demir, 2015) have helped demonstrate the failure of device-focused approaches that largely ignore teaching practice and pedagogy. In both the LAUSD and Turkish cases, the lack of technical support and lack of time invested in teacher professional development were identified as central reasons for program failure. In the case of LAUSD, teachers were initially provided with only two or three days of training on the general use of the device (Margolin et al., 2015). The findings from the LAUSD and Turkish technology programs are consistent with our own previous research in Birmingham (Warschauer, Cotten, & Ames, 2011), where a top-down, hardware-driven approach failed to support instructional pedagogy and student learning. We argue that technology can be
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an integral part of solving challenges in teacher instruction or practice; however, technology use should be predicated on the instructional problem of practice. In the cases mentioned above, there was little consultation with teachers or instructional practice in the deployment of technology. In the context of access, skill, and usage, these cases demonstrate that even when abundant access was available, the absence of skill and usage on the part of teachers limited students’ skill and usage. Conversely, we note that positive student outcomes have been achieved when teachers are provided with technical support and professional development for the integration of technology in the classroom (Warschauer, 2011; Warschauer, Zheng, Niiya, Cotten, & Farkas, 2014).
Technology-Rich Environments What are technology-rich environments? Though the framework access, skills, and usage has been applied on a macro level to define entire countries as technologyrich (ITU, 2009), it may also serve as a useful framework on a micro level to look at teaching and classrooms. We conceptualize technology-rich environments in the classroom as providing access to digital technology, developing skills with digital technology, and enacting and supporting usage of digital technology. The extent of access, skills, and usage then define the affordances for student learning. Though access is important, the types and number of devices used in technology-rich classrooms vary widely (Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, Newby, & Ertmer, 2010). Furthermore, the effective integration of technology may be more dependent on curriculum and instruction than the particular technological tool (Earle, 2002). Thus, we suggest that in the context of access, skills, and usage, technology-rich environments are dependent on the teachers who instruct the student as much as they are dependent on the availability and affordances of the technology itself. We additionally point to the wide range and availability of technological tools and resources in effective classrooms to suggest that there is no single technological saturation point or narrow description of what technology-rich learning environments should look like (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2010). Technology-rich environments may exist in unexpected places and with limited resources, if teachers are able to effectively leverage those resources in ways that support the curriculum and student learning. Globally, the pursuit of technology-rich classrooms is unfolding at different rates, with different emphases. Developing countries are focusing on greater access to digital technology (du Plessis & Webb, 2012) and developed countries are confronting issues of skill and usage (Haight, Quan-Haase, & Corbett, 2014; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2013). In developed countries where digital technology has proliferated in society and schools, ICT has become a common part of classrooms, as well as teacher preparation and in-service training programs. Nonetheless, the presence of ICT has not resulted in universal improvements in academic performance and learning (OECD, 2015). Indeed, ICT should be
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viewed as a tool and resource (Dede, 2008) comprising the access components of technology-rich environments.
Teaching in Technologically-Rich Environments Technology-rich environments represent a system that encompasses the technological tools, curriculum, and context, and the teacher who is equipped to leverage the tools in service of teaching the curriculum and promoting student learning. Though teachers are central to this system, other contextual factors also influence teaching, including students’ home environments, cultural context, and their individual differences. Technology – when integrated into a program that aligns curriculum, instruction, and assessment in a rigorous and constructivist learning environment – positions teachers to support student learning. Research on integrated and aligned technology programs has shown positive student outcomes on measures both academic and personal (e.g., job and life skills like critical thinking; Incantalupo, Treagust, & Koul, 2014; Warschauer, 2011). Exemplary teachers do not need to be experts in all – or even many – modes of technology, but they are expert at leveraging relevant, useful technologies that they have sufficient expertise in to engage in student-centered, meaningful learning (Hakverdi-can & Dana, 2012). In fact, many exemplary teachers model life-long learning as they master new digital technologies alongside their students. Additionally, research has found increased levels of technological skill and usage in the classroom even with limited access when teachers have agency in PD and instructional designs (Schrum & Levin, 2013). Teacher skill and usage of technology is promoted when the school culture and the community support teachers in meaningful integration of technology in their classrooms (Schrum & Levin, 2013; Zhao, Pugh, Sheldon, & Byers, 2002).
TECHNOLOGICAL PEDAGOGY To better understand teacher skill and usage of digital technology, we look to the widely used technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). We consider how to assess the enactment of TPACK in classrooms and identify the limitations of TPACK as a framework. We then consider the challenges and barriers to teacher technological practice. Finally, we examine the influence of classroom and school contexts on teacher technological pedagogical practices.
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Nearly thirty years ago, Shulman (1987) set out a specialized view of teacher instructional practice to explain the specific, professional knowledge of teachers.
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This professional knowledge was situated at the intersection of teacher content knowledge (for example, how to add two numbers) and instructional pedagogy (how to teach addition skills to students). The pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) model proposed that teacher instruction be extended beyond content knowledge and general instructional pedagogy and include a more domainspecific knowledge that combined both content and pedagogy (Shulman, 1987). The concept of a PCK model formed the basis of the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). In the TPACK model (see Figure 33.1), technological pedagogy is viewed as part of a web composed of teachers’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, situated in particular contexts (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). Pedagogies within technologically rich environments are linked to teachers’ pedagogical knowledge (PK), technological knowledge (TK), and content knowledge (CK) (Chai, Ling Koh, Tsai, & Lee Wee Tan, 2011). In turn, pedagogical knowledge, technological knowledge, and content knowledge are prerequisites for the more complex interactions of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), as well as technological pedagogical content knowledge. To better understand the intersection of knowledge domains within TPACK, we examine the intersection of TK and PK at TPK. TK in the context of TPACK reflects the level of knowledge or skill a
Figure 33.1 Technological pedagogical content knowledge model Source: Koehler & Mishra (2009). Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org
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teacher may have with a given technology – for example, how well a teacher uses a word processing application (e.g., Google Docs). PK represents general classroom pedagogies, such as using peer review to help learn editing skills. TPK, then, would bring these two elements together – for example, a teacher using Google Docs for students to write and comment on each other’s papers. Thus, TPK represents a specialized knowledge of integrating technology and pedagogy to promote student learning. The TPACK framework discourages a technocentrist approach. For example, the focus is not on learning to write on Google Docs, but on how the teacher explains and facilitates the use of technology in the peer editing process. Additionally, the example also points to the importance of teacher practice across all TPACK domains. That is, in order for teachers to demonstrate high levels of technological pedagogical knowledge and to engage students in meaningful learning using technology, teachers need to have high levels of technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. Of course, content-specific knowledge adds an additional layer of complexity. For example, a teacher may know that it is pedagogically helpful for students to understand the broad outline of the progression of the American Civil War before going into details of why the march to Atlanta was crucial. Her knowledge of the content, and the need for an overview, can then be enacted through the use of technology, such as a powerful short video of an animated map illustrating the progress of the battles, the aggregate loss of life, and the shifting control of territory. If teachers are not supported in their pedagogical development, it would seem unreasonable to expect that they would somehow change their instruction simply because technology is introduced into the classroom. An additional challenge of technological knowledge in the digital realm is the complex and ever-evolving nature of technology itself. Whereas analog technologies such as paper and pencil afforded specificity, stability, and transparency, digital technologies are protean, unstable, and opaque (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). That is, the rapidly changing nature of digital tools and modalities makes them usable in different ways that are continually changing. This means that unlike content and pedagogy that may be largely stable over extended periods of time, technology is continually changing and evolving, creating a shifting landscape that is challenging for teachers to master (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). Indeed, the amorphous nature of technology led Koehler and Mishra to conclude that there is no single best way to design PD for technological integration, but rather that design should consider subject and classroom contexts.
Assessing Technological Pedagogy with Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge A number of assessments have been used to measure teacher understanding of pedagogies and to assess their growth and learning through the lens of TPACK;
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however, the changing nature of technology makes assessing teacher TPACK and practice more challenging than assessing knowledge of more stable domains such as content (Koehler, Shin, & Mishra, 2012). For example, a question about using DVD or CD burners may have been relevant a few years ago, but today those technologies are outdated and would be less useful in assessing classroom technology use. Assessments of technological pedagogy need regular examination due to the continual changes in technology and differential adoption of technology across schools and countries. Additionally, though there are numerous assessment tools for TPACK, few have been validated (Koehler et al., 2012); thus, choosing an appropriate assessment becomes paramount. Most TPACK assessments are quantitative and survey based. Although some qualitative approaches have been guided by TPACK (Groth, Spickler, Bergner, & Bardzell, 2009), they are less often used (Koehler et al., 2012). Two TPACK assessment types may be particularly useful in PD settings: self-report surveys and lesson assessment rubrics. Self-report surveys, when validated, have been useful in tracking teacher TPACK growth during pre-service (Chai et al., 2011) and in-service (Shin et al., 2009) education. The use of rubrics (Harris, Grandgenett, & Hofer, 2010) can help teachers better understand their classroom planning and how they enact lessons integrating technology. Multiple varied measures, such as self-report surveys and classroom observations or teacher interviews, may also be useful in providing greater detail on the extent of teacher knowledge.
Limitations of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge We acknowledge that the TPACK model has a number of limitations and constraints. Most notably, teachers bring their own histories and beliefs to the classroom, and classroom contexts vary from class to class and school to school (Angeli & Valanides, 2009). It is difficult to measure TPACK domains due to the interconnected nature of each of the knowledge domains (Archambault & Barnett, 2010). Some have argued that the relationships and intersection between these specialized forms of knowledge do not work evenly and that TK and PK are more closely connected to each other and TPACK than with CK, for example (Chai et al., 2011). Indeed, the intent of TPACK is to provide a framework to discuss the facets of teacher knowledge, not to propose a course for teacher instruction (Harris, Mishra, & Koehler, 2009). Nonetheless, TPACK can be a good starting point to conceptualize skill and usage of technology in the classroom. TPACK survey results can provide researchers and practitioners with basic information about teacher skills and usage of technology in the classroom, their pedagogical practices, and their technological pedagogical practices. Understanding teacher skills may then also help identify technological opportunities for students in the classroom. Furthermore, contextualized survey questions can provide more detailed
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and relevant information about teacher TPACK depending on the setting or specific research goal (Chai et al., 2011).
Barriers and Challenges to Implementing Technological Pedagogy What challenges do teachers face as they develop and implement classroom practices with the use of technology? We identify two broad types of barriers that hinder and challenge teachers’ efforts in successfully integrating technological pedagogy in the classroom. We classify them as first-order, or extrinsic, and second-order, or intrinsic, barriers (Ertmer, 1999). First-order barriers. First-order barriers are external to teachers. They are associated with availability of resources (Ertmer, 1999). For example, lack of high-speed internet access and lack of teacher PD are first-order barriers. These barriers are more likely to exist in schools serving poorer children (Warschauer et al., 2014). Globally, first-order barriers relating to hardware are most likely to be encountered in developing countries (Ayanso et al., 2014). Nonetheless, firstorder barriers exist across nations, from those with limited to high levels of technology (Goktas, Yildirim, & Yildirim, 2009; Keengwe, Onchwari, & Wachira, 2008; Lim & Khine, 2006). Time challenges relate to both student access to ICT and teacher development and planning time (du Plessis & Webb, 2012). Furthermore, technical support emerges as a common barrier to and universal prerequisite for successful pedagogical practices in technology-rich classrooms in developed countries such as the United States (Warschauer, 2011) as well as developing countries such as Nigeria (Tella, Tella, Toyobo, Adika, & Adeyinka, 2007), where lack of technical support was found to undermine instruction. Even schools with sufficient resources may have difficulty keeping up with the ever-evolving needs for increased bandwidth and computing power, frequent needs for device updates, and hardware obsolescence or wear. When confronted with hardware or software problems, teachers and students can become frustrated and stop making use of technology in the classroom. First-order barriers may also be more localized. For example, the lack of a coherent school vision and goals for integration of ICT also emerge as first-order barriers. If technology has not been chosen with curricular goals in mind, it can easily become a distraction. Students may have access to computers as a reward, rather than a tool to reach meaningful, authentic learning goals. Usage may focus on cutting and pasting content from the internet rather than developing higher order skills (Warschauer, 2006). These common pitfalls highlight the importance of involving teachers in creating a school’s technology vision (Earle, 2002; Hew & Brush, 2007; Jhurree, 2005). Second-order barriers. Though first-order barriers may appear daunting, second-order barriers are complex and require significant attention at the teacher
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instructional level. Second-order barriers associated with teachers include teachers’ beliefs about the role of technology in their classroom, beliefs about their own teaching, and the willingness or ability to change their practice (Ertmer, 1999). From an instructional practice perspective, addressing second-order barriers is central to developing teacher practice through pre-service and in-service teacher support (Ertmer, Ottenbreit-Leftwich, & York, 2007). From a skill and usage perspective, if teacher beliefs do not align with effective technological pedagogy, then it is unlikely that students will have opportunities to develop their own skills and usage of technology. Furthermore, social and cultural contexts play an important role in the interaction between students and teachers and the intersection of their beliefs about the use of technology for learning. For example, in studying the use of computers in an ESL class, Warschauer (1998) found incongruence between the teacher’s and students’ visions of using computers for writing. The conflicting visions led to student disengagement and a lack of interest in the work of the class. In considering teacher thinking and beliefs about the use of technology in their classroom, technology often extends teacher existing practice (Palak & Walls, 2009). That is, teachers are likely to use new technology in the same ways they used other resources and tools. If teachers held teacher-centered instructional beliefs prior to the introduction of a new technology, the introduction of that technology is unlikely to shift their approach to student-centered instruction. For example, teachers may shift their worksheets from paper and pencil to computer-based worksheets, but not change their core instructional approach (Jimoyiannis & Komis, 2007). Indeed, a resistance to change can undermine innovative technological pedagogy regardless of the number of internet-connected computers in the classroom (Ertmer, 1999; Granger, Morbey, Lotherington, Owston, & Wideman, 2002; Mirzajani & Mahmud, 2015). Thus, addressing hardware or even teacher use of software and hardware without addressing underlying pedagogical approaches is unlikely to change teacher practice or improve student learning. Teacher backgrounds and beliefs inform their pedagogical practice (Chen, 2008). Important beliefs include teachers’ valuing of constructivist approaches (moving teacher-centered instruction to student-centered instruction), their attitudes toward the use of computers in the classroom, and their teaching and technology self-efficacy (Sang, Valcke, van Braak, & Tondeur, 2010). For example, teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about the use of technology in the classroom were shown to be a strong influence on student-centered technology-facilitated instruction in the classroom in Asia and in Europe (Palak & Walls, 2009; Sang et al., 2010; Tezci, 2011). Thus, teacher beliefs, their enacted practice, and student behaviors and outcomes are interconnected and influence one another. Changing teacher practice, including technological pedagogy, is contingent on addressing teachers’ underlying beliefs. Interplay between first- and second-order barriers. Furthermore, first- and second-order barriers are often intertwined, creating particularly challenging
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issues. Lack of time (Gamze Isci & Besir Demir, 2015; Lim & Khine, 2006), a first-order barrier, is often a significant problem associated with assessing and effectively addressing teacher thinking and beliefs, second-order barriers; time is also usually underestimated as a barrier. Indeed, changing teacher beliefs and practices to integrate technology in student-centered ways takes an extended period of time (Gorder, 2008). One reason for the time required for technological pedagogy change is the resistance to change and inertia that frequently exists in the field of education (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Peck, 2001; Kinchin, 2012). Additionally, the process of teacher change in integrating technology in the classroom in a meaningful way is complex and multi-staged. As Sandholtz, Ringstaff, and Dwyer (1997) detailed in their investigation of the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) program, teachers undergo a process of entry, adoption, adaptation, appropriation, and invention as they navigate through the integration of technology in their classrooms. Teachers need further support as they become more proficient at technology-based instruction in student-centered ways. The types of support teachers need change as they move through the processes of entry, adoption, adaptation, appropriation, and invention (Sandholtz et al., 1997). Thus, teacher beliefs and backgrounds, the types of available instructional and pedagogical supports they have, and the classrooms and schools they teach in play a role in teachers’ classroom technological pedagogical practice.
Contexts for Technological Pedagogy In schools, important contextual factors impacting teacher technological pedagogy include support from school administrators (Ertmer, Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Sadik, Sendurur, & Sendurur, 2012) and time for teachers to reflect on their practice (Tondeur et al., 2012). To enable effective reflection, teachers need a clear understanding of both their own beliefs and alternative beliefs about technological pedagogy (Sandholtz et al., 1997), which requires professional development effort and time. Examining their own beliefs and alternative beliefs about the use of technology provides an opportunity to bridge a potential gap between beliefs and practice (Sandholtz et al., 1997). That is, when teachers are aware of their underlying beliefs, a disconnect is less likely to arise between their beliefs and their practice. Incongruence among school vision, teacher beliefs, and student beliefs is most likely to occur when teachers and students come from different backgrounds. In the United States, this most frequently occurs in urban settings, where teachers are often white, middle-class women and students are African American and Latino and from working-class families (Anderson & Stillman, 2011). This difference in backgrounds leads to different teacher and student perceptions of skills and usage of technology, and students may resist instruction due to the technological approaches used by the teacher (Warschauer, 1998). Indeed, sociocultural considerations should be at the forefront of promoting teacher technological pedagogy.
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Technological Pedagogy and Teacher Pre-Service Education Given the complex process needed to educate teachers in technological pedagogy and then successfully implement strong practices, pre-service programs must begin the efforts to support and develop successful teachers in technologically rich environments. Globally, there are wide disparities in the requirements and quality of teacher pre-service programs. Examining three programs from developing to developed countries highlights the differences between pre-service and credentialing programs: •• In India, for example, although standards and exams have been established for teacher preparation, there remains a great deal of inconsistency in teacher preparation program quality and accountability (Goel & Goel, 2012). •• Turkey typifies other developing countries in the limited integration of ICT in pre-service programs (Tezci, 2011). •• In the United States, virtually all teacher-licensing institutions use ICT in their courses at least minimally, including e-mail and internet resources. About half of the licensing institutions in the United States have implemented standalone technology-focused courses in their programs (Kleiner, Thomas, & Lewis, 2007), although these courses are often isolated and technocentrist in their approaches.
Further, limited modeling of pedagogically sound technology use is found in teacher preparation courses even in developed countries, since the faculty in such programs are often themselves not technologically proficient. Indeed, an analysis of pre-service programs revealed that instruction supported teachers with limited technological backgrounds in their development of technological knowledge (Brown & Warschauer, 2006; Brush, Glazewski, & Hew, 2008); however, programs did little to support teacher technological pedagogical practices in the context of classroom instruction (Brush et al., 2008). Although 57% of licensing institutions in the United States reported teaching candidates how to use technology to enrich and enhance instruction to a major extent, and 40% to a moderate extent (Kleiner et al., 2007), faculty in license-granting institutions reported lack of time (87%), lack of training (83%), and lack of interest (73%) as barriers to their integration of ICT in licensing courses (Kleiner et al., 2007). These challenges seem to mirror those of classroom teachers. Addressing these challenges more meaningfully in pre-service could help mitigate technological pedagogy challenges for teachers once they enter the classroom. Pre-service teachers would benefit from using technology in authentic, contextualized ways as they prepare for the classroom. By experiencing curricular-focused usage of technology, they would be better able to understand the affordances (both positive and negative) of using technology in their future classes. Because many of today’s teacher candidates have not experienced schooling with high-quality technology tools, they would benefit from the modeling of potential applications to increase their knowledge and comfort level.
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Technological Pedagogy and Teacher In-Service Professional Development As teachers move from pre-service to the classroom, in-service PD becomes a potential source for the support and development of technological pedagogy; however, in-service PD has had mixed results (Warschauer, 2011). Improved teacher practice and student outcomes are more likely to arise from developing teacher classroom practices in tandem with technological pedagogy, rather than developing isolated technology acumen (Warschauer, 2011). Indeed, developing teacher practice along with technology use has resulted in more meaningful teacher integration of technology in the classroom and student learning (Gerard, Varma, Corliss, & Linn, 2011; Matzen & Edmunds, 2007). Effective PD has been guided by previously defined principles (Desimone, 2009; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001), and these principles should continue to guide technology-specific PD. However, special consideration should be given to technology PD in three areas: the alignment of technological and instructional pedagogies; the ongoing nature of PD; and situating PD in schools. Aligning technology instruction with reform-minded teaching approaches has supported change in teacher instructional practice as well as student learning (Matzen & Edmunds, 2007; Walker et al., 2012). Though the importance of the duration of PD has been detailed in frameworks for effective PD (Desimone, 2009), with technology-based PD, longer duration becomes a critical element. PD programs lasting two years produced promising outcomes (Brinkerhoff, 2005; Martin et al., 2010), whereas programs lasting one year showed mixed results (Gerard et al., 2011). Finally, situating PD at teachers’ school sites works to promote a sense of safety, collaboration, and community that supports their learning (Klieger, Ben-Hur, & Bar-Yossef, 2010; Mouza, 2009).
IMPLICATIONS In this chapter, we conceptualized technological pedagogy within TPACK and looked at developmental trajectories and challenges for teachers as they enact technological pedagogy. In examining the integration of technology in the classroom, we found that technocentrist tool-focused, rather than practice-focused, approaches persist. We argue that practically and theoretically, the design and development of technology-rich programs should begin with student outcome goals. Technology should be used to the extent and in ways that extend and enhance opportunities for students to learn. Meaningful implementations of technology can allow diverse learners to access curriculum in multi-modal ways, hone their knowledge with analytical tools, collaborate better with students and mentors inside and outside the classroom, and present their understanding in
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multiple ways to diverse audiences. This suggested focus on learning contrasts sharply with the more typical focus on a specific technology in isolation. Additionally, the challenges that teachers and students experience in their classroom and context should guide program design and support of technology-based programs. Indeed, teacher practice and enactment of technological pedagogy is often viewed as an outcome, not the starting point, for teacher development and program design. We suggest that inclusion of teachers, students, and other stakeholders in the development of school technology programs and initiatives provides practical insights, improved collaboration, and increased investment in the project’s success. This same practice-based approach could be used in pre-service and in-service teacher development. For example, rather than preparing teachers to use technological tools, pre-service programs can focus more on identifying candidate instructional challenges and then on addressing those challenges with technological tools when those tools are appropriate. In evaluating use of technology in pre-service teacher credentialing and in-service PD, researchers and practitioners should be guided by how teacher problems of practice are addressed through technology. If problems of practice are not being addressed by technology, than what is technology addressing? From a research perspective, continuing to look beyond a snapshot of teacher technological pedagogy and examining teacher pedagogical change over time would provide increased insight into teachers’ developmental trajectories. Better understanding teacher technological pedagogical developmental trajectories could then inform development efforts across schools and countries. Tracking teacher technological practices from pre-service through the early years of classroom practice, as well as through implementation of technology initiatives, could inform design and assessment of programs. Identifying changes in teacher trajectories and emerging challenges is especially important given the rapid and continuous change in technology.
REFERENCES Anderson, L., & Stillman, J. (2011). Student teaching for a specialized view of professional practice? Opportunities to learn in and for urban, high-needs schools. Journal of Teacher Education, 62, 446–464. doi:10.1177/0022487111412052 Angeli, C., & Valanides, N. (2009). Epistemological and methodological issues for the conceptualization, development, and assessment of ICT–TPCK: Advances in technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK). Computers & Education, 52, 154–168. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2008.07.006 Archambault, L.M., & Barnett, J.H. (2010). Revisiting technological pedagogical content knowledge: Exploring the TPACK framework. Computers and Education, 55, 1656–1662. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.07.009 Ayanso, A., Cho, D.I., & Lertwachara, K. (2014). Information and communications technology development and the digital divide: A global and regional assessment. Information Technology for Development, 20(1), 60–77. doi:10.1080/02681102.2013.797378
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Brinkerhoff, J. (2005). Effects of a long-duration, professional development academy on technology skills, computer self-efficacy, and technology integration beliefs and practices. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 39(1), 22–43. doi:10.1080/15391523.2006.10782471 Brown, D., & Warschauer, M. (2006). From the university to the elementary classroom: Students’ experiences in learning to integrate technology in instruction. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14(3), 599–621. Brush, T., Glazewski, K., & Hew, K. (2008). Development of an instrument to measure preservice teachers’ technology skills, technology beliefs, and technology barriers. Computers in the Schools. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07380560802157972 Chai, C.S., Ling Koh, J.H., Tsai, C.-C., & Lee Wee Tan, L. (2011). Modeling primary school pre-service teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) for meaningful learning with information and communication technology (ICT). Computers & Education, 57, 1184–1193. doi:10.1016/j. compedu.2011.01.007 Chen, C. (2008). Why do teachers not practice what they believe regarding technology integration? The Journal of Educational Research, 102(1), 65–75. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ abs/10.3200/JOER.102.1.65–75 Cuban, L. (2013). A second look at the iPad program at LAUSD. Retrieved January 4, 2016, from https:// larrycuban.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/a-second-look-at-ipads-in-los-angeles/ Cuban, L., Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. (2001). High access and low use of technologies in high school classrooms: Explaining an apparent paradox. American Educational Research Journal, 38, 813–834. doi:10.3102/00028312038004813 Dede, C. (2008). Theoretical perspectives influencing the use of information technology in teaching and learning. In J. Voogt & G. Knezek (Eds), International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education. New York: Springer. Desimone, L. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 181–199. doi:10.3102/ 0013189X08331140 du Plessis, A., & Webb, P. (2012). Teachers’ perceptions about their own and their schools’ readiness for computer implementation: A South African case study. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 11, 312–325. Earle, R.S. (2002). The integration of instructional technology into public education: Promises and challenges. Educational Technology, 42(1), 5–13. Epstein, D., Nisbet, E.C., & Gillespie, T. (2011). Who’s responsible for the digital divide? Public perceptions and policy implications. The Information Society, 27(2), 92–104. doi:10.1080/01972243.2011.548695 Ertmer, P.A. (1999). Addressing first- and second-order barriers to change: Strategies for technology integration. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47, 47–61. doi:10.1007/ BF02299597 Ertmer, P.A., Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A.T., Sadik, O., Sendurur, E., & Sendurur, P. (2012). Teacher beliefs and technology integration practices: A critical relationship. Computers & Education, 59(2), 423–435. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2012.02.001 Ertmer, P.A., Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A., & York, C.S. (2007). Exemplary technology-using teachers: Perceptions of factors influencing success. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 23(2), 55–61. Gamze Isci, T., & Besir Demir, S. (2015). The use of tablets distributed within the scope of FATIH project for education in Turkey (Is FATIH project a fiasco or a technological revolution?). Universal Journal of Educational Research, 3(7), 442–450. doi:10.13189/ujer.2015.030703 Garet, M.S., Porter, A.C., Desimone, L., Birman, B.F., & Yoon, K.S. (2001). What makes professional development efective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915–945. doi:10.3102/00028312038004915 Gerard, L.F., Varma, K., Corliss, S.B., & Linn, M.C. (2011). Professional development for technologyenhanced inquiry science. Review of Educational Research, 81(3), 408–448. doi:10.3102/ 0034654311415121
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Goel, D.R., & Goel, C. (2012). Teacher education scenario in India: Current problems & concerns. MIER Journal of Education Studies, Trends & Practices, 2(2), 231–242. Goktas, Y., Yildirim, S., & Yildirim, Z. (2009). Main barriers and possible enablers of ICTs integration into pre-service teacher education programs. Journal of Education Technology & Society, 12(1), 193–204. Gorder, L.M. (2008). A study of teacher perceptions of instructional technology integration in the classroom. Delta Pi Epsilon, 50(2), 63–76. Granger, C., Morbey, M.L., Lotherington, H., Owston, R., & Wideman, H. (2002). Canada: Factors contributing to teachers’ successful implementation of information technology. In Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. Groth, R., Spickler, D., Bergner, J., & Bardzell, M. (2009). A qualitative approach to assessing technological pedagogical content knowledge. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(4), 392–411. Haight, M., Quan-Haase, A., & Corbett, B.A. (2014). Revisiting the digital divide in Canada: The impact of demographic factors on access to the internet, level of online activity, and social networking site usage. Information, Communication & Society, 17(4), 503–519. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2014.891633 Hakverdi-can, M., & Dana, T.M. (2012). Exemplary science teachers’ use of technology. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 11(1), 94–112. Harris, J., Grandgenett, N., & Hofer, M. (2010). Testing a TPACK-based technology integration assessment rubric. In Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference. Harris, J., Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2009). Teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge and learning activity types. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(4), 393–416. doi:10.1080/ 15391523.2009.10782536 Hennessy, S., Ruthven, K., & Brindley, S. (2005). Teacher perspectives on integrating ICT into subject teaching: Commitment, constraints, caution, and change. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(2), 155–192. doi:10.1080/0022027032000276961 Hew, K.F., & Brush, T. (2007). Integrating technology into K-12 teaching and learning: Current knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(3), 223–252. doi:10.1007/s11423-006-9022-5 Incantalupo, L., Treagust, D.F., & Koul, R. (2014). Measuring student attitude and knowledge in technology-rich biology classrooms. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 23(1), 98–107. doi:10.1007/s10956-013-9453-9 International Telecommunication Union (ITU). (2009). Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index. Geneva, Switzerland: International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved from https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/publications/mis2009/MIS2009_w5.pdf Jhurree, V. (2005). Technology integration in education in developing countries: Guidelines to policy makers. International Education Journal, 6(4), 467–483. Jimoyiannis, A., & Komis, V. (2007). Examining teachers’ beliefs about ICT in education: Implications of a teacher preparation programme. Teacher Development, 11(2), 149–173. doi:10.1080/ 13664530701414779 Keengwe, J., Onchwari, G., & Wachira, P. (2008). Computer technology integration and student learning: Barriers and promise. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 17(6), 560–565. doi:10.1007/ s10956-008-9123-5 Kinchin, I. (2012). Avoiding technology-enhanced non-learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(2), 43–48. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01264.x Kleiner, B., Thomas, N., & Lewis, L. (2007). Educational technology in teacher education programs for initial licensure. Statistical analysis report. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED499205 Klieger, A., Ben-Hur, Y., & Bar-Yossef, N. (2010). Integrating laptop computers into classroom: Attitudes, needs, and professional development of science teachers – a case study. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 19(2), 187–198. doi:10.1007/s10956-009-9191-1
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Koehler, M.J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK)? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9, 60–70. doi:10.1016/j. compedu.2010.07.009 Koehler, M.J., Shin, T.S., & Mishra, P. (2012). Educational technology, teacher knowledge, and classroom impact. In R.N. Ronau, C.R. Rakes, & M.L. Niess (Eds), Educational Technology, Teacher Knowledge, and Classroom Impact: A Research Handbook on Frameworks and Approaches. IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-60960-750-0 Lim, C.P., & Khine, M. (2006). Managing teachers’ barriers to ICT integration in Singapore schools. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14(1), 97–125. Retrieved from http://libproxy.uwyo. edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ723734&site= ehost-live\nhttp://www.aace.org Margolin, J., Heppen, J., Haynes, E., Ruedel, K., Meakin, J., Rickles, J., Samakian, A., O’Brien, B., Surr, W., & Fellers, L. (2015). Evaluation of LAUSD’s Instructional Technology Initiative Executive Summary. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research. Martin, W., Strother, S., Beglau, M., Bates, L., Reitzes, T., & Culp, K.M.M. (2010). Connecting instructional technology professional development to teacher and student outcomes. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 43(1), 53–74. doi:10.1080/15391523.2010.10782561 Matzen, N.J., & Edmunds, J.A. (2007). Technology as a catalyst for change: The role of professional development. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 39(4), 417–430. Mirzajani, H., & Mahmud, R. (2015). A Review of Research Literature on Obstacles that Prevent Use of ICT in Pre-Service Teachers’ Educational Courses. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 3(2), 25–31. doi:10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.3n.2p.25 Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x Mouza, C. (2009). Does research-based professional development make a difference? A longitudinal investigation of teacher learning in technology integration. Teachers College Record, 111(5), 1195–1241. Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=15479 Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A.T., Glazewski, K.D., Newby, T.J., & Ertmer, P.A. (2010). Teacher value beliefs associated with using technology: Addressing professional and student needs. Computers and Education, 55(3), 1321–1335. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.06.002 Palak, D., & Walls, R.T. (2009). Teachers’ beliefs and technology practices. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(4), 417–441. doi:10.1080/15391523.2009.10782537 Papert, S. (1990). A critique of technocentrism in thinking about the school of the future. Epistemology and Learning MIT Media Media Laboratory. Retrieved from http://www.papert.org/articles/ ACritiqueofTechnocentrism.html Sandholtz, J., Ringstaff, C., & Dwyer, D. (1997). Teaching with Technology: Creating Student-centered Classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University. Sang, G., Valcke, M., van Braak, J., & Tondeur, J. (2010). Student teachers’ thinking processes and ICT integration: Predictors of prospective teaching behaviors with educational technology. Computers and Education, 54(1), 103–112. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.07.010 Schrum, L., & Levin, B.B. (2013). Teachers’ technology professional development: Lessons learned from exemplary schools. TechTrends, 57(1), 38–42. doi:10.1007/s11528-012-0629-6 Shin, T., Koehler, M., Mishra, P., Schmidt, D., Baran, E., & Thompson, A. (2009). Changing technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) through course experiences. Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, 2009(1), 4152–4159. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/31309/ Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–23. Tella, A., Tella, A., Toyobo, O.M., Adika, L.O., & Adeyinka, A.A. (2007). An assessment of secondary school teachers uses of ICT’s: Implications for further development of ICT’s use in Nigerian secondary schools [sic]. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 6(3), 1–13.
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Tezci, E. (2011). Factors that influence pre-service teachers’ ICT usage in education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 34(4), 483–499. doi:10.1080/02619768.2011.587116 Tondeur, J., Van Braak, J., Sang, G., Voogt, J., Fisser, P., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. (2012). Preparing preservice teachers to integrate technology in education: A synthesis of qualitative evidence. Computers and Education, 59(1), 134–144. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.009 van Deursen, A.J., & van Dijk, J.A. (2013). The digital divide shifts to differences in usage. New Media & Society, 16(3), 507–526. doi:10.1177/1461444813487959 Walker, A., Recker, M., Ye, L., Robertshaw, M.B., Sellers, L., & Leary, H. (2012). Comparing technologyrelated teacher professional development designs: A multilevel study of teacher and student impacts. Educational Technology Research and Development, 60(3), 421–444. doi:10.1007/s11423-0129243-8 Warschauer, M. (1998). Online learning in sociocultural context. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 29(1), 68–88. doi:10.1525/aeq.1998.29.1.68 Warschauer, M. (2006). Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University. Warschauer, M. (2011). Learning in the Cloud. New York: Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University. Warschauer, M., Cotten, S.R., & Ames, M.G. (2011). One laptop per child Birmingham: Case study of a radical experiment. International Journal of Learning, 3(2), 61–76. doi:10.1162/IJLM Warschauer, M., Zheng, B., Niiya, M., Cotten, S., & Farkas, G. (2014). Balancing the one-to-one equation: Equity and access in three laptop programs. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(1), 46–62. doi:10. 1080/10665684.2014.866871 Watson, D.M. (2001). Pedagogy before technology: Re-thinking the relationship between ICT and teaching. Education and Information Technologies, 6(4), 251–266. doi:10.1023/a:1012976702296 Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S., & Byers, J. L. (2002). Conditions for classroom technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482–515. doi:10.1111/1467-9620.00170
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34 Teacher Education Pedagogies Based on Critical Approaches: Learning to Challenge and Change Prevailing Educational Practices V i v E l l i s a n d M e g M a g u i re If the education of teachers was ever of little concern to policy-makers and reformers, those times are long gone. From the mid-20th century onwards, there has been a burgeoning international movement to reform teacher education (Darling-Hammond and Lieberman, 2012; Maguire, 2014). One of the dominant explanations for this continual reforming zeal is based on the argument that ‘teacher quality is more and more being identified as decisive to student outcomes’, therefore ‘[e]ducation reforms that do not take into account teacher education are condemned to inefficiency’ (Musset, 2010, p. 3). ‘Fixing’ teacher education will ‘fix’ teachers, schools and students. Reforming teacher education will raise educational standards. Or so it is claimed. However, there is another dimension to reforming teacher education that goes beyond any of the functionalist or economistic approaches currently in vogue which we want to explore in more detail in this chapter. That is, we want to unpack some of the alternative and critical perspectives that deal with the role of the teacher and teacher education as vehicles for promoting social justice and societal change. As Higgins (1999) put it, commenting on Raymond Williams, ‘All education participates in the reproduction of social consciousness; but potentially, at least, it can give some of the intellectual tools for challenging existing social consciousness’ (p. 176). In this chapter we focus on two traditions of work that adopt a critical approach in educating teachers, approaches that have had some success but are nonetheless ‘modest’ in their claims for challenging dominant and, often, oppressive
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practices in schools. The first tradition seeks to prepare teachers to be more inclusive in terms of their understandings of sexuality and identity formation, drawing on perspectives in the humanities known as queer theory (Warner, 1993). The second line of research and development is informed by sociocultural and cultural-historical theories (Ellis et al., 2010) that aim to create social spaces (known, often, as ‘third spaces’) within which educational practices can be examined, understood and changed. Both traditions rely on the development of critical consciousness – the conscientisation of participants – that is, we believe, synonymous with critical approaches. Some time ago, in their classic text, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life, Bowles and Gintis (1976) claimed that there was a ‘correspondence principle’ between education and the economy. They argued that schools played a central role in reproducing the labour market: working-class children were prepared for working-class jobs; more advantaged students were prepared for professional and elite roles in different types of schools through different curricula and pedagogy. Thus, ‘schooling was essentially a tool of capitalism which served ruling-class interests’ (Gewirtz and Cribb, 2009, p. 87). Teachers were inevitably tied into this process through their work in schools, particularly in sorting and selecting out children for different forms of education provision to reproduce a stratified labour market. These ideas – which regard education as a key lever in social reproduction – were extended by a range of social theorists e.g. (Apple, 2013; Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). However, counter-discourses argued that social reproduction was not inevitable in education and could be challenged and changed through critical pedagogy involving ‘active engagement with oppressed and exploited groups’ (Smith and McLaren, 2010, p. 332). In this chapter we argue that competing narratives construct either a normative and allegedly neutral role for teacher education or an alternative praxis for emancipatory ends. If teacher education ought to be about producing teachers who can raise student attainments (normative), then one outcome might lie in coaching would-be teachers in testing and assessment procedures. If teacher education were to take a critical approach towards the outcomes of these sorts of assessment procedures and conclude that some groups of children were doing better than others (richer, whiter, healthier, cis-gendered children, for instance), then perhaps teacher education programmes would want to include some discussion about why this was the case and what might be the teachers’ responsibilities to challenge these situations in their classrooms. In what follows, we concentrate on how these spaces for learning change perspectives in teacher education programmes.
TOWARDS CRITICALITY Over the last forty years, critical approaches towards the education of teachers have drawn on a range of theoretical traditions arising, for example, from varieties of Marxism, feminism, critical race and queer theories. These critical
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approaches have not regarded teacher education as neutral; they have positioned it as having ‘significant agency for the reproduction and legitimation of a society characterized by a high degree of social and economic inequality’ (Giroux, 1981, p. 143). However, these approaches have not all been of one piece. Classic social reproduction theory has been often associated with a more traditional Marxist approach, concerned with explaining the role of education in the production and reproduction of stratification and hierarchies in capitalist societies. In this perspective, powerfully demonstrated by Bowles and Gintis (1976) in the US and Willis (1977) in the UK, education was positioned as playing a pivotal role in social reproduction. Theorists working in the field of teacher education in the late 1970s and 1980s were influenced by social reproduction theories that offered explanations for working-class educational exclusion. These understandings influenced programmes of teacher preparation to some degree. In this chapter, we do not have enough time to do justice to the complexities and ‘turns’ within social theory. Some of these new approaches emerged from the US civil rights movement, anti-war movements and second-wave feminism. Consequently, there was, in the late 1960s and through to the early 1980s, a ‘moment’ of emancipatory space, however fragile in the long term. A progressive educational discourse was in evidence and some of this leaked into educational policy and practice (Anyon, 2014). This was particularly the case in urban settings where teachers could see that things needed to change and so started to think about potentially emancipatory practices in their schools. Drawing on the work of Paulo Friere, teachers were aware of the power of education to begin to stimulate change. For example, education could help develop what Friere called conscientisation: ‘the process in which men [and women], not as recipients, but as knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness both of the socio-cultural reality which shapes their lives and their capacity to transform that reality’ (Freire, 1972, p. 51). So while teacher education may not have changed dramatically, there was some scope for elements of critical pedagogy, particularly in relation to race/ethnicity and gender. In the UK, these concerns were mirrored in the guidelines of more enlightened sections of the local state; multiculturalism (if not anti-racism) and girl-friendly (if not anti-sexist) education were part of the discourses of schooling and teacher education. Work by second-wave feminists foregrounded ways in which schooling marginalised and oppressed girls and young women. Work by anti-racist educators argued that many second-wave feminists were white and middle class and were failing to recognise the realities of black girls and women. These contestations (about identity, position and difference) were influential in teacher education programmes in England and elsewhere. For example, teachers were encouraged to select books for their classrooms that reflected the social world more accurately and they were supported in using texts that were more inclusive in terms of representation. Teachers were expected to be aware of the need to challenge their own pre-judgements and take racism and gender discrimination seriously.
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They were encouraged to become more aware of their own (sometimes more) privileged positions. These views and values were influential in considering what counted as knowledge (and, therefore, the curriculum); what resources might be more/less appropriate for working with difference in the classroom; and what sorts of grouping practices for children and school students were more inclusive. The new social movements of the mid-part of the 20th century did impact pedagogy in a direct manner, and in anti-sexist and anti-racist education there was an attempt at transformation (see, for example, Epstein, 1993; Mahony and Jones, 1989; Myers, 1987).
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND ITS LIMITS While discourses of equality and egalitarianism may well have become more mainstream, in-school developments were patchy and piecemeal in the UK and frequently depended on the commitment of key individuals (Delamont, 1990). Many commentators argued that attempts at social transformation through a direct engagement with pedagogy were not always very effective even if they existed. Ellsworth (1989), in perhaps the most celebrated critique of critical pedagogy, raised a number of questions that went right to the heart of the matter. Under a heading entitled ‘Have We Got a Theory for You!’, she wrote: theorists of critical pedagogy have failed to launch any meaningful analysis of or programs for reformulating the institutionalized power imbalances between themselves and their students, or of the essentially paternalistic project of education itself. (Ellsworth, 1989, p. 306)
Based on a systematic review of journal articles that dealt with critical pedagogy, she claimed that it was largely represented as a ‘highly abstract and utopian line that does not necessarily sustain the daily workings of the education its supporters advocate’ (p. 297). She wrote about a programme she had developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison intended to investigate racist practices on the campus and make interventions to disrupt these processes. Her paper argued that concepts such as ‘student voice,’ ‘empowerment’ and ‘dialogue’ raise complicated questions about power, control and regulation because, in the classroom, ‘power relations between raced, classed, and gendered students are unjust’ (p. 316). She added that while teachers held the power to select, define and regulate in the classroom, ‘critical pedagogues will continue to perpetuate relations of domination in their classrooms’ (p. 316) and she included herself and her programme in this account. Her arguments involved a critique of some key concepts in critical pedagogy such as ‘empowerment’, for, as she explained, if students were supposed to be freed to come to their own conclusions, and if their perspectives depended on rationalism, then anything regarded as irrational would be rejected by the (powerful and reality-defining) teacher. Thus, ‘empowerment’ could only be teacher
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dependent. Ellsworth argued that giving ‘voice’ was too often more about sharing perspectives. In contrast, she suggested that the voices of those who have been ‘othered’ may be a fight back ‘that is constructed within communities of resistance and (are) a condition of survival’ rather than any sharing of experiences (1989, p. 310). She regarded many of the claims for the power of critical pedagogy as ‘repressive myths’. As she put it, unless critical pedagogy deals with ‘trust, risk, and the operations of fear and desire around such issues of identity and politics in the classroom, their rationalistic tools will fail to loosen deepseated, self-interested investments in unjust relations of, for example, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation’ (p. 314). In terms of relating this powerful critique of some of the original narratives of critical pedagogy to practices of teacher education, there are some caveats that need to be considered. First, teacher education (at least in England and particularly at the pre-service or initial level) has always been constructed out of a bricolage of courses concerned with pedagogy (including classroom management), curriculum (content and methods) and aspects from the traditional educational disciplines (developmental theories, learning theories, sociology of education, history and philosophy of education). In these courses, delivered by different tutors, some will have been more critical in their approach either because of their own political commitments, their own lived identities, their class consciousness or even because of institutional directives to be pro-equality. Second, initial teacher education has always been conducted in relationships and partnerships with schools and here too different influences will have been in play. Some schools take a more radical approach towards social justice and inclusion than others. Experiences in schools can be influential and may become valorised and displace or contradict what the trainee ‘learns’ on their university programme. Third, while some courses and some schools will have adopted a rhetoric of giving ‘voice’, recognising difference and working to be inclusive, in practice, these intentions might not always be possible to bring off in more than a symbolic way (Ellsworth’s ‘sharing’) because of other pressures from governments to promote a traditional construction of academic excellence and the ‘raising standards’ discourse. Finally, even if schools and universities were minded to take a more radical approach towards education, governments and politicians have the power to overrule and sometimes determine what goes on in schools and in teacher education programmes.
‘DIFFICULT DIFFERENCES’ AND PEDAGOGICAL RESPONSES Ellsworth’s paper was written some time ago, and in the succeeding years, theoretical perspectives have moved on. We now have fuller understandings about ableism (Swain et al., 2003), broader perspectives in sexualities education (Jones, 2015; Meiners and Quinn, 2012), increased awarenesses in matters of race/ethnicity as well as complex intersectionalities of identities (Bhopal and
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Preston, 2012). Much of what we know has been as a consequence of social justice and civil rights activists working in these fields. We are now more accustomed to thinking about ‘difficult differences’, including the interplay between the identity of the researcher and those of the ‘researched’ (Reay, 1996). However, it might be argued that these advances are theoretical and have not, as yet, percolated down to shape pre-service teacher education programmes. As Pittard (2015, p. 341) claims, ‘a teacher wanting to know more about CP [critical pedagogy] is almost three times as likely to read an article producing her as unable to engage CP than she is to read one encouraging her to at least try’. In this chapter, it is not possible to deal with all the complexities of identity politics and how these may impact teacher education programmes (but see Kim and Slapac, 2015). One example will have to suffice. England is a hyper-diverse society. London’s population is currently 8.6 million and is forecast to rise to 11 million by 2050. By 2038, it is estimated that 50% of the population of London will be of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage (GLA, 2013). London schools reflect these trends in their staffrooms and classrooms. Thus, the need for education to be responsive to the demands of diversity are unassailable. Schools celebrate Black History Month; the history curriculum may include a post-colonial perspective (to some degree); school libraries will endeavour to include texts that speak to the communities they serve. These sorts of strategies will be advocated in current models of teacher education. However, many of the in-school responses are liberal in nature and celebrate difference while failing to deal directly with racism, its ‘central importance in society and its routine (often unrecognised) character’ (Gillborn, 2006, p. 20). Drawing from work in the US, anti-racist educators in the UK have turned to Critical Race Theory (CRT) to inform their research and their specialist teaching in the area. However, while some teacher education programmes may refer to CRT, they are still more likely to tackle issues of representation and recognition rather than racism (Gillborn, 2015). Issues of criticality and conscientisation, with its focus on action and change, may still be far less in evidence in practice. So, while earlier proponents of critical pedagogy centred on the need for teachers to encourage their students to question ideologies and practices of oppression in order to dismantle them (Giroux, 1983; Liston and Zeichner, 1987), what is meant by critical pedagogy has become more tied into the usefulness of critical theory perspectives (such as CRT and ableism, for example) rather than critical pedagogy per se (Sarroub and Quadros, 2015). If earlier versions of critical approaches in education were prone to arguing that educational change could promote wider societal changes, then perhaps we are either more sophisticated, less ambitious or more realistic nowadays. As Anyon (2014) put it: Teachers, principals, and urban students are not the culprits – as reform policies that target high stakes testing, educator quality, and the control of youth assume. Rather, an unjust economy and the policies through which it is maintained create barriers to educational success that no teacher or principal practice, no standardized test, and no ‘zero tolerance’ policy
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can surmount for long … macroeconomic mandates continually trump urban educational policy and school reform. (p. 5)
However, this is not to let education off the hook. While it may not be possible to enact critical pedagogy in its classic form in the pre-service setting, there is the possibility of what Tinning (2002) refers to as the adoption of a more ‘modest pedagogy’, rooted in the values and principles of critical pedagogy but with an awareness of the material conditions under which most teachers work and with more realistic expectations of what happens when good ideas are mediated in the complex intersections of teacher education programmes.
CRITICAL APPROACHES TO TEACHER EDUCATION We now focus briefly on two illustrations of critical approaches to teacher education: first, the challenge to heteronormativity and, second, the creation of mediating social spaces for change in practices. Both examples illustrate how student teachers can be active participants in change perspectives in their education programmes through exploring and extending their critical consciousness.
Challenging Heteronormativity through Teacher Education The last fifty years have seen profound legal and cultural changes around questions of sexuality in many countries around the world. In England, homosexuality was partly decriminalised in 1967 and the 1970s saw the emergence of gay rights or ‘liberation’ movements based on the assertion of sexual difference, as happened elsewhere. The early 2000s saw the equalisation of the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual intercourse; the repeal of a law (Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act) that sought to prohibit the fair treatment of homosexuality in schools; the introduction of civil partnerships guaranteeing legal recognition for same-sex partners in 2005; the inclusion of sexuality among ten ‘protected characteristics’ in the Equality Act 2010, an act that offered protection against discrimination in most aspects of public life; and, in 2014, the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Similar patterns of change can be identified in other countries: for example, Canada introduced same-sex marriage freedoms in 2005; and the United States introduced the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009 and the US Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage in 2015. In most settings, progress has not been uniformly ‘upward’ towards these socially progressive ideals; there have been backlashes and variations in progress dependent on local cultures. Indeed, while these apparently progressive social changes have been enacted, schools continue to be relatively unsafe places for many young people who
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identify or are perceived as different, and research and development that seeks to promote change around sexualities in education continues to be marginal and, at times, high risk. In 2012, for example, the regular survey undertaken by the UK charity Stonewall and the University of Cambridge (‘The School Report’) found that more than half of young lesbian, gay and bisexual young people1 had experienced homophobic bullying in school and that 96% reported hearing homophobic remarks while at school (Guasp, 2012). Researchers leading the only major in-service teacher education research and development project around sexualities in primary schools in England in recent years – the ‘No Outsiders’ project (Atkinson & DePalma, 2009) – received death threats when their grant success was publicised in the press and their media launch event had to be cancelled (TES, 2008). The story of progress in this area is not a simple one with an unambiguous happy ending. Over the last twenty years, there have been several published examples of research-led developments in teacher education programmes that have sought to challenge heteronormativity and homophobia. Heteronormativity is a term most closely associated with Michael Warner, one of the leading proponents of queer theory, and suggests the cultural bias towards heterosexuality as ‘the norm’ based on a simple set of relationships between biological sex, gender and sexual behaviour (Warner, 1993). Heterosexuality is therefore constructed as ‘natural’, with the implication that alternatives are deviations from this norm and those that ‘choose’ the alternatives are deviant. The oppressive nature of this cultural bias has been described as ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1980). Queer theory challenges heteronormativity and, according to Deborah Britzman (1995), insists on three methods of enquiry: ‘the study of limits, the study of ignorance, and the study of reading practices’ (Britzman, 1995, p. 155). In following through these methods of enquiry, particular attention is paid to the practices of representation (in curriculum texts and in pedagogic interactions, for example), practices that are then opened to further study through the tools of critical literacy which have two ‘complementary aspects’: One is analysis: scrutinising the ways language and image are used to give us a position for reading and desiring, for taking up a position as sexual beings. The other is imagination: understanding something of how the ideologies of our society are lived out in individuals in a specific time and place. (Morgan, 1997, p. 48)
These two aspects have often, in practice, led to different emphases: one emphasis has been on the rights that should be accorded to all individuals based on an older form of identity politics and an ideal of tolerance; the other has been more hermeneutic in the ways it has sought to unsettle common-sense understandings of what it means to be ‘normal’. These different emphases might be described as anti-homophobic (often as part of a wider anti-bullying strategy) and anti-hetero normative. The former has had some greater success in educational settings,
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perhaps given that schools tend to involve regulating students’ behaviours anyway and instilling non-violent means of disagreement. Robinson and Ferfolja (2001, 2008) report on curriculum development in an Australian teacher education programme that sought to include work on prospective teachers’ dispositions towards sexual difference. In some ways, this research is part of a tradition of work more generally that seeks to change educational practices by changing teachers’ beliefs. Robinson and Ferfolja’s research is also interesting for the way in which early attention (in 2001) was given to ‘lesbian and gay’ issues, whereas by 2008 their concerns had become ‘queer’ and opened up a broader set of questions such as what it means to be ‘straight’ rather than presenting homosexuality as an ‘issue’. This research showed that, despite the general social progress around sexualities described earlier, some student teachers resisted their teacher education programme’s attempts to engage them in thinking through their personal dispositions about sexuality. Their resistance (expressed in comments such as ‘what are we doing this for?’) suggested a preference for a more functionalist approach to learning to teach. However, just changing the curriculum content may be less effective in engaging the critical consciousness of trainee teachers. In contrast, Goldstein, working in Canada, explored the potential of performed ethnography for enacting anti-homophobia teacher education (e.g. Goldstein, 2004). Performed ethnography involves generating data with participants from an ethnographic perspective and then shaping these data aesthetically – using the craft of the dramatist – into a play for performance. The aim is to engage the audience – in this case, prospective teachers – in an affective way so that the theoretical propositions about working against homophobia can be experienced in ways that invite the spectator (the teacher) to draw on their emotions and connect what they see and hear to their own experiences. Goldstein’s work is a good example of methodologically inventive research that sought to have greater impact in changing prevailing educational practices and in capturing the critical consciousness of the student teachers. More recently, Murray (2015) reports on an institution-wide project in one US university that promoted a queer-inclusive approach in teacher education. Murray’s book-length study of the project includes a companion website (www.Queerinclusion.com). The project was initially based on research with student teachers as they negotiated questions of sexuality and gender in their classroom experiences. This study led Murray to generate five assertions about the prevalence of queerness in educational settings and the related significance of coming to terms with one’s own identity as part of the process of learning to teach. Murray’s work is important for the subsequent scale of the programmatic intervention that led on from the seven-month study and the ways in which an institutional task-force took forward research ideas that permeated the entire teacher education programme in order to promote wider social change.
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Creating Mediating Social Spaces that Promote Change in Educational Practices Our second example concerns the broad constellation of ideas known as sociocultural or cultural-historical theories that share commitments to both the importance of context and the interrogation of the theory/practice dichotomy (see Ellis et al., 2010, Chapter 1). Sociocultural and cultural-historical theories regard meaning as situated but not situation-bound (i.e. not solely determined by or relative to its location) and suggest that human agency is essential to the process by which we make sense of our world and act on or shape it. This agency can be stimulated in ways that surface the situatedness of practices in our consciousness (a process of conscientisation, in effect) by designing social spaces that bring participants together in dialogue that mediates theoretical concepts with positive change as a shared goal. From the cultural-historical perspective particularly (essentially a neo-Vygotskian perspective), theory (abstract ideas) has the potential to give people greater control over the future of their practices (i.e. theory enhances their agency) when it is mediated in the kinds of social spaces that encourage participants to put theory in contact with their own concrete, lived experiences. Activity theory (a variety of cultural-historical theory) has perhaps achieved the most in elaborating the methodology of designing mediating social spaces and is closely associated with the work of Finnish researcher Yrjo Engeström (for a methodological summary see Engeström [2007]). Activity theory intervention research is known as Developmental Work Research (DWR), where the researcher works with participants to help them change their practices by encouraging them to identify and work through contradictions and conflicts they experience in their practices; a process where there is ownership, trust and risk, key aspects of working critically (Ellsworth, 1989). The spaces where participants and researchers are brought together are called Change Laboratories and the theoretical tools of activity theory are used to examine the contradictions and then to envision new futures for the practices under examination. In contrast to the cultural-historical line, the more sociocultural perspective in educational research has been influenced by a wider range of disciplines such as post-colonial studies, geography, organisational studies and sociolinguistics. At first popularised in education by the work of Gutiérrez (e.g. Gutiérrez et al., 1997, 1999), the concept of ‘third space’ has emerged to indicate an environment that has been designed to bring contradictory discourses into contact with one another in order for a new, hybrid discourse to emerge from the interaction. As in the work of Gutiérrez, and suggestive of the term’s origins in post-colonial theory, third space is associated with approaches to promoting sociocultural diversity with a social justice orientation. Through the process of dialectical thinking stimulated in the third space, new cultural forms emerge that appropriate and remake older forms. Explicitly disruptive to hierarchical understandings of change,
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third spaces allow for potentially radical new educational practices to be created collectively by participants, from the ‘bottom up’. Max (2010) developed an innovative teacher education programme at the University of Luxembourg centred around an extended internship for student teachers that brought them and their school-teacher mentors together in collaborative enquiries. The planning, implementation and evaluation of these enquiries was undertaken in designed social spaces that spanned the boundaries of the schools and the university. Max used activity theory concepts to design the spaces (he referred to them as ‘boundary zones’) and to inform the interactions with them, while the collaborative enquiries addressed issues of linguistic diversity in Luxembourg’s elementary schools (highly relevant in a multilingual country). Max’s programme changed longestablished teacher education practices in a continental European country where student teaching or ‘teaching practice’ is usually seen as an opportunity to ‘put theory into practice’. His programme tried to show how the theory already in the practice was open to examination by practitioners with a view to changing that practice. In a context (England) where long school placements (or internships) have been a feature of teacher education programmes for over twenty years, Ellis (2011) used DWR and a series of Change Laboratories to work with student teachers and mentor (supervising or cooperating) teachers to develop the teaching of writing while the student teachers were learning how to teach writing. In this way, the prevailing practices were examined by the experienced practitioners at the same time as new practitioners were being drawn into them. In the Change Laboratories, data generated from an ethnographic perspective in each school were analysed using activity theory tools and surfaced a primary (or central) contradiction between the use value of using a genre-based approach to the teaching of writing (‘genre theory provides a useful set of intellectual resources that can productively inform the teaching of writing’) and the exchange value of drawing on government-approved appropriations of genre theory (‘if I follow the official guidance on using genre theory, and provide recipes to students, their test scores and my performance management grades will improve’). Ellis’ research showed how the accountability pressures facing teachers can limit the opportunities for student teachers’ learning, unless mediating social spaces such as Change Laboratories can be designed into teacher education programmes. From a more sociocultural perspective, Norton-Meier and Drake (2010) created third spaces in their US programme to allow student teachers to see the relationship between the knowledge students bring to school from their families and communities (known as ‘funds of knowledge’ [Gonzalez et al., 2005; Moll & Greenberg, 1990]) and the knowledge required to be successful at school. Third spaces allowed for a new hybrid discourse to emerge – transcending both the academic, privileged, middle-class discourse of schooling and the everyday, spontaneous discourse of families and communities from other classes and cultures. Norton-Meier and Drake noted that while such third spaces may well have a physical and temporal dimension, the potential for changing educational
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practices lies in their virtual dimension, where potentially damaging ideas about what certain kinds of children can achieve are surfaced and then challenged. Urban Teacher Residencies (UTRs) are federally supported innovations in teacher education in the United States in which universities partner with hard-tostaff school districts to improve teacher recruitment and retention. As their name implies, student teachers become teacher-residents and are based in the schools for most of their time, with the university’s programme ‘wrapped around’ the practices of teaching in the schools. For university teacher educators as well as the schools, the UTR model presents a set of challenges to ‘business-as-usual’ and requires a genuine reconceptualisation of the relationship between the two kinds of organisations. Reporting on the experience of the Newark-Montclair UTR, Taylor and Klein (2015) position the programme as a third space for all participants, for themselves as well as their school and district colleagues, as well as student teachers. By entering the third space they themselves were largely responsible for designing, Taylor and Klein also had to address fundamental questions about the forms of knowledge that would be useful to prospective teachers working in sometimes tough and hard-to-staff schools and that would retain them as teachers within the district for longer than the norm, while also allowing the students in those schools to succeed without narrowing the curriculum and teaching to the test. By emphasising the challenges third spaces such as UTRs bring to the traditional academic work of teacher education, Taylor and Klein’s work demonstrates the risks, potentials and vulnerabilities for teacher educators of engaging in critical approaches that challenge existing practices.
CONCLUSION One of the challenges in writing about critical approaches to the education of teachers lies in trying to avoid a utopian or romanticised approach towards what is possible, as well as what is desirable. Another challenge lies in ensuring that we do not fall into the trap Ellsworth identified some time ago, that of misrecognising the inherent power imbalances that are embedded in all social relations. At the same time, however, something has to be done. In this chapter, we have shown that the research suggests it is possible to challenge and change prevailing and sometimes oppressive practices, even in ‘impossible times’ (Biesta, 1998). We have focused on two traditions of successful interventions – first, work with teachers that is anti-homopobic/anti-heteronormative, and, second, the creation of ‘third spaces’ through collaborative interventions that produce new hybrid discourses that stimulate change and promote sociocultural diversity. Both traditions arise out of the critical social theory, identity politics and cultural movements that we outlined at the beginning of the chapter. And crucially, both traditions rely on the development of critical consciousness – the conscientisation of participants – for their enactment.
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The story of critical approaches to teacher education, then, is a story of inevitably piecemeal, socially situated and historically contingent progress towards socially just goals that have to be continually re-made – won, lost and re-won. But the research also shows that the intellectual tools that enable teachers to challenge existing consciousness and change educational practices continue to develop despite pressures to the contrary. That is the story of critical approaches to teacher education: somewhat fragile but enduring.
Note 1 Controversially, Stonewall has not used transgender as a category in its School Report research.
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Tinning, R. (2002) Towards a more ‘modest critical pedagogy’: Reflections on the problematics of critical pedagogy. Quest, 54(3): 224–240. Warner, M. (Ed.) (1993) Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wideen, M.F. and Grimmett, P. (1995) Changing Times in Teacher Education: Restructuring or Reconceptualization? London and Washington: Falmer Press. Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs. Farnborough, UK: Saxon House. Zeichner, K. and Conklin, H.G. (2016) Beyond knowledge ventriloquism and echo chambers: Raising the quality of the debate in teacher education. Teachers College Record, 118(12): 1–38.
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35 Culturally Relevant Teacher Education Pedagogical Approaches Jae Major and Jo-Anne Reid
INTRODUCTION Preparing teachers for diverse contexts remains an urgent global challenge as student populations diversify in schools while teacher populations remain largely homogeneous (Sleeter, 2001; Zumwalt & Craig, 2005). Policy agendas seeking to increase representation of minority cultures amongst teachers have not decreased the racial, ethnic and cultural distance between students and teachers. Gains have been eclipsed by rapid growth in minority student populations: the diversity gap, along with the achievement gap, has actually increased over the years (Gist, 2016; Ingersoll & May, 2011; Villegas, Strom & Lucas, 2012). A range of approaches to preparing teachers for increasing cultural diversity in schools has been proposed internationally by educational researchers concerned with social justice and equity. Their work aims to support success for marginalised and failing students in education systems that are neither relevant nor responsive to racial, cultural and linguistic diversity, or differences in student ability, class or gender. We note that the term ‘cultural diversity’ implies an unnamed point of comparison against which something or someone becomes diverse; and the power to mark this comparison rests with the normative cultural and linguistic majority in any context. This often produces deficit connotations emanating from essentialised binary constructions of difference – a knowledge stance frequently crystallised within teacher education curricula. This chapter focuses on approaches to teacher education that address cultural diversity, defined in the larger sense of difference related to social class, ethnicity, culture and language
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(Zeichner 1993), and argues the need for pre-service teacher education to engage more effectively with the extensive research base available to support culturally relevant pedagogy in teacher education.
THE NEED FOR CULTURALLY RELEVANT TEACHER EDUCATION While there is evidence indicating a shift towards more positive attitudes among pre-service teachers (PSTs) about teaching culturally diverse students (Castro, 2010), persistent problems and inadequacies still characterise their engagement with, and understanding of, cultural diversity. This is despite the extensive literature that describes successful teacher education programmes and approaches designed to instil knowledge, skills and attitudes that will support PSTs to teach effectively in culturally diverse contexts (see Cochran-Smith, Ell, Grudnoff et al., 2016; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Sleeter, 2008). So what is the problem here? We suggest that although teacher education programmes may be effective in telling PSTs about what they should be doing in the classroom as propositional knowledge (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016), there is little evidence that they actually use the culturally relevant pedagogies they espouse to help PSTs develop embodied, experiential and practical knowledge. There is a gap between the content of teacher preparation programmes and the pedagogical approaches they employ. If teacher education programmes are to succeed in the goals to which they aspire, they must not only embed culturally relevant content in all aspects of the curriculum, but teacher education must itself be a culturally relevant practice. This is essential if it is to demonstrate, and assist PSTs to learn, how culturally relevant pedagogy can be accomplished in practice. There are relatively few studies focused on the use of culturally relevant approaches in the preparation of teachers (Han, Vomvoridi-Ivanović, Jacobs et al., 2014). Research remains focused on coursework that provides information teachers can use to develop culturally relevant pedagogies in their future classroom practice. This suggests that teacher educators rarely ‘walk the talk’ of culturally relevant pedagogy: when constraints of time and efficiency mean that practices such as learning about and using pre-service teachers’ own funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff et al., 1992) are not utilised in pre-service teacher education, we risk (p)reproducing an education system that remains neither relevant nor responsive to diversity and difference. For minority and indigenous PSTs in particular, who are underrepresented in higher education around the world, dominant Eurocentric epistemologies continue to alienate and normalise whiteness and inequity despite decades of diversity and integration policies and processes (Naepi, Stein, Ahenakew & Andreotti, 2017), just as they do in schools. In what follows, we explicate and describe forms of teacher education that do exemplify and provide teachers with generative theoretical knowledge about,
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lived experience of, and commitment to, the need for culturally relevant pedagogy. We begin by summarising the key features and characteristics of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) as a discursive field, clarifying differences and parallels in terminology and theory in its development over time, and across different national contexts. Arguing that the concern for social justice is central to its project at all levels of learning, we describe the key components of teacher education programmes that might better prepare culturally responsive practitioners. Evidence and examples gathered from research around the world help us answer the question of how culturally relevant pedagogical approaches might be prioritised within teacher education, highlighting the need for teacher education to integrate theory and practice in order to ‘practise what it preaches’. The model of CRP for teacher education that we propose on the basis of this review will support teacher educators in responding to this challenge in their own institutions.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY As this field has developed over time, different terminology has been used in different places to reference and develop the idea of preparing teachers to teach for, and with, diversity. Referred to variously as ‘multicultural’ (Banks, 1993, 2015), ‘anti-bias’ (Derman-Sparks, 1989; Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010) and ‘antiracist’ education (Troyna, 1987; Gillborn, 2004), ‘critical multiculturalism’ (May, 2009), ‘culturally responsive teaching’ (Gay, 2000; Villegas & Lucas 2002), ‘culturally relevant pedagogy’ (Ladson-Billings, 1995), ‘intercultural’ education (Dervin, 2015; Leeman, 2016) or ‘culturally-sustaining’ pedagogy (Paris, 2012), the field has a range of lexical markers that reflects the theoretical and geopolitical research agendas available to resource pre-service teacher education curricula. Within the global community working for social justice in education, theoretical concern with multicultural education has given way in recent decades to calls for a focus on culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2013; Villegas, 1991; Villegas & Lucas, 2002) and culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014). Villegas and Lucas (2002) described the characteristics of culturally responsive teachers as people who understand how learners construct knowledge; are prepared to learn about their students’ lives; are socioculturally conscious; hold affirming views about diversity; advocate for all students; and use appropriate instructional strategies. Ladson-Billings (1992) introduced ‘culturally relevant pedagogy’, grounded in research into the practices of successful teachers of African-American students. She proposes three core propositions for CRP, claiming that students from all cultures must: 1 experience academic success; 2 develop and/or maintain cultural competence; and 3 develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order. (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 160)
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Ladson-Billings claims that culturally relevant pedagogy goes further than simply acknowledging (multi)cultural difference and diversity, but rather demands equity of opportunity for all. Research strongly suggests that this is best achieved when teachers have had culturally relevant and responsive pre-service experiences that connect formal education to lived experience; promote equity and excellence; create community among individuals from different cultural, social and ethnic backgrounds; and develop students’ agency, efficacy and power (Gay, 2013, p. 49). Recent developments reflect this ongoing commitment to social justice. Paris (2012) introduced the term ‘culturally sustaining pedagogy’ to describe pedagogies that sustain multicultural and multilingual practices through ‘both the traditional and evolving ways they are lived and used by young people’ (Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 91, original emphasis). McCarty and Lee (2014) take up these ideas in the context of indigenous education, emphasising the revitalisation of indigenous languages and cultures. They acknowledge the need to balance culturally and linguistically appropriate education with the knowledge and skill requirements of ‘mainstream’ curriculum. Such work critically reflects on and interrogates CRP in spaces that are continually changing, and marked by complex, intersecting differences and diversities. Aronson and Laughter (2016, p. 166) distinguish between research on culturally responsive teaching (CRT) and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), defining the former as a focus on ‘competency and methods, describing what a teacher should be doing in the classroom to be culturally responsive’. Culturally relevant pedagogy, however, is about attitudes and dispositions, which, ‘when fully embodied, would determine planning, instruction, and assessment’ (Aronson & Laughter, 2016, p. 162). Thus, CRP is unlikely to be taken up unless teachers have experienced it through their pre-service teacher education. This is because CRP aims to change ‘natural’, embodied attitudes and dispositions towards cultural difference (Bourdieu, 1977), as well as suggesting strategies and methods that educators can use in their classrooms. The goal of culturally relevant teacher education, therefore, is the production of teachers who will ‘naturally’ and ‘automatically’ work in culturally responsive ways. When teacher education is understood in this way, as a ‘practice producing subjects’ (Britzman, 1992/2012; Green & Reid, 2004), it becomes a task far greater than simply imparting information for teachers to use elsewhere, ‘in the future’, if they can. CRP is the enabling process that demands of its teachers what it asks of its students. The core tenets of CRP proposed by Ladson-Billings, Gay, Villegas and others have been further developed by professional and accrediting bodies legislating requirements for teacher education. They have been used to inform teacher education curricula in North America, Europe and other multicultural, postcolonial nations such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The goals of CRP are challenging for any teacher, requiring a particular combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Without focused teacher preparation that produces the
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capacity to realise them in everyday classroom practice, however, the principles of CRP remain ideals – only seldom achieved in most education systems internationally. The ways that teacher education has attempted to turn principles into practice is the focus of the next section.
CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY IN TEACHER EDUCATION A considerable body of research describes the core elements of teacher education programmes that develop CRP. Sleeter (2008, p. 563), for example, describes a ‘three legged platform’ that supports ‘White teachers to learn to teach diverse students well’. These ‘legs’ are: 1 cross-cultural community-based learning requiring PSTs to engage with a community culturally different from their own; 2 professional coursework on culture and equity pedagogy that is integrated across all elements of the program; and 3 classroom experience where PSTs have an opportunity to connect coursework with practice in ways that ‘do not simply replicate prevailing practices’ (Sleeter, 2008, p. 568).
Darling-Hammond (2006) identifies five elements that address this same dilemma. These include field placements in ‘culturally diverse settings linked to consciously guided discussions and readings’; ‘an ecological view of human development’ that takes into account context and knowledge about students’ lives to inform teaching; regular ‘integrated study of multicultural concerns and classroom strategies’; ‘commitment to social action’; and ‘willingness to struggle with issues of race and class’ (Darling-Hammond, 2006, pp. 362–363). According to Hernandez, Morales and Shronger (2013), culturally relevant teacher education practices that prepare teachers for integrating content from a range of cultures and perspectives, while maintaining high expectations, require teacher educators to themselves have these capabilities. If prejudice reduction requires teachers to use ‘contextual factors … to build a positive, safe classroom environment in which all students are free to learn’ (Hernandez et al., 2013, p. 810), teacher education pedagogies must also work with and be prepared to learn from school and cultural communities beyond the academy. Social justice demands that teachers act as agents of change and encourage their students to question the status quo, and so teacher education must foreground this activist commitment. This, we argue, underlines the need to conceptualise teacher education, like teaching itself, as always-unfinished and recursive, a project of action research (Reid, 2013). In Figure 35.1 we present a model of culturally relevant teacher education pedagogy (CRTEP) that depicts it as always evolving through relationships of curriculum, practicum and pedagogy that connect the practice of teacher educators, PSTs and the communities they serve. These connections are made through
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Pre-service Teachers
History
Policy
Curriculum (Knowledge)
CRP School/ Community
Pedagogy (Values)
Prac cum (Skills)
Teacher Educators
Par cipatory Ac on Research Place
Figure 35.1 A culturally relevant teacher education pedagogy (CRTEP)
participatory action research and reflective inquiry that takes account of history, policy and place, and connect the materiality of embodied experience to research and theoretical accounts of the purpose, means and effects of education. Three core processes are at the heart of developing knowledge, skills and values for CRTEP: inquiry-based coursework, field experiences to practise skills and culturally responsive pedagogies to inculcate values. We elaborate these in turn below.
Inquiry-based Teacher Education Coursework Underpinning pre-service coursework curricula aimed at producing CRP is a set of sociocultural theories, seen as providing the knowledge base for teaching practice. A grounding in critical sociology and education provides a strong shared conceptual framework for reflection and action across the whole of the teacher education programme. Theoretical foundations include whiteness studies, critical race theory, critical literacy, critical multiculturalism, and postcolonialism. Key concepts include: terms such as discourse, habitus and cultural capital as defined by Bourdieu (1986), hegemony as articulated by Gramsci (2012), power and privilege as discussed by Foucault (1980),
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social practice as defined by the New London Group (1996), as well as identity, hybridity, and even the very word literacy (Janks, 2007). (Nieto, 2013, p. 9)
Other foundational concepts include: ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992) and understandings and respect towards ‘students’ cultural backgrounds and home communities’ (Jester & Fickel, 2013, p. 186); having high expectations of learning for ethnic minority students; understanding and awareness of oneself as encultured and how naturalised cultural frames of reference impact teaching (Santoro, 2009); and developing a commitment to social justice and acting as agents of change (Zipin, Sellar & Hattam, 2012). This last element is perhaps the most difficult to design learning for, and to assess, but if approached with an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), based on critical-participatory action research, it becomes a means of promoting awareness of the effects of membership of culturally different groups. Castagno and Brayboy (2008, p. 948) claim there is important knowledge about ‘sovereignty, racism, and epistemologies’ missing from teacher preparation programmes for indigenous contexts. Educators must critically engage with concepts such as sovereignty and self-determination, and cultural and language revitalisation/preservation if they are to prepare culturally responsive teachers for indigenous communities (Fickel, Macfarlane & Macfarlane, 2017). Robust culturally relevant coursework integrates CRP principles throughout the programme, rather than in just one or two courses. It actively engages with the CRP approaches promoted by teacher educators for teacher use. Sleeter (2008, pp. 567–568) identifies ‘active learning and reflection strategies that connect conceptual frameworks with personal experience, examine diverse points of view, and model pedagogical strategies’ as ‘helping White pre-service teachers work through their defenses’, as well as supporting them to know how to practise in a culturally relevant manner. This, of course, places teacher educators firmly in their own reflexive sights, requiring that they also learn about and reflect on how their own ethnic and cultural identities shape their practices. However, critical theoretical knowledge and standpoints alone will not support graduate teachers to actively work towards change (Sleeter, 2001); experience is also necessary.
Studying Culturally Relevant Practice in Field Experiences Field experiences and service learning are acknowledged means of developing self-efficacy and changing PSTs’ attitudes towards teaching ethnically diverse students (Bodur, 2012; Miller & Mikulec, 2014). A considerable literature describes the effects of placing predominantly white, majority-culture PSTs’ experiences in a range of local and international contexts with cultural and linguistic ‘others’. Findings suggest integrating coursework with field experiences that move beyond the classroom into the community achieves positive outcomes for attitudinal change, and for challenging negative or deficit thinking about
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diverse students and families (Wiggins, Follo & Eberly, 2007). Lauricella (2005) challenged her PST students’ prejudices about students ‘othered’ by race, class, ethnicity, language background or political status, by requiring them to leave the ‘cultural safety’ of the school grounds on field placement. The PSTs were introduced to the neighbourhood by a community member, becoming aware of local issues from an insider’s perspective. Positioned as observers and inquirers, they learned from interactions with authoritative cultural others. Like other variations of the cultural immersion or ‘cultural plunge’ (Nieto, 2006), this experience ‘not only challenged students’ unexamined assumptions about the hopelessness of urban life’ (Lauricella, 2005, p. 132), it alerted them to their own lack of knowledge about people who live differently from themselves, and the need to research the place and people of any school community. Similarly, in Canada, James (2017) promotes a ‘community-referenced’ approach to education in diverse urban contexts. Reflecting the need for teachers to learn and re-learn about students and communities, James worked with teachers, parents and community members to develop community-based activities aimed at improving particular aspects of their lives. Such an emphasis on ‘this-ness’ (Thomson, 2000), highlighting the specificity of place and culture, involves teacher educators, teachers, PSTs and community members in continuous, conscious and strategic action research (Carr & Kemmis, 2003), which connects ‘what is’ to educational and social theory and evidence, and moves towards planning and implementing collaborative local activity to attain a desired outcome. Field experiences are therefore sites and foci of action research, engaging PSTs in an active ‘apprenticeship’ of cultural interaction, exchange and identity formation (Gross & Maloney, 2012; Li & Lal, 2005; Mbugua, 2010). Haddix (2015) suggests that teacher educators should also engage with communities, designing programmes that consider the diversities of the ‘families and communities of the children and young people that school systems purport to serve’ (p. 65). She critiques ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to teacher education around the world that are driven by a culture of standardisation (Santoro & Kennedy, 2016), and promotes, instead, community-engaged teacher education where PSTs ‘critically interrogate … their social locations and the ways in which they engage with and honour their students’ lives and histories’ (Haddix, 2015, p. 64). In the globalised and mobile world of the 21st century, teacher education institutions are also increasingly looking to international experiences as a way of exposing PSTs to diversity and difference. A growing body of evidence suggests that such experiences contribute, cognitively and affectively, to teachers’ professional (and personal) selves (Alfaro & Quezada, 2010; Harbon & Smyth, 2015), challenging deficit notions of difference, and promoting the use of culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom (Dantas, 2007). The transformative potential of international experiences results as participants move ‘from a confrontation with a new culture into an encounter with the self’ (Brown, 2009, p. 505).
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However, just as with field experiences in local communities, this does not happen without careful preparation and support. Reflecting on international experience programmes in Australia, Buchanan, Major, Harbon and Kearney (2017) conclude that effective programmes must be embedded into wider course structures, where rigorous academic elements link critical educational theory to reflection on PSTs’ own and other cultural practices. Reflection and reflective practices are seen as central to maximising learning in international programmes (Buchanan et al., 2017; Pence & Macgillivary, 2008; Willard-Holt, 2001).
Achieving Culturally Relevant Teacher Education Pedagogy Because a culturally relevant pedagogy is always ‘situated’ (White & Reid, 2008), it cannot be achieved by formula. As Gay (2013, p. 63) stresses: ‘instructional practices should be shaped by the sociocultural characteristics of the settings in which they occur, and the populations for whom they are designed’. However, in an era of ‘best practice’, evidence-based teaching and international testing, it can be difficult to convince both teacher educators and their students that they must continually make and re-make their pedagogy in response to changing contexts and conditions. PSTs who lack the capacity to function with an inquiry stance towards their practice look for a toolkit of strategies that will ‘work’ in any classroom. They can be resistant to programmes that do not provide this, but instead ask for deeply reflective thinking about ‘discomforting truths’ (Zembylas, 2012). Teacher educators often settle for more generic guiding principles for CRP that can be utilised and integrated to support inquiry in different contexts. These include: applying multiple ethnic, racial, and cultural perspectives in analyzing educational problems and possibilities; using varied culturally responsive instructional strategies to achieve common learning outcomes for diverse students; and developing skills among students for crossing cultural borders. (Gay, 2013, pp. 63–64)
But a teacher preparation programme that aims to produce graduates who understand the need to be willing and able to adjust pedagogical approaches to each new group of students, each year, each term, each day, will ultimately serve teachers better than one that convinces them there is a single ‘best practice’. One productive place to look for teacher education models that are grounded in CRP principles may be in programmes designed specifically to prepare indigenous teachers. In Canadian (Kitchen & Hodson, 2013) and New Zealand (Sexton, 2011) studies, for instance, the importance of relational knowing, where learning through relationships of self and other makes knowledge personally and culturally meaningful, was identified as a key pedagogical strategy for effective teacher preparation. Sexton (2011) goes further, describing a teacher education
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programme for M¯aori PSTs in New Zealand that combined ‘mainstream’ educational approaches with kaupapa M¯aori knowledge (ways of learning/being M¯aori) to support and retain the teachers. Core M¯aori values were used to conceptualise and develop the programme, based on ‘challenging, questioning and critiquing P¯akeha [white New Zealanders’] hegemony, rather than rejecting or excluding P¯akeha culture’ (Sexton, 2011, p. 35). By connecting ‘mainstream’ pedagogies with indigenous epistemologies and practices, M¯aori teachers were prepared for mainstream schools and classrooms. Ubuntu education or pedagogy, which is based on a southern African philosophy of being that locates identity and meaning-making within the collective rather than the individual, describes a pedagogical ethos with a focus on reciprocal, interdependent and mutually beneficial relationships between individuals and community (Biraimah, 2016; Oviawe, 2016; Swanson, 2009). To develop PST capacity to these ends, action research and inquiry-based approaches, grounded in critical reflection processes, continue to have pedagogical promise in teacher education. Recursive cycles of inquiry not only develop skills needed for ongoing professional learning, but also offer ways for teacher educators to work collaboratively with PSTs and communities to explore equityrelated questions and issues as they relate to teaching and learning (CochranSmith et al., 2016; Esau, 2013; Li & Lal, 2005; Souto-Manning, 2012). The role of critical reflection in CRTEP is central because it requires consideration of issues such as ‘equity, access, and social justice’ (Howard, 2003, p. 197) and ‘racism, power and White privilege’ (Haddix, 2015, p. 66). It asks PSTs to ‘engage in the rigorous and oftentimes painful reflection process about what it means to teach students who come from different racial and cultural backgrounds than their own’ (Howard, 2003, p. 198). To effectively facilitate critical reflection in the context of CRTEP, teacher educators must be able to: sufficiently address the complex nature of race, ethnicity, and culture, … be aware that reflection is a never ending process, … be explicit about what to reflect about, … recognize that teaching is not a neutral act … [and] avoid reductive notions of culture. (Howard, 2003, pp. 200–201)
Active learning and reflection strategies that facilitate these kinds of conversations include asking PSTs to critically engage with multicultural literature, biographies and autobiographies (Gere, Buehler, Dallavis & Haviland, 2009; Souto-Manning, 2009), along with activities such as autobiographical writing (Gooden & O’Doherty, 2015; He & Cooper, 2009; Schmidt, 1999), digital storytelling (Gachago, Cronje, Ivala et al., 2013), and cultural collages (Muschell & Roberts, 2011). Discussion and reflective writing (Moloney & Oguro, 2015) about images and narratives produced through these means can stimulate awareness of PSTs’ own cultural backgrounds, identities and practices, and how these shape their beliefs about race, racism and privilege. Engaging with cultural ‘others’ through structured pedagogical activities (Holmes & O’Neill, 2012),
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running community events (Lafferty & Pang, 2014), collecting and publishing community stories, and other forms of participatory action research connect theory and practice as they develop skills, knowledge and values for CRP, as described in Figure 35.1. The point here is that there is not one way to enact CRTEP. Just as pre-service teachers are urged to be responsive and relevant to their teaching context and learners, so too teacher educators must resist the urge for a one-size-fits-all response, and critically engage in remaking pedagogies to respond to changing circumstances and student cohorts. This is the research that teacher educators must enact. In the next section we discuss the challenges for teacher educators who attempt to employ CRP in their practice.
CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION – THE CHALLENGES Teacher educators frequently find the work of confronting issues such as racism, whiteness, inequity and privilege difficult, both emotionally and intellectually. As Aveling (2006) argues, the ways in which PSTs’ identities are challenged when they are asked to consider whiteness, its privilege and hegemony have ongoing implications for their ability to teach students different from themselves. This becomes ‘risky business’ for teacher educators because ‘exploring “race” and racism with White students goes to the very heart of our socially constructed identities’ (Aveling, 2006, p. 264). Sleeter (2011) notes the potential for backlash by members of dominant cultural groups against indigenous and minority groups’ claims for equity. Teacher educators’ own pedagogical practices are key to overcoming resistance and supporting PSTs to move beyond the guilt often engendered when exploring issues of white privilege and racism, foregrounding PSTs’ ‘own racialized, gendered and class-based positioning’ (Aveling 2006, p. 264), to become more effective culturally responsive educators. The challenge of working with ‘difficult knowledges’ (Zembylas, 2012) with PSTs can reduce the ambition of CRP to what Sleeter (2011, p. 12) calls ‘faulty and simplistic conceptions’, where PSTs are rarely pushed to critically consider ‘policies and practices that may have direct impact on their lives and communities’ (Ladson-Billings, 2014, p. 78). Developing a critical consciousness through which new teachers can question social injustice is frequently missing in standards-based teacher education programmes. Without strong pre-service preparation, however, Young’s (2010) findings that teachers are unlikely to raise issues such as sexism, racism and structural inequality with their students (either because they are unaware of their significance, or because they are uncomfortable with the emotions and lack of resolution around these issues) will continue. CRP requires ‘an entirely new way of thinking … [that] challenge[s] social and racial inequalities’ (Young, 2010, p. 255). An incomplete understanding of
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CRP results in a tendency to trivialise culture and provide learning about other cultures in tokenistic ways (Hickling Hudson, 2003; Meyer & Rhoades, 2006). There is a danger that CRTEP becomes reduced to a checklist or recipe where teacher educators themselves may ‘substitute celebrations for academic learning’, instead of ‘learning to teach challenging academic knowledge and skills through the cultural processes and knowledge students bring to school’ (Sleeter, 2011, p. 13, emphasis added). A related concern is that CRP is being ‘pushed to the margins’ by neoliberal agendas that prioritise standardised curricula, pedagogies and assessment (Sleeter, 2011, p. 12; Zeichner, 2009). The teachers in Young’s (2010) study felt overwhelmed by the demands and time pressures of a content- and skillsfocused curriculum, making culturally responsive pedagogy seem impossible. The lack of research that connects CRP to student achievement (Gist, 2016; Sleeter, 2011) contributes to teachers’ doubts about the ‘validity’ of CRP as well as their ability to implement it (Gay, 2013). Many teachers report feeling a ‘haze of confusion about how to be culturally responsive’ (Marker, 2006, cited in Sleeter 2011, p. 19) as they grapple with ‘a clash of worldviews about the purpose of schooling and the nature of knowledge’. In such a situation of uncertainty, teacher education researchers must move away from work that simply describes CRP and its impact on student engagement, to work that demonstrates the impact of CRP on student outcomes and achievement (Sleeter, 2011). This is the research that will shape policy for cultural and linguistic diversity, and it remains imperative.
CONCLUSION We have argued that culturally relevant teacher education pedagogy is crucial in the struggle to ensure teaching graduates can and do practise culturally relevant pedagogies in their classrooms. However, finding a universal solution for preservice teacher education that promotes culturally relevant teaching is difficult if not impossible. Recognising this is the key to a culturally relevant teacher education. Cultural and linguistic difference is inevitably overlaid with larger historical and political issues of migration, indigeneity, invasion, economic power, citizenship and racism. All of these are realised differently in different contexts, and require teachers to understand their own cultural positioning and power in relation to the varieties of cultural difference with which they are engaged. Reid (2017) argues that this actually means preparing teachers to recognise that their work is predicated on a lack of knowledge about cultures and communities, and that, as digital global communications bring increasingly rapid cultural hybridity, cosmopolitanism and fall-out from historical policy inequity, they will continually need to learn, over and over again, about students’ cultural and community ways of knowing, thinking and doing.
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As elaborated above, culturally relevant teacher preparation puts equity pedagogy ‘front and centre’ (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016) by designing cross-disciplinary curricula that integrate CRP principles throughout, that are ‘place-based’, take a critical inquiry stance to difference and diversity-related issues, and provide experiences grounded in action research and inquiry approaches. Social justice requires teachers who see themselves as agents of change with a commitment to equity and action (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 2014). This requires teacher education that teaches PSTs ‘about the change process, helping them to understand the obstacles to change, helping them develop the skills for collaboration and dealing with conflict, and providing evidence that schools can become more equitable’ (Villegas & Lucas, 2002, p. 25). In order to do this, teacher educators themselves must also commit to a culturally relevant teacher education pedagogy, becoming agents of social action through their research and scholarship, as well as their teaching.
REFERENCES Alfaro, C., & Quezada, R.L. (2010). International teacher professional development: Teacher reflections of authentic teaching and learning experiences. Teaching Education, 21(1), 47–59. Aronson, B., & Laughter, J. (2016). The theory and practice of culturally relevant education: A synthesis of research across content areas. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 163–206. DOI: 10.3102/0034654315582066 Aveling, N. (2006). ‘Hacking at our very roots’: Re-articulating white racial identity within the context of teacher education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 9(3), 261–274. Banks, J.A. (1993). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. Review of Research in Education, 19, 3–49. Banks, J.A. (2015). Cultural Diversity and Education. New York and London: Routledge. Biraimah, K.L. (2016). Moving beyond a destructive past to a decolonised and inclusive future: The role of ubuntu-style education in providing culturally relevant pedagogy for Namibia. International Review of Education, 62, 45–62. DOI 10.1007/s11159-016-9541-1 Bodur, Y. (2012). Impact of course and fieldwork on multicultural beliefs and attitudes. The Educational Forum, 76(1), 41–56. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice, Trans R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241–258. Britzman, D.P. (1992/2012). Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. New York: SUNY Press. Brooks, B.R. (2015). Preservice teachers developing cultural competency: ‘We are more connected than we think’. Global Education Journal, 3, 131–147. Brown, L. (2009). The transformative power of the international sojourn: An ethnographic study of the international student experience. Annals of Tourism Research, 36(3), 502–521. Buchanan, J., Major, J., Harbon, L., & Kearney, S. (2017). Preparing teachers through international experience: A collaborative critical analysis of four Australian programs. In C. Reid & J. Major (Eds), Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (2003). Becoming Critical: Education Knowledge and Action Research. London and New York: Routledge. Castagno, A.E., & Brayboy, B.M.J. (2008). Culturally responsive schooling for indigenous youth: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 941–993. Castro, A.J. (2010). Themes in the research on preservice teachers’ views of cultural diversity implications for researching millennial preservice teachers. Educational Researcher, 39(3), 198–210. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S.L. (2009). Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation. New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M., Ell, F., Grudnoff, L., Haigh, M., Hill, M., & Ludlow, L. (2016). Initial teacher education: What does it take to put equity at the center? Teaching and Teacher Education, 57, 67–78. Dantas, M.L. (2007). Building teacher competency to work with diverse learners in the context of international education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 34(1), 75–94. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Constructing 21st-century teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 57, 300–314. Derman-Sparks, L. (1989). Anti-bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J.O. (2010). Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analysing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. Esau, O. (2013). Preparing pre-service teachers as emancipatory and participatory action researchers in a teacher education programme. South African Journal of Education, 33(4), 1–10. Fickel, L.H., Macfarlane, A., & Macfarlane, S. (2017). Culturally responsive practice for indigenous contexts: Provenance to potential. In C. Reid & J. Major (Eds), Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Bristol, UK: Harvester Press, pp. 109–133. Gachago, D., Cronje, F., Ivala, E., Condy, J., & Chigona, A. (2013). Stories of resistance: Digital counterstories among South African pre-service student educators. International Conference on e-Learning, 149–XIII. Kidmore End: Academic Conferences International Limited. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Gay, G. (2013). Teaching to and through cultural diversity. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 48–70. Gay, G., & Kirkland, K. (2003). Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in preservice teacher education. Theory into Practice, 42(3), 181–187. Gere, A.R., Buehler, J., Dallavis, C., & Haviland, V.S. (2009). A visibility project: Learning to see how preservice teachers take up culturally responsive pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 46(3), 816–852. DOI: 10.3102/0002831209333182 Gillborn, D. (2004). Anti-racism: From policy to praxis. In G. Ladson-Billings and D. Gillborn (Eds), The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Multicultural Education. London and New York; Routledge, pp. 35–48. Gist, C.D. (2016). Voices of aspiring teachers of color: Unraveling the double bind in teacher education. Urban Education, DOI: 10.1177/0042085915623339 Gooden, M.A., & O’Doherty, A. (2015). Do you see what I see? Fostering aspiring leaders’ racial awareness. Urban Education, 50(2), 225–255. Gramsci, A. (2012). Selections from Cultural Writings. Edited by D. Forgas & G. Nowell-Smith. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Green, B., & Reid, J. (2004). Teacher education for rural–regional sustainability: Changing agendas, challenging futures, chasing chimeras? Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 32(3), 255–273. Gross, P.A., & Moloney, V.A. (2012). Embracing diversity through service learning. The Clearing House, 85, 192–196.
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Haddix, M.M. (2015). Cultivating Racial and Linguistic Diversity in Literacy Teacher Education: Teachers Like Me. New York: Routledge. Han, H.S., Vomvoridi-Ivanović, E., Jacobs, J., Karanxha, Z., Lypka, A., Topdemir, C., & Feldman, A. (2014). Culturally responsive pedagogy in higher education: A collaborative self-study. Studying Teacher Education, 10(3), 290–312. Harbon, L., & Smyth, C. (2015). Creating an ecology of affordances to allow Australian pre-service teachers to get to know and make sense of China. In M. Robertson & P.K.E. Tsang (Eds), Everyday Knowledge, Education and Sustainable Futures: Transdisciplinary Approaches/Research in the Asia/ Pacific Region. Melbourne: Springer. He, Y., & Cooper, J.E. (2009). The ABCs for pre-service teacher cultural competency development. Teaching Education, 20(3), 305–332. Hernandez, C.M., Morales, A.R., & Shronger, M.G. (2013). The development of a model of culturally responsive science and mathematics teaching. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 8, 803–820. Hickling Hudson, A. (2003). Multicultural education and the postcolonial turn. Policy Futures in Education, 1(2), 381–401. Holmes, P., & O’Neill, G. (2012). Developing and evaluating intercultural competence: Ethnographies of intercultural encounters. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36, 707–718. Howard, T.C. (2003). Culturally relevant pedagogy: Ingredients for critical teacher reflection. Theory into Practice, 42(3), 195–202. Ingersoll, R.M., & May, H. (2011). The minority teacher shortage: Fact or fable? Phi Delta Kappan, 93(1), 62–65. James, C. (2017). The schooling of marginalized students in urban Canada: Programs, curricula, and pedagogies. In C. Reid & J. Major (Eds), Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and Power. New York: Routledge. Jester, T.E., & Fickel, L.H. (2013). Cross-cultural field experiences in Alaska native villages: Implications for culturally responsive teacher education. The Teacher Educator, 48(3), 185–200. Kitchen, J., & Hodson, J. (2013). Living alongside: Teacher educator experiences working in a communitybased Aboriginal teacher education program. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue Canadienne de l’éducation, 36(2), 144–174. Ladson-Billings, G. (1992). Liberatory Consequences of Literacy: A Case of Culturally Relevant Instruction for African American Students. The Journal of Negro Education, 61(3), 378–391 Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74–84. Lafferty, K.E., & Pang, V.O. (2014). Challenging teacher bias: Implementing a community learning fair. Issues in Teacher Education, 22(2), 189–203. Lauricella, A.M. (2005). Community walk-about: Finding the hope in hopelessness. In L. Johnson, M.E. Finn & R. Lewis (Eds), Urban Education with an Attitude, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 124–133. Lee, J. (2009). ESL student teachers’ perceptions of a short-term overseas immersion programme. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 1095–1104. Leeman, Y. (2016). Whither cultural diversity and intercultural education in the Netherlands? In C. Reid & J. Major (Eds), Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Li, X., & Lal, S. (2005). Critical reflective thinking through service-learning in multicultural teacher education. Intercultural Education, 16(3), 217–234. Marker, M. (2006). After the Makah whale hunt: Indigenous knowledge and limits to multicultural discourse Urban Education; 41(5); 482–505. May, S. (2009). Critical multiculturalism and education. In J. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 33–48.
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Mbugua, T. (2010). Fostering culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy and global awareness through the integration of international service-learning in courses. Journal of Pedagogy, 1(2), 87–98. McCarty, T.L., & Lee, T.S. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101–124. Meyer, C.F., & Rhoades, E.K. (2006). Multiculturalism: Beyond food, festival, folklore, and fashion. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 42(2), 82–87. Miller, P.C., & Mikulec, E.A. (2014). Pre-service teachers confronting issues of diversity through a radical field experience. Multicultural Education, 12(2), 18–24. Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. Moloney, R., & Oguro, S. (2015). The effect of intercultural narrative reflection in shaping pre-service teachers’ future practice. Reflective Practice, 16(1), 96–108. Muschell, L.H., & Roberts, H.M. (2011). Bridging the cultural gap: One teacher education program’s response to preparing culturally responsive teachers. Childhood Education, 87(5), 337–340. Naepi, S., Stein, S., Ahenakew, C., & Andreotti, V.O. (2017). A cartography of higher education attempts at inclusion and insights from Pasifika scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand. In C. Reid & J. Major (Eds), Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. Nieto, J. (2006). The cultural plunge: Cultural immersion as a means of promoting self-awareness and cultural sensitivity among student teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 75–84. Nieto, S. (2013). Language, literacy, and culture: Aha! Moments in personal and sociopolitical understanding. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 9(1), 8–20. Oviawe, J.O. (2016). How to rediscover the ubuntu paradigm in education. International Review of Education, 62, 1–10. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97. Paris, D., & Alim, H.S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85–100. Pence, H.M., & Macgillivary, I.K. (2008). The impact of an international field experience on preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(1), 14–25. Reid, J. (2013). Why programming matters: Aporia and teacher learning in classroom practice. English in Australia, 48(3), 40–45. Reid, J. (2017). Learning the humility of teaching others: Preparing teachers for culturally complex classrooms. In C. Reid & J. Major (Eds), Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Santoro, N. (2009). Teaching in culturally diverse contexts: What knowledge about ‘self’ and ‘others’ do teachers need? Journal of Education for Teaching, 35(1), 33–45. Santoro, N., & Kennedy, A. (2016). How is cultural diversity positioned in teacher professional standards? An international analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 44(3), 208–223. Schmidt, P.R. (1999). Focus on research: Know thyself and understand others. Language Arts, 76(4), 332–340. Sexton, S.S. (2011). Putting M¯aori in the mainstream: Student teachers’ reflections of a culturally relevant pedagogy. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(12), 33–45. Sleeter, C.E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94–106. Sleeter, C.E. (2008). Preparing white teachers for diverse students. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. FeimanNemser, & D.J. McIntyre (Eds), Handbook on Research in Teacher Education (3rd edn). New York: Taylor & Francis, pp. 559–582. Sleeter, C.E. (2011). An agenda to strengthen culturally responsive pedagogy. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 10(2), 7–23.
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Souto-Manning, M. (2009). Negotiating culturally responsive pedagogy through multicultural children’s literature: Towards critical democratic literacy practices in a first grade classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9(1), 50–74. Souto-Manning, M. (2012). Teacher as researcher: Teacher action research in teacher education. Childhood Education, 88(1), 54–56. Swanson, D. (2009). Where have all the fishes gone? Living ubuntu as an ethics of research and pedagogical engagement. In D.M. Caracciolo & A.M. Mungai (Eds), In the Spirit of Ubuntu: Stories of Teaching and Research. Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education, 48. Rotterdam: Sense, pp. 3–21. Thomson, P. (2000). ‘Like schools’, educational ‘disadvantage’ and ‘thisness’. The Australian Educational Researcher, 27(3), 157–172. Troyna, B. (1987). Beyond multiculturalism: Towards the enactment of anti-racist education in policy, provision and pedagogy [1]. Oxford Review of Education, 13(3), 307–320. Villegas, A.M. (1991). Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for the 1990s and Beyond. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Villegas, A.M., & Lucas, T. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers: Rethinking curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 20–32. Villegas, A.M., Strom, K., & Lucas, T. (2012). Closing the racial/ethnic gap between students of color and their teachers: An elusive goal. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(2), 283–301. White, S., & Reid, J. (2008). Placing teachers? Sustaining rural schooling through place-consciousness in teacher education. Journal of Research in Rural Education (Online), 23(7), 1. Wiggins, R.A., Follo, E.J., & Eberley, M.B. (2007). The impact of a field immersion program on pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 653–663. Willard-Holt, C. (2001). The impact of a short-term international experience for preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(4), 505–517. Young, E. (2010). Challenges to conceptualizing and actualizing culturally relevant pedagogy: How viable is the theory in classroom practice? Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3), 248–260. Zeichner, K.M. (1993). Educating teachers for cultural diversity. National Center for Research on Teacher Learning Special Report, Michigan State University. Zeichner, K. (2009). Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice. New York: Routledge. Zembylas, M. (2012). Pedagogies of strategic empathy: Navigating through the emotional complexities of anti-racism in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(2), 113–125. Zipin, L., Sellar, S., & Hattam, R. (2012). Countering and exceeding ‘capital’: A ‘funds of knowledge’ approach to re-imagining community. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 33(2), 179–192. Zumwalt, K., & Craig, E. (2005). Teachers’ characteristics: Research on the demographic profile. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds), Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 111–156.
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WORKING EDITORIAL BOARD Janice Huber, University of Alberta Juanjo Mena, University of Salamanca Jerry Rosiek, University of Oregon Mistilina Sato, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Auli Toom, University of Helsinki
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Beatrice Avalos, Chile Douwe Beijard, Netherlands Gavin Brown, New Zealand Robert V. Bullough, USA Rosie LeCornu, Australia Effie Maclellan, UK Elaine Munthe, Norway Lily Orland-Barak, Israel Brigitte Smit, South Africa Quan Xu, China Ji-Sook Yeom, Korea Ken Zeichner, USA
Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne
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SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483 Editor: James Clark Editorial Assistant: Production Editor: Sushant Nailwal Copyeditor: Rosemary Campbell Proofreader: Indexer: Marketing Manager: Cover Design: Wendy Scott Typeset by: Printed by: At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in the UK using FSC papers and boards. When we print overseas we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the PREPS grading system. We undertake an annual audit to monitor our sustainability. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Library of Congress Control Number: British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4739-2509-0
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Introduction & editorial arrangement © D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu 2017 Chapter 1 © D. Jean Clandinin & Jukka Husu 2017 Section I Introduction © Jerry Rosiek 2017 Chapter 2 © Jerry Rosiek & Tristan Gleason 2017 Chapter 3 © Wendy Robinson 2017 Chapter 4 © Maria Teresa Tatto & James Pippin 2017 Chapter 5 © Rose Dolan 2017 Chapter 6 © Clare Kosnik & Clive Beck 2017 Chapter 7 © Gavin T.L. Brown 2017 Section II Introduction © Douwe Beijaard 2017 Chapter 8 © Jan D. Vermunt, Maria Vrikki, Paul Warwick & Neil Mercer 2017 Chapter 9 © Sue Cherrington 2017 Chapter 10 © Douwe Beijaard & Paulien C. Meijer 2017 Chapter 11 © Francine Peterman 2017 Chapter 12 © Beverly E. Cross 2017 Chapter 13 © Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay & Florence R. Sullivan 2017 Section III Introduction © Lily Orland-Barak 2017 Chapter 14 © Effie Maclellan 2017 Chapter 15 © Anne Edwards 2017 Chapter 16 © Ryan Flessner & Katherina A. Payne 2017 Chapter 17 © Janice Huber & Ji-Sook Yeom 2017 Chapter 18 © Lisa Loutzenheiser & Kal Heer 2017 Section IV Introduction © Robert V. Bullough, Jr 2017 Chapter 19 © Matthew N. Sanger 2017 Chapter 20 © Alison Cook-Sather & Kira J. Baker-Doyle 2017 Chapter 21 © Mark Boylan 2017 Chapter 22 © Luciano Gasser & Wolfgang Althof 2017 Chapter 23 © Robert Thornberg 2017 Chapter 24 © Sandra Cooke 2017 Section V Introduction © Roland Mitchell 2017 Chapter 25 © Geert Kelchtermans & Eline Vanassche 2017 Chapter 26 © Mary Louise Gomez & Amy Johnson Lachuk 2017 Chapter 27 © Michael Vavrus 2017 Chapter 28 © Roland W. Mitchell, Sara C. Wooten, Kerii LandryThomas & Chaunda A. Mitchell 2017 Section VI Introduction © Juanjo Mena 2017 Chapter 29 © Juanjo Mena, Paul Hennissen & John Loughran 2017 Chapter 30 © Fred A.J. Korthagen 2017 Chapter 31 © Gary Harfitt & Cheri Chan 2017 Chapter 32 © Jan H. van Driel & Amanda K. Berry 2017 Chapter 33 © Doron Zinger, Tamara Tate & Mark Warschauer 2017 Chapter 34 © Viv Ellis & Meg Maguire 2017
Chapter 35 © Jae Major & Jo-Anne Reid 2017 Section VII Introduction © Cheryl Craig 2017 Chapter 36 © Xu Quan, Simmee Chung & Yi Li 2017 Chapter 37 © Wing On Lee & Maria Manzon 2017 Chapter 38 © Tony Brown 2017 Chapter 39 © Lee Schaefer, lisahunter & Shaun Murphy 2017 Chapter 40 © Robyn Ewing 2017 Chapter 41 © Andrew Wright & Elina Wright 2017 Chapter 42 © Bonnie WattMalcolm 2017 Chapter 43 © Robert V. Bullough, Jr & Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon 2017 Chapter 44 © Kirsi Tirri & Sonja Laine 2017 Section VIII Introduction © Auli Toom 2017 Chapter 45 © Sigrid Blömeke & Gabriele Kaiser 2017 Chapter 46 © Auli Toom 2017 Chapter 47 © Jan van Tartwijk, Ros anne Zwart & Theo Wubbels 2017 Chapter 48 © Elaine Munthe & Paul F. Conway 2017 Chapter 49 © Sue Catherine O’Neill 2017 Chapter 50 © Monica Miller Marsh & Daniel Castner 2017 Section IX Introduction © Mistilina Sato 2017 Chapter 51 © Robert Klassen, Tracy Durksen, Fiona Patterson & Emma Rowett 2017 Chapter 52 © Jeanne Maree Allen 2017 Chapter 53 © Susan M. Brookhart 2017 Chapter 54 © Mistilina Sato & Sara Kemper 2017 Chapter 55 © Bronwen Cowie & Beverley Cooper 2017 Chapter 56 © Surette van Staden & Brigitte Smit 2017 Chapter 57 © Valerie Farnsworth 2017 Section X Introduction © Stefinee Pinnegar 2017 Chapter 58 © Jean Murray 2017 Chapter 59 © Robert Kleinsasser 2017 Chapter 60 © Linor L. Hadar & David L. Brody 2017 Chapter 61 © Stefinee Pinnegar & Mary Lynn Hamilton 2017 Section XI Introduction © Beatrice Ávalos 2017 Chapter 62 © Craig Deed 2017 Chapter 63 © Katherina Payne & Ken Zeichner 2017 Chapter 64 © Beatrice Ávalos & Paula Razquin 2017 Chapter 65 © Lynn Paine, Elena Aydarova & Iwan Syahril 2017 Chapter 66 © Florence Glanfield & Brooke Madden 2017 Section XII © Jukka Husu & D. Jean Clandinin 2017 Chapter 67 © Jukka Husu & D. Jean Clandinin 2017
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Contents List of Figuresxii List of Tablesxiii Notes on the Editors and Contributorsxiv Consulting Reviewersxl
Volume 1 1
Mapping an International Handbook of Research in and for Teacher Education D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu
Section I MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE OF TEACHER EDUCATION Jerry Lee Rosiek 2
Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn Jerry Rosiek and Tristan Gleason
3
Teacher Education: A Historical Overview Wendy Robinson
4
The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems in Teacher Education Maria Teresa Tatto and James Pippin
23
29
49
68
5
Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View Rose Dolan
6
The Continuum of Pre-service and In-service Teacher Education Clive Beck and Clare Kosnik
107
7
What We Know We Don’t Know about Teacher Education Gavin T.L. Brown
123
Section II LEARNING TEACHER IDENTITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Douwe Beijaard
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1
90
139
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vi
8
9
10
11
12
13
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
Connecting Teacher Identity Formation to Patterns in Teacher Learning Jan D. Vermunt, Maria Vrikki, Paul Warwick and Neil Mercer
143
Developing Teacher Identity through Situated Cognition Approaches to Teacher Education Sue Cherrington
160
Developing the Personal and Professional in Making a Teacher Identity Douwe Beijaard and Paulien C. Meijer
177
Identity Making at the Intersections of Teacher and Subject Matter Expertise Francine Peterman
193
Teacher Education as a Creative Space for the Making of Teacher Identity Beverly E. Cross
210
Developing an Activist Teacher Identity through Teacher Education Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay and Florence R. Sullivan
Section III LEARNING TEACHER AGENCY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Lily Orland-Barak 14
15
247
Shaping Agency through Theorizing and Practicing Teaching in Teacher Education Effie Maclellan
253
The Dialectic of Person and Practice: How Cultural-historical Accounts of Agency can Inform Teacher Education Anne Edwards
269
16
The Impact of Social Theories on Agency in Teacher Education Ryan Flessner and Katherina A. Payne
17
Narrative Theories and Methods in Learning, Developing, and Sustaining Teacher Agency Janice Huber and Ji-Sook Yeom
301
Unsettling Habitual Ways of Teacher Education through ‘Post-theories’ of Teacher Agency Lisa Loutzenheiser and Kal Heer
317
18
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Contents
Section IV LEARNING MORAL AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Robert V. Bullough, Jr 19
20
21
22
23
24
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333
Teacher Beliefs and the Moral Work of Teaching in Teacher Education Matthew N. Sanger
339
Developing Teachers’ Capacity for Moral Reasoning and Imagination in Teacher Education Alison Cook-Sather and Kira J. Baker-Doyle
354
Disrupting Oppressive Views and Practices through Critical Teacher Education: Turning to Post-structuralist Ethics Mark Boylan
369
Developing Teachers’ Cognitive Strategies of Promoting Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education Luciano Gasser and Wolfgang Althof
387
Strengthening Sociocultural Ways of Learning Moral Reasoning and Behavior in Teacher Education Robert Thornberg
403
The Moral Work of Teaching: A Virtue-Ethics Approach to Teacher Education Sandra Cooke
419
Section V LEARNING TO NEGOTIATE POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Roland W. Mitchell 25
vii
Micropolitics in the Education of Teachers: Power, Negotiation, and Professional Development Geert Kelchtermans and Eline Vanassche
26
Teachers Learning about Themselves through Learning about ‘Others’ Mary Louise Gomez and Amy Johnson Lachuk
27
A Decolonial Alternative to Critical Approaches to Multicultural and Intercultural Teacher Education Michael Vavrus
435
441
457
473
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viii
28
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
Recruitment and Retention of Traditionally Underrepresented Students in Teacher Education Roland W. Mitchell, Sara C. Wooten, Kerii Landry-Thomas and Chaunda A. Mitchell
Section VI LEARNING THROUGH PEDAGOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION Juanjo Mena 29
30
31
491
509
Developmental Learning Approaches to Teaching: Stages of Epistemological Thinking and Professional Expertise Juanjo Mena, Paul Hennissen and John Loughran
513
A Foundation for Effective Teacher Education: Teacher Education Pedagogy based on Situated Learning Fred A. J. Korthagen
528
Constructivist Learning Theories in Teacher Education Programmes: A Pedagogical Perspective Gary Harfitt and Cheri Chan
545
32
Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Jan H. van Driel and Amanda K. Berry
33
Learning and Teaching with Technology: Technological Pedagogy and Teacher Practice Doron Zinger, Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer
577
Teacher Education Pedagogies based on Critical Approaches: Learning to Challenge and Change Prevailing Educational Practices Viv Ellis and Meg Maguire
594
34
35
Culturally Relevant Teacher Education Pedagogical Approaches Jae Major and Jo-Anne Reid
561
610
Volume 2 Section VII LEARNING THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Cheryl Craig 36
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Teacher Education in English as an Additional Language, English as a Foreign Language and the English Language Arts Xu Quan, Simmee Chung & Yi Li
627
633
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Contents
37
Teacher Education in Social Studies and Civic Education Wing On Lee and Maria Manzon
649
38
The Political Shaping of Teacher Education in the STEM Areas Tony Brown
665
39
Research for Physical Education Teacher Education Lee Schaefer, lisahunter & Shaun Murphy
681
40
The Creative Arts and Teacher Education Robyn Ewing
696
41
Teacher Education in Religious Education Andrew Wright and Elina Wright
713
42
Teacher Education in Technical Vocational Education and Training Bonnie Watt-Malcolm
728
43
The Curriculum of Early Childhood and Lower Primary Teacher Education: A Five-Nation Research Perspective Robert V. Bullough, Jr and Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon
44
Teacher Education in Inclusive Education Kirsi Tirri and Sonja Laine
Section VIII LEARNING PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION AND THROUGHOUT THE CAREER Auli Toom 45
Understanding the Development of Teachers’ Professional Competencies as Personally, Situationally and Socially Determined Sigrid Blömeke and Gabriele Kaiser
744
761
777
783
46
Teachers’ Professional and Pedagogical Competencies: A Complex Divide between Teacher Work, Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education 803 Auli Toom
47
Developing Teachers’ Competences with the Focus on Adaptive Expertise in Teaching Jan van Tartwijk, Rosanne Zwart and Theo Wubbels
820
Evolution of Research on Teachers’ Planning: Implications for Teacher Education Elaine Munthe and Paul F. Conway
836
48
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x
49
50
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
Developing Teacher Competence from a Situated Cognition Perspective Sue Catherine O’Neill Critical Approaches in Making New Space for Teacher Competencies Monica Miller Marsh and Daniel Castner
Section IX LEARNING WITH AND FROM ASSESSMENTS IN TEACHER EDUCATION Mistilina Sato 51
Filtering Functions of Assessment for Selection into Initial Teacher Education Programs Robert Klassen, Tracy Durksen, Fiona Patterson and Emma Rowett
869
887
893
52
Summative Assessment in Teacher Education Jeanne Maree Allen
910
53
Formative Assessment in Teacher Education Susan M. Brookhart
927
54
Teacher Assessment from Pre-service through In-service Teaching Mistilina Sato and Sara Kemper
944
55
Functions of Assessment in Sociocultural Teacher Education Approaches Bronwen Cowie and Beverley Cooper
963
Functions of Learning-centred/Person-centred Approaches to Assessment in Teacher Education Surette van Staden and Brigitte Smit
979
Functions of Assessment in Social Justice Teacher Education Approaches Valerie Farnsworth
994
56
57
Section X THE EDUCATION AND LEARNING OF TEACHER EDUCATORS Stefinee Pinnegar 58
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1010
Defining Teacher Educators: International Perspectives and Contexts1017 Jean Murray
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Contents
xi
59
A Quest for Teacher Educator Work Robert Kleinsasser
1033
60
Professional Learning and Development of Teacher Educators Linor L. Hadar and David L. Brody
1049
61
The Promise of the Particular in Research with Teacher Educators Stefinee Pinnegar and Mary Lynn Hamilton
1065
Section XI THE EVOLVING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS OF TEACHER EDUCATION Beatrice Ávalos 62
Adapting to the Virtual Campus and Transitions in ‘School-less’ Teacher Education Craig Deed
63
Multiple Voices and Participants in Teacher Education Katherina Payne and Ken Zeichner
64
The Role of Policy as a Shaping Influence on Teacher Education and Teacher Educators: Neo-Liberalism and its Forms Beatrice Ávalos and Paula Razquin
1081
1085
1101
1117
65
Globalization and Teacher Education Lynn Paine, Elena Aydarova and Iwan Syahril
1133
66
Research in Indigenizing Teacher Education Florence Glanfield and Brooke Madden
1149
Section XII A REFLECTIVE TURN 67
Pushing Boundaries for Research in Teacher Education: Making Teacher Education Matter Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin
1167
1169
Index1181
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List of Figures 4.1 Role of Evaluation Research in Teacher Education Programs: Current Tendencies 8.1 A model of teacher learning and professional development 8.2 A multi-layer model of teacher learning and student learning 12.1 Post-modern/colonial/structural identity perspectives 30.1 The three-level model and the accompanying learning processes (Korthagen et al., 2001) 30.2 The ALACT model (Korthagen et al., 2001) 33.1 Technological pedagogical content knowledge model 35.1 A culturally relevant teacher education pedagogy (CRTEP) 45.1 Personal, situational and social determinants of the development of teachers’ professional competencies (extended version of Blömeke, Gustafsson & Shavelson, 2015) 45.2 Enriched model of teacher competence by Santagata and Yeh (2016, p. 163) 45.3 Conceptual model of the social context and the development of professional competencies 46.1 Dimensions of teacher competence in terms of teacher knowledge and the work of teaching. 47.1 Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) 51.1 Model of relationship between academic attributes, background experience, and non-academic attributes in prediction of performance in ITE (Initial Teacher Education) and teaching behaviors 51.2 Model of situational judgment tests (SJTs) as a tool to assess implicit and explicit beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions 52.1 Conceptual framework 54.1 Points along the teaching career continuum where assessments serve as filters for advancing a person into and along a teaching career
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85 146 150 214 533 538 581 615 785 793 793 811 829
897 904 913 945
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List of Tables 4.1 Report of survey results 77 5.1 Overview of teacher preparation program provision in Ireland, Finland and Singapore94 21.1 Orientations towards social justice in teacher education 371 22.1 Moral educational competence profiles 395 29.1 Epistemological thinking model based on teachers’ knowledge and beliefs 516 51.1 Example of scenario for a Situational Judgment Test (SJT) 905 54.1 Professional teaching standards across five jurisdictions 948 54.2 Percentage of teachers receiving feedback from various personnel and sources of feedback data 953 54.3 Comparative dimensions of competency vs. professional standards-based teacher education (Valli & Rennert-Ariev, 2002, p. 205) 958
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Notes on the Editors and Contributors THE EDITORS D. Jean Clandinin is Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta. A former teacher, counsellor, and psychologist, she is author or coauthor of 17 books and many articles and book chapters. Her first book, Classroom Practice: Teacher Images in Action, was based on her doctoral research. Other books were based on research into teachers and children’s experiences in and out of schools such as Composing Diverse Identities and Places of Curriculum Making. She co-authored Composing Lives in Transition (2013), a narrative inquiry of the experiences of youth who left school before graduating and Narrative Conceptions of Knowledge based on research around early career teacher attrition. She authored three books on narrative inquiry, Narrative Inquiry, Engaging in Narrative Inquiry and Engaging in Narrative Inquiry with Children and Youth. Her books have won outstanding book awards from Divisions and Special Interest Groups of the American Educational Research Association. She is the winner of many awards from the American Educational Research Association, the International Study Association of Teachers and Teachers, the Canadian Education Association and the Canadian Association of Teacher Education. Currently she is working on research into the educational experiences of Aboriginal youth and families, familial school readiness practices of indigenous families and a study of the relational ethics of narrative inquiry. Within the field of education, Dr. Clandinin’s research has had a profound impact upon the related areas of teacher knowledge, teacher education and narrative inquiry. Her research on teachers’ personal practical knowledge has altered our understanding of the role that teachers play in curriculum making in their classrooms and of the need for incorporating this knowledge into teacher education programs. She has been instrumental in the development of narrative inquiry as a methodology for conducting research in the social sciences. Jukka Husu is Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Turku, Finland, where he has worked since 2009. Before he started his career as teacher educator and researcher, he worked as a Primary School Teacher. Formerly, in academia, Dr. Husu has worked as Research Associate, Senior Lecturer, and Professor of Education at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on
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teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, reflection and ethical judgement in teaching. Throughout his work, he has emphasizes the need for incorporating these areas of knowledge and skills into teacher education and teacher learning. Dr. Husu has published extensively in the above areas, including book chapters, international journals and academic texts. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Teaching and Teacher Education. Currently, his research at the Centre for Learning and Instruction (CeRLI) focuses on the development of teachers’ knowledge and skills and how ways of teaching can support student learning.
THE CONTRIBUTORS Jeanne Allen is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Griffith University. She has worked in tertiary education since 2005 after an extensive career in secondary teaching and school leadership. She researches teacher education, school-university partnership, standardized educational contexts, teacher identity and student retention, and has developed an international research profile with over forty-five peer reviewed publications including three books. Jeanne has recently been a Chief Investigator of a large ARC-funded project into student retention (2012–2015) and a member of the OLT-funded Project Evidence extension team (2014–2015). She was an Associate Editor for Higher Education Research and Development from 2010 to 2015, is currently the Co-Editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, and sits on the Editorial Board of Linguistics, Culture and Education. Jeanne is a member of the Griffith Institute for Educational Research and is Leader of the Innovation in Teacher Education Theme. Wolfgang Althof (Dr. phil.) is the Teresa M. Fischer Endowed Professor in Citizenship Education at the University of Missouri–St Louis (UMSL). His research interests focus on moral/character and civic/citizenship education, student participation and school democracy. He co-directs (with Marvin W. Berkowitz) the Center for Character and Citizenship at UMSL: https://characterandcitizenship.org/. For the term 2013–2016, he was the President of the Association for Moral Education (AME). Beatrice Ávalos-Bevan holds a PhD from St Louis University, USA and is currently an associate researcher at the Centre for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, where she leads a research group on teacher-related topics. She is the recipient of the 2013 National Prize in Educational Sciences from the Chilean government. Formerly, she was Senior Lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff and Professor of Education at the University of Papua New Guinea, and more recently coordinated the application in Chile of the IEA
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TEDS-M study on teacher education and participated in the Latin American UNESCO review of teacher policies. She has carried out consultancy work for several international organizations and is a member of the ILO/UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendations Concerning Teacher Personnel and the IIEP Research Advisory Council. She has published extensively on teachers, education policy and educational development both in Spanish and English. Kira J. Baker-Doyle is an Associate Professor of Education and the Director of Master’s and Certificate degree programmes at Arcadia University School of Education. Her research focuses on teachers’ social networks (online and faceto-face), professional development, and civic engagement. She is the author of The Networked Teacher: How Beginning Teachers Build Social Networks for Professional Support (2011), and a forthcoming book with Harvard Education Press, Transformative Teachers: Teacher Leadership and Learning in a Connected World. Baker-Doyle is the co-founder of the Connected Learning certificate programme at Arcadia, and conducts workshops and talks for practitioners and scholars on teacher professional learning, civic community engagement, and social network development. Clive Beck is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE/University of Toronto, teaching both pre-service and graduate courses. He is currently conducting an SSHRC longitudinal study of 40 teachers, of whom 19 began teaching in 2004 and 21 in 2007. His books include Better Schools (1990), Learning Values in Adulthood (1993), Innovations in Teacher Education (2006), Priorities in Teacher Education (2009) and Growing as a Teacher (2014), the last three with Clare Kosnik. He has served as Chair of Graduate Studies at OISE and President of the American Philosophy of Education Society. Douwe Beijaard is Professor of Professional Learning and former Dean of the Eindhoven School of Education (ESoE) of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Before he started his career as teacher educator and researcher, he worked as teacher in a secondary school. In 2014 and 2015 he was visiting professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of Turku, Finland. His research interests focus in particular on (student) teacher learning and professional development, and the identity, quality and assessment of teaching and teachers. He was/is an executive editor of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice and a member of the international editorial board of Teaching and Teacher Education. Amanda K. Berry is a Professor of Education in the School of Education at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia. Amanda’s work
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focuses on the development of teachers’ knowledge and the ways in which that knowledge is shaped and articulated through teacher preparation, beginning teaching and in-service learning. Amanda has a particular interest in researching the specialist knowledge and practices of science teachers and science teacher educators. Amanda has published extensively in the above areas, including Handbook chapters, international journals and academic texts. She is currently Editor of Studying Teacher Education and Associate Editor of Research in Science Education. Sigrid Blömeke is Director of the Centre for Educational Measurement at the University of Oslo (CEMO), Norway. Previously, she was a professor at the universities in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany, as well as a visiting professor at Michigan State University, USA. She holds a PhD in sociology and a Habilitation in education. Her research has focused on international studies of teacher education and the assessment of teacher knowledge and skills. She is currently examining the development of preschool teachers’ knowledge and skills and how these are related to performance in preschool and children’s cognitive development. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Research Award from the German Educational Research Association (GERA). Mark Boylan a Professor of Education at the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University, where he leads the Practice, Innovation and Professional Learning Research Group. His background is in secondary mathematics teaching and then teacher education. He has developed programmes and curricula to address issues of social justice in mathematics teacher education and in school mathematics, particularly in relation to segregation of learners by perceived ability. One strand of this is to use arts-based approaches informed by his training as a sociodramatist and movement teacher. He undertakes research into and evaluation of national professional and curriculum development programmes in mathematics education as well as other curriculum areas. David L. Brody (DHL) is an Assistant Professor at Efrata College of Education, where he serves as Academic Dean and Chair of the Early Childhood Department. His research focuses on professional development of teacher educators, the use of the community of learners as a format for professional development, supporting early childhood educators in dealing with emotionally laden topics, and gender balance in early childhood education. His book: Men Who Teach Young Children: An International Perspective (IOE, London) represents a milestone in research on gender balance in early childhood education. Among his other publications are: ‘From Isolation to Symphonic Harmony: Building a Professional Development Community among Teacher Educators’ (TATE); ‘The Interaction between Group Processes and Personal Professional Trajectories in a Professional Development Community for Teacher Educators’ (JTE); ‘Talk about Student
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Learning: Promoting Professional Growth among Teacher Educators’ (TATE); ‘The Construction of Masculine Identity among Men who Work with Young Children, an International Perspective’ (EECERJ). Susan M. Brookhart, PhD, is an independent educational consultant, professional developer, author and an adjunct faculty member in the School of Education at Duquesne University, where she previously served as a full-time professor and department chair. Her interests include the role of formative and summative classroom assessment in student motivation and achievement, the connection between classroom assessment and large-scale assessment, and grading. She was the 2007–2009 editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, a journal of the National Council on Measurement in Education. She is the author or co-author of 17 books and over seventy articles and book chapters on classroom assessment, teacher professional development and evaluation. She serves on several editorial boards and research advisory panels. She received the 2014 Jason Millman Award from the Consortium for Research on Educational Assessment and Teaching Effectiveness (CREATE) and the 2015 Samuel J. Messick Memorial Lecture Award from the Educational Testing Service. Gavin T.L. Brown, PhD, is Director of the Quantitative Data Analysis and Research Unit in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. His research focus is on school-based assessment, informed by psychometric theory, with a special focus on the psychology of teacher and student responses to assessment. Specifically, he seeks to determine which beliefs and attitudes most powerfully influence practices of assessment and increased academic performance. After being a secondary school teacher in New Zealand for ten years, Gavin was a standardized test developer for NZCER and the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) Project. He conducts multivariate statistical research (including confirmatory factor analysis; structural equation modelling, item response theory; and longitudinal latent curve modelling), with a special interest in cross-cultural differences. He is lead editor of the 2016 Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (Routledge). Robert V. Bullough, Jr is Professor of Teacher Education and Associate Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling (CITES), McKay School of Education, Brigham Young University. He is also a Humanities Center Fellow at Brigham Young University and Emeritus Professor of Educational Studies, University of Utah. His research interests include teacher education, curriculum studies, history of progressive education and, most recently, early childhood education. His most recent book is Adam’s Fall: Traumatic Brain Injury (2011). A new book with Kendra Hall-Kenyon, ECE Teachers’ Lives and Work: Studies of Teaching in Head Start, is nearing completion.
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Daniel Castner is an Assistant Professor at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. His scholarly interests include critical approaches to early childhood education, curriculum development and teacher education. Prior to entering higher education, Daniel taught kindergarten for fifteen years. Cheri Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. She teaches a wide range of courses for the Faculty’s undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programmes. Cheri began her career as an English language teacher in 1999 and has taught students across all levels at different schools before she joined the University in 2006. As a teacher educator, Cheri has supported many teachers in the Hong Kong community through different school-university partnership projects. Cheri is interested in teacher education research. In particular, her studies draw on critical social theories to understand the complexities of how language teachers learn together as professionals. Her areas of research include teacher mentoring, collaboration in education and language teacher identities. Sue Cherrington, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She has an extensive background in early childhood teacher education, and previously taught in New Zealand kindergartens. Sue’s research interests are focused on early childhood teachers’ professional and pedagogical practices in the areas of teacher thinking and reflection, including the use of video to support collective thinking and reflection; teacher professional learning, particularly through professional learning communities; teachers’ ethical and professional experiences and practices; and teachers’ professional and pedagogical responses to working with diverse children and families. Simmee Chung Paul Conway is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Limerick, Ireland. With a background in educational psychology (PhD, Michigan State University), his research interests are in teacher learning, teacher education policy and learning theories, with recent publications in the British Educational Research Journal, Teachers and Teaching and Pedagogy, Culture and Society. He is a former President (2008–10) of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI), Co-chair of EARLI’s SIG on Teaching and Teacher Education (2004–2008), and has been a member of both the Council of the European Education Research Association (2006–2008) and World Education Research Association (2009–2013) on behalf of ESAI. He is currently joint General Editor of Irish Educational Studies (ISI-indexed journal, Routledge). He led large-scale international comparative study on ITE Learning to Teach and its Implications for the Continuum of Teacher Education: Nine-country Cross National Study (commissioned by Ireland’s Teaching Council) (2009).
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Sandra Cooke is a Teaching Fellow on the BA Education programme in the School of Education, University of Birmingham. Her recent research interests include understanding the place of virtue in good teaching and how teachers can be supported and developed in their work, having been Principal Investigator for The Good Teacher: Understanding Virtues in Practice project: (http://www.jubileecentre.ac. uk/1568/projects/previous-work/the-good-teacher). Prior to joining the Jubilee Centre, Sandra’s work focused on overcoming educational inequalities, including as Head of Widening Participation at the University of Birmingham and as Education Policy Officer for NASUWT, one of the main teaching unions in the UK. Alison Cook-Sather is the Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. Supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she has developed internationally recognized programmes that position students as pedagogical consultants to prospective secondary teachers and to practising college faculty members. She has published over 80 articles and book chapters and given as many keynote addresses and other presentations around the world. Her books include Engaging Students as Partners in Learning & Teaching: A Guide for Faculty (2014), Learning from the Student’s Perspective: A Sourcebook for Effective Teaching (2009), International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School, and Education Is Translation: A Metaphor for Change in Learning and Teaching (2006). Beverley Cooper is the Associate Dean, Teacher Education, the University of Waikato, Hamilton New Zealand. Beverley’s research is focused on teacher education programme development and implementation. Current projects are investigating the development of shared understanding of practicum judgements between school and university, the development of mathematical thinking across an Initial Teacher Education programme for a teacher’s professional role, and the development of innovative practicum and programme collaborative partnerships between the university and schools. She has been involved in a number of large national research projects focused on the development of expertise in teacher education programmes such as assessment capability and curriculum. Bronwen Cowie, PhD, is Professor and Director of the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Her research interests are in assessment for learning, classroom interaction, student voice, curriculum development and implementation, and culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in science education. She has completed a number of large national research projects as well as in-depth classroom studies where she has worked collaboratively with teachers and students to understand and enhance teaching and learning for primary and secondary age students.
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Beverly E. Cross is the Moss Chair of Excellence in Urban Education at the University of Memphis. Cross is nationally recognized for her record of teaching, research, scholarship, and service in urban education. She has conducted research in the areas of teacher diversity, urban education, multicultural and antiracist education, and curriculum theory, and she has written frequently on urban education, particularly concerning issues of race, class and culture in urban schools and achievement. Her research has appeared in such publications as Theory into Practice, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Education Leadership, International Journal of Educational Reform and The Urban Review. Craig Deed is the Director of Teaching & Learning, in the School of Education, College of Arts, Social Science and Commerce, La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include the exercise of agency related to engagement and learning; educator and student adaptation to open and virtual space; innovative pedagogical approaches in higher education; and the changing identity and role of academics in higher education. Recent research has focused on the relationship between pedagogy and effective use of new physical and virtual learning space. He has been involved in several Australian Research Council grants in the area of increasing educational opportunities for students living in low socioeconomic areas of regional Australia. He has published over thirty academic papers and book chapters that have had productive impacts on school and higher education pedagogy, workplace innovation, and reform. Rose Dolan is a lecturer in the Department of Education at Maynooth University, Ireland. She joined MU Department of Education in 2003, where she lectures on pedagogical strategies and critical reflection in education. Her PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, focused on the teacher educators’ professional development. Tracy L. Durksen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on professional learning across career phases and teachers’ interpersonal skills, motivation and engagement. Her programme of research involves studying the use of situational judgment tests as (1) a selection method that can help assess non-academic attributes (such as empathy and adaptability) of prospective and novice teachers and (2) an educational tool for teachers’ professional learning. Anne Edwards is a former teacher and teacher educator, whose 1984 PhD focused on the agency of young children in pre-school settings. She is currently Professor Emerita at the University of Oxford Department of Education, where she set up the Oxford Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (OSAT). She has researched teacher education and professional learning and
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written extensively on these topics over the last thirty years. Most recently her work has drawn on cultural-historical ideas to explain how professionals develop and deploy relational expertise in their work with other practitioners, children and families. She has received Honoris Causa degrees from the Universities of Helsinki and Oslo for her work in this area. She is currently involved in research studies in Denmark, Norway and the UK. Viv Ellis is Professor of Educational Leadership and Teacher Development in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College, London. His academic interests include teacher education and development, culturalhistorical activity theory and practice-developing research. His most recent book (with Jane McNicholl) is Transforming Teacher Education: Reconfiguring the Academic Work (Bloomsbury). He is also a Professor II at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and a Visiting Researcher at Teachers’ College, Columbia University. Robyn Ewing is Professor of Teacher Education and the Arts at the University of Sydney Australia. She teaches in the areas of curriculum, English and drama, language and early literacy development. Robyn is passionate about the arts and education and the role quality arts experiences and processes can and should play in creative pedagogy and transforming the curriculum at all levels of education. In the areas of English, literacy and the arts, Robyn’s research has particularly focused on the use of educational or process drama with authentic literary texts to develop students’ imaginations and critical literacies. She has been published widely in this area. Her current research interests also include teacher education, especially the experiences of early-career teachers and the role of mentoring; sustaining curriculum innovation; and evaluation-, inquiry- and case-based learning. She is particularly interested in innovative qualitative research methodologies, including the role of the arts in educational research. Valerie Farnsworth has a background in Linguistics, Sociology and Education. Her PhD focused on teacher identity and social justice. Since completing her PhD in 2006, her research interests have spanned the interplay between technology, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and the ways these things can support and also hinder learning. She is currently Lecturer in Curriculum Studies in the Leeds Institute of Medical Education in England where she is involved in developing and researching curricular innovations to support the learning and development of students becoming medical professionals. Ryan Flessner is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Butler University in the United States. His teaching and research interests include elementary and early childhood education, teacher education, mathematics education, practitioner inquiry, and issues of equity, diversity and social justice.
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Dr Flessner is an Associate Academic Editor for The Educational Forum and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for The New Educator. He has edited two books – Creating Equitable Classrooms Through Action Research (with Cathy Caro-Bruce, Mary Klehr and Kenneth Zeichner) and Agency in Teacher Education: Reflection, Community, and Learning (with Grant Miller, Kami Patrizio and Julie Horwitz) – and has written articles for journals such as Action in Teacher Education, Action Research, Educational Action Research, The Educational Forum, The New Educator and Science Education International. Luciano Gasser, PhD, is Professor at the University of Teacher Education Lucerne, Switzerland. His research interests focus on social and moral development, moral education, classroom observations and teaching quality. For more information see http://www.phlu.ch/luciano-gasser Florence Glanfield is of Métis ancestry and a professor and department chair in the Department of Secondary Education, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. Florence’s research interests include teacher education, mathematics teacher education and development, Indigenous curriculum perspectives, and relational approaches to research. Florence engages in research and teacher development with primary and secondary school teachers in urban and rural schools nationally and internationally. Tristan Gleason is an assistant professor at Moravian College in the Department of Education. He teaches courses on science education and educational foundations, emphasizing the intersections between the sciences, teacher education and social justice. His scholarship draws on resources from pragmatic philosophy and feminist and anti-colonial Science and Technology Studies to interrogate the political and ontological relationships between science education and democracy. His writing will appear in the forthcoming book Critical Voices in Science Education, and in a special issue of the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education on rethinking the role of STEM in the philosophy of education. Mary Louise Gomez is Professor of Literacy Studies and Teacher Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of WisconsinMadison. The MSPE courses she teaches are Teaching Diverse Learners and Current Issues in Education. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, language background, and teaching and learning. Linor L. Hadar, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer (assistant professor) at Beit-Berl College of Education and a teaching fellow at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research focuses on the study of pedagogies, including alternative pedagogies,
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communal learning pedagogies, students’, teachers’ and teacher educators’ experience in various pedagogies, and professional learning of teachers and higher education faculty implementing pedagogic innovation. Among her publications are: ‘From Isolation to Symphonic Harmony: Building a Professional Development Community among Teacher Educators’ (TATE); ‘The Interaction between Group Processes and Personal Professional Trajectories in a Professional Development Community for Teacher Educators’ (JTE); ‘Talk about Student Learning: Promoting Professional Growth among Teacher Educators’ (TATE); ‘Professional Development for Teacher Educators in the Communal Context: Factors which Promote and Hinder Learning’ (in ISATT book, forthcoming); ‘Trajectories of Pedagogic Change: Learning and Non-learning among Faculty Engaged in Professional Development Projects’ (in Pedagogic Frailty and Resilience in the University, Sage, forthcoming). Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon is a Professor of Early Childhood Education at Brigham Young University. Her research interests include early literacy instruction and assessment, and early childhood teacher education. Recently completing a multi-year project on early childhood teacher well-being, a new book written with Robert Bullough, ECE Teachers’ Lives and Work: Studies of Teaching in Head Start, is nearing completion. Mary Lynn Hamilton, Professor in Curriculum & Teaching, University of Kansas, combines research interests in teachers’ professional knowledge, issues of social justice, and the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. She is a co-editor of the International Handbook of Teacher Education (2016), a co-editor of the International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (2004) and a co-author of Self-Study of Practice as a Genre of Qualitative Research: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (2009). Gary Harfitt is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. He is currently Assistant Dean for Experiential Learning in the Faculty and coordinates a number of local and regional experiential projects at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Gary has been teaching in Hong Kong since 1989 and worked as a secondary school teacher, and English department head before joining HKU in 2002. He teaches courses on pedagogy, the teaching of literature and language arts in English and effective teaching in small classes at undergraduate, postgraduate and Master’s levels. His research interests include the experiences of early career teachers, the effectiveness of small-class teaching, hearing the student voice, and good practice in English language teaching. Kal Heer is a doctoral candidate in Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation focuses on Sikh youth and the ways discourses about gender, race and religion intersect to constitute and constrain Sikh identities in
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multicultural contexts. In addition he has published on topics in social justice pedagogy, teacher education, gender studies and philosophy of education. Paul Hennissen is Professor school-based teacher education at the Department of Education at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Sittard, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the relation between theory and practice within teacher education, mentoring, professional learning communities, and the professional development of the teacher (educator). Paul worked as teacher in primary and secondary education and as teacher educator in different subjects. Janice Huber is Professor and Director in the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development (CRTED), Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. Her background in teacher education and development includes authentic assessment, children’s curriculum-making worlds, cultural diversity and social studies, curriculum development and integration, early childhood education, narrative inquiry, and qualitative research. As a narrative inquirer, Janice has engaged in inquiry alongside children, youth, families, teachers, principals and Indigenous Elders. Gabriele Kaiser is a full professor for mathematics education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hamburg. She holds a Master’s degree as a teacher for mathematics and humanities for lower and upper secondary level, a PhD in mathematics education and a Habilitation in education, which was funded by a postdoctoral research grant awarded by the German Research Society (DFG). Her areas of research include modelling and applications in school, international comparative studies, gender and cultural aspects in mathematics education, empirical research on teacher education and teachers’ professional competencies. Since 2005 she has served as Editor-in-chief of ZDM Mathematics Education published by Springer. Furthermore, she is Convenor of the 13th International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME-13). Geert Kelchtermans studied philosophy and educational sciences at the University of Leuven, where he obtained a PhD in 1993 with a study on teachers’ professional development from a narrative-biographical perspective. He is now a full professor at the same university and head of the Center for Innovation and the Development of Teacher and School (in the Education and Training Research Unit). His research focuses on the interplay between individual educational professionals (teachers, principals, teacher educators …) and their professional development on the one hand and their organizational and institutional working conditions on the other. He is an editorial board member of several international journals and also a board member of InFo-TED International Forum on Teacher Educator Development.
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Rob Klassen is Professor and Chair of the Psychology in the Education Research Centre, and Director of Research in the Department of Education at the University of York in the UK. His research background is in motivation, engagement and emotions in school settings. He currently focuses on applying educational psychology research to the problem of teacher selection. Rob has numerous international collaborations, and his work is funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant. Before entering academia, Rob worked as a teacher and school psychologist in Canada and is a Chartered Psychologist in the UK. Robert Kleinsasser is a teacher educator with interests in the sociology of teachers and second language pedagogy. He is currently the (inaugural) Book Review Editor for The Journal of Educational Research and an Associate Editor for Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies. His current research with colleagues considers online teaching, learning and professional development including recent articles in TechTrends, Language Learning & Technology, and 英語教學 English Teaching & Learning. He is also a member of a writing group that has published in the area of teacher education and professional development including recent articles in The Educational Forum, Journal of Education for Teaching International Research and Pedagogy and Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education. Fred A.J. Korthagen is a Professor Emeritus of Utrecht University, the Netherlands and Director of the Korthagen Institute for Professional Development. His academic fields are the professional development of teachers and teacher educators, the pedagogy of teacher education, and more particularly, core reflection and strengths-based coaching. He has chaired two university teacher education programs in the Netherlands. He published numerous articles and books on these topics, in various languages, and gave keynotes on conferences and workshops all over the world. Fred Korthagen received awards for his publications from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE). In 2015, he became Fellow of AERA, ‘to honor excellence in research’. Clare Kosnik is Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/ University of Toronto and Director of the Jackman Institute of Child Study. She is currently conducting a study of 28 literacy teacher educators in four countries (Canada, USA, England and Australia). Her authored books include: Innovations in Teacher Education (2006); Priorities in Teacher Education (2009); Teaching in a Nutshell (2011); and Growing as a Teacher: Goals and Pathways of Ongoing Teacher Learning (2014) (co-authored with Clive Beck). She was recently the lead editor of the texts Literacy Teacher Educators: Preparing Student Teachers for a Changing World (2013) and Building Bridges: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era (2016).
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Amy Johnson Lachuk Sonja Laine is a doctoral student at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki. Her main research interests are gifted education and teacher education. She has published her research in international educational journals such as High Ability Studies and Journal for the Education of the Gifted. She also has years of experience in working as an elementary school teacher. Kerii Landry-Thomas is a Doctoral Candidate at Louisiana State University in Educational Leadership and Research with a concentration in Higher Education Administration. She is a former assistant public defender in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and currently a research assistant for Dr. Roland Mitchell, Associate Dean for Research & Academic Services. Her scholarly contributions include her Breaking the Pipeline: Using Restorative Justice to Lead the Way, chapter which appeared in Varner, Martin, Mitchell, Bennett-Harron & Daneshzadeh’s co-edited text Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison– To-School-Pipeline. Her research interests include race and gender in higher education, and the intersection of law and education. Landry-Thomas holds a BS from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctor from Southern University. lisahunter has a long history in teaching health and physical education as a teacher at all school levels and in teacher education, and as a curriculum writer and researcher. She is currently a freelance academic who researches and teaches in physical and movement cultures including foci on health and physical education, teacher education, surfing and relationships with the sea, movement education, sport and leisure, sex/gender/sexualities, and research methodologies. A current focus is on historical and contemporary narratives of surfing at personal, organizational and cultural levels and sexuality education. lisahunter plays with methodologies of sensory and visual narrative as part of participatory and ethnographic research. Recent related publications include: ‘Sensory Narratives: Capturing Embodiment in Narratives of Movement, Sport, Leisure and Health’ (2016); Workplace Learning in Physical Education (2015); ‘Active Kids Active Minds: A Physical Activity Intervention to Promote Learning?’ (2014) and HPE: Pedagogy, Sexualities and Queer Theory (in press). John Loughran is the Foundation Chair in Curriculum & Pedagogy, Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Monash University. John was a science teacher for ten years before moving into teacher education. He is well regarded in the fields of teacher education and science education. He has published extensively with Routledge, Springer and Sense and was the co-founding editor of the international journal Studying Teacher Education and an Executive Editor for Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice.
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Lisa W. Loutzenheiser is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Dr Loutzenheiser’s research interests are centred in youth studies, qualitative methodologies, anti-oppressive and critical race theories, curriculum policy, and gender and queer theories. Dr Loutzenheiser focuses on the educational experiences of marginalized youth and the teaching directed to and about students labelled as such. Her current research involves an ethnography of a leadership camp for LGBQ and T youth and a policy analysis of school-board level policies geared towards LGBQ and T youth and faculty. She is also particularly interested in the ways theories of race, sexualities and gender are useful across research projects, methods and methodologies. Effie Maclellan works at the interface of Psychology and Education. Her teaching is concerned to make complex educational psychology theory accessible to teachers, to other professions (such as Nursing and Physiotherapy), to university academics and to people-focused voluntary agencies so that these groups can use educational and psychological ideas to enhance practice. Her research draws on deep understanding of psychological principles and approaches to investigate and analyse highly important, practical and applied educational issues in schools, in higher education and in wider society. Her topics of interest are eclectic but all are rooted in the importance and complexity of pedagogy so the arena of ‘teacher’ education is the usual site for her work. She moved into higher education in 1988 after more than 20 years of professional practice as a class teacher and head teacher in mainstream and special education. She is now Emeritus Professor at Strathclyde University, Glasgow. Brooke Madden’s maternal ancestry is Wyandot/Iroquois, French and German, and her paternal ancestry is Mi’kmaq, Irish and English. She currently works as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. Brooke’s research focus is on the experiences and perceptions of Aboriginal and ally early career teachers who completed Indigenous education coursework within a Faculty of Education. Brooke has also published on Indigenous education and teacher education; whiteness, decolonizing processes and teacher identity; school-based Indigenous education reform; and Indigenous and decolonizing research methodologies. Meg Maguire is Professor of Sociology of Education in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College, London. Her research is in the sociology of education, teacher education, urban education and policy. She is lead editor for the Journal of Education Policy. She is a Visiting Professor at Victoria University, Melbourne Australia. Jae Major PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the
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Faculty of Arts and Education, Charles Sturt University in Australia. She has been a teacher educator since 1995, in the fields of multicultural studies, English for speakers of other languages, and primary literacy. Her research focuses on preparing teachers for cultural and linguistic diversity, identity, intercultural competence, and international mobility programs. Paulien C. Meijer is professor on teacher learning and development, and dean of the Teachers Academy of Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She has a long career as a teacher educator, as well as being a former teacher, and as a researcher. She publishes on topics related to beginning and experienced teacher learning, with a specific focus on identity development. From 2009 to 2013, she was chair of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). Juanjo Mena is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Salamanca (USAL, Spain). His research focuses on Teaching Practice, Teacher Education, Mentoring, Teacher Development and ICT. He is Treasurer and National Representative of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). He also spent five years as a classroom teacher before joining USAL as full time professor. Neil Mercer is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, and Director of the study centre Oracy@Cambridge at the Cambridge college Hughes Hall (of which he is also a Life Fellow). He was previously Professor of Language and Communications at the Open University. A psychologist with a special interest in the role of language in the classroom and the development of children’s thinking, one of the main outcomes of his research has been the teaching approach called Thinking Together. His research has generated strong links with researchers outside the UK, especially in the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Australia and the USA. He has been a consultant, visiting scholar and examiner for governments and universities in many countries. He is a former editor of the journals Learning and Instruction, the International Journal of Educational Research, and Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. Monica Miller Marsh is Associate Professor and Director of the Kent State University Child Development Center. Her areas of interest include family diversity, early childhood education and curriculum. She is co-founder of the Family Diversity Education Council and the Journal of Family Diversity in Education. Chaunda A. Mitchell is the Director of Drug Policy and Director of Indian Affairs for the Office of Governor John Bel Edwards. In both capacities she seeks to provide action-oriented solutions to enhance the lives and everyday lived experiences of the citizens of Louisiana. Prior to joining the Louisiana
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Governor’s Office, Mitchell served as director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Louisiana State University (LSU). She co-founded and co-chaired the SEC Multicultural Network, a network of directors of Multicultural Affairs offices in the South Eastern Conference. She is an adjunct instructor with the LSU higher education administration program teaching courses on race, gender, and college student populations. Her scholarly contributions have appeared in books and scholarly journals which continue to highlight a philosophy of integrating scholarship and practice. Mitchell is co-editor of Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America and Assault on Communities of Color: Reactions and Responses from the Frontlines. Roland W. Mitchell is the Jo Ellen Levy Yates Endowed Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Academic Services in the College of Human Sciences and Education at Louisiana State University. He teaches courses that focus on the history of higher education and college teaching and his research interests include theorizing the impact of historical and communal knowledge on pedagogy. Roland has authored five coedited books and numerous other scholarly works that have appeared in leading educational journals. He is the co-editor (with Wooten, 2016) of The Crisis of Campus Sexual Violence: Critical Perspectives on Prevention and Response, which was awarded a 2016 Outstanding Academic Titles (OAT) award and highlighted on the Top 25 Favorites list of the Choice editors. He is co-editor of the Lexington Press of Rowman and Littlefield book series Race and Education in the 21st Century, and Higher Education section editor of the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. Jenna Morvay is a doctoral student in the department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include teachers as activists, affect, inclusivity and critical whiteness. Elaine Munthe is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Stavanger, Norway and a Professor of Education. Her research interests include studies of classroom instruction, professional learning, and teacher education policy and practice. She has recently published in Teaching and Teacher Education, International Journal of Lesson and Learning Studies, European Journal of Teacher Education and Cambridge Journal of Education. From 2010 to 2015 she led a panel appointed by the Ministry of Education & Research to follow the implementation of a national teacher education reform. Since 2005, she has been a member of research programme boards within the Norwegian Research Council, and is currently chair of the research programme on ‘Research and Innovation in Education’. This programme funds research projects for early childhood, school and teacher education. In February 2016 she was elected chair of the National Association of Teacher Education in Norway. She has developed and directed several research projects related to teachers’ professional learning.
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M. Shaun Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan. His research interests are based in relational narrative inquiry and focus on familial and school curriculum making; the interwoven lives of children, families, and teachers; and teacher education. Sue O’Neill is a senior lecturer in Special Education at the School of Education, UNSW Australia. Her research interests include pre-service teacher preparation in evidenced-based classroom and behaviour management practices and programmes, beginning teacher self-efficacy, and teacher education methods that can close the theory to practice gap. Lily Orland-Barak Celia Oyler is a professor of inclusive education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the author of: Actions Speak Louder than Words: Social Action as Curriculum (Routledge); Learning to Teach Inclusively: Student Teachers Classroom Inquiries (Taylor & Francis); and Making Room for Students: Sharing Teacher Authority in Room 104 (Teachers College Press). Fiona Patterson is a Principal Researcher at the University of Cambridge and founding Director for the Work Psychology Group, an international research-led organizational psychology consulting practice. Fiona has published widely in assessment, especially in relation to selecting for non-academic attributes, innovation and change in organizations. Katherina A. Payne is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States. Her research and teaching interests include teacher education, social studies education, elementary and early childhood education and democratic education. Dr Payne’s work as a teacher educator and researcher seeks to better prepare and support elementary teachers as democratic educators who create more equitable classrooms so that all students see themselves as able and active members of our democratic society. She has written articles for journals such as the Journal of Teacher Education and Social Studies and the Young Learner. Francine Peterman Stefinee Pinnegar is a teacher educator in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, Provo Utah. Her research interests focus on teachers’ thinking along with ways to reveal that thinking through S-STTEP and narrative methodologies. She co-authored Self-Study of Practice as a Genre of Qualitative
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Research: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (2009). Furthermore, she is the editor of the popular series – Advances in Research on Teaching published by Emerald Press. James Pippin, PhD, is a Research Associate in the Department of Teacher Education in the College of Education at Michigan State University. He earned his PhD in Educational Policy from Michigan State University with a specialization in international development. His research interests include comparative and international analyses of education policies related to teachers and evaluation. Using sociological frameworks and both quantitative and qualitative approaches, his research focuses on the intersections of policy, context and individual backgrounds in shaping the recruitment, development and retention of effective teachers for marginalized students in the United States and internationally. Prior to completing his doctoral studies at Michigan State University, Dr Pippin taught English and conducted research in China and South Korea. He has a Master’s degree from Bowling Green State University and Bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University. Paula Razquin is Assistant Professor at the University of San Andrés (Argentina) and an Adjunct Faculty at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (California). She holds a PhDin Education from Stanford University and was awarded scholarships from Fulbright Argentina, the Organization of American States, and the Argentinean National Ministry of Education. Prior to her current appointment, Razquin worked at UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report team and at the Division for Education Strategies & Capacity Building. She was a RAND/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow on Education Policy, and consulted on education reform projects for multilateral and bilateral agencies in about ten countries. She has written on student achievement and school choice, teacher pay-for-performance and incentives reforms, the global financial crisis and primary education in developing countries, teachers in comparative perspective, Education for All, and teacher salaries in Latin America. Jo-Anne Reid is Professor of Education and former Head of School and Associate Dean, Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University. She began her career teaching Secondary English, and has worked as a literacy teacher educator and researcher in a number of Australian Universities prior to taking up this appointment in 2002. She is particularly committed to the preparation of teachers for schools in rural and remote locations, where the issue of cultural and linguistic diversity is regularly overlooked as a key issue of social justice and equity for understanding and living in (rural) social space. She is interested in post-structuralist theories of practice as a theoretical framework for rethinking teacher education for a diverse and changing society, and has written on English teaching, school transition, Indigenous teachers, teacher education and rural schooling.
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Wendy Robinson is a Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, UK, where she was appointed in 2006, following appointments at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge. She is currently University Academic Dean for Students, responsible for teaching, learning and the student experience. She has published extensively in the field of history of education, with a special interest in the history of the teaching profession. Selected publications include: Pupil Teachers and their Professional Training in Pupil Teacher Centres in England and Wales, 1870–1914 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003); Power to Teach: Learning through Practice (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004); and A Learning Profession? Teachers and their Professional Development in England and Wales 1920–2000 (Rotterdam/Boston: Sense Publishers, 2014). Jerry Rosiek is a professor at the University of Oregon in the Department of Education Studies and is affiliated faculty in the Department of Philosophy. He teaches courses on peer-to-peer teacher knowledge networks and qualitative research methodology. His empirical scholarship focuses on the ways teachers learn from their classroom experience. Specifically he looks at the way teachers think about the mediating effects of culture, class, gender, sexuality and social context on student learning. His theoretical scholarship explores the way pragmatic philosophy, feminist materialism, indigenous philosophy and critical race theory provide promising ways to think outside of necessary, but increasingly wearisome foundationalism vs anti-foundationalism debates in the social sciences. His writing has appeared in major journals including Harvard Educational Review, Education Theory, Educational Researcher, Qualitative Inquiry, Curriculum Inquiry, Educational Psychologist and the Journal of Teacher Education. His recent book with co-author Kathy Kinslow is entitled Resegregation as Curriculum. Emma Rowett is a psychologist at the Work Psychology Group, an international research-led organizational psychology consulting practice. Emma’s key area of expertise is in early career selection for high stakes professions in the UK and internationally, with her work ranging across a variety of both private and public sector clients. Matthew N. Sanger received his PhD in Educational Studies, along with an MA in Philosophy, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on the moral work of teaching and teacher education, with publications appearing in Teaching and Teacher Education, Curriculum Inquiry and the Journal of Moral Education. He is co-editor of the book The Moral Work of Teaching and Teacher Education: Preparing and Supporting Practitioners (Teachers College Press). Lee Schaefer is an Assistant Professor at McGill University in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education. He is also the Chair of the Physical and
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Health Education Canada Research Council. His research is focused on teacher education, specifically, physical education teacher education, youth development through wellness and physical activity, the impact of the outdoors on youth physical activity levels and narrative inquiry. He has been recognized on a national and international level for both his research and his writing and has been invited to speak at local, national and international conferences. His passion for physical education, and providing youth purposeful, developmental, movement opportunities continues to drive his research, teaching and service commitments. Brigitte Smit (PhD) is a Research Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Management at the University of South Africa. She coordinates research courses, teaches Qualitative Research, Mixed Methods and CAQDAS – ATLAS.ti, serves on national and international editorials boards and has published in national and international journals. Some past research projects include: Health and Development Africa; Teacher Identity and the Culture of Schooling; and the Multisite Teacher Education Research Project, with the University of Sussex. Her current research focuses on relational and female leadership in disadvantaged schools. She is a recipient of the 2009 Outstanding Reviewer Award: American Educational Research Journal: Social and Institutional Analysis – American Educational Research Association. In 2015, she received the Research Medal of Honour, awarded by the Education Association of South Africa in recognition of her research over the past ten years. She also received the 2015 Leadership in Research Women’s Award, from UNISA. Dr Smit is an accredited professional trainer and a consultant for ATLAS.ti for Africa. Florence R. Sullivan is an associate professor in the College of Education at UMass, Amherst. Her research interests include gender equity in STEM learning, the processes and outcomes of collaboration in computational learning environments for children, service learning and teaching in computational and STEM learning environments and learning in online environments. She is the author of Creativity, Learning, and Technology: Theory for Classroom Practice (Routledge). Tamara Tate is a doctoral student in the Language, Literacy and Technology specialization within the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. She received her BA in English at UC Irvine and her JD at UC Berkeley. Tamara was a corporate finance partner at Morrison & Foerster, LLP for 17 years, specializing in public companies and mergers & acquisitions. Besides representing a number of high-tech companies, Tamara was involved in the use of technology and knowledge-based solutions to improve the quality of practice. Tamara left law to focus on K-12 literacy education, technology-supported learning, and exceptional learners of all types. She is inspired daily by her own exceptional learners, her two sons, who also strive to keep her aware of the latest technology.
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Maria Teresa Tatto is the Southwest Borderlands Professor of Comparative Education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University (ASU). Her research is characterized by the use of comparative frameworks to study the impact of policies on educational systems, particularly reforms affecting teacher education, teaching and learning across organizational, economic, political and social contexts. Her work combines the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches and methods, and emphasizes user-relevant participatory research approaches. She is currently the director and principal investigator of two large-scale international studies funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), and the First Years of Mathematics Teaching Study (FIRSTMATH). Dr Tatto is an editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives, has served as Editorin-Chief of the Journal of Teacher Education, guest editor for the Oxford Review of Education and the International Journal of Educational Research, and has edited, co-edited and authored several books. From 2008 to 2012, she was elected to function in an executive leadership capacity for the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) including serving as President in 2010. Robert Thornberg, PhD, is Professor of Education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University in Sweden. He is also a member of the Board for the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA). Dr Thornberg’s current research is on school bullying, especially in terms of social and moral processes (such as peer norms, moral disengagement, group processes, moral reasoning and class climate), bystander reactions and actions, and students’ perspectives and explanations. His second line of research is on values education, moral practices, school rules, student participation and social interactions in everyday school life. He has investigated teachers’ everyday work with school rules and how students view, judge and make meanings of school rules, student participation, school democratic meetings, and teachers’ disciplinary practices. Kirsi Tirri is a Professor of Education and Research Director at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is the Chair of the Doctoral Programme SEDUCE (School, Education, Society and Culture) and the Chairman of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. She is also a visiting scholar with the Stanford Center on Adolescence, USA. From 2008 to 2012 Tirri was the President of ECHA (European Council for High Ability), and the President of the SIG International Studies at AERA (American Educational Research Association) from 2010 to 2013. She has published widely in international educational journals and books on teacher education, moral education and gifted education. She also serves on the editorial boards of 13 educational journals. You can read more of her work at: http://www.helsinki.fi/~ktirri
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Auli Toom, PhD, Ass. Prof., works as a Vice Director of the Center for University Teaching and Learning at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. She also holds an adjunct professorship in pedagogy at the University of Eastern Finland. Her major research interests are teachers’ pedagogical knowing, agency and teacher education, as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning, and student learning in the context of higher education. Dr Toom leads and co-leads several research projects on teacher education and higher education and supervises PhD students involved in these projects. She has published her research extensively in international refereed journals and edited books. Dr Toom has given several international keynote speeches and workshops related to research on teacher education and acted as an expert on teacher education. Eline Vanassche is an Assistant Professor at the School of Health Professions Education at Maastricht University (the Netherlands). She received her PhD in Educational Sciences from the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2014. Her PhD research focused on how to understand and conceptualize teacher educators’ professionalism and its development throughout their careers. Since then, she has continued her research in this area. Vanassche published widely on this topic, both in ISI listed journals as well as edited book volumes and more practitioner oriented outlets. She is also a board member of the Flemish Association of Teacher Educators (VELOV) and the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development (InFo-TED). Jan H. van Driel is a Professor of Science Education at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne. Jan’s research expertise concerns teacher knowledge and teacher learning. Among others, he has conducted several research projects on the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in science teachers. Some of these studies focused on pre-service teachers, whereas others targeted in-service teachers in the context of educational innovation. Jan has published articles and chapters on empirical projects and review studies, for instance, in the International Encyclopaedia of Education (2010) and in the Handbook of Research on Science Education (2014). He is co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Science Education. Surette van Staden was appointed to the Department of Science, Maths and Technology Education in June 2011 at the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria. She teaches on the PGCE programme at Honours level and is also a lecturer on the Master’s Programme in Assessment and Quality Assurance. She is currently involved in the supervision of a number of Master’s degree students. Surette has experience in international comparative assessment studies and served as co-national research coordinator for the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 in South Africa. Having worked in a research centre for ten years with a focus on issues of assessment and quality assurance in education, her focus is now on interventions to address issues raised by assessment and quality standards.
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Jan van Tartwijk is Professor of Education at the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University, where he chairs the Graduate School of Teaching and the faculty’s Educational and Consultancy group. In his research and teaching, Jan van Tartwijk focuses on teacher–student communication processes in the classroom, learning and assessment at the workplace (in particular in teacher and medicals education), assessment and motivation, assessment and creativity, teacher education, and the development of teacher expertise. Michael Vavrus is Emeritus Professor at the Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA, USA) where he teaches interdisciplinary programmes in education, history and political economy. He is the author of Diversity and Education: A Critical Multicultural Approach and Transforming the Multicultural Education of Teachers: Theory, Research and Practice. Among the journals in which his research and book reviews have appeared include Teachers College Record, Journal of Education Policy, Teaching and Teacher Education, Journal of Negro Education, Urban Education, Educational Studies and Action in Teacher Education. In addition to book chapters in edited books, Dr Vavrus also has chapters in the reference texts 21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook and the Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education. He is past president of the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education. Dr Vavrus is the current scholarship/research committee chair for the Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender, a special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. Jan D. Vermunt is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Wolfson College. The study of human learning has fascinated him since he started his studies in the Psychology of Learning and Education. Current research interests include: how people integrate knowledge from different sources into a unified theory of practice; how people differ in their pathways to growth and development; and how learning environments can be created that foster high-quality learning. His scientific work has been published in journals such as Learning and Instruction, British Journal of Educational Psychology, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Studies in Higher Education, Learning and Individual Differences and Vocations and Learning. Jan has served on the Editorial Boards of several international journals. Currently he is the Editor-in-Chief of Learning and Instruction, one of the world’s leading journals in the fields of Educational Research and Educational Psychology. Maria Vrikki works as a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Her work centres on productive dialogue and its effects on learning and development in different contexts. She has studied professional groups, like Lesson Study groups, where dialogue is the main mechanism driving teacher learning processes. She is also involved in the study of dialogue in the classroom context, and in particular in teacher–student and student–student
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interactions. Her background is in Linguistics. She holds a DPhil (PhD) degree in Education from the University of Oxford. She has taught on professional development, language acquisition and learning at several institutions. Mark Warschauer is Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine. He has carried out a wide range of research on the use of digital media by diverse learners in K-12 schools and colleges. Warschauer is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association and editor-in-chief of AERA Open. His books include Learning in the Cloud: How (and Why) to Transform Schools with Digital Media (Teachers College Press) and Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide (MIT Press). Paul Warwick is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Homerton College. His research and teaching focus on students’ developing understanding of the scientific approach to enquiry, the role of technologies in the development of a dialogic classroom pedagogy and the development of teacher learning. He has an interest in classroom assessment practices and the development of teachers as reflective practitioners – in particular, the ways in which beginning teachers create and sustain a professional identity. Paul is a member of the Faculty’s Psychology and Education academic group and Chair of Examiners for primary teacher education. He has acted as external examiner for Initial Teacher Education at various universities and has led professional development related to both dialogic pedagogy and assessment in Africa and Europe. He is a founder member of Oracy@Cambridge, a study centre at Hughes Hall, Cambridge, established in 2015. Sara C. Wooten is a Doctoral Candidate in Educational Leadership and Research with a concentration in Higher Education Administration at Louisiana State University. Wooten’s research interests include the intersections of higher education policy; campus rape culture; discourse theory; feminist poststructuralism; queer theory; and critical race theory. Wooten has presented her work at numerous conferences including the American Educational Research Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and the National Women’s Studies Association. She was honored to have her symposium on campus sexual violence selected as a Presidential Session for the 2014 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She is the co-editor of The Crisis of Campus Sexual Violence: Critical Perspectives on Prevention and Response (with Mitchell, 2016) and recently published her second co-edited volume Preventing Sexual Violence on Campus: Challenging Traditional Approaches Through Program Innovation (with Mitchell, 2017). Theo Wubbels is professor of education emeritus at the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University. He participates in several national and
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international committees on education, pedagogy and quality assurance in teaching in higher education. He is the president of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) and council member of the World Educational Research Association (WERA). His research interests include the problems and supervision of beginning teachers, teaching and learning in higher education, and studies of learning environments, especially interpersonal relationships in education. Ji-Sook Yeom is a Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education, Konkuk University, South Korea. She completed her doctoral degree and postdoctoral programme at the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta. Her research interests involve narrative inquiry, children’s, mothers’ and teachers’ experiences, and teacher education in preservice and in-service education contexts. She has published a number of articles and translated English books into Korean in the area of narrative inquiry to share the topic among the Korean academic community. Ken Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. His current research focuses on the integrity and effectiveness of the policymaking process in teacher education internationally and in the US. His current work also focuses on the creation of new forms of teacher education that help provide high-quality teachers for everyone’s children and that support both the dignity of the teaching profession and the legitimate rights of local communities in democratic societies to have a voice in their children’s education in public schools. Doron Zinger is a doctoral Student at the University of California, Irvine. As a former high school science teacher and school administrator, Doron led numerous technology integration and instruction initiatives. His research focuses on teacher learning, especially in STEM fields. He researches how teachers learn to use technology in the classroom, as well as teachers’ learning online. Rosanne Zwart is an assistant professor at the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University. Her research has a strong focus on teacher professional development throughout teachers’ careers. In the teacher education programmes of the university’s Graduate School of Teaching, she coordinates several courses that prepare prospective teachers for practice-oriented research. She is also involved in several projects with schools for secondary education aimed at supporting (beginning) teachers’ professional development. She is chair of the Teaching and Teacher Education division of the Netherlands Educational Research Association (NERA).
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Consulting Reviewers Section I: MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE OF TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Barbara Stengel and D. Jean Clandinin Jerry Rosiek and Peter Sleegers Jerry Rosiek and Jukka Husu Jerry Rosiek and Eila Estola Jerry Rosiek and Robert V. Bullough Jerry Rosiek and Bob Adamson
Section II: LEARNING TEACHER IDENTITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13
Douwe Beijaard and Sanne Akkerman Douwe Beijaard and Elana Joram Alison Kington and D. Jean Clandinin Douwe Beijaard and Catherine Beauchamp Douwe Beijaard and Beatrice Avalos Douwe Beijaard and Anne Edwards
Section III: LEARNING TEACHER AGENCY IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18
Janice Huber and Tammy Iftody Janice Huber and James Greeno Janice Huber and Jamy Stillman Michalinos Zembylas and Jukka Husu Janice Huber and Kirsten Edwards
Section IV: LEARNING MORAL AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24
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Robert V. Bullough and Elizabeth Campbell Robert V. Bullough and Wiel Veugelers Robert V. Bullough and Carmen Mills Robert V. Bullough and Kristján Kristjánsson Robert V. Bullough and Richard D. Osguthorpe Robert V. Bullough and Hugh Sockett
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Section V: LEARNING TO NEGOTIATE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28
Roland W. Mitchell and Nathan D. Brubaker Roland W. Mitchell and Annemarie Alberton Gunn Roland W. Mitchell and Carmen Montecinos Ben Kirchner and D. Jean Clandinin
Section VI: LEARNING THROUGH PEDAGOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35
Rozanne Zwart and Jukka Husu Juanjo Mena and Mark Winschitl Juanjo Mena and Baljit Kaur Juanjo Mena and Drew H. Gitomer Juanjo Mena and Sara Hennessy Juanjo Mena and Brigitte Smit Juanjo Mena and Mariana Souto-Manning
Section VII: LEARNING THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44
Cheryl J. Craig and Patience Sowa Cheryl J. Craig and Cameron White Cheryl J. Craig and Billie Eilam Cheryl J. Craig and Ashley J. Casey Cheryl J. Craig and Lynn Butler-Kisber Cheryl J. Craig and Jude Butcher Cheryl J. Craig and Frans Meijers Cheryl J. Craig and Ying Guo Cheryl J. Craig and Kristine Black-Hawkins
Section VIII: LEARNING PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION AND THROUGHOUT THE CAREER Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47
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Auli Toom and Katrien Stuyven Elaine Munthe and D. Jean Clandinin Auli Toom and David Gijbels
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Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50
Auli Toom and Fred Janssen Auli Toom and Elisabeth van Es Auli Toom and David Zyngier
Section IX: LEARNING WITH AND FROM ASSESSMENTS IN TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57
Mistilina Sato and Gavin Brown Mistilina Sato and Harm Tillema Mistilina Sato and Kari Smith D. Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu Mistilina Sato and Val Klenowski Mistilina Sato and Mary Hill Mistilina Sato and Rosie Le Cornu
Section X: THE EDUCATION AND LEARNING OF TEACHER EDUCATORS Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61
Ronnie Davey and Stefinee Pinnegar Ronnie Davey and Hafdis Gudjonsdottir Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin Ronnie Davey and Sally Galman
Section XI: THE EVOLVING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS OF TEACHER EDUCATION Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66
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Beatrice Avalos and Keith Turvey Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin Miriam Ben-Peretz and D. Jean Clandinin Beatrice Avalos and Jukka Husu Beatrice Avalos and Lani Florian
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Section VII
Learning the Contents of Teaching in Teacher Education Cheryl J. Craig
Section VII’s chapters focus on the learning of subject matter content in teacher education. The history of teacher education and the emergence of faculties of education/colleges of education in many places in the world trace back to courses originally offered by subject-specific departments on university/college campuses (i.e. Art, English, History, Mathematics, Physical Education, and so forth). Specialization in different content areas continues to occur in international teacher education programs either through concurrent or consecutive models of teacher education (Craig, 2016). Regardless of the way teacher education programs are structured/delivered, content areas have a vital role to play in teacher education. In addition to content binding Section VII together and the logic determining its order, the particular compilation of chapters cohere through the use of Schwab’s commonplaces of curriculum as a lens for viewing them. Schwab (1973) used the commonplaces of teacher, learner, subject matter and milieu, all of ‘equal rank’, to capture curriculum-making situations. These ‘bodies of curriculum making’ (Schwab, 1973, p. 504) are widely accepted because of their reasonableness/ applicability (Goodson, 1990). Clandinin, Huber, and Murphy (2011) and Craig and Ross (2008) experimented with the commonplaces of teacher and student as they reflected on different teaching-learning situations and the ways they
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‘reshape the curriculum making of teacher education’ (p. 9). The third commonplace, subject matter, is filled with content such as that discussed in this Handbook section. The fourth commonplace, milieu, sometimes described as context, includes everything from the micropolitics of teaching and teacher education (Kelchtermans, 2005) to the influence of global neo-liberalism (Rosiek & Clandinin, 2016). Against this backdrop, teacher educators and teacher candidates ‘live out a curriculum . . . with intentionality, objectives, and curriculum materials play[ing] a part’ (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992, p. 365). In Chapter 36, Quan Xu, Simmee Chung and Yi Li show how teaching in literacy areas and language arts combine the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of teaching and learning to teach. This blending of the ‘what’ – content – with the ‘how’ – method – constitutes a perennial issue in teacher education. The what-how dilemma is muddied because content and method cannot be separated from one another. Further complications arise from three different orientations to literacy and English language arts teacher education: (1) transmission, (2) social reconstruction, and (3) transformative practices. These conflicting orientations work from different theories/stances, and shape pedagogies in different ways. Assessment approaches, also considered part of the content that is taught, create major issues when learning about language arts testing and standardized test items. The authors recommend continuing research on pedagogical decision making, educational policy, literacy and language arts curricula, and teachers’ literacy and language arts practices. Wing On Lee and Maria Manzon, co-authors of Chapter 37, also highlight the content-method issue in teacher education in social studies education/civic education. For them, content and method are ‘inseparable entities’. They characterize teachers as ‘gatekeepers’ in a field diverse in its content/pedagogies/ curricular spaces. The question of whether social studies is a discipline in its own right or whether it is a narrow subject area is an area of dispute for those engaged in teacher education research. Terms are also a contested matter in teacher education classes in universities and in K-12 classrooms in schools. The contrast between social studies teacher education and civic education teacher education in Western nations and the authors’ exemplars are evident. The authors stress the need for more research concerning the differences in social studies education/ civic education content and delivery. The effects of globalization and pluralism also need to be investigated more fully in teacher education research agendas. How to engage student teacher candidates in dialogues about citizenship and social issues – with the idea of possible futures held closely in mind – is a priority item for future teacher education research. The disputed nature of disciplinary knowledge is also important in Tony Brown’s chapter (Chapter 38), which centers on the political forces shaping teacher education in the content areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Brown argues that international comparison tests such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the
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Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which arguably advance Western agendas, not only serve evaluation and assessment purposes, but also have dramatically changed the content of what is taught/learned in the STEM disciplines and have increased the pressures placed on those in teacher education. What constitutes teacher education research in the STEM content areas is driven by the agendas of funding agencies. This ‘re-casting of mathematics and science’, as Brown puts it, has led to a vocational employment-based model of teacher training in England, New Zealand, and the United States, which differs enormously from the Continental European model of compulsory five years of teacher preparation in the Bologna Accord. In the Physical Education teacher education (PETE) chapter (Chapter 39) authored by Lee Schaefer, lisahunter, and Shaun Murphy, tensions mapped in the previous three chapters re-appear. Changing contexts, knowledges, epistemologies, and ontologies influence PETE. Another phenomenon noted is the hegemony of quantitative research in the PETE field favoring only one research paradigm, which limits what can be studied. The authors believe that the quantitative research paradigm has a place, but its dominance should not obliterate other valid ways of conducting research. The authors call for more culturally responsive and socially just research agendas in order to shed light on the controversies in the PETE field and to offer new ways of studying how to be/become a PE teacher/teacher educator/researcher. Chapter 40, ‘The Creative Arts and Teacher Education’ by Robyn Ewing, also pushes the edges and calls for more imagination in research in creative arts teacher education. Ewing acknowledges that the need for the creative arts comes at a time when valuing quality arts in teacher education is ‘at an all-time low’. This affects how teacher education research in the creative arts is conducted. In her view, future teacher education research in the creative arts would move technology in from the margins and would work cross-culturally on such themes as domestic violence, the refugee crisis, the environment and sustainable development, global citizenship, and the need for peace. However, Ewing asserts that such agendas cannot be accomplished until (1) there is ‘adequate teacher education in and through the Arts’ and (2) the creative arts are no longer ‘under threat or already diminishing in many countries’. Chapter 41, co-authored by Elina Wright and Andrew Wright, ‘Teacher Education in Religious Education’, echoes similar concerns: religious education has also lost ground and its ‘pride of place’ in the core curriculum. The authors point to the contested nature of the content in their field in which learning about/ researching something (i.e. different religions, different worldviews) is equated with advocating for it. Furthermore, what are the risks when absence of knowing morphs into fear of the unknown (i.e. different religions, different worldviews, etc.) in the world arena? The authors provide a case study of critical religious teacher education that they hope will lead to “informed belief and action . . . respect and honesty . . . [and the ability] to think’. Teacher education in religious
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education is ‘tangential’ as opposed to being a targeted and pre-planned area; hence, greatly lacking, particularly in controversial areas. Chapter 42, ‘Teacher Education in Technical Vocational Education and Training’ by Bonnie Watt has a core theme: the need to provide material and symbolic goods/services to meet societal needs. A new ‘vocationalization’ has recently taken shape whereby the school curriculum involves learning about work and employment. Despite efforts to blend the academic and the vocational in school education, the problems of which skills to focus on and how return on funding will be achieved are recurring themes. Longitudinal tensions having to do with the status and value of vocational teachers and teacher education continue and Watt asks ‘Who decides?’ in a content area that also faces a shortage of research. Schoolification is the central theme of Robert Bullough, Jr. and Kendra Hall-Kenyon’s Chapter 43, ‘The Curriculum of Early Childhood and Lower Primary Teacher Education: A Five-Nation Research Perspective’. Through studying Chile, Nigeria, China, New Zealand, and the United States the authors show how access to disciplinary knowledge varies globally, as does the role of practical and professional studies in lower primary teacher education. The authors note the heightened attention placed on academic performance in schools and in research studies, and the consequent rise of neo-liberalism, trends that teachers and teacher educators, in their view, do not appear to be outwardly resisting. To end Section VII, Kirsi Tirri and Sonja Laine in Chapter 44 ‘Teacher Education in Inclusive Education’ present how student diversity shapes teacherstudent relationships in teacher education. The work includes an overview of what teacher education for inclusion entails, and how students vary in their integration into school programs. Similarly, teachers and teacher educators vary in their preparation to be inclusive educators. Using inclusive education in Finland as an example, Tirri and Laine show how teachers with their knowledge, values, and beliefs are the linchpins of inclusive education. Throughout the chapters in Part VII, the distinction between research involving knowledge for teaching – knowledge for the cultivation and nurturing of teachers/ their profession in their own terms (teacher knowledge) – and research about knowledge of teaching (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; also see Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990; Fenstermacher, 1994) – knowledge that can be ‘imparted and sent like bricks across countr[ies] to build knowledge structures that . . . accumulate’ (Eisner, 1997, p. 7) becomes evident as teacher education in the content areas becomes further complicated. The chapters raise major, overarching queries: Who produces knowledge of teaching at the intersection of subject matter and teacher? Teacher education researchers? Subject matter specialists? Policy makers? Teacher educators? Teachers? Teacher candidates themselves? Furthermore, whose purposes are served when the knowledge base for teaching is shaped/ researched/funded to be studied in particular ways?
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Associated with these issues is the privileging of some subject matters (i.e. STEM) or some strands of subject matter (i.e. vocational learning over vocational training) over other content areas (i.e. physical education/health/creative arts). While the STEM disciplines have been politically favored due to their socioeconomic potential, other subject areas (i.e. religious education/creative arts) have largely lost their footholds in educational systems. This has resulted in large accumulations of literature in the STEM and literacy disciplines, while sparse attention has been paid to research on the teaching of religion, a particularly salient contemporary topic. Within the content areas, a lack of agreement exists concerning research on how subject matter should be taught. This has ignited the ‘Literacy Wars’ and the ‘Math Wars’, for example, but also conflicting research goals such as whether physical education and health produces elite athletes or health-conscious citizens. Teacher education for social studies/civic education also experiences palpable disputes between those who research and treat content as being free of the will of those politically in charge and research concerning the practice of social education for a more equitable and socially just world. Religious teacher education/ creative arts teacher education/literacy teacher education/vocational teacher education, for example, experience similar tugs-of-war between and among different research factions in their disciplinary fields. The notion that teacher education is its own discipline also forms part of the scholarly debate (i.e. Loughran & Russell, 2007). Heavily implicated in these research struggles are the roles in which teachers and teacher educators are cast. From a research perspective, are they studied as active curriculum makers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992)? Or are they approached as ‘agents of the state’ who are ‘paid to do its bidding’ (Lent & Pipken, 2003, cited in Craig & Ross, 2008)? At the core of these research debates are tensions concerning who is the good teacher as generally conceived and who is the good teacher in particular subject matter domains. Another persistent theme is the theory-practice split where the research that scholars produce remains estranged from the teachers with whom the studies were conducted. Such theory-practice chasms frequently produce theory-practice-policy bifurcations (Craig, 2009) where neither theory nor practice nor policy are engaged in fruitful conversations with one another. In a nutshell, future teacher education research agendas in the content areas need to avoid simplistic views of subject matter knowledge cut off from Schwab’s three other commonplaces and embrace the complexities of teacher education contexts, the field and the profession.
References Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1992). Teacher as curriculum maker. In P. Jackson (Ed.). Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 363–410). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Clandinin, D. J., Huber, J., & Murphy, M. S. (2011). Familial curriculum making: Re-shaping the curriculum making of teacher education. International Journal of Early Childhood Education, 17(1), 9–31. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1990). Research on teaching and teacher research: The issues that divide. Educational Researcher, 19(2), 2–11. Craig, C. (2009). The contested classroom space: A decade of lived educational policy in Texas schools. American Educational Research Journal, 46(4), 1034–1059. Craig, C. (2016). The structure of teacher education. In J. Loughran & M.L. Hamilton (Eds). International Handbook of Teacher Education (pp. 69–135). Singapore: Springer Science + Business Media. Craig, C., & Ross, V. (2008). Cultivating the image of teachers as curriculum makers. In F. Michael Connelly, Ming Fang He & JoAnn Phillion (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction (pp. 282–305). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Eisner, E. (1997). The promises and perils of alternate forms of data representation. Educational Researcher, 26(6), 4–10. Fenstermacher, G. D. (1994). The knower and the known: The nature of knowledge in research on teaching. Review of Research in Education, 20(1), 3–56. Goodson, I. (1990). Studying curriculum: Towards a social constructionist perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22(4), 299–312. Kelchtermans, G. (2005). Teachers’ emotions in educational reforms: Self-understanding, vulnerable commitment and micropolitical literacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 995–1006. Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2007). Beginning to understand teaching as a discipline. Studying Teacher Education, 3(2), 217–227. Rosiek, J., & Clandinin, D. J. (2016). Curriculum and teacher development. In D. Wyse, L. Hayward & J. Pandya (Eds). The Sage Handbook of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment (pp. 293– 308). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schwab, J. J. (1969). The practical: A language for curriculum. The School Review, 78(1), 1–23. Schwab, J. J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501–522. Schwab, J. J. (1983). The practical 4: Something for curriculum professors to do. Curriculum Inquiry, 13(3), 239–265.
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36 Teacher Education in English as an Additional Language, English as a Foreign Language and the English Language Arts Quan Xu, Simmee Chung, and Yi Li Defining Literacy and the Language Arts Traditionally, literacy was narrowly defined as reading and/or writing (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Lotherington, 2007; O’Quinn, 2005). In the 1980s, reading and writing were considered separate and empirically based individual cognitive psychological activities – distinct from their social and political contexts (Gallego & Hollingsworth, 2000, p. 3). Cope and Kalantzis (2000) noted that literacy pedagogy traditionally meant teaching and learning to read and write in standard forms of the national language and was restricted to ‘formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rule-governed forms of language’ (p. 9). Currently, research in teacher education has shifted towards a more expansive notion of literacy to include a continuum of communication and language skills. For example, taking sociocultural milieu into consideration, Gee, Hull, and Lankshear (1996) define literacy as ‘ways of talking, listening, reading, writing, acting, interacting, believing, valuing, and using tools and objects in particular settings and at specific times, so as to display or to recognize a particular social setting’ (p. 131). Worthman and Kaplan (2001) write, ‘literacy is a tool for participating within particular sociocultural contexts with the goal of getting things done or accomplishing something, with things and something being defined by the participants’ (p. 655). There is a growing understanding that literacy learning in teacher education programs encompasses not only the teaching of traditional reading and writing, but also the ways we use language to communicate.
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In this review of the literature surrounding literacy and the language arts in teacher education, we define the language arts as encompassing the teaching of English Language Arts (to learners whose first language is English), English as an Additional Language, and English as a Foreign Language. We understand these three terms to be distinct, and therefore often approached pedagogically differently within teacher education programs; however, we also see intersections and overlaps. We present the following definitions, which inform our understanding and review of the language arts in teacher education. Within English Language Arts (ELA) learning and teaching settings, according to the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) (1996), students focus on the learning of English through ‘reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and visually representing’ (NCTE, 1996, p. 1). English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as an Additional Language (EAL) refers to the study of the English language by non-native speakers in an English-speaking environment (Gunderson, D’Silva, & Odo, 2009). That environment may be a country in which English is the dominant language or mother tongue (e.g. Australia, the US, Canada) or one in which English has an established role (e.g. India, Nigeria, Hong Kong). The term English Language Learner (ELL) is becoming increasingly used by educators and researchers in multi-culturally diverse countries in order to acknowledge multi-lingual speakers who may speak more than two languages in these ESL/EAL settings. However, in our review of the literature, we make greater reference to the term English as a Second Language (ESL) as it is more commonly cited in the existing international research. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is a term that speaks to the teaching or study of the English language by people whose first language is not English, and who do not live in an English-speaking country (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2009). For example, students in China learning the English language may be considered EFL learners. We use these distinct terms as a way to examine research in teacher education programs in literacy and the learning and teaching of English (ELA, ESL, EFL). As we present our review of international research surrounding literacy and ELA, alongside ESL and EFL (as defined above), we focus on different theoretical stances with Schwab’s (1973) notion of commonplaces in mind.
Our Framework – Schwab’s notion of commonplaces The curriculum scholar Joseph Schwab first wrote his notion of ‘commonplaces’, which he considered to be of equal importance in curriculum and educational revision and reform. In his essay The Practical 3: Translation into Curriculum (1973), he argued,
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Defensible educational thought must take account of four commonplaces of equal rank: the learner, the teacher, the milieu, and the subject matter. None of these can be omitted without omitting a vital factor in educational thought and practice. (pp. 508–9)
Although Schwab’s (1973, 1983) notion of commonplaces was introduced over 40 years ago, curriculum specialists, theorists, and researchers over the years have continued to refer to these commonplaces as a way to understand, analyze, and attend to changes in curriculum and education more generally. In our review of international research in teacher education surrounding literacy and ELA, ESL, and EFL, we reflect on different theoretical stances using Schwab’s (1973) notion of four commonplaces. We interpret assessment as being within the subject matter commonplace. Attending to the four commonplaces as a framework helps us understand and position some of the dominant ideologies and curriculum paradigms, which have shaped particular research and teacher education programs.
Issues and Dominant Theoretical Stances in Language Teacher Education Researchers and scholars over the years have proposed different theoretical stances, which, they argue, lead to more effective teaching and learning of literacy and the English language arts in teacher education. In our findings, we found persistent references to three broad orientations and their implications for literacy pedagogy: the transmission, social constructivist, and transformative orientations. Although we present these orientations separately from one another in this chapter, we acknowledge, like Cummins and Davison (2007), that they may also be ‘nested within each other’ (p. 971). Each of the following sub-sections starts with the link of Schwab’s commonplaces to the orientations. The features of the orientation are summarized and research findings are presented in ELA, ESL, and EFL contexts from the perspectives of pre-service and in-service teacher education.
Transmission Orientation In 1973, Schwab noted that the subject matter commonplace was dominant in curriculum. Subject matter refers to ‘the scholarly materials under treatment and with the discipline from which they come’ (Schwab, 1973, p. 502). For the purpose of this chapter, we understand assessment as part of subject matter. The transmission and delivery of subject matter were viewed to be essential in teaching knowledge and skills in curriculum across disciplines. Additionally, the role of teacher as needing to be expert in the delivery of subject matter has been emphasized in numerous research studies of pre-service teacher education
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(e.g. Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008; Kendall & Marzano, 1977; Kleickmann, Richter, Kunter, Elsner, Besser, Krauss, & Baumert, 2012). Within a transmission orientation, teachers are expected to be content experts and masters of the subject matter. Furthermore, the role of expert in the subject is correlated with teachers’ knowledge of the subject they are to teach. This is the knowledge-oriented dimension, i.e. the teacher as expert in the content area. In research surrounding literacy and the teaching and learning of ELA in teacher education, Bainbridge and Macy (2008) speak to the different aspects of the transmission approaches. They note that, in their study of pre-service teacher education programs, some believe this approach provides student teachers with the opportunity to be engaged in intensive direct teaching of what is commonly referred to as basic literacy skills (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). Those who advocate the transmission approaches emphasize providing language learners with clear targets and then moving them towards achieving it. From the transmission orientation perspective, the main focus of teacher education is the transmission of subject content (Barr, Watts-Taffe, Yokota Ventura, & Caputi, 2000). Rolheiser (1999) writes that transmission-oriented educators believe that teachers can be the experts who guide learners in structured, direct learning experiences in order to develop specific skills and knowledge. This view of teaching operates from a belief that there is a fixed curriculum that needs to be transmitted to the students (p. 129). In review of ELA education in the United States, Goodman (2011) notes that the transmission model of teaching was very much in evidence in the past sixty years. In fact, transmission and constructivist models have ‘ebbed and flowed but neither completely dominated . . . both models maintain their influences on language arts teaching and learning . . . and that they have become more or less prominent for theoretical, social, and political reasons’ (p. 17). Goodman points out that ‘the professionalization of literacy teaching and the development of literacy learning depends on teachers who understand and are committed to what they know is best for their students’ (p. 17). In teacher education programs where English is taught as a second language, there is a strong orientation towards a transmission pedagogy which aims to transmit information and skills articulated in the curriculum directly to students. Cummins and Davison (2007) note that, historically, ESL has been rooted within this traditional orientation. In a transmission orientation, the teacher is constructed as expert and knowledge-holder, students as passive recipients. Often the transmission approach to language and literacy instruction uses a lecture method. It is a means to transmit information from a teacher to a group of students. It is also a one-way process where teachers are active agents of instruction, and students are passive listeners (Henderson & Nash, 2007). In ESL teacher education settings, we may see methods of oral translation, dictation, and focus on delivering subject matter knowledge followed by tests and examinations as assessments.
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In some countries where English is considered and taught as a foreign language in teacher education programs, the subject matter commonplace continues to be the dominant starting point. Within these teacher education programs, preservice and in-service teachers are trained to become content experts so that they can transmit this knowledge to their students in the classrooms. For example, in the knowledge base of pre-service English teacher education in Argentina (Banegas, 2014), all curricula should be structured around three macro fields in which the subject-specific field course load takes up to 50–60%, the general knowledge field course load takes 25–35%, and the professional practice field course load takes only 15–25%. Subject-specific fields include such subject matter courses as English language interculturality, grammar, phonetics, literature, diction, text, and discourse across all four years of the education program for initial English language teachers.
Social Constructivist Orientation As attention grew toward Schwab’s notion of the learner and milieu commonplaces, the social constructivist orientation became more prominent in teacher education programs. Educators become increasingly cognizant of the important social factors involved in both the construction and appropriation of knowledge. According to Schwab, milieus refer to the school and classroom ‘where the child’s learning will take place’ (Schwab, 1973, p. 503). Schwab also describes other relevant milieus: ‘the family, the community, and the particular groupings of religious, class or ethnic genus’ (p. 503). Social constructivist educators generally believe that learners will construct their own meaning through a range of experiences, social interactions, and discussions. We understand this to mean that shared meaning making or coconstruction of meaning making in a social community is critical in this stance. Cummins and Davison (2007) note, ‘social constructivist pedagogy incorporates the “direct instruction” focus on transmission approaches but broadens it to include the development of higher-order thinking abilities based on teachers and students co-constructing knowledge and understanding’ (p. 971). The importance of the learner’s knowledge is emphasized and valued. Discussions are stressed as a means for students to share their knowledge (Demirel, 2006). Schwab (1973) notes attention to the learner commonplace requires ‘general knowledge of the age group under consideration’ by taking into account what they already know, what is difficult, their aspirations, anxieties, and other ‘intimate knowledge of the children under consideration – knowledge achieved by direct involvement with them’ (p. 502). As the social constructivist approach to literacy teaching gained momentum, curriculum reform also began to reflect these changes. For example, Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde (2012) suggest that the central principles of critical, reflective, and constructivist approaches to literacy teaching are captured
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in the Standards for English Language Arts developed by the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). In 2005, the IRA board of directors established a Teacher Education Task Force to analyze current reading teacher education research. This resulted in a review and critique of 298 studies conducted from 1980 to 2006 (Risko, Roller, Cummins, Bean, Block, Anders & Flood, 2008). In their analysis, Risko et al. (2008) state that 73% of researchers, in their study of individual literacy courses, subscribed to constructivist approaches to theoretical orientations for literacy instruction. The research in English language arts teacher education programs highlights philosophical underpinnings rooted in a social constructivist stance. Ways of incorporating social constructivism into the teaching of English language arts in teacher education are suggested or made explicit through the teaching of literacy, portfolio assessment, cooperative learning, and both discussion and lecture classes (Smith, 2014). Action research, as another approach and strategy to enhance teacher development, has been introduced to and practiced by language teachers (Denscombe, 2014; Forsman, 2012; Kiilo & Kutsar, 2012; Wallace, 1998). Reflective teaching, or critical reflection, is also increasingly practiced in language and literacy teaching and language teacher development in ESL teacher education programs (Farrell, 2013). Research findings indicate that critical reflection as teacher inquiry helped both pre- and in-service teachers deal with situations of uncertainty, instability, and value conflict in multiple contexts, enhanced teachers’ understanding, and brought about changes in their teaching beliefs and awareness of instructional effectiveness (Chi, 2013). In China, the largest EFL-learning country, there is a growing shift from the teacher’s role as disseminator or knowledge-giver to mediator; this shift in the language teaching and language teacher education has been a focus of innovation that is increasingly being encouraged in some pre- and in-service teacher education programs. Rather than focusing on subject matter, research in EFL teacher education is moving towards an integration of the communicative language teaching approach in the social milieu where teaching and learning occur (Cheng, 2014). For example, pre-service teachers are learning to have children/ students practice language in authentic contexts and through conversations between learners and with the teacher rather than a focus on instructor/teacher dictation transmitted down to students.
Transformative Orientation In Schwab’s framework, the teacher commonplace refers to knowledge of the teachers: their backgrounds, ‘personalities, characters and prevailing moods’ (Schwab, 1973, p. 504). Schwab (1973) stresses ‘[t]his should include what these
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teachers are likely to know and how flexible and ready they are likely to be to learn new materials and new ways of teaching’ (p. 504). When Schwab’s teacher commonplace was foregrounded in teacher education, teachers were seen as ‘transformative intellectuals who strive not only for academic advancement but also for personal transformation, both for themselves and for their learner’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 9). Teachers were seen as valuable knowledge-holders in their own right. In ESL teacher education research, transformative approaches to pedagogy are believed to have broadened the focus further by ‘emphasizing the relevance not only of transmitting the curriculum and constructing knowledge but also of promoting critical literacy among students to enable them to analyze societal discourse and to influence these discourses by means of social action’ (Cummins & Davison, 2007, p. 971). In a comparative study in Canada, it was found that both ELA teachers and ESL adult literacy educators recognized their role of transformative educator as being co-learner, facilitator, guide, counselor, manager, expert, and planner (Margo, 2002). In EFL teacher education, transformation is called upon by the current practice. Sociocultural, political, ideological, and critical issues need to be addressed in the post-transmission alternative approaches and theories. In Iran, Safari and Rashidi’s research (2015) in teacher education noted the importance of policy makers, educators, and teachers working to adopt alternative theories and approaches in order to improve pre-service and in-service EFL teacher education. Abednia’s (2012) observation in a teacher education course found that participant in-service Iranian EFL teachers experienced a professional identity reconstruction ‘from conformity to and romanticization of dominant ideologies to critical autonomy, from no orientation or an instrumentalist orientation to a critical/transformative orientation of teaching, and from a linguistic and technical view to an educational view of second language education’ (p. 706). The transformative orientation is increasingly realized and embodied in different aspects of teacher education in ELA, ESL, and EFL settings. In terms of the means of teacher education, narrative and collaboration are emphasized. Narrative has functioned as a vehicle for teacher inquiry and a meditational tool for externalization, verbalization, and systematic examination in fostering language teacher professional development (Johnson & Golombek, 2011). Collaborative learning, along with reading from the literature, is reported to be successful in an ESL/EFL continuing professional development program due to the context of collaboration as supportive, reassuring, and incorporating shared values (Kiely, 2010). In terms of the component of teacher education, a critical reorientation of ESL/EFL teachers’ worldviews and beliefs about English language teaching, learning, and communication is included in an English as lingua franca teacher education model conducted in Greece and Turkey (Sifakis, 2007; Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015).
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Research in Language Teacher Education – ELA, ESL, EFL contexts Reflective Approach Though one particular theory of teaching may be transmitted in a language teacher education program, we should be aware that teaching is also a highly personal and individual activity. Teachers may develop their own theories of teaching based on personal principles, beliefs, and experiences. Teachers’ personal theories of teaching are formed and developed by critical reflection and self-assessment. Critical reflection has been accepted as a useful approach for language teacher education, which ‘seeks to engage teachers in articulating and examining the assumptions that underlie their teaching, and in developing personal principles of best practice that can support their approach to teaching’ (Richards, 2000, p. 3). Dewey defined reflective thinking as ‘active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it and the further consequences to which it leads’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 9). Four types of reflection were identified: reflection-in-action, reflectionon-action, reflection-for-action and action research (Farrell, 2007, 2013; Schön, 1987). Building on Schön’s work, in the ESL field, Farrell (2013) suggests ESL teachers may reflect on three different and hierarchical levels: descriptive, conceptual, and critical. Reflection can be practiced in three ways: alone, with critical peers, and in groups. Some of the tools that are often used for reflective ESL teaching include journals, classroom observations, critical incident analysis, case study reflection, concept mapping, and teaching portfolios. These types, levels, methods, and tools of reflective approach towards English language teaching can be used by either pre- or in-service English teachers to develop their reflective teaching practice as well as by teacher educators in ELA, ESL and EFL teacher education programs. However, different reflective tools are found to bear effectiveness and challenges in different ways. For example, research on the effectiveness of journal writing for Iranian in-service EFL teacher education (Abednia, 2012) shows that journal writing has contributed in multiple aspects, such as EFL teachers’ self-awareness, understanding of issues related to English teaching, reasoning skills, and dialogue with the teacher educator. Another example is Geyer’s (2008) research on classroom observation in a pre-service foreign language teacher education program in the US, which shows that two types of classroom observation, whole-class and targeted observation, have their distinct advantages and each reveals different aspects of the teaching process. Hence, the study suggests that both types of observation should be included in teacher education programs. With the development of multi-literacy and multi-modality in teacher education, teaching portfolios, especially electronic portfolios, are proved to be
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effective for reflective practice. For example, based on a four-year experiment, The Network Electronic Portfolio is reported to work well in both EFL teaching and teacher development (Kabilan & Khan, 2012). In EFL teaching, it provides distant interaction and collaboration possibilities between students and teachers, and develops students’ independent work skills and self-reflection; in teacher development, it helps pre-service foreign language teachers become more creative and develop more professionally competent personalities capable of planning and following their own educational route (Bezukladnikov & Kruze, 2015). E-portfolios have also been recognized as an alternative form of assessment for English language teacher learning (Kabilan & Khan, 2012). A reflective approach towards ELA, ESL, and EFL teaching and teacher education is helpful in transforming teachers from technicians to professionals, and from recipients of research findings to reflective inquirers. However, there are still challenges in the process of teaching and teacher education. A case in point is a research study conducted by Cirocki and colleagues (Cirocki, Tennekoon, & Pena Calvo, 2014) on Sri Lankan in-service ESL teachers, which reveals that Sri Lankan ESL teachers consider reflective practice as important and useful elements in their professional development. However, they also find that reflective practice has still not made an impact on the ESL context in Sri Lanka. In another study, Kabilan and Khan (2012) also note the challenges in using e-portfolios as a tool of reflective approach in EFL teaching and teacher education, such as interrupted internet connection, negative attitudes of participants, time constraints, workload, and ethical issues.
Action Research Mills (2000) defined action research as: Any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. The information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in general, and improving student outcomes. (p. 4)
The defining characteristic of action research is its aim to solve a particular real life and practical problem/issue in the classroom. The practitioner actively participates in the research process by generating possibilities for change and then implementing and evaluating their effectiveness (Denscombe, 2014). Like the other three types of reflective practice, action research can be used as a method in both language teaching and language teacher education, particularly for inservice/practicing teachers as they are situated in a real life classroom in which they can conduct research. Various models of action research have been developed over the years. For example, Stringer’s model (Stringer, Christensen, & Baldwin, 2009, p. 12)
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emphasizes community-based action research, Mills’s model (Mills, 2000, p. 18) focuses on the steps in action research, while Wallace’s (1998) model points to the importance of teachers’ reflective development. Moreover, in Wallace’s (1998) research, he specifically addresses the issues related to action research for language teachers, which includes developing a research topic, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting the research findings. Action research can enhance both pre- and in-service language teachers’ professional development, such as improving teaching skills, developing new methods of teaching and learning, increasing power of analysis, heightening selfawareness, and shifting their teaching beliefs. Applied to language arts teacher education, this practical approach or strategy may result in ‘produc[ing] guidelines for best practice’ (Denscombe, 2014, p. 6). Additionally, action research may be a valuable tool to develop pre-service English language teachers’ self-efficacy. In a study by Cabaroglu (2014) on the impact of action research on pre-service EFL teacher development, the participants were reported to have experienced growth in teaching efficacies, increased self-awareness, improved problem-solving skills, and enhanced autonomous learning. In a study intended to examine the ways in which action research projects can be used to socialize in-service teachers to the teaching of English language learners in the US (Sowa, 2009), the participants were reported to have grown as teachers, and to be more reflective and more confident about teaching in general, and teaching English language learners in particular. Action research projects are also increasingly being implemented to help develop the professional identity of pre-service EFL teachers. For instance, in Finland, Ruohotie-Lyhty and Moate (2016) reported that their research provided a relational picture of the identity development of pre-service Finnish EFL teachers. According to the research findings on pre-service English language teachers in Hong Kong as reported by Trent (2010), in the process of professional identity development, the trainee teachers contested previously held perceptions about their engagement in teaching. Much literature on action research in teacher education has revealed a growing attitude that it may be used in and for language teacher development, that is, to change and shift the practice of language teachers. For example, Naci (2015) reported that teachers were positive towards, and capable of carrying out, action research. Moreover, they were hopeful that engaging in action research would help them improve their practice and overcome inadequacies in their educational environment even in a highly centralized education system. It is important to note that tensions also exist in the process of engaging in action research and attempting to make shifts in teachers’ practice. Price and Valli (2005) highlight five central points of tensions: individual and institutional change, action and understanding, support and challenge, passion and reason, and regulation and emancipation.
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Native English Speaking Teachers and Non-Native English Speaking Teachers In order to obtain and reach higher standards of English language proficiency, there has been an increased focus on the attributes and roles of the teacher (Schwab, 1973), particularly in ESL and EFL contexts in teacher education. As we further examined the research in language teacher education, our findings pointed to two main schemes that were persistent in the English language teaching discourse, particularly in EFL and ESL settings. The first scheme is the international trend towards recruiting Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs), known in Hong Kong as Native English Teachers (NETs), in classrooms and in post-secondary institutions (Benson, 2012). The NETs scheme was first introduced in Hong Kong in 1998 (Lai, 1999). As the demand for trained English teachers rose, NETs were recruited from abroad in order to teach the English language in secondary schools. Some countries in the Asia-Pacific region have implemented a similar scheme in schools and institutional settings. For example, in Japan, the Japanese Exchange and Teaching (JET) program was introduced by the government in 1987 (Lai, 1999; Tajino & Tajino, 2000). In South Korea, the English Program in Korea (EPIK) is modeled after the JET program (Kwon, 2000). The other prevalent scheme is Non-Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) in ESL and EFL settings. Medgyes’ (1994) seminal book, which focused on the respective capacities of native and non-native teachers, sparked global interest and debate among educational researchers. The distinction and the research surrounding these two schemes require further investigation – as Benson (2012) reminds us, this distinction is ‘central to everyday English language teaching (ELT) discourse and practice in many parts of the world’ (p. 484). Benson (2012) highlights this importance in teacher education as he writes, In teacher education, discourses on the strengths of NNESTs and NESTs may also be relevant to the ways in which pre-service student teachers construct their ‘authority to teach’ English. In Hong Kong, NESTs are able to base authoritative identities on the assumption that their native-speaker competence provides privileged access to linguistic and cultural knowledge, while local NNESTs can base their identities on the assumption that they know Hong Kong students well and share their first language. (p. 486)
Adding to this complexity is another distinction within the NNESTs scheme, which differentiates between local and non-local NNESTs. According to Benson (2012), non-local NNESTs are understood to come from other parts of the world to teach English in ESL and EFL settings. Benson (2012) notes that perhaps the most significant distinction between local and non-local NNESTs is the degree to which ‘teachers share linguistic, cultural, and educational experiences with their students’ (p. 484). Some of the reasons most cited in the research for this shift towards employing NESTs is an assumption that native English speakers may have a stronger
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command of the language. They are perceived to be more fluent, more able to model and correct pronunciation and language forms, and to be more conversant with the cultural appropriateness of the English language (Mahboob, 2004; Meadows & Muramatsu, 2007; Medgyes, 1996; Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2002). Moreover, within this prevailing view, the NESTs are expected to provide a model for pre-service teachers to immerse themselves in the culture, accent, pronunciation, spelling, and grammar of the language (Meadows & Muramatsu, 2007). Alternatively, some studies also emphasize the strengths of the NNESTs’ teaching in ESL and EFL contexts for several reasons. NNESTs are believed to be able to provide a positive learner model to their students, and to effectively teach language learning strategies, listening, and grammar in ESL and EFL settings (Alrabah, Wu, Alotaibi, & Aldaihani, 2016; Mahboob, 2004). The instruction and teaching of English grammar in particular by NNESTs are cited in several studies as strengths (Meadows & Muramatsu, 2007; SuriatiJusoh, Alias, Siraj, De Witt, Hussin, & Darusalam, 2013). For example, Madrid and Canado (2004) in Spain found that students and teachers from various levels of education believed they benefited from learning from non-native speakers of English, as they more likely share the same cultural and language background. These common experiences are all seen as assets in ESL and EFL contexts in both in-service and pre-service education programs; as teachers are also learners of English themselves, this shared connection may thereby provide them with greater empathy and insight into the needs of their learners/students (Barratt & Kontra, 2000).
Conclusion In our examination of the research shaping the landscapes of literacy and language arts in teacher education programs, two main factors emerged and intersected, influencing and shaping each other. One is the way in which definitions of literacy and the language arts have evolved and shaped curriculum reforms and teacher education programs in the English Language Arts, English as a Second or Additional Language, and English as a Foreign Language contexts. The other is the different dominant theories, stances, and schemes shaping pedagogy and approaches to language and literacy instruction in teacher education. There is much debate and, at times, controversy on best practices and research in teacher education surrounding the teaching of English language in different contexts. Schwab’s (1973) four commonplaces (subject matter, learner, milieu, and teacher) helped us position some of the dominant ideologies and curriculum para digms which have shaped particular research and teacher education programs around the world. Regardless of one’s stance and beliefs on these different issues facing the landscape of teacher education, we agree with Bainbridge and Macy (2008), who remind us, ‘the underlying philosophy of a teacher education literacy
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program should be continually discussed, revised, and reinterpreted in order to address the rapidly changing needs of our diverse university and school populations’ (p. 81). The implications of this review of the literature in teacher education in the areas of literacy and ELA, ESL, and EFL remind us of the importance of reflecting on our own practice as teachers and teacher educators. In addition, this chapter highlights the importance of further discussions in teacher education to inform pedagogical decisions, policy, curriculum, and teachers’ practice, and – ultimately – to enhance the learning of students and learners at all levels of education.
References Abednia, A. (2012). Teachers’ professional identity: Contributions of a critical EFL teacher education course in Iran. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(5), 706–717. Alrabah, S., Wu, S., Alotaibi, A. M., & Aldaihani, H. A. (2016). English teachers’ use of learners’ L1 (Arabic) in college classrooms in Kuwait. English Language Teaching, 9(1), 1–11. Bainbridge, J. M., & Macy, L. (2008). Voices: Student teachers link teacher education to perceptions of preparedness for literacy teaching. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(2), 65–83. Ball, D. L., Thames, M. H., & Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: What makes it special? Journal of Teacher Education, 59(5), 389–407. Banegas, D. L. (2014). Initial English language teacher education: Processes and tensions towards a unifying curriculum in an Argentinian province. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 13(1), 224–237. Barr, R., Watts-Taffe, S., Yokota, J., Ventura, M., & Caputi, V. (2000). Preparing teachers to teach literacy: Rethinking pre-service literacy education. Journal of Literacy Research, 32(4), 463–470. Barratt, L., & Kontra, E. (2000). Native English-speaking teachers in cultures other than their own. TESOL Journal, 9(3), 19–23. Benson, P. (2012). Learning to teach across borders: Mainland Chinese student English teachers in Hong Kong schools. Language Teaching Research, 16(4), 483–499. Bezukladnikov, K. E., & Kruze, B. A. (2015). Modern education technologies for pre-service foreign language teachers. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 200, 393–397. Cabaroglu, N. (2014). Professional development through action research: Impact on self-efficacy. System, 44(3), 79–88. Cheng, X. Y. (2014). A review of role shifts among China’s secondary school EFL teachers from a social constructivist perspective. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(4), 801–809. Chi, F. M. (2013). Turning experiences into critical reflection: Examples from in-service teachers. AsiaPacific Journal of Teacher Education, 41(1), 28–40. Cirocki, A., Tennekoon, S., & Pena Calvo, A. (2014). Research and reflective practice in the ESL classroom: Voices from Sri Lanka. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(4), 24–41. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London and New York: Routledge. Cummins, J., & Davison, C. (2007). Introduction: Research and teacher education in ELT: Meeting new challenges. In J. Cummins, & C. Davison (Eds). International handbook of English language teaching (pp. 963–972). New York: Springer. Demirel, O. (2006). Egitimde Program Gelistirme. Ankara: Pegem Akademi Yayıncılık. Denscombe, M. (2014). The good research guide: For small-scale research projects. Maidenhead, Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
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Farrell, T. S. C. (2007). Reflective language teaching: From research to practice. London: Continuum Press. Farrell, T. S. C. (2013). Reflective practice: Reawakening your passion for teaching. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Forsman, L. (2012). Investigating the cultural dimension in foreign language education – from transmission of facts to dialogical uptake. Education Action Research, 20(4), 483–496. Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2001). Guiding readers and writers (grades 3–6): Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gallego, M. A., & Hollingsworth, S. (2000). What counts as literacy: Challenging the school standard. New York: Teachers College Press. Gee, J., Hull, G., & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. Boulder, CO: Westview. Geyer, N. (2008). Reflective practices in foreign language teacher education: A view through micro and macro windows. Foreign Language Annals, 40(4), 627–638. Goodman, Y. M. (2011). Sixty years of language arts education: Looking back in order to look forward. English Journal, 101(1), 17–25. Gunderson, L., D’Silva, R., & Odo, D. (2009). ESL (ELL) literacy instruction. New York: Routledge. Henderson, G., & Nash, S. S. (2007). Excellence in college teaching and learning: Classroom and online instruction. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, Ltd. Johnson, K., & Golombek, P. (2011). The transformative power of narrative in second language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 45(3), 486–509. Kabilan, M. K., & Khan, M. A. (2012). Assessing pre-service English language teachers’ learning using e-portfolios: Benefits, challenges and competencies gained. Computers & Education, 58(4), 1007–1020. Kendall, J. S., & Marzano, R. J. (1977). Content knowledge. A compendium of standards and benchmarks for k-12 education (Second edition). Aurora, CO: Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory. Kiely, R. (2010). From transmission to transformation: Teacher learning in English for speakers of other languages. Language Teaching Research, 14(3), 277–295. Kiilo, T., & Kutsar, D. (2012). Exploring constructivist social learning practices in aiding Russianspeaking teachers to learn Estonian: An action research approach. Educational Action Research, 20(4), 587–604. Kleickmann, T., Richter, D., Kunter, M., Elsner, J., Besser, M., Krauss, S., & Baumert, J. (2012). Teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge: The role of structural differences in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(1), 90–106. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012). Language teacher education for a global society: A modular model for knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing. New York: Routledge. Kwon, O. (2000). Korea’s English education policy changes in the 1990s: Innovations to gear the nation in the 21st century. English Teacher, 55(1), 47–91. Lai, M-L. (1999). Jet and Net: A comparison of native-speaking English teachers schemes in Japan and Hong Kong. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 12(3), 215–228. DOI: 10.1080/07908319908666579 Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). New technologies in early childhood literacy research: A review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 3(1), 59–82. Lasagabaster, D., & Sierra, J. M. (2002). University students’ perception of native and non-native speaker teachers of English. Language Awareness, 11(2), 132–142. Lotherington, H. (2007). From literacy to multiliteracies in ELT. In J. Cummins, & C. Davison (Eds). International handbook of English language teaching (pp. 891–905). New York: Springer. Madrid D., & Canado, M. L. P. (2004). Teacher and student preferences of native and non-native foreign language teachers. Porta Linguarum, 2(6), 125–137. Mahboob, A. (2004). Native or nonnative: What do students enrolled in an intensive English program think? In L. Kamhi-Stein (Ed.), Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on nonnative English-speaking professionals (pp. 100–120). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
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Margo, K. M. (2002). Exploring teaching roles and responsibilities in adult literacy education: Do teachers see themselves as transformative educators? (September 19, 2002). Adult Education Research Conference. Paper 41. http://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2002/papers/41 Meadows, B., & Muramatsu, Y. (2007). Native speaker or non-native speaker teacher? A report of student preferences in four different foreign language classrooms. Arizona Working Papers in SLA & Teaching, 14, 95–109. Medgyes, P. (1994). The non-native teacher. London: Macmillan. Medgyes, P. (1996). Native or non-native: Who’s worth more? In T. Hedge, & N. Whitney (Eds). Power, pedagogy & practice (pp. 31–42). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mills, G. (2000). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Naci, K. (2015). Teacher researchers in action research in a heavily centralized education system. Educational Action Research, 23(2), 140–161. National Council of Teachers of English. (1996). Standards for the English Language Arts. Urbana, IL., IRA, Newark, DE. O’Quinn, E. J. (2005). Critical literacy in democratic education: Responding to sociopolitical tensions in US schools. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(4), 260–267. Pearson Education Limited. (2009). Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (5th Ed.). London: Pearson Longman. Price, J., & Valli, L. (2005). Preservice teachers becoming agents of change. Journal of Teacher Education, 56(1), 57–72. Richards, J. (2000). Beyond training. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Risko, V., Roller, C. M., Cummins, C., Bean, R. M., Block, C. C., Anders, P. L., and Flood, J. (2008). A critical analysis of research on reading teacher education. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(3), 252–288. Rolheiser, C. (1999). Redesigning teacher education: The delicate, demanding dance of ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’. In M. Wideen & P. Lemma (Eds), Ground level reform in teacher education: Changing schools of education (pp. 119–148). Calgary, AB: Detselig Enterprises. Ruohotie-Lyhty, M., & Moate, J. (2016). Who and how? Preservice teachers as active agents developing professional identities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 55(1), 318–327. Safari, P., & Rashidi, N. (2015). Teacher education beyond transmission: Challenges and opportunities for Iranian teachers of English. Issues in Educational Research, 25(2), 187–202. Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Towards a new design for teaching and learning in the profession. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Schwab, J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501–522. Schwab, J. (1983). The practical 4: Something for curriculum professors to do. Curriculum Inquiry, 13(3), 239–265. Sifakis, N. (2007). The education of teachers of English as a lingua franca: A transformative perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(3), 355–375. Sifakis, N., & Bayyurt, Y. (2015). Insights from ELF and WE in teacher training in Greece and Turkey. World Englishes, 34(3), 471–484. Smith, R. D. (2014). Teaching evolving literacies in an era of national standards. Virginia English Journal, 64(2), 40–59. Sowa, P. (2009). Understanding our learners and developing reflective practice: Conducting action research with English language learners. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(8), 1026–1032. Stringer, E., Christensen, L, & Baldwin, S. (2009). Integrating teaching, learning, and action research: Enhancing instruction in the K-12 classroom. London: Sage. SuriatiJusoh, F., Alias, N., Siraj, S., De Witt, D., Hussin, Z., & Darusalam, G. (2013). Research and trends in the studies of native & non-native speaker teachers of languages: A review on selected researches and theses. Malaysian Online Journal of Educational Sciences, 1(1), 30–42. Tajino, A., & Tajino, Y. (2000). Native and non-native: What can they offer? Lessons from team-teaching in Japan. ELT Journal, 54(1), 3–11.
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Trent, J. (2010). Teacher education as identity construction: Insights from action research. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(2), 153–168. Wallace, M. J. (1998). Action research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Worthman, C., & Kaplan, L. (2001). Literacy education and dialogical exchange: Impressions of Cuban education in one classroom. The Reading Teacher, 54(7), 648–656. Zemelman, S., Daniels, H., & Hyde, A. (2012). Best practice: Bringing standards to life in America’s classrooms (4th Ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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37 Teacher Education in Social Studies and Civic Education Wing On Lee and Maria Manzon
Introduction This chapter will describe teacher education and professional development in social studies and civic education. The main argument of the chapter is that the field of social studies is emerging and thus diverse, both in terms of its conceptualization and pedagogical practice. Not only is there disagreement in the field’s definitions, but also in the subject’s contents, pedagogical approaches, and curricular space. These diverse conditions make teacher education difficult and contested. Drawing on Schwab’s (1973) concept of commonplaces of curriculum as a theoretical framework, we argue that multiple factors intervene in the shaping of teacher education in social studies and civic education in different contexts and at different levels. We take three main factors, namely subject matter, teacher, and context, to frame the cases discussed in this chapter. Subject matter – the interpretations of content and methods of social studies and civic education – is one explanatory factor shaping the curriculum. Another factor is the teachers who are the gatekeepers of the enacted curriculum as demonstrated by the pedagogies they use. The final factor refers to the nestedness of social studies curricula, pedagogies, and teacher education in macro sociopolitical and cultural contexts. Contexts further, and perhaps largely, account for diversity in this field. The chapter comprises four main sections. The first will discuss the evolving nature of the field of social studies and civic education. It is followed by a review of teacher education and professional development in social studies internationally, in order to lay the foundations for the third section, which describes the
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diversity in teachers’ views on citizenship, the corresponding pedagogies they adopt, and their embeddedness in their macro contexts. The cases used in this section are taken from research in the Asia-Pacific region. While echoing similar themes in other parts of the world, they enrich our knowledge from different perspectives. Finally, the fourth section describes some implications for teacher education and professional development in social studies and civic education.
Diverse Interpretations of Subject Matter: Civic Education and Social Studies This section will discuss civic education and social studies under the lens of Schwab’s (1973) subject matter commonplace. ‘Subject matter’ is taken to refer to both content and methods as inseparable entities. In the first place, why do we use the two terms, social studies and civic education? In the literature, these two terms have been used interchangeably. In addition, there are other similar terms being used interchangeably as well, such as citizenship education, moral and national education, and education for democratic citizenship, among others. Scholars speaking of citizenship in particular characterize it by where it stands on the continua of minimal and maximal citizenry (McLaughlin, 1992), of thick and thin citizenship (Walzer, 1994), and of vague and precise descriptions (Heater, 1997). Even for such a common term as ‘social studies’, scholars highlight the lack of consensus about its nature – whether it is broadly an academic discipline or narrowly a school subject for citizenship formation (Evans, 2004). For the purposes of this chapter, we use the US National Council for the Social Studies’ (NCSS) definition of ‘social studies’ as: the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. (…) [Its] primary purpose (…) is to help young people make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world. (NCSS, 1994, p. 3)
Based on this definition, social studies is intertwined with and geared towards civic education, citizenship education, and global citizenship education. In this respect, the literature reviewed in this chapter draws on this diverse usage of terminology. The lack of conceptual clarity about the nature of social studies suggests a similar lack of clarity about how it should be taught. The findings from the IEA Civic Education Studies in 1999 and 2008 confirm this. Both studies, respectively covering 28 countries in 1999 and 38 countries in 2008, revealed that teachers were almost equally divided in supporting the following three stances on citizenship education: (1) citizenship should be taught as a specific, stand-alone subject (either compulsory or optional); (2) citizenship should be taught via integration into other subjects; and (3) citizenship should be taught via cross-curricular
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activities (Losito & Mintrop, 2001; Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, & Losito, 2010). These divergent positions are also found in studies on citizenship education in Asia and the Pacific. Lee (2008) analyzed the citizenship curriculum in 12 jurisdictions in this region and concluded that it is always conflictual, with unfinished tensions and contentions in its definitions and pedagogies. These disagreements reflect that the subject, or the discipline, is emergent in nature. Thus, it is not clear what should be the right vehicle to contain this area of teaching. Should it be a subject, and, if so, then what subject? Should it be delivered by cross-disciplinary, cross-curricula, total curricula, or whole-school approaches? These questions are still undergoing debate. In addition to, and partly as a consequence of, the contested nature of social studies, there is a great variety of subjects being used to teach citizenship. These include history, geography, language and literature, social studies, religion and ethics, ethics/morality, personal and social education, social and political education, morals and civics, history and politics, history and civics, democracy, peace and social life, homeland and society, human beings and society, society and ethics, law and economics, economics and public affairs, and science/environmental education. Subject diversity also implies diverse perceptions of civic education and how to teach it (Lee, 2002). Lee (2008) further points out that, in China, citizenship education is a combination of civic education, moral education, political education and ideological education. In Taiwan, the citizenship curriculum is represented by life and ethics, morality and health, and civics and morality, and, at a certain point in time, national education. Singapore is perhaps the most adventurous in its attempts to try using different subjects to teach citizenship. Since its establishment, Singapore has introduced 12 different subjects for teaching citizenship, with new subjects replacing older ones in an interval of three to five years. Specifically, the subjects were ethics (1959), civics (1967), education for living (1973), moral education (1978), good citizen (primary) (1981), being and becoming (secondary) (1981), religious knowledge (1984), social studies (primary) (1994), national education (1997), social studies (secondary) (2001), and character and citizenship education (2010) (Lee, 2013, p. 245). Examining the question about civic education contents, teachers expressed diverse opinions. For example, according to the 2008 IEA Civic Education Study, out of the 38 countries, 25 countries covered human rights, 23 countries covered understanding different cultures and ethnic groups and the environment, 22 covered parliamentary and governmental systems, and 20 covered voting and elections, whereas only 11 countries covered resolving conflict, 12 covered economy and economics, and regional institutions and organizations, and, lastly, 14 countries covered communications studies. At the extreme, only five countries covered voluntary groups (Schulz et al., 2010). This discussion shows the lack of agreement in nomenclature, definitions, curricular forms, contents, and methods. This alludes to the constructedness of the field of social studies education, as it is embedded within the personal,
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structural, and institutional constructions of each society, of which education and teacher education play a key role (Vickers & Kumar, 2015). This confusion partly explains the continued disagreement about the knowledge and skills to be required for social studies teachers (Huddleston, 2005). The following section reviews the literature on pre-service and in-service teacher education in social studies and civic education.
The Education and Professional Development of Social Studies Teachers Teachers play a pivotal role in students’ learning to be good citizens of the nation and the world. The following literature review mainly focuses on social studies teachers’ pre-service and in-service education. It serves to update two state-ofthe-field reviews published in 2008 in the Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education on teacher education and professional development, respectively (Adler, 2008; van Hover, 2008).
Social Studies Teacher Education Adler (2008) reviewed the state of research in social studies teachers’ pre-service education from 1994 to 2005, in the context of the United States. She also noted an emerging research in the mid 2000s, which explored the ‘interrelationships among teacher practices, the context of those practices, and teachers’ beliefs and perspectives’ (Adler, 2008, p. 329). Adler categorized the practices in social studies teacher education into the following components: social studies methods courses, field experiences, working with diverse learners, reflection by pre-service teachers, and the use of technology. Below are some of these dimensions based on the international literature we have reviewed for the period 2006 to 2016. Social studies methods courses
Initial teacher education methods courses include training to facilitate class discussions on controversial issues and perspective taking, developing interdisciplinary curriculum in collaboration with English and foreign language classes, and experiential learning. With respect to the teaching of controversial issues, some studies indicated insufficient teacher training and the wider cultural-political context as inhibitors for trainee teachers to open up these topics. A comparative study of teacher education in England and South Africa attributed this to insufficient role modeling in teacher education programs. University tutors expose student teachers to controversial topics but do not work through the principles and methods of handling those issues in the classroom (Chikoko, Gilmour, Harber, & Serf, 2011; Erickson & Miner, 2011). In South Korea, controversial
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instruction is undermined by the paucity of reflective thinking on controversial issues. Misco (2016) characterized this cultural attitude as ‘We are only looking for the right answers’. Other studies point to the benefits of social studies courses in honing certain skills among pre-service teachers, including: democratic citizenship skills such as problem solving, social participation and media literacy (Ahrari, Othman, Hassan, Samah, & Silva, 2013), planning skills (Akkus, 2015), and being transformative agents of change in early childhood education (Adler & Iorio, 2013). Shimura (2015) surveyed teachers from 79 Japanese municipal primary schools and concluded that teachers who majored in social studies demonstrated the ability to develop customized teaching materials compared with their counterparts who lacked this specific content training. A growing number of studies explored the relationships between social studies methods courses and pre-service teachers’ beliefs and/or classroom practices (Bauml, 2016; Buchanan & Crawford, 2015; Castro, 2014). Dündar (2015) found that the deep learning approach in a social studies methods course significantly contributed to Turkish future teachers’ teaching efficacy beliefs. Field experiences
This refers to collaborations between schools and universities/teacher training institutions in both pre-service and in-service education. Research in this area demonstrates positive effects on the beliefs and practices of social studies teachers (Adler, 2008). An all-Ireland study reported on student teachers’ experiences of teaching primary geography during their school placements (Dolan, Waldron, Pike, & Greenwood, 2016). It illustrated the complexity of school placement as both an affective and cognitive engagement journey for trainee teachers. Similarly, a study on the teaching of Britishness in the UK through higher education partnerships indicated a gap between trainee teachers’ awareness of this agenda and their actual practices (Jerome & Clemitshaw, 2012). In post-conflict countries (e.g. Croatia, Sierra Leone), teacher training programs promote new teaching and learning methodologies which address behavior change, communication, and conflict-resolution (španja, 2011; UNICEF, 2016). Technology
New technologies provide additional resources to support both direct instruction and student-centered learning, as well as promote collaborations across classrooms in different cultures. Some studies have reviewed successful cases of technology integration in social studies classrooms (Beck & Eno, 2012; Debele & Pleyvak, 2012). One such example is the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms initiative, which partners classrooms in different parts of the world, enabling teachers to improve their skills (British Council, 2016). Another is the
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online classroom simulation which proved to enhance teacher professional identity in initial teacher education (Carrington, Kervin, & Ferry, 2011). Singapore adopted the Critical Web Reader as a means of teaching social studies. The software was developed by Indiana University, and with this technology the Singapore teachers and students are connected to their counterparts in the United States, thus both managing to teach social studies with cross-cultural approaches and perspectives (Baildon, 2011). Reflection
In line with the move to foster teachers as reflective learners, Adler (2008) cited the use of online journals and problem-based learning in pre-service education. One such recent study among Jordanian pre-service social studies teachers revealed that journal writing served multiple purposes (Al-karasneh, 2014). It fostered holistic reflection on student teachers’ teaching, and motivated them to learn and gather beneficial feedback to improve their practices. Research on the power of self-study for social studies teachers and teacher educators is also growing (e.g. Crowe, 2010; Ritter, 2012).
Social Studies Teacher Professional Development Van Hover (2008) examined the research undertaken from 1995 to 2005 on the professional development of social studies K–12 teachers in the US context. She highlighted that effective professional development should take into account the beliefs and prior knowledge of in-service teachers, in addition to the school culture and structures in which teachers are embedded. This section builds on van Hover’s review and broadens it to the international context, with updates for the period 2006 to 2016. We added three new categories to van Hover’s, namely, international professional development, experienced teachers, and lifelong and life-wide learning. Beginning teachers
This is an important phase in teacher development and socialization within social studies education. Studies point to the benefits of structured research to encourage beginning teachers’ reflection on their students’ cognition (Conklin, Hawley, Powell, & Ritter, 2010). On a small scale, various studies report on the role of critical friendships in providing pedagogical, affective, and intellectual support for beginning teachers (e.g. Gradwell & Lorrei, 2013; Logan & Butler, 2013). Teacher community
This is a growing area of research in professional development. It includes the formation of learning communities such as the use of lesson study in history
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teaching (e.g. Howell & Saye, 2016), and co-teaching and embedded professional development in social studies for students with disabilities (Shaffer & Thomas-Brown, 2015). Researchers also reported on evidence-based collaborative inquiry in New Zealand schools (Sinnema, Sewell, & Milligan, 2011) and collaborative inquiry for curriculum development in citizenship education in the Netherlands (Willemse, ten Dam, Geijsel, van Wessum, & Volman, 2015). ‘Traditional’ modes of professional development
These take the form of workshops and summer institutes which are mainly content-specific (e.g. history, civics, and geography), offered by various organizations. In the area of civics, the Center for Civic Education (CCE) in the US conducts the James Madison Legacy Project, which provides high-quality professional development in civics and government to over 2,000 teachers (CCE, 2016). As for geography, the National Geographic Network of Alliances for Geography Education (NGS Alliance, 2016) consists of 52 US state-based organizations and one each in Canada and Puerto Rico, which promote partnerships between university faculty and K–12 educators. Researchers also analyzed how to improve the dialogue between social studies teachers and museum educators for more effective collaborations (Wright-Maley, Grenier, & Marcus, 2013). Cross-cultural professional development
Choi and Shin (2016) reported on the benefits and limitations of international professional development for a group of US social studies teachers who experienced cross-cultural learning in South Korea. The program served as a collaborative learning community that contributed to the professional growth and confidence of the teachers as global educators. However, its short-term nature posed challenges in sustaining teacher self-efficacy and/or changing teachers’ neo-liberal worldviews. Likewise, contextual barriers in the home country limited curricular and pedagogical innovations for global education. Experienced teachers
A new strand of research involves experienced social studies teachers and the role of rationale development – the importance of teachers’ purposes – in teaching social studies (Hawley & Jordan, 2014). A New Zealand study revealed that, contrary to the mainstream literature, there is an agreement between students and experienced teachers about the nature and purpose of social studies education (Hawe, Browne, Siteine, & Tuck, 2010). The authors attributed this to teachers’ common ‘apprenticeship of experience’ in classrooms, the broader socio-historical context, a shared prevalent educational discourse, and the common lack of experience in formal knowledge of social science.
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Lifelong and life-wide learning
A case study of 15 social studies teachers in Ontario by Schugurensky and Myers (2003) revealed that civics and citizenship education teaching is highly influenced by early family socialization, previous experience in teaching, and actual civic engagement. They suggest the promotion of lifelong citizenship learning. The above review of research on teacher education and professional development in social studies highlights the idea that preparation for teachers begins not only in pre-service education but prior to it. It is a lifelong process of learning. It likewise indicates gaps which need to be addressed in the transition from trainee ship to actual practice, as teachers form their professional identity in interaction with the real contexts of schooling and society. The following section will focus on the teacher as the ultimate decision maker in the enactment of social studies curricula across and in interaction with diverse sociocultural and political contexts.
Diverse Interpreters of Civic Education and Social Studies: Teachers and Contested Pedagogies Huddleston (2005) highlighted the importance of the educational traditions within each country and how they influence the curricular position of social studies and civic education. This section will expound on the teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper (Thornton, 1991) in citizenship education. Taken from the Asia-Pacific context1, a set of cases exemplifying practices in strong states will be examined, followed by practices of other countries with different emphases.
Strong State Approaches in Asia Singapore is an example of a strong state with a clear expectation for citizenship education to play an explicit role in national education. Various studies have examined social studies teachers in Singapore. Baildon and Sim (2009, p. 407) explored Singapore teachers’ views on and practices of critical thinking in social studies. They identified ‘three key tensions involving teaching critical thinking in an exam culture, uncertainty about what constitutes the “out-of-bound”, and the issue of professional identity’. Sim’s (2010) analysis of Singapore citizenship teachers revealed that they are not homogeneous despite working within the framework of a tightly organized, state-oriented and prescriptive citizenship education curriculum. They adopt pedagogies based on their interpretation of the role of citizenship education in national education. Social studies teachers thus play the role of ‘readers’ of the curriculum and pedagogical texts and practices. They act as curricularinstructional gatekeepers and make their own meanings in citizenship education. Sim’s qualitative study of eight social studies teachers revealed four types of
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pedagogical approaches and orientations. These approaches were: expository and highly controlled, rationalistic and persuasive, interactive and participative, and constructive and experiential. Their pedagogical orientations ranged from nationalistic to socially concerned, to personal orientations. Pedagogies for conservative nationalistic education adopt a top-down approach, which is teacher-centered and didactic, knowledge-based and content-based, exercising control through social studies as a visible subject and as an examinable subject. As a subject in national examinations, the teaching process is characterized by ‘teaching to the test’ through repetitive drilling exercises for the appropriate response in examinations. Templates are provided and there are always right and wrong answers (an approach that resonates with the Korean case; see Misco [2016] above). Nevertheless, progressive nationalistic-oriented teachers prefer more active learning, group work, and rational thinking, so as to co-construct nationalistic goals. They regard nationalistic education as a process of persuasion and engagement rather than drilling. This notwithstanding, the socialization goal of setting ‘correct knowledge and values to function in society’ (Sim, 2010, p. 233) remains the same. Thus the progressive teachers are still exercising epistemic authority, but in an open and subtle way. Citizenship teachers also act in a subtle way in Pakistan. As reported by Dean (2010), citizenship education has always been ideological, religious, and nationalistic. Social studies textbooks use Islamic ideology to develop a sense of national identity, which is promoted through a denial of cultural and religious diversity and by cultivating loyalty to the nation and Islam. The textbooks state that Pakistan is a democracy but promotes military rule and a militarized state. In the classroom, didactic approaches are predominant, being teacher-centered and lecture-based. However, the strong-state orientation in citizenship education does not preclude variations. Whilst read-explain-question formulates the predominant mode of teaching in class, some teachers choose to ask students to read, or to ‘talk’, and discuss civic issues relevant to the local context and daily life experiences. Some teachers facilitate discussion in class and group work, organize student debates during national day and Muslim religious festivals, and engage in community service as part of civic learning. In the case of Japan, as reported by Kobara (2010), social studies covers a range of areas that serve the interests of the nation, the community, and the international community. While citizenship education goals are quite ‘collective’ in terms of being focused upon national, community, and international community interests, the pedagogical approaches adopted by teachers are rather personoriented. Japanese teachers emphasize experience and understanding, explanation and inquiry, problem solving, decision making, and social construction. Similarly, in China, as reported by Zhao and Fairbrother (2010), nationalistic education is always a focus of citizenship education. Local citizenship educators have developed innovative and indigenous pedagogies, including aesthetic appreciation, dialogical approaches, life-practice and activity-oriented approaches, and
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learning-to-care approaches. They are quite different from the international literature on citizenship pedagogy. They are both indigenous and authentic, strongly intertwined with the cultural context of teaching and learning in China. For example, the record of five loves (loving the society, loving the collectivity, loving parents, loving peers, and loving the circumstances), eight particulars (investigation, extending knowledge, being sincere in thought, rectifying the heart and mind, cultivating oneself, regulating the family, governing the state well, and bringing peace to the world), three dimensions of affective education (content, format, and capacities), and four dimensions of contents (self, others, nature, and society). A closer look at all these locally developed approaches suggest that they tend to be person-oriented in addressing various dimensions of individuality, such as psychological health, self-cultivation, investigation, and dialogue. Nevertheless, the person-oriented pedagogies are tools for collective goals, like the case of the Philippines as will be discussed below.
Alternative Approaches in Asia The case of Thailand displays the alignment of citizenship education with global emphases. According to Lawthong (2010), the government promotes citizenship pedagogies that would enhance citizen autonomy, such as conflict resolution, debate, and collaborative learning. However, according to a survey reported by Lawthong, these rank low among the citizenship skills of Thai teachers. Moreover, most teachers prefer a more didactic, ‘teacher control’ strategy. The main reason given by the teachers is the lack of training, but this also reflects that the training provided for teachers is not consistent with the pedagogical approaches proposed in official curriculum documents. As reported by Jennifer Lee (2010), Taiwan’s citizenship education has gone through stages of development from being nationalistic-focused towards being person-oriented, emphasizing critical thinking. The Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum Plan for Elementary and Junior High Schools implemented in 2001 introduced social studies as the subject for citizenship education. The nature of the subject is non-prescriptive, and covers a range of citizenship dimensions, including national education, as well as multicultural perspectives, activist conceptions, and the world community. It is inclined towards issues-based and higher-order thinking. However, traditional lectures and large group instruction continue to dominate classroom teaching. Subject teaching is examination driven. Civics-related subjects are reduced to memorizing facts, and there is little attention towards critical thinking and civic participation skills. The use of student-centered and nation-centered pedagogies in teaching democracy is visible in the Philippines (Almonte-Acosta, 2010). In relation to the national agenda in citizenship education, the teaching of values and patriotism is important, emphasizing social awareness, empathy, and a firm commitment to the common good – a balance between individual and social needs. In the
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Philippines, Araling Panlipunan (social studies) and Edukasyon Pagpapahalaga (values education) contribute to Makabayan (patriotic education). National goals in citizenship education are achieved by means of both student-centered and nation-centered citizenship education. Didactic approaches are regarded as a means of achieving nationalistic goals, being described as the ‘text and talk, teacher directed approach’ (Almonte-Acosta, 2010, p. 183). This approach is textbook based, content based, instruction based and examination based, trying to achieve ‘a single way of concept’ and ‘content acquisition’. The sampled Philippine teachers sought to provide classroom situations that would facilitate free expression, diverse opinions, and dialogue, but they also wanted to ‘instill’ the ideas that ‘everyone has responsibility and accountability to the nation’. Even when implementing cooperative learning, the sample teachers tended to connect the students’ discussion and presentations to the textbooks, and emphasize the points relevant for the examination. This examination-based approach tends to justify didactic transmission as acceptable. This section has elucidated the pedagogies employed by teachers using a range of approaches from strong-state to person-oriented with underlying nationalistic, individual, and/or global emphases. They have illustrated that teachers are at the center of curriculum enactment and that, in interaction with structural and societal constraints and opportunities, the pedagogies they employ sometimes exhibit a paradoxical relationship with the subject matter of social studies and civics education. The following section teases out some implications of the above discussions for teacher education.
Implications for Teacher Education for a FutureOriented Citizenship Education The twenty-first century is marked by rapid changes and uncertainties. Societies are becoming more globalized and pluralistic where diverse values and cultures co-exist. A future-oriented citizenship disposition is apposite and teacher education has an important role to play in this regard. Teachers and teacher educators are called upon to make a pedagogical shift from conservative to progressive approaches in order to develop values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge for global citizenship (APCEIU-UNESCO, 2013, p. 1). New pedagogies would involve more transformative and participatory skills where the teacher is a guide and facilitator (UNESCO, 2015). Such pedagogical shifts would benefit from whole-school approaches that are rooted in quality teacher-student relationships and in contextual knowledge (Crick, Coates, Taylor, & Ritchie, 2004). Presumably, the quality of dialogue and discourse is central to learning in citizenship education. Thus, teacher-pupil relationships need to be inclusive and respectful, where student voices are heard and empowered. Contextual knowledge and problem-based thinking can lead to citizenship
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engagement and action. In this respect, school leadership plays a key role in enabling participative and democratic processes and dispositions among its educational stakeholders. In 2015, UNESCO Bangkok launched a project on ‘Preparing teachers for global citizenship education’. It delineated three core inter-related dimensions which provide a conceptual framework: the cognitive, the socio-emotional, and the behavioral (Summary Report, 2015). The report particularly noted that their relationship is not linear. Moreover, taking action may be the necessary catalyst to change behaviors and feelings, since it is by doing that we learn, and by learning that our feelings can change. The report further pointed out that students and young children are more open and accepting [than adults], and perhaps would be better teachers of global citizenship education. [A] reversal of roles between teachers and students may be necessary, including letting students re-design the curriculum and assessment of systems. (Summary Report, 2015, p. 3) [italics added]
In summary, teacher education for a future-oriented global citizenship education would need to prepare teachers to be dialogical, collaborative, and student-centered. They would employ transformative and multi-disciplinary pedagogies, viewing citizenship education as a journey and a process (Summary Report, 2015).
Conclusion In a discussion on initial teacher preparation for citizenship education, McGettrick (2002) pointed out that there are broadly three models or typologies of citizenship pedagogies, namely, transmission, process, and transformation. Of particular relevance to this chapter is the transformational professional model. It is concerned with a ‘re-professionalization of the educator’ as a facilitator of learning, where learning is a process of transforming society. It is based on the education of the teacher as a primary agent for social change and development, having to be flexible in relation to the curriculum, which is considered to be the vehicle of thought and transformational thinking. This is, in many ways, risktaking, holistic and uncertain. It relies on long-term dialogues on education change and social reform. The various case studies on social studies pedagogies reviewed above show that teachers are curriculum makers. Despite the official instructions and expectations of how social studies is to be taught, teachers teach in the ways they judge to be appropriate, both considering what is desirable and what is feasible. This shows that, far from being passive implementers of the curriculum, teachers have acted as change agents in the process of curriculum delivery, and in the process of deciding what would best fit their students. This is based on teachers’ professional judgment, and thus further shows the significance of teacher education for social studies, citizenship education, and related studies.
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This chapter has shown the diverse views on social studies and civic education, in terms of what it is and how it is to be taught. It has demonstrated that, unlike any other subject in the curriculum, civic education and social studies are directly linked to the nations’ identities, images, and views of citizenship. Due to this complexity, teaching and teacher education approaches differ not due to the discipline per se, but due to the subtle or grand changes in the national and international spheres and to how teachers negotiate and interpret such shifts through the pedagogies they employ. Despite their diversity, they tend to converge on a set of universal values that uphold human rights, equality, inclusion, and empowerment. When citizenship education is future-oriented, it also allows for, and indeed requires, students’ participation both in discussion and in action for co-constructing the future. In this sense, pedagogies have to be transformative, and learning has to be an experiential process and a journey, based upon which students develop the attributes relevant not only for the evolving society but also for themselves as human persons.
Note 1 These examples were drawn from two projects on citizenship education in Asia-Pacific, conducted by Lee and his colleagues, resulting in two publications (Grossman, Lee, & Kennedy, 2008; Kennedy, Lee, & Grossman, 2010).
References Adler, S. (2008). The education of social studies teachers. In L. Levastik & C. Tyson (eds), Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 329–351. Adler, S., & Iorio, J. M. (2013). Progressive teachers of young children: Creating contemporary agents of change. International Journal of Progressive Education, 9(2), 129–143. Ahrari, S., Othman, J., Hassan, M. S., Samah, B. A., & Silva, L. D. (2013). Role of social studies for preservice teachers in citizenship education. International Education Studies, 6(12), 1–8. Akkus, Z. (2015). Activity-based teaching in social studies education: An action research. Educational Research and Reviews, 10(14), 1911–1921. Al-karasneh, S. M. (2014). Reflective journal writing as a tool to teach aspects of social studies. European Journal of Education, 49(3), 395–408. Almonte-Acosta, S. A. (2010). Pedagogical approaches to citizenship education in the varied contexts of secondary schools in the Philippines. In K. J. Kennedy, W. O. Lee & D. L. Grossman (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 175–201. APCEIU-UNESCO (2013). Teacher preparation for global citizenship education in Southeast Asia: Key issues, challenges, and possibilities, Report on the Conference co-organized by APCEIU and UNESCO, 5–7 December. http://gced.unescoapceiu.org/data/(Concept%20note)%20Sub-regional%20Workshop %202013%20Teacher%20Preparation%20for%20global%20Citizenship%20Education%20 in%20Southeast%20Asia.pdf. Downloaded on 22/06/2016.
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Baildon, M. C. (2011). A critical resource for web-based teaching. Research in Education, 1, 9. Singapore: Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education. https://www.nie.edu.sg/docs/defaultsource/nie-research/oer-nie-reed1_final-for-web.pdf?sfvrsn=2. Downloaded on 22/06/16. Baildon, M., & Sim, J. B-Y. (2009). Notions of criticality: Singaporean teachers’ perspectives of critical thinking in social studies. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(4), 407–422. Bauml, M. (2016). Is it cute or does it count? Learning to teach for meaningful social studies in elementary grades. Journal of Social Studies Research, 40(1), 55–69. Beck, D., & Eno, J. (2012). Signature pedagogy: A literature review of social studies and technology research. Computers in the Schools, 29(1–2), 70–94. British Council. (2016). Connecting classrooms. https://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/aboutprogrammes/connecting-classrooms. Downloaded on 17/03/17. Buchanan, L. B., & Crawford, E. O. (2015). Teaching for sustainability in a social studies methods course: Opportunities and challenges. Social Studies Research and Practice, 10(2), 135–158. Carrington, L., Kervin, L., & Ferry, B. (2011). Enhancing the development of pre-service teacher professional identity via an online classroom simulation. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 19(3), 351–368. Castro, A. (2014). The role of teacher education in preparing teachers for critical multicultural citizenship. Journal of Social Studies Research, 38(4), 189–203. CCE (2016). Center for Civic Education – Professional Development. http://www.civiced.org/community/ teachers/professional-dev. Downloaded on 04/05/16. Chikoko, V., Gilmour, J. D., Harber, C., & Serf, J. (2011). Teaching controversial issues and teacher education in England and South Africa. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(1), 5–19. Choi, Y., & Shin, E. K. (2016). Rethinking the hermit kingdom: US social studies teachers’ crosscultural professional development in South Korea. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 44(2), 188–202. Conklin, H. G., Hawley, T. S., Powell, D., & Ritter, J. K. (2010). Learning from young adolescents: The use of structured teacher education coursework to help beginning teachers investigate middle school students’ intellectual capabilities. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(4), 313–327. Crick, R. D., Coates, M., Taylor, M., & Ritchie, S. (2004). A systematic review of the impact of citizenship education on the provision of schooling. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education. Crowe, A. R. (ed.) (2010). Advancing social studies education through self-study methodology: The power, promise, and use of self-study in social studies education (Vol. 10). Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. Dean, B. (2010). Citizenship education in Pakistan: Caught in the stranglehold of transmission pedagogies. In K. J. Kennedy, W. O. Lee & D. L. Grossmann (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 129–147. Debele, M., & Plevyak, L. (2012). Conditions for successful use of technology in social studies classrooms. Computers in the Schools, 29(3), 285–299. Dolan, A. M., Waldron, F., Pike, S., & Greenwood, R. (2016). Learning to teach primary geography in the context of school placement: Lessons from an all-Ireland study. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 20–35. Dündar, S. (2015). Are prospective elementary school teachers’ social studies teaching efficacy beliefs related to their learning approaches in a social studies teaching methods course? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 40(7), 70–85. Erickson, L., & Miner, A. (2011). Social studies teacher educators as curriculum makers: Engaging teacher candidates in democratic practices. In J. Kitchen, D. Ciuffetelli Parker & D. Pushor (eds), Narrative Inquiries into Curriculum Making in Teacher Education (Advances in Research on Teaching Volume 13). Bingley, UK: Emerald, pp. 151–168.
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Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York: Teachers College Press. Gradwell, J. M., & Lorrei, D. (2013). ‘The second we stop growing we are dead’: Examining a middle grades social studies professional dyad. Middle School Journal (November 2013), 3–11. Grossman, D. L., Lee, W. O., & Kennedy, K. J. (eds) (2008). Citizenship curriculum in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong. Hawe, E. M., Browne, I., Siteine, A., & Tuck, B. (2010). Beliefs of experienced and student teachers about the nature and purpose of social studies education in New Zealand elementary schools. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 30(3), 289–304. Hawley, T., & Jordan, A. (2014). Exploring rationale development as intellectual professional development for experienced social studies teachers. Journal of Thought, Fall-Winter 2014, 2–12. Heater, D. (1997). The reality of multiple citizenship. In I. Davies & A. Sobisch (eds), Developing European Citizens. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University Press, pp. 21–48. Howell, J. B., & Saye, J. W. (2016). Using lesson study to develop a shared professional teaching knowledge culture among 4th grade social studies teachers. The Journal of Social Studies Research, 40(1), 25–37. Huddleston, T. (2005). Teaching training in citizenship education: Training for a new subject or for a new kind of subject. Journal of Social Science Education, 4(3), 50–63. Jerome, L., & Clemitshaw, G. (2012). Teaching (about) Britishness? An investigation into trainee teachers’ understanding of Britishness in relation to citizenship and the discourse of civic nationalism. Curriculum Journal, 23(1), 19–41. Kennedy, K. J., Lee, W. O., & Grossman, D. L. (eds) (2010). Citizenship pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong. Kobara, T. (2010). Exemplary social studies lessons in Japan: Pedagogy for effective citizenship education. In K.J. Kennedy, W.O. Lee & D.L. Grossmann (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 107–125. Lawthong, N. (2010). Pedagogies for citizenship education in Thailand: The gap between government policy and implementation. In K.J. Kennedy, W.O. Lee & D.L. Grossmann (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 203–220. Lee, J. W. S. (2010). Structure and agency: A comparison of youth learning of citizenship in Taipei and Calgary. In K.J. Kennedy, W.O. Lee & D.L. Grossmann (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 81–105. Lee, W. O. (2002). The emergence of new citizenship: Looking into the self and beyond the nation. In G. Steiner-Khamsi, J. Torney-Purta & J. Schwille (eds), New Paradigms and Recurring Paradoxes in Education for Citizenship: An International Comparison. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd, pp. 37–60. Lee, W. O. (2008). Tensions and contentions in citizenship curriculum in Asia and the Pacific. In D. L. Grossman, W. O. Lee & K. J. Kennedy (eds), Citizenship Curriculum in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 215–231. Lee, W. O. (2013). The development of a future-oriented citizenship curriculum in Singapore: Convergence of character and citizenship education and curriculum 2015. In Z. Deng, S. Gopinathan & C. K. E. Lee (eds), Globalization and the Singapore Curriculum: From Policy to Classroom. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 241–260. Logan, K., & Butler, B. M. (2013). What do we know about elementary social studies? Novice secondary teacher educators on learning to teach elementary social studies methods. Studying Teacher Education, 9(3), 267–283. Losito, B., & Mintrop, H. (2001). The teaching of civic education. In J. Torney-Purta, R. Lehmann, H. Oswald & W. Schulz (eds), Citizenship and Education in Twenty-Eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen. Amsterdam: IEA, pp. 157–173.
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McGettrick, B. (2002). Professional values and students learning: Models of initial teacher education for the future. Paper presented at the Conference on PGCE Programmes, University of Nottingham, 9 July, Nottingham. McLaughlin, T. H. (1992). Citizenship, diversity and education: A philosophical perspective. Journal of Moral Education, 21(3), 235–250. Misco, T. (2016). ‘We are only looking for the right answers’: The challenges of controversial issue instruction in South Korea. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 36(3), 332–349. NCSS (1994). Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: NCSS. NGS Alliance (2016). National Geographic Network of Alliances for Geography Education – About us. http://alliances.nationalgeographic.com/about. Downloaded on 04/05/16. Ritter, J. K. (2012). Modeling powerful social studies: Bridging theory and practice with preservice elementary teachers. The Social Studies, 103(3), 117–124. Schugurensky, D., & Myers, J. (2003). A framework to explore lifelong learning: The case of the civic education of civics teachers. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 22(4), 325–352. Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Kerr, D., & Losito, B. (2010). Initial findings from the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. Amsterdam: IEA. Schwab, J. J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501–522. Shaffer, L., & Thomas-Brown, K. (2015). Enhancing teacher competency through co-teaching and embedded professional development. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 3(3), 117–125. Shimura, T. (2015). Primary geography education in Japan: Curriculum as social studies, practices and teachers’ expertise. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 5(2), 151–165. Sim, J. B-Y. (2010). Simple ideological ‘dupes’ of national governments? Teacher agency and citizenship education in Singapore. In K. J. Kennedy, W. O. Lee & D. L. Grossmann (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 221–242. Sinnema, C., Sewell, A., & Milligan, A. (2011). Evidence-informed collaborative inquiry for improving teaching and learning. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 247–261. Španja, S. (2011). The educational program Zajedno Jači (Stronger Together) in Croatia. Intercultural Education, 22(4), 351–353. Summary Report (2015). Preparing teachers for global citizenship education, July 27–29, 2015, Bangkok. http://www.unescobkk.org/fileadmin/user_upload/apeid/GCED2015/GCED-SumRpt.pdf. Downloaded on 17/03/2017. Thornton, S. J. (1991). Teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper in social studies. In J. P. Shaver (ed.), Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning. New York: Macmillan, pp. 237–248. UNESCO (2015). Global Citizenship Education: Topics and learning objectives. Paris: UNESCO. UNICEF (2016). Sierra Leone ‘Emerging Issues’ Teacher Training Programme. http://ungeiblog.sectae. com/resources/sierra-leone-emerging-issues-teacher-training-programme/ Downloaded on 17/03/17. van Hover, S. (2008). The professional development of social studies teachers. In L. Levastik & C. Tyson (eds), Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 352–372. Vickers, E., & Kumar, K. (2015). Constructing modern Asian citizenship. Oxford: Routledge. Walzer, M. (1994). Thick and thin: Moral argument at home and abroad. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. Willemse, T. M., ten Dam, G., Geijsel, F., van Wessum, L., & Volman, M. (2015). Fostering teachers’ professional development for citizenship education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 118–127. Wright-Maley, C., Grenier, R., & Marcus, A. (2013). We need to talk: Improving dialogue between social studies teachers and museum educators. The Social Studies, 104(5), 207–216. Zhao, Z. Z., & Fairbrother, G. P. (2010). Pedagogies of cultural integration in Chinese citizenship education. In K.J. Kennedy, W.O. Lee & D.L. Grossmann (eds), Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht: Springer/Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, pp. 37–52.
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38 The Political Shaping of Teacher Education in the STEM Areas To n y B ro w n
School subjects like Mathematics and Science have been re-conceptualised as part of the armoury of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), responding to a commonly conceived purpose of supplying the world’s workforce with the resources needed to support economic wellbeing through technological development (Tytler, Swanson & Appelbaum, 2015; Freeman, Marginson & Tytler, 2015). With the metaphorical underpinning of being straight and strong, the centre from where everything grows, the acronym STEM drives an insistent and well-funded project of advancing our understandings in those areas of the curriculum. Schooling is increasingly shaped and judged by its perceived capacity to deliver success in terms of international competitiveness as measured in testing programmes such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which have perhaps privileged Western concerns. Governments around the world, however, have been jockeying for a better position in the resulting league tables, which are supposedly indicative of wider economic competitiveness. They have been seduced by the appeal of raising standards in a statistically defined world. What had been introduced to measure school performance, however, now defines what it is and polices its boundaries. That is, such comparisons have transformed the content of what they compare and the demands on the teachers preparing to meet these newly defined challenges. A possible consequence of this has been an overly restrictive understanding of mathematics and science through being referenced to their socio-economic potential. But, whilst these subjects have become a priority across nations through research funding and the like, growth in these subjects is hampered by a
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shortage of people qualifying as teachers either because of perceived or actual difficulty, or because of their lack of popularity for other reasons. Yet policy responses to these economic priorities and actual teacher supply have been conceptualised in diverse ways across different countries (Brown & Clarke, 2013). This chapter examines some examples of policy initiatives consequential to this re-casting of mathematics and science. It first explores the impact on teacher education in these areas with reference to two very different state-led responses to changing teacher preparation. In some countries teacher education increasingly comprises a vocational employment-based model of training located primarily in schools. England is a prominent example, with similar models being introduced in New Zealand and the United States. This approach is in sharp contrast to models followed in continental Europe subject to the Bologna Process, where student teachers spend much more time in university (e.g. five years in Finland where a masters’ degree is required). These two approaches reveal radically different conceptions of how teacher quality might be improved in the name of international competitiveness. In the first, teacher education has been wrested from its traditional home within the academy where universities play a support role to what has become ‘school-led’ training where government funds for teacher education have been diverted to schools. Teacher professional identity has been referenced to skill development within this frame and the wider assessment culture. The second model, meanwhile, is similarly concerned with ‘raising teacher quality … (but specifically) in a way which responds to the challenges of lifelong learning in a knowledge based society’ (ENTEP: Dimitropoulos, online). It is characterised by reinvigorated faith in academic study and promotion of individual teachers, where a pedagogical dimension is included from the outset of undergraduate studies, but with relatively brief periods spent in school. Second, the chapter focuses more directly on how policy administration relates to ideological conceptions of the task of teaching. Who does the curriculum target and why? For example, a major report suggested that school science in Europe is often conceptualised as a necessary transit for those following scientific study at university whilst neglecting ‘the needs of the majority of students who require a broad overview of the major ideas that science offers, how it produces reliable knowledge and the limits to certainty’ (Osbourne & Dillon, 2008). Technology, as a school subject, is a weaker partner in its STEM membership with its more precarious place on the curriculum (Bartex, 2011). The case of the US reform movement in mathematics is taken in this chapter as a key example of how ideological differences create alternative priorities in conceptualising the challenges of education, then compete in determining teacher education practices and how teacher practice relates to curriculum structure. That is, does education constitute the delivery of basic skills or are students required to build their own constructions? The ‘mathwars’ in the US were a particular manifestation of this divide. Similarly, teachers are given varying responsibility across countries as to their responsibility to build their own constructions of what it is to teach. Similar
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debates are also alive in science teacher education across Europe (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, 2011). The chapter will commence by outlining the way in which two radically alternative conceptions of teacher education have emerged in Europe, both seemingly in response to the ascendance of international comparisons as a framework of reference in deciding policies motivated by assumptions of education being linked to economic wellbeing. The chapter outlines how both models trouble common assumptions about the role of universities in teacher education and how market conditions can undermine educational principles and customary practice. In the second part attention turns to how ideological conceptions of learning and teaching drive teacher development and identifications with particular modes of practice. Anecdotal material from teacher educators and trainees is drawn from a study spanning the UK, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Japan (Brown, Rowley & Smith, 2014, 2015ab).
Alternative conceptions of teacher education across school and university settings In England, atypically perhaps among other countries, most teacher education has moved into schools with universities playing a more peripheral role. This is ostensibly a lower-cost approach to teacher education that may appeal to other countries. The point of this section, however, is not to invite international readers to try this at home. The more general issue relates to how teacher education knowledge is conceptualised, how this shapes practice but also questioning how and why university contributions have been conceptualised in the way that they have been, and if they deliver on their promise. The chapter asks whether the choice between the benefits of school-based training and of university-led teacher education is as obvious as it may first appear. By taking an atypical perspective on more familiar models the rationale for these models might be seen differently, whilst raising the more generic issue of how learning to teach happens differently across university and school locations.
School-Based Teacher Education University teacher education in England generally has been redefined through new priorities determined by, among other things, budgetary constraint, problems with teacher supply (Rowland & Ruthven, 2011) and perceived school performance as compared with other countries (Department for Education (DFE, 2010). The teacher education function has been re-distributed through governmental mandate to include professional and subject mentors within the school setting challenging the more familiar university-based models. These mentors are themselves classroom teachers with their own classes to teach.
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This arrangement is thought to provide immediate opportunity for student teachers to develop classroom skills (DfE, 2010). The student teachers spend much less time at university with tutors, where they have some limited scope to reflect on their practice and to consider educational theory (Smith, Hodson & Brown, 2013a). Something of the order of 30 days are spent at a university during a oneyear postgraduate ‘training’ course, where the chief university responsibility is oversight and accreditation for a process primarily administered by schools. University teacher educators and school mentors, however, may have very different priorities for their roles in teacher training, such as those relating to how subject knowledge is understood, meeting the demands of testing, effectively using materials, learning a range of pedagogical strategies or building personal involvement in the subject. There are different ways of understanding the disciplinary knowledge that teachers need. Schools may prioritise the immediacy of classroom practice or following centralised guidance; universities may prioritise the more intellectually based elements such as pedagogical subject knowledge, building professional autonomy, or meeting the demands of formal qualification (Hobson, Malderez & Tracey, 2009; Hodson, Smith & Brown, 2011). Hitherto, relatively little research has been carried out on how increased school-based training supports the pedagogical subject knowledge aspects of teacher education, and how they are conceptualised, prioritised and enacted, so that further interventions could be better informed. Brown et al. (2015a) discuss a few instances of subjects being reshaped to fit their new state of priority. Yet overall we know little about how new teachers understand subject knowledge following training across school and university settings (Rowland, Turner, Thwaites & Huckstep, 2009) and how student teachers of science conceptualise their own teaching in schools (Heywood & Parker, 2010). Meanwhile, the tendency in some countries to take charge of school practices through a multitude of regulatory devices, such as through frequent testing, prescriptive curriculum and school inspection (Askew, Hodgen, Hossain & Bretscher, 2010; Brown, 2011) has resulted in mathematics and scientific subject knowledge becoming understood through a culture of performativity (Pampaka, Williams, Hutcheson, Wake, Black, Davis & Hernandez-Martinez, 2012). This insistence on following centralised documents has deflected attention from knowing how the re-distribution of teacher education has resulted in student teachers actually understanding and meeting the professional challenges they face. These changing policies affect the challenges faced by teacher-educators and ‘school mentors’, and in turn influence student teachers’ conceptions of subject knowledge and its teaching. The policies also impact on the identity of the student teachers. Are they student teachers engaged in an educative process developing the ability to lead curriculum initiatives as they later become professional teachers? Or are the trainees fulfilling the requirements of training, working to the current models of school practice, as specified by the government? That is, are teachers curriculum makers, or curriculum implementers (Schwab, 1983;
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Clandinin & Connelly, 1992)? One is moved to suggest that school-based trainees are being prepared primarily for the latter and will take their chances in being carried along in the future rather than having been prepared directly to address changes in professional circumstances. We now turn to the contrasting situation in continental Europe. Here we shall find an approach that has provoked some concern through its lack of connection to school practice.
University-Based Teacher Education There are still many regional variations across Europe yet: ‘Almost all countries introduced reforms in initial primary teacher education after the initiation of the Bologna Process (1999)’ (ENTEP: Dimitropoulos, online), similarly for secondary subject teachers and half of pre-primary sectors of education. This has led to the establishment of a ‘European Teacher Education Area’. The model is motivated by sharing good practices and creating mutual trust in the teaching qualifications awarded across member states with a view to enabling shared accreditation and greater mobility across European countries. This approach has disappointed some students studying primarily to get a job in a given location. The lengthy academic training often conducted by people with relatively little experience of schools can seem distant from the more practical challenges ahead. In Germany teachers need to get through four to five years prior to being admitted to the school practicum phase of 18 months to two years. In Spain all primary teachers study at university for four years including short periods in school. Yet this investment retains wide support across European nations. As one German primary mathematics teacher educator put it, ‘The university is a space to question. What for? Why? How could it be different? Rather that being in a state of permanent emergency (as in school-based work) … A teacher is not just a craftsman’. This intensification of the academic component can be seen as a further distancing from practical concerns for student teachers in those countries (Hudson & Zgaga, 2008). Once qualified, however, following an extended school placement after the academic component has been completed, rather more professional autonomy can be asserted than in the policy-dominant approach in England. That is, the teachers are given more responsibility for making local decisions, thus setting the curriculums to a greater extent.
Contrasting the Two Models Lower-cost school-based teacher education may appeal to an increasing number of governments in building and influencing the practice of their teaching forces. But three questions immediately present themselves: Does it provide a viable alternative to university-based teacher education? Does it alter the composition of the pedagogical subject knowledge it seeks to support? Is it low cost, or at least good value for money? The particular impact on different school subjects
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as a result of these contrasting approaches relates to the way in which conceptions of the subjects derive from where understandings of them are developed, whether in schools or in universities. For those in schools little more may be done than enable teachers to work through commercial schemes as implementers of curriculum. For those following university intensive courses relatively low attention is given to the practical school aspects during the university element where the creative aspect is not extensive. To summarise key issues emerging in our study one might highlight:
Some Limitations of School-Based Teacher Education a) Performance-driven assessment affects the nature of subject knowledge
School-based practice has been driven by the need to meet assessment requirements. Trainee teachers are given fewer opportunities to conceptualise other modes of practice. By emphasising the elements that are more likely to be tested, subject knowledge may be diminished. Current conceptions of school mathematics and science, for example, are supported but only in a narrow way if judged primarily by their ease of assessment. Less emphasis is placed on pupils being able to adjust to future demands. This emphasis drives compliance to external demands in which student teachers and their pupils play a smaller part in the construction of the subjects. There is a culture of ‘getting it done’ or ‘giving the method’ rather than teaching for understanding: ‘Does that make sense . . . is that realistic?’ An occasional decision to ‘step back’ from the formal in the name of building understanding, ‘light bulbs were going on everywhere’, was seen as an exception rather than the norm in the anecdotal material (Smith et al., 2013b). The thrust in English schools over recent years has been towards supporting a skills-based agenda. For example, following a governmental-led ‘back to basics’ campaign England succeeded in moving from 18th to 7th position in mathematics on TIMSS in 2007, whilst dropping in its rankings from 8th to 25th on more problem-focused measures, such as PISA, in 2006. Being a teacher is understood in terms of shaping subject knowledge in line with curriculum specification to meet the required forms to suit the given class composition. This external specification can lead to some issues of continuity in education in England where successive phases (e.g. exams at 16+, 18+ and university degree level) each works to a different discursive frame as to how teachers, students and mathematics are each understood. b) School-based training can nurture narrow administrative conceptions of teaching
For student teachers on school-based routes, being initiated into teaching by way of their placement schools’ insistence on following specific textbooks ‘page after
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page’ in some instances diverted student teachers from trying out ideas introduced in university sessions. This administrative insistence on a clearly defined but narrow route resulted in an antipathy to risk. This is perhaps unsurprising for primary students (those teaching ages 5–11) who have usually not gone beyond their 16+ examinations in mathematics or science. Yet even for secondary teachers (those teaching ages 11–16) with formal mathematics backgrounds there was some trepidation in relation to the mathematical demands of teaching. Many student teachers in mathematics and science now feel the need to follow special courses to enhance their subject content knowledge in advance of commencing formal teacher education. Yet these occasionally negative assessments of school-based training limiting the development of subject knowledge are countered by some additional pedagogical factors that were seen as conferring some benefit:
Some Benefits of a Stronger School Role in Teacher Education c) Practice-centred learning can improve participation in schools
Some school practitioners see virtue in employment-based models because of their immediate concern with the demands of the classroom. A mentor responsible for overseeing such students in a demanding inner city location spoke of how the school’s greater input allowed more investment of support time aimed at enabling new teachers to survive and function in difficult circumstances (cf. Clandinin, Long, Schaefer, Downey, Pinnegar, McKenzie & Wnuk, 2015). For a school with a well-developed scheme of work, student teachers and pupils alike may benefit from the student working to a clearly defined structure as a shared enterprise with colleagues. Such a community of practice (Wenger, 2000) may supply genuine opportunity for students to experience an insider perspective on being a teacher. As one student put it: ‘the behaviour of the students is challenging, but we’re encouraged to take risks and try out activities’. A number of school-based students were offered jobs by their placement schools prior to the course being completed. This was good for the school to have found a suitable teacher in an area of persistent teacher supply issues, but could reduce the student’s motivation to exceed the already limited academic demands. d) The enforcement of a centralised curriculum supports a collective vision of learning
The motivation behind the somewhat insistent centralised curriculum was centred in administrating the many teachers who lacked adequate subject content knowledge and professional capabilities to work without explicit support towards a collective set of ambitions. Any collective arrangement requires compromise and unnecessary guidance to those teachers who were adequately skilled was
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seemingly a low price to pay for wider participation in a shared arrangement. STEM education research is sometimes predicated on finding more refined pedagogical strategies for a teacher to follow whilst neglecting the reality of teacher recruitment in terms of individual skill. Alternatively, student teachers might creatively identify with approaches spanning a larger population of teachers as a mode of support for those with lower confidence or specialist background in STEM areas (Brown & McNamara, 2011). e) Research is directly focused on developing practice
Many instances of STEM education research are finely tuned on issues unlikely to be encountered in preservice training courses. Within the apprenticeship model described, however, the students themselves were participating in forms of practitioner-oriented research made possible by the immediacy of on-going school practice (e.g. Sorenson, 2014; Hanley & Brown, 2016). The university element that had often been seen as irrelevant by many students in the first instance later became an effective critical platform for inspecting and reflecting on their own school practices. This platform comprised an opportunity to articulate the shaping of practice from an alternative location in which everyday demands could be understood against a wider context. Rather than thinking what would work in the current placement school, the concern became that of thinking more broadly about what would work for them across schools more generally. So rather than student teachers being subservient to a map dictating the format of their practices, they had some influence over how the map was created and how it could be seen as guiding their generic practices as a teacher. These opportunities to connect school with university input featured less in the Bologna Process as a result of university and school phases being sequential. Having focused on how the teacher education curriculum is conceptualised and distributed across university and school locations, the chapter now considers the interface between the curriculum and its users.
Conceptions of policy-led curriculum change With the introduction of any new initiative there comes an implicit assumption that it will bring improvement over the previous regime. More specifically, teachers’ orientations to teaching are identified as influential factors in mediating the strength of an initiative’s effect. Evaluations of a major curriculum initiative in England refer to teachers’ deep-seated beliefs, which are left largely unchallenged (e.g. Brown, Askew, Millett & Rhodes, 2003) such that structural changes can be ‘bolted on’ to existing practice (Galton, 2002). Similarly, Brown, Millet, Bibby and Johnson (2000) have asserted that any such development will have multiple interpretations made of its impact. Local context also appears to
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influence the nature of classroom implementation: specifically, this could be teachers’ perceptions of their schools’ priorities within the wider education system (Ng, Lopez-Real & Rao, 2003; Kynigos & Argyris, 2004; Krogh & Thomsen, 2005) or their beliefs about pupils’ needs (Sztajn, 2003; Hammon, 2011; Wells, 2012). Senger (1999), Skott (2001) and Sorensen, Newton and McCarthy (2012), meanwhile, provide models that help to illuminate shifts in teachers’ thinking and practice as a recursive interchange between beliefs and how they talk about teaching and experimentation. One specific aspect that has drawn attention is the quality and variation of interactions observed in wholeclass teaching (e.g. Brown et al., 2003; Burns & Myhill, 2004). Still other pertinent and diluting factors include teachers’ lack of detailed awareness of how they operate (Sahin, Bullock & Stables, 2002; Torrance & Pryor, 2001) and for how long they have been teaching. Inexperienced teachers are more likely to engage fully with new curricula (Remillard & Bryans, 2004), whilst experienced teachers can find it very difficult to alter practice (Romberg, 1997) as personal beliefs about practice are based on compelling evidence derived from daily classroom experience (Handal & Herrington, 2003). Voogt and Tondeur (2015) and Alayyar, Fisser and Voogt (2011) consider the challenge of introducing technology into the curriculum in a number of countries. Tondeur, Siddiq, Scherer and van Braak (2016) discuss the case in African school education. Asking teachers to move from one teaching approach to another can never be regarded as a straightforward substitution (cf. Fullan, 2001). Nevertheless, for those charged with setting policy, there is often a perceived obligation to do something. And often this involves doing something big. In the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, governments have prescribed detailed mathematics and science curricula for students and teachers alike, along with associated industries of preparation of materials. In terms of research literature, however, considerably more information is readily available about the effect of major curriculum reform in the United States, where there is also a considerable emphasis on the widespread adoption of new curriculum materials as a primary strategy for improving mathematical education (Remillard, 2005). And this research has influenced the parameters through which curriculum reform and related research more generally has come to be understood. There is a need to question the common assumption that research is about encouraging movement towards some improved conception of teaching on the grounds that ‘improvement’ is not a universal term. Rather, US reform has shaped research and practice domains in particular ways with commensurate conceptions of improvement. US reform, more generally, is defined for mathematics in relation to National Council for Teaching Mathematics guidelines and is, for many teachers, seen as the transition from a transmission to a constructivist pedagogical approach (e.g. Fennema & Nelson, 1997). Constructivism, which has dominated international mathematics and science education research for the last three decades (Steffe & Kieran, 1994; Brown, 2001; Anderson, 2002), is characterised by
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‘genuine mathematical problems for students to solve’ (Lloyd, 1999, p. 228) and a focus on ‘conceptual understanding’ (Wilson & Goldenberg, 1998, p. 269). Simon and Tzur (1999) and Tzur, Simon, Heinz and Kinzel (2001) provide examples in which research is conceptualised as tracking progress towards some improved state of affairs. Many other studies focusing on how teachers respond to curriculum changes (e.g. Remillard & Geist, 2002; Van Zoest & Bohl, 2002, Rivera Maulucci, 2010; Goode & Margolis, 2011) centre their analysis on individuals shaping their practice in response to the perceived reform agenda, an agenda with which the authors positively identify and to which they readily subscribe, albeit with resistance from some quarters, such as ‘veteran’ or ‘traditional’ teachers who are unable to shift so fundamentally in terms of their beliefs as to what it is to be a teacher (Cohen, 1990; Lloyd, 1999). US ‘reform’ functions as an ideology insofar as it has set key parameters shaping discussion relating to curriculum innovation. It is a conception of improvement often presented as universally beneficial but actually it is culturally specific. It defines a professional space governed by certain assumptions as to how improvement might be achieved, whilst the limitations of its validity remain peripheral to this definition. Further, according to Sztajn (2003, p. 53), even within that culture: ‘Based on their concepts of students’ needs, teachers select which parts of the reform documents are appropriate for their students’, which translates as ‘children from upper socioeconomic backgrounds get problem solving, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds undergo rote learning’ (ibid.). Viewed internationally, however, even such variation might be regarded as modest, framed as it is within the parameters of national boundaries, compulsory schooling infrastructure, economic status and a host of other societal assumptions. So there is a need to be cautious in observing how such assumptions have slipped into the apparatus for curriculum reform research more generally. Yet even affinity with an ideology does not necessarily fix the mode of association or how that is viewed. In her study Remillard (2005, pp. 215–23) examined alternative ways in which teacher/curriculum interfaces are understood within the research literature. She contrasted ‘following or subverting’ a curriculum text with ‘drawing on’ a curriculum text or ‘interpreting’ a curriculum text. In these three alternatives, the text is present in some form and teachers respond to it. Finally, however, Remillard considered how curricula might be understood as teachers participating with the text. For a teacher ‘enacting’ a curriculum in this mode, she suggested that teacher and curriculum might be seen as mutually constitutive. Here, curriculum use is understood as participation with the text (pp. 221–3). She identifies this with ‘Vygotskian notions of tool use and mediation, wherein all human activity involves mediated action or the use of tools by human agents to interact with one another and the world’ (cf. Cole, 1996). Such an approach is familiar within mathematics and technology education research (e.g. Lerman, 2000; Blanton, Westbrook & Carter, 2005; Goos, 2005). But how
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might we unfold the features of this mutual constitution of teachers and curricula? Understood in terms of Foucault’s (1989) notion of ‘discursive formation’, both teacher and curriculum would be functions of how they are implicated in the stories that unite them. Both change as a result of curriculum development activity. Remillard (ibid.) identifies some studies where teachers change or learn from their use of resources (Lloyd, 1999; Remillard, 2000; Van Zoest & Bohl, 2002). Yet teacher change can also be understood as being the result of increased compliance with respect to a curriculum initiative. Reform cannot offer a trajectory with universal appeal or applicability. The ‘inquiry’ methods associated with constructivist reform, characterised by greater learner and teacher autonomy, would be less acceptable in many Eastern or Pacific cultures where curricula, teacher/student roles and the collective good are defined differently (e.g. Brown, Devine, Leslie, Paiti, Sila’ila’i, Umaki & Williams, 2006). Further, the alleged autonomy understood within the ‘reform’ agenda conflicts with the reality teachers have come to accept in some countries, assessed as they are through legislative documentation and recognised through the filter of their compliance with this. TIMSS and PISA were introduced to measure and compare school mathematics in different countries on a singular scale. Yet the resultant conceptions of school mathematics and science now define and police the boundaries of school mathematics and science. At a conference in 2011, a Mexican delegate spoke of how the exercises made her country subservient to American priorities (Garcia, Saiz & Rivera, 2011). An Ethiopian teacher educator depicted a situation in which teachers and students were obliged to engage with a form of study encased in pedagogical formations often unrecognisable in their country situation (Gebremichael, 2011). As seen, the United Kingdom has sacrificed its earlier facility with problem-solving approaches in order to meet newly understood content objectives. Meanwhile, a Finnish teacher educator indicated that her country’s high performance in the exercises did not release her colleagues from having to reevaluate their practices in terms of the newly dominant international discourse (Krzywacki, Koistinen & Lavonen, 2011).
Conclusion Pedagogical subject knowledge is a function of the educational domain in which it is encountered, and hence of the discourse that characterises that domain. That discursive structure can shape the actions of those subject to it. This chapter has documented some instances of STEM teaching practice resulting from modified conceptions of teacher education or development. The chapter has argued that the student teachers’ conceptions of STEM subjects and their teaching of them can be crafted around the apparatus of administrative control, which are restrictive, expressed in terms of curricula compliance, or fitting in with existing school practices. This administrative restrictiveness in the name of policy
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implementation is potentially counter to pupils achieving both a positive disposition towards and functionality in the subjects in later study or professional life. Specifically, pedagogical subject knowledge derives from particular types of encounter in a model of teacher education. In the school-based models the teachers’ conceptions of subject knowledge developed without a great deal of explicit instruction from university specialists in the area. Rather the teacher education function was achieved through the student teachers being immersed in the infrastructure of schooling. In the approach described, the student teachers were primarily guided by their school mentors through centralised curriculum documentation, or by textbooks chosen by head teachers. That is, the students’ mathematical pedagogical knowledge is derived from their own practice referenced to existing or required conceptions of subject knowledge and patterned on the associated apparatus. Their way of talking about subject knowledge mirrored the official discourse. As a consequence, there is a strong reproductive dimension to the student teachers’ understanding of school subjects. Subject knowledge is defined within very tight boundaries that give it little space to be something else, such as constructions generated by the teachers or pupils themselves. On the one hand, if mathematics and science are understood in terms of fixed results, levels and procedures, then little opportunity is provided for the student teacher to develop an autonomous professional attitude to the generation of mathematical or scientific enquiry in the classroom. Rather, the students are subject to an externally imposed curriculum as represented by the schools to whom they are assigned. They understand their own professionalism and identities in those terms. On the other hand, school-based models provide an avenue through which student teachers and their tutors can experience the teaching of mathematics from new angles. In the school-based model described, student teachers retained some possibility of inspecting their practices in school from an external site so that their insider experience of meeting immediate demands can be reviewed against a more holistic understanding of what they are trying to achieve. University tutors, meanwhile, provided a responsive role in helping students to confront demanding classroom challenges in more creative ways, albeit in terms of administering mathematics and science to the prevailing models. Ultimately, conceptions of improvement are very much a function of the country, or even local community, in which they apply and the state of affairs prevalent there. And it is this sense of contingency that underpins this chapter’s focus on adjustments to new paradigms. In particular, it is unhelpful to suppose that we could identify trajectories of improvement that apply across all people and all phases of development. School subject knowledge has come to be a function of this newly described world, backed up by governments using these conceptions to set their policies. There is always a cost in the form of suppressions resulting from such generalist suppositions. To represent STEM subjects as universal, spanning nations and generations, comes at a price in
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terms of teachers’ ability to identify with the modes of education privileged in such comparisons.
References Alayyar, G., Fisser, P., & Voogt, J. (2011). ICT integration through design teams in science teacher preparation. International Journal of Learning Technology, 6(2), 125–145. Anderson, R. (2002). Reforming science teaching: What research says about inquiry. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 13(1), 1–12. Askew, M., Hodgen, J., Hossain, S., & Bretscher, N. (2010). Values and variables: A review of mathematics education in high-performing countries. London: The Nuffield Foundation. Bartex, D. (2011). Dear Minister, This is why design and technology is a very important subject in the school curriculum. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 16(3), 9–18. Blanton, M., Westbrook, S., & Carter, G. (2005). Using Valsiner’s zone theory to interpret teaching practices in mathematics and science classrooms. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 8(1), 5–33. Brown, M. (2011). Going back or going forward? Tensions in the formulation of a new national curriculum in mathematics. Curriculum Journal, 22(2), 151–165. Brown, M., Askew, M., Millett, A., & Rhodes, V. (2003). The key role of educational research in the development and evaluation of the National Numeracy Strategy. British Educational Research Journal, 29(5), 655–667. Brown, M., Millett, A., Bibby, T., & Johnson, J. (2000). Turning our attention from the what to the how: The National Numeracy Strategy. British Educational Research Journal, 26(4), 457–472. Brown, T. (2001). Mathematics education and language. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Brown, T. & Clarke, D. (2013). Institutional contexts for research in mathematics education. In M. Clements, A. Bishop, C. Keitel, J. Kilpatrick, & F. Leung (Eds) Third International Handbook of Mathematics Education (459–484). Dordrecht: Springer. Brown, T., Devine, N., Leslie, E., Paiti, M., Sila’ila’i, E., Umaki, S., & Williams, J. (2006). Reflective engagement in cultural history: A Lacanian perspective on Pasifika teachers in New Zealand. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 15(1), 107–118. Brown, T. & McNamara, O. (2011). Becoming a mathematics teacher: Identity and identifications. Dordrecht: Springer. Brown, T., Rowley, H., & Smith, K. (2014). Rethinking research in teacher education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3), 281–296. Brown, T., Rowley, H., & Smith, K. (2015a). Sliding subject positions: Knowledge and teacher educators. British Educational Research Journal (online first). DOI: 10.1002/berj.3203 Brown, T., Rowley, H., & Smith, K. (2015b). The beginnings of school-led teacher training: New challenges for university teacher education. School Direct Research Project. Final Report. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University. Burns, C. & Myhill, D. (2004). Interactive or inactive? A consideration of the nature of interaction in whole class teaching. Cambridge Journal of Education, 34(1), 35–49. Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (1992). Teacher as curriculum maker. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Curriculum. (pp. 363–401). New York: Macmillan. Clandinin, D.J., Long, J.S., Schaefer, L., Downey, C.A., Steeves, P., Pinnegar, E., McKenzie Robblee, S., Wnuk, S. (2015) Early career teacher attrition: Intentions of teachers beginning. Teaching Education, 26(1), 1–16. Cohen, D. (1990). A revolution in one classroom: The case of Mrs. Oublier. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12(3), 327–345. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press.
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Department for Education. (2010). The importance of teaching. London: Department for Education. Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. (2011). Science Education in Europe: National Policies, Practices and Research. Brussels: Eurydice. ENTEP: Dimitropoulos, A. (Online). The Bologna Process and teacher education structures in Europe: Creating a European teacher education area. European Network on Teacher Education Policies (accessed 2016). Fennema, E. & Nelson, B. (Eds) (1997). Mathematics teachers in transition. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Foucault, M. (1989). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge. Freeman, B., Marginson, S., & Tytler, R. (Eds) (2015). The age of STEM: Policy and practice in science, technology, engineering and mathematics across the world. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change. New York: Teachers College Press. Galton, M. (2002). A National Curriculum balance sheet. Education Review, 15(2), 15–21. Garcia, R., Saiz, M., & Rivera, A. (2011). Cognitive cultural analysis of low achievement in TIMSS: Evaluating wrong answers in 8th grade. In B. Ubuz (Ed.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the International Group on the Psychology of Mathematics Education (p. 340). Ankara, Turkey: Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi [Middle East Technical University]. Gebremichael, A. (2011). Perceptions of relevance of prior experiences of mathematics in an Ethiopian preparatory school. In B. Ubuz (Ed.), International Group on the Psychology of Mathematics Education (p. 340). Ankara, Turkey: Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi [Middle East Technical University]. Goode, J. & Margolis, J. (2011). Exploring computer science: A case study of school reform. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 11(2), Article 12. Goos, M. (2005). A sociocultural analysis of the development of pre-service and beginning teachers’ pedagogical identities as users of technology. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 8(1), 35–59. Hammon, M. (2011). Beliefs and ICT: What can we learn from experienced educators? Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 20(3), 289–300. Handal, B. & Herrington, A. (2003). Mathematics teachers’ beliefs and curriculum reform. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 15(1), 59–69. Hanley, C. & Brown, T. (2016). Developing a university contribution to teacher education: Creating an analytical space for learning narratives. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(3), 352–368. Heywood, D. & Parker, J. (2010). The pedagogy of physical science. Dordrecht: Springer. Hobson, A. J., Malderez, A., & Tracey, L. (2009). Navigating initial teacher training: Becoming a teacher. London: Routledge. Hodson, E., Smith, K., & Brown, T. (2011). Reasserting theory in professionally-based initial teacher education. Teachers and Teaching, 18(2), 181–195. Hudson, B. & Zgaga, P. (Eds) (2008). Teacher education policy in Europe: A voice of higher education institutions. Monographs on Journal of Research in Teacher Education, Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden. Krogh, L. B. & Thomsen, P. V. (2005). Studying students’ attitudes towards science from a cultural perspective but with a quantitative methodology: Border crossing into the physics classroom. International Journal of Science Education, 27(3), 281–302. Krzywacki, H., Koistinen, L., & Lavonen, J. (2011). Assessment in Finnish mathematics education: Various ways, various needs. In B. Ubuz (Ed.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the International Group on the Psychology of Mathematics Education (p. 340). Ankara, Turkey: Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi [Middle East Technical University]. Kynigos, C. & Argyris, M. (2004). Teacher beliefs and practices formed during an innovation with computer-based exploratory mathematics in the classroom. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 10(3), 247–273. Lerman, S. (2000). A case of interpretations of ‘social’: A response to Steffe & Thompson. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 31(2), 210–227.
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Lloyd, G. M. (1999). Two teachers’ conceptions of a reform-oriented curriculum: Implications for mathematics teacher development. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 2(3), 227–252. Ng, S., Lopez-Real, F., & Rao, N. (2003). Early mathematics teaching: The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices. Proceedings of the 2003 joint meeting of PME and PMENA, vol. 3. Honolulu, USA: University of Hawaii. Osbourne, J. & Dillon, J. (2008). Science education in Europe: Critical reflections. London: Nuffield. Pampaka, M., Williams, J., Hutcheson, G., Wake, G., Black, L., Davis, P., & Hernandez-Martinez, P. (2012). The association between mathematics pedagogy and learners’ dispositions for university study. British Educational Research Journal, 38(3), 473–496. Remillard, J. (2000). Can curriculum materials support teachers’ learning? Elementary School Journal, 11(4), 331–350. Remillard, J. T. (2005). Examining key concepts in research on teachers’ use of mathematics curricula. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 211–246. Remillard, J. & Bryans, M. (2004). Teachers’ orientations towards mathematics curriculum materials: Implications for teacher learning. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 35(5), 352–388. Remillard, J. T. & Geist, P. K. (2002). Supporting teachers’ professional learning by navigating openings in the curriculum. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 5(1), 7–34. Rivera Maulucci, M. (2010). Becoming an urban science teacher: Teacher learning as a collective performance of conceptions. In W-M. Roth (Ed.) Re/structuring Science Education. Dordrecht: Springer. Romberg, T. (1997). Mathematics in context: Impact on teachers. In E. Fennema & B. Scott Nelson (Eds) Mathematics Teachers in Transition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Rowland, T. & Ruthven, K. (Eds) (2011). Mathematical knowledge in teaching. Dordrecht: Springer. Rowland, T., Turner, F., Thwaites, A., & Huckstep, P. (2009). Developing primary mathematics teaching: Reflecting on practice with the Knowledge Quartet. London: Sage. Sahin, C., Bullock, K., & Stables, A. (2002). Teachers’ beliefs and practices in relation to their beliefs about questioning at Key Stage 2. Educational Studies, 28(4), 371–384. Schwab, J. (1983). The practical 4: Something for curriculum professors to do. Curriculum Inquiry, 13(3), 239–265. Senger, E. (1999). Reflective reform in mathematics: The recursive nature of teacher change. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 37(3), 199–221. Simon, M. & Tzur, R. (1999). Explicating the teacher’s perspective from the researchers’ perspectives: Generating accounts of mathematics teachers’ practice. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 30(3), 252–264. Skott, J. (2001). The emerging practices of a novice teacher: The roles of his school mathematics images. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 4(3), 3–28. Smith, K., Hodson, E., & Brown, T. (2013a). Teacher educator changing perceptions of theory. Educational Action Research Journal, 25, 379–397. Smith, K., Hodson, E., & Brown, T. (2013b). The discursive production of classroom mathematics. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 25(3), 379–397. Sorenson, P. (2014). Collaboration, dialogue and expansive learning: The use of paired and multiple placements in the school practicum. Teaching and Teacher Education, 44, 128–137. Sorensen, P., Newton, L., & McCarthy, S. (2012). Developing a science teacher education course that supports student teachers’ thinking and teaching about the nature of science. Research in Science & Technological Education, 30(1), 29–47. Steffe, L. & Kieran, T. (1994). Radical constructivism and mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 25(6), 711–733. Sztajn, P. (2003). Adapting reform ideas in different mathematics classrooms: Beliefs beyond mathematics. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 6(1), 53–75. Tondeur, J., Siddiq, F., Scherer, R., & van Braak, J. (2016). Time for a new approach to prepare future teachers for educational technology use: Its meaning and measurement. Computers & Education, 94, 134–150.
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Torrance, H. & Pryor, J. (2001). Developing formative assessment in the classroom: Using action research to explore and modify theory. British Educational Research Journal, 27(5), 615–631. Tytler, R., Swanson, D., & Appelbaum, P. (2015). Subject matters of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In M. He, B. Schultz, & W. Schubert (Eds) The SAGE Guide to Curriculum in Education. London: Sage. Tzur, R., Simon, M., Heinz, K., & Kinzel, M. (2001). An account of a teacher’s perspective on learning and teaching mathematics: Implications for teacher development. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 4(3), 227–254. Van Zoest, L. R. & Bohl, J. V. (2002). The role of reform curricular materials in an internship: The case of Alice and Gregory. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 5(3), 265–288. Voogt, J. & Tondeur, J. (2015). Towards design-based approaches for ICT integration in African education. In J. Voogt & J. Tondeur (Eds) Technology Pedagogy and Education, 24(5), 527–537. Wells, D. (2012). Computing in schools: time to move beyond ICT? Research in Secondary Teacher Education, 2(1), 8–13. Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, S. M., & Goldenberg, P. (1998). Some conceptions are difficult to change: One middle school mathematics teachers’ struggle. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 1(3), 269–293.
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39 Research for Physical Education Teacher Education L e e S c h a e f e r, l i s a h u n t e r a n d Shaun Murphy
I am forever on the way. (Maxine Greene, 1995, p. 1)
Physical education teacher education (PETE) research, like teacher education in general, is a conflicted area of study imbued with tensions. The conflict often stems from differing beliefs about purpose and knowledge that are driven by contradictory epistemological and ontological frames. Those holding dominant and traditional knowledge important may frame this confliction as negative, or as confusing the spectrum of study. However, taking a generative approach, in this chapter we show that the uncertainty around PETE research demonstrates a response to changing contexts, as well as shifting knowledge landscapes, epistemologies, and ontologies. We attempted to approach this chapter aware of the past, reflective of the present, and awake to future possibilities. This chapter initially illustrates historically how PETE research has evolved, to better understand the current research, and possible directions for the future. Given the broad scope of this work, we take up topics we see as being enduring research questions that polarize the field. The questions we specifically take up are: Who comes to be a PETE teacher? What is the purpose of PETE? What happens in the PETE practicum? How do PETE pre-service teachers transition to being teachers? What is worth doing in PETE? What content should be taken up and how, pedagogically, should it be taken up? How do we research assessment? Where should future PETE research take us? In the final section of the chapter we look at research that we see as emergent, and suggest possible directions for the future of research for PETE.
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Using the aforementioned questions, we draw on past and contemporary research and literature to illustrate that the messiness, confusion, and disagreement, can be better understood by seeing PETE as being on its way, and, while on its way, being shaped by differing philosophies, epistemologies, and ontologies. Instead of framing the diverse landscape of PETE research as a problem, we attempt to hold open a generative space that in nature pushes the field into new areas of knowledge useful not only for PETE, but more broadly for teacher education.
Brief history of research for PETE PETE research, at least that which is published in the English language, is firmly planted with several geo-historical roots acting as pivotal epistemological and ontological differences between which there has been vigorous debate over time (see for example the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (1991), and the more recent edition (2014)).1 Each of the main areas of research are recognized as largely originating (1) in the USA (major work being represented in the Journal of Teaching in Physical Education; Quest; and earlier publications of Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport) and (2) in Europe/Australasia (see this work in journals such as ACHPER/Asia-Pacific Journal of Sport, Health, and Physical Education; Sport, Education and Society; European Physical Education Review, and Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy). Early research initially (for example Locke, 1984) included the study of the effectiveness of teacher education/training programs, teacher socialization, methods for providing feedback to teachers, workplace experience or the practicum, and the process of induction and ongoing in-service teacher development. As PETE began to expand, researchers from outside the USA graduated from American universities and established research hubs in their own countries (e.g. Richard Tinning in Australia), and European graduates took up PETE as a research focus (e.g. Bart Crum); PETE research began to shift in different directions. One such shift was towards socially just PE and PETE, sociocultural ways of knowing, and critical pedagogy. This shifting fostered new research frameworks and research programs. Researchers involved in this shift, such as Tinning and Fitzclarence (1992), from a then-new conceptualization around social justice, were arguing for new health and physical education (HPE) curricula in response to new ‘conditions of contemporary schooling, and the nature of postmodern youth culture [that] meant that traditional ways of doing PE and of being a PE teacher [were] now under threat’ (pp. 242–243). During this period, we also saw the scientization of PETE that over time led to changes in the status and structure of programs (Kirk, Macdonald, & Tinning, 1997; Tinning, 2010; Macdonald, 2014). Kinesiology knowledge became significant and science-based kinesiology course work
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replaced many practical courses such as athletics, gymnastics, swimming, outdoor education, and sports. While many of the topics we listed in the introduction continued to garner research interest, there was also increased research associated with a more explicit interaction between health and PETE (Webster, Webster, Russ, Molina, Lee, & Cribbs, 2015); motor development and learning (Ross, Metcalf, Bulger, & Housner, 2014); investigations of emerging identity categories (Sykes & Goldstein, 2004), theoretical perspectives and research methodologies (Cameron, 2012), and learning technologies (Roth, 2014). In the period between the 1990s and the present, the research on PETE has expanded in breadth and depth, reflecting the more general teacher education literature, but also broadening the research specific to physical education. This expansion was largely driven in response to justifications for PE in schools, and PETE in universities. During this same period, epistemological, ontological, and methodological shifts have meant there is no agreed-upon single understanding or model of PETE. In fact, debates continue to ensue around the purpose of PETE. We offer this brief summary as a way to provide historical context to the questions that we take up in the following section. For each of the questions we attempt to move in a temporal fashion to show how the past has shaped the present and may in turn shape the future.
Enduring questions Who enters PETE? Who enters pre-service teaching and their ‘fit’ for schooling agendas has long been, and continues to be, a major topic in PETE research. Issues associated with recruitment and identity are interrelated with the socialization process during PETE. Research on how PE teachers become socialized into the profession (Templin & Schempp, 1989; Lawson, 1983) discussed the idea of the ‘subjective’ warrant of pre-service identities. Physical activity, sport, health, and technical notions of the body were found to be central in prospective PE teachers’ identity construction (Dewar, 1990; Templin & Schempp, 1989; Macdonald & Tinning, 1995) both prior to, and after entering, PETE. A shift towards viewing PETE and PETE recruits from other conceptual frameworks allowed for a reflection on knowledge and identity, and brought about more critical questions about who comes to be a PETE student. Dowling (2011) asks ‘whether teacher educators need to reassess their recruitment policies to PETE, as well as to systematically re-analyse their “taken-for-granted” notions of teacher professionalism’ (p. 201). Her call to reassess teacher education recruitment policies and develop broader teacher professional identities is not isolated (Clandinin, Schaefer, & Downey 2014; hunter, Rossi, Tinning, Flanagan, & Macdonald, 2011; Rossi, hunter, Christensen, & Macdonald, 2015). It becomes evident that the purpose of teacher education, and specifically PETE, requires (re)thinking.
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What is the purpose of PETE? Before the turn of the century, attempts to understand the purpose and nature of PETE programs became more prevalent, and we again note that how one understands purpose depends on the ontological and epistemological commitments of the person and field. In North America, Metzler and Tjeerdsma (1998), from a behaviorist framework, suggested PETE program assessment was situated within a development, research, and improvement framework that focused on traditional behaviorist notions of PE. In contrast the Australasian and European ‘systems’ leaned towards a more critical theory framework, illuminating the socially critical assessment of PETE programs (Kirk & Macdonald, 2001). Macdonald and Brooker (1999), amongst others, continued the call for critical pedagogy in PETE, noting that ‘[t]he challenge to physical education teacher education faculty is how to help PETE students (and themselves), who are embedded in the rationalist enterprise of universities, to cross the borderland to take up a critical perspective’ (p. 1). With more diverse school populations, as well as a shifting demographic of PETE students, research became more powerful in understanding the role of pre-service student teachers’ identities within PETE programs. Questions continued about their effectiveness in exposing issues, and changing practices such as racism (Burden, Hodge, & O’Bryant, 2004), sexism, and interrelated heteronormativity (e.g. see Sykes, 1998), as well as incorporating pedagogies that considered difference and inclusivity in learners (Wright, McNeill, Fry, & Wang, 2005). Contemporary teacher educators and PETE programs have been charged with challenging sexism, racism, ableism, and homophobia (Flintoff, 1998; Brown & Evans, 2004; Sykes, 1998), problematizing Christianity (Macdonald & Kirk, 1999), and recognizing other identities that were underserved (Marsh, 2000; Dowling, Fitzgerald, & Flintoff, 2014). While these issues may seem broad, we share them here to illustrate the conflicted nature of the purpose of PETE.
PETE School-Based Practicum – Professional Experience? Preparing teachers to enter the highly contested space of teaching in schools invariably requires PETE programs to ensure that prospective teachers ‘get enough field experiences with diverse student groups and across several grade levels [and to] be provided quality supervision and support’ (Metzler, 2009, p. 305). Learning to teach in the field has been shaped by objective teacher standards and competencies assessed through clinical supervision and behavior analysis (Metzler, 1990), through to teacher competencies, practical knowledge, and reflection through self-analysis and peer evaluation (e.g. Rovegno, 1993). Part of the school-based practicum process is to introduce pre-service student teachers to workplace environments to smooth the significantly influential period on beginning teachers’ careers (Ingersoll & Smith, 2004; Smith &
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Ingersoll, 2004) and to make explicit some of the micro-political spaces they may need to negotiate. The idea that PETE pre-service student teachers would ‘fit’ or ‘change’ the schooling (and sometimes even social) system (Tinning, 1984) had been heavily debated by the turn of the century. Studies such as these had convinced researchers that there was much to be learned in the practicum that had nothing to do with traditional notions of teaching. Adding to the complexities surrounding practicum aspects of PETE, Rossi et al. (2015) and Rossi, Sirna, and Tinning (2008) established some of the problems associated with low-power pre-service student teachers entering into highpower staffrooms in schools, countering the assumption that practicum was effective in aiding professional education of pre-service student teachers. Toxic settings not only turned effective pre-service teachers off entering the profession but also re-oriented the future teachers to social injustice and oppression, undoing much of the important work established outside that particular school setting. Rossi et al. (2008) argue that the challenge is to identify quality workplace experiences with purposeful enculturation directed towards pre-service teacher learning and also to mentor teacher professional development. PETE students’ transition to teaching in schools. School contexts that pre-service, beginning, and developing teachers have to negotiate are important when thinking about what should shape PETE programs and research. While some of this work, such as research on teacher retention in PETE (Macdonald, 1995; Schaefer & Clandinin, 2011), is referring to periods beyond pre-service student teaching, transitions to teaching are more significant in the research. This is because they are momentous times for identity negotiation, including moving from university or teacher education to full-time teaching, which Lortie (1975) referred to as a reality shock. This process is of significant interest within the PETE literature, taking account of identities, bodies, relationships, politics, space, and performance (Curtner-Smith, 2001; Schempp & Graber, 1992; Casey & Schaefer, 2016; Christensen, 2013; Schaefer, 2013b; Sirna, Tinning, & Rossi, 2008, 2010). Research has found that some individuals transition very successfully (Macdonald, 1995), while others become isolated emotionally, physically, socially, and professionally (Macdonald, 1995; Rossi et al., 2015). The success of transition seems to be a complex process imbued with a mix of teacher biography (Tsangaridou, 2006a, 2006b; Schaefer & Clandinin, 2011; Schaefer, 2013a), PETE program influence, and workplace factors (Curtner-Smith, 2001). Christensen (2013) and Rossi et al. (2015) also explored the physical and political negotiations and the extent to which PETE had readied them for the complex environment. Research around transitioning to teaching in schools often takes up the relationship between schools and teacher education institutions. These relationships have come under the spotlight with new forms of relationships (e.g. UK school clusters; see Chambers & Armour, 2012) over longer periods of time (e.g. MacPhail, 2011) and are attracting research that situates PETE in a different
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way. Being mindful of both the transitioning to schools as well as the tensions included in these transitions calls for a further thinking about how we create spaces in teacher education programs to allow pre-service teachers to attend to who they are and are becoming (Schaefer, 2012).
What is Worth Doing? Conflicted content in PETE. Within PETE there has been a pre-eminence of content knowledge above other knowledge bases. Hayes, Capel, Katene, and Cook (2008) found that student teachers and mentors conceptualized subject knowledge as content knowledge (skills, tactics, and rules of activities/sports) and prioritized that over other types of knowledge. Hayes et al. noted that it was important that teacher education courses recognize the influence of both socialization and phases of student teacher development; otherwise content knowledge is likely to remain the priority. While, historically, content held epistemological status over pedagogy, there seems to be agreement that pedagogy and content are both important aspects of PETE programs. Dyson (2014) takes up Shulman’s (1987) notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and argues that it is ‘that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding’ (p. 8). Dyson argued that we do not pay enough attention to how important the relationship is between pedagogy and content, which is context dependent in PE. Nor do we focus enough on how important PCK is to creating a positive learning environment. Yet it seems that the conceptualization of PCK does little to stifle disagreements around what knowledge should be included in PETE programs. As Siedentop (2002) argued, ‘[y]ou can’t have PCK without content knowledge, and all of our advances in pedagogy in physical education can’t change that simple truth’ (p. 368). Further, and as Bernstein (1971) noted, curriculum (often default for ‘content’), pedagogy, and assessment have been, and continue to be, the three powerful message systems of education. The influence of policy, for example curriculum documents, and teaching PETE students to make sense of these policies has also weighed in on what the nature of content is to be in PETE. At the same time discussions associated with PETE, focused on the challenges and mismatch between intended curriculum and lived experiences of curriculum, ensued in Quest, a significant journal for PETE debates and scholarship. Ingham (1997) and Fernandez-Balboa (1997) brought to light the compartmentalized knowledge driving PETE and the mismatch between education and allied professions of human movement such as biophysical foundations. The pedagogic discourse also remained an issue of debate with Kirk et al. (1997) suggesting social constructionism as an answer. A decade either side of the turn of the century saw PETE and related knowledge bases involved in a
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‘struggle for legitimacy’ within universities and schooling. The increased importance of propositional knowledge in scientific paradigms such as sports and exercise sciences created a shift towards kinesiology becoming stronger, not just in Canada and the USA but also countries where challenges to these paradigms had been strong (see for example in Australia, Fitzclarence & Tinning, 1990, 2006). The struggle over the content and purpose of PETE, reflected in curriculum, continues to be heavily debated, but not without opening new spaces for possibility and discussion (Pill, Penney, & Swabey, 2012). Within these new spaces, to mention a few, we also see new ways forward with pedagogical research in regards to critical pedagogies (Dowling, et al., 2014; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Robinson & Randall, 2016), non-linear pedagogies in regards to skill acquisition (Chow, Davids, Button, & Renshaw, 2015), and re-conceptualizations of cooperative learning in physical education (Dyson & Casey, 2012). While research associated with pedagogy and curriculum continues to be highlighted in research agendas, perhaps the most controversial and poorly researched area of the three message systems is assessment. Tensions in assessment in PETE. Though there is a broad spectrum and depth within teacher education around assessment, this is not yet the case within PETE as assessment has been somewhat neglected (Hay, 2006). Having said this, research on assessment in PETE has long been considered an aspect of PE teaching: ‘assessment has been the third leg of conventional physical education pedagogy (curriculum, instruction, assessment) for the last decade – at least in theory, if not in practice’ (Mercier & Doolittle, 2013, p. 38). Drawing on Hay (2006) we see that, historically, PETE research has focused much more on the practice of assessment than it has on the impact of assessment on pedagogy and student learning. Given the conflicts noted within the purpose and content sections above, it should not be surprising that debates also arise around assessment. The conflicts reside in what we teach PETE students to assess, when it is to be assessed, how it is to be assessed, and what the work of assessment does (Naul, 2003). PETE research around assessment practices in the early 1980s and 1990s, which was often gathered through surveys and questionnaires, showed that much of what was assessed in the field of physical education focused on values, dispositions and effort that could be observed (Carroll & Macdonald, 1981; Imwold, Rider, & Johnson, 1982; Matanin & Tannehill, 1994). While what was assessed, and how it was assessed, shifted as new and alternative curriculum approaches appeared in PETE programs, such as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR), Sports Education, and others, the research around assessment continued to focus on the practice of assessment. As with many other subject areas, PE and therefore PETE shares teaching the concepts of assessment for learning, and assessment of learning (Wiliam, 2011) as means of evaluating children and youth. Assessment of learning is the traditional form of assessment and evaluates children and youth with nominal impact on
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their learning. Assessment for learning, which is formative in nature, has the possibility to shape teaching and learning by helping educators respond to children and youth, as opposed to the impact of assessment on student learning (Kirk & O’Flaherty, 2004). Conceptualizing assessment as a way to better understand student learning, as well as a pedagogical tool, is a drastic shift from simply assessing what a student knows. Like any educational reform, the diversification of assessment has provided opportunities to ask more critical questions around dominant understandings surrounding assessment, and knowledge (Hay, 2006; Tinning & Glasby, 2002). It is also important to note how the pressures around sociocultural health issues such as obesity and diabetes have, in many ways, forced PETE, as well as more general health science researchers, to focus their sights on promoting physical activity levels in physical education. While we are aware that physical activity and physical education are only a part of the apparent solution to the aforementioned issues, we perceive the pressure to increase physical activity levels as part of the shift of what is assessed in PETE. This shift has focused assessment practices to become more about measuring physical activity, about getting children and youth to move, than about learning. This shapes the prevalent sense that the cognitive is separated from the body and positions PE as less academic. However, many argue that the separation of these domains is just as problematic as their hierarchizing (see for example heavily debated ideas captured in Hunter, Abbott, Macdonald, Ziviani, & Cuskelly, 2014; and Macdonald, Abbott, Hunter, Hay, & McCuaig, 2013). As the field moves forward, PETE teachers and researchers endeavor to diversify ways of assessing in relation to PE beyond assessment focused primarily on skills for sports and fitness. Research has, and is, taking up this call for more complexity in relation to assessment (Leirhaug & MacPhail, 2015; Mercier & Doolittle, 2013). A call for more democratic approaches to assessment has fostered research and discussion around not only how student approaches may benefit learning, but also, from a critical pedagogy perspective, how these new approaches may continue to position student knowledge in a degraded epistemic status (Lorente-Catálan & Kirk, 2014). Research on PETE assessment that can be negotiated with an attentiveness to the learner, in relationship with the teacher, and in relationship to the milieu in which it occurs (Schwab, 1973) may provide PETE teachers with opportunities to connect their pedagogical practices in PETE programs to the field.
Discussion: Aware of the past, reflective in the present, awake to future possibilities What do we hope others might take from this chapter? We hope readers get a sense of the differing epistemological and ontological commitments taken up as
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PETE researchers attempt to better understand each of the questions we posed. We appreciate the diversity of theoretical commitments engaged in PETE research, and hope this chapter illustrates how important it is for those engaged in PETE research to understand how their own theoretical commitments fit into past, current, and future PETE research. Arguments about research can often stem from confusion, or an outright lack of interest in how others are undertaking their research. However, to move forward, we see it as imperative for PETE researchers to gain a better understanding of the complex epistemological and ontological commitments being adhered to in PETE research. From this we feel that more complicated, respectful, educated, and informative conversations can take place around moving PETE research forward. While we see a diversification of PETE research, many forums that disseminate PETE research still adhere to post-positivist agendas. If we look at venues such as the American Education Research Association (AERA), and the British Education Research Association (BERA), the two largest general educational research conferences in the world, we still see a prevalence of quantitative, often post-positivist, methods being accepted and presented. While we do not discount the importance of this research, we feel that a shift in this hegemony is needed for a broader dissemination of PETE research that pushes against the dominant stories and values other ways of knowing. At this potentially transformational time there is no doubt that questions of ‘whose knowledge’ and ‘who gains’, as well as questions about the micro, meso, and macro politics at work, will expand and continue to invite understanding. We have new, or renewed, questions about the role of PETE in developing new orientations to PE, such as joy (Blankenship & Ayers, 2010; Gleddie & Schaefer, 2015), social justice (Robinson & Randall, 2016), and the meaning of being a life-long mover (Kretchmar, 2008). These shifting orientations offer other ways for researchers to understand how PETE research impacts the field comprising teaching, teacher education, and perhaps society. Shifting orientations of PETE research and programming offer opportunities to diversify the ways that research is taken up, as well as the way PETE students engage with curriculum. Emerging epistemologies and methodologies such as autoethnography (Cameron, 2012), self-study (Fletcher & Ovens, 2014), narrative inquiry (Schaefer, 2013b), and pedagogical case studies (Armour, 2014; Stolz & Pill, 2014) shift ways that we might understand PETE efficacy: who comes to PETE programs; outcomes of PETE programs; the significance of PETE in diffusing new approaches (e.g. Moy, Renshaw, & Davids, 2014); the purpose of PETE programs (Dyson, 2014; Forrest, Wright, & Pearson, 2012; Lavay, Henderson, French, & Guthrie, 2012; Ward, 2013); and how these shifting purposes can be measured or accounted for (Lorente & Kirk, 2013; McKenzie & Lounsbery, 2013; Metzler, 2014; Rink, 2014; Roberts, 2014). New and emerging epistemologies and methodologies offer opportunities for PETE educators to become more reflective about how their philosophies, and in turn their
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own pedagogies, are shaped by engaging in being teachers and researchers. This reflexivity brings about new questions surrounding becoming a PETE educator (Casey & Fletcher, 2012; MacPhail, 2014), how PETE educators’ pedagogies shift as they take up different methodologies (Gleddie & Schaefer, 2015; Schaefer, 2013b; Fletcher & Ovens, 2014), how social media may impact pedagogy (Goodyear, Casey, & Kirk, 2014), and how these pedagogies may shape PETE student experiences. Understanding where we have come from allows us a much more reflexive relationship with the future and perhaps a releasing of the imagination (Greene, 1995) in moving forward. As we are imagining here, we end with wonders for the future. Given the shifting identities of PETE pedagogues who at one time, not that long ago, were simply expected to teach teachers, we wonder how we might better understand how research agendas are indeed shaping PETE programs. We also wonder how we might better understand if/how the relationship between research and PETE programs is shaping pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment in the field. Wondering about this leads to questions surrounding knowledge translation, and how we might make it a common goal moving forward to enhance the epistemic status of teachers’ knowledge in ways that more pragmatically connect PETE research and physical education teachers. Given the diverse landscapes PETE graduates are entering into, we see a continued need for PETE researchers to advocate for more culturally responsive and socially just forms of physical education that bring attention to racism, colonialism, sexism, heteronormativity, and other social issues. Given that critical theories tempered success in both PETE, and teacher education in general, in regards to advocating for social justice, perhaps exploring other theoretical frameworks with PETE students such as narrative inquiry, self-study, ethnography, auto-ethnography, and action research offer new ways forward. While much of the research focus seems to be on PETE students’ dispositions towards social justice, what about PETE educators and researchers dispositions towards social justice? Given the homogeneous demographic of PETE researchers and educators, perhaps questions around diversifying this particular population need to be taken up more seriously. With what seems to be an overnight phenomenon of a societal awareness of obesity, health, wellness, fitness, and disease, we wonder if we have a sense of those who are coming to us as future physical educators. Socialization work taken up in the past seems to conceptualize very different students from the ones we are seeing in today’s teacher education courses. We wonder how we might better understand the lives of those who are coming to PETE programs, and the lives of those who are beginning to teach physical education. How are they negotiating their identities, personal dispositions in social systems that seem to continue to ask them to become more accountable to values, standards, and measures that may or may not resonate with their imagined notions of teaching physical education?
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On what is perhaps an even more extreme note, what will technology, professional outsourcing, the significance of health sciences, and health education, which is still largely ignored by PE, mean for PE, PE teachers, and PETE in the future? How might PETE researchers offer different perspectives to those researching in the areas of obesity, health promotion, heart health, and diabetes? What might PETE learn from being more intricately involved in these areas? Is there a danger in being swallowed up by the sciences if we branch off to research in multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral ways, or does this collaborative relationship offer generative ways forward? In returning to our introductory quote, we are forever on our way (Greene, 1995) and while we know that we have not offered any concrete answers here, we hope that the dialogue and questions posed may allow for new imagined possibilities in PETE research as we move forward.
Note 1 In this chapter we draw on a wide range of international research around PETE. In our initial review of the literature we focused on research that spoke to the enduring questions we list above that we see as polarizing the field. From this review we then chose the research that we saw best helped us illustrate the past, present, and possible future research for PETE.
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McKenzie, T., & Lounsbery, M. (2013). Physical education teacher effectiveness in a public health context. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 84(4), 419–430. Mercier, K., & Doolittle, S. (2013). Assessing student achievement in physical education for teacher evaluation. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 84(3), 38–42. Metzler, M. (1990). Instructional supervision for physical education. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Metzler, M. (2009). The great debate over teacher education reform escalates: More rhetoric or a new reality? Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 28(3), 293–309. Metzler, M. (2014). Teacher effectiveness research in physical education: The future isn’t what it used to be. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 85(1), 14–19. Metzler, M., & Tjeerdsma, B. (1998). PETE program assessment within a development, research, and improvement framework. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 17(4), 468–492. Moy, B., Renshaw, I., & Davids, K. (2014). Variations in acculturation and Australian physical education teacher education students’ receptiveness to an alternative pedagogical approach to games teaching. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 19(4), 349–369. Naul, R. (2003). Concepts of physical education in Europe. In K. Hardman (Ed.), Physical education. Deconstruction and reconstruction – issues and directions. Berlin Germany: ICSSPE. Pill, S., Penney, D., & Swabey, K. (2012). Rethinking sport teaching in physical education: A case study of research based innovation in teacher education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(8), 118–138. Rink, J. (2014). Teacher effectiveness in physical education – Consensus? Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 85(3), 282–286. Roberts, G. (2014). Time to demonstrate how we impact student learning. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 85(1), 27–30. Robinson, D., & Randall, L. (2016). Social justice in physical education. Toronto: Canadian Press. Ross, S., Metcalf, A., Bulger, S., & Housner, L. (2014). Modified Delphi investigation of motor development and learning in physical education teacher education. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 85(3), 316–329. Rossi, T., Hunter, L., Christensen, E., & Macdonald, D. (2015). Workplace learning in physical education. Milton Park, Oxfordshire: Routledge. Rossi, T., Sirna, K., & Tinning, R. (2008). Becoming a health and physical education (HPE) teacher: Student teacher ‘performances’ in the physical education subject department office. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(4), 1029–1040. Roth, K. (2014). Technology for tomorrow’s teachers. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 85(4), 3–5. Rovegno, I. (1993). The development of curricular knowledge: A case of problematic pedagogical content knowledge during advanced knowledge acquisition. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 64(1), 55–68. Schaefer, L. (2012). Shifting from stories to live by to stories to leave by: Conceptualizing early career teacher attrition as a question of shifting identities. Published dissertation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Schaefer, L. (2013a). Beginning teacher attrition: A question of identity making and identity shifting. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(3), 260–274. Schaefer, L. (2013b). Narrative inquiry for physical education pedagogy. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 8(1), 18–26. Schaefer, L., & Clandinin, D.J. (2011). Stories of being sustained: A narrative inquiry into the experiences of two beginning teachers. LEARNing Landscapes, 4(2), 275–295. Schempp, P., & Graber, K. (1992). Teacher socialization from a dialectical perspective: Pretraining through induction. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 11(4), 329–348. Schwab, J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501–522.
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Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the New Reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–21. Siedentop, D. (2002). Content knowledge for physical education. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 21(4), 368–377. Sirna, K., Tinning, R., & Rossi, T. (2008). The social tasks of learning to become a physical education teacher: Considering the HPE subject department as a community of practice. Sport, Education and Society, 13(3), 285–300. Sirna, K., Tinning, R., & Rossi, T. (2010). Social processes of health and physical education teachers’ identity formation: Reproducing and changing culture. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(1), 71–84. Smith, T.M., & Ingersoll, R.M. (2004). What are the effects of induction and mentoring on beginning teacher turnover? American Educational Research Journal, 41(3), 681–714. Stolz, S., & Pill, S. (2014). Telling physical education teacher education tales through pedagogical case studies. Sport, Education and Society, 21(6), 868–887 Sykes, H. (1998). Turning the closets inside/out: Towards a queer-feminist theory on women’s physical education. Sociology of Sport Journal, 15(2), 154–173. Sykes, H. & Goldstein, T. (2004). From performing to performed ethnography. Teaching Education, 15(1), 41–61. Templin, T., & Schempp, P. (1989). Socialization into physical education: Its heritage and hope. In T. Templin and P. Schempp (Eds), Socialization into physical education (pp. 1–11). Indianapolis, IN: Benchmark Press. Thompson, M., & Penney, D. (2015). Assessment literacy in primary physical education. European Physical Education Review, 21(4), 485–503. Tinning, R. (1984). Social critique in physical education: A missing dimension of our profession. The ACHPER National Journal, 103, 10. Tinning, R. (2010). Pedagogy and human movement: Theory, practice, research. London: Routledge. Tinning, R., & Fitzclarence, L. (1992). Postmodern youth culture and the crisis in Australian secondary school physical education. Quest, 44(3), 287–303. Tinning, R., & Glasby, P.M. (2002). Pedagogical work and the ‘cult of the body’: Considering the role of HPE in the context of the ‘new public health’. Sport, Education and Society, 7(2), 109–119. Tsangaridou, N. (2006a). Teachers’ beliefs. In D. Kirk, D. Macdonald & M. O’Sullivan (Eds), The handbook of physical education (pp. 486–501). London: Sage. Tsangaridou, N. (2006b). Teachers’ knowledge. In D. Kirk, D. Macdonald & M. O’Sullivan (Eds), The handbook of physical education (pp. 502–515). London: Sage. Ward, P. (2013). A response to the conversations on effective teaching in physical education. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 85(3), 293–296. Webster, C., Webster, L., Russ, L., Molina, S., Lee, H., & Cribbs, J. (2015). A systematic review of public health-aligned recommendations for preparing physical education teacher candidates. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 86(1), 30–39. Wiliam, D. (2011). What is assessment for learning? Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37(1), 3–14. Wright, S., McNeill, M., Fry, J., & Wang, J. (2005). Teaching teachers to play and teach games. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 10(1), 61–82.
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40 The Creative Arts and Teacher Education Robyn Ewing
Imagination is no mere ornament, nor is art. Together they can liberate us from our indur ated habits. They might help us restore decent purpose to our efforts and help us create the kind of schools our children deserve and our culture needs. (Eisner, 2005, p. 213)
Introduction It is widely accepted that the Arts are inextricably linked with our imaginations and creative capacities and are core to who we are as human beings (Greene, 1995). As Eisner argues in the above quote, an imaginative, arts-rich curriculum has the potential to transform our schools and engage our students in purposeful learning. Real engagement with any art form can transform our thinking and understanding, help us reflect on the taken for granted and challenge the way we look at and live in the world. Biesta (2013) argues that the Arts in education have the potential to help children become more ‘grown up’ or more compassionate and able to live less egocentrically. If we accept that the Arts are central to our humanity, they should be an integral part of each stage of the early childhood, school and higher education curriculum alongside the often more privileged focus on literacy and numeracy. This chapter argues that the Arts should be embedded in both pre-service and in-service teacher education to ensure that teachers have the confidence and expertise to provide quality arts-rich learning experiences in their classrooms. Decades of international research have demonstrated that embedding quality arts experiences and processes as critical, quality pedagogy (Ewing, 2006, 2010) across the curriculum has the potential to reform traditional notions of curricula and
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also to improve students’ engagement in learning (Fleming, Gibson & Anderson, 2016) as well as their affective and academic achievements more generally (for example, Catterall, 2009, 2013). Arts processes and experiences can enable the development of dispositions / habits of mind that are critical for living in the twenty-first century (for example, see Winner, Goldstein & Vincent-Lancrin, 2013; Catterall, 2009, 2013; Bamford, 2006; UNESCO, 2006; Miller & Saxton, 2004; Deasy, 2002; Heath, 2000; Fiske, 1999). Despite this growing acknowledgement of the centrality of the Arts for our identities and for transformative pedagogy, provision of arts education and quality arts experiences for pre-service and in-service teachers appears to be at an all-time low. Pre-service teacher education and teacher professional development programmes in the Arts, while flourishing in some countries, have been radically cut in others. Many artists-in-residence programmes or arts partnerships in schools are wholly or partially funded by arts organisations or through philanthropic foundations rather than by governments. Resource funding for quality arts education in schools is unevenly distributed and consequently it is often the most vulnerable school communities that miss out (Vinson & Rawsthorne, 2015; Ewing, 2010). Many generalist early childhood, elementary and non-arts secondary teachers at all stages of their careers articulate a lack of confidence and expertise in teaching different art forms (Gibson & Ewing, 2011; Upitis, Atri, Keely & Lewis, 2010). In the author’s own experience, teachers often describe themselves as ‘uncreative’ or ‘not artistic’, failing to appreciate the creative artistry or aesthetic (Hobbs, 2012) that underpins their teaching while simultaneously acknowledging the creativity of their students. Despite rhetoric that proclaims the importance of the Arts and their relationship to creativity, problem solving and flexibility, many government policies seek linear recipes for success through assessment of achievement based on high-stakes testing (Nussbaum, 2010). This chapter first considers a definition of ‘the Arts’ and an understanding of related terms before providing a brief review of contemporary international research and scholarship that demonstrates the criticality of quality arts experiences for children and for the education of their teachers. Several vignettes and examples follow to highlight the features of successful arts teacher education initiatives in a number of countries. The chapter then addresses the tenuous and tense relationship between education in and through the Arts and teacher education. Finally, the ongoing challenges in ensuring that all teachers are prepared, knowledgeable and confident in their own creative potential to embed the Arts in curriculum are considered.
Defining ‘the Arts’ Defining ‘the Arts’ in any cultural context must always be characterised as fluid and dynamic given that cultural and social contexts shape and sustain and,
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conversely, inhibit different arts disciplines (Bamford, 2006). Conscious of the ever-changing nature of contemporary arts experiences and practices, the term ‘the Arts’ has been used throughout this chapter as a collective, shorthand term to identify, discuss and represent major creative arts disciplines and the embodied knowing they develop. If dance, drama, film and other media arts, literature, music and visual arts (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2013) should play an important role in formal educational contexts it is imperative that both pre-service and experienced teachers understand their own artistry as educators and enjoy career-long professional learning opportunities in and through the arts.
The Arts for the Sake of the Arts Although many communities privilege words/text over other symbols in their formal or intended curriculum documents, each art form represents different ways of making meaning or different ways of knowing (Habermas, 1972) and communicating about the world: different literacies (Livermore, 2003). All art forms must therefore be studied and understood for their intrinsic worth (Bryce, Mendelovits, Beavis, McQueen & Adams, 2004). Some positive influences of the Arts in our lives include: the pleasure and emotional stimulation of a personal, ‘felt’, often spontaneous response; our captivation by or through an imaginative experience; an expanded capacity for empathy and compassion leading to the potential for creating social relationships; cognitive growth in being able to make sense of art; and the ability to find a voice to express or represent societal or personal challenges or dilemmas provocatively (adapted from McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaras & Brooks, 2004). In a similar vein, Seidel, Tishman, Winner, Hetland and Palmer (2009) suggest that the characteristics of quality in arts learning experiences include all-encompassing engagement; involvement with authentic, artistic processes and materials; an exploration of ‘big ideas’ about both art and human experience; and direct experiences with completed or inprocess works of art (Seidel et al., 2009). It is clear therefore that the Arts must never be viewed merely as ‘instrumental’ to the achievement of other learning outcomes (McCarthy et al., 2004). Nevertheless, the realisation of the potential for the Arts to foster the development of creativity and innovation is currently attracting much attention given the increasing emphasis on the importance of creative, flexible and critical thinking and problem solving in a world of escalating change (Fleming et al., 2016).
Arts Disciplines and Processes The following arts disciplines (presented alphabetically to prevent any perceived privileging) are named in many formal curriculum documents all over the world and have therefore provided the focus and exemplars for this discussion:
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•• Dance uses the body integrating choreography and intentional movement as performance to make meaning. •• Drama employs dramatic processes (voice, body, gesture, space, tension) to explore and create real and fictional worlds as performers and as audience. •• Literature includes imaginative writing that uses evocative, expressive language including novels, short stories, plays, poetry and picture books. •• Media arts involve the use of technologies to tell stories creatively and include artistic and expressive elements of traditional and new technologies (for example: photography, film, video and digital animation). •• Music is aurally based and involves listening, composing, performing and critical appreciation. •• Visual arts include two- and three-dimensional design and art-making (painting, drawing and sculpture) and art appreciation as audience.
Alongside the discrete knowledge, skills and expertise in each arts discipline, it is argued that all art forms involve processes that are integral to both formal and informal educative experiences. These processes include imaginative play; experimentation or exploration; provocation; use of metaphor; expression or representation; communication; design; and the artistic or aesthetic shaping of the body or other media. Teachers must understand these processes and how they are inextricably linked to the nurturing of children’s and their own already rich imaginative and creative abilities. Other terms important in understanding the tenuous relationships between the Arts and education as discussed in this chapter include: •• ‘Arts and education’ represents an overarching term emphasising equal status and acknowledging a reciprocal and interactive relationship. •• ‘Arts in education’ and ‘education through the Arts’ capture the concepts of engaging in arts experiences and using arts processes and strategies as pedagogical tools to facilitate learning and foster creative and flexible thinking connecting different kinds of knowledge. •• ‘Education in the Arts’ and ‘arts education’ describe the teaching and learning about different arts disciplines. •• ‘Teacher education’ refers to both initial or pre-service education needed to gain a qualification to teach and ongoing professional learning for experienced teachers.
While specialist arts secondary teachers usually qualify through a first degree in their chosen arts field, this chapter is particularly concerned with the need for all teacher education to incorporate meaningful education about, in and through the Arts. Schwab’s (1973) ‘commonplaces’ for curriculum-making in the Arts mandate that all teacher education must include knowledge of: •• relevant subject matter (knowledge, skills and expertise) as well as access to appropriate resources; •• how children are innately artful; •• an understanding of how learners at a particular age or stage will best learn about, in and through the Arts; •• the particular contexts for arts learning in classrooms as well as in out-of-school and extracurricular community contexts; and
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•• themselves as teachers as art-makers and artful educators who need to engage in ongoing professional learning.
Acknowledging the value of arts education in developing creativity emphasises the importance of the interdisciplinary nature of key competencies, including cultural awareness. They represent an important lens through which to view the Arts in teacher education (President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, 2011; Council of the European Union’s Agenda for Culture, 2007).
An Integrated, Holistic Perspective While the knowledge about discrete disciplines of art-making processes must be upheld, this author considers that artistic and educational collaborations should also be based on authentic curriculum integration (Gibson & Ewing, 2011; Bresler, 2004). It is damaging when competitive arguments about which arts discipline should receive the most attention dominate the agenda. Instead of the traditional codifying of the Arts into discrete categories, multi-layered, even organic, ways of thinking about the Arts provide a much-needed shift in epistemological grounding (Gadsden, 2008). The following section demonstrates that embedding students in quality arts processes and experiences can provide the potential to reshape the way learning is conceived and organised in schools and other educational contexts.
Reviewing the Research: The Arts and Education Findings from a range of research and practitioner sources over more than two decades demonstrate that the Arts, while in no way a panacea for all educational and social problems, have the potential to help us address many of the habitual issues routinely embedded in current educational institutions. These include the motivation and engagement of young people in authentic learning (Wyn, 2009). Many successful arts projects also depict the Arts as providing potential catalysts for social transformation in the community more generally. Arts-rich experiences give teachers and students the courage to make and represent meanings aesthetically (Greene, 1978), to take risks, to genuinely collaborate, to fail memorably (Zusak, 2014) and, critically, to develop the resilience to try again. An artwork, a theatre or dance performance, a piece of music, a film, can trigger the asking of big questions that inevitably challenge the stereotypes that prevail too often within individual and community life. Experiencing and engaging in a quality arts process is therefore necessary for all children and young people as part of their learning – through the Arts they gain access to the real world and to other possible imaginative worlds, and begin to make coherent meanings about their own identities, their worlds and the people in these worlds.
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In a review for the OECD, Arts for Art’s Sake?, Winner et al. (2013) analyse the empirical evidence for the impact of the Arts on developing critical and creative thinking as well as skills to enhance academic outcomes in non-arts subjects. While valuing the technical skills of different art forms as well as the habits of mind and behaviour that are developed, they also conclude that: Arts education matters because people trained in the arts play a significant role in the innovation process…. the arts are an essential part of human heritage and of what makes us human, and it is difficult to imagine an education for better lives without arts education. (pp. 13–14)
Neuro-scientific research confirms that genuine collaborative strategies developed through creative dance, music, visual arts and drama activities can achieve an increase in brain synchrony encouraging the breaking up of old patterns of behaviour (Damasio, 2004; Freeman, 1995). The ability to empathise or walk in someone else’s shoes emphasised in educational drama is also important in understanding diversity and the need to be inclusive (Ewing & Simons, 2016; Donelan, 2012; Heath, 2000). Thousands of programmes and initiatives all over the world strive to improve educational outcomes or change problematic social situations through embedding arts experiences in formal or informal learning contexts. Too numerous to mention, these programmes and initiatives have varying specific goals and objectives primarily concerned with improving the life chances of children or adults considered to be vulnerable or ‘at risk’. Given the growing research evidence about the centrality of the Arts for cognitive and emotional well-being and the impact it can have on deep learning, arts education needs to be seen as a core curriculum component and be accessible to all students from all backgrounds at each level of education. Yet, despite the importance of such programmes to their participants and their potential generalised social impact, many of them are initiated and implemented by not-for-profit, philanthropic or charitable organisations rather than public education and state governments.
The Arts as a core formal curriculum component: two exemplars Recently the need for the centrality of the Arts in the formal curriculum has been recognised by the Welsh government. Successful Futures (Donaldson, 2015) reviewed curriculum and assessment built on an earlier report (Smith, 2013) to strongly endorse the recommendation to place arts and creativity at the heart of the Welsh curriculum. Expressive arts is nominated as one of six ‘areas of learning and experience’ that the Welsh national curriculum for ages 3 to 16 will adopt in place of traditional, often silo-ed curriculum subjects. The report
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recommends that the entirety of the school curriculum should be designed to help all children and young people to become: •• •• •• ••
ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world, ready to be citizens of Wales and the world healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society.
In the Expressive Arts, it is intended that children will develop their creative appreciation and talent, and their artistic and performance skills. They will have opportunities to explore thinking, and refine and communicate ideas creatively using their imagination and senses. This area of the curriculum will span the making, performance, expression and appreciation of art, drama, music, dance, film and digital media. The report anticipates it will provide ‘many opportunities’ for students to visit theatres and galleries, and provide funding to bring artists and musicians into the classroom. In Finland, a country leading the world in the international benchmarking, the Arts also have an important role in both school and cultural life. The number of adults and children from early childhood onward participating in arts education exceeds well over 1.2 million every year (more than 20 per cent of the population). In addition, tens of thousands develop their artistic skills outside the art education institutes, through orchestras, choirs, dance studios and amateur theatricals. The Finnish Ministry (2010) notes, however, that there is inequitable distribution across different regions and in art forms. It has undertaken strategies to widen the opportunities for children to pursue artistic hobbies, notably by means of the Finnish Arts Council’s Aladdin’s Lamp network of 11 children’s cultural centres. Additionally, a project called Myrsky (Storm) focuses on arts provision in remote and regional areas and is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Winner et al. (2013, p. 18) found that universities in Europe were increasingly working on inter-disciplinary curricula to enhance skills in other areas through arts. They cite Aalto University in Finland created through merging studies in Economics, Arts and Design and Technology. Yet there are many other examples worldwide where the arts in-and-through education are not flourishing despite the policy rhetoric.
Disparities between curriculum intention and actuality Ongoing tensions persist between the Arts and education in many contemporary education systems. Frequently cited factors that contribute to these ongoing tensions include a perception that arts disciplines represent a form of cultural elitism only accessible to the privileged. In addition, the dearth of quality and sustained pre-service and in-service arts professional learning for early childhood, primary
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and generalist secondary teachers has contributed to teacher misconceptions and/ or lack of confidence in one or more art form(s). Such feelings are sometimes influenced by unfortunate prior personal arts experiences. At times intense political and often destructive arguments within and between the arts disciplines themselves (Pascoe, 2015) have also created other kinds of tensions. To date, while there is much correlational evidence about quality arts and the improvement of student learning across the curriculum, limited systematic large-scale research and difficulties quantifying their impact (Ewing, 2010) in ways preferred by governments has also proved an obstacle. In many countries the continued silo-ing and dominance of traditional competitive academic curricula (Connell, 1994) remains the main passport for entering tertiary education. Across the OECD countries Winner et al. (2013) report that the share of time allocated for arts education for children aged between 9 and 11 has slightly diminished in 10 of the 18 OECD nations. This observation is supported by evidence from individual countries. The University of Warwick Report (2015) argued that between 2003 and 2011 there was evidence that the Arts and creative processes were progressively being ‘squeezed out’ of the English curriculum. A 2012 US Department of Education (National Council of Educational Standards) report demonstrated that theatre and dance offerings in primary schools had decreased dramatically since 2002, with children at risk most affected. In a US Common Core survey of 1,001 third- through 12th-grade educators, 66 per cent of participant teachers responded that arts subjects are being downsized due to an overwhelming emphasis on language, literacy and mathematics. More emphasis continues to be placed on what is perceived as the more ‘academic’ subjects and reduced educational funding results in major cuts to arts programmes and resourcing. Vermeulen’s (2009) doctoral research found that few teachers in South Africa had expertise in more than one arts discipline and that practical arts activities were often sacrificed for more literacy and numeracy instruction. Thousands of years ago, Confucianism provided a basis for a holistic approach to Chinese Arts education from early childhood by advocating the ‘Six Arts’ (etiquette, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy and mathematics). The Annual Report of Chinese Arts Education 2012 only discusses music and visual arts as the main components of preschool arts education, which, in reality, are often the only arts subjects in Chinese kindergartens (Li, 2013; Zhang, 2012). Some Chinese educators suggest there is a biased focus on a skills-only approach to teaching in the Arts and claim that many children are expected to follow the teacher’s instruction while more spontaneous exploration and appreciation are ignored (Zhang, 2012).
Implications: Quality arts teacher education If quality arts education and arts pedagogy are to be central curriculum features, learning in, through and about the Arts must become a priority for both pre-service
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teacher education courses and ongoing professional learning for in-service teachers. There is evidence of a mismatch between what is expected of early childhood and generalist primary teachers in teaching about, in and through the Arts and what they themselves believe they can do (Alter, Hayes & O’Hara, 2009; Garvis & Riek, 2010). Eason, Giannangelo and Franceschini (2009) report that teachers with the expertise in the Arts who consider they have creative abilities do encourage and support these in their classrooms. At the same time there are many others who do not describe themselves in this way and who do not feel confident to do so. As demonstrated earlier, provision of quality teacher preparation in the Arts for early-career early childhood, primary and non-Arts secondary teachers has diminished and ongoing professional learning in the Arts has been almost nonexistent. At Murdoch University in Western Australia, for example, primary preservice teachers have just six hours in their programme to learn about the Creative Arts (Pascoe, 2015). Reduced time allocation for learning about specific arts disciplines in teacher education courses has resulted in many early-career teachers reporting that they lack the knowledge, skills and understanding in one or more of the art forms that they are expected to teach. Additionally some research suggests that pre-service teachers do not always see the relevance of the Arts (see, for example, Lemon & Garvis, 2013) for their classrooms. Thus it is necessary for teacher educators to find innovative ways to work collaboratively across the university, school and broader community. Many such initiatives involve teaching artists (Booth, 2010) and artists-in-residence programmes shared with community arts organisations, galleries and museums to underpin and support teacher education in the Arts. This has been termed a co-participative approach (Nilson, Fetherston, McMurray & Fetherston, 2013). Where possible the involvement of families in developing creative arts skills and interest is also developed. Ongoing professional learning or development for experienced teachers is also important. Upitis et al. (2010) examined four North American professional programmes aimed at upskilling generalist teachers in the Arts. While a number of teachers reported personal transformations, others reported that they experienced increased self-confidence and a greater awareness of their creativity and self-expression as well as moments of frustration. In many instances participants made a long-term commitment to the Arts in their classrooms and shared these new understandings with their students’ parents. In Canada, masterclasses, teacher resources and internships for emerging artists are funded by Arts Alive (ArtsAlive.ca) established by the National Youth and Education Trust. In the United Kingdom, The Creative Partnerships Programme (2002–2011) aimed to develop the arts skills and knowledges of more than a million young people and 90,000 teachers across England by funding 8,000 innovative partnerships between creative professionals and schools. Many were long term and aimed to raise the aspirations of young people to give them more options for
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their future. Improvements in student attendance, engagement, behaviour and academic achievement were documented (Thomson & Sefton-Green, 2011). Looking particularly at teacher professional learning, researchers noted that, for significant and effective professional learning to occur, teachers needed to go beyond the application of skills learned to understand the deeper underlying principles of the process so they could generate their own planning and implementation of this work subsequently (Hatcher, 2011). The Kennedy Center offers a variety of arts teacher education programmes including Changing Education through the Arts (CETA) in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. These development programmes are designed to teach educators about the Arts and about arts integration techniques. They include mentoring and co-teaching by expert teaching artists in the classroom. CETA partners with schools that have determined a school-wide integrated focus on the Arts and concentrates on teacher professional learning. It aims to: establish and nurture a network of schools committed to arts integration as an approach to teaching and learning; build teacher planning, teaching and assessment skills and practices in arts integration; create supportive school cultures that enable sustained teacher professional learning and collaboration; and share knowledge with other organisations with similar programmes. Evaluations of CETA to date have reported that teachers involved have developed their own creativity as well as knowledge, skills and appreciation of the Arts. They have also become more confident in working collaboratively to meaningfully connect art forms with other curriculum subjects (Silverstein, Duma & Layne, 2010). Since 1976 the Lincoln Center has similarly established programmes that aim to connect the performing arts to classrooms and more broadly in the community.
Australian Arts Partnerships In Australia there are also many teacher professional learning programmes involving artists-in-residence in schools that aim to develop teacher knowledge, expertise and confidence in embedding the Arts in the curriculum (Hunter, 2005, 2011). A Victorian study (Imms, Jeanneret & Stevens-Ballenger, 2011) reported that arts partnerships in 24 schools positively impacted student engagement, student voice, social learning, creative skills, and arts-related knowledge and skills. Teachers noted more active student participation and pride in the learning process and more evidence of students’ willingness to take on challenges. One such programme, School Drama, particularly focuses on teacher professional learning. The School Drama programme is a teacher professional learning, artist-inresidence programme for primary teachers developed in 2009 by Australia’s largest theatre company, Sydney Theatre Company, and the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. The co-mentoring programme involves a Sydney Theatre Company Teaching Artist working alongside the classroom
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teacher modelling the use of process drama-based strategies with quality children’s literature to enhance their students’ English and literacy teaching and learning outcomes. The programme aims to increase teacher confidence and capacity in using drama strategies in English and literacy but ultimately to understand its application across the curriculum. Through the co-mentoring model (Ewing, 2006), the Teaching Artists share their theatre skills and artistry with the classroom teacher. At the same time they learn to adapt their artistry to particular English or literacy outcomes in specific classroom contexts. Research (Saunders, 2015; Gibson & Smith, 2013) concluded that the participating classroom teachers are continuing to use this professional learning experience of their new understanding of teaching artistry in their own classrooms long after the teaching artists have concluded their classroom programme. The programme is expanding across Australia. In 2016, 21 Teaching Artists worked with over 900 teachers, with more than 4,000 students in 45 schools experiencing their teachers’ new found expertise. These examples illustrate there is much potential to integrate arts partnerships and teaching artists into teacher education programmes more systematically and to encourage multiple cultural opportunities for pre-service and in-service teachers’ to work together alongside experts in the different arts disciplines or through an integrated arts approach. Such programmes build teacher knowledge and skills but also inform their self-efficacy and the development of positive beliefs about how arts education and education through the Arts can be realised.
Understanding teaching as artistry In addition to developing knowledge and expertise about the teaching of mandated arts disciplines, teachers must see their teaching as artful and become aware of the role the Arts and arts processes can play in enriching their creative pedagogical perspectives in their curriculum area(s). As Dinham (2011) argues, all pre-service teachers need the time and resources within their teacher education to engage in learning through the Arts and to reflect on these experiences. They need to be challenged to think creatively about their own teaching and the aesthetics of teaching. Offering innovative units of study that encourage early-career teachers to engage in Creative Arts experiences empowers them to be actively involved in designing their learning against a backdrop of traditional transmissive educational practices commonplace in many institutions of higher education. Young teachers need to see meaningful connections across the Creative Arts and experience different routes of learning that can be accessed through the Creative Arts. If early-career primary teachers are to feel empowered to change transmissive and traditional educational practices that often exist in schools, it is vital that they acknowledge, understand and question their own emerging teacher identity
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and many taken-for-granted aspects of teaching practice. Nine years ago Ewing and Gibson (2007, 2015) documented a then five year journey to design and develop two elective final year Bachelor of Education Creative Arts units that aimed to encourage final year pre-service primary teachers to teach creatively through integrated arts processes and experiences. It was believed that if preservice teachers engaged in meaningful artistic creative processes they would be more likely to offer such learning opportunities for the children they teach. Through such processes, teachers can reconnect with their creative potential. In using Creative Arts in education, it is anticipated that teachers will start to consider different ways of learning, at the same time providing spaces in which to research their own teaching practices. Early-career teachers will then be encouraged by their own imaginative efforts using the Arts to translate these experiences to meet the needs of their students in primary classrooms. For example, Ewing and Gibson reported their use of McDermott’s (2005) collage strategy as a means of representing identity with pre-service teachers. McDermott argued that: Creating collage allows emerging educators to discuss the shifting relationships between self, community, power, language, social equality, and educational practices, unhinging linear frames of thinking and dominant ideologies and practices that often go unchallenged in the classroom. (p. 49)
They asked their class to consider how their personal life experiences related to their emerging teacher identity, and represent through collage the way that their philosophies and experiences had impacted on their decision to become a teacher. In advocating creative teaching through the Creative Arts, Sawyer (2004) argued that ‘creative teaching is better conceived of as improvisational performance’ (p. 12). To this end, beginning teachers should engage in exploring, questioning and critiquing their own ‘cultural scripts’ (Barone, 2001). This section has emphasised the importance of quality education in and through the Arts, and has highlighted the insecurities many teachers articulate about their ability to use arts processes in their teaching. Governments and universities must re-consider the initial preparation of all teachers to give them confidence to embed the Arts in their teaching and learning practices. Funding for ongoing professional development, to enable both experienced generalist and arts teachers to continue to update their knowledge and develop their expertise and skills in and through the Arts, should also be prioritised.
Concluding comments If arts education is to be made accessible to all students from all backgrounds at each level of education, there are direct implications for teacher education and for school curricula. Because many official curriculum documents fail to emphasise arts processes and experiences, many teacher education programmes do not
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provide adequate time and resourcing in arts education. If a creative culture is to be developed through arts education among teachers, principals and other leaders, governments and education systems must reshape the competing competitive academic discourse that currently works against achieving such a culture. Cultivating imagination and creativity needs to become meaningfully integrated with other espoused priorities. Interdisciplinary experiences, including digital and other emerging art forms, need to be deemed important, not marginalised. More cross-curricular work involving arts and other (non-arts) subject areas, working together on creative and/or cultural themes, such as domestic violence, the refugee crisis, the environment and sustainable development, global citizenship and the need for peace, would initially place new demands on teachers and schools. It would require both intelligent school leadership and support at a policy level as well as adequate funding. The Arts are demonstrably well-placed to facilitate change in educational systems and structures. Communicating the individual and social impact of arts education, to raise community awareness about the intrinsic benefits of the Arts is also imperative. Currently conflicting discourses about what is and is not important in contemporary educational policy and practice confuse the issue. In Schultz’s words: … we tend to talk about the arts, and then we split that into disciplinary or geographic areas and encourage territorial scrapping; we talk about creative industries and disconnect them from the arts that are their wellspring; we talk about identity and then engage in bitter ideological arguments about what to include rather than accepting the reality of layers that leak into each other. (2013, p. 2)
A considerable and growing body of research supports the assertion that the Arts should be playing an important role in all areas of school and university education and community development. This cannot be actualised until there is adequate teacher education in and through the Arts. This chapter has particularly focused on the evidence that Arts can help transform learning processes and practices in schools to ensure that education is inclusive and meaningful for all children. It has demonstrated, through a brief review of related research literature, that the Arts and arts partnerships are already flourishing in a range of school and community initiatives. Such initiatives have enabled new beginnings for some participating teachers. At the same time, it is important to remember that inherent in the Arts is their ability to touch us as individuals in unique ways, and that this in itself can be an important catalyst for change in classrooms. All learners are entitled to access knowledge and skills that will enable their well-being in such a rapidly changing world. Nevertheless the position of the Arts in teacher education is under threat or already diminishing in many countries. With notable exceptions, it appears that in many education systems some art forms are encouraged (usually music and visual arts) while others are seen as optional, including dance and drama. In a crowded curriculum, and with
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worldwide cuts to education spending, minimal attention and funding is being provided for meaningful education in and through the Arts, limiting children’s opportunities and experience in music, drama, creative writing and quality literature. We must research the impact of teacher education programmes that do embed quality arts education and processes on both the teachers themselves and their students. If we are to realise the transformative potential of the Arts and education, we must move beyond rhetoric in policy about its importance, to action, by ensuring the provision of adequate funding for career-long teacher professional learning in and through the Arts.
References Alter, F., Hays, T., & O’Hara, R. (2009). Creative arts teaching and practice: Critical reflections of primary school teachers in Australia. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 10(9). Accessed at: http:// www.ijea.org/v10n9/ Australian Curriculum Reporting and Assessment Authority (ACARA). (2013). The Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation to Year 10. Accessed at: http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Australian_ Curriculum_The_Arts_2_July_2013.pdf Bamford, A. (2006). The wow factor: Global research compendium on the impact of the arts in education. Berlin, Germany: Waxmann Verlag. Barone, T. (2001). Touching eternity. The enduring outcomes of teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. Barton, G., Baguley, M., & Macdonald, A. (2013). Seeing the bigger picture: Investigating the state of the arts in teacher education programs in Australia. 38(7), 75–90. Biesta, G. (2013). The beautiful risk of education. London: Paradigm Publishers. Booth, E. (2010). The music teaching artist’s bible: Becoming a virtuoso educator. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. Bresler, L. (2004). Knowing bodies, moving minds: Towards embodied teaching and learning. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Bryce, J., Mendelovits, J., Beavis, A., McQueen, J., & Adams, I. (2004). Evaluation of school-based arts education programmes in Australian schools. Melbourne: Australian Council of Educational Research. Catterall, J. (2013). Getting real about the E in STEAM. The STEAM Journal, 1(1), Article 6. DOI: 10.5642/ steam.201301.06 Accessed at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/steam/vol1/iss1/6 Catterall, J. (2009). Doing well and doing good by doing art: The long term effects of sustained involvement in the visual and performing arts during high school. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Imagination Group. Connell, R. (1994). Poverty and education. Harvard Educational Review, 64(2), 125–47. Council of European Union. (2007). European Agenda for Culture. Accessed at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ legal-content/GA/ALL/?uri=celex:52007DC0242 Damasio, A. (2004). Descartes’ error. Emotion, reason and the human brain. New York: Avon Books. Deasy, R. (2002). Critical Links. Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership. Dinham, J. (2011). Delivering authentic arts education. Melbourne: Cengage. Donaldson, G. (2015). Successful Futures. Independent review of curriculum and assessment arrangements in Wales. Accessed at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150225-successful-futuresen.pdf
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Donelan, K. (2012). Arts education as intercultural and social dialogue. In C. Sinclair, N. Jeanneret, & J. O’Toole (Eds), Education in the Arts (pp. 22–8). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Eason, R., Giannangelo, D., & Franceschini III, L. (2009). A look at creativity in public and private schools. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4(7), 130–7. Eisner, E. (2005). What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education? In E. Eisner (Ed.), Reimagining schools: The selected works of Elliot E. Eisner (pp. 205–14). New York: Routledge. Ewing, R. (2010). The Arts and Australian education: Realising potential. Australian Education Review, 58. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research. Ewing, R, (2006). Reading to allow spaces to play. In R. Ewing (Ed.), Beyond the reading wars: Towards a balanced approach to helping children learn to read. (pp. 141–52). Camdenville, Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Ewing, R. & Gibson, R. (2007). Creative teaching or teaching creatively? Using creative arts strategies in preservice teacher education. Waikato Journal of Education (Special issue on Creative Research in the Arts), 13, 159–78. Ewing, R. & Simons, J. (2016). Beyond the script. Take 3. Drama in the classroom. 3rd edn. Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. (2010). Arts Education and Cultural Education in Finland. Policy Analysis Report of the Ministry of Education in Finland. Accessed at: http://www.minedu.fi/ export/sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2010/liitteet/okmpol022010.pdf?lang=en Fiske, E. (Ed.). (1999). Champions of change: The impact of the arts on learning. Washington, DC: The Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Fleming, J., Gibson, R., & Anderson, M. (2016). How arts education makes a difference. Research examining successful classroom practice and pedagogy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Freeman, W. (1995). Societies of brains: A study in the neuroscience of love and hate. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gadsden, V. (2008). The arts and education: Knowledge generation, pedagogy and the discourse of learning. Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 29–61. Garvis, S. & Riek, R. (2010). Improving generalist teacher education in the arts. International Journal of Arts in Society, 5(3), 159–69. Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Melbourne: Palgrave Macmillan. Gibson, R. & Smith, D. (2013). School drama: A meta-analysis. Unpublished report. Sydney: University of Sydney. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests. (J. Shapiro, trans.). London: Heinemann. Hatcher, R. (2011). Professional learning for creative teaching and learning. In J. Sefton-Green, P. Thomson, K. Jones, & L. Bresler (Eds), The Routledge international handbook of creative learning (pp. 404–13). London and New York: Routledge. Heath, S. (2000). Seeing our way into learning. Cambridge Journal of Education, 30(1), 121–31. Hobbs, L. (2012). Examining the aesthetic dimensions of teaching: Relationships between teacher knowledge, identity and passion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(5), 718–27. Hunter, M. (2011). Australia Council Community Partnerships Artist in Residence Program Evaluation 2009–2010: Report. Australian Council for the Arts. Hunter, M. (2005). Education and the Arts: Research overview. A summary report prepared for the Australia Council for the Arts, Australia Council for the Arts, Sydney. Canberra: Australian Government and Australian Council for the Arts. Imms, W., Jeanneret, N., & Stevens-Ballenger, J. (2011). Partnerships between schools and the professional arts sector: Evaluation of impact on student outcomes. State of Victoria Department of
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Education and Early Childhood Development. Accessed at: http://www.arts.vic.gov.au/Research_ and_Resources/Research_Projects/Arts_and_Ed ucation_Partnerships Lemon, N. & Garvis, S. (2013). What is the role of the arts in a primary school? An investigation of preservice teachers in Australia. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(9), 1–9. Li, H.J. (2013). 2012 Annual report of Chinese arts education – preschool. Arts Criticism, 5, 64–6. Livermore, J. (Ed.). (2003). More than words can say: A view of literacy through the arts. Canberra: National Affiliation of Arts Educators. McCarthy, K., Ondaatje, E., Zakaras, L., & Brooks, A. (2004). Gifts of the muse: Reframing the debate about the benefits of the Arts. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. McDermott, M. (2005). Torn to pieces: Collage art, social change, and pre-service teacher education. In M. Powell & V. Speiser (Eds), The arts, education and social change (pp. 49–60). New York: Peter Lang. Miller, C. & Saxton, J. (2004). Into the story: Language in action through drama. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Nilson, C., Fetherston, C., McMurray, A., & Fetherston, T. (2013). Creative arts: An essential element in the teacher’s toolkit when developing critical thinking in children. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(7), 1–17. Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pascoe, R. (2015). The transformative change in teacher education: AIR at Murdoch. Paper presented at Australian Association in Education Annual Conference, Perth, 30 November–3 December. President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. (2011). Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s future through creative schools. Washington, DC: Author. Saunders, J. (2015). Academic and non-academic outcomes for students engaged in School Drama: A case study. Unpublished M.Ed (Research) dissertation. Sydney: University of Sydney. Sawyer, R. (2004). Creative teaching: Collaborative discussion as disciplined improvisation. Educational Researcher, 33(2), 12–20. Schultz, J. (2013). ‘Where to from here … after the National Cultural Policy?’ Currency House Art and Public Life Address, Sydney, 14 August 2013. Schwab, J.J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501–22. Seidel, S., Tishman, S., Winner, E., Hetland, L., & Palmer, P. (2009). The qualities of quality. Understanding excellence in arts education. Cambridge, Mass: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education and The Wallace Foundation. Silverstein, L., Duma, A., & Layne, S. (2010). Arts integration schools: What, why and how? Changing education through the arts. Washington, DC: The Kennedy Center. Smith, D. (2013). An independent report for the Welsh Government into Arts in Education in Welsh Schools. Accessed at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/130920-arts-in-education-en.pdf Thomson, P. & Sefton-Green, J. (2011). (Eds). (2011). Researching creative learning: Methods and issues. London: Routledge. University of Warwick. (2015). Enriching Britain: Culture, creativity and growth. Accessed at: http:// www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/futureculture/finalreport/warwick_commission_ report_2015.pdf UNESCO. (2006). Road Map for Arts Education. Retrieved March 26, 2017 from http://www.unesco.org/ fileadmin/multimedia/HQ/CLT/CLT/pdf/Arts_Edu_RoadMap_en.pdf Upitis, R., Atri, A., Keely, C., & Lewis, A. (2010). Teachers’ experiences of professional development programs in the arts: Generalist teachers and arts advocates. The University of Melbourne E-Journal, 1(5), 1–27. Vermeulen, D. (2009). Integrating music in an integrated arts curriculum for South African primary schools. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Pretoria: University of Pretoria. Vinson, T. & Rawsthorne, M. (2015). Dropping off the Edge 2015. Persistent communal disadvantage in Australia (pp. 6–148). Curtin, ACT, Australia: Jesuit Social Services / Catholic Social Services Australia.
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Welsh Government. (2015). Creative Learning Through the Arts – An Action Plan for Wales 2015–2020. Accessed at: http://www.arts.wales/c_engagement-and-participation/action-plan-creative-learningthrough-the-arts Winner, E., Goldstein, T., & Vincent-Lancrin, S. (2013). Arts for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education. Paris: OECD. Accessed at: www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/arts.htm Wyn, J. (2009). Touching the future: Building skills for life and work. Australian Education Review, 55. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research Press. Zhang, J. (2012). Contemporary preschool music education in China. Science and Technology Information, 33, 196. Zusak, M. (2014). The failurist. Sydney, Australia: TEDx. Retrieved March 26, 2017 from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=A-_8QIdm4hA
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41 Teacher Education in Religious Education E l i n a Wr i g h t a n d A n d re w Wr i g h t
Introduction There is little research in the field of teacher education in Religious Education (RE). The existing literature tends to address generic non-subject-specific issues, rather than attend to the complex and contested nature of the subject, and to focus on the attitudes, knowledge, skills and competences student teachers bring with them to the learning process, rather than on their actual learning of how to deal with a specific, contested subject content in a way that helps students understand it better in relation to the educational aims. This chapter seeks to address the balance, by reporting the theoretical basis and ongoing delivery of a programme of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in a UK university that is intentionally subject-specific and focused on student teachers’ theoretical and practical learning. The programme is innovative in using the model of Critical Religious Education (CRE), which is grounded in the philosophy of Critical Realism and employs the Variation Theory of Learning as its pedagogical framework. An action research project employing a Learning Study model based on Variation Theory and a phenomenographic research approach forms an integrated component of the programme delivery.
Religious Education in the Global Context The global context of RE is that of religious and secular pluralism, which raises complex intellectual and moral challenges. Scholars in the field ‘agree to
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disagree’ on the content knowledge and aims of a curricular area that is subject to continuous debate and approached from different religious and philosophical frameworks (Grimmitt, 2000). Given such pluralism, we believe it important to make our approach to the subject explicit: from the philosophical perspective of Critical Realism (CR), we adopt a subject-specific philosophical approach to the pedagogy of RE and its application to teacher education. It is our view that the primary task of RE is to empower learners to live life wisely and truthfully sub species aeternitatis (‘under the canopy of eternity’). Prior to the Enlightenment the fact that the vast majority of worldviews were religious meant that RE took pride of place in the curriculum: the assumption that one must first understand the Creator in order to make sense of creation led medieval scholars to identify Theology as the ‘queen’ of the sciences and view all education as at root religious. The emergence of non-religious worldviews in the post-Enlightenment period served to problematise the subject. Traditional ‘Confessional’ RE, which assumes the truth of a particular religious worldview and seeks to induct students into it, remains the norm in many non-Western countries and still maintains a hold in the state education systems of Western countries such as Ireland and Turkey. From a Western liberal perspective Confessional RE is open to the charge of indoctrination: to impose a single religious worldview on students in a context of religious and secular pluralism threatens to undermine reason and autonomy and breed intolerance. Consequently, countries such as France and the USA systematically exclude it from the curriculum in favour of programmes of secular moral education. Critics argue that this move assumes the truth of secular critiques of religion and consequently generates secular confessionalism equally vulnerable to the charge of indoctrination (Wright, 2007). Between these extremes, countries such as Finland and the United Kingdom, rejecting the naïve assumption that to teach something is necessarily to advocate it, affirm forms of ‘Liberal’ RE that seek to cultivate public religious literacy (understood as the ability to think, speak and act wisely and responsibly with respect to religious issues) by attending to a diversity of religious and secular worldviews in an open manner that eschews confessionalism (Wright, 2007). Since there is no space here to provide a detailed account of the diverse approaches of RE in today’s global culture, a single example must suffice. The tensions between Confessional and Liberal forms of RE and various secular alternatives is clearly visible in the state-sponsored education system of England and Wales. In the early 1970s the subject underwent a fundamental shift from a ‘closed’ confessional approach, predicated on a common-denominator Christian Protestantism loosely allied to the Anglican establishment, to an ‘open’ liberal approach designed to explore a diversity of religious and secular worldviews in a non-partisan manner. In doing so it rejected Christian confessionalism yet resisted secular calls for the removal of the subject from the curriculum. There is a legal requirement that RE syllabuses ‘reflect the fact that religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking account of the teaching
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and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain’ (DES, 1988: Section 8.3). A key debate focuses on the question of aims: if the subject is no longer concerned with the confessional induction of students into a Christian worldview, what should it be attempting to achieve? An emerging consensus identifies two complementary attainment targets: students should both ‘learn about’ and ‘learn from’ religion: the former seeks to generate knowledge of religious phenomenon, the latter seeks to cultivate the liberal virtues of autonomy and tolerance in order to enhance freedom of belief and social cohesion (Hella & Wright, 2009). It is our contention that it is part of the human condition to ask primal questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life: Who are we? Where are we? What fundamental problems do we face? What constitutes human flourishing and how is it best achieved? Our responses are inevitably related to implicit or explicit understandings of the nature of the reality we inhabit and our place in the ultimate order-of-things that flow from our embeddedness in networks of stories, symbols, beliefs and practices that constitute the given cultural lens through which we engage with the world. The emergence of secular worldviews alongside religious ones does not nullify these questions. The spiritual task of making sense of our lives in relation to the totality of reality, of orienting ourselves sub species aeternitatis, is not the exclusive preserve of religious adherents. Regardless of our religious or secular commitments, we all face the spiritual challenge of making sense of the ultimate meaning and purpose of our lives. Despite the current resurgence of various forms of fundamentalism (both religious and secular), there is an increasing recognition that our understanding of our place in the ultimate order-of-things is necessarily partial, contingent and contested. This means that faith, whether religious or secular, is unavoidable. There is, we suggest, an intellectual and moral imperative to pursue questions of ultimate truth and truthful living in relation to the ultimate order-of-things: it is good to pursue truth and avoid falsehood, and our beliefs about our place in the ultimate order-of-things will inevitably shape our relationships with others.
Researching Teacher Education in Religious Education Given the current fluidity of the subject it is inevitable that approaches to teacher education in RE within state-sponsored education systems will be shaped by national, regional and local contexts. The research literature needs to be contextualised in broader debates concerning the complex and contested nature and aims of the subject (Jackson, 2004; Barnes, 2012), different subject pedagogies (Grimmitt, 2000) and subject teaching issues and arrangements in different countries (Larsson & Gustavsson, 2004; Ziebertz & Riegel, 2009). Research related to teacher education (TE) in RE tends to focus on three key areas: issues surrounding initial and in-service TE, notions of professionalism
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and professional development, and pedagogies of teaching and learning. Since there is no space here for a comprehensive review of the literature, we will restrict ourselves to presenting key examples of research in each area. (a) Initial and in-service teacher education. Research in this area tends to focus on particular national contexts and address specific rather than generic issues. Thus, for example: Memon (2011) addresses the absence of teacher training programmes for private Islamic schools in North America; McCreery (2005) presents a case study of the training of non-specialist primary school teachers in ITE in the UK; Startin and Webster (1996) report a qualitative study of the perceived needs of RE teachers at the start of their professional careers; Ziebertz and Riegel (2009) address the issue of divergent formal qualification requirements across Europe. (b) Professionalism and professional development. Research in this area tends to focus on evidence-based notions of professional development and brings teachers’ participation in communities of practice and engagement in action research to the fore (Bakker & Heimbrock, 2007; Ipgrave, Jackson & O’Grady, 2009; Baumfield, 2010; O’Grady, 2010; Stern, 2010). Professional development tends to be linked to the process of becoming an RE teacher (Everington, 2007, 2009, 2016; Everington & Sikes, 2001; Sikes & Everington, 2001, 2003, 2004; Bakker & Heimbrock, 2007; Baumfield, 2007; Riegel & Mendl, 2014). It is recognised that the notion of ‘professionalism’ requires clear conceptualisation and needs to be approached historically and comparatively (Freathy, Parker, Schweitzer & Simojoki, 2016a, 2016b; Horn, 2016). There is an emphasis on teachers’ perceptions of their roles as RE teachers and understanding of and attitudes towards the subject (I’Anson, 2004); their understandings of the nature of the subject (Tirri & Ubani, 2013; Riegel & Mendl, 2014); their general pre-service aims (Riegel & Mendel, 2014) and specific pedagogical aims (Kuusisto & Tirri, 2014); and their assessment of the quality of RE (Barić & Burušić, 2015). Ubani has studied student teachers’ understandings of the characteristics of competent subject teachers (2012) and their development (2016). Sikes and Everington (2001) employ a life history approach to explore personal and professional identity formation in relation to issues such as gender and lifestyle, while Chater (2005) and Gellel and Buchanan (2011) consider teachers’ values and developing sense of vocation. Skeie (2017) addresses the issue of teacher impartiality in a Norwegian context. There are studies of the recruitment (Mead, 2006) and retention (Dadley & Edwards, 2007) of trainee teachers. The professional role of teacher trainers is less extensively researched, though Rota and Bouzar (2017) consider representations and concepts of professional ethos among Swiss teacher trainers. (c) Teaching and learning. This literature includes studies of teaching and learning in schools, but not specifically in teacher education. Svensson (2010) explores the didactic choices of Muslim teachers in Kenya, identifying a tension between a confessional education into Islam and a more fact-oriented education about Islam. Baumfield (2010), in her editorial for a special edition of the
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British Journal of Religious Education devoted to the research into the pedagogy of RE, emphasises the importance of professional development through engagement with empirical research. She stresses ‘the importance of partnership and the formation of communities in which pupils, teachers and lecturers in universities are learning together’ (p. 89). Furthermore, Baumfield (2016) highlights the importance of teachers’ professional learning to integrate theory and practice and to improve teaching and learning in Religious Education. Contributors to the special edition affirm the significance ‘of the pupil voice to our understanding of learning and the improvement of education has been recognised in recent research’ and ‘stress the importance of giving teachers the opportunity to be heard’ (p. 89). Teece’s (2010) contribution traces the difficulties faced by teachers in relating to the dual attainment targets of learning ‘from’ and ‘about’ religion back to a lack of clarity regarding the object of study, offers a descriptive and explanatory analysis of their decision making with regards to lesson content, and suggests the need for a viable second-order interpretative framework in order to generate clarity regarding the object of study and enhance classroom decision making. Stern (2010) applies Bernstein’s concepts of ‘classification’ and ‘framing’ to classroom practice, while I’Anson (2010) calls for a pedagogy of difference designed to overcome supposedly neutral curricular constructs that contain inherent Western biases. O’Grady (2010) provides an overview of the work of a major European-wide research project that tested the application of the ‘Interpretive’ model of RE, as developed by Jackson and his colleagues at Warwick University, to a range of classroom contexts (Jackson, 1997, 2000, 2008; Ipgrave et al., 2009). In reflecting on this literature, we offer a number of observations: (a) There is a relative scarcity of empirical and theoretical research into teacher education in RE per se. Much of the literature reviewed is tangential, and discussion of the personal and professional development of teachers tends to take place at a generic level largely abstracted from concrete subject-specific issues of curricular construction, delivery and assessment. (b) The emphasis on student teachers’ perceptions of their roles tends to bypass both teacher education curricular requirements and teacher educators’ professional judgements with regard to the competencies expected of emergent teachers. Though it is undoubtedly important to attend closely to the voices of student teachers, their perceptions may need to be problematised and challenged if effective learning is to take place. (c) The generic focus on the development of teacher identity risks obscuring the primary task of facilitating student learning: personal and professional formation is not an end in itself, but a means to a greater end. (d) The literature on the pedagogy of RE tends to focus on the process of teaching at the expense of the process of learning: again, teaching is not an end in itself, but a means to the greater end of student learning. We adopt Loughran’s (2006, p. 2) claim that pedagogy of teacher education should refer to the relationship between teaching and learning. (e) Teece’s (2010) insistence on the need for a viable second-order interpretative
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framework for understanding teaching-for-learning is to be welcomed, as is his recognition that the absence of such a framework is a major impediment in ITE. This is undoubtedly related to the contested nature of RE: student teachers inevitably encounter a range of diverse theoretical models, and as a result risk working with a hybrid model made up of elements of different approaches linked together in a fragmentary and incoherent manner. Given that student teachers will inevitably work with some form of theoretical understanding, a strong case can be made for equipping them with the best possible theoretical framework currently available and empowering them to work within it. O’Grady’s (2010) research exemplifies such an approach, offering insight into the systematic and explicit application of a coherent pedagogical framework. (f) There are significant absences: no research into student teachers’ pedagogical learning processes and their outcomes in relation to the aims of teacher education in RE; no substantial differentiation between student teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and subject content knowledge; no consideration of the relationship between teacher learning, classroom teaching and classroom learning; no extended exploration of student teachers’ understanding of their own students’ learning.
Critical Religious Education Our approach to ITE in RE is grounded in the philosophy of CRE formulated by the authors of this chapter, a philosophy that presents itself as an alternative to the dominant philosophy of Liberal RE. CRE identifies teaching for learning as the critical task facing teachers and teacher educators, and views issues such as professional identity and role perception as peripheral to that task. The primary responsibility of teacher educators is to enable students to learn to teach, and the primary responsibility of teachers is to enable their students to learn. The programme also recognises the importance of teachers and teacher educators owning a clear underlying philosophy of teaching and learning specific to the disciplinary context of RE. Effective teaching requires a clear understanding of the relationship between ontology (the nature of the object of knowledge) and epistemology (ways of knowing the object). Attending to this relationship is especially important in RE, both because the subject attends to ontological objects (such as God) whose existence is disputed, and because the epistemic possibility of obtaining knowledge of such objects is similarly disputed. The place of RE in the school curriculum is ambiguous precisely because it deals with ultimate truth claims that appear to many to be ontologically and epistemically unsustainable. Consequently ITE in RE must attend to critical ontological questions about the primary object of knowledge in RE (i.e. the ultimate nature of reality and our place in it) and critical epistemic questions about the manner in which subject knowledge is mediated by teachers and accessed by students.
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Liberal forms of RE tend to adopt epistemic and ontological assumptions, informed by the legacy of the Enlightenment, which distinguish between ‘objective knowledge’ generated by empirical observation of objects and events in the external world, and ‘subjective opinion’ with respect to aesthetic, moral and religious beliefs closed to empirical verification. The ensuing divide between fact and value, knowledge and belief, reason and faith had a profound effect on RE. Objective curricular knowledge was limited to information about religion as an observable cultural phenomenon, whilst the transcendent truth claims proffered by various religious traditions were relegated to the status of subjective opinions closed to rational scrutiny. Consequently the pursuit of ultimate truth gave way to the pragmatic task of encouraging freedom of expression and tolerance of difference within a secular liberal moral framework. Such a position is not neutral: it entails a commitment to a matrix of naturalism (nature is the self-generating and self-rationalising bedrock of reality), secular humanism (human beings are the greatest entities known to have emerged from nature) and secular liberalism (human beings are free to pursue their own chosen ends provided they avoid harming others in the process). The twin principles of freedom and tolerance allowed for the accommodation of (non-radical) religious traditions within a secular liberal polity, but only at the expense of a confessional paternalism that consistently refuses to embrace religious truth claims as a serious option (Wright, 2004). The philosophy of Critical Realism (CR), which has independent roots in both secular and religious thought, challenges these ontological and epistemic assumptions by starting, not with the Enlightenment’s epistemic question ‘How can I obtain certain knowledge?’, but the ontological question ‘What must the world be like for us to experience it in the ways we do?’ CR contends that the best available answer is provided by the triumvirate of ontological realism, epistemic relativism and judgemental rationality. Ontological realism holds that reality exists, in the main, independently of our knowledge of it (the earth is spherical despite beliefs that it is flat). Epistemic relativism holds that our knowledge of the world, though often substantial (sufficient to allow us to identify DNA and affirm genocide as evil), is always partial and contingent on diverse cultural contexts and power structures. Judgemental rationality holds that it is nevertheless possible, though not always easy, to progress from less truthful to more truthful knowledge of the world. The pursuit of truth is predicated on the priority of ontology over epistemology: the epistemic task is to discern the ontological reality of objects of knowledge and avoid the epistemic fallacy of forcing them into the Procrustean straightjacket of our preferred ways of knowing. The paradigmatic modern example of the epistemic fallacy is empiricist reduction of reality to that which can be observed and verified: water consists of hydrogen and oxygen despite our inability to taste either, and love and beauty are realities that impact on our lives despite our inability to measure and weigh them. The pursuit of more truthful knowledge takes the form of the inferential generation and iterative refinement of ‘best possible’ explanations of our abductive encounters
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with the world. This has crucial ramifications for religious truth claims, since it reveals the naturalistic claim that the universe is self-generating to possess the same epistemic status of faith-seeking-understanding as theistic claims that the universe is created by God. Naturalism can no longer claim discursive privilege: if there is ‘no proof’ that God created the cosmos, then there is equally ‘no proof’ that the cosmos is self-generating. This leads, not to a thoroughgoing relativism, but to the ongoing search for best possible explanations, driven by the intellectual virtues of attentiveness, reasonableness and responsibility (Wright, 2007). CRE utilises the under-labouring services of CR to challenge the paternalistic tendency of Liberal RE to marginalise religious truth claims by reducing them to the status of unsubstantiated subjective opinion (Wright, 2004, 2007, 2016). The vital task of promoting personal autonomy and social cohesion in RE should not be allowed to obscure the greater task of pursuing questions of ultimate truth and truthful living sub species aeternitatis. Failure to do so effectively reduces RE to a form of personal, social and moral education in which students are confessionally inducted into a secular worldview by default. CRE holds that its primary object of knowledge is the nature of the ultimate order-of-things and our place within it (ontological realism); that the ultimate order-of-things is contested by diverse religious and secular worldviews (epistemic relativism); that it is nevertheless possible to pursue questions of ultimate truth; and that the critical task of RE is to cultivate forms of religious literacy that will enable adherents of religious and secular worldviews alike to take intellectual and moral responsibility for truthful living sub species aeternitatis in increasingly attentive, reasonable and responsible ways. CRE seeks to out-liberal Liberal RE: freedom of expression gives way to freedom for informed belief and action; surface tolerance gives way to deep respect and honesty (including the honesty of identifying and resisting that which is unworthy of toleration); and students are empowered to ‘think for themselves’ in a manner no longer constrained by the matrix of naturalism, secular humanism and secular liberalism.
Realist Pedagogy and the Variation Theory of Learning Whereas Liberal RE tends to utilise constructivist pedagogy, CRE adopts a realist pedagogical approach. Constructivist pedagogy holds that knowledge is ‘constituted, maintained and transformed’ through active construction rather than passive reception (Esland, 1971, p. 75). Because constructed knowledge is always relative to the learner’s interests, it cannot provide ‘a true reflection of some independent reality’ and, as a consequence, is a product of invention rather than discovery (Fox, 2001, p. 26). Realist pedagogy, on the other hand, is ‘based fairly and squarely on the nature of knowledge itself’, and seeks ‘the development of mind according to what is quite external to it, the structure and pattern of reality’ (Hirst, 1973, pp. 87, 90). Constructivists and realists stand at an impasse: they agree
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that knowledge is generated by learners, but dispute whether authentic knowledge is grounded in human needs and interests or the ontological reality of objects of knowledge. Constructivists hold that learners should construct subjective meaning from raw objective information; realists hold that learners should discern meaning inherent in ontological realities. Critical Realism provides the resources that enable proponents of realist pedagogy to challenge the dominance of constructivist pedagogy in educational theory and practice. Michael Young, in abandoning his previous commitment to constructivism, argues that constructivists fail to differentiate between ‘how we think about the world’ and ‘how the world is’ (Young, 2008, p. 201). Though human interests undoubtedly impact on knowledge generation, it is arbitrary to privilege the pragmatic desire for power, prestige and wellbeing over the realistic desire to understand the world more truthfully (p. 30). We possess substantial realistic knowledge of the world, and the ‘social character of knowledge is not a reason for doubting its truth’ (p. 205). The possibility of moving from less- to more-truthful accounts of reality undermines the relativistic claims of constructivism. Our realist pedagogical assumptions are drawn from Variation Theory, a pedagogical theory of learning that seeks to explain necessary conditions of learning and explain variation in understanding and learning (e.g. Marton, 2007, 2015; Marton & Pang, 2006). Our research also utilises Phenomenography: a qualitative research approach, developed by Ference Marton (1981) and his colleagues in educational psychology since the 1970s, which seeks to describe variation in understanding and learning via ‘the empirical study of the differing ways in which people experience, perceive, apprehend, understand, or conceptualise various phenomena in, and aspects of, the world around them’ (Marton, 1994, p. 4425). People experience the same object in different ways because they notice, pay attention to, or focus on different features of it (Marton & Pang, 2006, p. 198). Variation in ways of seeing a situation, or a particular meaning of a situation, is thus defined in terms of the features that are noticed and focused upon simultaneously (p. 198). Pedagogy constitutes of a set of related acts that enable people to learn, while teaching involves the organisation of educational practices to support learning (Marton, Tsui, Chik, Ko, Lo, Mok, Ng, Pang, Pong & Runesson, 2004, p. 35). According to Marton et al. (2004) learning means acquiring both knowledge of an object (the direct object of learning) and the capability of doing something with respect to it (the indirect object of learning) (p. 4). Thus religious literacy entails both knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the capability of attending wisely to it. In the language of Critical Realism: ontological realism references the aspect of reality that is to be learned, epistemic relativism references variation in discernment of that aspect and judgemental rationality references the pursuit of more differentiated and truthful discernment. Learning is a qualitative change in a way of seeing or experiencing something in a way that expands our awareness of the complexity of the object through
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discrimination and discernment: ‘learning proceeds, as a rule, from undifferentiated and poorly integrated understanding of the whole to an increased differentiation and integration of the whole and its parts’ (Marton & Booth, 1997, p. viii). ‘Noticing and giving attention to a feature of a situation amounts to the discernment of that feature, and the discernment of a feature amounts to experiencing a difference between two things or between two parts of the same thing’ (Marton & Pang, 2006, p. 199). Variation is identified as a necessary condition of learning: the possibility of discernment of aspect is possible if variation is experienced in that aspect (Runesson, 2006). Teaching makes learning possible through variation by opening up alreadynoticed aspects of the object of learning for further differentiation as well as introducing previously unnoticed or missing aspects. The teacher’s task is to identify variation in different ways of understanding the same object between students within a group, and open up variation corresponding to noticed and unnoticed aspects of that which students already discern (Bowden & Marton, 1998, p. 12). Teachers’ ways of acting are related to the intentional nature with which they direct their awareness to aspects and people around them in the real world (Marton, 1994, p. 29; Marton & Booth, 1997, p. 111). The way in which teachers understand an object of knowledge and the intentionality with which they approach it in their teaching constitute critical preconditions for the enhancement of students’ understanding. It is the way in which the object of learning is presented in the classroom that determines the limits of what a pupil can learn and how learning can be developed (Holmqvist & Mattison, 2008, p. 32). Student teachers need to identify what is to be learnt by breaking down the learning objectives, exploring the nature of the object of learning and considering how to communicate the object to students. To achieve the latter they must attend to student’s pre-understanding of the object in order to identify the aspects focused upon, those that are necessary in order to understand the nature of the object and those that are missing in relation to the educational aims, and, furthermore, what is to be improved so that it is possible for students to learn that which is intended. Once these critical aspects have been identified, it is possible to design teachinglearning activities that introduce patterns of variation and invariance: contrast with another object (the whole object in context); generalisation of aspects of the same object (the whole object in relation to its parts); separation of aspects of the object (varying a focused aspect while unfocused aspects remain invariant); fusion of all critical aspects (part-whole-context relationship) (Marton & Pang, 2006, pp. 199–200). Our approach to teacher education employs a realistic pedagogy. The basic pedagogical task is to engage with the world in order to learn more about it, understand it better and act and grow in relation to it. Learning is the changing relationship between the learner and aspects of reality through expanded awareness of and more truthful engagement with the complex relationships of the aspects of reality.
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Learning Study in Initial Teacher Education The application of the model of CRE into research on Teacher Education in RE combines the philosophy of critical realism and the pedagogical framework of Variation Theory. Here we describe a research application of CRE to ITE based on ongoing research conducted by the first author of this chapter. This research operates in the context of a London-based University, which offers a course leading to the award of a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in partnership with local schools, which has been rated ‘excellent’ by OFSTED inspectors. The research design takes the form of a ‘Learning Study’: a Variation Theory based action research model for classroom learning and teachers’ professional learning (Marton, Tsui et al., 2004; Lo, 2012; Marton, 2015; Wood & Sithamparam, 2015). It explores what is intended to be taught and learnt, how that which is intended is enacted in teaching-learning interaction between teachers and students in university-based teacher education and schools and what is actually learnt. Research on teacher education in RE investigates how teaching and learning in RE is understood and implemented by teacher educators, student teachers and their school-based subject teacher mentors; what secondary students learn about the object of learning during student teachers’ teaching; what student teachers learn from their students’ understandings in relation to the educational aims in order to improve their learning; and what teacher educators and mentors learn about student teachers’ learning to improve teacher learning. Teacher education is informed by the theoretical framework, so that the philosophy of CRE and the Variation Theory of Learning is taught to student teachers in contrast with alternative theoretical and pedagogical approaches to RE. This enables theory-informed teacher learning through variation throughout the student teachers’ learning about teaching. Phenomenography and Variation Theory are used as analytical tools to focus on the ways in which teaching opens or prevents opportunities for learning: how specific contents are made available for learners so that it is possible for them to discern new meanings of the object of learning. These tools are made available to teachers, teacher educators and student teachers to allow learning from each other’s reflections on the relationship between the theory and practice. The research focuses on two levels: the general level of understanding teaching and learning of RE as a curricular subject, and the particular level of the understanding teaching and learning of specific curricular topics within RE. The general level addresses student teachers’ understandings of teaching and learning in RE via open in-depth interviews in the beginning, middle and the end of the PGCE year of ITE in order to make it possible to investigate the qualitative change in their understanding and possible learning as expanding awareness from
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early days of being a student teacher towards becoming a qualified RE teacher. The particular level investigates student teachers’ actions and reflections-onaction as they go about planning, implementing and evaluating teaching, and their teacher educators’ and mentors’ support in this process, as together they address the critical questions: What is to be learnt? How is the object of learning discerned and focused? What is learnt? The researcher works alongside teacher educators to interview and observe teacher educators, student teachers and their mentors as they plan, implement and evaluate their teaching for student learning. Student teachers and mentors are interviewed prior to lessons in order to identify their understanding teaching and learning in RE in general, and their specific lesson plans in particular. Secondary students’ understandings of the lesson topics are also investigated via interview and open written task prior to and after being taught by the student teachers. Classroom practices are video-recorded and video-stimulated recall interviews are conducted in order to study student teachers foci in reflecting on teaching and learning in their RE lessons. The immediate purpose of research is to help both pre-service and in-service teachers to develop theory-informed pedagogical awareness of their own teaching in relation to student learning and provide an in-depth understanding of teaching and learning in RE in the context of ITE. The long-term purpose is to establish a theory-based and evidence-informed approach to RE and teachers’ continuous professional learning.
Conclusion The primary purpose of this chapter has been to outline an innovative approach to ITE education in RE by elaborating its distinctive theoretical basis and pedagogical approach to understanding teaching and learning of student teachers, their teachers and their students. It is our conclusion, that the main focus of research in teacher education in RE should be on understanding teachers’ learning about pedagogy of RE: the internal relationship between teaching, learning and the subject matter, which involves teachers’ identification of their own students’ understanding of a specific subject matter in the learning situation in order to learn to help their students a) to better understand the content, and its contested nature, in relation to the curricular aims; and b) to develop religious and worldview literacy: to be able to discern the different ways in which the content is understood in order to make informed critical judgements of their own worldview in relation to others.
Acknowledgement Elina Wright would like to thank All Saints Educational Trust for the financial support for her research project.
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References Bakker, C. & H.-G. Heimbrock (Eds). (2007). Researching RE teachers. RE teachers as researchers. Münster: Waxmann. Barić, D. & Burušić, J. (2015) Quality of religious education in Croatia assessed from teachers’ perspective. British Journal of Religious Education, 37 (3), 293–310. Barnes, L.P. (2012). Debates in Religious Education. London: Routledge. Baumfield, V. (2007). Research report: Becoming a teacher of RE in a world of religious diversity. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 28 (1), 77–81. Baumfield, V. (2010). Towards a pedagogy for religious education: Professional development through engagement in and with research. British Journal of Religious Education, 32 (2), 89–91. Baumfield, V. (2016). Making a difference in the Religious Education classroom: Integrating theory and practice in teachers’ professional learning. British Journal of Religious Education, 38 (2), 141–151. Bowden, J. & Marton, F. (1998). The university of learning: Beyond quality and competence in higher education. London: Kogan Page. Chater, M. (2005). The personal and the political: Notes on teachers’ vocations and values. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 26 (3), 249–259. Dadley, E.M. & Edwards, B. (2007). Where have all the flowers gone? An investigation into the retention of religious education teachers. British Journal of Religious Education, 29 (3), 259–271. DES (Department for Education and Science) (1988). Education Reform Act. London: HMSO. Esland, G.M. (1971). Teaching and learning as the organization of knowledge. In M.F.D. Young (Ed.) Knowledge and Control: New Directions in the Sociology of Education (pp. 70–115). London: CollierMacMillan. Everington, J. (2007). Freedom and direction in religious education: The case of English trainee teachers and ‘learning from religion’. In C. Bakker, H.-G. Heimbrock, R. Jackson, G. Skeie and W. Weisse (Eds) Researching RE teachers: RE teachers as researchers, religious diversity and education in Europe (pp. 111–125). Münster: Waxmann. Everington, J. (2009). Individuality and inclusion: English teachers and religious diversity. In A. Van der Want, C. Bakker, I. Ter Avest and J. Everington (Eds) Teachers responding to diversity in Europe: Researching biography and pedagogy (pp. 29–41). Münster: Waxmann. Everington, J. (2016). ‘Being professional’: RE teachers’ understandings of professionalism 1997–2014. British Journal of Religious Education, 38 (2), 177–188. Everington, J. & Sikes, P. (2001). ‘I want to change the world’: The beginning RE teacher, the reduction of prejudice and the pursuit of intercultural understanding and respect. In H.-G. Heimbrock, C.T. Scheilke & P. Schneider (Eds) Towards religious competence: Diversity as a challenge for education in Europe (pp. 180–203). Münster: LIT-Verlag. Fox, R. (2001). Constructivism examined. Oxford Review of Education, 27 (1), 23–35. Freathy, R., Parker, S.G., Schweitzer, F. & Simojoki, H. (2016a). Professionalism, professionalisation and professionality in Religious Education. British Journal of Religious Education, 38 (2), 111–113. Freathy, R., Parker, S.G., Schweitzer, F. & Simojoki, H. (2016b). Conceptualising and researching the professionalisation of Religious Education teachers: Historical and international perspectives. British Journal of Religious Education, 38 (2), 114–129. Gellel, A.-M. & Buchanan, M.T. (2011). The impact of cultural religious values upon pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their role as educators in Catholic religious schools. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 32 (3), 317–328. Grimmitt, M. (Ed.). (2000). Pedagogies of religious education. Case studies in the research and development of good pedagogic practice in RE. Great Wakering, Essex: McCrimmons. Hella, E. & Wright, A. (2009). Learning ‘about’ and ‘from’ religion: Phenomenography, the variation theory of learning and religious education in Finland and the UK. British Journal of Religious Education, 31 (2), 53–64.
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Hirst, P.H. (1973). Liberal education and the nature of knowledge. In R.S. Peters (Ed.) The philosophy of education (pp. 87–111). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holmqvist, M. & Mattisson, J. (2008). Variation theory – A tool to analyse and develop learning at school. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 7, 31–38. Horn, K.-P. (2016). Profession, professionalisation, professionality, professionalism – historical and systematic remarks using the example of German teacher education. British Journal of Religious Education, 38 (2), 130–140. I’Anson, J. (2004). Mapping the subject: Student teachers, location and the understanding of religion. British Journal of Religious Education, 26 (1), 45–60. I’Anson, J. (2010). RE: pedagogy – after neutrality. British Journal of Religious Education, 32 (2), 105–118. Ipgrave, J., Jackson, R. & O’Grady, K. (Eds). (2009). Religious education research through a community of practice: Action research and the interpretive approach. Münster: Waxmann. Jackson, R. (1997). Religious education: An interpretative approach. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Jackson, R. (2000). The Warwick religious education project: The interpretative approach to religious education. In M. Grimmitt (Ed.). (2000). Pedagogies of religious education. Case studies in the research and development of good pedagogic practice in RE (pp. 130–152). Great Wakering, Essex: McCrimmons. Jackson, R. (2004). Rethinking religious education and plurality: Issues in diversity and pedagogy. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Jackson, R. (2008). Contextual religious education and the interpretative approach. British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (1), 13–24. Kuusisto, E. & Tirri, K. (2014). The core of religious education: Finnish student teachers’ pedagogical aims. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 35 (2), 187–199. Larsson, R. & Gustavsson, C. (2004). Towards European Perspective on Religious Education. Bibliotheca Theologie Practicae, 74. The RE Research Conference, March 11–14, 2004. University of Lund. Skellefteå: Artos & Norma. Lo, M.L. (2012). Variation theory and the improvement of teaching and learning. Gothenburg Studies in Educational Science, 323. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education. Understanding teaching and learning about teaching. London: Routledge. Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography: Describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10 (2), 177–200. Marton, F. (1994). Phenomenography. In T. Husén & T.N. Postlethwaite (Eds) The International Encyclopedia of Education 8, 2nd Edition (pp. 4424–4429). Oxford: Pergamon. Marton, F. (2007). Towards a pedagogical theory of learning. In N.J. Entwistle & P.D. Tomlison (Eds) Student learning and university teaching (pp. 19–30). Leicester: British Psychological Society. Marton, F. (2015). Necessary conditions of learning. London: Routledge. Marton, F. & Booth, S. (1997). Learning and awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Marton, F. & Pang, M.F. (2006). On some necessary conditions of learning. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15 (2), 193–220. Marton, F., Runesson, U. & Tsui, A. (2004). The space of learning. In F. Marton, A.B.M Tsui et al. Classroom discourse and the space of learning (pp. 3–40). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Marton, F., Tsui, A.B.M., Chik, P.P.M., Ko, P.Y., Lo, M.L., Mok, I.A.C., Ng, F.P., Pang, M.F., Pong, W.Y. & Runesson, U. (2004). Classroom discourse and the space of learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. McCreery, E. (2005). Preparing primary school teachers to teach religious education. British Journal of Religious Education, 27 (3), 265–277. Mead, N. (2006). The experience of black African religious education trainee teachers training in England. British Journal of Religious Education, 28 (2), 173–184. Memon, N. (2011). What Islamic school teachers want: Towards developing an Islamic teacher education programme. British Journal of Religious Education, 33 (3), 285–298.
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O’Grady, K. (2010). Researching religious education pedagogy through an action research community of practice. British Journal of Religious Education, 32 (2), 119–131. Riegel, U. & Mendl, H. (2014). What should religious education in Germany be about and how does religiosity fit into this picture? An empirical study of pre-service religious education teachers’ beliefs on the aims of RE. Journal of Beliefs and Values: Studies in Religion and Education, 35 (2), 165–174. Rota, A. & Bouzar, P.B. (2017). Representations and concepts of professional ethos among Swiss religious education teacher trainers. British Journal of Religious Education, 39 (1), 75–92. Runesson, U. (2006). What is possible to learn? On variation as a necessary condition for learning. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50 (4), 397–410. Sikes, P. & Everington, J. (2001). Becoming an RE teacher: A life history approach. British Journal of Religious Education, 24 (1), 8–19. Sikes, P. & Everington, J. (2003). ‘I’m a Woman before I’m an RE teacher’: Managing religious identity in secondary schools. Gender and Education, 15(4), 393–403. Sikes, P. & Everington, J. (2004). ‘RE teachers do get drunk you know’: Becoming an RE teacher in the twenty-first century. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 10 (1), 21–33. Skeie, G. (2017). Impartial teachers in religious education – a perspective from a Norwegian context. British Journal of Religious Education, 39 (1), 25–39. Startin, R.J. & Webster, D.H. (1996). Religious education in secondary school: The initial year of teaching. British Journal of Religious Education, 18 (2), 103–113. Stern, J. (2010). Research as pedagogy: Building learning communities and religious understanding in RE. British Journal of Religious Education, 32 (2), 133–146. Svensson, J. (2010). Divisions, diversity and educational directives: IRE teachers’ didactic choices in Kisumu, Kenya. British Journal of Religious Education, 32 (3), 245–258. Teece, G. (2010). Is it learning about and from religions, religion or religious education? And is it any wonder some teachers don’t get it? British Journal of Religious Education 32 (2), 89–103. Tirri, K. & Ubani, M. (2013). Education of Finnish student teachers for purposeful teaching. Journal of Education for Teaching, 39 (1), 21–29. Ubani, M. (2012). What characterises the competent RE teacher? Finnish student teachers’ perceptions at the beginning of their pedagogical training. British Journal of Religious Education, 34 (1), 35–50. Ubani, M. (2016). RE student teachers professional development: Results, reflection and implications. British Journal of Religious Education, 38 (2), 189–199. Wood, K. & Sithamparam, S. (Eds). (2015). Realising learning: Teachers professional development through lesson and learning study. London: Routledge. Wright, A. (2004). Religion, education and post-modernity. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Wright, A. (2007). Critical religious education, multiculturalism and pursuit of truth. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Wright, A. (2016). Religious education and critical realism: Knowledge, reality and religious literacy. London: Routledge. Young, M.F.D. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in: From social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. London: Routledge. Ziebertz, H.-G. & Riegel, U. (Eds). (2009). How teachers in Europe teach religion. An international empirical study in 16 countries. Münster: LIT Verlag.
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42 Teacher Education in Technical Vocational Education and Training B o n n i e Wa t t
Introduction Technical vocational education and training (TVET) is layered, complex, and highly contextualized to its particular region and country. Organized around Schwab’s (1973) four commonplaces of subject matter, teacher, learner, and milieu, this chapter extends the examination of international research on vocationally oriented teacher education. The first section documents the TVET field’s milieus, the historical influences and current happenings that underpin enduring tensions. From these influences and tensions, anticipated international TVET directions are introduced. Building on previous contributions (c.f. Grollmann, 2008; Rauner & Maclean, 2008; Maclean & Wilson, 2009; International Labour Organization, 2010; Smith & Grace, 2011; Unwin, 2014; Axmann, Rhoades, & Nordstrum, 2015; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2016), the section that follows considers implications for teacher education in the TVET sector: programming, teacher education models, curricula, teachers and student teachers, and knowledge categorization. In this section, Schwab’s commonplaces of subject matter, teacher, and learner frame the investigation of preservice teachers’ prior specialized knowledge and skill sets, and practices they bring to the classroom, shop, and laboratory settings. If these prior skills do not exist, they are typically acquired throughout their teacher education programs. For teachers of TVET, regardless of where they are positioned in the theory and practice knowledge continuum, learning subject content carries on beyond the successful completion of the teaching credential. Pedagogical content knowledge
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is studied in this section and, correspondingly, because of knowledge gained by apprenticeships, technical and skill-focused diplomas and degrees, paid employment, hobbies, and/or volunteer activities, what it means to teach within a model of vocational pedagogy and vocationally grounded assessment approaches is reviewed. A general discussion about the legislation and internationalization of teacher education in TVET, and observations of ongoing research directions are documented to conclude this chapter.
Tensions in TVET teacher education This section introduces current tensions in teacher education including a short commentary to define the TVET sector, a tension in itself. A brief elaboration that documents TVET’s historical underpinnings and origins follows. Historical experiences cannot be disregarded because they influence present and future TVET endeavors, related teacher education compositions, structures of institutions and organizations, and subsequent policies, programming, and expectations. Schwab (1973) identifies the importance of the multiple and complex curricular milieus. Influences include schools, classrooms, family, communities, and geographical locations along with interests, cultures, socio-economics, policies, intellectualism, and materialism.
Teacher education in the vocational sector One of the distinct challenges when studying international research on teacher education in the field of vocationally oriented education is to determine its scope (Rauner & Maclean, 2008; ILO, 2010; Lipsmeier, 2013). Even establishing a unified identifier and core definition is problematic. European and Scandinavian countries tend to use vocational education or vocational education and training (VET) (Maclean & Lai, 2011) and have defined and integrated programming for youth and adults and teacher education policies and practices. Canada and the United States use VET, or the terms Career and Technology Studies (CTS) and Career and Technical Education (CTE) respectfully. The North American emphasis is on adult skill development in technical and technological occupations, although momentum is increasing to develop the skills and knowledge of youth and articulation with college programming. Attention to teacher education programming depends on provincial and state education mandates. Technical vocational education and training (TVET) is used in Australia, Asia, and Africa, to name a few. Australia, for example, has strong vocational education programming for youth and adults via the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) system (Unwin, 2014). However, a recent study on their TVET teacher credential requirements is raising concerns about the value
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of the VET system (Smith, Hodge, & Yasukawa, 2015). The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2011) summarizes the term TVET as general education and a ‘study of technologies and related sciences; as well as the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, understanding, knowledge relating to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life’ (p. 4). Following UNESCO’s lead, TVET is the overarching term to describe vocationally oriented education in this chapter. Historical influences and current happenings. The genesis of TVET is a common story. At the core of TVET is the recognition that most, if not all, countries have similar roots with identifiable and well-established crafts: skills and knowledge for survival to provide food, clothing, and shelter. Alongside these necessities grew the ceremonial expression of craft and evidence of skill emerging from dedicated time and effort. True mastery of a service, product, or production (i.e. directly links to competency-based approaches to education; see below) was prized and honored by patrons. Familial histories were nurtured and built on, and by, these respected skill sets. The need for traditional skilled craftspeople lessened with the introduction and uptake of mass production. It was difficult for home and small productionbased industries to compete with the efficiencies of medium and large mechanized enterprises. Skilled craft practices adapting to multi-faceted fabrication and assembly systems altered the geographical expertise and skill specializations. Yet master skills and knowledge taught by successive generations exist today. Contemporary career and occupations founded on these family teachings often draw on the now-formalized arrangement of the traditional master-expert/ apprentice-novice teaching and learning model. They have transitioned into career profiles that are teachable within a scope of prescribed content and subject areas. From guilds to associations and unions, corresponding organizational and governmental policies and regulations developed. Schwab (1973) maintains that the milieu commonplace, dictated by policies and regulations combined with societal expectations for material culture, structures, and systems, is the result of the economic organization of people and paid employment and delineated occupations. The past few decades were noteworthy because of the market volatility that reinforced, once again, the pressing need for relevant and timely vocational education programming and quality TVET teacher education programs (Busemeyer & Trampusch, 2012; Paryono, 2015). Teachers are positioned to prepare learning materials and teach within their regional political and economic pressures (Schwab, 1973), which involve inclusion of the general content into the vocational, and vocational content into general coursework (Dewey, 1916; Lucas, Spencer, & Claxton, 2012). Coupling of academic and vocational content is the premise of the ‘new vocationalization’. Vocationalization is the design and implementation of a school curriculum that invites students to learn about work and employment (Kerre, 2009).
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With the ‘new’, there is a purposeful integration of general education. Evidence of this coupling is seen through cross-curricular initiatives, work-based programming, dual credit connections between high school, college, and university, and cross-curricular and interdisciplinary initiatives to integrate general education and vocational content. Quality teachers are needed (Eichhorst, Rodriguez-Planas, Schmidl, & Zimmermann, 2012) to ensure the success of initiatives intended to advance workplace-ready skills, to help youth stay in school and, ideally, to ensure the health and well-being of students by promoting useful school to post-secondary and paid work transitions. Governments, businesses, industries, secondary and post-secondary educational institutions, and communities have a discriminating awareness of this trend and several have implemented policies to uphold these relationships (e.g. North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Sub-Saharan and South Africa) (Eichhorst et al., 2012). Even though the trend to link academic and vocational is visible in many countries, two points of concern are: (1) how will these skills be realized, and (2) how will the return on funding, especially subsidized monies, be maximized (Eichhorst et al., 2012). In some countries (e.g. southern Europe) academic training is preferred since TVET is seen as the less-than option, a position that is attributed to the lack of employer interest, non-existent employment policies, and incompatible labor markets. Some Sub-Saharan countries typically reject VET as viable due to the informal market economy and minimal government support, and because the benefits are not readily identifiable (Eichhorst et al., 2012). It is difficult for teacher education institutions and educators to harmonize TVET content and general education in ways that translate into meaningful learning. Enduring and more recent tensions. Coinciding with, and some might suggest exacerbated because of, the new vocationalization movement are several enduring tensions that are remnants of vocational education’s historical influences (Maclean & Lai, 2011; Majumdar, 2011; Agrawal, 2013). Tensions abound in the status and value of these occupational areas (Grollmann, 2008; Maclean & Lai, 2011), in approaches to assessment, and in sustainable and credible TVET teacher education programming (Unwin, 2014; Paryono, 2015). Limited resources are customary and then there is the speculation about what should be taught and what is taught. Lastly, there is the undeniable association with the economy, paid work, and poverty reduction (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). Not only are there ongoing struggles and interactions with the economy, but the dynamics of a country’s politics and society and its ethical understanding and action of Aboriginal people, gender equity, and cultural awareness also affect TVET. Added to these tensions are sustainability, environmental consciousness (cf Taylor & Creech (2012) and their description of TVET-focused environmental sustainable development in Germany, China, Kenya, and Canada), societal connections, and a broader and more complex understanding of technology and technological associations (Agrawal, 2013; Unwin, 2014).
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Pedagogical and content boundaries, approaches to teaching and learning, and outcome- or competency-based assessment frameworks are carefully scrutinized in the design and implementation of TVET teacher education programs (see below). Historical and current understandings of TVET heavily influence teacher education programming decisions. Stakeholders’ positions may not align because they have special goals for TVET: government, labor, education, employment, and social welfare agencies, universities, school districts, academic faculty, school administration, current teachers, student teachers, community, industries and businesses, unions and associations of TVET areas, and governing bodies for skilled-based credentials (Paryono, 2015). One persevering theme is the social status of TVET teacher educators and student teachers. They are often viewed as not-quite-as-good-as the general education teachers in the schools and in the teacher education programs (Grollman, 2008). TVET teacher and programming significance relies on government and education administration focus and funding as well as societal perceptions. Dewey’s (1916) apprehension about the divide between vocational education and general education to track low-income students into vocational education is not unfounded. Many use school structure to perpetuate class distinction among youth (Schwab, 1973) by locating the vocational and the practical apart from the academic and general, and the theoretical. This separation is precisely what the new vocationalization movement is trying to alleviate. When reviewed from a more distant perspective, one is hard pressed to remove the theory and the practice from either the vocational or the academic and general content. Compounding the positioning of TVET and its teachers is an age-old conundrum about the importance and worthiness of teachers in general (Grollmann, 2008). Student teachers specializing in TVET curricular topics encounter similar responses. Administrator attitudes, programming approaches, and teacher educators, the university faculty responsible for this area of teacher education, can positively shift these perceptions. A second persistent theme that is evident throughout the TVET areas is the attachment to paid work. UNESCO’s (2011) definition locates TVET as a part of general education, not separate, yet, as noted in the available literature, TVET is consistently presented as disconnected from the general or academic pathways in lower and upper secondary school grades and post-secondary systems (Agrawal, 2013). Equivalent to general education, TVET is a key element of lifelong learning, which ties it to paid work while at the same time learning how to be a responsible citizen. TVET is designed to advance sustainable development and environment awareness and concrete development (Taylor & Creech, 2012). Intertwined throughout TVET, which, as previously mentioned, is irrefutably coupled with paid work and social well-being, is the goal to reduce poverty (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). The following section brings to the forefront the magnitude of this goal and others, and how the international community and global pressures remain pivotal stimulation for national and regional TVET programming for teachers and their students.
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Anticipated international TVET directions In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly, composed of 195 member states and 10 associate member states (UNESCO, 2015a), established the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This 2030 Agenda documents 17 sustainable goals. Five of these goals as numbered in the original document are: Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere; Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages; Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning; Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all; and Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels (United Nations General Assembly, 2015, p. 14). Arguably, all 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are of critical interest to TVET. Of these 17 goals, UNESCO (2015b) specifically identifies Goal 4 and Goal 8 as the two aims that will launch TVET into a more prominent, recognizable, and dignified position. To further the likelihood of meeting these goals, UNESCO is re-evaluating its TVET 2010–2015 strategy to determine progress to date, and to consider and implement post-strategy activities that will ensure consistency with the 2030 Agenda. TVET is a thematic area that UNESCO member states have identified as one of the four main education priorities. The other three priorities are ‘literacy, teachers, and sector-wide policy and planning’ (Broek, Werquin, Coles, Buiskool, Rathner, & Sediakina-Rivière, 2015, p. 1). Similar to UNESCO’s (2015b) support for TVET, other organizations have mandates to globally promote TVET including, but not limited to, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP), European Training Foundation (ETF), European Commission (DG DEVCO), World Bank, International Labour Organization (ILO), International Vocational Education and Training Association (IVETA), and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) (Broek et al., 2015). In addition to these world-based organizations and their goal to advance TVET are national, regional, and local governments as well as educational institutions and systems, labor unions and associations, businesses and industries, teachers and pre-service teachers, parents and guardians, youth, and communities. This list of stakeholders demonstrates the importance of TVET and its essential connections to our society, politics, economics, and culture. In the re-evaluation of the 2010–2015 UNESCO strategy for TVET, reviewers acknowledge a number of anticipated directions that require a response (Broek et al., 2015). Articulation of these issues will hopefully advance its priority for education. There are many issues. Stakeholders need to be involved
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in sustainable and humanistic practices; there is a need for policy development and implementation that span several concepts, approaches, and sectors; youth throughout the world require quality employment preparation; aging workers should have access to re-skilling opportunities; skill and knowledge competency and credentials are vital for labor mobility from region to region, and nation to nation; technology is shifting how work is navigated; globalization is a major driver for reorganization of workplaces and expectations of what it means to be engaged in paid work; and stability of economics and politics is desired (Broek et al., 2015). Transitions for youth and adults are unavoidable and often sought, and with communication between varying levels of governments and society, TVET can support economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural aspirations (Rauner & Maclean, 2008).
Teacher education in TVET The commonplace of milieu in TVET is large, complicated, and multifaceted and the commonplaces of subject matter, teacher, and learner (Schwab, 1973) are similar. Subject matter involves the history and the current materials. Historically, the importance of TVET and its varying content and educational and occupational crossovers is seen as a ‘silver bullet’ (Eichhorst et al., 2012). TVET is the perceived answer for resolving youth and adult unemployment, and is an approach that is commonly used as a default policy position. Supporting the anticipated directions and specific issues that could be alleviated or even reduced by quality TVET programming identified in the previous section requires more than a default policy position. Indications are that there is minimal worldwide consensus about how to educate individuals to be TVET teachers (Eichhorst et al., 2012; Barabasch & Watt-Malcolm, 2013; Smith et al., 2015). Incentives need to be plainly apparent for stakeholders involved in TVET education systems and employers to include new skills and projected proficiencies in their educational plans (ILO, 2010). Research and corresponding ideas about who is the learner and the teacher, and what should be and what is taught are major concerns. These concerns continue to influence pedagogical content and assessment for TVET teacher education programs. Schwab’s (1973) commonplaces are evident because of the current and historical tensions that persist and even limit how teacher education programs are organized. Familiar methods that align with the original TVET model (i.e. industrial arts, home economics, and business education) do not help present and anticipate TVET directions (Eichhorst et al., 2012). Content that outlines the specific skills and knowledge for student teachers and their assessment emerges at the top of the primary concerns to be addressed (Maclean & Lai, 2011). Defining TVET content is immense. What does it mean to have content in TVET? What skills and knowledge should be introduced and experienced? For example, a more recent
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concern for educators and students of teacher education programs is the inclusion of environmentally sustainable processes and applications to further the care and respect for people and property in many aspects of TVET content areas (Taylor & Creech, 2012; United Nations General Assembly, 2015). Reviewing the TVET definition documented in the introduction does present guidelines; however, the boundaries are far-reaching. TVET is a ‘comprehensive term’ (UNESCO, 2011, p. 4). TVET is an essential aspect of general education because of its relations with occupations, paid work, learning throughout life, environmental awareness, and a transparent intent to reduce or eliminate poverty. Uniting TVET content with general education happens through the exploration and development of knowledge and skills about technologies and sciences and the corresponding integration of theory and practice (UNESCO, 2011). This definition demonstrates that one approach will not promote quality educational programming for any of the TVET areas. A multi-pronged approach to TVET programming and teacher education is needed. Establishing frameworks for the four main components of TVET education is wanted: post-secondary, kindergarten to grade 12 education, workplace training, and informal learning. The micro perspective dovetails into each of these four areas. Although there are crossovers, attending to each of the four components as its own entity will further the TVET teacher education programming and its development in multiple ways (Eichhorst et al., 2012). However, creating a convincing comparison of TVET frameworks between countries is difficult because of the different approaches and locations where TVET is taught, introduced, and disseminated for youth and adults. For example, TVET participants may be youngsters in a secondary school system, where it might be integrated into the general education curriculum as a secondary topic, or positioned with the general education inserted in between, or there could be an equal approach to both vocational and general education. Participants could also be individuals engaged in workplace learning, informal learning, or post-secondary programs (Eichhorst et al., 2012). Teacher education programming: Establishing some boundaries. TVET teacher education program design varies and, in some countries, may not exist at all (Eichhorst et al., 2012; Agrawal, 2013). People may learn at first the skills and knowledge in the workplace. They become an expert and progress to master and teacher roles (ILO, 2010). Defined occupational pathways and mandated credentials may be seen as not important or not exist. Even in countries where universities and other training providers offer TVET teacher education programs, there are indications that these programs are being eliminated because of diminishing student enrollment. This trend is evident despite the need for qualified teachers. Re-evaluation of teacher education programming for its flexibility and ability to stimulate collaboration with other VET stakeholders deserves consideration (Guthrie, 2010; Smith et al., 2015). Further, various governments establish and regulate teaching credentials. In countries where pathways for TVET teachers
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are not explicitly defined, awareness may open up possibilities for stakeholder discussions (Eichhorst et al., 2012). TVET teacher shortages exist. Compounding the lack of universities and training providers are the difficulties that come with unsuccessful recruitment and retention of qualified and knowledgeable teachers (Guthrie, 2010; Lipsmeier, 2013; Axmann et al., 2015). Quality TVET teacher education programming involves attending to university faculty qualifications and expertise, university faculty teaching and learning approaches, university program curricula, university structures, lab/shop and classroom facilities and equipment, and research-based information and literature access appropriate for TVET content and pedagogy (Lipsmeier, 2013). International organizations as early as the 1960s documented in their standards that practical experiences (e.g. business, agronomy, industry) should be integrated into teacher education programs, yet tend to be excluded in TVET education programs (ILO, 2010). Supporting these teacher education program criteria is the initial teaching experience: what is needed to assist the individual during the transition from a pre-service teacher to a certificated teacher (Schwab, 1973; Axmann et al., 2015). Stable institutional environments and an induction process (Guthrie, 2010) that fosters an environment of mentorship and learning will contribute to teacher retention and recruitment. While an individual may successfully complete a highly respected teacher education program, involvement with practical experiences, participation in an induction program, opportunities to work with a mentor, and engagement with professional development during the graduate’s career trajectory will be beneficial (Borko, 2009). Excellence does not happen by chance (Grollmann, 2008; Guthrie, 2010); it takes effort. Professional development varies and depends on the individual, the TVET area, and the teaching environment. Additional professional development that consists of recognized credentials and qualifications and formal, workplace, and informal learning options will promote a holistic approach to teacher education (Guthrie, 2010; Unwin, 2014). Teacher education programming models. Three teacher education program models are the concurrent or parallel model, the consecutive model, and the transfer or articulated model. The concurrent model, as the name suggests, incorporates pedagogies most suited for vocational education with the TVET discipline or major area of study. Another version of this model is designed to have the general content presented to the students in the first few years of the program followed by instruction in the TVET major subject. The consecutive model requires that students enter the program with successful completion of a Bachelor’s and/ or Master’s degree, which is typically the vocational discipline specialization. The transfer model or articulated model is complex, with the vocational skill and knowledge certification acquisition positioned outside of the traditional university pathways. This model makes it possible for those with practical work experience and recognized credentials from colleges and polytechnics to earn university teaching qualifications. The transfer model has the potential to expose
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problems that the other two models may not, although it can introduce creative and original ideas that contribute to curriculum, teaching approaches, and learning methods (Barabasch & Watt-Malcolm, 2013; Lipsmeier, 2013). The preferred approach, but the most difficult to offer, is the concurrent or parallel model, with the next preferred being the consecutive model. Yet these two models cannot meet the demand for qualified TVET teachers, in part because they are difficult to develop and sustain; thus the transfer or articulated model becomes a viable option (Lipsmeier, 2013). Entry is based on recognized credentials obtained from formalized and government-mandated post-secondary education apprenticeships and polytechnic institutes. This last model is not a lesser than – it has great potential to fill gaps and present benefits to future students. These teachers will have practical and credentialed experiences that complement their teaching qualifications. TVET curricula: Subject matter and knowledge of. Vocational curricula, subject matter, and the knowledge of content are dynamic topics, especially when trying to answer the question of who decides what is taught in any one of the many TVET content areas. Vocational curricula are complex (Agrawal, 2013). Each TVET discipline has its particular subject matter and specific occupational skills and knowledge. TVET content for one discipline in one location may not be the same as a comparable TVET discipline in another geographical locale or region (ILO, 2010; Pahl, 2014). Relevant curricular and competencies for future employment form the basis of many vocational curricula and are critical for educators to share with their student teachers. Developing research skills is also a key aspect in vocational curricula and should be a part of the student teachers’ development in their TVET teacher education program (Bukit, 2012). TVET curricula are contingent on whether the program is designed for student teachers to earn teacher credentials for secondary schools, post-secondary programs, or workplace training programs (Nze & Ginestié, 2012; Unwin, 2014). Decision-makers can include government officials with little TVET knowledge or individuals with extensive practical and pedagogical experience and credentials in their discipline as well as teaching (ILO, 2010). Another concern for vocational curriculum and what might be included as learning material is old and archaic content that has little relevance to the current TVET field (ILO, 2010). Perpetuating the disconnection between the delivered content and the applicable content expected by student teachers and their future students will not sustain the TVET area. Further, meaningless content does not support the 2030 Agenda goals determined by the United Nations General Assembly in their September 2015 meeting (2015b). Goal 4, providing ‘inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all’ and Goal 8, working towards ‘sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2015, p. 14) will be advanced only through the contributions of well-planned and relevant TVET pedagogy and content.
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Teachers of TVET, pedagogical content knowledge and other categorizations Directly associated with the teacher education models identified previously are the individuals enrolled in these programs and knowledge categorizations for pedagogy and content in one’s TVET curricular area. Because core learning is commonly gained by apprenticeships, technical and skill-focused diplomas and degrees, paid employment, hobbies, and/or volunteer activities, combined with a strong base of instructional approaches, the pedagogical content knowledge is perhaps the most universal way of knowing for TVET teachers. The commonplaces of teacher and learner are intertwined when reviewing the continuous learning of teachers (Schwab, 1973), especially those teaching in TVET (Grollmann, 2008; Chatigny, Lévesque, & Riel, 2012; Axmann et al., 2015). Teachers of TVET. There are many ways to create or organize TVET teacher typologies. Traditional categories can be narrowed to five types of teacher involved in the TVET field: general knowledge teacher, theory teacher, practice teacher or trainer, theory and practice teacher and, lastly, advanced skills and theory teacher. Each of the categories contribute to the TVET sector yet a skilled and knowledgeable teacher is but one element required for purposeful TVET programming. Creditable and informed learning strategies, teaching techniques, content, facilities, and instructional materials are also important (Lipsmeier, 2013). These elements will exist in various forms depending on available resources, administrational goals, and venues. It is arguable that, regardless of their quality, TVET teachers, like others in the teaching profession, will habitually teach as they were taught, which may not align with the learners’ needs and hopes (Bukit, 2012). Ideally this will not be the case, but finding the appropriate TVET teacher is difficult, especially one skilled and knowledgeable in both the vocational content and suitable pedagogies (Lipsmeier, 2013; Nze & Ginestié, 2012). Hence the push for higher levels of qualifications for TVET teachers. A particular focus on advanced credentialing is noticeable for those employed in the lower and upper secondary schools and post-secondary educational systems. Higher qualifications are attributed somewhat to new entrants because they see themselves as teachers in the making. In contrast, some closely identify as practitioners of their vocations, not as teachers. This is the dichotomy that pervades TVET teacher education as well as the teachers, student teachers, and their students. Along with higher credentialing requirements is the increase in standards that direct this work. This is a response, in part, to greater scrutiny and accountability (Harris, Simons, & Maher, 2009; Guthrie, 2010). Teacher educators are instrumental to the programs and its graduates; thus, attending to, preparing, and delivering quality teacher education programming is critical (Grollmann, 2008; Kerre, 2009; Eichhorst et al., 2012). Realizing these goals is problematic because TVET teacher education has an awkward relationship
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in the university structure. Teacher education programs can be designed with a major subject and sometimes a minor subject. These subject areas typically fall within the mainstream university setting (e.g. math, languages, sciences, arts), but TVET content does not, except for those in, for example, engineering and computer technologies. TVET teacher education institutions often do not single out the teaching and learning between the vocational pedagogy and content of TVET subjects. Rather, the pedagogical theories and practices are relegated to a non-significant role with the vocational topics and content in the forefront of planning and dissemination (Bukit, 2012). A homogeneous curricular approach is not possible, which makes the design and delivery of a university TVET teacher education program extremely difficult, but it is not impossible (Lipsmeier, 2013). Pedagogical content knowledge and other knowledge categorizations. Connections to the historical and current organization of work, material culture, and what it means to be a skilled craftsperson are still embedded in vocational education and training concepts. Learning content continues beyond the successful completion of the teaching credential. Content knowledge of TVET teachers is regularly gained through apprenticeships, technical and skill-focused diplomas and degrees, paid employment, hobbies, and/or volunteer activities. Subsequent to learning the subject content is learning the pedagogical knowledge. The outcome is pedagogical content knowledge, which, when presented to others, should make the content accessible and learnable (Shulman, 1986). Even if pedagogical content knowledge dominates the TVET sectors, it will be remiss if other ways of knowledge categorizations are not acknowledged, such as practical and academic or general knowledge as well as declarative knowledge and abstract knowledge. Practical knowledge is integral to the TVET content as is the academic or general knowledge, or the theory. The two aspects, theory and practice, are so intertwined, separating them is unrealistic and unproductive (Lipsmeier, 2013). Declarative knowledge is key to reviewing and assessing practice, identifying problems and resolutions, and establishing potential ways to advance TVET. Related to these concepts is abstract knowledge. This categorization allows for flexibility, to synthesize, and to promote, interdisciplinary connections (Harteis, 2009). Combined, these categorizations encourage experiences and learning that build professional and personal expertise, vocational identity, proficiency, and competence (Nze & Ginestié, 2012). Schwab’s (1973) four commonplaces of subject matter, teacher, learner, and milieu provide a useful frame for this chapter. In the next section, these previously developed concepts are further explored within the context of TVET pedagogy and assessment.
Vocational pedagogy and assessment Is the design of the TVET teacher education program intended for the general ist or specialist? Is the intent of the program to prepare teachers to teach in a
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competency or outcome-based environment? There are implications for vocational pedagogy and assessment with each of these questions. Vocational pedagogy encompasses general pedagogy, the theory and practice of teaching and learning, and can be theoretically defined with five interrelated steps: •• •• •• •• ••
be clear about the goal of vocational education understand the nature of your ‘subject’ be clear about the breadth of desired outcomes understand the range of learning methods that may, taken together, provide the best blend bear in mind any contextual factors: the nature of learners, the expertise of the ‘teacher’, and the settings for learning (Lucas, 2014, p. 7)
Thoughtfully designed and implemented TVET teacher education programs will provide pre-service teachers with experiences and learning that incorporate and expand these five concepts of vocational pedagogy. Exposure will advance the learning for students who have many diverse talents and skills with the pedagogical understandings that will, in turn, support their approaches to teaching and learning (Lucas, 2014). Given the range of TVET content, methods, and assessment possibilities, and multiple stakeholders and connections to numerous aspects of society, politics, economics, and culture, teacher education program designers have much to consider. An approach taken by some program organizers is that ‘pedagogic programs should be accommodated to meet the nature of TVET congruent with the unique world of work’ (Bukit, 2012, p. 10). Framing teacher education programs in this way may promote practice and theory learning for pre-service teachers. Learning aspects of vocational pedagogies that complement content and assessment practices will develop professional competencies and are essential for graduates’ career and occupational journey (Harteis, 2009; Nze & Ginestié, 2012). In addition to providing the necessities for survival and as evidenced by a service, product, or production, valued skills and knowledge can only be achieved with time and effort. It is this mastery that is recognized and honored. Competency-based TVET assessment reflects this recognition and is connected to the specific craft and vocational expectations. Occupational guidelines and standards are regularly the benchmark, for example, quality, aesthetics and beauty, fit and tolerance, design, function, longevity, and uniqueness. Assessment for TVET content is multi-faceted. Questions about what is important, what can be assessed, how it can be assessed, and why is it assessed are asked. Competency-based education methods and assessments tend to draw attention to traditional TVET services, products, and productions, which are imbued with technical histories. However, more modern applications of competencybased uses are communication, problem solving, teamwork, and technical skills. Collaboration among stakeholders will further the quality of TVET teacher education programming and delivery including its pedagogy and assessments (ILO, 2010). The first step to advance this collaboration is recognizing that it needs to happen and the next step is action. Vocational pedagogy will be improved by
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incorporating project-based learning and varied assessment practices (Paryono, 2015). The following section briefly examines international research on vocationally oriented teacher education to further policy and practice.
Legislation, internationalization, and ongoing research directions The legacy of TVET continues to influence, for example, the occupational status of TVET and its teachers and the professionalization of TVET teachers. Internationalization of TVET creates tensions for teacher education programs especially for existing faculty and domestic students (Tran, 2012). There are also pressures from governments and schools, which are reluctant to fund areas that tend to cost more than the traditional general education (Eichhorst et al., 2012); struggles with establishing the most effective assessment for TVET, in particular, outcome- or competency-based approaches (Paryono, 2015); and the ongoing dilemma about pedagogical and content boundaries and how to develop and implement quality programming for pre-service and in-service teachers (Grollmann, 2008). Teachers of TVET have a dual professional role, one of teacher and one of content expert (Unwin, 2014). The challenge here is to first gain pedagogical and content knowledge and the second is to keep up to date with industry and teaching practices (OECD, 2014).
Conclusion This chapter invites contemplation to further TVET teacher education policy and practice. Organized by Schwab’s (1973) four commonplaces of subject matter, teacher, learner, and milieu, this chapter presented the complexities of TVET and vocationally oriented teacher education. From this discussion, questions that still permeate the TVET sector are: What are pre-service teachers asked to do, to think about, to engage with, to grapple with, to learn? What skills and knowledge are they expected to have when they enter a TVET teacher education program? What pedagogical and TVET content should they graduate from a teacher education program with? How and why have teacher education institutions established the program areas that they have? Research about the learner and the teacher, and what should be and what is taught are major concerns because they continue to direct and influence the approach and inclusion of pedagogical content knowledge and assessment for TVET teacher education programs. Tensions also include future planning for TVET teacher education programs: Who decides? Implications for TVET teacher education such as programming, teacher education models, curricula, teachers and student teachers, and knowledge categorization are far-reaching. Dedicated research and programming will lessen the tensions created by TVET’s multi-pronged definition and diverse scope,
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historical and current interpretations and actions, and lack of coherent TVET systems and structures. The result will ideally be consistent quality teacher education programming that benefits teachers and their students.
References Agrawal, T. (2013). Vocational education and training programs (VET): An Asian perspective. Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 14(1), 15–26. Axmann, M., Rhoades, A., & Nordstrum, L. (2015). Vocational teachers and trainers in a changing world: The imperative of high-quality teacher training systems. Employment Policy Department, Employment Working Paper No. 177. Geneva: International Labour Organization. Barabasch, A., & Watt-Malcolm, B. (2013). Teacher preparation for vocational education and training in Germany: A potential model for Canada? Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 43(2), 155–183. Borko, H. (2009). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3–15. Broek, S., Werquin, P., Coles, M., Buiskool, B., Rathner, M., & Sediakina-Rivière, E. (2015). Evaluation of the UNESCO thematic area ‘TVET’ (technical and vocational education and training). Geneva: UNESCO Internal Oversight Service Evaluation Section. Bukit, M. (2012). Strengthening TVET teacher education: Report of the UNESCO-UNEVOC online conference. Bonn: International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training. Busemeyer, M., & Trampusch, C. (Eds). (2012). The political economy of collective skill formation. New York: Oxford University Press. Chatigny, C., Lévesque, S., & Riel, J. (2012). Training yourself while training students: The constant challenge of vocational training teachers. Work, 41(2), 143–153. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The MacMillan Company. Eichhorst, W., Rodriguez-Planas, N., Schmidl, R., & Zimmermann, K. (2012). A roadmap to vocational education and training systems around the world. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor. Grollmann, P. (2008). The quality of vocational teachers: Teacher education, institutional roles and professional reality. European Educational Research Journal, 7(4), 535–547. Guthrie, H. (2010). A short history of initial VET teacher training. Adelaide, Aus: National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). Harris, R., Simons, M., & Maher, K. (2009). New directions in European vocational education and training policy and practices: Lessons for Australia. Adelaide, Aus: National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). Harteis, C. (2009). Professional learning and TVET: Challenges and perspectives for teachers and instructors. In R. Maclean, & D. Wilson (Eds) International handbook of education for the changing world of work: Bridging academic and vocational learning (pp. 1351–1366), Berlin: Springer. International Labour Organization (ILO). (2010). Teachers and trainers for the future – Technical and vocational education and training in a changing world. Geneva: Author. Kerre, B. (2009). A technical and vocational teacher-training curriculum. In R. Maclean, & D. Wilson (Eds) International handbook of education for the changing world of work: Bridging academic and vocational learning (pp. 1319–1332), Berlin: Springer. Lipsmeier, A. (2013). Approaches towards enhanced praxis-orientation in vocational teacher education (VTE). TVET@sia, 2(5), 1–18. Lucas, B., Spencer, E., & Claxton, G. (2012). How to teach vocational education: A theory of vocational pedagogy. London: City & Guilds Centre for Skills and Development.
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Lucas, B. (2014). Vocational pedagogy: What it is, why it matters and how to put it into practice. Report of the UNESCO-UNEVOC virtual conference. Bonn: International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training. Maclean, R., & Lai, A. (2011). The future of technical and vocational education and training: Global challenges and possibilities. International Journal of Training Research, 9(1–2), 2–15. Maclean, R., & Wilson, D. (Eds). (2009). International handbook of education for the changing world of work: Bridging academic and vocational learning. New York: Springer Science + Business media, LLC. Majumdar, S. (2011). Teacher education in TVET: Developing a new paradigm. International Journal of Training Research, 9(1–2), 49–59. Nze, J., & Ginestié, J. (2012). Technical and vocational teaching and training in Gabon: How future teachers build their vocational identity? International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 22(3), 399–416. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2014). Skills beyond school: Synthesis report, OECD reviews of vocational education and training. Retrieved from http//dx.doi. org/10.1787/9789264214682-en Pahl, J. (2014). Vocational education research: Research on vocational pedagogy, vocational discipline and vocational didactics. In Z. Zhao, & F. Rauner (Eds) Areas of vocational education research: New frontiers of education research (pp. 17–43), Berlin: Springer. Paryono, P. (2015). Approaches to preparing TVET teachers and instructors in ASEAN member countries. TVET@sia, 5(1), 1–27. Rauner, F., & Maclean, R. (2008). Handbook of technical and vocational education and training research. Dordrecht: Springer. Schwab, J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation and curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501–522. Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Smith, E., & Grace, L. (2011). Vocational educators’ qualifications: A pedagogical poor relation. International Journal of Training Research, 9(3), 204–217. Smith, E., Hodge, S., & Yasukawa, K. (2015). VET teacher education in Australian universities: Who are the students and what are their views about their courses? Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 20(4), 419–433. Taylor, S., & Creech, H. (2012). Technical-vocational education for sustainable development in Manitoba. Winnipeg, MB: International Institute for Sustainable Development. Tran, L. (2012). Internationalisation of vocational education and training: An adapting curve for teachers and learners. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17(4), 492–507. United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2011). Introducing Unesco’s technical vocational education and training (TVET) definition and strategy. Retrieved from www.uis. unesco.org/…/10_TVET_UNESCO_OREALC_EN.pdf UNESCO. (2015a). Member states. Retrieved from http://en.unesco.org/countries/member-states UNESCO. (2015b). Shanghai update. Paris: Author. UNESCO. (2016). UNESCO. Retrieved from http://en.unesco.org United Nations General Assembly. (2015). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015. 70/1. Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Unwin, L. (2014). Adult vocational teaching and learning: An introduction to the international debates and evidence. Paper 2. Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/content/etf24
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43 The Curriculum of Early Childhood and Lower Primary Teacher Education: A FiveNation Research Perspective R o b e r t V. B u l l o u g h , J r a n d Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon The problem The content of teacher education, usefully thought of as ‘bodies of experience’ (Schwab, 1973: 504), generally includes studies of select academic disciplines and tool subjects, such as reading, instructional methods, foundational studies including educational psychology and child development, among other courses, and practica of various kinds. What these studies entail, how they are understood, and the role they play in teacher education vary based on differing national economic and political aspirations and resource availability. As historical creations, any discussion of the curriculum of teacher education must begin with an examination of context: the curriculum of teacher education is embedded in the culture and politics of place. For this reason, five national portraits follow to illustrate some of the variability in the content of early childhood and lower primary teacher education across the globe. By early childhood we mean educational programs designed for children somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6, depending on the context. Lower primary teacher education focuses, generally, on teaching children between the ages of 5 and 8. The first portrait is of Chile, illustrative of a strong, global trend toward the marketization of education which has profoundly affected the design of teacher education. A portrait of Nigeria comes next. As in many nations, Nigerian educational ambitions are rising but there is wide separation between government rhetoric and aspiration
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and educational reality. Nigeria illustrates several of the severe educational challenges poor nations face. The third portrait is of China, the most populous nation. We focus on China not only because of its size and international prominence, but because of growing tensions between government educational policy and traditional, subject and test-driven teaching practices that underpin much of the world’s teacher education reform. Because of its standing as an innovator in early education and as a nation resistant to national student testing and, to a degree, the marketization of education, New Zealand is portrayed next. The final portrait is of the USA, where there is no national system of early education and where economic ambitions have reshaped teacher education, narrowing the curriculum, dramatically increasing providers, and redefining the nature of the work of teaching and teacher education.
Five National Portraits Teacher Education in Chile ‘Chilean society remains highly unequal’ (OECD, 2013: 3), although educational ambitions have been rising for decades. Twelve years of schooling are compulsory. In support of parental labor market participation, childcare, specifically targeted at vulnerable children from 85 days old to age 4, is free for parents who work or study. Enrollments have soared. Currently about 40 percent of children receive full-time care outside of their homes and over 90 percent of all school-age children are in school. College enrollment has also grown dramatically. With such growth, providing adequate facilities and staffing has been challenging, and some government policies have proven highly controversial, leading to periodic student protests. Market-driven, there is a ‘strong belief in the principle of curricular freedom’ (Yoshikawa, Leyva, Snow, Treviño, Barata, Weiland, Gomez, Moreno, Rolla, D’Sa, & Arbour, 2015: 311). Accordingly, Ministry of Education standards represent guidelines that carry the expectation of adaptation by teachers to fit communities and the children taught. Seeking better education for their children, the majority of parents enroll their children in private schools, most often subsidized by government-sponsored school vouchers. Similar trends are evident in higher education. UNESCO reports about 80 percent of higher education students are enrolled in private institutions. Generally unregulated, higher education is increasingly shaped by for-profit institutions that charge high tuition and have low admission requirements. To teach, an applicant must hold a degree or diploma in a subject area. No other form of licensure is required. Initial teacher education takes place in approximately 65 officially recognized universities and institutes, with a sharp increase in the number of private teacher training programs. Teachers are prepared as
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preschool (including kindergarten, to age 6) or basic generalist teachers (grades 1 to 8). Nursery school teachers (to age two) also need a bachelor’s degree. Such ‘professional caregivers’ are responsible for supervising ‘a maximum of 42 infants (two classrooms), supported by one assistant per seven children’ (Carcamo, Vermeer, De la Harpe, van der Veer, & van Ijzendoorn, 2014: 749). As student and program numbers have grown, so has concern about teacher quality (Meckes & Bascope, 2012). In a pattern common to much of the world, the curriculum of teacher education includes ‘general education, professional or pedagogic preparation and school curriculum subjects, including special teaching methods, as well as field experiences and a final year practicum’ (Avalos, Tellez, & Navarro, 2010: 15). Basic generalist teaching programs vary in emphasis; in the four areas little time is spent studying school subject areas, although in some programs students in need of remedial work are offered ‘upgrading courses’ (2010: 19), in mathematics, for example. That the majority of Chilean teachers are generalists who lack systematic, focused study in the disciplines, as in much of the world, has been a source of concern. Wales, Ali, and Nicolia note, for example, that in ‘cross-national evaluations of teacher knowledge conducted in 2011 [Chilean] teachers scored well below international benchmark levels in both pedagogical knowledge … and subject content knowledge’ (2014: 7). Teachers with the poorest academic records are those most likely to find work in the public, municipal, schools. In general, within lower primary teacher education, more time is devoted to ‘language skills and mathematics than … the other nine subject areas’ (2014: 15). For example, fully half of the basic program offered by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, a major teacher education institution, focuses on language and communication and mathematics teaching and learning. An analysis of the basic program of the Metropolitan University of Educational Science produced similar conclusions: four semesters (of 10) include courses in mathematics and mathematics teaching while 6 include language and communication courses. In comparison, a single class is devoted to physical education and health, two focus on the natural environment, one on creativity, and there is a smattering of professional courses that address lesson planning and assessment, for example. Subject area courses in the early childhood program at Metropolitan include art, early literacy and mathematics, social science, child development, and the psychology of learning, among others. There are signs of change in early childhood teacher education programs. As in much of the world, in early childhood education (ECE) there is a ‘trend towards … schoolarisation’ (Pardo & Woodrow, 2014: 103), which raises teacher concern about being required ‘to focus their practice primarily on the instruction of reading, writing and numeracy skills, and neglecting the use of play-based integrated learning’ (2014: 106). Acknowledging both concerns while making a cultural argument supporting large group work, Leyva et al. concluded that for 4–6-year-olds ‘skill development is mainly promoted through whole-group activities … Small group activities are rare’ (2015: 5).
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By law, to improve teaching quality the performance of public (not private) school teachers from preschool to high school is periodically assessed. The National Teacher Evaluation System (NTES) ‘operationalizes a set of teaching standards that correspond to descriptions of what competent teaching should look like … It includes a combination of instruments [including a portfolio]’ (Taut & Sun, 2014: 4). The standards significantly shape the curriculum of teacher education. Summative and formative data are used to create Professional Development Plans to improve instruction, to reward outstanding teachers and, after multiple assessments, remove ineffective teachers. Student achievement scores are not yet part of assessment.
Teacher Education in Nigeria The teacher educational challenges of Nigeria must be understood in relationship to several pressing national issues. With the largest population in Africa, Nigeria also has the most children out of school. According to UNICEF, 30 percent of children ‘drop out of primary school’ (UNICEF, n.d.: 2). The national literacy rate of people over age 15 is 72 percent for males and 50 percent for females and, despite being Africa’s largest producer of oil, poverty is rising. Approximately 60 percent of the population is unable to afford minimal essentials to sustain life. As in most of the world, rural areas suffer greater neglect than urban areas and economic inequality results in very different levels of educational opportunity for children (Sooter, 2013). Growing sectarian violence frequently targets schools, and in many areas providing school buildings let alone toilets, safe water, and books, has proven very difficult. Access and quality issues are pressing. For example, ‘almost 80% of creche, kindergarten and nursery schools in Nigeria are owned by private individuals’ who, in seeking to maximize profit and lower costs, willingly employ poorly qualified teachers (Ige, 2011: 165). To address widespread illiteracy, a key issue for economic development, the Federal Government launched a Universal Basic Education program in 1999, legislating free and compulsory education for all children (ages 6 to 15). The ambition was to equip each child ‘with adequate knowledge, skills and attitudes which will enable him/her develop to the fullest capacity’ (Ige, 2011: 162–63). In 2004, the government made early education compulsory and set goals and identified strategies for accomplishing this aim. Offering care for children of working parents, ‘effecting a smooth transition from home to school’ and ‘preparing the child for primary school’ were among the reasons given for policy expansion (Chukwura, 2011: 170). Despite growing governmental ambitions, across the nation, staffing preschools and primary schools with adequately educated teachers is a vexing problem. Moreover, as part of the new market for preschooling created by shifting government policy, the ‘proliferation of early childhood institutions [has led to teacher education] “regulations” [having] been waved off’ (Sooter, 2013: 175).
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On the whole, large numbers of ECE teachers are judged to be ill prepared to teach. Reviewing the situation, Ige concluded that nursery schools often are ‘managed by old and illiterate women who lack the pedagogy of teaching and adequate training and skill to handle children of such ages’ (2011: 164). By policy, the minimum standard for teachers is the Nigerian Certificate of Education (NCE), a three-year non-degree program offered by teachers’ colleges. Holders of the NCE are deemed qualified to teach pre-primary to lower secondary age children. NCE standards are set by the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE, 2012). A recent revision sets 10 program objectives that are intended to guide the teacher education curriculum. Teacher education students are to possess a broad knowledge of the Nigerian education system and the ability to ‘develop, select, and effectively use appropriate curriculum processes, teaching strategies, instructional materials and methods for maximum learning achievement’ (2012: 10). The NCE requires the study of two junior secondary school teaching subjects and a range of general education courses such as sequences in ‘General English’, and ‘General Mathematics’. Select courses in pedagogy and practice teaching are also required. Guidelines are given for facilities, provision of demonstration schools, library holdings, and staff/faculty ratios. In addition, teacher educators are required to hold a minimum of a master’s degree. In an attempt to discourage traditional lecture practices in these programs, the document urges instructors to ‘adopt … the practice of using a combination of two or more techniques that match the students and content they are teaching’ (2012: 12). Yet, as Adeosun, Oni, Oladipo, Onuoha, and Yakassai reported, teacher education faculty still rely on the ‘exclusive use of lecture method[s] and do not use instructional materials’ (2009: 123). Holders of bachelor degrees in education may teach at any level. Compared to the three-year NCE program, having passed a rigorous academic admissions test, bachelor degree candidates enroll in far fewer general education courses. For example, a degree holder from the early childhood program offered by Tai Solarin University completes a program of 143–150 units, spread across 8 semesters, 69 dedicated to candidate-selected subject area studies. Twenty-four additional credits are required in such subjects as English, Nigerian culture, and land use and general agriculture. Thirty-nine credits are required in general teaching methods (curriculum, technology use, and management) plus several credits in methods courses that include a subject area focus such as ‘teaching language, reading and writing skills for children’. Eighteen credits of foundations courses are required. Six credits are earned for practice teaching (Credential Templates, 2010). Reviewing the emphasis in teacher education programs and calling for change, Adeosun et al. concluded that on the whole what is offered is ‘specialized training in specific subject areas’ (2009: 110). Even so, these authors note an insufficiency in the NCE’s emphasis on academic content. The subject areas taught in secondary school have an important place in primary teacher education. There is no mandated curriculum for early education (Ige, 2011). While
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the government seeks to encourage early childhood education, custodial care in creches and nurseries dominates. The gap between government policy, available resources, and practice in teacher education appears to be wide. On the whole, broad definitions of education and of teacher education are supported. Additionally, there is a recognized need for expansion of inservice teacher education despite very limited resources. For some years teachers with less than NCE licensure have been required by policy to engage in ongoing teacher education (see Adeosun et al., 2009), but aspiration and reality clash.
Teacher Education in China A fifth of all children under the age of six live in China. Simply feeding and housing such an immense population is a daunting challenge. Education represents another challenge. Yet educational ambitions have grown with economic development, even as criticism of the failures of recent market policies to improve educational quality increases (see Liu & Pan, 2013). Nine years of schooling are compulsory in China. Preschool and kindergarten (through age 6) are optional. Ever larger numbers of citizens see hope for the future in the education of their children. Central government policy strongly links educational improvement to national political and economic ambitions. Test-score driven, competition for high quality educational placements from preschool to graduate school is keen. As in much of the world, educational opportunities and program quality vary dramatically across China, with Beijing and Shanghai standing in a privileged class by themselves (Hong, Luo, & Cui, 2013: 71). In Beijing and Shanghai the preschool student-to-teacher ratio is reportedly 14 to 1 while in schools located in the 17 poorest provinces of China the ratio is 1 teacher for every 30 students, and in Guizhou province the ratio is 1 to more than 50. Similar patterns of privilege and neglect are evident in teacher quality measures and child preschool and kindergarten enrollment rates. About half the population lives in rural areas, where scarcity of educational provision, comparatively high tuition costs and low family incomes make ‘preschool education [a] luxury for the majority of Chinese parents’ (Hu & Li, 2012: 19). As in many nations, educational equity and school readiness have become major social concerns. Often rural children have only limited access to quality education. Large numbers of rural children, about 35 percent of children 0–5 years old, some 35 million, have been left behind in their home villages as their parents, part of a mass internal migration of some 262 million people, have moved to the cities for work (Song, Zhu, Xia & Wu, 2014: 356–357). These children are academically far behind more privileged urban students even before they begin compulsory schooling (Luo, Zhang, Liu, Zhao, Shi, Rozelle, & Sharbono, 2012). Deeply concerned about the difficulty of overcoming the educational lag of rural children,
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Wang (2011) argues there is simply too little instructional time available in primary schools for teachers to help the children catch up with their more privileged peers who were enrolled in preschool. He also concludes that even if more time was available primary teachers often lack the skills and knowledge needed to effectively teach the national curriculum. There is, he states, an ‘urgent need of teacher professional upgrading’ (2011: 163). Most preschools and kindergartens in China are privately operated and have their own curriculum. Market-driven (Gu, 2006), these varied preschool curricula may or may not support government kindergarten guidelines even though those guidelines are quite broad. The Guidelines for Preschool Education (trial version) draw on Western educational ideas (Gu, 2006), including developmentally appropriate practice (Li, Wang, & Wong, 2011: 7), ‘learning through play, self-discovery, and problem solving’ (Hu, Fuentes, Wang, & Ye, 2014: 193). Although difficult to embrace and even harder to implement, as Frees, Hoover, and Zheng (2014) assert there are signs that among some teachers there is a ‘gradual adaptation of WesternEuropean ideas within the traditional collectivist context’ (2014: 246). Historically, within preschool and kindergarten teacher education ‘children’s artistic skills in dancing, singing, drawing and literacy and numeracy [were] highly valued’ (Vong et al., 2014: 846–847), but this appears to be changing. Current trends in teacher education emphasize early years schoolification, instead of focusing on artistic skills or more Western notions of self-discovery and play suggested by central government policy. Increasing attention is placed on ‘“sharpening student teachers” proficiencies in English and computer science and building [a] theoretical foundation in various disciplines … The “new” preschool teacher image is associated with academic thinking and acquisition of general knowledge, rather than mastery of artistic and pedagogical skills’ (2014: 848). Seeing education as key to future economic security, many ‘high demand’ parents promote these developments (Guo & Yong, 2013: 96). A qualitative case study of a kindergarten mathematics curriculum illustrates the challenge to teacher education of meeting the mandated Guidelines and supporting learning through play, self-discovery, and problem solving. The Guidelines were viewed as a ‘paradigm shift in Chinese preschool education from a teacher-led format … to one embracing a child-centered philosophy and practice’ (Hu et al., 2014: 195). The curriculum was to be integrated, thematic, active, and exploratory but was mandated without provision for teacher education or support (Li et al., 2011). Hu et al. found that, contrary to the Guidelines, which see economic value in encouraging children’s creativity through play, direct instruction dominates, a concern for ‘the answer to questions rather than [student thinking]’ (2014: 203). Reportedly, there is a double divide, one between policy and practice, the other between policy and teacher belief, which militates against government reform efforts. Otherwise promising ideas lose out to the cultural and political realities of teaching: ‘large class sizes, predetermined classroom layouts, limited
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resources, an examination-oriented system, and high parental expectations and demands’ (Li et al., 2011: 20). A result of the one-child policy and anticipating university admission exams, parents expect ‘academic preparation (generally reflected as memorized subject matter), whereas [by policy] the curriculum is [to] gradually [become] more play-based and integrated…. [T]eachers recognize this conflict and acknowledge that China continues to [be] exam-oriented’ (Frees et al., 2014: 248). As with kindergarten, primary and secondary curricula, the central government prescribes the general curriculum of teacher education, the National Curriculum Standards for Teacher Education, issued in 2011. ‘The document stresses connecting theoretical knowledge to educational practice … Curriculum goals, requirements and suggested courses are stated. Improving teaching methods is recognized as a central goal’ (Zhou, 2014: 520). Yet, illustrating the policypractice divide, Zhou draws on a published study of 192 undergraduate teacher education programs at 30 universities and colleges where virtually all teacher education ‘programs are subject centered … [and] many courses cover political matters [along with] English, physical education and computer science’. In addition, ‘professional education courses’, including teaching methods, ‘occupy a relatively low percentage [of class time], and educational psychology, pedagogical content and educational technology [are] the four dominant courses’. Moreover, few undergraduate teacher education programs ‘offer instruction strategies and skill courses’ (2014: 516). There is, contrary to stated policy, Zhou argues, a serious lack of practica and rather little effort put into connecting theory and practice in favor of ‘the transmission of context-free conceptual knowledge’ (2014: 517). Nevertheless, the hope is that over time the ‘standards will deepen the curriculum reform of P-12 schools and promote further professionalization of teaching’ (Han, 2012: 325). One means for accomplishing this aim is that textbook publishers whose books dominate the curriculum are required by central government to reflect the new standards. Primary teachers are usually educated in normal universities and colleges and teach children aged 6–12. Most, but not all, primary teachers teach one subject, and some normal universities specialize in teaching one or another subject. For example, in a study of 727 preservice primary teachers in four universities, more than 60 percent majored ‘in a specific subject such as Chinese education, mathematics education [or] English education’ (Sang, Valcke, Tondeur, Zhu, & van Braak, 2012: 420). The remaining students were enrolled in a general teacher education program. Usually, instruction within these programs is reportedly ‘teacher-centered, with college staff lecturing to students who listen silently while making notes’ (Ping, 2013: 209–10). In contrast, early childhood teacher education (nurseries, 0–3 years, and kindergarten, 3–6 years) generally takes place in special upper secondary schools that usually ‘lack related training experiences and infrastructure [including] teacher training faculty’ (Li, Deng, & Liu, 2015: 135). Such schools emphasize ‘basic
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theory … and [neglect] practice [and offer little] training experience’. Better teachers require better teacher education, and better teacher education requires a revamping of programs and faculties. Reviewing the situation and giving up on reforming existing institutions, Li et al. argue that a ‘group of local normal colleges of preprimary education should be built’ (2015: 138). Teachers are licensed but there are, as yet, no accepted program accreditation criteria (Han, 2012). There is, however, a National Teacher Certification Examination administered within the provinces that includes a computerized or paper-pencil test on ‘professional ethics, professional knowledge, and basic knowledge and skills’ for each teaching level (Han, 2012: 328). A 20-minute graded interview follows, requiring, among other items, responses to scenarios, and answers to questions on lesson planning. In addition to improving preservice teacher education, efforts are also underway to improve the quality of inservice teaching at all levels, including for early years and lower primary teachers. The National Teacher Training Program requires all teachers, new and experienced, to participate in extensive and ongoing professional development. Due to the sheer number of teachers, professional development is disseminated by teachers. Following a cascade model, ‘backbone’ teachers are identified through a variety of competitive means including ‘teaching competitions’ (Guo & Yong, 2013: 99), given additional focused training, and charged with sharing and demonstrating their ‘new knowledge and skills for other teachers’ (Han, 2012: 330). With the expansion of schooling and increasing recognition of gross educational inequalities, teacher education has grown dramatically in importance in China. It appears that issues of teacher quality have become more insistent than issues of teacher quantity. To improve teacher quality, within the past two decades historic patterns of teacher appointment have been replaced by requirements for certification and continuing improvement. Funding has been increased, institutions have been reorganized, teacher academic standards have been raised, and attempts are underway to change long-held instructional and curricular practices, but a test-driven culture remains.
Teacher Education in New Zealand New Zealand is a small, but very diverse nation. Formal education is compulsory to age 16. In 2010, 54 percent of year 1 students were of European origin, 25 percent Maori, 11 percent Pacific Islander and 9 percent Asian. Despite generally performing well in international education comparisons, there are large gaps in performance between Asian and European students and Maori and Pacific Island students (Ell, 2011). New Zealand led efforts to integrate early childhood education into a coherent and single system of schooling (Mitchell, 2011). However, recession led to a shift in government policy from providing funding for universal early education, a policy that supported the aim of
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increased female employment, toward more targeted programs for children at risk, like Head Start in the USA. In addition, the government halved the goal of 100 percent of early educators becoming qualified degree holders. Tremendous changes have taken place within teacher education in New Zealand in recent years especially following a change in government leadership in 2008. Teachers’ colleges were merged with universities and, to lower costs, three-year baccalaureate degrees in education were developed. Alternative forms of teacher licensure were also created. National Standards for primary education were introduced producing an ‘intense focus on literacy’ (Alcorn, 2014: 454) and ‘numeracy for primary schools’ (Ell, 2011: 437). National benchmarks were set ‘against which new and existing [teacher education] programs [are] approved, monitored and reviewed [which require institutions to] demonstrate how their programs are designed to ensure students meet [standard]’ (Alcorn, 2014: 452). Although demonstrating some unique features, particularly resistance to national student testing and a determination among educators to maintain childcentered practices in early education, New Zealand is no longer an outlier to market-driven patterns of educational reform (Alcorn, 2014). Such changes have not come without protest, however. For example, noting signs of schoolification, of making early education less play-oriented and more like regular school, Alcock, among others, has expressed concern about what she argues is a ‘global phenomenon’ leading to the potential ‘demise of play in [ECE]’ (2013: 28). Following a review of Ministry documents, ‘that prioritize economic outcomes redefined as “learning outcomes”’, she argued that such trends will harm children. Similarly, Ell has argued that ‘the introduction of national standards in literacy and numeracy for primary schools … [sits] uncomfortably with the open, process-driven curriculum on which they are based’ (2011: 437). Others, in contrast, are concerned that New Zealand primary teachers’ subject matter knowledge, particularly of mathematics, is unacceptably low and their negative attitudes toward math hurts children’s learning (Young-Loveridge, Bicknell, & Mills, 2012). By this view, teacher education has done little to remediate the situation, which requires not only more emphasis on mathematics but changes in how prospective teachers are taught. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), a secondary school completion certificate that prescribes specific subject area standards, is central to admission to teacher education. For early childhood and lower primary teachers, it is assumed the majority of their academic knowledge will be gained in secondary school. The place of subject matter knowledge in teacher education is illustrated by the University of Canterbury primary 3-year degree program. The first semester includes courses on child and adolescent development and health, social and cultural studies in education, the teaching profession, and an introduction to Maori language and culture. The second semester offers opportunities to work with children and to study learning, beginning literacy, arts, and mathematics education. Semester three involves considerable fieldwork
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and classes on assessment, methods, and communication. Health and physical education, ‘Effective Classroom Practices in Literacy and Mathematics’, and an additional course on language and social and cultural studies comprise semester four. The fifth semester includes fieldwork, and two courses, one in special education. Courses entitled ‘Literacy and Mathematics Education for All’ and ‘Science and Technology Education’ plus an elective comprise the final semester. Perhaps partially as a result of program brevity, coupled with a focus on teaching skills, including pedagogical content knowledge, the place of academic subject matter in early childhood and primary teacher education in New Zealand is particularly limited.
Teacher Education in the USA The USA is a large, diverse nation with approximately 74 million children, birth to age 17 (Child Stats, 2015). Although state policies vary, schooling is generally compulsory from age 6 to 17. Only 17 states require kindergarten but 90 percent of all 5-year-olds attend. Preschool attendance (3–4-year-olds) varies widely. As elsewhere, access to high-quality early childhood education programs, particularly preschool, is linked to family income and location. Because of the large disparity between publicly funded, needs-based and private programs, ‘families with modest income may face the greatest difficulties in obtaining high-quality preschool education for their children’ (Barnett & Yarosz, 2007). Recognizing this problem, efforts are underway to increase access. Currently about 54 percent of 3–4-year-old children are enrolled in preschool and the number is growing. Historically, there has been a clear divide between ECE and primary schooling. As elsewhere in the world, pressures grow for alignment. The pattern has been to push policies developed under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 that emphasized specific learning outcomes, standardized testing of children particularly in reading and mathematics, grading of schools, and tightened teacher oversight downward into preschool. Evidence of this trend is seen in the growing number of states adopting preschool standards. In 1999, only 10 states had specific preschool standards; today, 42 states have such standards, and several have added infant/toddler standards as well. Pressure continues to grow on ECE teachers and programs to meet mandated outcomes, with school readiness as the ultimate goal. Teacher quality mandates have also increased pressure on ECE teachers to obtain additional education, even though salaries are low and stagnant. Increasing teacher education levels is widely thought to be a worthy goal, but concern has been raised that focusing primarily on degrees rather than on the nature of programs of study may actually undermine quality (Early et al., 2007). As in New Zealand, there is growing concern about possible harmful effects of schoolification. Critics argue that increasingly narrow definitions of teacher quality that focus primarily on teacher academic attainment may devalue care and nurturing of children as essential and
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traditional components of ECE. In response, Halpern, for example, has called for a robust ‘child development orientation’ in teacher education (2013: 14). In recent years, accreditation of teacher education programs has tightened even as alternative routes to teaching have proliferated. Part of a general trend toward privatization of public services, funding has grown for the expansion of alternative, often short routes, to teacher licensure over established university programs to ‘lower barriers to the teaching profession’ (Paige, 2003: n.p.) and increase markets. Accrediting bodies emphasize ‘output or results-based criteria’ and embrace narrow and technical views of teaching (Hyson, Tomlinson, & Morris, 2009: n.p), with the continual addition of licensure requirements. Lists of teacher competencies set the content of teacher education and, seeing market opportunities, various organizations and institutions are developing for sale common assessments and programs. For example, 35 states have adopted the edTPA, a portfolio assessment, developed with federal funding at Stanford University but licensed to Pearson Education for the purpose of helping determine teacher competence. Licensure for early childhood teachers varies widely. Some states license teachers for birth-5 settings (Georgia and New Jersey, among others). Primary grade certification is sometimes offered independently as part of a PreK-grade 3 program but can also be integrated into an elementary grade program, K-6 or even K-8. Currently, about 1200 institutions of higher education offer some form of ECE certification, 40 percent a baccalaureate degree, 60 percent an associates degree (Hyson et al., 2009). Large numbers of teachers of young children who lack degrees hold a Child Development Associate credential (CDA) offered by a variety of institutions including community colleges and some high schools. Consisting of 120 clock hours, a CDA is the entry-level teaching qualification set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) standards for teaching young children. Although there is some overlap, PreK-3 teacher education programs and early care and education programs have differences. For example, in PreK-3 teacher education programs, particularly those that lead to state licensure, professional standards usually drive the content. In comparison, early education and care standards vary widely (Whitebook, Gomby, Bellm, Sakai, & Kipnis, 2009). The typical content for 2-year associates degree programs, including the CDA credential, include emphasis on child development and teacher-child interactions in birth-5 settings. Specific, primarily relational, skills are taught including emphasis on hygiene in childcare. Four-year degree programs, in contrast, tend to focus on early literacy and numeracy, making these programs more similar to the subject matter emphasis of elementary teacher education. NAEYC early childhood teaching standards are closely aligned to the 10 Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) standards that underpin accreditation reviews conducted by the federally recognized Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), the primary
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national accreditation body. In ECE, the standards require evidence of meeting learning outcomes in the areas of child development and learning, family and community relationships, observation, documentation and assessment, developmentally effective approaches to teaching, content knowledge, and professionalism (NAEYC, 2009). On the whole, in the USA, there is a shift underway toward more academic, school-readiness models of early education (Gibbons, 2011). Teacher-child interactions (Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, 2008), and diversity (Kidd, Sanchez, & Thorp, 2008), technology in teaching (Rosen & Jaruszewicz, 2009), and family involvement (Sewell, 2012) are also included in the curriculum. Throughout early childhood and primary teacher education, there is consistent and growing emphasis on mathematics and early literacy as the primary subject areas for study, generally studied in relationship to teaching methods. Four-year general elementary teacher education programs, and teacher education programs that include ECE and reach upwards to middle school grades, face a daunting and perhaps impossible challenge. Within 120-semester-hour university-based programs, approximately half of the courses taken are general education, often survey courses in history or biology, for example. Additional course hours involve practice teaching and practica. At the same time, as Katz (2009) observes, requirements expand while rarely is anything eliminated. As elsewhere in the world, one result is a persistent concern with breadth over depth of teacher subject matter knowledge. Moreover, as Early and Winton (2001) observe from their survey of 438 early childhood degree programs, there are large gaps between stated program mission statements and what students actually experience in those programs. Mandates continue to grow and expectations rise, while the time available for study does not increase. Under such conditions, content coverage rather than mastery becomes the goal (Katz, 2009).
Looking Across Portraits and Ahead As the portraits illustrate, the place of disciplinary knowledge in the curriculum and how intending early childhood and lower primary teachers are given access to such knowledge varies worldwide, as does the place of practica and professional studies. By policy, subject matter knowledge for teachers appears to be more important in Nigeria than it is in New Zealand, where pedagogical content knowledge is the primary concern. Yet, there are commonalities. Schoolification, or what Li et al. call ‘strong “academism”’ (2015: 135), is common and pressures for early childhood teacher education to respond in ways that will produce teachers better able to support improved student academic performance as demonstrated on standardized test scores appear to be growing. As Halpern (2013) observes, upper-grade subject area priorities are being forced downward into the lower grades, especially mathematics and literacy. In Nigeria, basic literacy is a
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central and pressing concern for teacher education. In some respects, China appears to be an exception: while continuing to embrace intense national testing of students for the distribution of opportunity, China seeks to broaden the curriculum of the early grades to place greater emphasis on play. Teacher education reform is a key strategy to achieving this aim, which is thought critically important to enhancing creativity as a form of human economic capital. It is readily apparent that across the world, notably in Chile and the US, under the influence of globalism the values of neoliberalism are much in evidence within education and teacher education as marketization of schooling and of teacher education has dramatically increased. Broadly, neoliberalism ‘argues that free markets, unfettered by government regulation, will solve social, economic, and political problems and that government regulation exacerbates or even causes problems, such as schools’ failure to educate some children’ (Weiner, 2007: 275). Among the central tenets of neoliberalism is the subsumption of politics to market economics, where ‘government practices are reduced to … calculating equations of profitability and cost-efficiency benefits’ (Baltodano, 2012: 493) and education shifts from being ‘primarily a cultural to an economic concern’ (Bullough, 2014: 15). One sign of the rise of neoliberalism is that those public services that resist privatization are subjected to aggressive systems of accountability driven by ever skeptical and sometimes punitive policy makers. Accountability of this kind often results in the development of a ‘managerial professionalism, a kind of “tick-box” professionalism where teachers demonstrate the expected behaviours but out of compliance and in an environment of distrust rather than through the expression of their intrinsic professional characteristics or qualities’ (Goepel, 2012: 500). Evidence of this trend is readily apparent in the US, but also of growing influence in New Zealand and elsewhere. The portraits and our review of the research literature on early childhood and lower primary teacher education suggest that teacher educators appear to be primarily responsive to shifting governmental policies and are not active participants in policy making. On the defensive, teacher education likely strengthens the influence of neoliberalism in education, including the weakening of disciplinary traditions in favor of teaching narrow skills. The impact of such practices on teacher education, intending teachers and on the quality of the education made available to children needs exposure and constant criticism.
References Alcock, S. (2013) Searching for play in early childhood care and education policy. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 48(1): 19–33. Alcorn, N. (2014) Teacher education in New Zealand 1974–2014. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 447–60. Avalos, B., Tellez, F., & Navarro, S. (2010) Learning about the effectiveness of teacher education: A Chilean study. Perspectives in Education, 28(4): 11–21.
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Baltodano, M. (2012) Neoliberalism and the demise of public education: The corporatization of schools of education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(4): 487–507. Barnett, W.S., & Yarosz, D.J. (2007) Who goes to preschool and why does it matter? (Policy Brief 15) Retrieved from http://nieer.org/resources/policybriefs/15.pdf Bullough, R.V., Jr. (2014) Higher education and the neoliberal threat: Place, fast time, and identity. Journal of Thought, 48(3/4): 13–32. Carcamo, R.A., Vermeer, H.J., De la harpe, C., van der Veer, R., & van Ijzendoorn, M.H. (2014) The quality of childcare in Chile: Its stability and international ranking. Child Youth Care Forum, 43(6): 747–61. Child Stats (2015) Number of children (in millions) ages 0–17 in the United States by age, 1950–2013 and projected 2014–50. Retrieved from http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1. asp?popup=true Chukwura, E.N., (2011) Teachers’ role in improving early childhood education in Nigeria. Journal of Research and Development, 2(1): 169–74. Credential Templates. (2010) Retrieved April 22, 2015. Work.Alberta.Ca/documents/Nigeria-detailedcredential-templates.pdf Early, D.M., Maxwell, K.L., Burchinal, M., Alva, S., Bender, R.H., ... & Zill, N. (2007) Teachers’ education, classroom quality, and young children’s academic skills: Results from seven studies of preschool programs. Child Development, 78(2): 558–80. Early, D.M., & Winton, P.J. (2001) Preparing the workforce: Early childhood teacher preparation at 2- and 4-year institutions of higher education. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 16(3), 285–306. Ell, F. (2011) Teacher education in New Zealand. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(4): 433–40. Frees, B.S., Hoover, L., & Zheng, F. (2014) Chinese kindergarten teachers’ perceived changes in teaching philosophies and practices: A case study in university-affiliated program. Journal of Early Childhood, 46(2): 231–52. Gibbons, A. (2011) The incoherence of curriculum: Questions concerning early childhood teacher educators. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 36(1): 9–15. Goepel, J. (2012). Upholding public trust: An examination of teacher professionalism and the use of Teachers’ Standards in England. Teacher Development, 16(4): 489–505. Gu, L. (2006) Chinese early childhood education in transition. Wingspan: The Pedamorphosis Communique, 16(1): 30–41. Guo, K.L., & Yong, Y. (2013) Policies and practices of professional development in China: What do early childhood teachers think? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(6): 88–102. Halpern, R. (2013) Tying early childhood education more closely to schooling: Promise, perils, and practical problems. Teachers College Record, 115(1): 1–28. Han, X. (2012) Big moves to improve the quality of teacher education in China. On the Horizon, 20(4): 324–35. Hong, X., Luo, L., & Cui, F. (2013) Investigating regional disparities of preschool education development with cluster analysis in Mainland China. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 7(1): 67–80. Hu, B.Y., Fuentes, S.Q., Wang, C.Y., & Ye, F. (2014) A case study of the implementation of Chinese kindergarten mathematics curriculum. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 12(1): 193–217. Hu, B.Y., & Li, K. (2012) The quality rating system of Chinese preschool education: Prospects and challenges. Childhood Education, 88(1): 14–22. Hyson, M., Tomlinson, H.B., & Morris, C.A. (2009) Quality improvement in early childhood teacher education: Faculty perspectives and recommendations for the future. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 11(1): n.p. Ige, K.M. (2011) The challenges facing early childhood care, development and education (ECCDE) in an era of universal basic education in Nigeria. Early Childhood Education Journal, 39(2): 161–7. Katz, L. (2009) The challenges and dilemmas of educating early childhood teachers. In A. Gibbons & C. Gibbs (Eds) Conversations on early childhood teacher education: Voices from the working forum for teacher educators (pp. 8–22). Redmond, WA: World Forum Foundation and New Zealand Tertiary College.
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Kidd, J.K., Sanchez, S.Y., & Thorp, E.K. (2008) Defining moments: Developing culturally responsive dispositions and teaching practices in early childhood preservice teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(2): 316–29. Leyva, D., Weiland, C., Barata, M., Yoshikawa, H., Snow, C., Treviño, E., & Rolla, A. (2015) Teacher-child interactions in Chile and their associations with prekindergarten outcomes. Child Development, DOI:10.1111/cdev.12342 Li, H., Wang, X.C., & Wong, J.M.S. (2011) Early childhood curriculum reform in China. Chinese Education and Society, 44(6): 5–23. Li, M., Deng, F., & Liu, L. (2015) How to advance the initial training system for Chinese kindergarten teachers in a new era. Retrieved April 6, 2015. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-44986-8_9 Liu, Y., & Pan, Y-J. (2013) A review and analysis of the current policy on early childhood education in mainland China. International Journal of Early Years Education, 21(2–3): 141–51. Luo, R., Zhang, L., Liu, C., Zhao, Q., Shi, Y., Rozelle, S., & Sharbono, B. (2012) Behind before they begin: The challenge of early childhood education in rural China. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37(1): 55–64. Meckes, L. & Bascope, M. (2012) Uneven distribution of novice teachers in the Chilean primary school system. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 20(3): 1–23. Mitchell, L. (2011) Enquiring teachers and democratic politics: Transformations in New Zealand’s early childhood education landscape. Early Years, 31(3): 217–28. National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2009) NAEYC Standards for Early Childhood Professional Preparation. Retrieved from http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/files/2009%20 Professional%20Prep%20stdsRevised%20pdf4_12pdf National Commission for Colleges of Education Abuja (NCCE) (2012) Nigeria certificate in education minimum standards for general education. Retrieved April 22, 2015. ncceonline.edu.ng/ncce- digitization/base.html OECD. (2013) Reviews of national policies for education quality assurance in higher education in Chile. Retrieved April 10, 2015. Eric number Ed539032 Paige, R. (2003) Meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: The Secretary’s Second Annual Report on Teacher Quality. Retrieved from: https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/teachprep/2003title-iireport.pdf Pardo, M., & Woodrow, C. (2014) Improving the quality of early childhood education in Chile: Tensions between public policy and teacher discourses over the schoolarisation of early childhood education. International Journal of Early Childhood, 46(1): 101–15. Pianta, R.C., Mashburn, A.J., Downer, J.T., Hamre, B.K., & Justice, L. (2008) Effects of web-mediated professional development resources on teacher-child interactions in pre-kindergarten classrooms. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(4): 431–51. Ping, W. (2013) Perspectives on English teacher development in rural primary schools in China. Journal of Pedagogy, 4(2): 208–19. Rosen, D.B., & Jaruszewicz, C. (2009) Developmentally appropriate technology use and early childhood teacher education. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 30(2): 162–71. Sang, G., Valcke, M., Tondeur, J., Zhu, C., & van Braak, J. (2012) Exploring the educational beliefs of primary education student teachers in the Chinese context. Asia Pacific Education Review, 13(3): 417–25. Schwab, J.J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. School Review, 81(4), 501–22. Sewell, T. (2012) Are we adequately preparing teachers to partner with families? Early Childhood Education Journal, 40(5): 259–63. Sooter, T. (2013) Early childhood education in Nigeria: Issues and problems. Journal of Educational and Social Research, 3(5): 173–9. Taut, S., & Sun, Y. (2014) The development and implementation of a national, standards-based, multimethod teacher performance assessment system in Chile. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(7): 1–26.
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UNICEF (n.d.) UNICEF Nigeria. Retrieved April 22, 2015. Unicef.org.Nigeria.children_1937.html Vong, K.P., Hu, B.Y., & Xia, Y-P. (2014) Different moves, similar outcomes: a comparison of Chinese and Swedish preschool teacher education programmes and the revisions. Compare, DOI.org/10.1080/ 03057925.2014.929489 Wales, J., Ali, A., & Nicolia, S. (2014) Improvements in the quality of basic education: Chile’s experience. Retrieved April 10, 2015. www.odi.org/sites/odi.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9068.pdf Wang, D. (2011) The dilemma of time: Student-centered teaching in the rural classroom of China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1): 157–64. Weiner, L. (2007) A lethal threat to US teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(4): 274–86. Whitebook, M., Gomby, D., Bellm, D., Sakai, L., & Kipnis, F. (2009) Comparison of K-12 and early care and education systems. Retrieved from: http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/cscce/wp-content/uploads/ 2010/12/ComparisonandK-12Webversion.pdf Yoshikawa, H., Leyva, D., Snow, C.E., Treviño, E., Barata, M.C., Weiland, C., Gomez, C.J., Moreno, L., Rolla, A., D’Sa, N., & Arbour, M.C. (2015) Experimental impacts of a teacher professional development program in Chile on preschool classroom quality and child outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 51(3): 309–22. Young-Loveridge, J., Bicknell, B., & Mills, J. (2012) The mathematical content knowledge and attitudes of New Zealand pre-service primary teachers. Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 14(2): 28–49. Zhou, J. (2014) Teacher education changes in China: 1974–2014. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5): 507–23.
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44 Teacher Education in Inclusive Education Kirsi Tirri and Sonja Laine
Introduction In recent decades, educational systems all around the world have changed radically, and classrooms have become more diverse than ever. In the course of this change, demands on schools and on teachers have become increasingly complex (Saloviita, 2015), and teachers are expected to meet the varied needs of diverse learners (VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2005; Dixon, Yssel, McConnell, & Hardin, 2014). Pressures on teacher education have therefore increased, since teachers of the future need to be educated to overcome and cope with these challenges. In this chapter, our emphasis is on teacher education and how student diversity is challenging teacher-student relationships. We begin by describing the context of inclusive education. We provide the widest possible definition of inclusion, and we emphasize the important role of teacher education in the development of inclusive practices. National contexts differ in the way that teachers are educated and school systems organized (Florian & Rouse, 2009). As an example of context, we use Finland to illustrate ways in which a country which has been acclaimed as a leader in teacher education is instructing teachers to meet the needs of diverse learners in inclusive classrooms. Teachers make a difference, and their pedagogical thinking is a core element in making educational decisions. According to Hattie (2009), the teacher and the nature of teacher-student relationships are among the most critical aspects of a student’s learning experience. Effective teachers are those ‘using particular teaching methods, teachers with high expectations for all students, and teachers who have created positive student-teacher relationships’ (Hattie, 2009, p. 126).
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Furthermore, the beliefs necessary for successful inclusive education are the idea ‘that all students can learn and progress’ and ‘achievement for all is changeable and not fixed’ (Hattie, 2009, p. 218). These ideas reflect the growth mindsetbelief identified by Carol Dweck (2000), namely, an attitude that intelligence, personality, and abilities can be developed and changed. In this chapter, the didactic triangle (Herbart, 1835) provides a conceptual framework for teachers’ pedagogical thinking and for a curriculum of inclusive teacher education. Pedagogical thinking includes both rational and intuitive reasoning in teachers’ practical knowledge (Kansanen, Tirri, Meri, Krokfors, Husu, & Jyrhämä, 2000). We discuss interactive relationships in teaching with emphasis on the pedagogical relation between a teacher and a student as well as on the didactic relation between a teacher and student’s learning to illuminate the concrete teaching- studying-learning process in which inclusive education is actualized. Teachers’ values, beliefs, and attitudes to diverse learners have a powerful effect on their pedagogical and didactical relations (Kansanen et al., 2000), and educating teachers for inclusion should therefore reflect these. We discuss inclusion from the perspective of pedagogical practices as well. We present differentiated teaching and inclusive pedagogy as an optional pedagogical basis for educating different kinds of learners. These components should be at the core of the teacher education curriculum.
A context for inclusive education Defining the Concept of Inclusion Defining the concept of inclusion is a challenging task (Armstrong, Armstrong, & Spandagou, 2011; Moberg & Savolainen, 2003). As Armstrong et al. (2011, p. 31) stated, ‘It is not simply that inclusion means different things to different people but rather that inclusion may end up meaning everything and nothing at the same time’. The various definitions of inclusion can be divided between narrow and broad (Ainscow, Booth, Dyson, Farrell, Frankham, Gallannaugh, Howes, & Smith, 2006). Narrow definitions promote the inclusion of specific groups of students, such as disabled students. Broad definitions, on the other hand, focus on diversity and how schools respond to the diversity of all students (Armstrong et al., 2011, p. 31). In the context of education, inclusion has often been connected exclusively with disability and special education (Arnesen, Mietola, & Lahelma, 2007; Miles & Singal, 2010), which yields a narrow definition. Thus, in the minds of many people, inclusion refers solely to a particular group of children, namely, students with special learning needs (Smith, 2006). However, as the following example from the UNESCO Salamanca Statement shows, inclusion reaches further: The guiding principle that informs this framework is that schools should accommodate all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social, linguistic or other conditions. This
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should include disabled and gifted children, street and working children, children from remote or nomadic populations, children from linguistic, ethnic, or cultural minorities and children from other disadvantaged or marginalized areas and groups. (UNESCO, 1994)
In this chapter, we use a broad definition whereby inclusion is defined as nondiscriminatory quality education for all (Saloviita, 2015; UNESCO, 2009).
Teacher Education for Inclusion The Salamanca Statement, as well as other generalized definitions developed by international agencies, may help the initial discussion, but these are less helpful when practitioners attempt to make sense of inclusive education (Miles & Singal, 2010). Furthermore, the existence of inclusive policies or the discourse of inclusion does not mean that inclusion functions in practice (Kivirauma, Klemelä, & Rinne, 2006). Consequently, the crucial role of teachers in providing quality education is widely acknowledged (Florian & Rouse, 2009), and teachers have been considered key persons in making inclusion a reality (Moberg & Savolainen, 2003; de Boer, Pijl, & Minnaert, 2011). Thus, teacher education, especially preservice education, is believed to play a central role in achieving truly inclusive schools (Forlin, 2010; Allday, Neilson-Gatti, & Hudson, 2013; Saloviita, 2015). There are differences between countries in how teacher education is organized. Typically, inclusive education for teachers is offered either as part of initial training or as ongoing professional learning for in-service teachers, and it involves both course work and teaching practice (Forlin, 2010). However, much of teachers’ learning takes place in actual practice through experience and interaction with colleagues, students, and others (Booth, Nes, & Stromstad, 2003). Nevertheless, whenever there is discussion about formal teacher education, there is a need for judgment about what teachers must be prepared to think and do (Kansanen et al., 2000; Darling-Hammond, 2008). As demands on teachers have increased, basic content knowledge is no longer seen as adequate. As the WHO World Report on Disability (2011, p. 222) states: ‘The principles of inclusion should be built into teacher training programmes, which should be about attitudes and values not just knowledge and skills’. Where inclusion is concerned, there seem to be two distinct, but overlapping strands regarding the content of teacher education (Florian & Rouse, 2009). On the one hand, there are those who claim that there is a specific set of knowledge and skills for working with ‘special children’. On the other hand, there are those who maintain that, since inclusion involves more than ‘special children’, teacher education should focus on improving learning and teaching for all. Florian and Rouse (2009, p. 596) have suggested that there is a need to move beyond the debate; they have formulated the tasks of teacher education to ‘prepare people to enter a profession, which accepts individual and collective responsibility for improving the learning and participation for all children’. Furthermore, there is a need for teachers who are confident in their own ability to teach all students and
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to be willing to participate and be engaged in the educational reform of inclusion (Forlin, 2010). Besides the question of content, there is also the question of how teacher education should be organized. Historically, as students’ different needs have been addressed through different forms of provisions, educators have realized that this specialist knowledge should be offered to teachers in separate programs. For example, special education teachers have been taught separately from classroom teachers. Similarly, whenever need for multicultural education has been acknowledged, a new, separate course has been added to teacher education programs (Florian, Young, & Rouse, 2010). However, because there is some indication that these kinds of separate programs only reinforce teachers’ views of the students they are responsible for teaching, and because many educational practices across settings are similar for different types of learners, the way in which teachers are prepared to work in schools today should be reconsidered and restructured (Florian et al., 2010). Most of the earlier research on teachers and inclusion has concentrated on teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion, their beliefs, and their teaching strategies. However, little is known about what exactly teachers need to know in order to teach in an inclusive school (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011). Furthermore, research on how best to prepare teachers for inclusive education is still scarce (Florian et al., 2010).
Teacher Education for Inclusion: Case Example from Finland In the last decade, Finnish teacher education has received more and more international attention, thanks especially to the excellent results Finnish students have achieved on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) since the year 2000. Good PISA achievement results together with highquality teacher education have made Finland an exemplary country in the field of education and training for teachers from countries all over the world (Tirri, 2014). Universities in Finland have a high degree of autonomy in designing their curricula. As a result, there is no detailed ‘curriculum of teacher education’ for all universities. However, there are certain principles and general outlines followed by all institutions of teacher education. Currently, teacher education in Finland is based on the idea of an autonomous and professional teacher who continues to develop throughout his/her working career and on the ideal of life-long learning. The goal of teacher education is to produce pedagogically-thinking teachers who can combine research findings about teaching with the profession’s practical challenges. Teachers’ thinking is pedagogical when it is intentional and directed toward student learning. In order to think pedagogically, a teacher has to be aware of his/her values and beliefs, formulate goals for his/her teaching, and give justifications for this decision-making (Kansanen et al., 2000). Hence, reflection in
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action and reflection on action are important skills in becoming a pedagogicallythinking teacher (Schön, 1987), and these are highlighted in teacher education in Finland. For example, in teaching practice at the University of Helsinki, the aim is to educate a reflective teacher, one who examines, frames, and attempts to solve the dilemmas of classroom practice, is aware of and questions the assumptions and values he or she brings to teaching, is attentive to the institutional and cultural contexts in which he or she teaches, takes part in curriculum development, is involved in school change efforts, and takes responsibility for his or her own professional development (Jyrhämä & Maaranen, 2012, p. 109). These emphases mean that reflective practice is present in both theoretical studies and teaching practice with the goal being to educate teachers who can combine theoretical and practical knowledge in their work. The country’s educational policy provides the values and restrictions on inclusive education that teachers and teacher educators should advocate. Finland is one of the Nordic welfare states in which equality and inclusiveness are the main guiding values in educational policy (Arnesen et al., 2007; Tirri & Kuusisto, 2013). The equality has been specifically manifested in care for the weakest students, such as children with learning difficulties (Tirri & Kuusisto, 2013). The principle has been that teaching methods should be chosen in a such way as to consider students’ individual characteristics, needs, and interests (Tirri & Kuusisto, 2013), an approach addressed both in the Finnish constitution (731/1999) and in the Basic Education Act (628/1998). Furthermore, differentiation is emphasized as the pedagogical basis of teaching (Finnish National Board of Education [FNBE], 2011, 2014). According to the newest Finnish national core curriculum (FNBE, 2014), education should be developed in accordance with inclusive principles.
Teacher education for inclusive education A good teacher is capable of pedagogical thinking, and this should be the aim of teacher education for inclusive education. In this chapter we use the didactic triangle to provide a conceptual framework for teachers’ pedagogical thinking and for a curriculum of inclusive teacher education. The didactic triangle illustrates how the teaching-studying-learning process is based on the interaction between the teacher, the student, and the content (Herbart, 1835). In the didactic triangle the teacher’s relationship with the student is called the pedagogical relation, which is asymmetrical in nature since ‘in the pedagogical relation the teacher has something that the students do not yet have’ (Kansanen & Meri, 1999, p. 112). The teacher’s relation to content indicates the teacher’s expertise, passion, and knowledge of the subject matter. In the German research tradition, ‘subject didactics’ (Fachdidaktik) (Kansanen & Meri, 1999) and in the AngloSaxon research tradition, ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ (Shulman, 1987) mean a combination of expertise in subject content and pedagogical competence
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(Kuusisto & Tirri, 2014). The relationship between the teacher and the student’s studying and learning process is referred to as the didactic relation. The teacher’s goal is to nurture this relationship in such a way that the student achieves the aims of the curriculum. Thus, the didactic relation is manifested through the individual’s studying process, which the teaching can influence and should focus on the most (Kansanen & Meri, 1999). The teacher can help the student find meaning in the subject matter with purposeful teaching; learning can thus become personally significant (Hopmann, 2007). The didactic triangle includes all the necessary interactive components that contribute to successful inclusive education. It is essential to teach future teachers exactly how the pedagogical relation and didactical relation established in the teaching-studying-learning process is affected by their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values about inclusion and how these contribute to the effectiveness of the inclusive education they practice.
Pedagogical Relation In the pedagogical relation between a teacher and a student, the teacher is the adult with the authority to teach, guide, and evaluate the student. The teacher is also a professional whose work is guided by the ethical codes for teachers and by the curriculum established in the educational institute where the teaching takes place. In classrooms, the teacher is responsible for many pedagogical relations at the same time, which indicates a need to reflect on the needs of different students with the goal of helping them to learn as effectively as possible. In order to establish good pedagogical relations with students, a teacher needs the skills to reflect on his or her own values and attitudes to these different learners. Reflective teaching is acknowledged as one possible approach for preparing teachers with the necessary attributes to implement inclusive practices for all children (Jordan, Schwartz, & McGhie-Richmond, 2009; Sharma, 2010). Reflective teachers question their beliefs and practices, evaluate events, and alter their teaching behaviour based on craft, research, and ethical knowledge (Sharma, 2010). The starting point should be pre-service teachers’ past experiences during their schooling and their beliefs about teaching (Sharma, 2010). Without this reflection, they will not be able to examine their beliefs critically or change them (Sharma, 2010). In practice, this reflective teaching includes such components as evaluating personal teaching philosophy; effective reasoning (what happened, why did it happen, what might it mean, what are the implications for my practice); collaborative problem solving; and identification, evaluation, and use of evidence-based practices (Sharma, 2010). In addition, teachers should be guided to reflect on their attitudes, beliefs, and values connected with inclusion. Next, we consider these attitudes, beliefs, and values in a more detailed manner.
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Teachers’ Attitudes and Beliefs It is generally seen that, in order to address students’ differing needs and abilities, teachers should have the attitudes and skills that can lead to positive changes in the students’ academic and social behavior (Allday et al., 2013). It has been suggested that teachers’ negative attitude is one of the factors hindering successful inclusive practices (de Boer et al., 2011). Accordingly, teachers’ attitudes to inclusion have been one of the most frequently examined areas in inclusive education (Chambers & Forlin, 2010). The review of earlier research on teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion reveals that teachers mostly have positive attitudes to inclusion in general (Avramidis, Bayliss, & Burden, 2000; Avramidis & Norwich, 2002; Moberg & Savolainen, 2003; Allan, 2010). However, their attitudes toward the practice of inclusion are more skeptical (Moberg & Savolainen, 2003; de Boer et al., 2011; Farrell, Dyson, Polat, Hutcheson, & Gallannaugh, 2007). They might, for example, have doubts about how inclusion affects the achievement of pupils with special education needs (SEN) and that of their peers (Farrell et al., 2007), or they see that in practice the premises do not support inclusion (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002), or they might feel that their skills for implementing inclusion are inadequate (Burstein, Sears, Wilcoxen, Cabello, & Spagna, 2004; Allan, 2010; de Boer et al., 2011). Furthermore, teachers’ high self-efficacy toward inclusive education has been found to be related to more positive attitudes (Sharma, Loreman, & Forlin, 2011; Savolainen, Engelbrecht, Nel, & Malinen, 2012). Special education teachers (Moberg & Savolainen, 2003) and teachers with favorable experiences of inclusion have been found to be more positive toward inclusion as well (Moberg & Savolainen, 2003). Furthermore, there is some indication that the type and the severity of disability affect teachers’ attitudes (Avramidis et al., 2000; Avramidis & Norwich, 2002; Evans & Lunt, 2002; Moberg & Savolainen, 2003; Farrell et al., 2007). For example, emotional and behavioral difficulties cause more concerns than other types of SEN (Avramidis et al., 2000; Avramidis & Norwich, 2002; Evans & Lunt, 2002; Farrell et al., 2007), and teachers are most supportive of the physical or sensory disorders (Evans & Lunt, 2002). However, most of this research has been done from the perspective of the inclusion of SEN students. Foundations for more positive attitudes toward inclusion can be built in teacher education programs (Killoran, Woronko, & Zaretsky, 2014). Since attitudes can influence intentions and behavior in the classroom (Chambers & Forlin, 2010), one aim of teacher education should be about reflecting beliefs and attitudes of pre-service teachers in order to improve more positive attitudes toward inclusion. There is a need to develop teachers for new ways of believing that all children are worthy of education, all children can learn, teachers have the capacity to make the difference, and such work is their responsibility (Rouse, 2010). Carol Dweck’s (2000) theory of mindsets, defined as beliefs that individuals hold about their most basic qualities and abilities, can be regarded as a promising theory
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to use for improving teachers’ beliefs of every child’s capacity to learn. People with a growth mindset (i.e. an incremental theory of abilities) believe that intelligence, personality, and abilities can be developed. People with a fixed mindset (i.e. an entity theory of abilities) believe that these basic qualities are static and unalterable. Mindsets act as mechanisms behind several motivational and learning-related processes and have relevance for all learners (Dweck, 2000). While a fixed mindset leaves students vulnerable to negative feedback and can lead to avoidance of challenges, a growth mindset helps students take risks and see possible failures as learning opportunities (Dweck, 2000). Furthermore, although mindsets are quite stable, they are alterable through educational interventions (e.g. Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Yeager, Trzesniewski, Tirri, Nokelainen, & Dweck, 2011). Thus, educators’ role in orienting students to the idea of increasing their abilities through effort is seen as crucial (Dweck, 2009). Moreover, the results of earlier attitude research have indicated the importance of offering fieldwork experiences and contacts to pre-service teachers during their teacher education (Brownlee & Carrington, 2000; Chambers & Forlin, 2010). It has been found that the most effective results are achieved when fieldwork is combined with formal instruction (Campbell, Gilmore, & Cuskelly, 2003).
Teachers’ Values The emphasis on teacher professionalism has prompted an increasing number of countries to publish formalized codes of ethics for teachers (Terhart, 1998). In the United States, teachers have had formalized codes of ethics for 60 years. For example, in 1975, the NEA (National Education Association) Code stressed the self-control or self-commitment of the teaching profession. In these codes, the profession defined commitments to students and to the teaching profession. European countries published formalized codes of ethics for teachers much later. For example, in Finland the ethical principles for teachers were published for the first time in 1998 by the Trade Union of Education (Tirri, 2010). These principles defined the values behind teachers’ ethics. These clearly defined values, which are based on humanistic psychology, are human worth, honesty, justice, and freedom. Furthermore, the principles defined the values in the context of pedagogical interactions relevant to a teacher’s work. The values should be reflected in the relationships between the teacher and the pupil, as well as between the teacher and his/her colleagues. The principles also provide guidance in the development of a teacher’s personality and relationship to work and society (Trade Union of Education in Finland, 2010; Tirri, 2010). Moreover, teachers are trusted in Finland and given a great deal of professional freedom in curriculum design, teaching methods, and learning materials (Sahlberg, 2011). This autonomy challenges teachers’ ethical conduct and makes them reflect on the bases of their professional ethics. Professional ethics also include reflection on the values and virtues of a teacher (Lovat, Toomey, Clement, Pring, & Noddings, 2010). According to empirical
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studies, teachers cannot separate their own moral character from their professional selves. The stance of teachers’ moral character functions as a moral approach in teachers’ reasoning, guiding how they interact with pupils and giving the young hope for the future. The professional approach in teachers’ reasoning includes rules and principles that guide their pedagogical practice and decision-making. These rules and principles build teachers’ professional character in their practical knowing (Tirri, Husu, & Kansanen, 1999). Empirical research on Finnish teachers has indicated that, in critical situations in their work, these teachers value professional commitment in terms of caring and cooperation (Hanhimäki & Tirri, 2008, 2009; Tirri, 1999). Furthermore, teachers in Finland individually tailor and personalize their curricula for their students with special needs. This emphasis on caring for students with special needs has produced good learning results, even with those struggling with socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Taken together, an atmosphere of caring, an effort to meet the needs of individual students from diverse backgrounds, and respect for different families have created conditions for success and the emotional well-being of students within the context of schools (Hanhimäki & Tirri, 2009). These findings have implications for teacher education curricula and suggest increasing content that encourages future teachers to reflect on the values and the beliefs that underlie their professional ethics and their attitudes toward students from diverse backgrounds.
Didactical Relation The goal of teaching is for a teacher to establish a didactic relation to a student’s learning. In this relation, the teacher needs to find ways to motivate the student to study and learn the content of the curriculum (Kuusisto & Tirri, 2014). In inclusive education, the challenge for a teacher is to find different methods and approaches for students whose content knowledge, abilities, and study skills, among other things, differ from each other. Furthermore, there is evidence that ‘teachers who accept responsibility for teaching a wide diversity of students, and feel confident in their instructional and management skills, can successfully implement inclusive programmes’ (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002, p. 140). Thus, in order to make inclusion work, teachers need different skills and pedagogies (Winter, 2006; Forlin, 2010). A highly critical aspect of inclusive teacher education is to break the traditional idea of a homogeneous approach to teaching, which is no longer seen as adequate (Forlin, 2010). In fact, the idea that there is a one-size-fits-all curriculum that meets the needs of most students should be abandoned (e.g. Subban, 2006; Tomlinson, 1999, 2001; Dixon et al., 2014; Ferguson, 2008). Instead, a curriculum that is meaningful, interesting, and engaging for every student (Ferguson, 2008) together with instructional practices that enable all students to learn and develop (Roy, Guay, & Valois, 2013) is required. To achieve that, teachers first need to diagnose their own skills in assessing students’ current level
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of performance. Second, the teachers need to find the materials and methods to teach the student in the zone of proximal development identified by Vygotsky (1978). According to this pedagogical approach, the teaching should start from familiar contents and proceed to the unknown, beginning with the simple things and ending up with more complex issues. In this process, the teacher also needs knowledge of different ways to meet the needs of diverse learners in an inclusive classroom. Thus, instead of offering pre-service teachers content knowledge only, pre-service teachers need preparation in pedagogy and practice (Forlin, 2010). Their educational programs should prepare them to plan and execute teaching that is suitable for a wide range of students. In this chapter we present two different pedagogical approaches to inclusive practices: differentiation and inclusive pedagogy. The practice of differentiation is rooted in a student-centered philosophy or ethic of teaching (Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010). It is seen as an approach to teaching in which teachers address students’ different needs, abilities, interests, and learning profiles (Tomlinson, 1999, 2001; Subban, 2006). Differentiation is guided by the general principles of respectful tasks, flexible grouping, and ongoing assessment and adjustment (Tomlinson, 1999; Subban, 2006). While differentiating, teachers proactively modify curricula, teaching methods, resources, learning activities, and students’ products (Tomlinson, Brighton, Hertberg, Callahan, Moon, Brimijoin, Conover, & Reynolds, 2003). Furthermore, every student’s learning is assisted in a way appropriate to that student’s level (Dixon et al., 2014; Tomlinson, 1999). The goal of differentiation is to maximize every student’s learning opportunity (Tomlinson et al., 2003), as well as the student’s individual success and growth (Dixon et al., 2014). By means of differentiation, support and appropriate modifications for students with disabilities is possible, as well as appropriate challenges for those students who already excel. However, there is some indication that teachers do not implement differentiation on a regular basis (cf. Latz, Speirs Neumeister, Adams, & Pierce, 2009; Archambault, Westberg, Brown, Hallmark, Emmons, & Zhang, 1993; Westberg, Archambault, & Brown, 1997), or they do not necessarily use evidence-based differentiation practices (Laine & Tirri, 2016). Inclusive pedagogy is a relatively new concept, intended to avoid problems and stigma associated with marking some learners as different (Florian & BlackHawkins, 2011). While typical inclusive practices include the idea of providing for all, yet differentiating for some, inclusive pedagogy is about everyone (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011). The teacher’s role is to create options and optimal conditions, while student are allowed and trusted to make decisions about their own learning (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011; Black-Hawkins & Florian, 2012). Furthermore, it is considered important to reject deterministic beliefs that ability is fixed along with the idea that the presence of some students will hold back the progress of others (Black-Hawkins & Florian, 2012). This approach calls for seeing difficulties as professional challenges, for example, instead of seeing deficits
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in learners, and it calls for being continuously committed to the professional development of more inclusive practices (Black-Hawkins & Florian, 2012).
Conclusions In this chapter, we have presented the teacher with his or her values, beliefs, attitudes, and pedagogical knowledge as the key factor in inclusive education. The nature of interactive relationships in teaching, pedagogical relations, and didactic relations have been identified as pre-requisites to successful inclusive education. Teachers need to have the motivation and skills to establish pedagogical relations with diverse learners, as well as the knowledge of different teaching methods and practices in order to motivate different students to study and learn the curriculum content. These issues should be acknowledged and taught in teacher education programs and in curriculum planning all over the world. The goal of teacher education should be to produce a reflective teacher who can reflect on the values, beliefs, and attitudes that guide his or her pedagogical thinking and teaching practice, including teaching for inclusion. The growth mindset (also called an incremental theory of abilities) discussed in this chapter can guide teachers and teacher educators to believe that intelligence, personality, and abilities can be developed. This kind of mindset would provide the best possible starting point for educating different learners in inclusive settings. In addition to reflecting beliefs, attitudes, and values, teachers need knowledge about the successful inclusion of different students, such as students with special education needs and gifted students. This kind of knowledge should be provided in teacher education curricula by means of practical plans and opportunities for trying different teaching strategies with diverse student populations. Without these kinds of training opportunities, it is difficult for teachers to include diverse students in mainstream education (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002). Research-based teacher education acknowledges practices that are evidence-based from inclusive schools (Burstein et al., 2004). The teacher education curriculum should pay special attention to teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge on how to educate different learners and practice teaching for inclusion in different subjects and contexts. In their comparative chapter on the history of initial teacher education programs in the United States, Chile, South Africa, Singapore, and Finland, Placier, Letseka, Seroto, Loh, Montecinos, Vásquez, and Tirri (2015) recognize the harm of past inequities as well as the economic benefits of a more educated population in their countries. As democracies, all of these countries face the challenge of preparing teachers to provide more equitable learning opportunities. This is one reason why teacher education curricula should not neglect the importance of addressing the political and economic issues related to inclusive education. Often, financial resources are allocated on the basis of political decisions. Schools and
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teachers also lack resources to meet the needs of all their students, and they frequently have to choose whose needs to prioritize. Furthermore, teacher education curricula always reflect the culture of each nation. Each country should reflect on its own history and the cultural roots underlying its educational system to understand better the current policies and practices concerning inclusive education. In teacher education curricula, these historical and cultural roots should be discussed and reflected on so that future teachers understand the bigger context of the education to which they will contribute.
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Terhart, E. (1998). Formalised codes of ethics for teachers: between professional autonomy and administrative control. European Journal of Education, 33(4), 433–444. Tirri, K. (1999). Teachers’ perceptions of moral dilemmas at school. Journal of Moral Education, 28(1), 31–47. Tirri, K. (2010). Teachers’ values underlying their professional ethics. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, N. Clement, R. Pring, & N. Noddings (Eds), International Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, pp. 153–163. New York: Springer. Tirri, K. (2014). The last 40 years in Finnish teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5), 600–609. Tirri, K., & Kuusisto, E. (2013). How Finland serves gifted and talented pupils. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 36(1), 84–96. Tirri, K., Husu, J., & Kansanen, P. (1999). The epistemological stance between the knower and the known. Teaching and Teacher Education, 15(8), 911–922. Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). The differentiated classroom: responding to the needs of all learners. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Tomlinson, C.A. (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Tomlinson, C.A., Brighton, C., Hertberg, H., Callahan, C.M., Moon, T.R., Brimijoin, K., Conover, L.A., & Reynolds, T. (2003). Differentiating instruction in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile in academically diverse classrooms: a review of literature. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 27(2), 119–145. Tomlinson, C.A., & Imbeau, M.B. (2010). Leading and managing a differentiated classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Trade Union of Education in Finland. (2010). Code of ethics for Finnish teachers. Helsinki: Trade Union of Education in Finland. UNESCO. (1994). The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education. In World Conference on Special Needs Education: Access and Quality. Salamanca, Spain, June 7–10, 1994. UNESCO. (2009). Policy guidelines on inclusion in education. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved from http:// unesdoc.UNESCO.org/images/0017/001778/177849e.pdf VanTassel-Baska, J., & Stambaugh, T. (2005). Challenges and possibilities for serving gifted learners in the regular classroom. Theory into Practice, 44(3), 211–217. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society: the development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Westberg, K.L., Archambault, F.X, & Brown, S.W. (1997). A survey of classroom practices with third and fourth grade students in the United States. Gifted Education International, 12(1), 29–33. WHO. (2011). World report on disability. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/ 2011/report.pdf Winter, E.C. (2006). Preparing new teachers for inclusive schools and classrooms. Support for Learning, 21(2), 85–91. Yeager, D., Trzesniewski, K.H., Tirri, K., Nokelainen, P., & Dweck, C.S. (2011). Adolescents’ implicit theories predict desire for vengeance after remembered and hypothetical peer conflicts. Developmental Psychology, 47(4), 1090–1107.
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Section VIII
Learning Professional Competencies in Teacher Education and throughout the Career A u l i To o m
Teachers’ competencies have been suggested as key prerequisites for the professional work of teaching and the challenges teachers face since their early years in teacher education and throughout their career. Theoretically professional competencies are integrative and complex constructions including cognitive structures and professional skills (Westera, 2001; Korthagen, 2004; Blömeke, Gustaffson, & Shavelson, 2015). They are teachers’ individual characteristics, which are significantly and continuously shaped in interaction with the surrounding contexts where they are enacted (Pantic & Wubbels, 2012; Shavelson, 2013). As educational policy concepts, teachers’ professional competencies can carry heavy ideological meanings depending on the ways and purposes in which they are discussed and used. This section explores research on teachers’ competencies and their learning from multiple different perspectives. The chapters approach teachers’ competencies from varied theoretical and methodological orientations and thus present the comprehensive understanding of this research area.
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In this section, multiple perspectives related to teachers’ competencies of both student teachers and experienced teachers are being considered. The chapters present teachers’ competencies from different theoretical perspectives and illuminate the methodological variety in investigating teacher competencies and the multiple understandings resulting from them. Based on this, the consequences and implications for teacher education and work of teaching are reflected. The chapters also show the gaps in the research literature that should be filled in order to understand the phenomenon of teacher competence more thoroughly and to support teachers’ learning throughout their careers. The section as a whole analyzes the core qualities, learning, and enactment of teachers’ competencies both during teacher education and in the profession. It also approaches teachers’ competencies from broader perspectives as well as reflects on the meanings given for teacher competencies in different discourses. In the following the chapters in this section are presented along with the structural understanding of competence and the aspects elaborated earlier. In Sigrid Blömeke and Gabriele Kaiser’s chapter (Chapter 45), they consider the development of teachers’ professional competencies by analyzing their personal, situational, and social aspects. They define competences as teachers’ personal traits, but emphasize their situational facets and realization in social contexts. Competences include cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects, from which a teacher’s situation-specific skills, such as perception, interpretation and decision-making, and professional behavior are shaped of. Blömeke and Kaiser analyze the horizontal continuum of competence including a range of dispositions and skills related to classroom performance, and the vertical continuum of competence meaning higher or lower achievement levels in terms of competencies. Their theorization of the anatomy of teacher competencies concretizes the complexity of competence learning and development throughout a teacher’s career, and thus provides tools for empirical research and pedagogical support. In terms of formation of professional competencies, the authors reflect on the social aspects and multiple professional contexts influencing individual teachers, especially emphasizing the important role of teacher education and educators in shaping future teachers’ competencies. In Chapter 46, Auli Toom considers the complex divide between teachers’ work, teacher knowledge, and teacher education related to teachers’ competencies, which she defines as central elements when grasping the essence of teacher competencies both theoretically and empirically. Toom understands teacher competence as an integrative concept including cognitive resources and a variety of skills enabling a teacher to act in complex professional situations. The chapter analyzes the role of teacher knowledge in competencies, which is theoretically understood as a prerequisite of skilful action. There also exists little empirical evidence about the impact of teachers’ subject matter knowledge on their classroom behavior and pupil learning. Toom concludes the chapter by considering the dimensions of teacher competence in terms of teacher knowledge and work of teaching, which might be useful for further research.
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Teacher development throughout the career is analyzed in Chapter 47, written by Jan van Tartwijk, Rosanne Zwart and Theo Wubbels. They elaborate two main lines of research on teacher development (Kagan, 1992), stages in teacher development (Fuller, 1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975), and novice and expert studies (Berliner, 1994, 2001), and connect these with the research on teacher competence. The various models describe teachers’ professional development as a linear process, whereas the idiosyncrasy and the individual differences of the processes found in the empirical research make them especially interesting from the viewpoint of teacher learning and teacher education. The authors also analyze the qualities of expertise – adaptive experts’ abilities to perform in the profession, diagnose essential elements of practice, retrieve information from their memory, and change their routines – and underline the importance of continuous work of teaching in order to reach the level of expertise in teaching. As a future direction, they encourage the development of adaptive expertise through deliberate practice and reflection in teacher education, which could serve the needs of continuous development throughout the teacher career. In Chapter 48, Elaine Munthe and Paul F. Conway review the research on teacher planning from cognitive and ecological-situated perspectives, influential paradigms in this research area. They understand planning as a set of teachers’ basic psychological processes, as things that teachers do when they say they are planning, and as practices that are realized in a certain educational context with other professionals. As such, they define planning as one of the key competencies of teachers. Through planning teachers prepare frameworks that guide their classroom actions (Clark & Yinger, 1979), with profound influences on their behavior in the classroom (Shavelson, 1987; Borko & Livingston, 1989). A variety of both teacher-related and contextual factors influence teachers’ pedagogical decisions during planning. Finally they suggest that student teachers should learn to become adaptive experts planning during teacher education. In Chapter 49, Sue Catherine O’Neill elaborates teacher competence from a situated cognition perspective and shows how this approach helps to explain teacher learning and knowledge transference. She reflects both on individual teachers’ competencies, and the competencies of a community of teachers as their shared capability. Novice teacher learning becomes realized through apprenticeship, activities, experiences, modeling, scaffolding, discussions, and coaching in their multiple communities of practice, which are demanding to organize but rewarding when they succeed. O’Neill suggests applying the situated cognition approach more systematically to the design and practices of teacher education due to its broader benefits compared with the pitfalls identified in the research. Monica Miller Marsh and Daniel Castner consider the discourses on teacher competence in Chapter 50 and highlight the critical aspects worth reflecting on when doing research on teacher competence, facilitating their learning, or promoting them in teacher education. They present four different discourses, the status quo discourse, critical pedagogy discourse, hybrid discourse, and transactional
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discourse, and challenge readers to consider the relatively broad prevailing international phenomena, e.g. competency-based teacher education, teacher accountability, increasing the number of teachers, and monitoring students’ progress toward learning targets associated with it. They justify the elaboration of the discourses with the need to be careful with over-standardization of the educational phenomena. They emphasize the importance of situating thoughts, discussions, and activities when developing competencies and curricula in teacher education. The chapters elaborate the variety and complexity of teachers’ professional competencies both theoretically and empirically. Competencies are understood as integrative capabilities: on one end of the continuum, they express the threshold capabilities that early-career teachers inevitably need in their work; on the other end of the continuum they characterize the efficient capabilities of an adaptive expert teacher. Competencies are individual teachers’ characteristics, which are shaped situationally and contextually. Traditionally many teacher education programmes through their curricular structures emphasize the importance of learning theoretical knowledge and then application of this knowledge in practice. This is still a relatively dominant understanding of learning competencies for the work of teaching, which could be – from the viewpoint of research on teacher competencies – broadened, deepened, and diversified further both in the curricula and pedagogical practices of teacher education. The nature of some teacher competencies might require a different approach (cf. Toom, 2012). Broadening the spectrum of pedagogies of teacher education and applying the most appropriate pedagogies in line with the specific competence would be ideal. This could even narrow the gap between theory and practice of teacher education, and facilitate student teacher learning of multiple competencies. Competencies are shaped throughout the teacher career through deliberate practice and reflection in multiple professional interactions. Teachers can regulate learning of their own and others’ professional competencies intentionally, compensate each others’ strengths and weaknesses, and use each other as resources for learning in respectful environments. Under favorable conditions, this contributes significantly to student learning and wellbeing and the development of school communities. Teachers’ professional competencies should be investigated continuously to be able to support meaningful teacher learning and pursue reasonable developments. Further research is needed to investigate the anatomy of teacher competencies, the reciprocal relationships between teachers’ conceptual and cognitive structures, teacher decision-making, and professional behavior in the classroom and professional community. In addition, the competencies of teacher communities would be worth theorizing and investigating further in order to understand teachers’ networked expertise in collegial practice. In principle, the characteristics of teachers’ work define the competencies teachers need to possess. They assist understanding of teacher competence as a phenomenon and its theoretical definition. But, in practice, teacher competencies are also regulated through educational decision-making, especially through
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formal teacher qualifications, structures of the educational system, and curricula teachers implement in their work. The teacher competencies defined in these documents capture the conception of an ideal teacher in a certain context. Thus, the definitions are clearly ideological and political by nature. Teacher competencies are therefore determined, regulated, and directed through the social and societal processes on various levels of educational systems. When educational decision makers or politicians launch e.g. a new curriculum, criteria for teacher recruitment, teaching and learning materials, or pupil or teacher assessment criteria, the understanding of teacher competences is then – implicitly or explicitly – also brought into discussion. These multiple societal processes defining teacher competencies should be especially investigated despite their extensive complexity and challenges in reaching them. This would significantly help to understand the effects of broad societal actions on individual teachers’ work and competences and assist the directions of educational policy decisions. To conclude, the chapters in this section suggest three broad directions for further research on teacher competencies. Firstly, research on teachers’ competencies both individually and collectively, on the relationships between cognitive structures and professional behavior, on learning of competencies throughout the teacher career in multiple formal and informal contexts, and on the relationship between teacher competencies and student learning would facilitate more thorough understanding of teachers as educational professionals in the practice of teaching. Secondly, research on how teachers’ competencies are explicitly and implicitly defined in the societal processes and decision-making, how different educational needs become competence requirements for teachers, how practical organization of teachers’ work regulates teacher competencies, and how the different competence requirements are continuously constructed and reconstructed would deepen understanding of teachers as educational professionals in the changing societal contexts. Thirdly, research exploring the multiple complex relationships between these first two – teachers in the practice of teaching in the changing societal contexts – might show, in a multi-layered way, how teachers’ work is deeply embedded in the communities where it is enacted.
References Berliner, D. C. (1994). Expertise: The wonder of exemplary performances. In J. N. Mangieri & C. Collins Block (Eds), Creating powerful thinking in teachers and students (pp. 161–186). Forth Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Berliner, D. C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482. Blömeke, S., Gustafsson, J., & Shavelson, R. J. (2015). Beyond dichotomies: Competence viewed as a continuum. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 223(1), 3–13. DOI:10.1027/2151-2604/a000194 Borko, H., & Livingston, C. (1989). Cognition and improvisation: Differences in mathematics instruction by expert and novice teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 26(4), 473–498.
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Clark, C., & Yinger, R. (1979). Three studies of teacher planning. Research Series no. 55. The Institute for Research on Teaching, Michigan State University. Downloaded October 1, 2015 from http:// education.msu.edu/irt/PDFs/ResearchSeries/rs055.pdf Fuller, F. F. (1969). Concerns of teachers: A developmental conceptualization. American Educational Research Journal, 6(2), 207–226. Fuller, F. F., & Bown, O. H. (1975). Becoming a teacher. In K. Ryan (Ed.), Teacher education. 74th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Part 2. (pp. 25–52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kagan, D. M. (1992). Professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers. Review of Educational Research, 62(2), 129–169. Korthagen, F. A. J. (2004). In search of the essence of a good teacher: Towards a more holistic approach in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(1), 77–97. Pantic, N., & Wubbels, T. (2012). Competence-based teacher education: A change from Didaktik to curriculum culture? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(1), 61–87. DOI:10.1080/00220272.2011.620633 Shavelson, R. (1987). Planning. In M. Dunkin (Ed.), International encyclopedia of teaching and teacher education (pp. 483–486). Oxford: Pergamon. Shavelson, R. J. (2013). On an approach to testing and modeling competence. Educational Psychologist, 48(2), 73–86. DOI:10.1080/00461520.2013.779483 Toom, A. (2012). Considering the artistry and epistemology of tacit knowledge and knowing. Educational Theory, 62(6), 621–640. Westera, W. (2001). Competences in education: A confusion of tongues. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(1), 75–88.
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45 Understanding the Development of Teachers’ Professional Competencies as Personally, Situationally and Socially Determined Sigrid Blömeke and Gabriele Kaiser Introduction Research on teacher education, teachers’ professional development and the necessary prerequisites has become a prolific and productive field growing with enormous speed. Large-scale assessments such as the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) (Tatto et al., 2012) have triggered a series of national and international follow-up studies examining the competencies necessary to teach different subjects at different school levels. Substantial progress has therefore been made in understanding that teacher competencies are personal traits (i.e. individual dispositions relatively stable across different classroom situations) but that they also include situational facets (Jenßen et al., 2015). Furthermore, they play out in social contexts which determine to some extent how competencies can be transformed into classroom performance. Research is, thus, increasingly integrating the two different paradigms on teachers’ professional competencies, which can be characterized either as cognitive or as situated approaches to professional competencies of teachers (Rowland & Ruthven, 2011). These developments are in line with trends in subject-related discussions like mathematics education, where, in their survey on the state-of-the-art of teacher
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education and teachers, Krainer and Llinares (2010) identified three trends in the literature on prospective teachers, practicing teachers, and teacher, educators, namely teacher educators’ and researchers’ increasing attention to the social dimension of teacher education, to teachers’ reflections, and to the general conditions of teacher education. The trends are based on the shift from a perspective on the education of individual future and practicing teachers and their cognitions towards emphasizing the social dimension in teacher education based on sociological and sociocultural theories. The cognitive perspective on the professionalism of teachers focusing on knowledge facets of teachers has been dominant in recent decades. Its characteristic is a strong focus on teachers’ knowledge and the distinction of a limited number of knowledge components, treated as personal traits. These studies mainly come from mathematics education, for example, the Mathematics Teaching and Learning to Teach Project (MTLT) developed by the Learning Mathematics for Teaching Project (LMT) (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008; Fauskanger, 2015) or the Cognitive Activation in the Classroom Project (COACTIV) (Kunter et al., 2013; Bruckmaier et al., 2016), or the Knowledge Quartet (Turner & Rowland, 2011), in addition to the already-mentioned Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) (Blömeke, Suhl, & Kaiser, 2011). However, new studies such as the follow up study to TEDS-M (Blömeke et al., 2016), the Learning to Learn from Mathematics Teaching Project (Santagata & Guarino, 2011; Santagata & Yeh, 2016), or the Classroom Video Analysis (CVA) Instrument (Kersting et al., 2012; Kersting et al., 2016) have shifted the focus of research to the inclusion of situated and social aspects of teaching and learning and the professional development of teachers. These studies assume ‘the act of teaching being multi-dimensional in nature’ (Depaepe, Verschaffel, & Kelchtermans, 2013, p. 22), referring not only to subject-based cognitive aspects, but including pedagogical reflections on the teaching-and-learning situation as a whole. The context in which teaching and learning is enacted is in the foreground (for an earlier project describing teachers’ professional knowledge as situated, see Fennema and Franke, 1992). Integrating these different approaches, Blömeke, Gustafsson, and Shavelson (2015) presented a framework of teacher competencies that took this interaction of personal, situational, and social characteristics into account. They showed that former conceptual dichotomies were misleading in that they ignored either the stable dispositional or the more variable situational competence facets. By systematically sketching conceptual controversies, competing definitions of competence were unpacked. The resulting framework revealed how the different approaches complement each other. Competence can hence be viewed along a continuum from personal dispositions such as teachers’ professional knowledge and beliefs, which underlie situation-specific cognitive skills such as teachers’ perception, interpretation, and decision-making, which in turn give rise to observed teacher performance in the classroom.
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Complementing this view on teacher competencies, which was still limited in the sense that it solely focused on a teacher’s individual potential and his/ her interaction with the situation, Scheerens and Blömeke (2016) included in an extended model on teachers’ professional competencies the social context and its impact on the development of teacher competencies and their transformation into classroom performance. The present article summarizes this integrative conceptualization of personal, situational, and social determinants of teacher competencies and provides, thus, a multi-level, multi-dimensional conceptual framework of teacher competencies (see Figure 45.1). In the following, results from major studies on the development of teachers’ professional competencies are linked to this framework, and conclusions of what it means to understand competencies as personally, situationally, and socially determined are drawn for future research and pre-service/in-service teacher training.
Structure and development of teachers’ professional competencies A Person-Oriented Framework Although the term ‘teacher competencies’ is widely used, its precise meaning remains often unclear. The notion of competence became prominent in the US during the 1960s and 1970s (Grant et al.,1979) and meant successful performance on tasks sampled from real-life situations: ‘If someone wants to know who will make a good teacher, they will have to get videotapes of classrooms, … and find out how the behaviors of good and poor teachers differ’ (McClelland,
Figure 45.1 Personal, situational and social determinants of the development of teachers’ professional competencies (extended version of Blömeke, Gustafsson & Shavelson, 2015)
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1973, p. 8). A contrasting perspective stressed competence’s dispositional, and in particular its cognitive nature, either in a generic sense, for example intelligence or information-processing abilities, or in a domain-specific sense, for example professional knowledge. These discussions relate to the two paradigms described above on the nature of teachers’ competencies as being either socially or cognitively shaped (Depaepe et al., 2013). We suggest overcoming such simplified conceptualizations and regard competence more as a continuum with dispositions closely related to observable performance (see Figure 45.1). Spencer and Spencer (1993, p. 9) defined competence in this sense as ‘an underlying characteristic of an individual that is causally related to criterion-referenced effective and/or superior performance in a job or situation. Underlying characteristic means the competency is a fairly deep and enduring part of a person’s personality’. Furthermore, we suggest considering dispositions as a multi-dimensional set of not only cognitive but also affectivemotivational characteristics. Finally, we propose regarding the transformation of fairly stable dispositions into more variable performance as fully or partially mediated by situation-specific cognitive skills. It is important to note that in this conceptualization teachers’ competencies and their observable performance in the classroom are distinguished but they are assumed to be functionally related to each other because the former underlie the latter. In addition the conceptualization is limited to professional competencies of teachers. In order to succeed, they would most likely also require generic attributes all higher-education graduates need, such as creativity, ethical responsibility, or communication skills (Strijbos, Engels, & Struyven, 2015). Furthermore, teachers have, like all human beings, everyday knowledge not related to their job tasks. By definition, this knowledge is not part of their professional competencies.
A Developmentally-Oriented Framework The different competence facets and their dimensions may change over time, for example during teacher education, but also while teachers gain practical experiences. Thus, teacher competence is not only a horizontal continuum including a range of dispositions and skills functionally related to classroom performance but also a vertical continuum in terms of higher or lower achievement levels on the one hand, as well as of earlier or later developmental stages on the other hand (Blömeke et al., 2015). Growth and loss resulting in higher or lower achievement levels may happen with respect to each single competence facet or dimension but not necessarily in the same way (Braeken, 2015). A teacher may reach a high achievement level on one dimension but only a low one on another (Baltes, Lindenberger & Staudinger, 2006). Taking a developmental perspective increases complexity. A teacher may reach an advanced developmental stage on one dimension but remains on a premature one on another. Furthermore, it could be that the development of the
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different dimensions are related to each other, that for example some basic knowledge has to be in place before situation-specific skills can be developed, because neuropsychological research reveals that perception happens in the visual cortex and is connected to pre-frontal cortical structures that represent specific knowledge (Riddoch & Humphreys, 2001). This would mean with respect to preschool teachers, for example, that he or she needs a basic understanding of mathematics to be able to perceive opportunities to foster mathematics literacy of small children in a preschool situation. However, once a basic level of professional knowledge exists, practical experiences and practical training may be sufficient to increase situation-specific skills and performance. Many teacher education programs are built on the assumption that knowledge has to be delivered first before students undergo practical training to develop situation-specific skills. But it might be that change happens on all dimensions all the time (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980) and that an integrated approach would facilitate development in a better way. Furthermore, development can happen continuously in terms of incremental processes or it can happen as jumps once a threshold has been reached (Braeken, 2015). Besides quantitative incremental or jump-like growth and loss in each facet or dimension, qualitative changes may happen in that dimensions become more differentiated/specialized or more integrated, as it is assumed in the novice-expert paradigm (Berliner, 2001; Chi, 2011). Expertise is characterized by a well-connected knowledge structure that can be retrieved quickly (Calderhead, 1984). In such cases of differentiation or integration, one pedagogical content knowledge dimension may, for example, be split up into several sub-dimensions so that a teacher reveals strength in diagnosing student achievement but weaknesses in dealing with heterogeneity in a classroom. In contrast, the pedagogical content knowledge and the content knowledge dimensions could develop into more integrated ones over time. Developmental trajectories would imply structural changes in the nature of competence, for example concerning various sub-dimensions such as deepening and broadening of school-related pedagogical content knowledge, which may become more strongly connected to general pedagogical knowledge, and is more strongly bound to a conceptual and structural understanding of the teaching subject (Schoenfeld & Kilpatrick, 2008; Schoenfeld, 2011). A serious lack of research has to be pointed out in all these respects regarding teacher competence. Besides such intra-individual developmental differences, inter-individual differences between teachers exist. This means that each teacher can be characterized through a specific profile of stronger or weaker dispositions, stronger or weaker skills, and stronger or weaker classroom performance. A teacher can, thus, be characterized as more or less competent. A competence profile characterizes teacher competence as a whole (Oser, 2013), which raises the question of thresholds: how much is enough so that a teacher can be called ‘competent’? An important but open question in this context is whether the different dimensions of competence can compensate for each other (i.e. are additive by nature) or
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whether strength on one dimension cannot compensate for weakness on another (i.e. a multiplicative nature; Koeppen et al., 2008). Does a teacher need to have all types of dispositions and skills to be able to perform successfully in class or is it sufficient, for example, to have strong pedagogical content knowledge? If developmental stages exist, do teachers need to reach a certain stage before they can show certain classroom performance? If different achievement levels on each developmental stage exist, do teachers have to pass a minimum threshold before they can succeed (Blömeke et al., 2015)?
State-of-research regarding teachers’ dispositions Professional Knowledge Based on Shulman (1986), teachers’ professional knowledge is commonly categorized into content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and general pedagogical knowledge (GPK). CK and PCK are specific for each subject whereas GPK includes knowledge about generic teaching and learning tasks such as classroom management. All knowledge dimensions can be regarded as relatively stable dispositions in that they are not related to a specific classroom situation. In that sense they represent the potential a teacher brings to the classroom. It should be noted that professional knowledge is only one facet of teachers’ cognitions. These represent a multi-dimensional system and include in addition professional cognitive skills such as perception or decision-making (see Introduction) and generic cognitive facets such as memory or processing speed (Carroll, 1993). By definition, generic attributes are not part of the competence model presented in this chapter. Research about teachers’ professional knowledge has heavily focused on their CK. Mathematics teachers are of particular interest, from preschool teachers through to high school teachers. Mathematics content knowledge (MCK) covers school mathematics such as number or geometry, which teachers should be able to view ‘from a higher point of view’ (i.e. with a conceptual understanding that also includes prerequisites and following steps; Klein, 1932) and mathematical processes such as argumentation or modeling (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014). The level of MCK gained during teacher education varies across groups of teachers and countries. High school teachers have on average more MCK than middle school or primary school teachers (Tatto et al., 2012) and these in turn have more MCK than preschool teachers (Dunekacke et al., 2014). Similar to country differences on the student level, teachers from East Asian countries such as Taiwan or Singapore have at the end of teacher education on average more MCK than teachers from Western countries such as the USA or Germany, and teachers from these countries have again more MCK than teachers from developing countries such as Georgia or Botswana (Blömeke et al., 2011).
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Mathematics teachers were also those most often examined with respect to PCK. Mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) includes knowledge about how to teach mathematics to different groups of students, how these develop mathematical literacy, how to diagnose a specific type or level of achievement, and how to support students that struggle or are particularly excellent. MPCK is strongly related to MCK and GPK (e.g., Blömeke et al., 2015) and at the same time sandwiched between theory and practice. In the past, its conceptualization often depended on the group of teachers. With respect to high school teachers, the relation to MCK and theoretical knowledge dominated whereas the opposite applied to primary school teachers. Shulman (1986) argued for a more balanced view with respect to all teachers. He defined PCK as ‘that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding’ (p. 8). Concerning the level of MPCK that teachers have at the end of teacher education, international studies revealed similar results as regarding MCK. GPK, which should not be mixed up with generic cognitive skills such as creativity or communication, includes principles and strategies for classroom management and organization that are not subject-specific (ibid.). An international study carried out in Germany, Taiwan, and the USA that covered knowledge about lesson planning, classroom management, motivation, dealing with heterogeneity, and assessment revealed that German and Taiwanese teachers had more GPK than teachers from the USA (König & Blömeke, 2009).
Affective-Motivational Teacher Dispositions According to a modern understanding of competence, it is not sufficient to limit its conceptualization to cognitive dimensions. Interest, motivation, volition, values, beliefs, attitudes, and other mainly affective-motivational characteristics are also relevant when it comes to the transformation of knowledge into observable behavior. Teachers need to be motivated and willing to apply their knowledge. Take group work as an example. A teacher may have knowledge about different methods to implement group work but may not believe in their effectiveness. It is unlikely that he or she will implement any of the methods (Heckhausen, 1987). Note that the analytical distinction of affective-motivational characteristics on the one hand and knowledge on the other hand is to some extent artificial because the first ones often include a cognitive component as well (Richardson, 1996). Much research work in the field of affective-motivational teacher characteristics has been done about beliefs, in particular about student- versus teacherorientation in instruction. Strong agreement with the first orientation means that learning is regarded as an active process in which students conduct their own enquiries and develop their own approaches to learning the content. In contrast, strong agreement with the second orientation means that students are supposed to
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follow teachers’ instructions. Teacher beliefs vary strongly between countries. In individualistic countries like Germany, teachers at the end of their education supported student-oriented beliefs more strongly than others, whereas in collectivistic countries both types of beliefs were supported (Felbrich, Kaiser, & Schmotz, 2012; see for similar results with practicing teachers OECD, 2009). Other crucial affective-motivational teacher dispositions are their self-efficacy and their anxiety. Self-efficacy refers to teachers’ confidence to be able to cope with challenging classroom situations based on their competence (Bandura, 1986). Self-efficacy influences the willingness to strive longer and therefore increases the chance to transform competence into successful performance. Anxiety is in contrast the ‘feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of [mathematical] problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations’ (Richardson & Suinn, 1972, p. 551). Anxiety may limit the transformation of competence in performance because it leads to a tendency to avoid situations regarded as challenging although they represent core teaching tasks (Chinn, 2012). Whereas comparative research about anxiety is scarce, international studies revealed substantial differences in teachers’ self-efficacy between Northern Europe or English-speaking countries where high means were found on the one hand and Eastern Europe or East Asia where much lower means were found on the other hand (Vieluf, Kunter, & van de Vijver, 2013). Southern or Central European countries as well as South American countries ranged in between. Generally, serious research gaps have to be pointed out with respect to affective-motivational teacher characteristics besides beliefs or self-efficacy. Recently, teacher motivation has come more into focus (Watt et al., 2012) but otherwise we need to note that most of the attributes have only been studied in single countries, and these were mainly Western countries (an exception is a study on expert teachers from mainland China and Hong Kong, Yang, 2014).
Transformation of teacher competence into observable classroom performance To what extent the potential of teachers in terms of knowledge and affectivemotivational characteristics can be transformed into classroom performance depends, firstly, on a match between cognitive and affective-motivational competence facets as pointed out above. Secondly, the transformation depends on teachers’ situation-specific skills. These are conceptualized in this chapter as a facet of teachers’ cognitions and not equal to observable teaching behavior. They are in addition distinct from knowledge in that they represent cognitive processes prior to, during, or following real-life performance. Readers with a philosophical background may want to associate these psychological constructs with Schön’s (1983) notions of reflection in and on action.
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Perception, interpretation, and decision-making are the most prominent cognitive skills discussed and examined (Blömeke et al., 2015). Although some commonalities exist, researchers have conceptualized these skills slightly differently. Carter et al. (1988) stressed ‘perception accuracy’; Goodwin (1994) distinguished in his concept of ‘professional vision’ between ‘selective attention’ and ‘knowledge-based reasoning’. In any case, it is difficult to determine skill levels because – in contrast to knowledge – higher quality may not be determined by ‘more’ or ‘more elaborate’ skills but by qualitative differences in what and how something is perceived. Typically, in such studies an expert panel determines the correct solution to a task at hand. Situation-specific skills are supposed to be organized along specific characteristics of classroom situations (Sherin, Jacobs, & Philipp, 2011). Given the multi-dimensionality and the speed of what happens in a classroom, perceptual skills are of utmost relevance for identifying in a first step what is going on, followed by analyzing and interpreting the situation to finally decide about teaching activities to be implemented based on the teacher’s knowledge repertoire (Star & Strickland, 2008). Cognitive skills develop with more practical experiences and can be fostered through professional development. A systematic review identified twelve studies on teachers’ perceptual skills, which all reported positive effects of professional development activities on skill development (Stahnke, Schüler, & Rösken-Winter, 2016). Depending on the subject, the grade, the objective of a lesson, class composition, or other context characteristics, a teacher may perceive and interpret classroom situations differently or apply different sets of knowledge in the process of decision-making. Thus, it may be naïve to assume that knowledge is linearly transformed into performance. The knowledge needs to be restructured according to situational demands and adjusted to the needs of the students at hand. However, this does not mean that knowledge and performance are not related to each other. The question is more how strong this relation is. In psychology, a long-standing debate between two traditions exists in this respect. In the first tradition, traits basically do not exist, and behavior is almost exclusively triggered by the characteristics of a situation. A ‘situationalist’ would probably stress inconsistencies in teacher performance across different classroom situations. In contrast, a ‘dispositionalist’ would assume that on average a teacher with higher knowledge performs significantly better than one with lower knowledge, no matter how variable situations or behavior are, because the underlying dispositions overshadow all other influences. Transferred to the teaching profession, this dichotomy means that situationalists would claim that you cannot infer a teacher’s performance from an earlier situation, whereas dispositionalists would argue that a significant strong correlation exists between previous, current, and future performance. The empirical evidence available supports a more modern view of the relation between dispositions and situations and points to interaction between the two. Teacher knowledge seems to predict directly the skill of perceiving classroom
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situations and indirectly following steps such as decision-making. Evidence exists with respect to MCK and MPCK and content-related situation-specific skills (Dunekacke, Jenßen, & Blömeke, 2015; Kersting et al., 2012) as well as with respect to GPK and skills not specific for a subject such as classroom management (Voss et al., 2014). Research also revealed the relevance of MCK and MPCK for observable teaching performance. Preschool teachers with more MPCK created opportunities to learn (OTL) of higher quality than those with less knowledge (Lee, Meadows, & Lee, 2003; with respect to other domains see for example, Gold, Förster, & Holodynski, 2013; Stürmer, Könings, & Seidel, 2012). Kersting et al. (2012) and Gold and Holodynski (2015) applied generalizability theory to further clarify the relation between teacher competence and situation by splitting the variance in teaching skills into trait- and situation-specific variance. Teachers had to watch video clips of classroom situations and to take a skills test. Kersting’s results point to stable cognitive skills rather than to inconsistencies across situations. In contrast, Gold’s results point more strongly to such inconsistencies. The variance in teaching skills explained by the situation was often higher than the variance explained by the trait. Blömeke et al. (2014) and Seidel, Blomberg, and Stürmer (2010) applied confirmatory factor analyses which supported an interaction effect of teachers’ traits and situations. Overall, the studies suggest distinguishing between generic and subject-specific demands in a classroom because the situation-specific variability of the former seems to be larger than that of the latter. Studies taking a similar approach to teachers’ professional knowledge are unfortunately lacking despite different views particularly on PCK’s existence, namely ‘whether mathematical knowledge in teaching is located “in the head” of the individual teacher or is somehow a social asset, meaningful only in the context of its applications’ (Rowland & Ruthven, 2011, p. 3).
Social determinants of teachers’ professional competence This chapter has until now addressed only personal and situational determinants of teacher competence or the interaction of teachers and classroom situations. Thus, we have basically taken a view on the teacher as an individual. However, teachers are shaped and influenced by social contexts such as the teacher education program they took, the school where they are employed, the teaching staff they are working with, or a country’s social norms regarding what a teacher should be able to do. Furthermore, the definition of competence itself requires a professional context (see Figure 45.1) since competence is functionally defined as a means of being able to handle professional tasks. How these professional tasks are conceptualized may differ by country, school type, or other context characteristics. In a further development of the model by Blömeke et al. (2015), Santagata and Yeh (2016) emphasized the cyclic and context-related nature of perception, interpretation,
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Figure 45.2 Enriched model of teacher competence by Santagata and Yeh (2016, p. 163)
and decision-making (see Figure 45.2). Deliberate practice and reflection integrating knowledge and beliefs encounter classroom practice. They summarized their approach: ‘According to this model, teacher competence seems better defined as a complex interaction of situated knowledge, beliefs, and practices that can be understood only in the specific context in which teachers work. (…) Community pressures might shape a teacher’s instructional choices and even result in a behavior that contradicts knowledge a teacher might show in a different situation’. (Santagata & Yeh, 2016, p. 164) Such social determinants are discussed in the following section. Note that the distinction between teacher competence as a personal attribute (sections ‘State-of-research regarding teachers’ dispositions’ and ‘Transformation of teacher competence into observable classroom performance’) and social determinants of their development (this section) is mainly made for analytical reasons. Learning and development does not happen in a vacuum or individually only but in embedded contexts, in interaction with peers and teachers, for example in terms of co-construction as a socioconstructivist perspective would describe it (Vygotsky, 1978). Still, competence is nevertheless an individual attribute that a teacher develops and brings with him or her to the situation.
Teacher Education as a Social Practice that Shapes Teacher Competence The functional definition of competence as a teacher attribute that ensures successful job performance raises the question of how this job performance is defined in terms of teacher tasks. Although global influences have contributed to a circulation of teaching norms, these still vary between countries and cultures. To quote Paine, Blömeke, and Aydarova (2016, p. 731): ‘How much teachers work within a single subject or multiple subjects, how much their work involves
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responsibility for students outside of subject instruction – such as in leading students in extracurricular activities – and how much their workload involves collaborating with colleagues vary depending on context’. In particular, on a surface level, research suggests that distinct patterns of teaching settings exist across countries. However, looking deeper also reveals communalities. Paine et al. (2016) analyzed curricula from around the world and stated that ‘the vision of good teaching increasingly has become a vision of teaching that is learner-centered, focused on active learning, and moving away from traditions of what is typically described as teacher-centered, transmissive instruction’. Furthermore, they identified fostering students’ developmental growth of socioemotional as well as cognitive qualities as a shared objective of teaching almost worldwide. Teacher education intends to develop the competence necessary to meet these objectives by providing theoretical and practical opportunities to learn (OTL). This happens in a social context with certain assumptions about which knowledge, skills, and affective-motivational attributes are needed to succeed as a teacher. OTL provided during teacher education are in this sense a manifestation of such social (or cultural) assumptions. This applies, for example, to the content offered or the qualifications teacher educators are required to have or to the prerequisites students need to bring with them when they enter teacher education (see Figure 45.3). Teacher education is, thus, a social practice that impacts how teacher competencies develop. For example, building on the basic idea that highly specialized experts need to teach the different components of teachers’ professional competence, Western Germany has been organizing its teacher education programs for a long time in a rather fragmented way. Delivering theoretical knowledge was the responsibility of professors at different subject-specific or pedagogical departments at research universities not really connected to each other, followed by a practical training at state institutions supervised by master teachers with long experience (MüllerRolli, 1998). Only a few other countries in the world, for example France and Taiwan, followed a similar idea. In contrast, Eastern Germany and many other countries organized teacher education in an integrated way (Kemnitz, 2004). Educational colleges were responsible for teacher education programs where OTL in content and pedagogy as well as theory and practice were better connected with each other (Schwille, Ingvarson, & Holdgreve-Resendez, 2013). How important the social context and socially shared beliefs for the development of teacher competence are is also revealed by within-country differences in the organization of teacher education programs for different school levels. Programs for primary school may have a focus on general pedagogy with limited subject-specific training in a broad range of subjects, whereas teachers for high school may be trained as subject specialists. Middle school programs are often sandwiched between these two ideas and may include OTL in advanced university mathematics, basic mathematics or school mathematics only (Blömeke,
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Social, schooling and policy context
Characteristics of teacher education Program policy, OTL, connection of theory and practice
Characteristics of teacher educators Demographic and professional background, beliefs
Characteristics of future teachers Demographic and school background, prior competencies
Teacher competence at the end of teacher education Knowledge and skills, affective-motivational characteristics, performance
Figure 45.3 Conceptual model of the social context and the development of professional competencies
2012). Preschool teachers, on the contrary, are often not trained in any contentspecific topics, which points to the assumption that it is sufficient to have everyday knowledge to foster children’s development. The social context also determines who enters a teacher education program, for example based on differences in entry requirements or attractiveness of the profession. Cohort and longitudinal studies revealed that teacher competence grows during teacher education but that this development depends on cognitive and affective-motivational entry characteristics (positive: good high school grades and intrinsic motivation) as well as on personality traits (positive: an instrumental and expressive personality) (Blömeke, 2009; Voss, Kunter, & Baumert, 2011). Thus, countries with a large pool of applicants to programs have an advantage because they can select among candidates (Schwille et al., 2013).
Role of the School Context Although two teachers may have entered the profession after completing their education with largely the same potential in terms of knowledge, skills, and affective-motivational attributes, the ways in which their competences
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are transformed into teaching performance may differ. Occupational research indicates that the proximate job environment significantly affects work quality (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Feedback provided, autonomy given, and other characteristics of the context are strong predictors of work quality. Teacher-related research suggests a similar relationship. A climate of respect, recognition, and appreciation contributes to how teachers report the quality of their work (Blömeke & Klein, 2013; Shen et al., 2012). Appraisal has a positive influence on teachers’ development, too (OECD, 2009), and is particularly important for beginning teachers (Gimbert & Fultz, 2009). Job satisfaction plays a crucial role in this context as it contributes to teachers’ commitment to stay in the profession (Lubinski & Benbow, 2000). Teachers report higher satisfaction when they have a chance to participate in decision-making at school (Perie & Baker, 1997). The role of the principal seems to be a particularly important characteristic in this context. Principals can set the tone of a school (Valentine et al., 2004). Teachers perceive it as supportive if principals show administrative leadership through clear communication (Ma & MacMillan, 1999), empathy, and a climate of trust (Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, & Hoy, 1998). Besides such within-school context characteristics, the state-of-research points to malleable context conditions at the system level that contribute to effective schooling (Scheerens & Blömeke, 2016). School autonomy in the instructional domain, national standard-based examinations and comprehensive secondary schools seem to be such conditions (Wössmann et al., 2009).
Conclusions Teacher competence was conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct underlying performance in the classroom that includes knowledge, skills, and affective-motivational characteristics. Competence development and its transformation into performance were conceptualized as personally, situationally, and socially determined as well as embedded in a professional context. Several research traditions were brought together to arrive at such a complex framework that takes individual, classroom, school, and societal levels into account. Evidence from a broad range of studies including quantitative large-scale assessments and qualitative case studies supported this conceptualization. An important analytical element of this approach is to distinguish teachers’ cognitive skills such as perception, interpretation, and decision-making from professional knowledge on the one hand and classroom performance on the other hand. This analytical clarity should help us to understand the effects of teacher education and the transformation of competence into performance better than before. A reasonable hypothesis could be that cognitive skills predict classroom performance with a larger effect size than teacher knowledge because they are more proximal but that this knowledge is a necessary precondition to have before
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skills can be developed. Another more established analytical element is the distinction of subject-specific knowledge and skills on the one hand and general pedagogical ones on the other hand, the latter not to be mixed up with generic (non-profession specific) teacher attributes. A reasonable hypothesis for further research here would be that the subject-specific attributes predict subject-specific learning with larger effect sizes than general pedagogical ones but that the latter are necessary for instructional quality features such as classroom management or student support. Instructional processes, the interaction between teacher and students, are always supposed to mediate at least partly the relations between knowledge and skills on the one hand and student outcomes on the other hand. However, further research in all respects is still needed because most of the studies available are limited to the field of mathematics. Furthermore, most of the studies took place in English-speaking or Western countries. What do all these results mean with respect to teacher education and professional development? It may be that in some countries pre-service and in-service teacher training are mainly focused on the knowledge base of teaching, whereas in others practical training dominates – if one reviews the teacher education literature, it seems that a clash of paradigms exists. Our framework points to the need for a more comprehensive approach. Furthermore, intermediate cognitive skills are rarely addressed in either of the two paradigms, although interventions revealed that they are learnable and can be strengthened. The competence facets of perception, interpretation, and decision-making may be crucial to connect knowledge and attitudes to the classroom situation and vice versa. Teacher education programs and professional development activities are therefore well advised to offer comprehensive OTL in all these respects. However, in which form this should happen needs more research. An important issue is the influence of a broad concept of teachers’ competencies on the students’ learning gains. Little research has so far been carried out on the way in which teachers’ competence structure influences patterns of students’ learning growth. What role does teaching quality play, and which aspect is strongly influenced by teachers’ competencies (see Kaiser et al., 2016)? These aspects are certainly not culturally independent as teaching quality may be differently understood in East Asian countries and Western countries. Further research is also needed with respect to the generalizability of the findings presented in this chapter. Is it possible to generalize the structural relationships between knowledge, skills, instructional quality, and student outcomes developed in this chapter based mostly on research from mathematics and middle school teachers also across subjects such as language or history and across primary to upper secondary grades? What about cultural differences between English-speaking countries and others, for example East Asian countries such as Taiwan or continental European countries such as Germany? Do competent student teachers become competent teachers and produce competent students? This is a vicious cycle that Leung and Park (2002) bring into the discussion. How influential are culturally shaped values which coin the development of the
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so-called Confucian Heritage Culture learner’s phenomenon (Wong, Wong, & Wong, 2012). To be able to answer these questions it is necessary to assess teachers’ attributes and classroom performance in reliable and valid ways for different subjects and cross-culturally.
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Rowland, T. & Ruthven, K. (Eds). (2011). Mathematical knowledge in teaching. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Santagata, R. & Guarino, J. (2011). Using video to teach future teachers to learn from teaching. ZDM Mathematics Education, 43(1), 133–145. Santagata, R. & Yeh, C. (2016). The role of perception, interpretation, and decision making in the development of beginnings teachers’ competence. ZDM Mathematics Education, 48(1–2), 153–165. Schmidt, W. H., Cogan, L., & Houang, R. (2012). The role of opportunity to learn in teacher preparation: An international context. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(2), 138–153. Scheerens, J. & Blömeke, S. (2016). Integrating teacher education effectiveness research into educational effectiveness models. Educational Research Review, 18(2), 70–87. Schön, D. (1983) The reflective practitioner. How professionals think in action. London: Temple. Schoenfeld, A. H. (2011). How we think: A theory of goal-oriented decision making and its educational applications. New York: Routledge. Schoenfeld, A. H. & Kilpatrick, J. (2008). Toward a theory of proficiency in teaching mathematics. In D. Tirosh & T. Wood (Eds), International handbook of mathematics teacher education. Vol. 2: Tools and processes in mathematics teacher education (pp. 321–354). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense. Schwille, J., Ingvarson, L., & Holdgreve-Resendez, R. (Eds) (2013). TEDS-M encyclopedia: A guide to teacher education context, structure, and quality assurance in 17 countries. Findings from the IEA Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). Amsterdam: IEA. Seidel, T., Blomberg, G., & Stürmer, K. (2010). ‘Observer’: Validierung eines videobasierten Instruments zur Erfassung der professionellen Wahrnehmung von Unterricht [‘Observer’: Validating a video-based instrument meant to assess the professional perception of instruction]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 56, 296–306. Shen, J., Leslie, J. M., Spybrook, J. K., & Ma, X. (2012). Are principal background and school processes related to teacher job satisfaction? A multilevel study using schools and staffing survey 2003–04. American Educational Research Journal, 49(2), 200–230. Sherin, M. G., Jacobs, V. R., & Philipp, R. A. (Eds) (2011). Mathematics teacher noticing. Seeing through teachers’ eyes. New York: Routledge. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Spencer, L. M. & Spencer, S. M. (1993). Competence at work. New York: Wiley. Stahnke, R., Schueler, S., & Roesken-Winter, B. (2016). Teachers’ perception, interpretation, and decisionmaking: A systematic review of empirical mathematics education research. ZDM Mathematics Education, 48(1), 1–27. Star, J. R. & Strickland, S. K. (2008). Learning to observe: Using video to improve preservice mathematics teachers’ ability to notice. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 11(2), 107–125. Strijbos, J., Engels, N., & Struyven, K. (2015). Criteria and standards of generic competences at bachelor degree level: A review study. Educational Research Review, 14(1), 18–32. Stürmer, K., Könings, K. D., & Seidel, T. (2012). Declarative knowledge and professional vision in teacher education: Effect of courses in teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(3), 467–483. Tatto, M. T., Schwille, J., Senk, S. L., Ingvarson, L., Rowley, G., Peck, R., Bankov, K., Rodríguez, M., & Reckase, M. (2012). The Mathematics Teacher Education and Development Study (TEDS-M). Policy, Practice, and Readiness to Teach Primary and Secondary Mathematics: First Findings. Amsterdam: IEA. Tschannen-Moran, M., Hoy, A., & Hoy, W. (1998). Teacher efficacy: Its meaning and measure. Review of Educational Research, 68(2), 202–248. Turner, F. & Rowland, T. (2011). The knowledge quartet as an organising framework for developing and deepening teachers’ mathematical knowledge. In T. Rowland & K. Ruthven (Eds), Mathematical knowledge in teaching (pp. 195–212). Dordrecht: Springer. Valentine, J., Clark, D., Hackmann, D., & Petzko, V. (2004). Leadership for highly successful middle level schools: Volume II: A national study of leadership in middle level schools. Reston, VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals.
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Vieluf, S., Kunter, M., & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2013). Teacher self-efficacy in cross-national perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, 35, 92–103. Voss, T., Kunter, M., & Baumert, J. (2011). Assessing teacher candidates’ general pedagogical/psychological knowledge: Test construction and validation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(4), 952–969. Voss, T., Kunter, M., Seiz, J., Hoehne, V., & Baumert, J. (2014). Die Bedeutung des pädagogisch-psychologischen Wissens von angehenden Lehrkräften für die Unterrichtsqualität. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 60(2), 184–201. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. London: Harvard University Press. Watt, H. M. G., Richardson, P. W., Klusmann, U., Kunter, M., Beyer, B., Trautwein, U., & Baumert, J. (2012). Motivations for choosing teaching as a career: An international comparison using the FIT-Choice scale. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(6), 791–805. Wössmann, L., Luedemann, E., Schuetz, G., & West, M. R. (2009). School accountability, autonomy and choice around the world. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Wong, N.-Y., Wong, W. Y., & Wong, E. W. Y. (2012). What do the Chinese value in (mathematics) education? ZDM Mathematics Education, 44(1), 9–19. Yang, X. (2014). Conception and characteristics of expert mathematics teachers in China. Wiesbaden: Springer Spektrum.
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46 Teachers’ Professional and Pedagogical Competencies: A Complex Divide between Teacher Work, Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education A u l i To o m Introduction Teacher competencies and their learning during teacher education and in the profession has long puzzled researchers working on teacher education (Korthagen, 2004; Struyven & De Meyst, 2010; Whitty & Willmott, 1991), teachers (Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012) and also educational policy-makers. As Caena (2014) points out, various ‘[R]esearch-informed views on the teacher competence concept strive to find common ground beyond different cultural traditions, defining key knowledge, skills and attitudes that can be required of teachers, the role of professional standards, and basic characteristics of teacher expertise’. In the context of teacher education, this discussion takes place in the curricula of teacher education programmes, their characteristics and emphases and is finally concretized in the pedagogical practices of teacher education (cf. Munby, Russell & Martin, 2001). After pre-service teacher education, a teacher’s knowledge and competences are acquired in the everyday practice of teaching, so it is crucial to think about which competencies student teachers should acquire during teacher education in order to be able to act as teachers and learn continuously in their profession. What are the ‘threshold competencies and knowledge’ required by
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teachers? What are the actual challenges, and what are the future challenges for which student teachers should be prepared? What are the challenges especially now, as educational demands require new ways of thinking and learning (Kereluik, Mishra, Fahnoe & Terry, 2013; Struyven & De Meyst, 2010)? Finally, if teacher educators are able to define the core competencies for teachers, how should student teachers learning these competencies be assessed during teacher education in a reasonable and sustainable way (cf. Shavelson, 2013; Gitomer & Zisk, 2015)? This chapter focuses on considering the complexity of teacher competencies and teacher education especially from the viewpoint of teacher knowledge. Teacher competence has been understood as a general and precise enough concept for us to capture and explicate the core qualities that teachers require to succeed in their work. Teacher core competencies have also regularly been explicated and listed as outcomes to be reached during pre-service teacher education, but there does not exist much research focusing on the learning or the assessment of the learning of core competencies during teacher education (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010). The competencies have not either been broadly investigated as a continuum or reflectively and gradually learnt capabilities towards expertise and wisdom in teaching (cf. Blömeke, Gustafsson & Shavelson, 2015; Berliner, 2001). Teacher competence is often defined as an integrative concept including knowledge, skills, decision-making and disposition to act in multiple professional situations (e.g. Pantic & Wubbels, 2010; Struyven & De Meyst, 2010; Westera, 2001). The concept of teacher competence is a complex construct, and various theories defining it and empirical research exploring it are based on educational, psychological and philosophical grounds. This chapter explores the field of research into professional competencies required in teachers’ work by especially considering the significant aspect of teacher knowledge and its multiple characteristics (Clandinin & Connelly, 1987; Elbaz, 1981, 1991; Fenstermacher, 1994; van Manen, 1999; Shulman, 1986, 1987). The reason for this is that knowledge has been identified as a core aspect of teacher competence, and the acquisition of knowledge has been traditionally emphasized in teacher education (cf. Gitomer & Zisk, 2015). The reciprocal and complex relationships between knowledge, skills, decision-making and the disposition to act related to the learning of competences for teaching during teacher education and in the profession are also considered. This chapter also reflects on which aspects (e.g. the core of teachers’ work, key activities, responsibilities, curricular structure, school characteristics, educational policy context etc.) should be considered when promoting student teacher learning of certain professional competences for the practical work of teaching. In this chapter the characteristics of the pedagogies of teacher education that have been suggested especially suitable for fulfilling these learning needs are also briefly touched upon.
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Teacher competences: capturing the core capabilities for teaching The Elements of Teacher Competence When exploring the characteristics of teacher competence, it is necessary to define what is actually meant by teacher competence, and how it is related to the teacher expertise required to do the work successfully (Fenstermacher & Richardson, 2005). Related to the concept of competence itself, some researchers make a distinction between the prevailing holistic approach of competence (pl. competences) (Caena, 2014; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012) and a more analytical approach of competence (pl. competencies) (e.g. Blömeke et al., 2015), which still lack clear operational definitions (Caena, 2014; Westera, 2001). Teacher competences are constructs that include both a knowledge component and an action component (Westera, 2001; Niiniluoto, 1996): theoretically, competence is a cognitive structure that supports specified behaviours; operationally, competences encompass a variety of skills and behaviours that make it possible for a teacher to act in complicated, changeable professional situations (cf. Westera, 2001; Korthagen, 2004). Competence is thus connected to the ability to handle different complex situations, and develop effective solutions to the challenges faced in actual working situations (Blömeke & Delaney, 2012; Hartig, Klieme & Leutner, 2008, p. v). It also encompasses the ability to explain how knowledge and skills are used in a functional way. Several current competence frameworks represent a multidimensional approach and broad understanding of teacher competence as a complex combination covering knowledge and skills. In addition, competencies are understood to involve teachers’ beliefs and moral values (Klaassen, 2002; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012), their motivational, affective and volitional dispositions to work (Blömeke et al., 2015) and ‘social willingness to successfully and responsibly apply these solutions in various situations’ (Blömeke & Delaney, 2012, p. 227). Shavelson (2013, pp. 74–75) has presented an extensive definition of competence and identified seven facets of competence and especially emphasized the assessment of competence through the following categories: (a) c omplexity – a complex physical and/or intellectual ability or skill; (b) performance – a capacity to ‘know’ and be able to do or perform; (c) standardization – there are wellrecognized tasks that competent individuals would be expected to perform; (d) fidelity – tasks sampled from actual situations in which competency is to be demonstrated in the real world; (e) level – performance meets some level of ‘good enough’; (f) improvement – the abilities and skills measured can be improved over time by deliberative practice; and (g) disposition – personal and social characteristics that dispose a person to high levels of learning and performance such as identity, perspective-taking, self-regulation and social responsibility. Despite the
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differences in the definitions, all these characteristics are thought to be necessary for effective (teacher) performance and real action in multiple contexts (Caena, 2014). Thus, teacher competences cover more than their mere abilities: abilities represent the operational outcomes of actions, but competences represent both the action and the underlying cognitive functioning (Westera, 2001; Niiniluoto, 1996; Blömeke & Kaiser, Chapter 45 in this Handbook). Already in his well-known classical analysis, Ryle (1949; see also Niiniluoto, 1996) made the distinction between propositional knowledge ‘know that’ and procedural knowledge ‘know how’, and thus showed the necessity of these ‘knowledges’ in the professional action. This understanding of professional capabilities resonates well with the current understandings of teacher competence. Related to the multiple characteristics of teacher competence, Blömeke et al. (2015) consider the extreme dispositional and behavioural perspectives of competence and their measurement. The exact definitions and operationalization are especially required if and when teacher competencies are strictly measured or assessed (Shavelson, 2013). Still, the most important thing from the viewpoint of student learning is how teachers managing all the characteristics of competence are able to integrate them in a way that their full potential emerges in their classroom actions (Blömeke et al., 2015). These aspects of competence come close to such qualities of teacher action that resonate with tacit knowing (Toom, 2006, 2012), phronesis (Fenstermacher, 1986; Husu, 2002) or even wisdom of practice (Shulman, 2004). As Shavelson (2013, p. 74) states, ‘[t]he demand goes beyond simply knowing and includes applying knowledge to everyday problems and tasks’ (original emphasis).
Teacher Competence as a Continuing Process Current research understands teacher competence as a continuum and a dynamic process rather than a stable state of teacher knowledge and skills (Blömeke et al., 2015; Caena, 2014). In the context of teacher education, teacher competences are nowadays often defined as student teachers’ learning goals or outcomes. In a way they are expressed as a divide between pre-service teacher education and the transition to working life. Thus, it is necessary to consider the competences to be learnt during teacher education as threshold capabilities with which it is possible to begin a career as a teacher and learn and develop further in the profession when working as a teacher. Competences can be learnt and improved through reflective practice – they are not merely inherited fixed traits (Hartig et al., 2008; Shavelson, 2010). The learning of core competencies for teaching and the teacher profession is a demanding, long-lasting process that happens significantly in the practice of teaching throughout a teaching career and towards teacher expertise in a longer perspective (Berliner, 2001). Research into teacher expertise, expert teachers (Hattie, 2003, 2012) and the comparisons between novice and expert teachers (Berliner, 1988; Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986) have shown this from the other direction when demonstrating
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significant differences between the behaviours of newly qualified and experienced teachers. Current research has confirmed the earlier results and emphasized expert teachers’ capabilities of perceiving and anticipating classroom events more quickly, accurately and holistically as compared with novice teachers (Kaiser, Busse, Hoth, König & Blömeke, 2015; Van Es, 2011). From the viewpoint of teacher knowledge, it is interesting that expert teachers’ perceptions of teaching situations are characterized by increased integration of the different dimensions of professional knowledge (Kaiser et al., 2015). This extensive field of research demonstrates the changes taking place in teachers’ competencies, leading to tacit knowing and wisdom in practice (Berliner, 2001; Eraut, 2001; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012).
Teacher’s Core Competences: What Should Teachers Know and be Able to Do? An essential question related to teachers’ competences emerges from the work of teaching that teachers should manage. Despite the details of the definition and understanding of teacher competences, the tight connection to the practice of teaching is common to all of them (Blömeke et al., 2015). In other words, the premise for defining the competencies is the recognition of the authentic challenges of a teacher’s work (cf. Hiebert, Morris, Berk & Jansen, 2007), identification of the core characteristics of the practice of teaching and analysis of teachers’ broader professional tasks and responsibilities in society (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012; Pantic, Wubbels & Mainhard, 2011) now and in the future. There exist several theorizations of teachers’ core competencies, which define the necessary resources for teachers in relatively broad terms (cf. Munby, Russell & Martin, 2001; Shulman, 1987). Some of the theorizations are made for designing the curricula for teacher education (e.g. Struyven & De Meyst, 2010), some for suggesting changes in teacher preparation or assessing teacher behaviour (cf. Gitomer & Zisk, 2015). All these models of teacher competence are similar in the sense that they are intended to promote student learning and teachers’ capabilities of facilitating the learning process. They all also maintain that teaching should be evaluated in relation to student learning and the challenges they face in learning. Some of them focus on the classroom level, whereas others reach the collegial and school levels and even beyond. Some of the identified challenges require abstract understanding, whereas others require more practical orientation (cf. Blömeke & Kaiser in this Handbook, Chapter 45; see Figure 45.1). Baumert and Kunter (2006) have created a model of teachers’ professional action competence based on the five core propositions of the US National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), which includes four dimensions: (1) specific declarative and procedural knowledge that further distinguishes between content knowledge
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(CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1986, 1987); (2) professional beliefs, values, subjective theories, normative preferences and objectives; (3) motivational orientations; and (4) metacognitive skills and professional self-regulation. In their framework, Hiebert et al. (2007) present the range of competencies that student teachers need in order to become effective teachers. They present them as statements and questions as follows: Skill 1: Specify the learning goal(s) for the instructional episode (What are students supposed to learn?); Skill 2: Conduct empirical observations of teaching and learning (What did the students learn?); Skill 3: Construct hypotheses about the effects of teaching on students’ learning (How did teaching help [or hinder] student learning?); and Skill 4: The use of analysis to propose improvements in teaching (How could teaching more effectively help students learn?) (Hiebert et al., 2007). Pantic and Wubbels (2010) base their four categories of teacher competencies on the established areas of teacher expertise: 1) values and child-rearing, 2) an understanding of the system of education and contributions to its development, 3) subject knowledge, pedagogy and curriculum, and 4) selfevaluation and professional development. In addition to these relatively established views of teacher competence, there exist several categorizations of teacher competencies for the 21st century. These approaches challenge the traditional knowledge-based action and instruction at schools, shift the focus more on student learning, emphasize teachers’ professional collaboration, set demands for the use of digital technologies, present multiple different demands for skills and suggest dramatically new kinds of teacher and student roles and learning to be considered for the future (Kereluik et al., 2013; Schleicher, 2012, p. 40). Still, interestingly, certain elements of subject-specific teacher knowledge and subject-specific teaching methods are also part of these frameworks. Most of these suggestions are presented in educational policy documents and are not yet so systematically evidenced in empirical research papers. These integrated definitions, understandings and requirements set as competencies for teachers are understandable from the viewpoint of policy-making. They carry both the traditional understanding of teachers’ capabilities and reflect the current needs identified in the practice of teaching. But, as such, they do not give any advice to teachers about how to learn these competencies, or how teacher educators can facilitate and assess student teacher learning of these competencies.
Teacher knowledge as a key component for teacher competencies As the theoretical and practical definitions of teacher competence show, teacher knowledge has been traditionally defined as a central element of teacher competence. It is understood as a crucial component that ‘[e]nables teachers to carry
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out the work of teaching’ (Gitomer & Zisk, 2015, p. 24). Thus, it is also suggested that multiple kinds of both theoretical and contextual knowledge for the practical work of teaching in the classroom and beyond should be significantly learnt during teacher education (e.g. Caena, 2014; Carter, 1990; Greene, 1986; Pantic & Wubbels, 2012). Basically, the essential teacher’s knowledge base is defined in relation to the defined essential competencies: are they practically or theoretically and generally oriented; are they focusing on current or future challenges. The research area involved with teachers’ knowledge is extremely complex because of the multiple different definitions and labels given to teacher knowledge (e.g. Carter, 1990; Fenstermacher, 1994; Leinhardt, 1990; Munby, Russell & Martin, 2001; Rosiek, 2002; Russell, 2014) and multiple different understandings of the essential and necessary knowledge that teachers should manage (Jackson, 1986; Shulman, 1986, 1987) for their work of teaching. Some researchers present a broader view of teacher knowledge and understand it essentially as a personal cognitive construct including beliefs and conceptions (e.g. Clandinin, 1985; Clandinin & Connelly, 1987). Others take a stricter stance towards teacher knowledge and theories of teacher knowledge and practical reasoning, and claim that not everything that teachers know and reflect on can be regarded as knowledge. Rather, they define and understand it in line with the epistemological requirements for knowledge: it is possible to explicate verbally and possible to justify at least practically as one thing to do, a possible thing to do or as the only thing to do in various practical circumstances (cf. Fenstermacher, 1994; Husu, 2002; Orton, 1993; Toom, 2006, 2012). Within all these different approaches and emphases, teacher knowledge is understood as a personal construct and foundation upon which the professional work of teaching resides. Teacher knowledge integrates theoretical concepts and understandings, past personal experiences and beliefs, and practical professional experiences, and it is learnt continuously during and after teacher education through conscious reflection and continuous interaction with others. Thus, the central understanding related to the emphasis on teacher knowledge in order to learn competencies and act as a competent teacher is connected to the understanding that possessing certain conceptual and propositional knowledge precedes learning and managing the pedagogical skills related to these knowledge areas competently and comprehensively in real classroom situations (Eraut, 2001; Pitfield, 2012). In other words, student teachers are expected to know certain things related to the work of teaching before entering a classroom and teaching (cf. Munby et al., 2001). This approach emphasizes the logic that it is necessary for a (student) teacher to manage certain knowledge conceptually in order to learn certain skills and manage classroom situations effectively. This is also the logic underpinning the organization of most teacher education programmes. It might be worth enquiring whether this is the best possible approach from the viewpoint of learning skills for teaching. The practical work of teaching
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is highly interactive, complex and relational, and thus requires multiple skills and craft, not only conceptual knowledge (Grossman & McDonald, 2008). Some of a teacher’s professional activities, for example defining the problems of practice, are not necessarily about the application of theoretical knowledge (Pantic & Wubbels, 2010), but really clarification of complex challenges in practice.
What Kinds of Knowledge Have Been Shown to Be Crucial to Manage From the Viewpoint of Teacher Competencies? Many researchers have presented their theorizations of the necessary knowledge base for teaching (cf. Gitomer & Zisk, 2015), and some of them have even considered this problem from the viewpoint of teacher competence. Some theorizations present broad aspects of teacher knowledge, others list the specific knowledge for teaching certain subjects and skills in a relatively detailed way, and some integrate knowledge, skills and competence in their definitions (cf. Pantic & Wubbels, 2010). The broader definitions of teacher knowledge are related to a more holistic definition of teacher competence (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012), whereas the specific understandings of teacher knowledge are connected with the analytical definition of teacher competence and are based on empirical evidence between the knowledge and competence (Ball, Thames & Phelps, 2008; Blömeke et al., 2015; Hill, Rowan & Ball, 2005; Kersting, Givvin, Sotelo & Stigler, 2010; Nilsson & van Driel, 2011). Empirical research evidence for the importance of certain teacher knowledge in relation to certain teacher competencies is relatively scarce and especially scarce among student teachers. Still, the emphasis placed on a strong knowledge base as a prerequisite for teacher competence and behaviour is evident in most teacher education curricula (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010), where both the general theories of teaching and learning and the subjectspecific theories are seen to be essential (Kansanen, 2004; Pantic & Wubbels, 2012). Both the aspects of propositional knowledge ‘know that’ and procedural knowledge ‘know how’ are regarded essential (Ryle, 1949; Shavelson, 2013; see Figure 46.1).
Teachers’ General Knowledge of Education, Teaching and Learning Several researchers of teacher competence and knowledge agree theoretically that teachers should manage general knowledge of education, teaching and pupil learning. This kind of general knowledge covers the general understanding of school, curriculum, pedagogy, principles of learning and ethical aspects of education as well as the philosophical, historical and sociological background of education and schooling. These theories of teacher knowledge also include the aspect of being able to apply this knowledge in practical educational settings
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(c.f. Darling-Hammond, 2006; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010). Teachers’ use of knowledge should be practically wise from the viewpoint of an individual pupil and in line with the broader aims of education, because teachers’ choices are also value judgements in the practice of teaching (Biesta, 2012). In her classical study, Elbaz (1981, 1983) defined five broad domains of teacher practical knowledge and outlined that knowledge of self, the milieu of teaching, subject matter, curriculum development and instruction is necessary for teachers to act competently in their work. She also outlined three levels of generality in the organization and characteristics of practical knowledge: 1) rules of practice (what actions to take in particular situations when purposes are clear); 2) practical principles (broader statements for use in reflecting upon situations and selecting practices which apply to specific circumstances; 3) images (general orienting frameworks). With this categorization Elbaz (1981, 1983) aimed to show the extent and organization of teacher knowledge and its connections to various layers in the practice of teaching. Shulman (1986, 1987) is clearly the most cited researcher related to teacher knowledge. In particular, pedagogical content knowledge related to subject matter is a key idea of his categorization. Shulman has defined seven categories of teacher knowledge: content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational contexts and knowledge of educational ends, purposes and values. In Shulman’s theory, pedagogical content knowledge in particular is a special amalgam of content and pedagogy and, thus, it is a unique and special form of teachers’ professional understanding. Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005) have defined three intersecting areas of teacher knowledge that have been adopted widely as an outlining framework for many teacher education programmes (e.g. the US National Academy of Education Committee on Teacher Education; Singapore’s National Institute of Education 21st century teacher education programme). These areas are: 1) knowledge of learners and how they learn and develop within social contexts, including knowledge of language development; 2) understanding of curriculum content and goals, including the subject matter and skills to be taught in light of disciplinary demands, student needs and the social purposes of education; and 3) understanding of the skills for teaching, including content pedagogical knowledge and knowledge for teaching diverse learners, as these are informed by an understanding of assessment and of how to construct and manage a productive classroom (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005, p. 11). In addition to the teacher knowledge directly related to scientific disciplines, several researchers into teacher competence, knowledge and teacher education have highlighted the importance of moral and ethical knowledge for teachers because of the moral expectations associated with the teaching profession (Darling-Hammond, 2006) and the multiple value decisions that teachers constantly make in the practice of teaching and school duties (Carr, 1999; Fallona,
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2000; Husu & Tirri, 2001; Klaassen, 2002; Sanger, 2008; Tirri, Toom & Husu, 2013). This kind of viewpoint is almost completely missing from the teacher education curricula and frameworks of teachers’ core competencies, but is still an essential aspect of teachers’ everyday work at school. This implies that current teacher competence and knowledge frameworks do not serve this practical aspect that has emerged as part of teachers’ work in the best possible way (Pantic et al., 2011).
Teachers’ Specific Knowledge of Subject and Subject Pedagogy In addition to the general educational knowledge related to teaching, researchers have considered the specific subject knowledge (Ball, 2000; Ball et al., 2008; Blömeke & Delaney, 2012; Hill et al., 2005; Kersting et al., 2010; Nilsson & van Driel, 2011; Shulman, 1986) as an aspect of teachers’ competent practical action. Shulman (1986; Carter, 1990) calls this pedagogical content knowledge, covering both what teachers know about their subject matter and how that knowledge is translated into classroom curricular events. It is grounded in the discipline taught and related to school curricula and the collective wisdom of the profession. Pedagogical content knowledge is also more formal than general teacher knowledge (Carter, 1990). The importance of specific subject matter knowledge for teachers has been justified by empirical evidence which has shown that teachers’ understanding of the specific contents of teaching defines the space within classroom activities that they organize for pupils (Hiebert et al., 2007; Nilsson & van Driel, 2011), teachers’ ability to analyse, understand and direct classroom teaching (Kersting et al., 2010; Stürmer, Könings & Seidel, 2012), with the assumption that teachers’ subject matter knowledge is positively related to pupils’ learning (Hill et al., 2005). There is little empirical evidence for the significance of subject matter knowledge and the evidence that exists is only limited to some subject areas (Blömeke & Delaney, 2012), especially related to subjects representing exact disciplines like mathematics (TEDS-M reported in Blömeke, Hsieh, Kaiser & Schmidt, 2014) and physics (Nilsson & van Driel, 2011). Deborah Loewenberg Ball and her colleagues (Ball & Bass, 2003; Ball et al., 2008) have developed the broadly utilized, systematic subject specific knowledge framework based on Shulman’s (1986) idea of pedagogical content knowledge, Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). MKT categorizes the domains of knowledge needed to do the work of teaching mathematics (Ball et al., 2008) in a detailed way. The researchers examining other aspects of teacher competence, teacher knowledge and teacher education have not been so eager to present exact subject knowledge frameworks for (student) teachers – which might especially be related to the soft and applied qualities of the subject knowledge.
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Learning professional competences during teacher education From the viewpoint of teacher education, empirical research on teacher competences is important, because it provides a strong basis for planning teacher education curricula. Student teachers learn competencies – knowledge, skills and attitudes – for the work of teaching in the context of the teacher education programme in which they are involved. The ways in which teacher education is organized and the pedagogies and assessment practices (Shavelson, 2013) that are utilized in the programme influence the capabilities with which student teachers enter the teacher profession. Many teacher education programmes even use a competence-based structure (Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012; Struyven & De Meyst, 2010) instead of a discipline-based structure in order to diminish the theory–practice gap and to increase the meaningfulness of teacher education in relation to a teacher’s work. It is important to organize teacher education to support student teacher learning and to practise integrating knowledge and skills in the classroom (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Pantic & Wubbels, 2010, 2012) in the academic, theoretical and traditional knowledge-intensive contexts of teacher education because the learning of instructional core competencies during teacher education is challenging and takes time. Student teachers should be provided with opportunities to learn the required professional competences within the reality of classroom interaction (Fenstermacher & Richardson, 1993; Toom, Husu & Tirri, 2015) and to reflect on their actions and core competences both before and after their interactive teaching. This requires opportunities to observe situations, analyse the essential factors and make functional decisions, and the abilities to carry out the necessary actions (Husu, 2002; Toom, 2006, 2012). The structure and content of teacher education curricula and especially the utilized pedagogies are crucial in relation to student teacher learning (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Oliver & Osterreich, 2013). Pedagogies which increase student teacher knowledge, pedagogical skills, decision-making and ability to act in professional situations as well as reflect on their actions have been shown to be efficient in supporting student teacher learning of core instructional competences (Husu, Toom & Patrikainen, 2008). These kinds of pedagogies emphasize authentic qualities and characteristics of the instructional situations (Shulman, 1992; Strike, 1993), simulate and allow the modelling of real-life classroom interactions and make significant personal associations possible in learning situations. These qualities of the pedagogies of teacher education are well in line with the aim of enhancing student teachers’ professional competences for the teaching profession. Student teachers should be equipped with more than technical abilities for teaching – they should have a deeper understanding of the teaching profession and its position in educational systems (cf. Pantic & Wubbels, 2010).
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Discussion The focus of this chapter was to analyse teacher competencies from the viewpoint of teacher knowledge and to consider them in relation to the characteristics of a teacher’s work (see Figure 46.1) and also to teacher education. The complexity and multiple definitions of the concept of competence in relation to the work of teaching (Blömeke et al., 2015) were clarified, and the importance of teacher knowledge as a key component was especially emphasized (cf. Fenstermacher, 1994; Gitomer & Zisk, 2015). The versatile research has uncovered the diversity of teachers’ practical knowledge and its multiple facets for teacher competence: declarative knowing that and procedural knowing how (Ryle, 1949; Toom, 2012; Shavelson, 2013) on the one hand, and general pedagogical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985; Elbaz, 1981, 1983) and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987; Ball, 2000) on the other hand. Due to the emphases of previous research based on philosophical, psychological and educational policy traditions, the focus has been especially on the individual teacher’s competencies and knowledge but, still, the concept and the detailed definitions of teacher competence carry strong traditional and societal understandings of what core capabilities teachers should possess.
TEACHER Knowledge of pedagogical methods, schemes, practices, strategies relevant for practice of teacher’s work
WORK OF TEACHING
General knowledge of theories, principles of education, instructional process, subject matter
Ability to utilize theories and principles as tools to perceive and structure instructional phenomena
KNOWLEDGE Ability to apply pedagogical methods, schemes and strategies in practice, solve problems, act in teacher’s work
KNOW HOW
KNOW THAT
THEORETICAL CHALLENGES
PRACTICAL CHALLENGES Figure 46.1 Dimensions of teacher competence in terms of teacher knowledge and the work of teaching
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To conclude the chapter, the key dimensions of a teacher’s competence analysed in this chapter – teacher knowledge and characteristics of the work of teaching – are considered on a more general level (Figure 46.1). This analytical clarity might help when thinking about the single aspects, specific understanding and definitions given for the concept of competence as well as the wholeness of teacher competence identified in previous research. Through this kind of conceptual consideration, it is possible to reflect on the multiple facets of teacher competence requirements and think about possibilities and realities for defining, facilitating and assessing student teacher learning of certain core competences during teacher education. The four viewpoints coming to the fore through the figure can work as tools for thinking about the characteristics of teacher competence, and they could be interesting focuses of empirical research both among student teachers and experienced teachers. Further extensive research on teachers’ declarative knowledge know that in relation to procedural knowledge know how in the contexts of the theoretical and practical qualities and challenges of teacher’s work might provide new understanding of the aspects of teacher competence and their learning that have not been investigated empirically before. Longitudinal research into the learning of competencies during teacher education and during the profession throughout teacher careers would be necessary in order to be able to support teacher learning and develop pre- and in-service teacher education in a meaningful way. From the viewpoint of teacher education, all the choices related to promoting teacher competencies, teacher knowledge, and qualities of teacher education programmes are finally value-laden and even ideological decisions related to the purpose of education that involve educational policy-making in certain educational and societal contexts (Cochran-Smith, 2006). Systematic empirical research into teacher competencies is needed to inform the development of teacher education and educational decision-making. This would be valuable for teacher educators and policy-makers and would provide them with the research-based evidence required for thorough and justifiable decision-making.
Funding This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [Grant Number 285806].
References Ball, D.L. (2000). Bridging practices: Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 241–247. Ball, D.L. & Bass, H. (2003). Toward a practice-based theory of mathematical knowledge for teaching. In B. Davis & E. Simmt (Eds), Proceedings of the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (pp. 3–14). Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group.
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Ball, D.L. & Forzani, F.M. (2009). The work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497–511. DOI:10.1177/0022487109348479 Ball, D.L., Thames, M.H., & Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: What makes it special? Journal of Teacher Education, 59(5), 389–407. Baumert, J. & Kunter, M. (2006). Stichwort: Professionelle Kompetenz von Lehrkräften. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 9(4), 469–520. Berliner, D.C. (1988). The development of expertise in pedagogy. Washington: AACTE Publications. Berliner, D.C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482. Biesta, G. (2012). The future of teacher education: Evidence, competence or wisdom? RoSE – Research on Steiner Education, 3(1), 8–21. Blömeke, S. & Delaney, S. (2012). Assessment of teacher knowledge across countries: A review of the state of research. ZDM Mathematics Education, 44(3), 223–247. DOI:10.1007/s11858-012-0429-7 Blömeke, S., Gustafsson, J., & Shavelson, R.J. (2015). Beyond dichotomies: Competence viewed as a continuum. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 223(1), 3–13. DOI:10.1027/2151-2604/a000194 Blömeke, S., Hsieh, F., Kaiser, G. & Schmidt, W.H. (Eds) (2014). International perspectives on teacher knowledge, beliefs and opportunities to learn. Dordrecht: Springer. Caena, F. (2014). Teacher competence frameworks in Europe: Policy-as-discourse and policy-as-practice. European Journal of Education, 49(3), 311–331. DOI:10.1111/ejed.12088 Carr, D. (1999). Professional education and professional ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 16(1), 33–46. Carter, K. (1990). Teachers’ knowledge and learning to teach. In W.R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 291–310). New York: Macmillan. Clandinin, D.J. (1985). Personal practical knowledge: A study of teachers’ classroom images. Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4), 361–385. DOI:10.1080/03626784.1985.11075976 Clandinin, D.J. & Connelly, F.M. (1987). Teachers’ personal knowledge: What counts as ‘personal’ in studies of the personal. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19(6), 487–500. Cochran-Smith, M. (2006). Policy, practice, and politics in teacher education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Constructing 21st century teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 300–314. DOI: 10.1177/0022487105285962 Darling-Hammond, L. & Bransford, J. (2005). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Elbaz, F. (1981). The teacher’s ‘practical knowledge’: Report of a case study. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(1), 43–71. Elbaz, F. (1983). Teacher thinking: A study of practical knowledge. New York: Nichols. Elbaz, F. (1991). Research on teachers’ knowledge: The evolution of a discourse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 23(1), 1–19. Eraut, M. (2001). Developing professional knowledge and competence. London: Falmer Press. Fallona, C. (2000). Manner in teaching: A study in observing and interpreting teachers’ moral virtues. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(7), 681–695. DOI:10.1016/S0742-051X(00)00019-6 Fenstermacher, G.D. (1986). Philosophy of research on teaching: Three aspects. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 37–49). New York: Macmillan. Fenstermacher, G.D. (1994). The knower and the known: The nature of knowledge in research on teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond (Ed.), Review of Research in Education, 20 (pp. 3–56). Washington: American Educational Research Association. Fenstermacher, G.D. & Richardson, V. (1993). The elicitation and reconstruction of practical arguments in teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 25(2), 101–14. DOI: 10.1080/0022027930250201 Fenstermacher, G.D. & Richardson, V. (2005). On making determinations of quality in teaching. Teachers College Record, 107(1), 186–213.
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Gitomer, D.H. & Zisk, R.C. (2015). Chapter 1: Knowing what teachers know. Review of Research in Education, 39(1), 1–53. DOI:10.3102/0091732X14557001 Greene, M. (1986). Philosophy and teaching. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 479–501). New York: Macmillan. Grossman, P. & McDonald, M. (2008). Back to the future: Directions for research in teaching and teacher education.American Educational Research Journal,45(1),184–205.DOI:10.3102/0002831207312906 Hartig, J., Klieme, E. & Leutner, D. (Eds) (2008). Assessment of competencies in educational contexts: State of the art and future prospects. Göttingen: Hogrefe & Huber. Hattie, J. (2003). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Paper presented at the Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Conference on Building Teacher Quality, Melbourne. Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge. Hiebert, J., Morris, A.K., Berk, D., & Jansen, A. (2007). Preparing teachers to learn from teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 47–61. DOI:10.1177/0022487106295726 Hill, H.C., Rowan, B., & Ball, D.L. (2005). Effects of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 42(2), 371–406. DOI:10.3102/00028312042002371 Husu, J. (2002). Representing the practice of teachers’ pedagogical knowing. Research in Educational Sciences 9. Turku: Finnish Educational Research Association. Husu, J. & Tirri, K. (2001). Teachers’ ethical choices in socio-moral settings. Journal of Moral Education, 30(4), 361–375. Husu, J., Toom, A., & Patrikainen, S. (2008). Guided reflection as a means to demonstrate and develop student teachers’ reflective competencies. Reflective Practice, 9(1), 37–51. Jackson, P.W. (1986). The practice of teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. Kaiser, G., Busse, A., Hoth, J., König, J., & Blömeke, S. (2015). About the complexities of video-based assessments: Theoretical and methodological approaches to overcoming shortcomings of research on teachers’ competence. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 13(2), 369–387. DOI: 10.1007/s10763-015-9616-7 Kansanen, P. (2004). The role of general education in teacher education. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 7(2), 207–218. Kereluik, K., Mishra, P., Fahnoe, C., & Terry, R. (2013). What knowledge is of most worth: Teacher knowledge for 21st century learning. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 29(4), 127–140. Kersting, N.B., Givvin, K.B., Sotelo, F.L., & Stigler, J.W. (2010). Teachers’ analyses of classroom video predict student learning of mathematics: Further explorations of a novel measure of teacher knowledge. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 172–181. DOI:10.1177/0022487109347875 Klaassen, C. (2002). Teacher pedagogical competence and sensibility. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(2), 151–158. Korthagen, F.A.J. (2004). In search of the essence of a good teacher: Towards a more holistic approach in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(1), 77–97. Leinhardt, G. (1990). Capturing craft knowledge in teaching. Educational Researcher, 19(2), 18–25. DOI:10.3102/0013189X019002018 Leinhardt, G. & Greeno, J. (1986). The cognitive skill of teaching. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(2), 75–95. DOI:10.1037/0022-0663.78.2.75 Munby, H., Russell, T., & Martin, A.K. (2001). Teachers’ knowledge and how it develops. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed., pp. 877–904). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Niiniluoto, I. (1996). Informaatio, tieto ja yhteiskunta. Filosofinen käsiteanalyysi [Information, knowledge and society. A philosophical concept analysis]. (5th revised ed.). Helsinki: Oy Edita Ab. Nilsson, P. & van Driel, J. (2011). How will we understand what we teach? – Primary student teachers’ perceptions of their development of knowledge and attitudes towards physics. Research in Science Education, 41(4), 541–560. DOI:10.1007/s11165-010-9179-0
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Oliver, K.L. & Osterreich, H.A. (2013). Student-centred inquiry as curriculum as a model for field-based teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(3), 394–417. Orton, R.E. (1993). Two problems with teacher knowledge. Philosophy of Education 1993. http:// www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/93_docs/ORTON.HTM Pantic, N. & Wubbels, T. (2010). Teacher competencies as a basis for teacher education – Views of Serbian teachers and teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3), 694–703. DOI:10.1016/j.tate.2009.10.005 Pantic, N. & Wubbels, T. (2012). Competence-based teacher education: A change from Didaktik to curriculum culture? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(1), 61–87. DOI:10.1080/00220272.2011.620633 Pantic, N., Wubbels, T., & Mainhard, T. (2011). Teacher competence as a basis for teacher education: Comparing views of teachers and teacher educators in five Western Balkan countries. Comparative Education Review, 55(2), 165–188. Pitfield, M. (2012) Transforming subject knowledge: drama student-teachers and the pursuit of pedagogical content knowledge. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 17(3), 425–442. DOI:10.1080/13569783.2012.694038 Rosiek, J. (2002). Pragmatism’s unfinished project: William James and teacher knowledge researchers. In J. Garrison, R. Podeschi, & E. Bredo (Eds), William James and education (pp. 130–150). New York: Teachers College Press. Russell, T. (2014). Teacher craft knowledge. In R. Gunstone (Ed.), Encyclopedia of science education (pp. 1–12). Dordrecht: Springer. DOI:10.1007/978-94-007-6165-0_209-4 Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson’s University Library. Sanger, M.N. (2008). What we need to prepare teachers for the moral nature of their work. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(2), 169–185. Schleicher, A. (Ed.) (2012). Preparing teachers and developing school leaders for the 21st century: Lessons from around the world. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/site/eduistp2012/49850576.pdf Shavelson, R.J. (2010). On the measurement of competency. Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training, 2(1), 41–63. Shavelson, R.J. (2013). On an approach to testing and modeling competence. Educational Psychologist, 48(2), 73–86. DOI:10.1080/00461520.2013.779483 Shulman, J.H. (1992). Toward a pedagogy of cases. In J.H. Shulman (Ed.), Case methods in teacher education (pp. 1–30). New York: Teachers College Press. Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Shulman, L.S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22. Shulman, L.S. (2004). The wisdom of practice: Essays on teaching, learning, and learning to teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Strike, K.A. (1993). Teaching ethical reasoning using cases. In K.A. Strike & P. Lance Ternasky (Eds), Ethics for professionals in education: Perspectives for preparation and practice (pp. 102–116). New York: Teachers College Press. Struyven, K. & De Meyst, M. (2010). Competence-based teacher education: Illusion or reality? An assessment of the implementation status in Flanders from teachers’ and students’ points of view. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1495–1510. DOI:10.1016/j.tate.2010.05.006 Stürmer, K., Könings, K.D., & Seidel, T. (2012). Declarative knowledge and professional vision in teacher education: Effect of courses in teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(3), 467–483. Tirri, K., Toom, A., & Husu, J. (2013). The moral matters of teaching: A Finnish perspective. In C.J. Graig, P.C. Meijer, & J. Broeckmans (Eds), From teacher thinking to teachers and teaching: The evolution of a research community, Advances in Research on Teaching (Vol. 19, pp. 223–239). Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Toom, A. (2006). Tacit pedagogical knowing: At the core of teacher’s professionality. Research Reports 276. University of Helsinki: Department of Applied Sciences of Education. Toom, A. (2012). Considering the artistry and epistemology of tacit knowledge and knowing. Educational Theory, 62(6), 621–640. Toom, A., Husu, J., & Tirri, K. (2015). Cultivating student teachers’ moral competencies in teaching during teacher education. In C.J. Craig & L. Orland-Barak (Eds), International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (Part C), Advances in Research on Teaching (Volume 22C, pp. 13–31). Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing. Van Es, E. (2011). A framework for learning to notice student thinking. In M.G. Sherin, V.R. Jacobs, & R.A. Philipp (Eds), Mathematics teacher noticing. Seeing through teachers’ eyes (pp. 134–151). New York: Routledge. van Manen, M. (1999). Knowledge, reflection and complexity in teacher practice. In M. Lang, J. Olson, H. Hansen, & W. Bünder (Eds), Changing schools/changing practices: Perspectives on educational reform and teacher professionalism (pp. 65–75). Louvain: Garant. Westera, W. (2001). Competences in education: a confusion of tongues. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33(1), 75–88. Whitty, G. & Willmott, E. (1991). Competence-based teacher education: Approaches and issues. Cambridge Journal of Education, 21(3), 309–318. DOI:10.1080/0305764910210305
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47 Developing Teachers’ Competences with the Focus on Adaptive Expertise in Teaching J a n v a n Ta r t w i j k , R o s a n n e Z w a r t a n d T h e o Wu b b e l s In this chapter, we summarize a rich tradition of research on the development of teachers during their career. Kagan (1992) identified two models of teacher development that were based on the results of empirical research carried out previously. The first model was based on Fuller’s groundbreaking work on stages in teacher development (Fuller, 1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975), the other on Berliner’s research on differences between novice and expert teachers (Berliner, 1994, 2001; Carter, Sabers, Cushing, Pinnegar, & Berliner, 1987; Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991). In line with the distinction that Kagan made between these two lines of research, we will first summarize research on stage models of teacher development. Next, we will introduce research on the development of competence that has been carried out both within and outside the context of teaching. Competencies are conceptualized in this section as the mental conditions that are necessary for achievement (Weinert, 2001), with expertise being described as a very high level of a competency (Mayer, 2003). We will conclude this chapter with a section on adaptive expertise and relate the development of adaptive expertise in teachers to models for teacher learning and professional development.
Stage models of teacher development Several scholars have proposed stage models for the professional development of teachers (e.g. Burke, Christensen, Fessler, McDonnell, & Price, 1987; Huberman, 1993; Maskit, 2011) that all owe to Fuller’s work. In her publications in the 1960s and 1970s, Fuller defined four stages in teachers’ concerns in the
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process of becoming a teacher (Fuller, 1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975). Until they actually start teaching, prospective teachers are mainly concerned about their own progress as a student, according to Fuller. They are not yet thinking from the perspective of a teacher, but from a student’s point of view. As a consequence they might be very critical of teachers they observe. Once they have actually started teaching, their concerns primarily refer to their own survival and they focus on, for instance, content mastery, class control, and being liked by students. Questions they ask themselves are for example ‘Will I be able to create an orderly classroom atmosphere?’ and ‘Will the students listen to me?’ Next, a mastery stage can be distinguished, in which beginning teachers’ concerns focus on being able to perform well. In this stage, the concerns are less emotionally colored than in the survival phase and there is room for thinking about the best pedagogical approach. In the final stage of Fuller’s model, teachers may settle into stable routines or become resistant to change. Fuller and Bown (1975) describe teachers in this stage as being responsive to feedback and being concerned about their impact on pupils. For the first time, they consider the best ways to encourage student learning. In the Netherlands, Griffioen (1980) added a fifth stage, in which concerns about the effectiveness of the school policies and environment surface. In this stage, only encountered by in-service teachers, teachers may question to what degree the school is well-organized and in what way it could contribute best to student learning. Building on Fuller’s early work, several other stage models of teacher development have been described. Some of these models cover a longer period of the teaching career, even into retirement. In the Teacher Career Cycle Model for instance, Fessler and Christensen distinguish eight stages in teachers’ development (Burke et al., 1987; Fessler & Christensen, 1992). The first stage is the Pre-service period of preparation for teaching through studying in a college or university. Student teachers then move to the second stage, Induction, the first few years of employment as teacher, when they are socialized into the education system. Following Fuller’s concerns model, student and beginning teachers in this stage are assumed to strive for acceptance from their students, peers, and supervisors, and they attempt to achieve a certain level of comfort and security in dealing with everyday issues. The third stage, analogous to Fuller’s third and fourth one, includes Competency Building, when teachers perceive their work positively and find it challenging, want to teach well and try to improve their teaching competence. They are usually open to innovative ideas and want to use new teaching materials and pedagogical approaches. In the fourth stage of Enthusiasm and Growth, teachers reach the top competence level. They usually very much appreciate working as a teacher, are fully committed to the job, and actively seek professional development opportunities. Moving to the next stage of Stability, teachers do what is expected of them, and sometimes little more. Professional development often is no longer felt to be useful and from this stage the following, Stagnation and Career Frustration, may develop when job satisfaction becomes lower. When teachers are preparing to leave the
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profession, they are in the stage of Career Wind-Down. Subsequently, they actually leave the profession: Career Exit. Huberman (1993), based on a Swiss study, mentions similar phases, such as: career entry, stabilization, diversification and change, stocktaking and interrogations at mid-career, serenity and affective distance, conservatism, and disengagement. More recently, based on a longitudinal study in the United Kingdom, Sammons and her colleagues (Sammons, Day, Kington, Gu, Stobart, & Smees, 2007; see also Day & Gu, 2010) proposed stages that are characterized in terms of the number of years that teachers have been teaching. In all stages, subgroups with quite dissimilar features are reported. In the first four years, the phase of Commitment, two subtypes were present: one group of teachers with growing sense of efficacy and another group for whom the sense of efficacy was dwindling. During years 4–7 (Identity and Efficacy in the Classroom), a group was found with a sustained sense of identity, self-efficacy and effectiveness, and another for whom identity, efficacy and effectiveness were at risk. Later in the career, the stages gradually come to span a longer time period. From 8–15 years (Managing Changes in Role and Identity), the identified groups of teacher were either experiencing sustained engagement or feeling detachment and loss of motivation. For teachers with between 16 and 23 years of experience (Challenges to Motivation and Commitment), work-life tensions arose, and again groups with rather opposite features were found. In one group, further career advancement and good pupil results had led to increased teacher motivation and commitment, whereas in others workload and the difficulty of managing competing tensions or career stagnation had led to decreased motivation, commitment, and effectiveness. Between 24 and 30 years (Challenges to Sustaining Motivation), some teachers showed a sustained strong sense of motivation and commitment, whereas others were holding on but were losing their motivation. Finally, after over 30 years (Sustaining/Declining Motivation, Ability to Cope with Change, Looking to Retire), again some teachers sustained their motivation, while others felt tired and trapped. Based on the work of Huberman (1993), Hargreaves (2005) differentiated the last phases of the teacher career further. He distinguished four types of teachers, according to dominant career trajectories in the later years of the teaching career (see also Veldman, van Tartwijk, Brekelmans, & Wubbels, 2013). The first types of teachers are those who are able to keep finding challenges beyond and within their classrooms. The second type, the positive focusers, concentrate their efforts in the small world of their own classrooms, where they can pass their wisdom to young people in the autumn of their career. In contrast, the negative focusers, the third type, have always managed to protect their self-interest rather than the interests of the students. In their later career, they try to find ways to get the easiest timetables and classes. Finally, the disenchanted have typically committed themselves to educational reforms earlier in their career, which have been discharged of later. As a consequence, they have lost their ideals and motivation and often feel nostalgic.
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It is important to emphasize that none of these models claim that all teachers go through the same stages and even the order in which teachers go through stages may vary. For instance, it is striking that in the phases distinguished by Sammons et al. (2007), which are ordered by years of experience in the teaching career, teachers were found in every phase who had quite opposite experiences. Furthermore, it seems that these phases may overlap in time. This may imply that teacher professional development is a highly idiosyncratic process. Maskit (2011) mentions three common denominators in stage models that could potentially influence facets of the individual development process. The first is an informational factor, including teacher age and experience. The second, the professional factor, contains work and teaching proficiencies, such as: the commitment and responsibility that teachers are willing to shoulder during various professional stages; their self-perception, perception of teaching as a profession, and attitudes toward their students; and the give-and-take relationship between students and teachers. The last factor, the psychological one, includes teachers’ emotional state, their concerns and preoccupations during different stages, and the relation between items of individual developmental data, such as chronological age, and various stages of professional development. According to Maskit (2011), some models describing professional stages in a teaching career focus on a linear progression in professional development, with constant improvement in a teacher’s abilities and professional proficiencies. Other models describe ‘ups and downs in professional development, repetitions of certain processes, progressions and withdrawals. Both types of models underscore individual variants such as one’s character, work environment, chronological age and work experience’ (Maskit, 2011, p. 852). Similarly, Huberman concluded that ‘professional career journeys are not adequately linear, predictable or identical – are often, in fact, unexplainable …’ (Huberman, 1993, p. 264). Dall’Alba and Sandberg criticized stage models of professional development for lacking ‘clarity about what is being developed. (…) A focus on stages veils more fundamental aspects of development; it directs attention away from the skill that is being developed’ (2006, p. 388). In other words, the literature on stages in professional development only explains in a limited way what it is that experienced teachers have developed that distinguishes them in actual classrooms from their less experienced colleagues. This is the focus of the literature to which we turn in the next section.
What Teachers Develop When studying teacher development from the perspective of what it is that teachers develop, researchers focused on, for instance, the differences in how expert and novice teachers perceive classroom situations (Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991; Peterson & Comeaux, 1987), the knowledge underlying successful teacher
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behaviors in classrooms (Mulholland & Wallace, 2005; van Tartwijk, den Brok, Veldman, & Wubbels, 2009; Verloop, van Driel, & Meijer, 2001), and the development of specific teacher competencies such as delivering pedagogically sound lessons (Maulana, Helms-Lorenz, & van de Grift, 2015) and building good, productive relationships with students (Brekelmans, Wubbels, & van Tartwijk, 2005). In these studies, different concepts such as competence (Maulana et al., 2015), practical knowledge (Verloop et al., 2001), and expertise (Berliner, 2001; Mayer, 2003) are used to describe what teachers develop. Blömeke, Gustafsson, and Shavelson (2015) write that competence is a ‘messy construct’ because competing definitions are used, building on a misleading dichotomy of performance and traits. In some of the definitions the focus is on ‘performance’, that is, being successful in achieving desired outcomes. In others, characteristics or ‘traits’ underlying superior performance are emphasized. To overcome this dichotomy, Blömeke et al. propose to model competence as a continuum, by connecting cognitive, affective, and motivational traits to real-world performance through a set of perceptual, interpretive, and decision-making processes. Klieme, Hartig, and Rausch (2008) describe what they refer to as the functional-pragmatic concept of competence. When this conceptualization of competence is used, the focus is on a person’s readiness to cope with challenges in particular situations, instead of the generative, cognitive system that is independent from situations. They refer to Weinert (2001), who refers to competencies as ‘the mental conditions necessary for cognitive, social and vocational achievement’ (p. 56), which resembles Verloop et al.’s definition of teacher practical knowledge as ‘the whole of the knowledge and insights that underlie teachers’ actions in practice’ (Verloop et al., 2001, p. 446). In this functional-pragmatic conceptualization of competence, Mayer (2003) defines expertise as ‘a very high level of competency’ (Mayer, 2003, p. 265). Berliner (2001) also points to the importance of traits –which he refers to as ‘talent’ – in the study of expertise. In domains such as sport the importance of talent is obvious, but according to Berliner (2001) a focus on talent is of little practical interest when studying pedagogical expertise, because ‘talent for teaching is probably an extremely complicated interaction of many human characteristics (…) well beyond our ability to catalog’ (p. 465).
The Nature of Expertise Much research is available on the nature of expertise and its development in domains such as chess (de Groot, 1965; Chase & Simon, 1973), software design (Sonnentag, Niessen, & Volmer, 2006), and medicine (Norman, Eva, Brooks, & Hamstra, 2006; Schmidt, Norman, & Boshuizen, 1990). This research, which formed the basis of a general theory of expertise and its development, was summarized in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006). In this research, experts are distinguished from other professionals by their superior reproducible performances
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of representative tasks that capture the essence of a domain (Ericsson, 2006b). To be able to carry out these tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible, experts have restructured and refined their representation of knowledge and procedures (Feltovich, Prietula, & Ericsson, 2006). For this reason, expertise can be regarded as a maximal adaptation of experts to domain-specific task constraints (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996), which helps experts overcome fundamental limitations in the human cognitive architecture (Feltovich et al., 2006). First, there is a limitation in attention and perception, which is related to the capacity of the human working memory (Baddeley, Eysenck, & Anderson, 2009; Sweller, 2004; Miller, 1956). This limited capacity to handle information is clearly visible when novice teachers feel overwhelmed by their classrooms, in which many things seem to happen at the same time, as they have to simultaneously take care of classroom management, lesson planning, monitoring the progress and well-being of individual students, etc. Developing routines helps to prevent this perceptual and working memory overload, because, when teaching strategies and decisions are automatized in routines, no more working memory capacity has to be spent on it. A downside to this is that, after years, routines may become so internalized that experts are not aware of them anymore. This makes it harder to analyze and change them (Bransford, Derry, Berliner, Hammerness, & Beckett, 2005). A second limitation of human cognitive architecture is access to long-term memory. Research has shown that the capacity of human long-term memory for permanently storing information is unlimited in practice, but being able to retrieve this information is challenging (Baddeley et al., 2009). Experts are very good at doing this, because of the way information is stored in their long-term memory. For instance, de Groot (1965) showed that chess grand masters are much better at reproducing chess board positions, because they recognize them immediately from the tens of thousands of these configurations which they have stored in their long-term memory (and know the best move associated with them). In medicine, Rikers, Schmidt, and Boshuizen (2000) showed that expert physicians diagnose clinical cases faster and more accurately than novices and intermediates (sixth-year medical students), although intermediates remember more information from the cases and produce more elaborate explanations for the described signs and symptoms. Experts seem to ‘encapsulate’ knowledge into illness scripts as examples of previously analyzed patients (Norman et al., 2006; Schmidt & Rikers, 2007). In teaching, Berliner and his colleagues showed that expert teachers were much better than novices at recognizing the important cues in classroom situations and diagnosing what was going on (Berliner, 1994; Sabers et al., 1991).
The Development of Teacher Expertise Research in various domains shows that experts have spent thousands of hours carrying out the tasks that make them stand out to build such a knowledge base (see Ericsson, 2006a for an overview). The domain of teaching is no exception.
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In research with our colleague Mieke Brekelmans, we investigated the development of teacher expertise in the building of good working relationships with students during their career (Brekelmans, Holvast, & van Tartwijk, 1992; Brekelmans et al., 2005). It appeared that on average, in the first years of the career, student perceptions of teacher agency (which we referred to as teacher influence in our earlier research) grew considerably and stabilized after about six years. Maulana et al. (2015) studied the development of a broader array of teacher competencies during the first years of the career, which included improvements in the learning climate, classroom management, clarity of instruction, activating learning, adaptation towards the students, and teaching strategy. For all six variables, they found a steep increase during the first year and a slower increase afterwards for the average teacher. However, research shows that experience alone is not sufficient for developing expertise (Ericsson, 2006a). Beyond the first two years, the length of experience even turns out to be a weak correlate of performance. Ericsson writes that the ‘select group of individuals who eventually reach very high levels do not simply accumulate more routine experience of domain-related activities, but extend their active skill-building period for years or even decades’ (Ericsson, 2006a, p. 691). They do this by deliberately improving their performance through identifying suitable training tasks that are outside their current realm of performance, but that they can master by concentrating on critical aspects and by gradually refining performance through repetitions and feedback. Ericsson (2006a; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993) refers to this as deliberate practice. In research on teacher development, the concept of deliberate practice is not used very often. One exception is the work of Bronkhorst, Meijer, Koster, and Vermunt (2014). These authors describe four characteristics that have been used in the literature to define deliberate practice: (1) it is designed for self-improvement, (2) it is repeated to enable successive refinement, (3) it is followed by immediate, informative feedback, and (4) it requires significant effort and concentration or motivation. They point to the similarities with self-regulated or self-directed learning, but emphasize that these concepts refer to different outcomes (i.e. ‘practice’ and ‘learning’). Bronkhorst et al. (2014) analyzed the self-reported learning activities of 67 student-teachers who were enrolled in a one-year post-graduate teacher education program. Half of this program consisted of school internships, in which the students also taught classes themselves. Their analyses showed that deliberate practice activities turned out to mostly result in an increase in teaching performance. However, they also found that other vitally important learning processes – for instance, concerning identity development – are less likely to be realized with deliberate practice. A concept that resembles deliberate practice and that is used more often in the literature on teacher development is reflective teaching. Authors such as Calderhead (1989) and Korthagen and his colleagues (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999; Korthagen, Kessels, Koster, Lagerwerf, & Wubbels, 2001) describe
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reflective teaching ‘as an ongoing process of experiencing practical teaching situations, reflecting on them under the guidance of an expert, and developing one’s own insights into teaching through the interaction of personal reflection and theoretical notions offered by the expert’ (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999, p. 6). Korthagen et al. (2001) place the reflective aspect of learning to teach within the context of realistic teacher education, meaning that teacher growth covers a complex system of processes in which teachers are engaged in active and meaningful learning (cf. Borko, 2004; Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002; Guskey, 2002).
Adaptive Expertise In the previous section, we wrote that developing expertise implies developing routines and organizing information in memory in such a way that relevant situations are recognized more quickly and better. Routines, however, are also risky, because they may become outdated when tasks change. In teaching, an example is the change in classroom teaching because of the use of computers, which would for instance make it harder for the expert teacher to recognize the relevant cues in class environments. Here, it is important to distinguish types of experts that have been mentioned in the literature: routine and adaptive experts (Bransford et al., 2005; Hatano & Inagaki, 1986; National Research Council, 2000). Routine experts have a number of core competencies that they develop throughout their lives with growing efficiency, whereas adaptive experts are much more likely to change their core competencies and expand and restructure their expertise. According to Bransford et al. (2005, p. 49) this restructuring may reduce efficiency in the short run, but makes adaptive experts more flexible. They emphasize that these processes of restructuring ‘often have emotional consequences that accompany realization that cherished beliefs and practices need to be changed’. These emotional consequences can explain the resistance of many teachers towards educational change, in particular when they feel that their voice is not heard and their expertise is not valued (van Veen, Sleegers, & van de Ven, 2005). A recent review by Bohle Carbonell, Stalmeijer, Könings, Segers, and van Meriënboer (2014) identified a number of differences between routine and adaptive experts. The first of these differences is that, although adaptive and routine experts have a similar extent of knowledge, the knowledge of adaptive experts seems to be more abstract, that is, theoretical. Adaptive experts also seem to have more cognitive flexibility and more problem-solving skills. They rely more on analogical reasoning in which they use their knowledge base. The National Research Council of the USA discusses adaptive expertise as the new golden standard for learning (National Research Council, 2000). A framework for promoting the development of adaptive expertise in teacher education and professional development is crucial.
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Developing Adaptive Expertise Hammerness and her colleagues (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, Bransford, Berliner, Cochran-Smith, McDonald, & Zeichner, 2005) distinguish two dimensions of teacher expertise: efficiency and innovation. Developing expertise on the efficiency dimension implies developing routines or, in other words, ‘performing particular tasks without having to devote too many attentional resources to achieve them’ (p. 360). Developing expertise on the innovation dimension ‘typically involves moving beyond existing routines and often requires people to rethink key ideas, practices, and even values in order to change what they are doing’ (p. 361). Moving on the innovation dimension can be highly emotionally charged, because it requires teachers to reconsider the routines that help them perform their tasks efficiently. The route to adaptive expertise is described by Bransford et al. (2005) as balancing between development on both dimensions. Hammerness et al. (2005) write that making progress on both dimensions can be complementary, when appropriate levels of efficiency make room for innovation. It may also imply letting go of efficient routines, which implies that teaching may temporarily become less efficient. According to Hammerness and her colleagues (2005), developing adaptive expertise requires that teachers make preconceptions explicit, that teachers learn to take control of their own learning which can be stimulated by ‘providing tools for analysis of events and situations that enable them to understand and handle the complexities of life in classroom’ (p. 366), and that they not only develop a strong foundation of factual and theoretical knowledge, but also that this knowledge is organized in such a way that retrieval and action are facilitated.
Relating Change in Teacher Knowledge to Change in Teacher Practice Hammerness and her colleagues (2005) actually make the case not only for helping student teachers build a strong knowledge base, but also for helping them organize this knowledge in such a way that it can easily be enacted. However, a major question in the literature on teacher change is whether and how changes in knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes relate to changes in teacher practice (Bolhuis, 2006; Richardson, 1996; Wongsopawiro, Zwart, & van Driel, 2016). For a long time, it was widely assumed that, when teachers change their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, this will automatically lead to improved teaching practice, and subsequently better student outcomes (De Corte, 2010). In 2002 Clarke and Hollingsworth wrote: Teacher growth becomes a process of construction of a variety of knowledge types (content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge) by individual teachers in response to their participation in the experiences provided by the professional development program and through their participation in the classroom. (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002, p. 955)
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They introduced the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG, see Figure 47.1) and argued that teacher professional growth can best be understood in terms of reciprocal relationships between four different domains which encompass teachers’ professional world: (1) the Personal Domain, which contains teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes; (2) the External Domain, which contains external sources of information or stimuli; (3) the Domain of Practice, which involves professional experimentation; and (4) the Domain of Consequence, which contains salient outcomes related to classroom practice. Using this model, Clarke and Hollingsworth show that, when learning happens in teaching practice, often change in one of the domains is ‘translated’ into a change in another domain through mediating processes of enactment or reflection. They call these translations pathways of change or growth networks. ‘Enactment’ is defined as something the teacher does as a result of what ‘the teacher knows, believes, values or has experienced’. The term ‘reflection’ refers to ‘a set of mental activities to construct or reconstruct experiences, problems, knowledge or insights’. The IMTPG is recurrent and
Figure 47.1 Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) (adapted from Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002)
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has multiple entry points, meaning that it involves rather idiosyncratic, iterative processes of change as teachers learn new knowledge and refine existing skills, try things out in practice, work out what is and is not working for students, revisit conceptions and misconceptions, and try again (see also Wongsopawiro et al., 2016). In today’s understanding of teacher development, this is most effectively done in collaboration with peers, pupils or others (cf. Desimone et al., 2002).
Lesson Study as an Example The change mechanisms proposed in the IMTPG can be illustrated using the context of lesson study as an example (cf. Dudley, 2013, 2015). Lesson study is a strategy for professional development that originated in Japan more than a century ago and provides a well-developed set of principles and procedures that provide teachers with the support needed for the development of the knowledge and skills needed to become an effective teacher (Xu & Pedder, 2014). Lesson study is associated with high student performance (Dudley, 2015) and positive effects on teacher learning (cf. Dudley, 2013; Xu & Pedder, 2014). In lesson study, a team of teachers collaboratively designs a research lesson (the IMTPG’s domain of practice). One team member then executes the lesson while the other team members gather data on student learning processes (domain of consequence), including live observation. After collectively reflecting upon the data (domain of consequence), resulting in changed knowledge or ideas, the change in the domain of consequence is firmly tied to the teacher’s existing value system and to the inferences drawn from the practices of the classroom. The lesson is then revised and taught again (i.e. deliberate practice in the domain of practice). A lesson study-cycle is concluded by reflecting on the learning outcomes and sharing the results with colleagues (i.e. de-contextualizing knowledge and using information in and from the external domain). Within one or more lesson study-cycles, professionals engage in guided and collaborative experiential learning activities, resulting in change or growth networks. These learning activities provide challenges that go beyond the teacher’s current level of reliable performance, ideally in guided and collaborative learning contexts that allow immediate feedback and gradual refinement by repetition. Also, related to novice teacher development, these learning environments can be viewed as scaffolds that facilitate attainment of a higher level of performance. The scaffolds can be gradually eliminated later, so performance can be embedded and elicited in the natural environments in the domain of expertise (Ericsson, 2014). The characteristics of the learning activities described above resemble essential aspects of learning environments that could foster adaptive expertise, even of novice teachers (Anthony, Hunter, & Hunter, 2015; Bohle Carbonell et al., 2014; De Arment, Reed, & Wetzel, 2013).
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Concluding remarks Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, and Fung (2007) (see also Timperley, 2013) synthesized evidence on approaches to professional learning and development. This synthesis showed that no particular professional development experience was consistently associated with improved outcomes for students, because for every instance of an activity leading to improved outcomes, another was found in which it did not. What did make a difference was how the activities were constructed. In this synthesis, as in many others (e.g. Koellner & Jacobs, 2015), effective professional development aimed at continuous development of teacher competence is considered an ongoing process with a focus on understanding student learning. The lesson to be learned is that deliberately working on the development of teacher competence should have a focus on adaptive expertise (cf. Hammerness et al., 2005). This development implies the development of routines and a knowledge base. This knowledge base is constantly calibrated in a two-way process: contextualizing general principles and models by analyzing experiences in practice; and decontextualizing practical experiences through systematic reflection resulting in new or refined insights. This process starts in teacher education when student teachers are encouraged and trained to develop routines and reflect on their own practice using factual and theoretical knowledge. Teacher education thus can be the start of a process of continuous life-long teacher development throughout the various stages of the teacher career. In this development, ‘expert level’ of teachers is not a static endpoint, but a dynamic state in which teachers are experts because they continuously adapt their routines to help their students learn in various and changing contexts in the best possible way.
References Anthony, G., Hunter, J., & Hunter, R. (2015). Prospective teachers development of adaptive expertise. Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 108–117. Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. (2009). Memory. New York: Psychology Press. Berliner, D. C. (1994). Expertise: The wonder of exemplary performances. In J. N. Mangieri & C. Collins Block (Eds), Creating powerful thinking in teachers and students (pp. 161–186). Forth Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Berliner, D. C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482. Blömeke, S., Gustafsson, J. E., & Shavelson, R. J. (2015). Beyond dichotomies. Zeitschrift für Psychologie. 223(1), 3–13. Bohle Carbonell, K., Stalmeijer, R. E., Könings, K. D., Segers, M., & van Meriënboer, J. J. G. (2014). How experts deal with novel situations: A review of adaptive expertise. Educational Research Review, 12(1), 14–29.
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Bolhuis, S. (2006). Professional development between teachers’ practical knowledge and external demands: Plea for a broad social-constructivist and critical approach. In F. K. Oser, F. Achterhagen, & U. Renolds (Eds), Competence oriented teacher training. Old research demands and new pathways (pp. 237–249). Rotterdam: Sense. Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3–15. Bransford, J., Derry, S., Berliner, D. C., Hammerness, K., & Beckett, K. L. (2005). Theories of learning and their roles in teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond, J. Bransford, P. LePage, K. Hammerness, & H. Duffy (Eds), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 40–88). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Brekelmans, M., Holvast, A., & van Tartwijk, J. (1992). Changes in teacher communication styles during the professional career. Journal of Classroom Interaction, 27(1), 13–22. Brekelmans, M., Wubbels, T., & van Tartwijk, J. (2005). Teacher-student relationships across the teaching career. International Journal of Educational Research, 32(1–2), 55–71. Bronkhorst, L. H., Meijer, P. C., Koster, B., & Vermunt, J. D. (2014). Deliberate practice in teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 18–34. Burke, P. J., Christensen, J., Fessler, R., McDonnell, J. H., & Price, J. R. (1987). The teacher career cycle: Model development and research report. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington DC. Calderhead, J. (1989). Reflective teaching and teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 5(1), 43–51. Carter, K., Sabers, D., Cushing, K., Pinnegar, S., & Berliner, D. C. (1987). Processing and using information about students: A study of expert, novice, and postulant teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 3(2), 147–157. Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4(1), 55–81. Clarke, D., & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of teacher professional growth. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(8), 947–967. Dall’Alba, G., & Sandberg, J. (2006). Unveiling professional development: A critical review of stage models. Review of Educational Research, 76(3), 383–412. Day, C., & Gu, Q. (2010). The new lives of teachers. New York: Routledge. De Arment, S. T., Reed, E., & Wetzel, A. P. (2013). Promoting adaptive expertise: A conceptual framework for special educator preparation. Teacher Education and Special Education: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, 36(3), 217–230. De Corte, E. (2010). Historical developments in the understanding of learning. In D. Istance & F. Benavides (Eds), The nature of learning. Using research to inspire practice (pp. 35–67). Paris: OECD. de Groot, A. D. (1965). Thought and Choice in Chess. The Hague: Mouton. Desimone, L. M., Porter, A. C., Garet, M. S., Yoon, K. S., & Birman, B. F. (2002). Effects of professional development on teachers’ instruction: Results from a three-year longitudinal study. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(2), 81–112. Dudley, P. (2013). Teacher learning in Lesson Study: What interaction-level discourse analysis revealed about how teachers utilised imagination, tacit knowledge of teaching and fresh evidence of pupils learning, to develop practice knowledge and so enhance their pupils’ learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, 107–121. Dudley, P. (2015). Lesson Study: Professional learning for our time. Milton Park, UK: Routledge. Ericsson, K. A. (2006a). The influence of experience and deliberate practice on the development of expert performance. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 683–704). New York: Cambridge University Press. Ericsson, K. A. (2006b). An introduction to Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance: Its development, organization, and content. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R.
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Hoffman (Eds), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 3–19). New York: Cambridge University Press. Ericsson, K. A. (2014). Adaptive expertise and cognitive readiness: A perspective from the expert- performance approach. In H. F. O’Neil, R. S. Perez, & E. L. Baker (Eds), Teaching and measuring cognitive readiness (pp. 179–197). New York: Springer. Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P. J., & Hoffman, R. R. (Eds). (2006). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. Ericsson, K. A., & Lehmann, A. C. (1996). Expert and exceptional performance: Evidence of maximal adaptation to task constraints. Annual Review of Psychology, 47(1), 273–305. Feltovich, P. J., Prietula, M. J., & Ericsson, K. A. (2006). Studies of expertise from a psychological perspective. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 41–67). New York: Cambridge University Press. Fessler, R., & Christensen, J. (1992). The teacher career cycle: Understanding and guiding the professional development of teachers. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Fuller, F. F. (1969). Concerns of teachers: A developmental conceptualization. American Educational Research Journal, 6(2), 207–226. Fuller, F. F., & Bown, O. H. (1975). Becoming a teacher. In K. Ryan (Ed.), Teacher education (pp. 25–52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Griffioen, J. (1980). Supervisie van beginnende leraren [Supervision of beginning teachers]. (Doctoral thesis), University of Groningen. Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 8(3), 381–391. Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., Berliner, D. C., Cochran-Smith, M., McDonald, M., & Zeichner, K. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond, J. Bransford, P. LePage, K. Hammerness, & H. Duffy (Eds), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358–389). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hargreaves, A. (2005). Educational change takes ages: Life, career and generational factors in teachers’ emotional responses to educational change. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 967–983. Hatano, G., & Inagaki, K. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In H. Stevenson, H. Azuma, & K. Hakuta (Eds), Child development in Japan (pp. 262–272). New York: W.H. Freeman. Huberman, M. (1993). The lives of teachers [J. Neufeld Translation]. London: Cassell Villiers House. Kagan, D. M. (1992). Professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers. Review of Educational Research, 62(2), 129–169. Klieme, E., Hartig, J., & Rauch, D. (2008). The concept of competence in educational contexts. In J. Hartig, E. Klieme, & D. Leutner (Eds), Assessment of competencies in educational contexts (pp. 3–22). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers. Koellner, K., & Jacobs, J. (2015). Distinguishing models of professional development: The case of an adaptive model’s impact on teachers’ knowledge, instruction, and student achievement. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1), 51–67. Korthagen, F. A. J., & Kessels, J. P. A. M. (1999). Linking theory and practice: Changing the pedagogy of teacher education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 4–17. Korthagen, F. A. J., Kessels, J., Koster, B., Lagerwerf, B., & Wubbels, T. (2001). Linking practice and theory: The pedagogy of realistic teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Maskit, D. (2011). Teachers’ attitudes toward pedagogical changes during various stages of professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(5), 851–860. Maulana, R., Helms-Lorenz, M., & van de Grift, W. (2015). A longitudinal study of induction on the acceleration of growth in teaching quality of beginning teachers through the eyes of their students. Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 225–245.
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Mayer, R. E. (2003). What causes individual differences in cognitive performance. In R. J. Sternberg & E. L. Grigorenko (Eds), The psychology of abilities, competencies, and expertise (pp. 263–273). New York: Cambridge University Press. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97. Mulholland, J., & Wallace, J. (2005). Growing the tree of teacher knowledge: Ten years of learning to teach elementary science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42(7), 767–790. National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (Expanded ed.). Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Norman, G. R., Eva, K. W., Brooks, L., & Hamstra, S. (2006). Expertise in medicine and surgery. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 339–353). New York: Cambridge University Press. Peterson, P. L., & Comeaux, M. A. (1987). Teachers’ schemata for classroom events. Teaching and Teacher Education, 3(4), 319–331. Richardson, V. (1996). The role of attitudes and beliefs in learning to teach. In J. Sikula, T. Buttery, & E. Guyton (Eds), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 102–119). New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Rikers, R. M. J. P., Schmidt, H. G., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2000). Knowledge encapsulation and the intermediate effect. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(2), 150–166. Sabers, D. S., Cushing, K. S., & Berliner, D. C. (1991). Differences among teachers in a task characterized by simultaneity, multidimensionality and immediacy. American Educational Research Journal, 28(1), 63–88. Sammons, P., Day, C., Kington, A., Gu, Q., Stobart, G., & Smees, R. (2007). Exploring variations in teachers’ work, lives and their effects on pupils: Key findings and implications from a longitudinal mixedmethod study. British Educational Research Journal, 33(5), 681–701. Schmidt, H. G., Norman, G. R., & Boshuizen, H. P. (1990). A cognitive perspective on medical expertise: Theory and implication [published erratum appears in Acad Med 1992 Apr; 67(4), 287]. Academic Medicine, 65(10), 611–621. Schmidt, H. G., & Rikers, R. M. P. J. (2007). How expertise develops in medicine: Knowledge encapsulation and illness script information. Medical Education, 41(12), 1133–1139. Sonnentag, S., Niessen, C., & Volmer, J. (2006). Expertise in software design. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 373–387). New York: Cambridge University Press. Sweller, J. (2004). Instructional design consequences of an analogy between evolution by natural selection and human cognitive architecture. Instructional Science, 32(1–2), 9–31. Timperley, H. (2013). Learning to practise, a paper for discussion. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development: Best Evidence Synthesis. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education van Tartwijk, J., den Brok, P., Veldman, I., & Wubbels, T. (2009). Teachers’ practical knowledge about classroom management in multicultural classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3), 453–460. van Veen, K., Sleegers, P., & van de Ven, P. (2005). One teacher’s identity, emotions, and commitment to change: A case study into the cognitive-affective processes of a secondary school teacher in the context of reforms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 917–934. Veldman, I., van Tartwijk, J., Brekelmans, M., & Wubbels, T. (2013). Job satisfaction and teacher-student relationships across the teaching career: Four case studies. Teaching and Teacher Education, 32(1), 55–65. Verloop, N., van Driel, J., & Meijer, P. (2001). Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5), 441–461.
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Weinert, F. E. (2001). Concept of competence: A conceptual clarification. In D. S. Rychen & L. H. Salganik (Eds), Defining and selecting key competencies (pp.45–66). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers. Wongsopawiro, D., Zwart, R. C., & van Driel, J. (2016). Identifying pathways of teachers’ PCK development. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. doi: 10.1080/13540602.2016.1204286 Xu, H., & Pedder, D. (2014). Lesson Study: An international review of the research. In P. Dudley (Ed.), Lesson Study: Professional learning for our time (pp. 29–58). London: Routledge.
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48 Evolution of Research on Teachers’ Planning: Implications for Teacher Education E l a i n e M u n t h e a n d P a u l F. C o n w a y
The capacity to plan cannot be learned ‘from unguided classroom experience’ (Darling-Hammond, Banks, Zumwalt, Gomez, Sherin, Griesdorn, & Finn, 2005, p. 176), and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs tend to emphasize the provision of multiple opportunities for students to observe, plan, and practice diverse pedagogical approaches in diverse settings. However, planning can be regarded in technical terms, as a way to ensure effective classroom performance, but it can also be regarded as a means for professional learning and for curriculum development (Kelly, 2009), and thus both as a core competence itself and as a means for the development of other essential teaching competencies. How these two approaches are emphasized in ITE may vary and can create very different perspectives for future professional growth. Planning is most typically associated with the pre-active phase of teaching, and as such is seen as a dimension of anticipatory reflection (Conway, 2001; van Manen, 1995). However, it is also understood as encompassing the inter-active and post-active phases of teaching (Jackson, 1990) involving improvisation and reflection-in-action (Schön, 1987; Sawyer, 2011) as well as post-lesson review and planning for subsequent lessons. When teachers plan lessons, they anticipate and design the framework and environment where learning takes place. They align goals, activities, and assessments in repeated cycles of planning, enactment, review, and re-planning. In line with Crick’s definition of competence (2008), we can say that planning involves a complex combination of knowledge, skills, understanding, values, attitudes, and desire, and that these lead to effective action in the school.
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In this chapter, we will present research on planning in teaching and teacher education since about the 1950s with the advent of Tyler’s (1950) widely influential rational planning model involving four steps: (i) determine the school’s purposes (i.e. objectives), (ii) identify educational experiences related to purpose, (iii) organize the experiences, (iv) evaluate the purposes. Our three guiding questions are: (i) how has planning been studied; which aspects of planning are emphasized in the literature? (ii) can we identify patterns or developments in the literature over time? and (iii) how can insights from research on teacher planning and learning to plan inform how teacher education programs design the ways they design learning opportunities that enhance pre-service teachers’ competencies for planning? A central idea in this chapter is how research has evolved from an individual cognitive toward an ecological-situated framework – with the latter typically theorized in terms of situated (Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 1993), socio-cultural, and/or design sciences (Voogt, Laferrière, Breuleux, Itow, Hickey, & McKenney, 2015; McKenney, Kali, Markauskaite, & Voogt, 2015). Three important caveats are noteworthy. First, the cognitive to ecological move has not been linear. Rather, ecological-situated framings of teachers’ planning, while co-existing with the former, have extended, reframed, and/or sometimes overturned important insights gleaned from earlier cognitive-oriented studies. In some ways, the shift towards an ecological-situated perspective has also brought on a shift from studies of ‘what’ (what do teachers do?) to studies of how planning involves shared knowledge construction and professional learning. Second, our review is purposefully written as illustrative rather than systematic. As such, our focus is on illustrative key studies, i.e. widely cited, influential older ones, and recent studies that present new and generative advances in research on teachers’ planning that can inform the development of teacher education. Third, though this might appear as a rather obvious point, the initial research on planning in teaching was framed in singular terms, that is, teacher planning, whereas we now do so in the plural, ‘teachers’ planning’, as reflected in the chapter title. This move to describe planning in teaching in plural terms captures the broad move in the research toward more contextually oriented studies in the last quarter century. A major question for ITE programs is how this move to collaborative shared planning is reflected in ITE programs and what kinds of competencies this shift involves. In the following, we review the two prevailing perspectives which have framed research on teachers’ planning over the last half-century: the cognitive-rationalist perspective dominant in the 1990s, and now co-existing with ecological/situated perspectives which have become widely influential since the 1990s. In the latter part of the chapter we draw on these two influential perspectives on teachers’ planning, noting their uptake and implications for understanding teachers’ learning to plan in teacher education. In concluding the chapter, we note potential priorities in research on teachers’ planning in the context of learning to plan while learning to teach.
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Cognitive perspectives on teacher decisions and planning Reviewing twenty years of cognitively inspired research on teacher thinking, Clark and Peterson’s (1986) chapter in the Handbook of Research on Teaching identified two enduring conceptualizations of planning: (1) planning as a set of basic psychological processes where a person visualizes the future, inventories means and ends, and constructs a framework to guide his/her future action, and (2) planning as the things that teachers do when they say they are planning. Planning has been defined as ‘a process of preparing a framework for guiding teacher action’, and it was understood that planning is directed at action, not knowledge or self-development (Clark & Yinger, 1979, p. 8). Teachers identify content, develop a timeline, identify goals, skills, and objectives, decide on instructional materials, decide on activities to employ, decide on tests and quizzes, and adjust instructional plans on a weekly/daily basis (Young, 1998). Furthermore, teachers conduct eight different types of planning (Yinger, 1980; Clark & Yinger, 1979): six types are concerned with time span (weekly, daily, long range, short range, yearly, and term planning), and two describe a unit of content which teachers plan for (unit and lesson). Whether or not teachers’ planning is mainly concerned with the activity, the content or the objective (see e.g. Vaughn & Schumm, 1994; Sánchez & Valcárcel, 1999) varies across studies. However, several studies conclude that objective or goal is not necessarily a starting point despite the fact that the linear and structured model of instructional planning is often – or mainly – the model that is taught in teacher education programs (Zahorik, 1975; Clark & Yinger, 1979; Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 1994). The mismatch between what is taught during ITE and what practices develop afterwards was also addressed by Grant (1967), who pointed out that most teachers stop planning the way they were taught once they graduate from ITE. Yinger (1980) identified three stages in the planning process: the problemfinding stage (content, goals, and own knowledge), the problem formulation and solution stage (the design of instructional activities carried out through continuing processes of mental or hypothetical testing and adaptation), and implementation and evaluation of the activities as they unfolded in the classroom setting. This was described as a cyclic model with the final stage feeding into future problem-finding and problem formulation and solution stages.
Decisions, Uncertainty, and Perceived Pressures or Practicalities But what happens to the plans if lessons do not go as planned? Do teachers change the decisions they had made, and adapt according to unanticipated
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responses from their students? Clark & Yinger (1977, p. 301) investigated interactive decision making in classrooms, and concluded that ‘… teachers tend not to change the instructional process in midstream, even when it is going poorly’. Some years later, Borko and Livingston (1989) noted differences in use of information from enactment of plans among novice teachers and more experienced teachers. They found that more expert teachers notice classroom aspects differently than novice teachers and use this information more selectively during planning and teaching. A main reason for studying decision making in planning was that teachers’ decisions while planning ‘… have a profound influence on their classroom behaviors’ (Shavelson, 1987, p. 483). Shavelson explains that what ‘… d istinguishes the exceptional teacher from his or her colleague is not the ability to ask, say, a higher order question, but the ability to decide when to ask such a question’ (Shavelson, 1973, p. 147). Earlier research by Taba (1965) also pointed at the importance of questions. The sequence in which questions are asked is vitally important in achieving objectives, she maintained. It was the nature of questions that teachers asked that determined the level of thought for students, and these questions needed to be a part of the lesson planning in order to foster an appropriate level of sequencing. When should a teacher introduce a higher-level question during instruction? What consequences can the posing of different questions have for students’ learning opportunities? During the 1990s and up until today, the interest in cognitive-inspired research on teachers’ decision making in planning has not waned. What characterizes the further development is that other areas are introduced, for instance research on planning for the integration of technology (e.g. MacArthur & Malouf, 1991; Ling & Chai, 2008; Harris & Hofer, 2011; Krauskopf, Zahn, & Hesse, 2012; Michalsky & Kramarski, 2015) and decisions that are subject-matter specific (e.g. in mathematics: Li, Chen, & Kulm, 2009; Sullivan et.al., 2012). Research has also highlighted the importance of knowledge for decision making, e.g. Spear-Swerling and Zibulsky (2014), who find that teachers’ knowledge plays a role in time allocation in language arts instruction. A main conclusion was that teacher knowledge did predict teachers’ time allocation plans, but that many teachers chose to allocate time in ways that were inconsistent with recommendations. In addition to knowledge, issues of practicality also influence decisions made during planning. Doyle and Ponder (1977) identified three general criteria that teachers typically use to determine whether or not to adopt a practice or new method; instrumentality, congruence, and cost, and coined such factors the ‘practicality ethic’. If for instance a new method is believed to achieve a specific goal, if it is congruent with the teachers’ beliefs or previous experience, and if the ‘cost’ of employing the method is not too high, there is a fair chance that it will be adopted. This concept has been used since in several studies that analyze decisions teacher make, e.g. in a study by Priestley and Sime (2005) and Reid (2014), indicating a continued relevance of using this conceptual understanding
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for studying teacher decision making. The concept of a ‘practicality ethic’ also foreshadowed later ecologically informed research (e.g. Janssen, Westbroek, & Doyle, 2014). Yet another framework for teachers’ decisions in planning includes a power perspective, for instance a study by Floden, Porter, Schmidt, Freeman, and Schwille (1981) who were interested in teachers’ perceived responses to curriculum pressures. Combinations of pressures (pressures from above, new curricula, etc.) were systematically varied in their study. The authors were surprised at the degree to which teachers see themselves going along with whatever pressures are administered and incorporating these in their plans. Another surprising result was teachers’ reluctance to omit topics when pressures for new topics were introduced. Textbooks had less pressure on teachers’ decisions, but the pressure from tests was ‘striking’. There might be reason to assume that perceived pressures inhibit the decisions that teachers make when planning. This is also highlighted in a study among six teachers in Singapore (Ling & Chai, 2008), where five of the teachers were more inclined towards constructivist teaching practices, but in their plans they adhered to lesson plans that promoted information acquisition and regurgitation. A main reason for this was the need to prepare students for tests. The authors discuss how syllabi and exams can be barriers to more risk-taking in planning. What might be barriers to risk-taking for student teachers? In a cognitiveecological perspective, we might question how perceived pressures play a role in decisions student teachers make, and how this may inhibit the development of relevant teacher competencies. Pressures of assessment are central, and compliance to practices that are demonstrated by mentor teachers can play an important role. As we will see below, textbooks can also influence decisions student teachers make during planning.
Ecological perspectives on teachers’ planning: From individual to collaborative planning From the 1990s, in many countries, we see an increase in both practice and research focused on teachers’ collaborative work – including collaborative planning – informed very influentially by insights from Asia, with the introduction of Lesson and Learning Studies in schools and teacher education. Some years before, Little (1982, p. 331) had concluded that schools that encourage continuous professional development often emphasize (1) that teachers engage in frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete and precise talk about teaching practice, (2) that teachers are frequently observed and provided with useful critiques of their teaching, (3) that teachers plan, design, research, evaluate, and prepare teaching material together, and (4) that teachers teach each other the practice of teaching. All four areas require collaboration and are related to a
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collaborative planning cycle, which involves pre-lesson (or unit) collaboration, within-lesson collaboration, and post-lesson (or unit) collaboration. Once we lift our focus from the individual to the group, questions of shared knowledge in decision making emerge and also questions of culture for collaborative decision making. A problem with shared decision making in schools is how to foster a culture of open disagreement and trust. This is a highly pertinent question for teacher education: How can teacher education contribute to such competence? There is an obvious need for more attention on collaborative inquiry and learning in some parts of the world. Results based on the TALIS study (Gilleece, Shiel, Perkins, & Proctor, 2009) indicate that a dominant form of professional collaboration is ‘exchange and coordination’ activities. This is reported more frequently than ‘more complex professional collaboration’. The latter involves activities such as jointly planning or teaching the same class, taking part in year or subject area meetings, engaging in joint activities across different classes and age groups (e.g. projects) and discussing and coordinating homework practice across subjects (Gilleece et al., 2009, p. 84). The nature of planning as part of professional collaboration is a phenomenon that appears to differ across national contexts with some more likely to engage in ‘more complex collaborative practice’ and others tending toward ‘exchange and coordination”. In addition, TALIS noted that teachers reported spending an average of seven hours per week planning or preparing lessons (five hours in Finland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, up to ten hours in Croatia). In Japan teachers spend eighteen hours teaching students per week, indicating that they have considerably more time available for planning. TALIS points to very significant variation in teacher planning opportunities mediated both in terms of time (hours per week), and the scope for ‘more complex professional collaboration’ over ‘exchange and coordination collaboration’ in different countries.
Developing Competencies through Cycles of Planning Over the last twenty-five years, the ecological/situated perspective on teachers’ planning has generated a significant body of work (Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 1993; Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 1994; John, 2006; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Davis & Sumara, 1997). Insights into more complex collaborative planning have also been provided by research from China and Japan. Teachers in China are usually content specialists, and usually belong to two teacher research groups: a subjectbased research group, and a lesson preparation research group (Li et al., 2009, p. 719). In a study from 2009, Li et al. investigated both individual lesson plans (content, process, and student aspect) and a sequence of plans. Because China has a centralized education system, it was not unexpected that, although the teachers were from different schools, the content coherence was clearly influenced by the textbooks and teachers’ manuals (2009, p. 729). However, this did not prevent the teachers from making their own adjustments in how to treat the content and in selecting different pedagogical approaches. Although all the
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teachers were experienced teachers, they all regarded lesson planning as an important activity for developing their classroom instruction. ‘In particular, these teachers believed that the important factors in lesson planning include intensive studies of text books, considerations about their students, and mathematics knowledge connection’ (2009, p. 730). Actions that are collaboratively planned and enacted, but which are also collaboratively studied and further developed are at the core of what goes on during Lesson Study (see e.g. Lewis, 2002; Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998). Lesson study is a central component of Japan’s effort at teacher professional development (Ronda, 2013), and studies have reported positive effects for the development of teachers’ pedagogical and subject knowledge (Lewis, Perry, Friedkin, & Roth, 2012; Cajkler, Wood, Norton, & Pedder, 2013). In lesson study, groups of teachers meet to work on the design, implementation, testing, and improvement of one or more ‘research lessons’. Lewis (2002) emphasizes the meta-structure in what she labels the lesson study cycle. She attends to four critical structures: goal setting and planning; researching the lesson; lesson discussion; and consolidation of learning. Two aspects of lesson study are especially relevant for this review: 1) the emphasis it places on the planning stage, and 2) the emphasis it places on the cycle. The planning stage is an extended phase during lesson study, which involves aligning the individual lesson with both the past and the future learning for students, the study of text books and other materials, trying out different possible activities, discussing relevant activities and questions to elicit student thinking or learning goals, and anticipating student responses. The ‘script’ of lessons planned in Japan is more a dramaturgy (Shimuzu, 2008).
Pre-service teachers’ planning What are threshold competencies and knowledge for planning to which teacher education contributes? How does ITE contribute to the development of such competencies? Based on the brief review above, teachers deal with pressures when planning, they deal with issues of practicality, and their knowledge plays a role for the outcome of their plans. Their own ability to learn from experience can influence their planning, in how they are able to predict student thinking and behavior, and in how they are able to predict time needed to learn. Teachers’ competencies for planning can be enhanced through collaboration, and are related to designing curriculum and learning experiences, and to optimizing learning experiences for students.
Embracing ‘the Plan’ or Planning in ITE A central issue is the question of the emphasis placed on learning a correct planning method versus (or in addition to) the development of other teacher
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competencies through planning. One example in the first category is a study by Jones, Jones, and Vermette (2011), who addressed six common lesson planning pitfalls. The six pitfalls they identified are: the learning objective is unclear, students do not create an assessment of their understanding or the assessment is completed outside of class, students do not create evidence of their developing ideas, the assessment does not match the learning objective, the teacher does not know how to start the lesson, and students are passive recipients of knowledge. This study is geared toward learning to implement a standard template, an activity that is common in ITE programs. However, for ITE students, using a template like this also entails developing necessary teaching competencies: setting goals, deciding how to assess, what to assess, when to assess, etc. An interesting aspect of this study is that the consequences of the plans (the enactment in classrooms) are observed and brought back to the planning stage. Through observation, the researchers identify shortcomings that could be dealt with more effectively if the planning stage had been different. In this way, they also raise questions about how pre-service teachers learn to plan. There is a strong research-based case for teaching student teachers how to develop well-aligned lesson plans (Drost & Levine, 2015), and important steps involve unpacking the standard, creating an objective, creating formative and summative assessments, and designing meaningful activities (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011; Drost & Levine, 2015). Drost and Levine (2015) have identified three strategies that teacher educators (N=87) used to teach planning that addresses these issues. They are (1) expository instruction (instructor-centered, often passive with the student as receiver of information coming from a text or instructor), (2) handson instruction (students, often independently, actively show that they are grasping concepts and the instructor is mainly a facilitator), (3) collaborative instruction (an amalgamation of the two other strategies – instructors are facilitators and sages on the stage). The predominant evaluative tool was either an analytic or completion rubric, and the teachers tended to focus more on summative performance (the completed lesson plan) rather than on students’ engagement in formative practice. The pre-enactment planning stage is an important stage where many decisions are made that will have consequences for the students being taught. However, as Rusznyak and Walton (2011, p. 271) explain, there is a tendency for student teachers to quickly lapse into a description of classroom procedures in their lesson planning. They underestimate the conceptual complexity of teaching. ‘Good teaching looks like the ordering and deployment of skills’, Munby, Russell, and Martin pointed out (2001), ‘so learning to teach looks like acquiring the skills’. This, they continue, is a mechanistic view of teaching which dismisses theory and research. According to John (2006, p. 483), rationalistic, technical curriculum planning has been the dominant model underpinning student teachers’ lesson planning for a generation or more in England and Wales. How ITE programs emphasize the pre-planning stage varies across contexts and, some evidence suggests, across countries. Blömeke, Paine, Houang, Hsieh,
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Schmidt, Tatto, Bankov, Cedillo, Cogan, Han, Santillan, and Schwille’s (2008, p. 755) six-country comparative study in mathematics education (Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century, MT21; countries included: Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and the USA) developed coding categories to analyze lesson plans. They identified specific areas, e.g. lesson goals, teaching methods, teaching materials, the sequencing of the lesson, motivational strategies, student involvement, consideration of diverse needs, support of student cognition, mathematics content, assessment procedures, class climate, and feasibility. Findings can be summarized as follows: (i) significant cross-national differences on five of the six codes, (ii) the potential role of educational traditions (i.e. didaktik vs. curriculum) may help explain relative emphasis on different lesson aspects (e.g. more focus on assessment in the USA; a didaktik-based content-teacherpupil focus in Germany; a strong cognitive emphasis in Taiwan), (iii) different content focus with similarities between Korea and Taiwan, differences between the East Asian countries, and significant outcome focus in the USA sample. Other studies shed light on how student teachers can develop necessary competencies in relation to potential within-program differences. Metcalf, Hammer, and Kahlich’s work is one such informative study (1996). They conducted a quasi-experimental study where student teachers were divided into two groups, a ‘laboratory group’ and a ‘field practice group’. Laboratory teachers engaged in a guided series of peer teaching, simulation, role play, and problem solving. Field-based teachers engaged in similarly guided observational, tutorial, and whole-class teaching activities in middle school classrooms and completed detailed daily logs. All students received the same instruction in instructional planning, classroom management, instructional methods, grading and evaluation, and classroom decision making, and a major goal was to create optimal conditions for both groups. The results suggest that laboratory teachers, but not field experience teachers, improved their ability to reflect on teaching and to facilitate desirable instruction. The experiences were equally effective in developing teachers’ ability to plan and implement organized lessons. ‘Most dramatically’, the authors explain (1996, p. 277), ‘… laboratory teachers were much better able than field-experience teachers after treatment to provide high level, justificatory explanations of pedagogical actions in the cases’. The quality of feedback provided to student teachers and how they are able to use such feedback can scaffold the development of planning competencies. Ozugul, Olina, and Sullivan (2008) investigated effects of teacher, self and peer evaluation of lesson plans written by pre-service teachers. Effects were measured by analyzing the quality of new lesson plans following feedback. Students (n = 101) were assigned to one of three groups: teacher, self, or peer evaluation/ feedback. Similar to Metcalf et al. (1996) the format and quality of support and feedback mattered, so that, while all students improved their lesson plans, it was the group receiving feedback from teacher educators who had significantly better lesson plans (based on 15-item rubric). The types of feedback from each group
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varied; teachers provided corrective feedback (e.g. ‘Objectives are not observable’, p. 193), as well as suggestions to improve this (e.g. ‘Think about how you can observe that they understand the concept’, p. 193). In addition to the important role of support and feedback, the content focus of student teacher planning is impacted by another support/resource, that is, textbooks. Davis (2009) conducted a study among pre-service teachers in math education with findings indicating that pre-service teachers’ content knowledge oriented their decisions about the lesson content choices (see also Lui & Bonner, 2016). Pre-service teachers who had little knowledge of exponential functions in mathematics, and who did not learn more after having read the student textbook, decided that this was too difficult for the pupils they were going to teach and chose a different approach. Davis also found that the organization of the textbooks influenced how the pre-service teachers interacted with them. The lack of counterexamples in one of the books proved to be a barrier in helping teachers to understand the limits of different exponential properties (Davis, 2009, p. 385). While the Davis study is based on a small sample of pre-service teachers it provides a powerful example of how the ecological context of student teachers’ experience, in this case textbooks, frames teachers’ learning to plan.
Scaffolding Learning to Plan in ITE In summary, the focus on the plan or planning, the program context, and national context have emerged as important cultural dynamics shaping the learning to plan experience in ITE. Studies have revealed that competencies for planning can be effected through feedback, through textbooks used, and through experiences provided within the program. Experiences with collaborative shared planning and conducting complete cycles of planning, enacting, reflecting, refining, and enacting again also have a potential for developing competencies that shift a student teacher’s focus more towards their students’ learning. One such cyclical planning method is Lesson Study, which has also been implemented in teacher education. Results have been promising but also challenging as this cyclical planning approach involving studies of literature and instructional materials challenges reductive approaches to the preparation of new teachers (Cajkler & Wood, 2016; Murata & Pothen, 2011). This combination of challenge and promise is also evident in a design experiment conducted at one teacher education department involving two conditions: a ‘business-as-usual’ condition (BAU) and a Lesson Study intervention (INT) (Munthe, Bjuland, & Helgevold, 2016). The discussions among the collaborating student teachers and their mentor teacher in the BAU mentoring sessions were mainly about ‘Doings’, about the practicalities of teaching, whereas in the INT intervention discussions were more evenly divided between talk about students and talk about subject matter (Helgevold, Næsheim-Bjørkvik, & Østrem, 2015). The discourse among participants in the mentoring sessions during the
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intervention is characterized by more depth and more inquiry, and thus provides student teachers with more opportunities for professional learning. A second major difference between the two conditions was the length of time used for pre-mentoring (mentoring sessions before teaching). Whereas mentoring before teaching in the BAU condition could be as short as nine minutes, and the mentoring could take place shortly before the lesson, providing only brief time for any changes to be made, mentoring in the INT lasted longer and took place in reasonable time before teaching. A third difference between BAU and INT was the use of artefacts. During mentoring sessions in BAU, students did not bring artefacts or refer to observations made. During mentoring sessions in INT, artefacts were included in the mentoring sessions. This enhances the talk that went on in the groups because they could refer to observations, base their talk on pupils’ work, and reflect on consequences of choices made. Finally, although field practice was carried out in groups of about four in both conditions, the pre-service teachers in the BAU tended to operate individually. For the INT, pre-service teachers engaged collaboratively and shared responsibility. The study referred to above was carried out during field practice and involved student teachers collaborating in groups of about four, each with their mentor teacher. This is one example of how ITE programs attempt to create more authentic situations and to bridge the gap between ITE and teaching and learning to plan and teach while in school. In the above study, the mentor played an important role in scaffolding student teachers’ learning to plan through a cycle of planning – enacting – reflecting – modifying plans – enacting – consolidating learning. The study also revealed the challenges involved in scaffolding learning to plan since mentor teachers were not necessarily used to planning in this way themselves, nor all campus teachers. Studies on planning among in-service teachers have highlighted the role of teachers’ own knowledge (pedagogical content knowledge) when planning, the role of perceived pressures, and the role of collaboration. In-service teachers can base their plans on knowledge about students’ learning, their misconceptions, and experiences they have had previously. We have also seen that student teachers’ knowledge and the textbooks they use can play a role in their planning, and the kinds of collaborative planning experiences they have can also enhance their competence at planning. But how can teacher education play a role in developing the planning as a professional competence? One route may be what Janssen, Grossman, and Westbroek (2015) describe as the power of modularity. This would assume that ‘planning’ can be regarded as a complex system that can be decomposed into parts, or modules, and can be recomposed in a way that enhances understanding. ‘If we are to build approximations of practice that help develop expertise’, they maintain, ‘we need to identify components of practice that can be targeted for deliberate practice’ (p. 141). One way ahead would therefore be to decompose ‘planning’ into its many modules and related skills and practices, and provide student teachers with the opportunities to
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practice and understand the overall goals and reasons for planning. Since teacher education programs vary from a few months’ training to five-year concurrent and integrated MA programs, designs for scaffolding learning planning would most likely need to be quite different.
Conclusion and future research on teacher planning In summary, we conclude with three overarching observations: (i) planning as a process: steps, decision making and uncertainty, (ii) planning as cultural activities requiring differing competencies, and (iii) development of planning competence over time in ITE and rest of professional life cycle.
Planning as a Process: Steps, Decision Making and Uncertainty We have drawn a broad picture of how research on planning as a process has evolved from an individual cognitive toward an ecological-situated and collaborative framework. Several challenges for ITE have been mentioned, for instance: Why are skills that are emphasized during ITE ‘forgotten’ once a student becomes a teacher (e.g. Grant’s question from 1967)? Is there a mismatch that should or could be addressed? How do school culture or competencies stressed by school leaders play a role in novice teachers’ planning practices? Based on the studies referred to in this chapter, we cannot identify a coherent field investigating student teachers’ learning to plan, but there are important strands of research that have been productive and can be pursued further within both the cognitive and ecological-situated approaches. The question of how best to characterize changes in planning competence over time by various social configurations of student and beginning teachers in the early phases of teaching remains an important and under-studied issue. How does planning occur and develop in collaborative teaching (Pylman, 2016) or technology-enhanced collaborative planning (Al-Shareef & Al-Qarni, 2016) situations among student teachers or beginning teacher peers? How does planning develop in what we might term ‘rich’ planning contexts such as lesson study or study groups for newly qualified teachers, where beginning teachers are proactively supported at school and system level, given the growth of systematic and integrated approaches to new teacher induction (Smyth, Conway, Leavy, Darmody, Banks, & Watson, 2016)? Uncertainty can be understood as an unpleasant emotion, an endemic factor in teaching or as a starting point for professional inquiry. Professional uncertainty can be an important part of a planning cycle, e.g. in a lesson study cycle or in learning to plan through analyses of critical incidents (e.g. Nilsson, 2009). Different understandings of uncertainty can lead to different concerns in learning to plan. How we understand uncertainty in planning can also lead to variation
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in how learning to plan is scaffolded and taught, and which competencies are emphasized.
Insights from Cross-National Comparative Studies Analyzing ‘planning’ as a culturally embedded complex system with common components across contexts but with significant differences in emphases may be one route to follow. Using very broad strokes (and oversimplifying), we might see an emphasis on didaktik in Germany and other European countries, an emphasis on activities and assessment in the USA, and an emphasis on students’ thinking and collaborative teacher planning in some Asian countries. Which competencies are emphasized in different cultural contexts? Are some more complex than others, requiring different kinds of knowledge, attitudes, skills? Studies of both content and practices in ITE programs would be able to shed more light on how different competencies or which different competencies are developed. This could allow for a more systematic approach to studying learning in ITE. Another comparative approach is based on the cognitive perspective, namely its individual learner focus which has provided insights into how teachers at different phases of their careers plan, for example, early studies comparing novice and expert teachers. There is still more to be learned about learning to plan, learning planning, both across career phases and across cultural contexts. One important question for ITE is whether the practice of learning to plan in ITE has evolved from an individual cognitive competence to an ecological-situated collaborative practice. There are apparently some differences between countries.
Development of Planning Competence Over Time in Ite and Rest of Professional Life Cycle Significantly, this chapter has also brought up some questions for future research. For instance: What are the relationships between how planning is taught in ITE and how teachers plan in schools both during ITE and as qualified teachers? How do experiences from field practice effect changes in how pre-service teachers plan (see e.g. Broekmans, 1986)? Are these changes intentional? Are they conducive for pre-service teachers’ learning to teach? Following up on Helgevold et al.’s study (2015), we can also question how the quality of mentoring that takes place during field practice, and what the mentors direct attention to for the preservice teachers, influence what/how pre-service teachers learn to plan. A second issue is the continuum of teacher education. McMahon, Forde, and Dickson (2013) pose three pertinent questions for future study and designs of ITE and professional learning vis-à-vis planning: (i) what are the essential minimum requirements for the initial phase of teachers’ careers? (ii) what are the core principles of accomplishment and leadership that can be enhanced through
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in-service development? (iii) how to design learning to plan approaches that can have an impact on pupil outcomes? As such, these themes resonate with Janssen, Grossman, and Westbroek’s (2015) focus on how to modulize learning to plan. Significantly, however, there is a lack of research that is longitudinal and provides insight into how learning to plan and learning in planning influences teaching and changes over time. We know little about the consequences of student and beginning teachers’ plans and enactments for pupils’ outcomes. What do we expect novice teachers to understand, know, and be able to do? How are these competences enhanced during professional learning in schools? How do we design approaches for learning to plan in ways that have an impact on pupils’ learning? It would also be relevant to study how teachers’ learning opportunities for planning contribute to their capacity for innovative professional discretion or ‘the ability to go beyond merely choosing among established and sanctioned curriculum options to creating new curricular-instructional practices that ameliorate the dilemmas of their domain of curriculum practice’ (Haworth, 1986, p. 6, quoted by Sawyer, 2011, p. 9). Another area for future research is the role of teachers’ knowledge in planning (see e.g. Davis, 2009; Spear-Swerling & Zibulsky, 2014). Some studies have identified differences between countries. This is interesting in and of itself, but it could also be interesting to study the whole cycle of p lanning – enactment – planning across countries to investigate the consequences the different kinds of planning ‘scripts’ have for what goes on in classrooms, for students’ learning and inclusion, and what consequences such cycles have for teachers’ learning. Questions of ‘who decides’ are relevant in understanding planning practices across countries, and how national frameworks, textbooks, and tests matter (especially the new teacher and school accountability frameworks in many jurisdictions) (Mausethagen, 2013; Conway, 2013) for what and how teachers plan.
References Al-Shareef, S. Y., & Al-Qarni, R. A. (2016). The effectiveness of using teacher-teacher wikis in collaborative lesson planning and its impact on teacher’s classroom performance, English Language Teaching, 9(4), 186. Blömeke, S., Paine, L., Houang, R. T., Hsieh, F.-J., Schmidt, W., Tatto, M. T., Bankov, K., Cedillo, T., Cogan, L., Han, S. I., Santillan, M., & Schwille, J. (2008). Future teachers’ competence to plan a lesson: first results of a six-country study on the efficiency of teacher education, ZDM Mathematics Education, 40(5), 749–762. Borko, H., & Livingston, C. (1989). Cognition and improvisation: differences in mathematics instruction by expert and novice teachers, American Educational Research Journal, 26(4), 473–498. Broekmans, J. (1986). Short-term developments in student teachers’ lesson planning, Teaching and Teacher Education, 2(3), 215–228. Cajkler, W., & Wood, P. (2016). Mentors and student-teachers ‘lesson studying’ in initial teacher education, International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 5(2), 84–98. Cajkler, W., Wood, P., Norton, J., & Pedder, D. (2013). Lesson Study: towards a collaborative approach to learning in initial teacher education? Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(4), 537–554.
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Clark, C. M., & Peterson, P. L. (1986). Teachers’ thought processes. In M. C. Wittock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd ed., pp. 255–296). New York: Macmillan. Clark, C.M., & Yinger, R. (1977). Research on teacher thinking, Curriculum Inquiry, 7(4), 279–394. Clark, C., & Yinger, R. (1979). Three studies of teacher planning, Research Series no. 55. The Institute for Research on Teaching, Michigan State University. Downloaded October 1, 2015 from http:// education.msu.edu/irt/PDFs/ResearchSeries/rs055.pdf Conway, P. F. (2001). Anticipatory reflection while learning to teach: from a temporally truncated to a temporally distributed model of reflection in teacher education, Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(1), 89–106. Conway, P. F. (2013). Cultural flashpoint: the politics of teacher education reform in Ireland, The Educational Forum, 77(1), 51–72. Crick, R. D. (2008). Key competencies for education in a European context: narratives of accountability or care, European Educational Research Journal, 7(3), 311–318. Darling-Hammond, L., Banks, J., Zumwalt, K., Gomez, L., Sherin, M. G., Griesdorn, J., & Finn, L. (2005). Educational goals and purposes: developing a curricular vision for teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Brandsford (Eds), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 169–200). New York: John Wiley. Davis, J. D. (2009). Understanding the influence of two mathematics textbooks on prospective secondary teachers’ knowledge, Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 12(5), 365–389. Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (1997). Cognition, complexity, and teacher education, Harvard Educational Review, 67(1), 105–126. Doyle, W., & Ponder, G. A. (1977). The practicality ethic in teacher decision-making, Interchange, 8(3), 1–12. Drost, B. R., & Levine, A. C. (2015). An analysis of strategies for teaching standards-based lesson plan alignment to preservice teachers, Journal of Education, 195(2), 37–47. Floden, R. E., Porter, A. C., Schmidt, W. H., Freeman, D. J., & Schwille, J. R. (1981). Responses to curriculum pressures: a policy-capturing study of teacher decisions about content, Journal of Educational Psychology, 73(2), 129–141. Gilleece, L., Shiel, G., Perkins, R., with Proctor, M. (2009). Teaching and Learning International Survey. National Report for Ireland. Dublin: Educational Research Centre. Grant, D. A. (1967). A refocus on lesson planning, Teachers College Record, 68(6), 503–508. http:// www.tcrecord.org. ID Number: 2124, date accessed: 11/1/2015. Harris, J. B., & Hofer, M. J. (2011). Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in action: a descriptive study of secondary teachers’ curriculum-based, technology-related instructional planning, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 43(3), 211–229. Haworth, L. (1986). Autonomy: an essay in philosophical psychology and ethics. New Haven, CT: Yale. Helgevold, N., Næsheim-Bjørkvik, G., & Østrem, S. (2015). Key focus areas and use of tools in mentoring conversations during internship in initial teacher education, Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 128–137. Jackson, P. W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York and London: Teachers College Press (reissued). Janssen, F., Grossman, P., & Westbroek, H. (2015). Facilitating decomposition and recomposition in practice-based teacher education: the power of modularity, Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 137–146. Janssen, F., Westbroek, H., & Doyle, W. (2014). The practical turn in teacher education: designing a preparation sequence for core practice frames, Journal of Teacher Education, 65(3), 195–206. John, P. D. (2006). Lesson planning and the student teacher: re-thinking the dominant model, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), 483–498. Jones, K. A., Jones, J., & Vermette, P. J. (2011). Six common lesson planning pitfalls – recommendations for novice educators, Education, 131(4), 845–864. Kelly, A. V. (2009). The curriculum: theory and practice. London: Sage.
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Krauskopf, K., Zahn, C., & Hesse, F. W. (2012). Leveraging the affordances of Youtube: the role of pedagogical content knowledge and mental models of technology functions for lesson planning with technology, Computers and Education, 58(4), 1194–1206. Lewis, C. (2002). What are the essential elements of Lesson Study? The California Science Project Connection, 2(6). November/December 2002. Lewis, C., & Tsuchida, I. (1998). The basics in Japan: the three C’s, Educational Leadership, 55(6), 32–37. Lewis, C. C., Perry, R. R., Friedkin, S., & Roth, J. R. (2012). Improving teaching does improve teachers: evidence from Lesson Study, Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 368–375. Li, Y., Chen, X., & Kulm, G. (2009). Mathematics teachers’ practices and thinking in lesson plan development: a case of teaching fraction division, ZDM Mathematics Education, 41(6), 717–731. Ling, C. P., & Chai, C. S. (2008). Teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their planning and conduct of computer-mediated classroom lessons, British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 807–828. Little, J. W. (1982). Norms of collegiality and experimentation: workplace conditions of school success, American Educational Research Journal, 19(3), 325–340. Lui, A. M., & Bonner, S. M. (2016). Preservice and inservice teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and instructional planning in primary school mathematics, Teaching and Teacher Education, 56, 1–13. MacArthur, C. A., & Malouf, D. B. (1991). Teachers’ beliefs, plans, and decisions about computer-based instruction, The Journal of Special Education, 25(1), 44–72. Mausethagen, S. (2013). A research review of the impact of accountability policies on teachers’ workplace relations, Educational Research Review, 9, 16–33. McKenney, S., Kali, Y., Markauskaite, L., & Voogt, J. (2015). Teacher design knowledge for technology enhanced learning: an ecological framework for investigating assets and needs, Instructional Science, 43(2), 181–202. McMahon, M., Forde, C., & Dickson, B. (2013). Reshaping teacher education through the professional continuum, Educational Review, 67(2), 158–178. Metcalf, K. K., Ronen Hammer, M. A., & Kahlich, P. A. (1996). Alternatives to field-based experiences: the comparative effects of on-campus laboratories, Teaching and Teacher Education, 12(3), 271–283. Michalsky, T., & Kramarski, B. (2015). Prompting reflections for integrating self-regulation into teacher technology education, Teachers College Record, 117(5), 1–38. Munby, H., Russell, T., & Martin, A. K. (2001). Teachers’ knowledge and how it develops. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching, (4th ed., pp. 877–904). Washington, DC: AERA. Munthe, E., Bjuland, R., & Helgevold, N. (2016). Lesson Study in field practice: a time-lagged experiment in initial teacher education in Norway, International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 5(2), 142–154. Murata, A., & Pothen, B. E. (2011). Lesson Study in pre-service elementary mathematics methods courses: connecting emerging practice and understanding. In L. Hart, A. Alston, & A. Murate (Eds), Lesson Study research and practice: Learning together (pp. 103–116). Norwell, MA: Springer. Nilsson, P. (2009). From lesson plan to new comprehension: exploring student teachers’ pedagogical reasoning in learning about teaching, European Journal of Teacher Education, 32(3), 239–258. Ozugul, G., Olina, Z., & Sullivan, H. (2008). Teacher, self and peer evaluation of lesson plans written by preservice teachers, Education Technology Research Development, 56(2), 181–201. Priestley, M., & Sime, D. (2005). Formative assessment for all: a whole-school approach to pedagogic change, The Curriculum Journal, 16(4), 475–492. Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning?, Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4–15. Pylman, S. (2016). Reflecting on talk: a mentor teacher’s gradual release in co-planning, The New Educator, 12(1), 48–66. Reid, M. J. (2014). Ethic of practicality analysis of successful group curriculum planning by teachers, Interchange, 45(1–2), 75–84.
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Ronda, E. (2013). Scaffolding teacher learning through Lesson Study. In S. Ulep, A. Punzalen, M. Ferido, & R. Reyes (Eds), Lesson Study: Planning together, learning together (pp. 195–216). Quezon City, Philippines: UPNISMED. Rusznyak, L., & Walton, E. (2011). Lesson planning guidelines for student teachers: a scaffold for the development of pedagogical content knowledge, Education as Change, 15(2), 271–285. Sánchez, G. M., & Valcárcel, V. (1999). Science teachers’ views and practices in planning for teaching, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(4), 493–513. Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2011). Structure and improvisation in creative teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Shavelson, R. J. (1973). What is the basic teaching skill?, The Journal of Teacher Education, 24(2), 144–151. Shavelson, R. (1987). Planning. In M. Dunkin (Ed.), International encyclopedia of teaching and teacher education (pp. 483–486). Oxford: Pergamon. Shimizu, Y. (2008). Exploring Japanese teachers’ conception of mathematics lesson structure: similarities and differences between pre-service and in-service teachers’ lesson plans, ZDM Mathematics Education, 40(6), 941–950. Smyth, E., Conway, P. F., Leavy, A., Darmody, M., Banks, J., & Watson, D. (2016). Review of the Droichead teacher induction pilot programme. ESRI/Teaching Council (Ireland), Dublin/Maynooth. Available online: https://www.esri.ie/publications/review-of-the-droichead-teacher-induction-pilotprogramme-2/ Spear-Swerling, L., & Zibulsky, J. (2014). Making time for literacy: teacher knowledge and time allocation in instructional planning, Reading and Writing, 27(8), 1353–1378. Sullivan, P., Clarke, D. M., Clarke, D. J., Albright, J., Farrell, L., Freebody, P., Gerrard, J., & Michels, D. (2012). Teachers’ planning processes: Seeking insights from Australian teachers, Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 17(3), 4–8. Taba, H. (1965). The teaching of thinking, Elementary English, 42(5), 538–541. Tyler, R. W. (1950). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. van Manen, M. (1995). Epistemology of reflective practice, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1(1), 33–50. Vaughn, S., & Schumm, J. S. (1994). Middle school teachers’ planning for students with learning disabilities, Remedial and Special Education, 15(3), 152–161. Voogt, J., Laferrière, T., Breuleux, A., Itow, R. C., Hickey, D. T., & McKenney, S. (2015). Collaborative design as a form of professional development, Instructional Science, 43(2), 259–282. Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units. Alexandra, VA: ASCD. Yinger, R. J. (1980). A study of teacher planning, Elementary School Journal, 80(3), 107–127. Yinger, R., & Hendricks-Lee, M. (1993). Working knowledge in teaching. In J. Calderhead, C. Day, & P. Denicolo, (Eds), Research on teacher thinking: Understanding professional development (pp. 100–123). London: Falmer Press. Yinger, R. J., & Hendricks-Lee, M. S. (1994). Approaches to teacher planning. Education: The complete encyclopedia. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd. Young, A. (1998). Do superior teachers employ systematic instructional planning procedures? A descriptive study, Educational Technology, Research and Development, 46(2), 65–78. Zahorik, J. A. (1975). Teachers’ planning models, Educational Leadership, 32(2), 134–139.
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49 Developing Teacher Competence from a Situated Cognition Perspective Sue Catherine O’Neill
How teachers learn to teach and how they become competent and effective professionals have been the focus of ongoing educational research endeavors and debate (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, & Bransford, 2005; Sultana, 2009). Pedagogical competence, for the purpose of this chapter, is defined as the ability to strategically use resources and instructional methods to effectively and efficiently teach the curriculum to students: knowing what and how to teach, plus enacting it. What it means to be competent at the end of an initial teacher education program also differs from what it means to be highly accomplished, as does the training available to and sought by teachers at different career stages (Richter, Kunter, Klusman, Lüdtke, & Baumert, 2011; Ward, Grudnoff, Brooker, & Simpson, 2013). In this chapter, the development of teacher competence from a situated cognition perspective during preservice years, and after joining the profession, will be explored.
What Makes Cognition Situated? Situated cognition has its roots in several scientific research areas such as anthropology, psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, sociology, and linguistics (Clancey, 2009). Within these areas of research, theories such as constructivism, participatory processes, and others would evolve into theories of cognition being situated. From this theoretical perspective, cognition is thought to be embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted (Robbins & Aydede, 2009; Rowlands, 2010).
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Situated, in this context, refers to where cognition occurs for an organism. As embodied, Rowlands (2010) suggests cognition involves more than the brain and spinal cord: sensorimotor inputs from the whole body are utilized. Thus, by design, the brain and wider bodily structures are dependent upon each other and can even be considered constituents of cognitive processes. For teachers, cognition is embodied as they receive information through their wider bodily senses (sensorimotor), from their classroom environment. According to Rowlands (2010), cognition is also embedded; organisms and their environments are inseparable. Cognition is dependent on the environment in that some mental processes can only function in conjunction with or in tandem with information stored in the environment. By relying on the surrounding environment, the complexity of a task can be reduced (Clark, 2012). Consider how a teacher relies on set routines in their classroom to reduce the daily task demands of classroom organization. More controversial is the idea that some cognition (mental processes) extends beyond the organism’s bodily limits into the surrounding social, cultural, and physical environment (Wilson & Clark, 2009). In the extended thesis, an organism performs mental processes such as manipulations and transformations, or exploits information-bearing structures in the surrounding world. For example, consider how making a note-to-self on a piece of paper reduces the demands of remembering (an overall cognitive process) on your working memory. From a socio-cultural stance, consider how an individual teacher’s cognition can be extended through exploiting the communal knowledge of a professional community of teachers (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996). Teachers’ knowledge from this perspective can reside collectively in the profession and within the individual (Greeno et al., 1996). The last thesis of situated cognition is that it is enacted. According to Ward and Stapleton (2011), cognition depends upon both the potential and actual activity of the individual organism in their environment. Via attunement to one’s environment, the individual’s enacted mind determines the relevance of the features or affordances of the environment to its capacities, expectations, and needs: it responds to the environment (Rowlands, 2010). Teachers learn to be teachers from engaging in the practice of teaching. From a socio-cultural standpoint the term ‘situated cognition’ was first used by Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) in their explanation of how novices learned via a cognitive apprenticeship (CA). Soon after, Lave and Wenger (1991) introduced the term legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) in a community of practice (CoP) as their preferred terminology to explain how novices meaningfully acquired professional knowledge, skills, and understanding, and were enculturated through relationships with others, via activity in the world, over time. Although there are other sub-theories that have evolved; see for example, distributed cognition (Salomon, 1997) and activity theory (Engeström, Engeström, & Suntio, 2009); this chapter will focus on how CA and CoP approaches have
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been understood and utilized by teacher educators in the development of teacher competence.
Learning, knowledge, and transference to facilitate competence The transfer of knowledge to new contexts from professional development (PD) is typically poor, with new knowledge and skills seldom adopted in practice (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). To overcome the issues of transference, promoting competency using a situated cognition approach theoretically holds some appeal. Situated cognition approaches afford learning opportunities through exposure: learning is sometimes caught rather than taught (Sultana, 2009). By learning with others through activity, in context, transference issues should theoretically be lessened. From this perspective, competence is viewed as a shared capability, not just an individual one (Boreham, 2004). According to Greeno et al. (1996) learning, from a situated perspective, requires attention to the affordances and constraints of the available physical and social environment. Further, they posited that understanding or knowing involves analyzing situations or the environment for ‘the regularities of successful activity’ (p. 20). Lastly, to promote the transfer of knowledge, individuals must be able to recognize the affordances and constraints that remain unchanged between two contexts.
Situated Cognition Theories Applied to Teacher Education As applied to the education of teachers, situated cognition in the form of cognitive apprenticeship (CA) or community of practice (CoP) was not applied as either a lens to examine professional learning, or as an instructional design until the 1990s (e.g., Browne & Ritchie, 1991). In the seminal work on situated cognition by Brown et al. (1989), it was first postulated that it is through activity that knowledge is created and disseminated, leading to learning. Conceptual knowledge was conceived to be like a set of tools, akin to artefacts of the culture that developed them. In this thesis, learning requires a combination of activity, culture, and concepts in the context where essential information is available and indexed. In a professional community, such as teachers, novices access knowledge via engaging in authentic activity within a cognitive apprenticeship (CA), with their more experienced and knowledgeable colleagues. According to Brown et al. (1989), knowledge is imparted through expert modeling. Ideally this would be in classrooms, as an authentic, situated context aids conceptual and procedural knowledge integration. Modeling should be paired
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with articulation of metacognitive processes such as think-alouds so that tacit knowledge can be revealed (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991). Next, scaffolds and coaching should be provided for the novice/s that are faded over time as competence develops. By sequencing and structuring tasks to increase complexity, diversity, and scale, experienced teachers can assist novices’ integration and generalization of knowledge. The novice teacher would then participate in a collaborative exploration of the task with expert feedback, where ideas are articulated, exploited, and reflected upon as a group: as a sociological process embedded in culture. Novices gain confidence, expertise, and motivation, whilst concurrently developing the language/discourse and beliefs of their culture: enculturation as a teacher occurs. From a divergent position as anthropologists, Lave and Wenger (1991) viewed learning as a socio-historical practice. According to Lave and Wenger, learning starts with participation in social practice, ‘through relations among people in activity in, with, and arising from the socially and culturally structured world … as a member of a sociocultural community’ (pp. 51–52). As applied to teaching, novices need opportunities to observe others who are more skilled, and then be permitted legitimate practice. Novitiates would begin as partial participants at the periphery of the social world of a community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Over time, their involvement and participation in the teaching community increases, where they develop more complex and meaningful skills leading to full or central participation. Identity transforms from novice to expert (Wenger, 1998). The teaching community provides both context and content (curriculum), delivering implicit and explicit instruction in the knowledge, skills, and understanding required by that community (Barab, Barnett, & Squire, 2002). The presence of the novice teacher in the community could also transform and invigorate it by the addition of new ideas. Unequal power relations, however, between novice and expert teacher, and issues of access, could impede full participation, resulting in learning being a non-linear process. Later, Wenger (1998) evolved the theory of CoPs, determining that mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire were the three defining features of a CoP. Wenger asserted that an understanding of these features could be useful in the design of learning experiences. He asserted that designers should: use the right personnel in the right location in the right balance; involve the CoP in the design of learning based on what they need to be a full participant in the community; balance prescriptions of practice with emergent possibilities of practice; and incorporate tools, procedures, or plans to assist meaning-making. What follows is an overview of research conducted with inservice and preservice teachers where the theory has been used to explain how teachers learn with others, and what has been learned from the intentional design of learning experiences from a situated cognition perspective. The research literature included here was drawn from a database search of ERIC, PsycInfo, and of high-quality journals dedicated to teacher education (Journal of Teacher Education, Teaching
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and Teacher Education, Teaching Education) using the terms situated cognition, cognitive apprenticeship, and communities of practice combined with teacher education.
As an explanatory lens for how teachers learn as a socially mediated process Researchers have used situated cognition as an explanatory lens in the process of seeking meaning from observing teachers as they engaged in informal and formal professional development (PD). Some researchers have been interested in finding evidence of how CoPs form online (see, for example, El Hani & Greca, 2013) or in face-to-face contexts (see, for example, Akerson, Cullen, & Hanson, 2009). These studies confirmed that teachers who shared a common interest or subject area could develop into a CoP over time, through mutual engagement, in the unifying enterprise of improving their practice. Novices in CoPs receive more than emotional support from those with expertise. Through informal discussions and critical reflection, their content knowledge and pedagogical methods can be extended in what Grangeat and Gray (2007) asserted are novices’ preferred method of PD. El Hani and Greca (2013) noted that some novice members in an online CoP became involved in researchers’ action research projects, and tried others’ practices in their own classrooms. This would suggest that some were able to attend to, analyze, and discriminate the affordances and limitations of practices and programs others had shared. Informal PD can also arise from formal PD sessions. Cuddapah and Clayton (2011) demonstrated that a CoP of beginning teachers formed during ongoing district-wide PD sessions. They showed that, when time is allowed for informal discussions, collective and individual learning and enculturation could occur. The group provided mutual informal learning and support through multidimensional peer mentoring. Together they problem solved, affirmed, and shared resources, contemplating how the strategies they shared could be incorporated into their practice. The authors posited that the lack of a hierarchy within the group promoted open dialogue about problems and facilitated reflection and the sharing and challenging of beliefs and ideas about teaching and students. In other accounts of informal PD, the day-to-day interactions between colleagues in schools can provide authentic learning opportunities that could increase competence. Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004) studied workplace learning in department-level CoPs in UK secondary schools. They asserted that departments that were collaborative benefited in their pedagogical development, incorporating new ideas and policies into their teaching. Practices that promoted learning included: observing others’ classes; spending time together during recesses discussing improvements; incidentally sharing ideas from training and the wider world; heads of departments planning for deliberate training to improve practice
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or implement policy; and taking on student teachers who injected new ideas and technology and promoted self-reflection. In another account of informal workplace learning, Horn (2005) showed how teachers could develop competences through everyday interactions in the workplace. These everyday interactions included teacher replays (recounts of events) and rehearsals (modeling alternate responses) of real classroom events. Teachers collectively analyzed each other’s situations, reflected on practice, and offered other ways of viewing situations. Replays and rehearsals assisted teachers in identifying successful pedagogic practices, and provided attention to the affordances and constraints of situations, promoting learning and transfer to practice. PD in this sense was ongoing and powerful in promoting transformative change in practice, building individual and collective competency. Studying the interactions between teachers in formal PD sessions has also revealed important understandings of learning as a socially mediated process. When PD is conducted off-site, teachers must cognitively work harder to attend to the affordances and limitations of the practices they are learning about. They must be able to analyze them for successful elements, and see the possibilities within their own contexts. Off-site PD can, however, be supported by including teachers who have a proclivity for inquiry and problem solving (Leko, Kiely, Brownell, Osipova, Dingle, & Mundy, 2015). Leko et al. showed that a proclivity for inquiry proved to be more important than having group members with good content knowledge, as they modeled problem solving and stimulated group discussion that focused on student learning. They suggested that teacher educators should highlight to PD participants the sort of discourse that promotes learning. Strategies such as asking participants to provide more detail of what and why in their descriptions, prompting participants to ask questions of experts when problem solving, or designing activities that encourage integration of PD content with student needs and current curriculum were advocated.
The intentional use of situated cognition approaches in the design of teacher education In this section, the outcomes of teacher educator efforts to develop teacher competence from the intentional use of situated cognition approaches are presented. Outcomes from training delivered to inservice and preservice teachers are discussed. Both CA and CoP approaches were located in the literature base. In these studies, learning often occurred through the act of producing an artefact (cognition through enaction), after expert modeling and scaffolding of the practices (cognition as embedded and via extension). This was followed by collaboration and support of peers or experts (cognition as embedded and via extension), in context (cognition as embodied and embedded).
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Perhaps in response to teachers’ problems with integrating technology in classrooms and their resultant low self-efficacy (Kim, Lee, Spector, & DeMeester, 2013), researchers have investigated PD methods in this domain. Two studies were located on efforts to up-skill teachers using situated cognition approaches. In the first study, teachers were taught how to write computer software using Etoys to produce their own multimedia, digital storybooks (Lee, 2011). Professional development incorporated the CA steps reported in Brown et al. (1989). Lee demonstrated that the teachers became competent in software writing after the 12-week course, as evidenced by the quality of their final product that was evaluated by external assessors. Although the skills were acquired, the teachers in this study indicated that transference of these skills to their classroom was unlikely due to time constraints. In a much longer period of PD, Kopcha (2012) demonstrated via an extended two-year period of situated PD based on CoP principles that teachers’ attitudes to technology integration could be improved and sustained. Kopcha provided strong initial support through on-site PD, and transitioned teachers to provide their own support in the second year by strategically developing a CoP. As training occurred in their school and classrooms, the affordances and limitations of integrating technology remained constant. Competence, however, was only maintained at year-one levels in the second year. Teachers reported that, without dedicated in-class support, time, and someone to address equipment reliability issues, their technology integration was inhibited. Ongoing PD was also a feature of two studies conducted with inservice teachers in the UK and the Netherlands. Situated cognition approaches, by design, incorporate ongoing support and feedback to develop competency. Nichol and Turner-Bisset (2006) and de Jager, Reezigt, and Creemers (2002) both reported measureable improvements in teachers displaying the practices and skills imparted in training that spanned at least six months. Both studies used a CA approach to deliver the PD. In the first study, post expert modeling, an iterative cycle of collaborative lesson plan design, teaching the lesson, followed by reflection and peer feedback, was instrumental in developing competency in the history inquiry method. Competency was judged by the quality of their final lesson plans. In the process of collectively analyzing and reflecting upon the lesson plans, knowledge transfer and competence was enhanced via extended cognition (Greeno et al., 1996). In the second study, in addition to group training, three coaching sessions that were scheduled three months apart were included to assist the transfer of skills to teachers’ classrooms. There is some research that indicates that teachers’ preferences for PD differ by career stage (Grangeat & Gray, 2007). Newly graduated teachers have indicated a preference for observations and informal discussions with their colleagues. Informality was evident in the study by Dalgarno and Colgan (2007). Here, a mathematics teacher educator invited beginning teachers, who were exstudents, to join an online CoP. The expert shared exemplary resources, provided
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varied professional development topics, sent weekly group emails, provided a discussion space, and established a twenty-four hour helpline where just-in-time and on-demand support to graduates could be obtained from the community. Members’ posts suggested that they were trying new ideas in their classrooms and reflecting on their practices. Unlike teacher educators of inservice teachers, teacher educators of preservice teachers typically have the luxury of an entire course or, at times, programs to work towards developing essential, foundation teaching competences. Situated cognition approaches have formed the basis for the design of entire programs, coursework activities, and the practicum (student teaching). Korthagen (2010) wondered why the work of Lave and Wenger (1991) had not been more fully utilized in teacher education as he felt the principles had much to offer. For more than two decades, Korthagen and colleagues have used situated learning theory in the design of a realistic approach to the teacher education program at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (Korthagen, 2010; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). School-based teacher educators are responsible for the pedagogical instruction of preservice secondary teachers, in schools, three days a week. External evaluations of the Utrecht program from student teachers, graduates, and industry have rated this program most highly in the Netherlands (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). The gradual increase in activity/teaching demands and alternating between university-based and school-based learning led to solid theory to practice connections. In this program, preservice teachers learn in real teaching communities, via social practice. The program uses a three-level model first developed by Korthagen and Lagerwerf in 1996. At level one, their legitimized experiences assist the formation of gestalts: a cognitive science concept (Korthagen, 2010). To do this, they must analyze their teaching. At level two, these gestalts, via reflection-in-action, can be arranged into schemas: a mental network of gestalts that are more generalized, less situation-specific. In a CoP comprising experienced educators and their preservice teacher peers, they interrogate and reflect upon their actions and student responses to their teaching. By discussing evolving gestalts, meaning can be co-created, promoting pedagogical competence and collegiality (Korthagen, 2010). Ideally, these schemas are then connected and arranged logically to form a theory at level three, which assists them in understanding a type of situation. In another account of a whole teacher education program designed around a CoP approach, Barab et al. (2002) reported the benefits and tensions of an alternate, performance, and community-based teacher education program. The Community of Teachers (CoT) program was developed by Indiana University to prepare teachers for secondary schools. Preservice teachers learn to teach under a teacher-mentor in schools, initially for one day per week until they commence their student teaching practicum. In addition, the CoT members attended weekly university-based, three-hour-long student-led seminars. Seminar cohorts consist of one teacher educator and approximately 15 students with varying experience
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levels from one month to four years. Students can come from different disciplines. They participate together in the same seminar group for two to four years. In this design, learning is situated in the group through social interactions rather than in the individual (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Barab et al. (2002) suggested that tensions within the CoT, such as the value of theory over practice, and stability versus change in the seminar group promoted learning. Over time, preservice teachers develop pedagogical competences from experiences in schools, through discussions and activities in the seminars, from reading literature, and through the construction of their portfolio. Barab et al. suggested that teacher educators interested in developing CoT programs minimize the technical structure in the program so as to promote community development and ownership. This also facilitates evolution by the rolling cohort, recreating the system anew. CA approaches have also inspired program-wide approaches to developing competency. Bell, Maeng, and Binns (2013) reported that, by embedding a CA approach across five science method courses in a Master of Teaching program in the US, competence in integrating technology methods including innovative approaches could be achieved. The repeated and consistent exposure to modeling, scaffolded experiences, and peer collaboration projects throughout the program appeared key to technology adoption and innovation that was observed in lessons conducted during student teaching rounds. Increased competence in educational technology use has also been reported from single courses using a CA design. By using web-based technology to teach preservice teachers about educational technology, cognition can be enhanced through the affordances of flexibility of access to both expert modeling and peer collaboration (Liu, 2005). There is also some evidence that, compared with traditional face-to-face instructional methods, using web-based technologies can lead to more positive attitudes post instruction (Liu, 2005). Kim (2011) and Kim and Hannfin (2008, 2011) reported that US preservice teachers’ increased confidence and competence in educational technology methods were achieved using a web-enhanced, case-based approach. In these studies, expert modeling for preservice teachers was delivered via virtual teachers. Dickey (2008) also utilized a virtual teacher, but used an over-my-shoulder approach in his videos. Using this approach, the course instructor provided think-aloud commentary during demonstrations and animations to support cognition. Such thinkalouds reveal experts’ reasoning behind their modeled actions to novices (Collins et al., 1991). A CA design approach has also been used for developing preservice teacher competency in instructional methods. Liu (2005) delivered instruction via the web to Taiwanese preservice teachers in the use of lesson planning instructional software. Expert teacher think-alouds were used that highlighted salient aspects of the strategies demonstrated in the videoed lesson, which was accompanied by a written lesson plan. In addition, peer collaboration and discussion were enabled
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through synchronous and asynchronous online discussions with expert teachers and peers. Liu suggested this was an important step towards developing individual competency, in that collaboration and discussion strengthened their understanding of the instructional process, enhancing enculturation into the profession and discourse. Little has been reported in the design of coursework from a CoP perspective. Daniel, Auhl, and Hastings (2013) reported pedagogical growth when experienced educators and first-year, preservice elementary teachers in Australia were arranged into small CoPs. After the earlier modeling of the skill by the group’s expert teacher, the preservice teachers took turns demonstrating the skill to the group. The group’s expert and peers then critiqued the demonstration, using a structured, scaffolded feedback format. The demonstration was also filmed for later self-analysis. Benefits included the development in pattern language, coproduction of knowledge, development of teacher identity, self-reflection, and peer critiquing skills. In an attempt to connect course concepts to practice, Jurow, Tracy, Hotchkiss, and Kirshner (2012) trialled a community of learners approach with their educational psychology class. Through incorporating 10 site visits to a community-based program, it was hoped students would make better connections between theory and practice when their practice was embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted. From the analysis of students’ blog posts, seven out of the 30 students showed evidence of combining their understanding from the site visits with their course concepts and readings. More importantly, they were reflecting upon how their knowledge might be applied to other contexts, indicating knowledge transference. At the practicum level, studies exist that report various benefits of situated cognition approaches. Both face-to-face and online models were located. Eick, Ware, and Williams (2003) demonstrated that, by creating small CoPs of one supervising teacher paired with two student teachers, reflection and pedagogic practices were developed and better understood by novices in a co-teaching model. After observing the supervising teacher teaching a lesson, the student teachers taught the same lesson. The student teachers benefited from their prior peripheral participation as observers in the authentic context. Via reflection, they were attending to the affordances and constraints of the situation, and benefiting from dialogue with their peer and the supervising teacher before teaching the lesson. They were learning together, developing competency through action, in context. To overcome physical resource constraints as well as to enhance learning, online CoPs have been set up to support preservice teachers during the practicum (e.g. McLoughlin & Lee, 2010; Ovens & Tinning, 2009). In Western studies, such practices have been said to promote identity formation and reflective practice. In a rare account from an eastern culture, Hou (2015) described the formation of an online CoP among Chinese student teachers during their six-week field placement. In addition to knowledge growth through exposure to multiple perspectives, articulating ideas in posts, self-reflection, and vicariously learning from
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their peers’ experiences, theory was understood as contextualized social practice. Hou noted a shift from traditional teacher-directed learning to self-directed and peer learning, both of which could sustain learning into the future. Collectivist, Confucian ideals, Hou asserted, were also well aligned with CoP philosophy. Participation in an online space also seemed to lessen the loss-of-face phenomenon when failures occurred, quieter students appeared to participate more readily, and uneven power relationships between instructor and student were dissipated by the removal of traditional face-to-face cultural discourse rules.
The Pitfalls of a Situated Cognition Approach Although teacher educators may set out to create a CoP or adopt a CA approach, there is no guarantee that the social relationships that are central to this approach would actually form. Further, the motivation of members to engage, learn, and implement new practices also cannot be guaranteed (Akerson et al., 2009): personal dispositions can impact how much learning occurs (Jurow et al., 2012). Bocala (2015) advised that proactive efforts must be made by the facilitator/ teacher educator to develop and nurture the CoP, to promote mutual engagement. Dalgarno and Colgan (2007) also reflected that, to keep the CoP going, an expert who possesses both content knowledge and excellent leadership and communication qualities is required. Further, in a CoP, the expert or facilitator may need to nudge some novices to participate, otherwise they may remain at the periphery, where their voices may go unheard due to dominant personalities over-powering the group (Leko et al., 2015), an aversion to risking an opinion (Barab et al., 2002; Daniel et al., 2013), or feeling intimidated by others’ experiences (Barab et al., 2002). Lea (2005) explained that non-participation by members might also be due to choosing to stay at the periphery in order to retain a sense of identity or power. In the case of online lurkers, this may not necessarily preclude learning (El Hani & Greca, 2013). Akerson et al. (2009) urged teacher educators to validate participants’ contributions and to engage marginal participants more centrally. If novices do not shift from the periphery, learning will be limited. People are inherently social creatures. However, without engaging in joint enterprise such as collaboratively creating and/or evaluating new learning activities, the benefits of membership may be limited to social-emotional support (Cuddapah & Clayton, 2011; Leko et al., 2015). Validation of one’s personal experiences or struggles is important, but without attempts to connect to factual or theoretical knowledge, little change to teachers’ practices or learning is likely (Barab et al., 2002). This is particularly salient for CoPs with only novice members. Without experienced members’ insights and knowledge, novices can reify, perpetuate, and reinforce negative and inaccurate ideas and beliefs (Cuddapah & Clayton, 2011). As demonstrated by Leko et al. (2015), facilitators also need to promote the right
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kind of discussions, such as those based around inquiry to assist reflection about practice to promote student learning. Key to CA and CoP methods is that the experts used are firstly, good, effective models. Akerson et al. (2009), however, noted that, even with good modeling, not all teachers would improve in their pedagogical competence. Secondly, models must be able to make their tacit knowledge explicit to novices by scaffolding learning tasks with the right amount of challenge, assisting novices in making links between practice and theory, and coaching novices effectively (Brown et al., 1989; van Velzen & Volman, 2009). Lastly, in the design of learning activities, experts must consider how to integrate pedagogical methods and content knowledge to promote effective learning (Kim, 2011). Problematically, making tacit knowledge explicit is not second nature to experienced teachers (Liu, 2005). For preservice teachers in particular, the articulation of decision-making thought processes by the expert is vital. With little to no experience or understanding to draw upon, they may be unable to detect subtle yet important actions that can provide the basis for post-observation discussions. van Velzen and Volman (2009) found that school-based teacher educators seldom explicated their tacit knowledge, dealt with content in a limited way, and responded to student teacher experiences by imparting tips. No connection was made to theory, underlying ideas, or the wider school experience. In the comparative study by Liu (2005), issues of explication were also evident. Expert models need supports to articulate their thinking. Without a memory-enhancer such as a video recording of a lesson to review and reflect upon, the process relies upon the expert’s ability to recall the multitude of events or decisions made. External prompting or reminders to be mindful of the CA process may be needed to ensure that thought processes behind observed actions are explained during think-alouds. If experts choose not to share their knowledge, those on the periphery may be denied the knowledge needed to move centri petally towards competency (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Collaboration, discussion, and articulation of knowledge must occur for generalization and enculturation of novices (Brown et al, 1989). Collaboration, however, was notably missing from the CoPs’ discourse analyzed by Dalgarno and Colgan (2007) and El Hani and Greca (2013). van Velzen and Volman (2009) warned that if collaboration and discussion are not structured explicitly into training, novices may miss the opportunity to exploit the environment (extension thesis) in the form of the collective, professional knowledge base in schools or within PD cohorts. Further, facilitators must structure discussions that allow space for novice participation and relationship development. Without this opportunity, the extent of interaction and exploitation of the environment would depend upon the initiative of the novice. This led van Velzen and Volman to conclude that there may be missing parts to the CA model, namely in ensuring good interpersonal relationships between expert and novice, but also between novices and the wider school professional community.
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A final pitfall to a situated cognition approach to developing teacher competence relates to its application to preservice teaching program design. Wenger (1998) advocated that the learners should be involved in the design of learning, and make decisions about what knowledge, skill, or understanding they would need to fully participate in their professional community. In the two program accounts included in this chapter, Barab et al. (2002) and Korthagen (2010) required that curriculum delivery be driven by preservice teachers’ perceived needs. This may present a challenge for programs that traditionally silo their course curriculum and use the associated assessments to partially meet teacher accreditation requirements. Both programs also required preservice teachers to spend extensive time in schools gaining experience. This may be problematic given issues in locating effective supervising teachers and practicum placements (Zeichner, 2002).
Future Research Avenues into Situated Cognition Approaches In an age where evidence of effectiveness is pre-eminent in the minds of educators, the research conducted into situated cognition approaches in preservice or inservice populations, to date, could be viewed as lacking good experimental design to establish effectiveness. Case studies were common compared with comparative studies. Although discourse analysis can detect the features of situated cognition approaches, such methods cannot capture the downstream impact on student learning in classrooms. Employing research designs that involve random assignment and control groups are needed to validate CA or CoPs as an effective approach to teacher learning. This in itself may pose design issues, as, to hold true to the essence of CA or CoPs, research should be conducted in authentic classroom settings. Further, longitudinal studies that show measureable learning outputs from teacher participation in CA or CoPs on teachers, and their students, are needed. Do the practices acquired from this form of PD persist over time? Longitudinal studies involving observations might shed light upon long-term effects.
Conclusions From the studies included in this chapter, at face value, taking a situated cognition approach when designing PD or preservice programs or courses holds some appeal for teacher educators from Western and Eastern cultures. Becoming competent as a teacher can occur through activity, as social practice in a community, valuably through formal and informal PD avenues. Teacher educators should incorporate both avenues when designing training aimed at developing competences.
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To ensure benefits extend beyond teachers developing their professional identity or a sense of community, careful design that includes monitoring of learning activities, preparing experts to explicate their practices, provision of ongoing support, and opportunities for collaboration and reflection will be needed to shift pedagogical practice. However, for teacher educators to be convinced of the merits of these situated cognition approaches, far greater proof of efficacy is needed than currently exists in the extant literature for teachers and their students’ learning.
References Akerson, V. L., Cullen, T. A., & Hanson, D. L. (2009). Fostering a community of practice through a professional development program to improve elementary teachers’ views of nature of science and teaching practice. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46, 1090–1113. doi: 10.1002/tea.20303 Barab, S. A., Barnett, M., & Squire, K. (2002). Developing an empirical account of a community of practice: Characterizing the essential tensions. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 11, 489–542. Bell, R. L., Maeng, J. L., & Binns, I. C. (2013). Learning in context: Technology integration in a teacher preparation program informed by situated learning theory. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50, 348–379. doi: 10.1002/tea.21075 Bocala, C. (2015). From experience to expertise: The development of teachers’ learning in lesson study. Journal of Teacher Education, 66, 349–362. doi: 10.1177/0022487115592032 Boreham, N. (2004). A theory of collective competence: Challenging the neo-liberal individualisation of performance at work. British Journal of Educational Studies, 52, 5–17. Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32–42. Browne, D. L., & Ritchie, D. C. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: A model of staff development for implementing technology in schools. Contemporary Education, 63, 28–34. Clancey, W. J. (2009). Scientific antecedents of situated cognition. In P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds), The Cambridge handbook of situated cognition (pp. 11–34). New York: Cambridge Press. Clark, A. (2012). Embodied, embedded, and extended cognition. In W. Ramsey & K. Frankish (eds), The Cambridge handbook of cognitive science (pp. 275–291). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making learning visible. American Educator, 6, 38–46. Cuddapah, J. L., & Clayton, C. D. (2011). Using Wenger’s communities of practice to explore a new teacher cohort. Journal of Teacher Education, 62, 62–75. doi: 10.1177/0022487110377507 Dalgarno, N., & Colgan, L. (2007). Supporting novice elementary mathematics teachers’ induction in professional communities and providing innovative forms of pedagogical content knowledge development through information and communication technology. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 1051–1065. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.037 Daniel, G. R., Auhl, G., & Hastings, W. (2013). Collaborative feedback and reflection for professional growth: Preparing first-year pre service teachers for participation in the community of practice. AsiaPacific Journal of Teacher Education, 41, 159–172. doi: 10.1080/1359866X.2013.777025 de Jager, B., Reezigt, G. J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (2002). The effects of teacher training on new instructional behaviour in reading comprehension. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(7), 831–842. Dickey, M. D. (2008). Integrating cognitive apprenticeship methods in a Web-based educational technology course for P-12 teacher education. Computers and Education, 51(2), 506–518.
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Eick, C. J., Ware, F. N., & Williams, P. G. (2003). Coteaching in a science method course: A situated learning model of becoming a teacher. Journal of Teacher Education, 54, 74–85. El Hani, C. N., & Greca, I. M. (2013). ComPratica: A virtual community of practice for promoting biology teachers’ professional development in Brazil. Research in Science Education, 43, 1327–1359. doi: 10.1007/s11165-012-9306-1 Engeström, Y., Engeström, R., & Suntio, A. (2009). Can a school community learn to master its own future? An activity-theoretical study of expansive learning among middle school teachers. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (eds), Learning for life in the 21st century: Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education (pp. 211–224). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Grangeat, M., & Gray, P. (2007). Factors influencing teachers’ professional competence development. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 59, 485–501. doi: 10.1080/13636820701650943 Greeno, J. G., Collins, A. M., & Resnick, L. B. (1996). Cognition and learning. In D. Berliner & R. Calfee (eds), Handbook of educational psychology (pp. 15–46). New York: Macmillan. Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (eds), Preparing teachers for a changing world (pp. 358–389). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hodkinson, H., & Hodkinson, P. (2004). Rethinking the concept of community of practice in relation to schoolteachers’ workplace learning. International Journal of Training and Development, 8, 21–31. Horn, I. S. (2005). Learning on the job: A situated account of teacher learning in high school mathematics departments. Cognition and Instruction, 23, 207–236. doi: 10.1207/s1532690xci2302_2 Hou, H. (2015). What makes an online community of practice work? A situated study of Chinese student teachers’ perceptions of online professional learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 6–16. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2014.10.005 Jurow, A., Tracy, R., Hotchkiss, J., & Kirshner, B. (2012). Designing for the future: How the learning sciences can inform the trajectories of preservice teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 63, 147–160. doi: 10.1177/0022487111428454 Kim, H. (2011). Exploring freshmen preservice teachers’ situated knowledge in reflective reports during case-based activities. Internet and Higher Education, 14, 10–14. Kim, H., & Hannfin, M. J. (2008). Situated case-based knowledge: An emerging framework for prospective teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1837–1845. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2008.02.025 Kim, H., & Hannfin, M. J. (2011). Developing situated knowledge about teaching with technology via web-enhanced case-based activity. Computers and Education, 57, 1378–1388. doi: 10.1016/j. compedu.2011.01.008 Kim, M. K., Lee, C., Spector, M., & DeMeester, K. (2013). Teacher beliefs and technology integration. Teaching and Teacher Education, 29, 76–85. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2012.08.005 Kopcha, T. J. (2012). Teachers’ perceptions of the barriers to technology integration and practices with technology under situated professional development. Computers and Education, 59, 1109–1121. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.05.014 Korthagen, F. A. J. (2010). Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behavior and teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 98–106. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.001 Korthagen, F. A., & Kessels, J. P. (1999). Linking theory and practice: Changing the pedagogy of teacher education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 4–17. Korthagen, F. A. J., & Lagerwerf, B. (1996). Reframing the relationship between teacher thinking and teacher behaviour: Levels in learning about teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 2(2), 161–190. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lea, M. R. (2005). Communities of practice in higher education. In D. Barton and K. Tusting (eds), Beyond communities of practice. Language, power, and social context (pp. 180–197). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Lee, Y. J. (2011). Empowering teachers to create educational software: A constructivist approach utilizing Etoys, pair programming and cognitive apprenticeship. Computers and Education, 56, 527–538. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.018 Leko, M. M., Kiely, M. T., Brownell, M. T., Osipova, A., Dingle, M. P., & Mundy, C. A. (2015). Understanding special educators’ learning opportunities in collaborative groups: The role of discourse. Teacher Education and Special Education, 38, 138–157. doi: 10.1177/0888406414557283 Liu, T. C. (2005). Web-based cognitive apprenticeship model for improving pre-service teachers’ performances and attitudes towards instructional planning: Design and field experiment. Educational Technology and Society, 8(2), 136–149. McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. (2010). Developing an online community to promote engagement and professional learning for preservice teachers using social software tools. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 12, 17–30. doi:10.4018/jcit.2010010102 Nichol, J., & Turner-Bisset, R. (2006). Cognitive apprenticeship and teachers’ professional development. Journal of In-service Education, 32, 149–169. doi: 10.1080/13674580600650831 Ovens, A., & Tinning, R. (2009). Reflection as situated practice: A memory-work study of lived experience in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 1125–1131. doi: 10.1016/j. tate.2009.03.013 Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29, 4–15. Richter, D., Kunter, M., Klusman, U., Lüdtke, O., & Baumert, J. (2011). Professional development across the teaching career: Teachers uptake of formal and informal learning opportunities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 116–126. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.07.008 Robbins, P., & Aydede, M. (2009). A short primer on situated cognition. In P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds), The Cambridge handbook of situated cognition (pp. 3–9). New York: CUP. Rowlands, M. (2010). The new science of the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Salomon, G. (1997). Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sultana, R. G. (2009). Competence and competence frameworks in career guidance: Complex and contested concepts. International Journal of Education and Vocational Guidance, 9, 15–30. doi: 10.1007/s10775-008-9148-6 van Velzen, C., & Volman, M. (2009). The activities of a school-based teacher educator: A theoretical and empirical exploration. European Journal of Teacher Education, 32, 345–367. doi: 10.1080/02619760903005831 Ward, L., Grudnoff, L., Brooker, B., & Simpson, M. (2013). Teacher preparation to proficiency and beyond: Exploring the landscape. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 33, 68–80. doi: 10.1080/02188791.2012.751896 Ward, D., & Stapleton, W. (2011). Es are good: Cognition as enacted, embodied, embedded, affective and extended. Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/648508/Es_are_Good_Cognition_as_ Enacted_Embodied_Embedded_Affective_and_Extended Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, R., & Clark, A. (2009). How to situate cognition: Letting nature take its course. In P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds), The Cambridge handbook of situated cognition (pp. 55–77). New York: Cambridge University Press. Zeichner, K. (2002). Beyond traditional structures of student teaching. Teacher Education Quarterly, 29, 59–64.
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50 Critical Approaches in Making New Space for Teacher Competencies Monica Miller Marsh and Daniel Castner
Teacher competency is a highly contested construct that lies at the heart of all teacher education endeavors. By definition, the notion of competency implies that there are particular skills, knowledge qualifications, or capacities that constitute good teaching. Recognizing key attributes of good teaching and aspiring toward their realization is unquestionably a laudable task. However, the act of identifying answers to questions of what constitutes good teaching raises additional questions regarding what and whose norms have affected such a determination. This chapter will consider teacher competency through four different discourses, each of which has their own distinct set of beliefs and values. The conceptual scaffolding of each discourse structures the images of competency that will be valued in teacher thought and practice. These conceptual scaffoldings not only influence what teachers must know and be able to do to be deemed competent, but they also shape educators’ relationships with these identified sets of knowledge and behaviors. The concept of competencies carries heavy ideological meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Teacher educators’ approaches to developing pedagogical competence are necessarily contextualized by their dominant culture of curriculum, the orientations by which belief systems, behavioral interactions, and ‘the allocation of decision making power’ are realized (Joseph, 2011, p. 20). As such, the prevailing policy trends as well as taken-for-granted expert opinions influence the way one thinks about, discusses, and acts upon the endeavor of developing good teachers. The theoretical work of Bakhtin (1981) emphasizes the socially constructed nature of existence and highlights the role that language plays in shaping relations between and among people. Discourses are historically,
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politically, culturally, and socially generated patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that are sanctioned by a particular group of people (Fairclough, 1989; Gee, 1996). In this chapter, we utilize Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of discourse to explain how competencies are social constructions that are rooted in history and politics and examine how they have shifted and changed over time. To this end, we will highlight four discursive paths for teacher educators, each with its own contributions and limitations to conversations on teacher competency. First, we ascribe the name ‘status quo discourse’ to the dominant perspective of teacher competency. With a reliance on method, this discourse has also been classified by Wesley Null (2011) as the ‘technical tradition of pedagogical philosophy’. Apple (2005) and Ylimaki (2011) explain that the dominance of this tradition is perpetuated through conservative politics and enforced through procedures of auditing and management. Moreover, Sahlberg (2015) describes the international impact of these political trends as a global educational reform movement (GERM). We illustrate how the ideologies carried in the discourse of the status quo have defined and continue to define competencies and, subsequently, shaped teacher education programs, and the identities of the teachers who have participated in them. At its best, the status quo discourse offers teachers frameworks for refining the technical aspects of their practice. At its worst, it imposes a system of management that constrains teachers’ professional conversations and practices to the performativity of predetermined ‘best practice’ behaviors. Secondly, we will underscore approaches that challenge the status quo discourse, including the discourse of critical pedagogy. We argue that the edifices of pedagogical competency define what constitutes a good teacher and are aligned with complimentary structures, which support the purposeful development of corresponding knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This too is often the case for counter-hegemonic discourses. Therefore, we have categorized extant literature on pedagogical competency within two contrasting categories, status quo and critical discourses. The status quo presents competencies in ahistorical and apolitical terms through process-product empirical research. Inquiry into teacher competency takes on an allegedly value neutral stance. Critical discourses, on the other hand, are attentive to social, political, and historical contexts in ways that resist the oppressive and repressive effects of alleged value neutrality. Matters of power, identity, and discourse become central as considerations of social justice are brought to the fore through critical discourses. Though socio-political concepts are clearly the focal point of critical discourses and the status quo discourse maintains a laser focus upon technical rationality, we do not wish to conclude with a bifurcation of socio-political concepts from the technical aspects of teaching. It is also very important to note that by framing our appraisal of pedagogical competencies within two competing discourses we are in fact enacting a critical approach. Put differently, critical approaches impose their own structures even if sometimes this occurs through a
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post-structural argument of no structures. In an important way, this overview of pedagogical competency runs parallel to the field of curriculum studies, which makes sense, since curriculum and pedagogy are interdependent. Mainstream trends in curriculum scholarship have focused on the technical details of curriculum development. Inclusive of diverse epistemologies, reconceptualizers of curriculum have proliferated reproduction and resistance as their key concepts (Pinar, 2013). Among diverse contexts, matters of teacher competency are situated within broader discourses of educational practice. Curriculum studies constitute this broader sphere in North America, whereas the topic of teachers’ competencies is more commonly addressed as a component of wide-ranging pedagogical studies. It is important to note that any discussion of pedagogical competencies is situated within wider discourses that include socio-political as well as technical features that are contextualized by the normative structures of particular cultural contexts. As a leading voice in the field of curriculum studies as well as an original and significant contributor to the era of reconceptualizing curriculum, Pinar (2013) has controversially deemed social reproduction and political resistance to be intellectually exhausted concepts. Certainly, there are numerous critical scholars seeking to further understand systemic inequalities and inform a path for resistance (Ayers, Kumashiro, Meiners, Quinn, & Stovall, 2010; GaztambideFernández, 2010; Laura, 2014; Stovall, 2016; Watkins, 2012). While appreciating that the work of understanding social reproduction and political resistance is by no means finished, we are also mindful of Pinar’s (2013) suggestion that ethics and cosmopolitanism are two potential ways to reframe our most pervasive and persistent educational problems and generate new intellectual advancements. Hence, following Pinar’s advice, we will include in this chapter examples of the merging of the two internationally framed discourses illuminated above into a hybrid discourse. Then, the chapter will conclude with a consideration of a transactional discourse as a potential future direction for cultivating pedagogical competency.
Images of Mastery within the Discourse of the Status Quo The discourse of the status quo, rooted in Competence-Based Teacher Education (CBTE), emerged in the 1960s in the United States of America (Bowles, 1973). CBTE was part of a wider competence movement in education (Mulder, Gulikers, Biemans, & Wesselink, 2009), which responded to national concerns over the quality of schooling in the United States and its effect on international competitiveness (Forzani, 2014). Researchers at Stanford University launched a comprehensive study of teachers’ work in order to identify the characteristics and behaviors of the ‘effective’ teacher and worked to redesign teacher education
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by crafting a detailed taxonomy containing hundreds of teaching tasks organized into at least 19 categories (Forzani, 2014, p. 363). ‘Proponents of CBTE aspired to structure teacher education around a set of precise learning objectives (“competencies”), defined in assessable, behavioral terms’ (Howsam & Houston, 1972, in Forzani, 2014, p. 363). Through this discourse of CBTE, rooted in behaviorism, teaching was viewed as a series of techniques to be learned through short cycles of observation and emulation (Forzani, 2014). Policy makers and educational reformers around the world drew on the discourse of CBTE that had its roots in the American context. Competence-based education appeared in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Latin America in the late 1980s and early 1990s, although these early competencies were mostly related to vocational education (Hodge & Harris, 2012). Competency-based Educational Practices (CBE) emerged and moved across the African continent toward the end of the twentieth century (Chisholm & Leyendecker, 2008). The practices of CBTE and CBE are symptomatic of the dominant trends of what Sahlberg (2015) terms GERM policies. These dominant trends are routinized by the standardized management of instruction (Henderson & Gornik, 2007) and enforced by common rituals of professional management. Ylimaki (2011) identifies procedures for reviewing lesson plans, implementing pacing guides, and conducting evaluative walkthroughs as three customary methods for managing teachers’ daily practices. Hence, the systematic instructional consistency of CBTE prepares teachers to enact the systematically consistent instructional strategies of CBE. Currently, there is renewed international interest in competency-based education for several reasons including issues of accountability, efforts to increase the numbers of teachers, the move from teaching how to apply acquired knowledge rather than teaching knowledge itself, developments in Information and Communication Technologies and other challenges in regards to globalization, and the growing concern with citizenship and human rights issues (Education International & OXFAM Novib, 2013). As the social political context of the world has shifted, a social constructivist discourse has become entwined with the behaviorist discourse of CBTE to create more holistic conceptions of competence (Wesselink et. al., 2005, in Education International & OXFAM Novib, 2013). Rather than conceiving of education as an evaluation of stand-alone techniques, within a social constructivist discourse, competencies are conceived of as capabilities that occur developmentally (i.e. novice, experienced, specialist). In addition, the cultural context and social practices involved in competent performance are acknowledged, as are teaching conditions and the personal characteristics of teachers (Education International & OXFAM Novib, 2013). Hodge and Harris (2012), writing from an Australian perspective, discuss how this coupling of discourses has led to a progressive form of student-centered education (p. 158). While the appeal of CBT may center on the call for accountability for politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators, the authors claim that CBT benefits pedagogues as they make shifts toward more student-centered approaches to teaching.
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While there is no universal definition of competence (Education International & OXFAM Novib, 2013; Vazalwar & Dey, 2011), there does seem to be some agreement across the world that the core elements of teacher-quality standards are planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities (Asia Society, 2013, p. 9). In our analysis of the extant international literature, we found this to be the case. However, it is also imperative to preface these details with a reminder that this apparent consensus cannot be separated from the GERM context mentioned above. Consistency was found among several nations. Liakopoulou (2011), reporting on quantitative data gathered from the evaluation of prospective teachers in Greece, reports that almost half of the questions (48.9%) on the national assessment refer to teaching methodology, 15.9% refer to pedagogical psychology, and 15.2% monitor general pedagogical knowledge, and far fewer questions concentrated on the role of teachers in the field. Suciu and Mata (2011) found that pedagogical competence in Romania referred to the minimum professional standards needed in order to teach, and identified the following categories of pedagogical competencies as those that were measured for prospective teachers: professionalscientific, psycho-pedagogical, psycho-social and relational, and managerial and institutional. In Malaysia, Goh and Wong (2014) found that beginning teachers conceived of competency as being distributed across the categories of classroom and behavior management, knowing different teaching strategies, understanding students, reaching out for assistance and support, and possessing values of professionalism. Perceptions of teacher competence in Serbia were defined and categorized by teacher educators, student teachers, and mentor teachers (Pantic & Wubbels, 2010; Pantic & Wubbels, 2012; Pantic, Wubbels, & Mainhard, 2011) as falling into four domains: self-evaluation and professional development, subject matter, pedagogy and curriculum, understanding of the education system and contribution to its development, and values and child rearing. In India, Vazalwar & Dey (2011) found that veteran teachers experienced better classroom performance by students when they followed the competencies as classified by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): conceptual, contextual, content, transactional, educational activities, evaluation, management, and competencies related to working with other agencies (p. 89). In the United States, Danielson (2007) promulgates the same categories of teacher competency: planning and preparation, creating an environment conducive to learning, effective instruction, and professionalism. Reducing these complex facets of teaching into sub-categories and then observable teacher behaviors, the Danielson framework provides a rubric for evaluating pre-service and practicing teachers. Calls for accountability have led to such rubrics becoming politically mandated for teacher evaluation in the US. Accountability systems generate loosely agreed-upon competency descriptions as defined within the discourse of status quo. For example, Darling-Hammond (2013) consolidates various and competing descriptions of pedagogical competency into the ambiguous
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categories of teacher quality and teaching quality. Teacher quality, according to Darling-Hammond, comprises teachers’ knowledge of content and pedagogy, understanding of learners, and capacity to organize and explain ideas and think diagnostically, as well as adaptability to make contextual judgments. With similar vagueness, teaching quality is defined as ‘strong instruction that enables a wide range of students to learn. Such instruction meets the demands of the discipline, the goals of instruction, and the needs of students in a particular context’ (Darling-Hammond, 2013, p. 12). From Darling-Hammond’s perspective, standardized frameworks promulgated by centralized authoritative bodies necessarily govern the knowledge, understanding, and capacities possessed by quality teachers. Common curriculum frameworks and student learning standards are also key components of what is deemed to be an essential foundation for improving teaching quality and developing instructional plans that foster teachers’ competency. Through Alexander’s (2009) lens of comparative inquiry, Darling-Hammond (2013) is advancing a point of view that suggests teacher educators ought to engage in a version of teaching that emphasizes knowledge transmission to enable pre-service and practicing K-12 teachers to engage in a version of teaching that emphasizes technical efficiency. The status quo discourse promulgates the cultivation of ‘master teachers’ through methods courses and clinical models of practice. In an organized fashion, teacher quality is fostered among prospective and practicing teachers by directly teaching ‘evidence-based’ strategies and ‘best practice’ techniques in methods courses and professional development sessions. Additionally, teaching quality is established through observation, evaluation, and mentoring clinical experience. Yet, as stated in Supporting Teacher Competence Development, a publication by the European Commission (2013, p. 22), these descriptions do not guarantee quality teaching, since their purpose and the way they are applied will look quite diverse as they are embedded in socially and culturally specific contexts. This critique was also woven throughout the international literature. For example, Liakopoulou (2011) found that some of the limitations of the Greek assessment of competencies were that very few questions dealt with knowledge of the school environment, society as a whole and the institutional context, their analytical and synthetic ability, and their ability to evaluate knowledge and circumstances (p. 479). Goh and Wong (2014) questioned how the Malaysian standards could justifiably improve the quality of the teaching profession without imposing a framework on teaching that would limit creativity and autonomy. In their words, ‘professional development programmes to improve teaching quality need to be relevant to the real problems of classroom practices’ (p. 78). Goodwin (2010), in her article focused on globalization and the preparation of quality teachers, echoes the critiques put forth by the researchers mentioned above. She argues for transcending notions of teacher competency that emphasize discrete skills to instead cultivate teachers’ capacity to address the inevitable unpredictability of pedagogical problem solving.
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Taking commonly accepted educational ends and predominant evaluative systems for granted, fashions status quo images of teacher competency that focus narrowly upon the technical aspects of teaching. Consequently, pedagogical techniques are separated from more nuanced and comprehensive understandings of curriculum or pedagogical culture (Alexander, 2009), creating a dangerously false conceptual dichotomy that works to systematically reproduce patterns of social inequality, historically plaguing the work of pedagogues (Pinar, 2013). The notion of teacher competency as discussed within and through a discourse of critical pedagogy would seem to suggest ways to eliminate the reproduction of social inequalities. We turn to that body of literature next.
Images of Cultural Competency within a Discourse of Critical Pedagogy The theoretical underpinnings of the discourse of critical pedagogy that currently circulate in and through educational institutions can be traced back to the work of educators and scholars such as Freire (1970), Giroux and McClaren (1989), and Shor (1992). As Sarroub & Quadros (2015) state, ‘At the heart of critical pedagogy is an implicit understanding that power is negotiated daily by teachers and students’ (p. 252). Within a discourse of critical pedagogy the teacher understands that classroom practices enacted within the discourse of the status quo are a form of ideological production and reproduction of power-knowledge relations as lived in society and reflected in schools. The role of the teacher within this discourse is to make power relations visible and to work alongside her students and other community members to promote collective action that leads to social change. Embodied within a discourse of critical pedagogy are some very particular practices. For example, students, led by teachers, are engaged in the social construction (and deconstruction) of knowledge, so that shared power is normalized within the classroom. Teachers are continuously engaged in questioning and reflecting upon their own practices in relation to the dominant culture and the material realities in which they and their students live. Dialogue around emancipatory issues is commonplace as teachers and students work together toward equalizing power relations both in and out of the school. Hence, critical pedagogues define teacher competency in ways that shift the focus away from efficient transmission of knowledge and towards developing learning environments that foster liberation and social justice. Stevens (2010), writing about initial teacher education in England and Wales, problematizes the official standards for the recommendation for qualified teacher status (QTS), revised in 2008 through a discourse of critical pedagogy. He believes the QTS standards for initial teacher training, which comprise 33 separate entities, divided into three sections – professional attributes, professional knowledge
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and understanding, and professional skills – mask the complexity of teaching and learning. According to Stevens, ‘The standards seem to profess a bucket-filling view of teaching and learning espousing a “transmission” pedagogical model served by teachers ready, willing and able to meet a series of clearly defined (by others of course) competences’ (p.194). Stevens contends that, ‘problematization is the Freirean basis of understanding and critical empowerment for both teachers and learners, the very anti-thesis of the competence-based model’ (p. 193). A myriad of critical perspectives challenge the status quo notion of efficient knowledge transmission constituting the basis for understanding teacher competency. Critical pedagogues in the United States have appraised educational practice through an eclectic array of conceptual lenses. For example, a seminal text on the reconceptualization of American curriculum studies conceives of curriculum as an ‘extraordinarily complicated conversation’ which is ‘intensely historical, political, racial, gendered, phenomenological, autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, and international’ (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995, p. 847). While diverse socio-cultural lenses create a complicated conversation of critical educational discourse in the United States, the German bildung/didaktik traditions have an even more extensive history in Europe (Hopmann & Riquarts, 2000). Moreover, Westbury, Hopmann, and Riquarts (2000) explain an unfortunate absence of dialogue between the two traditions. Although the voices of American curriculum theorists in the reconceptualist era have been marginalized in discussions of pedagogical competency (Pinar, 2012), the bildung/didaktik traditions have elevated pedagogical studies in important ways (Westbury, Hansen, Kansanen, & Bjorkvist, 2005). Westbury (2000) highlights the valuable contributions the German didaktik tradition offers to English-language teacher educators, particularly those who value reflective practices as an element of competency. Hopmann and Riquarts (2000) explain how the concept of ‘the didaktik triangle’ – composed of the teacher, the content, and the learner – emphasizes localized processes of planning and instructional decision making that is vastly different from the Americanized view of individual curriculum workers negotiating the intertwinement of various levels of authority. Other German traditions, such as the Frankfurt school, were more readily transferred into the work of English-speaking, critical pedagogues whose work is based on sociological analyses. Undoubtedly, the success of Finnish schools has drawn international attention (Sahlberg, 2015). Westbury et al. (2005) point to the teacher education program at the University of Helsinki as an exciting exemplar of the thoughtful fusion of education theory, research, subject didactics, and practice. However, Autio (2006) offers a more cautious analysis of diverse traditions with different, yet common, struggles to realize the subjectivity of classroom teachers. Likewise, high performance on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has identified the teachers in various Asian countries and cities, such as South Korea, Singapore, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, as ‘top performers’. While ‘[m]any
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have attributed Asian success to an ethic of hard work, discipline, and extra time devoted to learning’, Hargreaves (2014) critiques that these are ‘the very factors that people gave to explain Japan’s success during its educational and economic booms in the 1990s, but which went out of fashion when the Japanese economy collapsed’ (p. 9). Furthermore, Hargreaves takes issue in general with the myopia of GERM that equates quality education with PISA ranking. Albeit in very different ways, Autio and Hargreaves suggest a broader consideration is necessary for understanding the merits and limitations of these recognized top performers. A discourse of critical pedagogy takes up the important function of interrupting the status quo habits of defining teacher competency based upon achievements of predetermined outcomes. Critical discourses disrupt the status quo by either negating what is commonly taken for granted or by offering a counter discourse. Critical negations identify problems that have become habituated in daily practices without necessarily working toward resolutions. Counter-hegemonic practices provide an alternative course of action, yet run the risk of enacting an opposing, albeit similar, dogmatism to that which one intends to challenge. Here, we will highlight the counter-hegemonic practices advanced through a discourse of critical pedagogy. These counter-hegemonic practices provide an alternative basis for understanding what constitutes pedagogical competency. Critical consciousness, inclusivity, and social justice aspirations are key attributes of competent critical pedagogues. Teacher educators cultivate these qualities by engaging students in ethical and political inquiries as a central component. Prospective and practicing teachers are introduced to matters of multiculturalism and diversity in an effort to enhance teachers’ capacity to plan and prepare instruction that is culturally relevant and representative of the students and communities being served. Understanding that education can operate and historically has operated as a vehicle of oppression or liberation, the professional responsibilities of teachers dramatically differ within a discourse of critical pedagogy. Instead of deeming compliance to be the primary responsibility of competent teachers, counter- hegemonic practices redefine this element of competency. Interrogating the values represented through curriculum and pedagogy in relation to considerations of who benefits as well as who does not are elevated as a central professional role of competent teachers. A binary of status quo discourses for the efficient development of pedagogical competency and critical discourses of re-conceptualizing pluralistic understandings of what constitutes pedagogical competency is present in extant educational theory and research. In juxtaposition, these contrasting discourses shed light upon the lack of consensus of what constitutes pedagogical competency, let alone how teacher educators can best approach its attainment. Nonetheless, a number of teacher educators devotedly attempt to merge criticality with technical rationality. We will turn to this perspective next, overviewing a hybrid discourse of teacher competency.
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Images of Progress within a Hybrid Discourse It is important to note that developing teacher competency through standardized frameworks does not necessarily standardize the conversations and activities of pre-service and practicing teachers. As Stevens (2010) concludes, ‘it is, in fact, quite possible to be a reflexive practitioner and to meet the standards’ (p. 195); yet, other than articulating that a competency model can live alongside a professional community of practice, no concrete suggestions are provided by Stevens. Indeed, an increasing number of approaches to developing teacher competency are being grounded in actual classroom practice (Fernandez, 2002). In the United States, Thorpe (2014) claims that a process of advanced certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPT) is a means to improve the quality of practice and professionalize teaching. Although he invites practitioners to ‘rethink every aspect of the trajectory people follow to become accomplished teachers’, Thorpe (2014) alludes to uniformity, in that ‘getting that path right and making sure all teachers follow it asserts the body of knowledge and skills teachers need and leads to a level of consistent quality that is the hallmark of all true professions’ (p. 1). Despite his rhetoric of empowering individual educators, this presumptuously universal demand restrains criticality and creativity by asserting a pathway of consistency established by NBPT. In contrast, Kincheloe, McLaren, and Steinberg (2011) suggest that the ‘authority of the critical teacher is dialectical; as teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers, they assume the mature authority of facilitators of student inquiry and problem posing’ (p. 165). Along parallel lines, examples of teacher educators facilitating teachers’ professional inquiry are abundant in the literature. State-led initiatives to implement professional learning communities in Singapore prioritize teachers’ opportunities to experience reflection and collaboration (Lee, Hong, Tay, & Lee, 2013). While the approach to professional development described by Lee et al. (2013) opens greater opportunities for teachers’ autonomous thinking and collegial discourse than the uniform path of credentialing suggested by NBPT, concerns remain for critical pedagogues. According to Ylimaki (2011), ‘PLCs do not necessarily lead to open dialogue and critical deliberations about controversial curriculum issues’, and she further warns that ‘norms of collegiality often prevail and decisions revolve around how to implement district, state, and federal mandates; how to increase test scores; and the pace of classroom instruction’ (p. 107). Examining teacher PLCs in rural China, Sargent and Hannum (2009) concur that the utility of PLCs depends upon personal and contextual circumstances: ‘professional learning communities penetrate to some of China’s most resource-constrained schools but that their nature and development are shaped by institutional supports, principal leadership, and teachers’ own initiative’ (p. 258). Kincheloe et al. (2011) argue that ‘teachers must have more voice and more respect in the culture of education’ (p. 165). The tradition of lesson studies in
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Japanese schools, which began in the early 1900s, is another example of an approach to developing competency that emphasizes the importance of elevating teachers’ voices. During lesson studies, teachers’ voices are respected as possessing vital insights for improving practice (Fernandez, 2002; Sargent & Hannum, 2009). Seeing the merits of collaborative dialogue, systemic inquiry into teaching, and critical analysis of daily practices, Fernandez (2002) explored the feasibility of implementing Japanese lesson studies as a professional development activity in the United States. The greatest challenge among American educators, according to Fernandez, was the difficulties they experienced trying to think as researchers. Teachers’ preparedness to engage in research-focused inquiries into classroom practices is an essential feature of Japanese approaches to developing teacher competency. Likewise, Sahlberg (2015) underscores the importance of introductions to research methodology in Finnish teacher preparation as a means to make classroom teachers ready to analyze their own practices. Westbury et al. (2005) point to this aspect of Finnish teacher education as being foundational to realizing a ‘research-based professional ideal’. From Kincheloe et al.’s (2011) perspective, ‘teachers must join the culture of researchers if a new level of educational rigor is ever to be achieved’ (p. 165). Teacher educators who are engaged in this hybrid discourse cultivate pedagogical competency by introducing teachers to methodologically sound forms of research and evaluation. While some encourage teachers to engage in action research to improve technical aspects of their daily practice, others encourage critical inquiry. Moreover, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) advance images of teacher research that involve mutually beneficial partnerships between classroom teachers and professors of education. Using established methods of inquiry as a means to critically appraise and improve daily practice, hybrid discourses of developing teacher competency attempt to transcend dichotomies of theory and practice. Within boundaries of hybrid discourses, one form of inquiry can take precedence over another. Therefore, finding a balance between technical refinements and criticality can prove to be a thorny undertaking.
Envisioning a Transactional Discourse of Cultivating Pedagogical Competency Thus far we have considered a status quo discourse, a critical discourse, and a hybrid discourse of developing teacher competency. While the status quo discourse dominates conversations, critical discourses challenge and complicate the conversation (Pinar, 2012). A hybrid discourse evolved from efforts to intertwine these two points of view. Recognizing a perpetual disconnect between educational theory and practice, hybrid discourses are an attempt to bridge the chasm between educational research and practice. Aspiring to professionalize daily practice, teachers’ technical competencies are supplemented by established
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methods of educational inquiry. A hybrid discourse encourages professors of education and classroom teachers to transcend their conventional roles and identities. However, as illustrated in the examples provided above, efforts to negotiate the demand for status quo standards and methods with the interest of critically appraising the realities of daily practice often lead to a compromise of criticality in the service of technical rationality. As teacher educators continue to contemplate the vast array of traditional and critical approaches to developing teacher competency, it is important to situate our thoughts, discussions, and activities concerning developing pedagogical competency as a matter of very important curriculum work in teacher education. Indeed, the diverse foundational assumptions underlying these three discourses engender multiple points of view regarding what constitutes competent teaching as well as how one engages in a process of becoming competent, many of which are in opposition to one another. In this concluding section, we will advance a transactional discourse as a means for envisioning an emancipatory view as a future direction for developing teacher competency. The transactional discourse advanced here is informed by John Dewey and Arthur Bentley’s (1949) often overlooked book, Knowing and the Known, which could be considered Dewey’s final word on experience. To summarize from a transactional perspective, the construct of pedagogical competency is an experiential phenomenon and cannot be separated from the personal and contextual features of human experience. Hence, the endeavor of developing pedagogical competency is framed as a deeply personal and contextualized experience, rather than based upon the foundational knowledge of either a system of self-evident best practices or an amalgamation of essential empirical data points. We conclude this chapter with a suggestion for a reframing of ‘developing teacher competency’ that appreciates how power relations are infused in the realities of pedagogical practices. We envision teacher educators fostering egalitarian relationships among pre-service and practicing teachers, functioning as critical researchers-asbricoleurs. Kincheloe et al. (2011) explain, [T]he critical researcher-as-bricoleur abandons the quest for some naïve concept of realism, focusing instead on the clarification of his or her position in the web of reality and the social relations of other researchers and the ways they shape the production and interpretation of knowledge. (p. 168)
The quest for naïve concepts of realism is apparent whenever a discourse on teacher competency claims evidence-based certainty or self-evident ideals of teacher competency. Of course, this is not to discount the usefulness of empirical evidence or principles of best practice that have been garnered through educational research. Rather, it is a call to recognize that pre-service teachers, practicing teachers and professors of education are all learning through experience. A transactional discourse of developing pedagogical competency is one that approaches models of knowledge transmission with a degree of skepticism.
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Because sensory data and rationalized ideals are insufficient proxies for lived experience from a transactional point of view, the aim of developing teacher competency becomes to ‘faithfully capture the dynamic of actual experience’ (Ryan, 2011, p. 26). Thus, the knowledge, understandings, skills, and dispositions associated with becoming an effective, inclusive, and equitable teacher are not fixed and a common set of knowledge to be transferred, but fluid and idiosyncratic processes of becoming, which need to be nurtured and thoughtfully cultivated experientially. In similar ways the status quo and critical and hybrid discourses stultify the cultivation of teachers’ professional capacities. Trusting in prescribed methods for analyzing teaching, discourses that claim to promote inquiry can work through educators in ways that become vehicles for repression. Moving out of status quo and critical discourses that shape how we allegedly ‘should’ be thinking, conversing and taking action to develop competent pedagogues and into the realms of the personal and contextual requires a reconsideration of ‘the intimate tie between knowledge and interest, the latter being understood as a standpoint from which to grasp reality’ (Ellsworth, 1989, p. 304). From a transactional perspective, Ryan (2011) concurs, arguing that actual experience is ‘dominated by habit rather than self-evident truths or brightly lit sense data’ (p. 26). The interests and habits pre-service and practicing teachers as well as teacher educators non-reflectively bring to their processes of developing pedagogical competency are therefore of central importance. The interests, habits, and preexisting knowledge that each individual brings to pedagogical experiences engender a commitment to pluralism that is uniquely captured by transactional pragmatism. In other words, pedagogical problems are contextual through the dynamics of human experience. Egalitarian principles and a transactional point of view encourage teacher educators to rethink Kincheloe et al.’s (2011) assertion that ‘teachers must join the culture of researchers if a new level of educational rigor is ever to be achieved’ (p. 165). Rather than presuming to be the self-evident arbitrators of rigor, transactional theory suggests that educational researchers should reciprocally join the culture of teachers. Apprehending human experience as the conduit to the realities of pedagogical competence leads teacher educators to consider the culture of researchers to possess a different, though not superior, account of teacher competence. To be certain, rigorous educational research studies are often helpful and informative in efforts to address persistent and pervasive educational problems. However, these methods of knowledge production cannot be separated from the habits engrained in non-reflective facets of the culture of researchers that Kincheloe et al. (2011) separate and elevate from practice. A transactional discourse of cultivating teacher competency shifts away from habits of sorting educators into bifurcated categories of those who generate and hold knowledge and those who consume and apply it. This conceptual distinction calls for teacher educators to move away from models of knowledge transmission and toward
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plans for nurturing transformative educational experiences alongside pre-service and practicing teachers. Additionally, a transactional discourse of cultivating pedagogical competency has an important functional implication. The reality of teacher competence is never independent of how it came to be realized as an outcome of problem solving. Here, the focus shifts from what is the best understanding of pedagogical competence, to questions of what is the most useful way of apprehending pedagogy given the needs and desires of a particular person and context. Perhaps one of the most useful, yet underutilized, ways of apprehending pedagogical competence is through practical experience. By attending to teachers’ actual experiences of daily practices, including the commitments, relationships and tacit knowledge that constitute such realities, teacher educators move toward apprehending pedagogical competencies as they are truly experienced. This pragmatic element of a transactional discourse reminds teacher educators that the complexities of pedagogy are found in the practical problem solving, rather than the advice given from bird’s-eye points of view. Positioned within a transactional discourse, teacher educators work alongside classroom teachers in the daily endeavors of pedagogical practices. From a transactional perspective, teacher educators are both influential and influenced by classroom teachers. With a spirit of reciprocity, we envision teacher educators working alongside classroom teachers to interdependently build pedagogical competencies in three interrelated processes. A broadening of conceptual repertoires leads to collaborative efforts to examine and re-examine the philosophical underpinnings of acculturated norms. A continuous effort to refine reflective inquiry capacities leads to careful appraisals of the personal and contextual complexities that contextualize daily practice. A sense of ethical virtue leads to ongoing considerations of the individual commitments, social responsibilities, and relationship that one brings to pedagogical practice. An apt illustration of this never-ending process of developing critically conscious and socially just pedagogical competency has been provided by Northern European curriculum theorist, Tero Autio. In a thorough historical critique, Autio (2006) employed a metaphor of dusting. ‘The efforts to rescue education and educative experience from the stranglehold and seductions of vulgar instrumentalism is parallel to the act of dusting: There is a constant need for cleaning; dust never disappears completely’ (Autio, 2006, p. 162). Akin to a transactional approach to developing teacher competency, Autio (2015) likens the unending process of sustaining critical consciousness to the reality that we always need to keep dusting. Further, he honors the complexity of teaching and challenges what he deems to be the dominant ‘culture of method’ that narrowly validates approaches to research and teaching. ‘Scratch a good teacher’, says Autio (2015), ‘and you will find a moral purpose’ (p. 195). However, to liberate the moral purpose of good teachers a shift from pedagogies of transmission to pedagogies of transformation is sorely needed for rethinking our relationship with knowledge and experience.
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To position the teacher intellectually and – through teacher education curricula – as the center of these flows of knowledge would create the space for cultural, counter-hegemonic, transnational movements and sensibilities that may extend the professional competence of teachers and provide them with the knowledge and skills needed in negotiations for their public recognition and appreciation as professionals and intellectuals. (p. 181)
Faithfully endeavoring to capture the true dynamic of actual pedagogical experience, we envision teacher educators realizing transformative power alongside preservice and practicing teachers. Empowered with classroom teachers, teacher education can be an avenue for realizing a discipline from within pedagogical practice that exceeds externally imposed regulations. Teaching has been an inherently moral practice since the earliest records of its practice, though this has been an undertheorized and underappreciated aspect of educational studies (Hansen, 2001). When teacher educators, practicing teachers, and prospective teachers are positioned within a status quo, critical or hybrid discourse developing pedagogical competencies occurs through a disciplined transference of knowledge. Although the competencies are distinctly defined within each of the aforementioned discourses, teaching method is primary to all three. When positioned within a transactional discourse of competency, teacher educators work alongside prospective and practicing teachers to identify the individual understandings brought to the teacher preparation program and build upon them to foster intellectual acumen, ethical virtues, and practical wisdom. A transactional approach to teacher preparation helps individuals to examine their own interests and values and identify the commonalities that bind them together – those commonalities that make us human. Teacher educators in collaboration with practicing and prospective teachers work to identify the moral and intellectual tasks put before them and accept responsibility for the ethical features of pedagogical decisions. In this way, a transactional discourse of pedagogical competency sheds light upon an existing quality of pedagogical practice in a novel way, the tacit way moral purposes play out in the complex realities of lived experience. Revitalizing this aspect of pedagogical discourse and practice, we contend, transforms means of expression, relationships, and professional identities.
References Alexander, R. (2009). Towards a comparative pedagogy. In R. Cowen & A. M. Kazamias (Eds.) International handbook of comparative education (pp. 923–942). New York: Springer. Apple, M. W. (2005). Education, markets, and an audit culture. Critical Quarterly, 47 (1–2), 11–29. Asia Society. (2013). Teacher quality: The 2013 International Summit on the Teaching Profession. Report retrieved from http://AsiaSociety.org/teachingsummit Autio, T. (2006). Subjectivity, curriculum and society: Between and beyond the German didaktik and Anglo-American curriculum studies. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Autio, T. (2015). Tero’s R2 and R3 contributions. In J. G. Henderson (Ed.), Reconceptualizing curriculum development: Inspiring and informing action (pp. 180–181, 194–195). New York, NY: Routledge.
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Ayers, W., Kumashiro, K., Meiners, E., Quinn, T., & Stovall, D. (2010). Teaching toward democracy: Educators as agents of change. New York: Paradigm Publishers. Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bowles, F. D. (1973). Competency-based teacher education? The Houston Story. Educational Leadership, 30(6), 510–512. Chisholm, L., & Leyendecker, R. (2008). Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Educational Development, 28(2), 195–205. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing professional practice: A framework for teaching (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Darling-Hammond, L. (2013). Getting teacher evaluation right: What really matters for effectiveness and improvement. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. F. (1949). Knowing and the known. Boston, MA: The Beacon Press. Education International & Oxfam Novib. (2011). Quality Educators: An International Study of Teacher Competences and Standards. Report retrieved from www.ei-ie.org/ under Resources and Research. Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297–324. European Commission. (2013). Supporting teacher competence development. Report retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/school/doc/teachercomp_en.pdf Fairclough, N. L. (1989). Language and power. New York: Longman. Fernandez, C. (2002). Learning from Japanese approaches to professional development. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(5), 393–405. Forzani, F. M. (2014). Understanding ‘core practices’ and ‘practice-based’ teacher education: Learning from the past. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 357–368. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Seabury Press. Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2010). Toward creative solidarity in the ‘next’ moment of curriculum work. In E. Malewski (Ed.), Curriculum studies handbook: Next moments (pp. 78–94). New York, NY: Routledge. Gee, J. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Taylor & Francis. Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1989). Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Goh, P. S. C., & Wong, K. T. (2014). Beginning teachers’ conceptions of competency: Implications to educational policy and teacher education in Malaysia. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 13(1), 65–79. Goodwin, A. L. (2010). Globalization and the preparation of quality teachers: Rethinking knowledge domains for teaching. Teacher Education, 21(1), 19–32, DOI:10.1080/10476210903466901 Hansen, D. T. (2001). Teaching as a moral activity. In V. Richardson (4th ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 826–857). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Hargreaves, A. (2014). Imagine the end of ranking. In L. Reynolds (Ed.), Imagine it better: Visions of what school might be (pp. 8–13). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Henderson, J. G., & Gornik, R. (2007). Transformative curriculum leadership (3rd ed). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc. Hodge, S., & Harris, R. (2012). Discipline, governmentality and 25 years of competency-based training. Studies in the Education of Adults, 44(2), 155–170. Hopmann, S., & Riquarts, K. (2000). Starting a dialogue: A beginning conversation between didaktik and the curriculum traditions. In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann, & K. Riquarts (Eds.), Teaching as a reflective practice: The German didaktik tradition (pp. 3–12). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Joseph, P. (2011) (Ed.). Cultures of curriculum (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
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Kincheloe, J. L., McLaren, P., & Steinberg, S. R. (2011). Critical pedagogy and qualitative research. In Denzin & Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 163–178). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Laura, C. T. (2014). Being bad: My baby brother and the school-to-prison pipeline. New York: Teachers College Press. Lee, D., Hong, H., Tay, W., & Lee, W. O. (2013). Professional learning communities in Singapore schools. Journal of Co-operative Studies, 46(2), 53–56. Liakopoulou, M. (2011). Teachers’ pedagogical competence as a prerequisite for entering the profession. European Journal of Education, 46(4), 474–488. Mulder, M., Gulikers, J., Biemans, H., & Wesselink, R. (2009). The new competence concept in higher education: Error or enrichment? Journal of European Industrial Training, 33(8/9), 755–770. Null, W. (2011). Curriculum: From theory to practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Pantic, N., & Wubbels, T. (2010). Teacher competencies as a basis for teacher education – view of Serbian teachers and teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3), 694–703. Pantic, N., & Wubbels, T. (2012). Competence-based teacher education: A change from didaktik to curriculum culture? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(1), 61–87. Pantic, N., Wubbels, T., & Mainhard, T. (2011). Teacher competence as a basis for teacher education: Comparing views of teachers and teacher educators in five Western Balkan Countries. Comparative Education Review, 55(2), 165–188. Pinar, W. (2013). Curriculum studies in the United States: Present circumstances, intellectual histories. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Pinar, W. F. (2012). What is curriculum theory? (2nd ed.) New York, NY: Routledge. Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Ryan, F. (2011). Seeing together: Mind, matter and the experimental outlook of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley. Great Barrington, MA: The American Institute for Economic Research. Sahlberg, P. (2015). Finnish Lessons 2.0: What the world can learn from educational change in Finland. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sargent, T. C., & Hannum, E. (2009). Doing more with less: Teacher professional learning in resourceconstrained primary schools in China. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(3), 258–276. Sarroub, L. K., & Quadros, S. (2015). Critical pedagogy in classroom discourse. In M. Bigelow & J. EnnserKananen (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of educational linguistics (pp. 252–260). New York & Abingdon: Routledge. Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Stevens, D. (2010). A Freirean critique of the competence model of teacher education, focusing on the standards for qualified teacher status in England. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(2), 187–196. Stovall, D. (2016). Born out of struggle: Critical race theory, school creation, and the politics of interruption. New York: State University of New York Press. Suciu, A. I., & Mata, L. (2011). Pedagogical competencies – the key to efficient education. International Online Journal of Educational Sciences, 3(2), 411–423. Thorpe, R. (2014). Sustaining the teaching profession. New England Journal of Public Policy, 26(1), 1–16. Vazalwar, C. S., & Dey, N. (2011). Teacher competencies and use of innovative techniques for improving classroom practices: A discussion. Learning Community, 2(1), 89–96. Westbury, I. (2000). Teaching as a reflective practice: What might didaktik teach curriculum? In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann, & K. Riquarts (Eds.), Teaching as a reflective practice: The German didaktik tradition (pp. 15–39). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Watkins, W. H. (2012). The assault on public education: Confronting the politics of corporate school reform. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
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Westbury, I., Hansen, S., Kansanen, P., & Bjorkvist, O. (2005). Teacher education for research-based practice in expanded roles: Finland’s experience. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 49(5), 475–485. Westbury, I., Hopmann, S., & Riquarts, K. (2000) (Eds.). Teaching as a reflective practice: The German didaktik tradition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ylimaki, R. M. (2011). Critical curriculum leadership: A framework for progressive education. New York, NY: Routledge.
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Section IX
Learning with and from Assessments in Teacher Education Mistilina Sato
Section IX is organized around the theme of learning with and from assessments in teacher education. It describes assessment practices through several theoretical lenses, approaches to teaching pre- and in-service teachers about assessment theory and practice, and how teachers are assessed. The authors discuss how teacher candidates, practicing teachers, and teacher educators are each positioned sometimes as learners about assessment and sometimes as subjects of assessment. This section recognizes that assessment processes make visible what is valued by the local education stakeholders, regardless of whether we have research-based evidence about what is being assessed and how.
Section Overview In Chapter 51, Klassen, Durksen, Patterson, and Rowett write about the filtering functions of assessment for selection into initial teacher education programs. They argue that selection processes are a predictive exercise that involves three
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steps: identifying the attributes needed for success, assessing these attributes, and confirming the relationship between assessed attributes and desired outcomes. After reviewing the limited research evidence undergirding current selection processes, they bring particular focus to assessment of non-academic/ non-cognitive attributes for teaching. They highlight the use of situated judgment tests and argue that these context-sensitive assessments have shown to be better predictors of job performance than conventional personality tests and, when tailored to specific contexts, are useful for selection purposes. In Chapter 52, Allen discusses factors that shape summative assessment in teacher education with a focus on determining candidates’ program progression and completion under three broad themes: standards-based teacher education; evidence of impact; and theory and practice integration. New developments in the use of standardized performance assessment are a key part of this chapter’s discussion. While summative assessments are often guided by socio-cultural, political, and policy agendas that set standards and criteria, local understanding and clarity around the assessment criteria and other implementation issues can determine the effectiveness of such assessments. In Chapter 53, Brookhart addresses how formative assessment is used in teacher education and how teachers learn to use formative assessment in their own teaching. Brookhart positions formative assessment in cognitive and constructivist understandings of learning, describing it as the mechanism by which learners become involved in their own learning. She concludes that the research literature shows mixed results as to whether formative assessment is taught in teacher education courses and whether teacher educators model formative assessment in those courses. In her view, ‘the largest stumbling block is the needed change in approach to learning, from a view that learning means transmitting information to students to a view that learning means students making their own meaning through self-regulatory processes that require formative assessment evidence’. In Chapter 54, Sato and Kemper describe the filtering functions of assessment for purposes of credentialing and advancing in the teaching career. This chapter examines how assessments serve a gatekeeping function and shape the process of teacher development. They consider the trade-offs when selecting entry requirements for teaching and how professional standards across multiple jurisdictions can help create commonly held views of what counts as good teaching. They conclude that teacher assessments must serve as a process for ensuring high quality teachers for every classroom while simultaneously honoring the complexity of teaching, create educative and advancement opportunities for teachers, and serve as trusted accountability measures for those peering at education results from the outside. In Chapter 55, Cowie and Cooper interpret the functions of assessment in relation to socio-cultural approaches to teacher education. They acknowledge that socio-cultural approaches to teacher education and assessment links learning
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with identity change. They argue that the implication for teacher education is that ‘we can no longer assume that student teachers and teachers can learn about content and appropriate teaching practices in their campus-based teacher education programme or professional development programme and be ready and able to enact these practices in a different community/setting’. The authors take a strong stance on the role of formative assessment within this theoretical framework and argue that the lines between instruction, formative assessment, and learning are blurred because each of these activities is a social practice and a social product. In Chapter 56, van Staden and Smit describe the functions of learning- centered/person-centered approaches to assessment in relation to teacher education. They position their argument within a constructivist framework and argue that students are responsible for their own learning within a learning environment that values student thinking, cooperative learning, and authentic assessment of student understanding. The authors illustrate these ideas using an example of teacher candidates engaging in learning about assessment at their home institution. The case example illustrates the teacher candidate playing an active role in learning and assessment through a process of collaboration, dialogue, feedback, and guided development. In Chapter 57, Farnsworth writes about the functions of assessment in relation to teacher education when striving for social justice in education. She describes social justice education as ultimately about the actions and practices that support and enable teachers to challenge misconceptions and stereotypes in their interactions with students and colleagues, and to identify and use materials in the classroom that create inclusive, empowering, and critical learning environments. Farnsworth points out that to accomplish this, a degree of unlearning needs to take place. She introduces the concept of assessment for reflection, with the end goal being reflexivity. Reflexivity itself, however, is viewed as a process that has no end, much as the ‘end goal of social justice is not perceivable but emergent’.
Themes, Tensions, and Puzzles The authors agree that assessment is a core practice of teaching and teacher education. They also discuss formative assessment, the fundamental practice of supporting student learning, as particularly essential to teaching and learning interactions and find support for it from several theoretical perspectives. They also converge in reporting on teacher assessment as grounded in professional performance standards and efforts to define effectiveness based on pupil outcomes. New developments in teacher performance assessments that capture the complexity of teaching and assessments that can honor and capture the moral and dispositional aspects of teaching are also reported in multiple chapters. Enduring puzzles, however, continue to shape the research and practices around assessment in teacher education. Two are briefly identified here.
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Tensions in Teacher Assessment Design Three chapters briefly discuss the technical and predictive qualities of assessments for teachers, centering on defining expectations that are agreed upon across a diverse array of conceptions of teaching; narrowing the measures to focus on particular aspects of teaching as a complex practice; and establishing measures of non-academic characteristics of teachers. Multiple chapters report that jurisdictions around the world have established standards of professional teaching practice that have influenced both pre-service and in-service teacher education. Setting such performance expectations is widely viewed as progress toward a consensus of what constitutes good teaching. Some authors, however, point out that standards can also narrow expectations to the point of not recognizing what may actually be learned or lead to more bureaucratic forms of assessment, resulting in compliance, rather than learning. While standardized assessment instruments provide a mechanism for building common expectations of teaching performance, there are multiple sources of heterogeneity in teacher assessment. Not only are there differences among individual teacher characteristics, but we are also in an era of many pathways into teaching creating wide variation in the quality of teachers’ preparation experiences. Additionally, the diversity of contexts in which teachers are expected to perform creates many assessment design challenges.
Puzzling about Developing Formative Assessment Practices These chapters suggest that practices of formative assessment in classrooms and in teacher education are still quite limited in maintaining a core focus on supporting student learning. We also see pedagogical and cultural puzzles about how we support the development of these teaching practices. A common pedagogy referenced across chapters is modeling assessment practices: communicating success criteria, establishing feedback loops, creating opportunities for self-assessment against criteria, adjusting instruction based on assessment information, promoting learner autonomy, and questioning strategies that include asking students to explain their thinking. For modeling to be an effective pedagogy, teacher educators and teachers in clinical placements need not only to have robust assessment practices, but must also be able to lead teachers through sense-making processes about how these practices are enacted. However, the research suggests that we do not have effective modeling of formative assessment practices that would create a foundation for a practice-begetspractice approach to teacher education. Another common teacher education pedagogy is the construction of unit and lesson plans, sometimes with guiding questions or frameworks to help bring focus to assessment practices (e.g. defining learning intentions, assessing prior
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knowledge, and identifying assessment procedures). Requiring teacher candidates and teachers to put definitive instructional plans in place creates a tension with the nature of formative assessment that is responsive to learners’ thinking and progress. Lesson plans typically put ultimate emphasis on outcomes and may limit a teachers’ use of formative assessment practices based on contingencies of student responses and formative feedback loops. Brookhart found some studies on teaching teachers about formative assessment uncovered a desire for procedures, routines, and record-keeping (and sometimes this was part of the researchers’ approach to formative assessment design). These procedures were sometimes taken up by teachers without embodying the spirit of supporting student learning. Tensions lie in the convergence of the need for both tools of practice and a shift in teachers’ understanding about the deeper meaning of assessment for learning. The local assessment culture becomes an important element in developing this understanding and practice. For example, do teachers conceptualize themselves as learners who engage in assessment practices to get smarter about their students’ learning versus viewing themselves needing to comply with local instructional and curricular mandates? Finally, while not addressed broadly across these chapters, we might consider the role that power plays in assessment relationships when trying to develop new teaching practices. Summative assessment positions teachers as judges of student performance whereas formative assessment involves teachers and teacher educators as supporters of learning. Within formative assessment for both pupils and teachers, expertise and relationships are lateral and community-centered rather than hierarchical. This creates a shared power dynamic, rather than the teacher having control or power over students. Ultimately, we may need to work through tensions that arise when we ask who is in control of the learning process.
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51 Filtering Functions of Assessment for Selection into Initial Teacher Education Programs R o b e r t K l a s s e n , Tr a c y D u r k s e n , F i o n a Patterson and Emma Rowett Selection for education, training, and employment occurs throughout the lifespan: sometimes for school places in early childhood, but commonly from late adolescence onwards as individuals move on to post-secondary education or employment. A selection process – for training or employment – is a predictive exercise that involves three steps: first, identifying the attributes needed for success in an endeavor; second, assessing these attributes in candidates; and, third, confirming the relationship between assessed attributes and the desired outcome. In education, selection is particularly important at two filtering points: when hiring into teaching positions, and when admitting candidates into initial teacher education. The goals of this chapter are to examine the selection process into initial teacher education, and specifically to consider the challenges of these processes, and then to present a new approach to selection into initial teacher education that addresses some of these long-standing challenges. Of particular interest in the chapter is the challenge associated with the assessment of non-academic attributes (sometimes called ‘non-cognitive’ attributes) for selection purposes. The term ‘non-academic attributes’ refers to withinperson variables variously described as beliefs, motives, personality traits, and dispositions (e.g. Patterson, Zibarras, & Ashworth, 2015). In selection research, academic attributes (sometimes called ‘cognitive’ attributes) typically refer to variables that reflect reasoning skills (such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)) or academic achievement (e.g. grade point average). For selection in education
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settings, academic attributes may also refer to subject area knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. Most teacher education selection processes attempt to assess candidates’ non-academic and academic attributes with the belief that both contribute to future success in teaching. Although our primary focus in the chapter is on selection into initial teacher education, systematic research in this area is scarce, and so we also consider the research examining teacher selection at the point of hire. The weighting of specific criteria at these two points of selection may change (e.g. SAT scores may hold less weight for selection of practicing teachers than for candidates for initial teacher education), but the overall goal, and the challenges, of selection at the two levels is the same: to identify the attributes needed for success and to assess these attributes in candidates. We begin by examining the purpose of selection, and highlight the challenges inherent in making selection decisions in education settings. Next, we consider current selection practices in a range of settings, and address the question of which non-academic attributes should be assessed. We follow with an examination of the ‘selection paradox’, the notion that non-academic attributes are important but difficult to measure at the point of selection. We conclude the chapter by discussing a new approach using situational judgment tests (SJTs) to assess non-academic attributes at entry into teacher education.
Selection and its Filtering Function Selection is necessary in any training or employment setting when the number of applicants outweighs the number of available places. Selection is also used to identify those candidates who may be unsuitable for a particular role (i.e. ‘selecting out’) and to identify candidates’ strengths and weaknesses for future development. At the foundation of selection research is the belief that individuals vary in personal attributes and experiences, and that these individual differences are related to future behaviors in training and professional contexts. Some of these individual differences are fleeting (e.g. mood), and some are more durable (e.g. intelligence and personality). In some cases, selectors might ask candidates to self-evaluate these attributes through direct assessment (e.g. how good are you at working in groups?), while in other cases, selectors attempt to infer these attributes by observation or through indirect assessments (e.g. through evaluation of personal statements or letters of reference). As a form of assessment, selection serves a filtering function where candidates’ academic and non-academic attributes are evaluated to help selectors make predictions about the candidates’ likely success in a training program or job. In education, the application of the selection filter of prospective and practicing teachers happens at several points: at selection into teacher education, at initial hiring into a teaching position, and, in some settings, at the point of awarding permanent status or tenure after a specified amount of teaching experience.
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The decision about when to filter people from the pool of teachers is partly influenced by the (as yet unsettled) question ‘Are teachers born or made?’, i.e. how are non-academic attributes, pedagogical knowledge, and academic attributes likely to change over time during teacher education and practice? Another factor to consider in the decision when to filter individuals from the pool of prospective teachers is the stability of the relative standing of these attributes. For example, are teacher education candidates who are low in conscientiousness compared to their peers likely to stay in that lower relative position over time? Some researchers, especially educational economists, have proposed routine filtering of teachers after hiring based on performance in the classroom. For example, Staiger and Rockoff (2010) proposed a model where teachers are filtered after their first year of teaching based on their students’ performance. Similarly, Hanushek (2011) suggested continuous filtering of teachers based on classroom performance. Our own work on selection in education is based on the belief that teachers are born and made: although most candidates for teacher education will develop and improve their teaching practices with appropriate instruction and opportunities, it is prudent to select those candidates who possess higher, rather than lower, levels of academic and non-academic attributes shown to be associated with successful teaching. From a theoretical standpoint, our work is grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1997), and particularly in the deterministic theory of reciprocal causation, where person factors (e.g. academic and non-academic attributes) interact reciprocally with behaviors (e.g. teaching experiences) and environmental factors (e.g. quality of opportunities to learn and develop).
Selecting Prospective Teachers Interest in improving the selection of teachers and prospective teachers has a long history. Tubbs in 1928 suggested that teacher selection depended on school officials’ ability to ‘read human character – to see below surface indications’ (p. 329). The need for systematic research on selection in initial teacher education has begun to receive attention from policymakers. For example, in the UK, the Donaldson report (2010) recommended ‘more consistent attention to interpersonal skills’ in the selection process of (teacher education) candidates (p. 5), and the House of Commons Education Committee (2012) ‘welcomed the concept of a test of interpersonal skills’ (p. 21) for selection into teacher education. Further research on the selection process for teacher education programs is worth pursuing because we know that the most effective new teachers tend to show stable effectiveness profiles over time (Atteberry, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2015). That is, teaching effectiveness patterns are not random, and selecting candidates for teacher education based on a broad combination of academic and non-academic attributes may increase the likelihood of potential for success in teacher education and in teaching practice. We also suspect (albeit from a limited research base) that current selection methods do not work very well in selecting
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candidates likely to be successful: commonly used selection predictors (e.g. grade point average) are not strongly related to future teaching effectiveness (Casey & Childs, 2011). However, we know from selection practices in other disciplines (e.g. medicine) that assessment of a range of candidates’ attributes at entrance into training predicts professional effectiveness once training is completed (e.g. Lievens & Sackett, 2012). Research on selection into teacher education has the potential to improve teacher effectiveness on a large scale.
What Do we mean when we say ‘Teaching Effectiveness’? At the heart of selection into teacher education is the prediction of candidates’ short-term and long-term teaching effectiveness. However, predicting which candidates will be effective when they enter the classroom is remarkably difficult, because teaching is a complex, multi-faceted job that is influenced by a host of interacting environmental and personal factors (e.g. Rimm-Kaufman & Hamre, 2010). Jackson, Rockoff, and Staiger (2014) considered teaching effectiveness as the ability to increase students’ ‘stock of human capital’ (p. 802) through teaching behaviors such as communication with students, classroom management, or encouragement of greater efforts. A recent review sponsored by the Sutton Trust in the UK (Coe, Aloisi, Higgins, & Major, 2014) defined teaching effectiveness as teaching which leads to ‘improved student achievement using outcomes that matter to their future successes’ (p. 2), with six evidence-supported components of effectiveness: content knowledge, quality of instruction, classroom climate, classroom management, teacher beliefs, and professional behaviors. One of the roles of selection into teacher education is to predict classroom effectiveness during teacher education and subsequently during teaching practice. Assessment of effectiveness can take on a range of forms (e.g. classroom observations, student ratings, self-reports, and, for practicing teachers, valueadded measures). The use of value-added measures of teaching effectiveness is common but contested, with particular concern that these measures fail to adequately account for differences in student backgrounds (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 2015). Another actively researched approach to measuring teaching effectiveness involves the use of systematic classroom observation tools, such as the CLASS framework (Classroom Assessment Scoring System, Pianta & Hamre, 2009), which assesses teaching behaviors including emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. For practicing teachers, assessment of teaching behaviors using instruments such as CLASS has been shown to be robust and of benefit for designing interventions aimed at enhancing teaching practices. We suggest that teaching effectiveness is formed through the interaction of a complex net of personal and environmental factors that influence student outcomes. We know that most new teachers become more effective as they gain experience, but Atteberry’s work on effectiveness within large cohorts of new teachers shows that relative effectiveness is stable (Atteberry et al., 2015); that
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is, new teachers’ effectiveness is heterogeneous, and patterns of individual differences in effectiveness may be apparent early on in a teacher’s development and persist over time. Uncovering the sources of heterogeneity in teaching effectiveness is at the heart of the filtering function of assessment for teacher selection. In order to understand patterns of individual differences in teacher effectiveness, selectors gather evidence through assessment that they believe can help them make valid selection decisions.
Current Selection Practices In Figure 51.1, we present a model that shows how the selection process for teacher education and teaching positions relies on sampling from academic attributes (such as subject area knowledge, cognitive ability, and literacy and numeracy skills), background experience (teaching and other related experiences), and nonacademic attributes (such as beliefs, motives, personality traits, and dispositions) in order to make predictions about future behaviors. Most selection practices are built on folk beliefs: there is scant evidence for the reliability and validity of selection procedures for teaching positions (Hindman & Stronge, 2009) and even less
Figure 51.1 Model of relationship between academic attributes, background experience, and non-academic attributes in prediction of performance in ITE (Initial Teacher Education) and teaching behaviors
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for selection methods in teacher education (e.g. Caskey, Peterson, & Temple, 2001). For example, at the point of hire, the Teacher Perceiver Interview is used by almost 2000 school districts in the United States, but the research base supporting its effectiveness in predicting teacher quality, and its theoretical foundation, is weak (Metzger & Wu, 2008). Other selection tools – including commercial personality tests (e.g. Pearson’s TalentLens) and structured interviews – have been used to assess non-academic attributes for teacher selection, but with decidedly mixed results (e.g. Young & Delli, 2002). Teacher education programs face the same challenges with selection. Programs vary in the kinds of assessments they use for filtering candidates, but we know very little about the reliability and validity of these procedures, and the research we do have on the validity of selection procedures produces equivocal results (e.g. Casey & Childs, 2011; Denner, Norman, & Lin, 2009). We recently surveyed 74 university-based initial teacher education providers in England and Wales to understand how academic and non-academic attributes were assessed for selection (Klassen & Dolan, 2015). Academic assessments in all the surveyed teacher education programs included a government-mandated professional skills test (literacy and numeracy) and an evaluation of academic qualifications: A levels, GCSE grades in English and Math, and university degree class (i.e. 1st, 2:1, 2:2, etc.). Non-academic attributes were assessed through individual and group interviews (97 percent), assessment of social behaviors through group activities (62 percent), and formal personality tests (3 percent); however, no evidence of the robustness of assessment practices was provided. In the United States, assessment for entry into one of the more than 2400 university-based initial teacher education programs may involve SAT scores (for undergraduate programs) or evaluation of university transcripts (for postgraduate/masters courses), as well as basic skills tests in reading, writing and mathematics. Other criteria for selection at US universities include examples displayed in Figure 51.1 (e.g. letters of reference, personal statements, proof of schoolbased work experience, personal interviews). However, little research evidence is available supporting the predictive validity of selection methods in teacher education (e.g. Casey & Childs, 2011), and some methods such as letters of reference and interviews have been shown to be biased against certain groups of candidates (McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, & Maurer, 1994). Similarly, the Teach for America program bases its selection process on identifying a wide range of non-academic attributes, including commitment to increasing opportunities for children from all backgrounds, long-term work commitment, a desire to improve and develop personally as well as professionally, interpersonal and motivational skills, a respect for diversity, and the ability to work effectively with people from a variety of backgrounds. The selection process involves an initial application form, including short-answer questions to evaluate writing ability, a telephone interview, an online test with multiple-choice and short-answer questions, and a series of subsequent interview sessions, which might include role play and workrelated exercises (Teach for America, 2015).
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International Perspectives on Selection Education systems in many countries share the same challenge – how to choose the best possible candidates for teacher education and teaching positions by examining academic and non-academic attributes, and relevant experiences. A call for attention to selection practices has been made by international bodies such as the OECD (2005), which highlighted the need for more rigorous and transparent approaches to selection into teaching. However, jurisdictional interest in developing selection processes is dependent on the need for selection; in some contexts with a shortage of teachers, available teacher education places may outweigh the number of candidates, whereas in other contexts, such as Finland, the number of candidates far outweighs the number of available places. Therefore, it is important to consider teacher education selection practices in a number of contexts in order to give a flavor of the similarities and differences of selection across international settings. The Finnish education system is well known for its success in international education comparisons, such as PISA, and its emphasis on high quality teachers and teaching. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg (2015) notes that although Finnish teacher education programs accept only about 10 percent of applicants, the filtering system gives as much weight to personality, interpersonal skills, and ‘moral purpose’ as to academic performance. Decisions about how these non-academic attributes are assessed are left to the individual teacher education programs. However, it is typical for selection into teacher education programs for primary school teachers that candidates take a written exam based on a set of research articles, followed by an assessment of personality and motivation, using standardized personality tests. In Ireland, candidates for initial teacher education programs (called the Professional Diploma in Education (PDE)) are filtered for selection through assessment of academic performance in their first degree, additional academic qualifications (e.g. Master’s degree), and relevant professional experience. Heinz (2013) analyzed admission and program performance data from entrants to an Irish teacher education program revealing that female pre-service teachers’ academic performance was significantly better than male pre-service teachers’, and that prior experience was positively associated with teaching practice grades. Heinz pointed out the need for additional assessment of ‘personal qualities’ and a renewal of focus on the fairness and transparency of selection criteria.
What Should be Assessed? Evidence from selection into training in other disciplines (e.g. medicine) shows that non-academic attributes assessed at the point of entry into a training programme are reliably associated with academic and professional effectiveness
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several years after initial selection (e.g. Lievens & Sackett, 2012). Measures of non-academic attributes tend to provide incremental validity – i.e. a significant increase in prediction – over and above academic predictors such as achievement test scores and educational background (e.g. Patterson, Tavabie, Denney, Kerrin, Ashworth, Koczwara, & McLeod, 2013). Selection processes in other disciplines differ in important ways from those in education, but they can provide a model worth considering when examining the selection of prospective teachers. Although research on teacher education selection is scarce, considerable research from education and psychology has examined non-academic attributes associated with teaching effectiveness. Therefore, we consider how beliefs, motivation, personality traits, and dispositions influence teachers’ classroom behaviors. Research in education and psychology has examined the factors associated with teaching effectiveness, including background factors such as educational record (e.g. Wayne & Youngs, 2003); academic attributes such as subject knowledge and expertise, literacy and numeracy skills, pedagogical knowledge, and reasoning abilities (e.g. Kunter, Klusmann, Baumert, Richter, Voss, & Hachfeld, 2013); and non-academic attributes, such as self-awareness, adaptability, beliefs, motivation, personality, self-regulation, resilience, commitment to the profession, and reflection (e.g. Buehl & Fives, 2009). Kunter et al. (2013) showed that non-academic attributes (beliefs and motivation) made an incremental contribution to successful teaching beyond pedagogical content knowledge. The factors related to teaching effectiveness are multi-faceted, with non-academic attributes making a contribution over and above background and academic factors. Teacher beliefs. Teachers rely on implicit and explicit beliefs while functioning within a dynamic educational system. Ashton (2015) provides an overview of theoretical perspectives associated with a range of teacher beliefs, beginning with beliefs ‘as the core of personality’ and later with the inclusion of a social cognitive focus on motivation. Social cognitive research on teachers’ beliefs typically focuses on beliefs about students’ learning and development, and beliefs about the nature of learning and knowledge (Buehl & Fives, 2009). A focus on beliefs about teaching ability reveals important implications for teachers’ development and resilience (Fives & Buehl, 2014). Since the prior beliefs of teacher candidates act as filters when interpreting training content and experiences (Levin, 2015), it is critical for education programs to indirectly identify and assess those beliefs at the time of selection. Initial teacher education develops candidates’ beliefs about teaching (Buehl & Fives, 2009), but how effective it is in changing beliefs about teaching is not well established. Innovative, longitudinal research has the potential to build understanding about how these beliefs influence teachers’ interpretation and engagement with daily professional practices and overall commitment to the profession. Motivation. Motivation is defined as a contextualized and responsive set of wishes, desires, or underlying beliefs that influence people’s movement towards attainment of goals (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002), and includes self-efficacy,
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goal orientation, and the three basic psychological needs from self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, and relatedness). Research using a self- determination theory framework showed that teachers’ relatedness with students was associated with higher levels of teaching engagement and lower levels of teaching anxiety (Klassen, Perry, & Frenzel, 2012). Motivation beliefs such as self-efficacy show some stability once established (Bandura, 1999) but fluctuate during initial teacher education (Klassen & Durksen, 2014). Overall, teachers who are more self-efficacious are more likely to be rated by classroom observers as being instructionally effective (Klassen & Tze, 2014), and teachers’ goal orientations are related to quality of instruction (Butler & Shibaz, 2014). Personality traits. Personality is conceptualized as particular attributes that tend to be expressed in the same way across situations and over time. In his Talks to Teachers (1899/2015), psychologist William James labelled personality traits as ‘bundles of habits’ that are the foundation of displayed behavior. Current research on personality traits continues to be dominated by the ‘Big Five’ framework (McCrae & Costa, 1987): conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, and openness. Modern interactionist approaches posit that the expression of traits depends on the interaction between person and the particular situation. For example, in latent state-trait theory (Steyer, Schmitt, & Eid, 1999), momentary expression of trait tendencies – states – are underpinned by an underlying latent trait that may be expressed differently according to setting. In education settings, Klassen and Tze (2014) reported a modest but significant positive relationship between teachers’ personality and objectively measured teaching effectiveness, and Patrick (2011) found that students favored teachers who displayed higher levels of conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, and agreeableness (in descending order), but not neuroticism. Our teacher selection research responds, in part, to Rimm-Kaufmann and Hamre’s (2010) call for further research into how teacher personality was linked with teaching effectiveness. Dispositions. Whereas psychologists tend to refer to a cluster of personal characteristics – beliefs, motivation, and personality – as non-academic attributes or competencies, education researchers have defined similar phenomena as ‘dispositions’. Johnson and Reiman (2007) define dispositions as ‘attributed characteristics of a teacher that represent a trend of a teacher’s judgments and actions in ill-structured contexts’ (p. 677), and Dottin (2009) defines dispositions as ‘habits of mind’ (p. 85) that include cognitive and moral dimensions, and are closely tied to professional judgment. Dottin proposed that dispositions should be nurtured and explicitly assessed during teacher education programs. In social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1999), dispositions are patterned differently across individuals and across contexts. Dispositions regulate behavior but are influenced by external (contextual) factors and interventions, such as environmental demands and training opportunities. For teacher education selection purposes, the context of any assessment of dispositions is important: it may be helpful to ask candidates to
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describe judgments in teaching-related contexts (e.g. as a tutor or coach) rather than in less relevant or general contexts.
A Selection Paradox of Assessing Non-Academic Attributes The problem of faking. Prospective teachers’ non-academic attributes are important but difficult to assess in high-stakes settings. One reason why nonacademic attributes are difficult to assess is because people may be motivated to distort their responses (e.g. Johnson & Saboe, 2011). Faking is particularly a problem with self-report measures in high-stakes settings because participants will often identify response patterns that they believe will show them in the most positive light. Another problem, perhaps more serious than faking, is the possibility of differential faking, where some candidates might inflate their scores more than others, thus affecting the fairness of the selection process. For example, when ‘fake-good’ response patterns on a personality test are universal, faking might not be a serious problem if everyone benefits to the same degree. However, when faking patterns favor certain candidates or groups of candidates (for example, candidates who have been coached), then the fairness of selection decisions must be questioned (Ryan & Ployhart, 2014). Implicit and explicit measurement of non-academic attributes. For selection purposes, assessment of academic (cognitive) attributes is relatively straightforward: schools and universities routinely assess and record academic progress, and reliable tests (e.g. the SAT) are available to test reasoning abilities. Although some aspects of beliefs, traits, values, and motivations operate ‘on the surface’ or explicitly, other aspects operate implicitly, separate from people’s awareness and control (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2010). Motowidlo and Beier (2010) propose an implicit trait policies theoretical framework that posits how we can gain insight into psychological characteristics by asking an individual to judge the effectiveness of responses to situations designed to elicit targeted characteristics. Individuals draw on their ready-to-hand explicit beliefs (e.g. I am generally agreeable), but are also influenced by their implicit beliefs, which may not be readily accessible by self-report (e.g. agreeableness is not the best course of effective action in all cases). In education, teaching behaviors are influenced by a combination of implicit and explicit attributes.
Innovative Selection Practices: Situational Judgment Tests Situational judgment tests are a scenario-based measurement method whereby individuals are presented with a range of workplace scenarios and asked to
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evaluate the effectiveness of a list of possible courses of action. Scoring for SJTs usually involves comparing candidates’ judgments with the judgments expressed by subject matter experts. The judgment tasks in an SJT are designed to tap procedural awareness and are based on the notion that situation-specific judgments and responses reflect implicit personality traits that have a causal effect on job performance. SJTs can be designed to capture a range of non-academic attributes – such as motivation, personality, resilience, professional integrity, and empathy – derived from careful job analyses of workplace demands (e.g. Patterson et al., 2013). Research is increasingly showing that SJTs are a reliable and valid approach to making selection decisions in a range of professional contexts (Whetzel & McDaniel, 2009). Further theoretical foundations for SJTs can be located in Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence, whereby procedural knowledge in complex situations is often tacit (e.g. Elliott, Stemler, Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Hoffman, 2011), and in Boyatzis and Kelner’s (2010) theory describing the behavioral manifestation of implicit motives. Research on SJTs for selection in other disciplines. The use of SJTs as an alternative to conventional selection tests has received considerable attention through recent research. The surge in interest is due to the effectiveness of SJTs for predicting job performance (e.g. Christian, Edwards, & Bradley, 2010). For example, SJTs have been shown to be better predictors of job performance than conventional personality tests (e.g. Shultz & Zedeck, 2012), and when tailored to specific contexts, are useful for selection purposes (Patterson et al., 2015). In addition, SJTs tend to display stronger face and content validity than conventional non-academic measures due to their close correspondence to the work-related situations that they describe (Whetzel & McDaniel, 2009). In fact, SJTs that are constructed by researchers working in collaboration with expert practitioners are less susceptible to coaching effects and faking than other kinds of selection tests (e.g. conventional personality tests). Recent empirical studies and meta-analyses show that SJTs administered as selection tools at the beginning of training programs can be reliable and robust predictors of subsequent job performance (Patterson et al., 2013). SJTs have been used for selection into training programmes in a range of professions, including dentistry, law, and medicine. In medicine, SJTs have been successfully validated for use in selection into foundation year training in the UK (Patterson et al., 2013). In the United States, Shultz and Zedeck (2012) reported that SJTs were a better predictor of lawyer effectiveness than the conventional tests used for selection into highly competitive law schools and, furthermore, were less prone to inter-group differences (i.e. gender, SES, and ethnicity) than conventionally used selection metrics (i.e. Law School Admissions Test and grade point average). SJTs show less inter-group bias than other selection methods, such as tests of cognitive ability and interviews, and are perceived to be fair by candidates (Patterson et al., 2015).
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Current Research: The Development and Validation of a Teacher SJT Over the last three years, we have been conducting research at three UK universities to develop SJTs designed for assessing candidates’ non-academic attributes for selection into primary and secondary initial teacher education. In our conceptual framework (Figure 51.2), a candidate’s non-academic attributes – their motives, traits, beliefs, and attitudes – have a causal relationship with prospective teaching behaviors. Figure 51.2 displays how SJTs can assess beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions that are implicit and explicit. Included in our illustration are three examples of deductive attributes from relevant theories – self-efficacy, mindset, and conscientiousness (from the ‘Big Five’), although other non-academic attributes could be included (e.g. grit, Robertson-Kraft & Duckworth, 2014; other Big Five traits, Patrick 2011; or teacher enthusiasm, Keller, Goetz, Becker, Morger, & Hensley, 2014). The practice-derived (inductive) attributes include three clusters of non-academic attributes – empathy and communication, organization and planning, and resilience and adaptability – derived from a series of individual and group interviews carried out over the course of a year with expert teachers and teacher educators (Klassen, Durksen, Rowett, & Patterson, 2014). In Table 51.1 we present an example item from our prototype SJT. The test consists of multiple scenarios (e.g. 32 items in the primary teacher education version) administered by paper and pencil with a 1-hour time limit. Our prototype
Figure 51.2 Model of situational judgment tests (SJTs) as a tool to assess implicit and explicit beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions
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Table 51.1 Example of scenario for a Situational Judgment Test (SJT) You are teaching a lesson and have asked the students to individually complete an exercise that requires them to write down their responses. You have explained the exercise to the students and answered all of the questions that they have asked. As the students begin writing, one student, Ruby, starts to throw paper around and is clearly distracting the students sitting nearby. You know from previous incidents that Ruby often becomes frustrated when she does not understand how to complete activities, and that she often displays her frustration by being disruptive. Choose the three1 most appropriate actions to take in this situation • Send Ruby out the class if she continues to be disruptive • Ask Ruby if she understands what the activity requires her to do • Tell Ruby that you are disappointed in her behavior • Ask Ruby’s classmate to discreetly provide help • Stop the exercise and discuss the classroom behavior plan with the whole class • etc. (eight total response options) 1
lternatively, applicants are asked to: rank the items in the most appropriate order from 1 to 5 (five total A response options) Note: This is an example only, and is adapted from an item from an early SJT version.
test asks applicants to respond to each scenario-based item in one of two ways: choosing the best responses from a larger set of responses (Part 1), and by ranking items according to their appropriateness (Part 2). The response options and scoring key are developed in collaboration with panels of expert teachers who indicate the appropriateness of each response for new teachers. The scoring of the SJT provides an overall score that can be weighted along with other predictors such as academic records, letters of reference, and interview scores to produce a cut-off point. Further validation of the SJT (piloting, evaluation of feedback, continuing development of test content, and psychometric analysis) is currently underway in a range of initial teacher education programs in multiple contexts. Initial results show promising reliability and concurrent validity (Klassen, 2015). Further work is needed to understand how key non-academic attributes operate in non-Western settings, and further work on predictive validity of SJTs will be needed before their use in live selection. In our international network of education selection research in Australia (Durksen, 2016), Finland, Hungary, Oman, and the UK, we have found agreement across settings about the relationship of certain non-academic attributes – such as resilience and empathy – with teaching success, but we have also seen cultural variations. In Oman, teacher leaders and teacher educators indicate strong support for the attribute of ‘moral fitness’ as a critical non-academic attribute for selection in teacher education (Al Hashmi, 2016). In Finland, Metsäpelto and Poikkeus (2016) conducted focus groups with experienced teachers and teacher educators
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and found support for inclusion of the domain of ‘community collaboration’ as a key non-academic attribute necessary for success in Finnish schools. An important question in all education contexts is how to identify the attributes considered critical for success in teacher education and then to develop reliable and valid means of evaluating these attributes.
Conclusion In this chapter we addressed the filtering function of selection into initial teacher education, and showed how new approaches to assessment could form an essential part of the selection process. Current selection practices are inadequate, with little evidence underpinning their use for predicting who will be successful in teacher education programs and in teaching positions. In particular, we do not have adequate measures that target non-academic attributes (Casey & Childs, 2011). Even more worrying, some selection procedures – including interviews – may show systematic bias against certain groups of candidates (McDaniel et al., 1994). Improving our understanding and practice of selection into teacher education gives an opportunity to better understand the roots of teacher effectiveness, and provides a way to improve educational outcomes on a system-wide basis. Developing selection methods for teacher education that are reliable, valid, and perceived as fair (by applicants) provides a real challenge for researchers, but it is a challenge worth addressing. SJT methods have been used successfully for selection into medical training (e.g. Patterson et al., 2015), and we propose that similar methods could provide one way forward in education. Although the SJT research presented in this chapter is in its early stages, the results are sufficiently promising to warrant further development and testing, with longitudinal and cross-cultural data particularly needed to show predictive relationships with teaching effectiveness. It is anticipated that as the need to develop effective teachers continues to grow, increasing awareness of the importance of evidencesupported teacher education selection methods will also grow.
References Al Hashmi, W. (2016, June). To what extent can situational judgment tests measure the non-cognitive domains of effective teachers through the selection process in Oman? Paper presented at the biannual meeting of EARLI SIG 11. Zurich, Switzerland. Ashton, P. T. (2015). Historical overview and theoretical perspectives of research on teachers’ beliefs. In H. Fives & M. G. Gill (Eds.), International handbook of research on teachers’ beliefs (pp. 31–47). New York: Routledge. Atteberry, A., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2015). Do first impressions matter? Improvement in early career teacher effectiveness. AERA Open, 1(4), 1–23. http://doi.org/10.1177/2332858415607834 Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
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Bandura, A. (1999). A social cognitive theory of personality. In L. Pervin & O. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality (2nd ed., pp. 154–196). New York: Guilford Publications. Boyatzis, R. E., & Kelner, S. P. (2010). Competencies as behavioral manifestation of implicit motives. In O. C. Schultheiss & J. C. Brunstein (Eds.), Implicit motives (pp. 488–509). New York: Oxford University Press. Buehl, M. M., & Fives, H. (2009). Exploring teachers’ beliefs about teaching knowledge: Where does it come from? Does it change? Journal of Experimental Education, 77(4), 367–407. doi: 10.3200/ JEXE.77.4.367-408 Butler, R., & Shibaz, L. (2014). Striving to connect and striving to learn: Influences of relational and mastery goals for teaching on teacher behaviors and student interest and help seeking. International Journal of Educational Research, 65, 41–53. doi: 10.1016/j.ijer.2013.09.006 Casey, C., & Childs, R. (2011). Teacher education admission criteria as measure of preparedness for teaching. Canadian Journal of Education, 34(2), 3–20. http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/ Caskey, M. M., Peterson, K. D., & Temple, J. B. (2001). Complex admission selection procedures for a graduate preservice teacher education program. Teacher Education Quarterly, 28(4), 7–21. Christian, M. S., Edwards, B. D., & Bradley, J. C. (2010). Situational judgment tests: Constructs assessed and a meta-analysis of their criterion-related validities. Personnel Psychology, 63, 83–117. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2009.01163.x Coe, R., Aloisi, C., Higgins, S., & Major, L. E. (2014). What makes great teaching? A review of the underpinning research. London: Sutton Trust. Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Can valued added add value to teacher evaluation? Educational Researcher, 44(2), 132–137. doi: 10.3102/0013189X15575346 Denner, P., Norman, A., & Lin, S-Y. (2009). Fairness and consequential validity of teacher work samples. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(3), 235–254. doi: 10.1007/s11092-0089059-6 Donaldson, G. (2010). Teaching: Scotland’s future. Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland. The Scottish Government, Edinburgh, UK. Retrieved from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/ Doc/337626/0110852.pdf Dottin, E. S. (2009). Professional judgment and dispositions in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(1), 83–88. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2008.06.005 Durksen, T. L. (2016, June). Context matters: The development of a scenario-based test for helping identify applicant suitability for rural and remote teaching positions in Australia. Paper presented at the bi-annual meeting of EARLI SIG 11. Zurich, Switzerland. Elliott, J. G., Stemler, S. E., Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Hoffman, N. (2011). The socially skilled teacher and the development of tacit knowledge. British Educational Research Journal, 37(1), 83– 103. doi: 10.1080/01411920903420016 Fives, H., & Buehl, M. M. (2014). Exploring differences in practicing teachers’ valuing of pedagogical knowledge based on teaching ability. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 435–448. doi: 10.1177/0022487114541813 Hanushek, E. A. (2011). The economic value of higher teacher quality. Economics of Education Review, 30(3), 466–479. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.12.006 Heinz, M. (2013). Tomorrow’s teachers – selecting the best: An exploration of the quality rationale behind academic and experiential selection criteria for initial teacher education programmes. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 25(2), 93–114. doi: 10.1007/s11092-013-9162-1 Hindman, J., & Stronge, J. (2009). The $2 million decision: Teacher selection and principals’ interviewing practice. Educational Research Service Spectrum, 27(3), 1–10. Retrieved from http://humanresourcesportfolio.wikispaces.com/ House of Commons Education Committee (2012). Great teachers: Attracting, training and retaining the best. Government Response to the Committee’s Ninth Report of Session 2010–2012. London: House of Commons. Retrieved from http://www.parliament.uk/
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Jackson, C. K., Rockoff, J. E., & Staiger, D. O. (2014). Teacher effects and teacher-related policies. Annual Review of Economics, 6, 801–825. James, W. (1899/2015) Talks to teachers. Retrieved from: http://www.gutenberg.org/ ebooks/16287?msg=welcome_stranger#I__PSYCHOLOGY_AND_THE_TEACHING_ART Johnson, L. E., & Reiman, A. J. (2007). Beginning teacher disposition: Examining the moral/ethical domain. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(5), 676–687. Johnson, R. E., & Saboe, K. N. (2011). Measuring implicit traits in organizational research: Development of an indirect measure of employee implicit self-concept. Organizational Research Methods, 14(3), 530–547. doi: 10.1177/1094428110363617 Keller, M. M., Goetz, T., Becker, E. S., Morger, V., & Hensley, L. (2014). Feeling and showing: A new conceptualization of dispositional teacher enthusiasm and its relation to students’ interest. Learning and Instruction, 33, 29–38. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.03.001 Klassen, R. M. (2015, October). The ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of selection into initial teacher education. Presented at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Association Psychology of Education section. Liverpool, UK. Klassen, R. M., & Dolan, R. (2015, September). Selection for teacher education in the UK and the Republic of Ireland: A proposal for innovation. Presented at the meeting of the European Conference on Educational Research. Budapest, Hungary. Klassen, R. M., & Durksen, T. L. (2014). Weekly self-efficacy and work stress during the final teaching practicum: A mixed methods study. Learning and Instruction, 33, 158–169. Retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.05.003 Klassen, R. M., Durksen, T. L., Rowett, E., & Patterson, F. (2014). Applicant reactions to a situational judgment test used for selection into initial teacher training. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 3(2), 104–125. doi: 10.4471/ijep.2014.07 Klassen, R. M., Perry, N. E., & Frenzel, A. (2012). Teachers’ relatedness with students: An underemphasized aspect of teachers’ basic psychological needs. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(1), 150–165. doi: 10.1037/a0026253 Klassen, R. M., & Tze, V. M. C. (2014). Teachers’ self-efficacy, personality, and teaching effectiveness: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 12, 59–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. edurev.2014.06.001 Kunter, M., Klusmann, U., Baumert, J., Richter, D., Voss, T., & Hachfeld, A. (2013). Professional competence of teachers: Effects on instructional quality and student development. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(3), 805–820. doi: 10.1037/a0032583 Levin, B. B. (2015). The development of teachers’ beliefs. In H. Fives & M. G. Gill (Eds.), International handbook of research on teachers’ beliefs (pp. 48–65). New York & London: Routledge. Lievens, F., & Sackett, P. R. (2012). The validity of interpersonal skills assessment via situational judgment tests for predicting academic success and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(2), 460–468. doi: 10.1037/a0025741 McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90. doi: 10.1037/00223514.52.1.81 McDaniel, M. A., Whetzel, D., Schmidt, F. L., & Maurer, S. D. (1994). The validity of employment interviews: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 599–616. http://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.4.599 Metsäpelto, R.-L., & Poikkeus, A.-M. (2016, June). Developing student selection for teacher training: Adapting a situational judgment test in Finland. Paper presented at the bi-annual meeting of EARLI SIG 11. Zurich, Switzerland. Metzger, S. A., & Wu, M-J. (2008). Commercial teacher selection instruments: The validity of selecting teachers through beliefs, attitudes, and values. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 921–940. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0034654308323035
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Motowidlo, S. J., & Beier, M. E. (2010). Differentiating specific job knowledge from implicit trait policies in procedural knowledge measured by a situational judgment test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(2), 321–333. doi: 10.1037/a0017975. OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2005). Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Paris, France: OECD Publications. Retrieved from http://www.oecd. org/education/school/attractingdevelopingandretainingeffectiveteachers-finalreportteachersmatter.htm Patrick, C. L. (2011). Student evaluations of teaching: Effects of the Big Five personality traits, grades and the validity hypothesis. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(2), 239–249. doi: 10.1080/02602930903308258 Patterson, F., Tavabie, A., Denney, M., Kerrin, M., Ashworth, V., Koczwara, A., & MacLeod, S. (2013). A new competency model for general practice. British Journal of General Practice, May, 63(610), e331–e338. doi: 10.3399/bjgp13X667196 Patterson, F., Zibarras, L., & Ashworth, V. (2015). Situational judgement tests in medical education and training: Research, theory and practice: AMEE Guide No. 100. Medical Teachers, Aug 27, 1–15, epub ahead of print. Pianta, R. C., & Hamre, B. K. (2009). Conceptualization, measurement, and improvement of classroom processes: Standardized observation can leverage capacity. Educational Researcher, 38(2), 109–119. doi: 10.3102/0013189X09332374 Pintrich, P. R., & Schunk, D. H. (2002). Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice-Hall. Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., & Hamre, B. K. (2010). The role of psychological and developmental science in efforts to improve teacher quality. Teachers College Record, 112(2), 2988–3023. http://www. tcrecord.org Robertson-Kraft, C., & Duckworth, A. (2014). True grit: Trait-level perseverance and passion for long-term goals predicts effectiveness and retention among novice teachers. Teachers College Record, 116(3), 1–25. Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org Ryan, A. M., & Ployhart, R. E. (2014). A century of selection. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 20.1– 20.25. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115134 Sahlberg, P. (2015). Finnish lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Schultheiss, O. C., & Brunstein, J. C. (Eds.) (2010). Implicit motives. New York: Oxford University Press. Shultz, M. M., & Zedeck, S. (2012). Admission to law school: New measures. Educational Psychologist, 47(1), 51–65. doi: 10.1080/00461520.2011.610679 Staiger, D. O., & Rockoff, J. E. (2010). Searching for effective teachers with imperfect information. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(3), 97–118. doi: 10.1257/jep.24.3.97 Steyer, R., Schmitt, M., & Eid, M. (1999). Latent state-trait theory and research in personality and individual differences. European Journal of Personality, 13(5), 389–408. Teach for America (2015). Our application process. Retrieved from: https://www.teachforamerica.org/ about-us/careers/find-a-job/application-process Tubbs, E. V. (1928). The selection of teachers. Peabody Journal of Education, 5(6), 323–332. Wayne, A. J., & Youngs, P. (2003). Teacher characteristics and student achievement gains: A review. Review of Educational Research, 73(1), 89–122. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3516044 Whetzel, D. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2009). Situational judgment tests: An overview of current research. Human Resource Management Review, 19(3), 188–202. doi: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2009.03.007 Young, I. P., & Delli, D. A. (2002). The validity of the Teacher Perceiver Interview for predicting performance of classroom teachers. Education Administration Quarterly, 38(5), 586–612. doi: 10.1177/0013161X02239640
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52 Summative Assessment in Teacher Education J e a n n e M a re e A l l e n
Background There is much that can be learned from summative assessment approaches in teacher education. They provide insight into what and how candidates learn during their pre- and in-service education, which, in turn, elucidates what is valued and privileged – and what is not – in teacher education. Arguably more so than other types of assessment, summative assessment approaches are informed by broader socio-cultural, political and policy agenda that impact the ways in which teacher educators assess teacher candidates’ and teachers’ coursework and workplace performance. As argued by Caughlan and Jiang (2014), the assessments that ‘serve as gatekeeping mechanisms for any profession reflect the field’s image of valued professional knowledge and practice, as well as the roles the professional takes in relation to clients and the larger social order’ (p. 375). The functions of summative assessment in teacher education can thus be seen to be cast in, and reflective of, the broader context of what it means to be an effective teacher in contemporary times. As a general principle, summative assessment in teacher education refers to the evaluation of candidates’ learning at the end of an instructional sequence or unit, usually measured against specific standards or benchmarks. Views differ, however, about definitions and processes pertaining to summative assessment, including how they relate to formative assessment (Scriven, 1967; Wiliam & Black, 1996). Wiliam and Black (1996), for example, argue that there can be inherent tensions between formative and summative functions of assessment, especially when the
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same assessment procedures are required to serve both purposes. These are tensions that need to be acknowledged, and to which I return below. For the purposes of this chapter, I follow Taras (2005) who argues that ‘[t]he process of assessment leads to summative assessment, that is, a judgement which encapsulates all the evidence up to a given point. This point is seen as a finality at the point of the judgement’ (p. 468). In what follows, I will identify ways in which summative assessment approaches in teacher education are conceptualized and enacted in current times, and how certain theoretical frames help us to understand such approaches. I will review how issues pertaining to summative assessment are studied with different methodologies, and report on what can be learned from research undertaken with specific theoretical frames and methodological approaches.
Introduction The primary research task of this chapter is to provide insights into key factors shaping summative assessment in contemporary teacher education throughout the world. The chapter’s focus is on current practices, and what they might signify for those involved in teacher education, now and into the future. As such, the chapter elucidates the types of summative assessment approach that have gained or are gaining ascendancy in teacher education worldwide; it does not intend to provide an historical nor an exhaustive account of summative assessment approaches that have reached prominence since the professionalization of teacher education. Such accounts have been reported elsewhere (e.g. Connell, 2009; DarlingHammond, 2006b). Addressing the research task of the chapter initially involved an extensive scan and review of relevant literature in key education and social sciences databases. Using a snowball technique, keyword searches (using, for example, ‘teacher education’ OR ‘teacher training’ AND assess*) were revised as we (the author and research assistant) followed up references from the bibliographies of the books, articles and reports that we located. The year span was limited to the current decade: that is, from 2010 to 2015. This noted, we also followed references to a number of earlier publications that bore the promise of shedding light on current approaches, practices and techniques. We sought to include a broad geographical representation, within the constraints of patchy reporting and/or evidence from some countries, and of accessing only English-language sources. These searches also led to other information sources, such as university websites, which hold publically available documentation about institutional teacher education assessment models and practices. During and after the process outlined above, I analysed and interpreted the reviewed literature and source materials, which generated a number of themes.
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I also drew on my own professional knowledge and expertise in the field, evidenced in previous research (e.g. Allen, 2011; Allen & Wright, 2013), during the theme development. As described below, these themes were used to frame the conceptualization of this chapter and, as such, serve as the parameters within which the following discussion around summative assessment takes place. The examples of practice included in each theme were selected for their capacity to substantiate the points and arguments that I make throughout the chapter. In the next section, I describe the conceptual frame for this work before discussing, through three themes, a number of significant factors that shape summative assessment in teacher education. In explicating each of the themes, I describe and discuss selected cases and/or practices that serve to exemplify the particular theme under discussion. I then conclude the chapter by drawing together the arguments included under the themes, as well as suggesting implications for the future.
Conceptual framework This chapter has been conceptualized with a view to identifying and elucidating key factors shaping summative assessment within the broad agenda currently influencing teacher education internationally. As noted above, the broad agenda or themes emerged from the analysis of an extensive teacher education research literature (2010 to present) and other pertinent and current source materials. The analysis showed that summative assessment practices relating to the dual elements of coursework and workplace performance in teacher education are constructed in certain ways to address the broader themes of: (1) standards-based teacher education; (2) provision of evidence of impact; and (3) theory and practice integration. Thus, as presented diagrammatically in Figure 52.1, the conceptual framework comprises three themes that provide a lens through which we can gain insight into key factors shaping summative assessment in teacher education. It is important to note that the themes overlap and intersect, such that a particular summative assessment model or approach discussed under one theme could also, in several instances, have been discussed under another. I also treat the themes differently (in terms of length, substance and content), in accordance with the types of concepts that they encapsulate, and to avoid undue repetition. The discussion within the themes draws on examples of typical, traditional and cutting-edge approaches to the summative assessment of teacher candidates. Illustrative rather than comprehensive or exhaustive, the examples are intended to shed light on contemporary approaches to summative assessment of teacher candidates internationally, and the factors that shape these approaches to assessment. The criteria used to select the specific examples included in the themes were that, together, they highlight an array and diversity of approaches, and that a
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Standards-based teacher education Coursework summative assessment
Theory & practice integration
Workplace performance summative assessment
Provision of evidence of impact
Figure 52.1 Conceptual framework
spread of countries is included. Further examples from other countries could just as reasonably have been included, but were omitted in consideration of space. I acknowledge this, however, as a potential limitation of the work.
Standards-based teacher education The intensification of standardization represents one of the most significant phenomena in teacher education in recent times. Cochran-Smith et al. (in press) refer to the accountability and standards ‘turn’ that has come about as a result of the additional focus placed on teacher education during the shift from an industry to a knowledge society in the developed world. Within this move towards high-stakes standardization in many countries (e.g. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), 2014; Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), 2013; United Kingdom Department of Education, 2011), and its associated measures of accountability, summative assessment is required to fulfil the multifold function of providing evidence of a teacher candidate’s achievement to a given point against the standards; guiding and informing jurisdictional decision making around teacher preparation, licensure and advanced certification (Darling-Hammond, 2013); and furnishing evidence of teacher effectiveness (Darling-Hammond, 2009) and ‘readiness to teach’ (Duckor, Castellano, Téllez, Wihardini & Wilson, 2014).
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Hence, summative assessment serves to both filter and evaluate teacher candidates across the broad stages of: program entry; program progression; program completion and exit; and post-program completion (Dinham, 2015). For the purposes of this chapter, the focus is on the functions of summative assessment in relation to teacher candidates’ program progression and completion. I now turn to a discussion of some of the summative assessment approaches that have gained prominence in the move to standards-based education.
Teacher Performance Assessments In order to illustrate teacher performance assessments (TPAs), I report on the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), with reference to several similar models. PACT was developed and validated in the early 2000s, in part as a response to California’s mandate that teacher education programs use performance assessments as one of the measures in making credentialling decisions (Pecheone & Chung, 2006). The PACT assessment is a structured portfolio that draws on an array of data sources, including lesson plans, teacher artefacts and personal reflections, student work samples and recorded clips of teaching sequences (Darling-Hammond, 2013, 2014). The assessments are used to ‘examine the planning, instruction, assessment, and reflection skills of student teachers against professional standards of practice’ (Darling-Hammond, 2006a, p. 121) and to provide evidence of content and pedagogical knowledge, as well as higher-order thinking skills (Pecheone & Chung, 2006). Teacher educators involved in PACT argue that, beyond the purpose of meeting their particular accountability requirements, this type of authentic, multifaceted performance assessment system can ‘offer more valid measures of teaching knowledge and skill than traditional teacher tests, and … inspire useful changes in programs as they provide rich information about candidate abilities’ (Darling-Hammond, 2006a, p. 121). Further, validity studies of PACT have shown that the instrument is effective in measuring the construct of ‘readiness to teach’ (Duckor et al., 2014), and that teacher candidates’ scores on the assessment are positively associated with their value-added effectiveness as practising teachers (Darling-Hammond, Newton & Wei, 2013). In Australia, TPAs developed in initial teacher education include the University of Melbourne Clinical Praxis Exam and the Deakin University Authentic Teacher Assessment (ATA). The ATA serves as a compulsory capstone summative assessment measured against the Australian Graduate Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2014). Program developers argue that the ATA positions teacher candidates ‘differently and more powerfully in relation to demonstrating their knowledge, skills and readiness to teach’ (Allard, Mayer & Moss, 2014, p. 440), thus (a) providing a strong accountability measure of effective beginning teaching and (b) demonstrably addressing current concerns around the provision of evidence of teacher candidate efficacy (Allard et al., 2014).
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Implemented in 2010 in the Master of Teaching program, the Deakin ATA drew on structure and design elements of the PACT, which, as Darling-Hammond (2006a, cited in Allard et al., 2014) proposes, allow a comprehensive view of what teacher candidates learn. Similar to the PACT, the ATA comprises five activity-based components that parallel those of the teaching experience: context for learning; planning teaching and assessment; teaching students and supporting learning; assessing student learning; and reflecting on teaching and learning (Allard et al., 2014, p. 429). At the end of their studies, candidates are required to submit a structured portfolio, including teaching plans, teaching artefacts, student work samples, video clips of teaching, commentaries on teaching and selfreflections (Allard et al., 2014). The intention of the structured assessment approach of the ATA, according to its creators, is that it ‘provides space for graduating teachers to demonstrate their professional knowledge and skills, while also allowing for their personal creativity and reflexivity’ (Allard et al., 2014, p. 429). Although ATA capstone assessments are accessed by both the school supervising teacher and the university academic, responsibility for assessing the capstone falls to the university, with schools tasked with assessing (non-graded pass/fail) the field experience component.1 There are acknowledged challenges and tensions associated with the types of performance assessment outlined above, particularly in cases where TPAs are implemented at the state or regional level. First, there are factors associated with assessment design, such as deciding on the expectations of performance and choosing the format and type of scoring process. Standards for technical quality of the measures used for assessing teacher performance, such as validity and reliability, must be established, which, given the breadth of measures used, makes this type of approach arguably more complex in its implementation than other approaches. Second, there are issues that arise during implementation, including local understanding and clarity around the assessment criteria, intensification of the workload of teacher candidates and the degree and quality of support provided to candidates to complete the assessment. A two-year survey study by Okhremtchouk, Newell and Rosa (2013), for example, found that two major and unintended consequences of the PACT assessment were high stress factors reported by teacher candidates, and insufficient provision of adequate support mechanisms. These findings arguably speak to the problem associated with standardized instruments to measure learning outcomes in light of the diversity of both the contexts that teacher candidates experience and the learning outcomes they are expected to achieve (Dinham, 2015), a point to which I return later. Development and implementation costs can also be significant (Pecheone & Chung, 2006) and potentially stymie attempts at broader and scaled-up applications. Criticisms have also centred on the trend in some contexts to the outsourcing of the scoring process from higher education to a corporate entity (Sato, 2014);
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on the risks associated with standardizing the process of teacher education and with undervaluing context-specific approaches (Aubusson & Schuck, 2013; Sato, 2014); and, more fundamentally, on the ideology underpinning TPAs and ‘whether there is a core body of knowledge and skills that teachers ought to know and be able to demonstrate through performance before being entrusted with a license to teach’ (Sato, 2014, p. 423). Despite such challenges and concerns, it is argued that performance assessments are a much preferred alternative to assessing ‘teacher competence solely on the basis of standardized multiple-choice tests of content and/or pedagogical knowledge’ (Pecheone & Chung, 2006, p. 33) and similar modes of testing (e.g. Allard et al., 2014). Importantly, TPAs have been shown not only to measure features associated with effective teaching but also, through guiding teaching and teacher candidates with feedback, to help develop classroom effectiveness at the same time (Darling-Hammond, 2013, 2014).
Provision of evidence of impact One of the more challenging functions of summative assessment in teacher education is how to provide evidence of candidates’ impact on student learning outcomes, ‘evidence of impact’ having become central to many approaches to accreditation globally (e.g. AITSL, 2015; CAEP, 2015). This sits within the broader notion of a ‘culture of evidence’ that the CAEP describes as one in which: The provider maintains a quality assurance system comprised of valid data from multiple measures, including evidence of candidates’ and completers’ positive impact on P-12 student learning and development. The provider supports continuous improvement that is sustained and evidence-based and that evaluates the effectiveness of its completers. The provider uses the results of inquiry and data collection to establish priorities, enhance program elements and capacity, and test innovations to improve completers’ impact on P-12 student learning and development. (http://caepnet.org/standards/standard-5)
It is argued that culture-of-evidence concepts can be used to strengthen the development, evaluation and modification of teacher education programs, and to enable a shift from inference to evidence with regards to program quality and impact, and teacher candidate efficacy in impacting student learning outcomes (Dinham, 2014). The point to be made here is that teacher educators are called upon not only to provide evidence of impact as an indicator of program effectiveness (of which a discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter), but also, increasingly, to provide evidence of impact of teacher candidates themselves (e.g. Cochran-Smith et al., in press; Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, 2014; Worrell, Brubeck, Dwyer, Geisinger, Marx, Noell & Pianta, 2014). Worrell et al. (2014) make the point that ‘[s]trong affirmative evidence that candidates are able to facilitate and
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enhance student learning is clearly a critical prerequisite for teacher preparation programs to recommend candidates for completion and licensure’ (p. 15). This has implications for the evaluation of candidates, with instruments such as standardized observation protocols and surveys of performance increasingly being used to serve to inform summative judgements of practice (Worrell, et al., 2014). An approach introduced by the University of Melbourne in 2008 is the Melbourne Taxonomy for Clinical Teaching. The Taxonomy was designed to provide evidence of teacher candidate efficacy and impact through preparing candidates ‘to be able to assess or “diagnose” individual students’ learning and provide appropriate “prescriptions” or interventions for improvement, i.e. to be clinical, evidence-based, interventionist practitioners in the nature of health professionals’ (Dinham, 2015, p. 3). Forming part of the Master of Teaching program, the Taxonomy consists of five stages with key questions intended to elicit clinical thinking in teacher candidates, as well as others involved in the professional partnership model, including teachers, education specialists and leaders in schools and early childhood settings (Anderson & Scamporlino, 2013). The key questions are addressed through developing a series of clinical interventions in which candidates must: identify a target school student; undertake a diagnostic assessment; explain and justify why the area to be developed is important; undertake a review of the literature and resources; design a series of interventions over a period of at least five lessons; and teach and monitor a series of interventions for the identified student in the context of whole-class practicum teaching (Louden, 2015). Assessment of the task occurs under five categories of: evidence; design of the intervention; literature review; variables that impact on student learning; and evaluation (Anderson & Scamporlino, 2013). Summative assessment for secondary school teacher candidates additionally involves a ‘Clinical Praxis Exam’ (noted above), in which candidates are required to make judgements about the impact of their teaching on the development of students’ knowledge and/or skills. They are assessed via a 20-minute oral report, followed by 10 minutes of questions from the assessment panel (Louden, 2015). Value-added models (VAMs) of assessment such as the Melbourne Taxonomy have been shown to hold promise for teacher education programs (CAEP, 2015; Feuer, Floden, Chudowsky & Ahn, 2013) and are widely becoming used as a channel to measure candidates’ impact on student learning, at targeted points during the period of candidature. In the United States, the CAEP (2015), for example, specifies that all Educator Preparation Providers administer assessments that evaluate candidate proficiencies, including impact on P-12 student learning, at various points during their preparation program, in addition to capstone assessments that sample multiple aspects of teaching. Depending on program design and the particular assessment approach, assessing candidates’ impact on student learning can serve a formative or summative function, or both. It must be noted, however, that gathering meaningful data about candidates’ impact on student learning, and deciding on the standards by which those data
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should be judged, can be problematic (Worrell et al., 2014). Additionally, we need to consider the wide diversity of contexts that candidates experience, as well as the learning outcomes that they are expected to achieve (Dinham, 2015). There is also the challenge of judging the efficacy of the candidate from other intertwined factors, such as the effectiveness of supervising teacher/s and/or teaching partners (Worrell et al., 2014). Critiquing the rapid shift towards a culture of evidence, there are also those who question the presumed link between assessment and teacher quality (such as Cochran-Smith, and the Boston College Evidence Team, 2009; Spillane & Miele, 2007). Cochran-Smith (2010), for example, notes that ‘despite the research that is available about each type of teacher quality assessment, there is a lack of empirical evidence about systematic links between the assessment and teacher effectiveness’ (p. xviii). Spillane and Miele (2007) caution that evidencebased practice is not nearly as simple and straightforward as some, including certain researchers and policymakers, would want us to believe. Concerns such as these can be couched in broader ideological deliberations about educational reform, from which the push towards a culture of evidence is generally seen to emerge. The argument put forward by Cochran-Smith and the Boston College Evidence Team (2009) serves as a case in point: [We raise] questions about what counts as evidence and for whom, how multiple evidence sources are differently interpreted by differently positioned participants within a culture, how evidence construction and interpretation are shaped by participants’ values and beliefs as well as traditions and institutional missions, and what conditions both constrain and support attempts to transform decision making over the long haul. (p. 460)
These are the types of question that teacher educators are required to address in their design, implementation and evaluation of summative assessment approaches and practices.
Theory and practice integration A core function of summative assessment is to evaluate teacher candidates’ capacity for integrating theoretical knowledge and understanding with workplace performance. The TPAs outlined above can be seen to fulfil this function in various ways, including being educative in and of themselves through providing an integrated approach to theory and practice. In this section, I explore further the functions of summative assessment as they relate to theory–practice integration. In particular, I raise questions about whose voice is heard with regard to assessing teacher candidates and how the summative assessment of teacher candidates captures the practice of theory and theory of practice enacted by the teacher candidate. I also consider what might be the effects on how we think about assessing candidate performance, as the field shifts to deeper (and more prescriptive) clinical models of teacher preparation.
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Since the professionalization of teaching in the 1960s, teacher education, although under the jurisdiction of higher education providers, has traditionally spanned two contexts – the university and the workplace (predominantly schools). Generally, coursework and the teaching and learning of theoretical knowledge and skills falls within the domain of the university, while fieldwork or professional experience takes place in schools. The dissonances between the two contexts have been well established (Allen, Ambrosetti & Turner, 2013; Burn & Mutton, 2013), with assessment functions and processes providing a particular source of challenge and tension (Allen, 2011; Allen & Wright, 2014; Mutemeri & Chetty, 2011). As shown by Allen (2011), disparate understandings between university and school staff about the nature and role of assessment can also adversely affect teacher candidates’ experiences of assessment. At the end of a practicum, for example, pre-service teachers are commonly assessed on their progress against nominated professional standards by the allocated school supervisor or mentor. While the university prescribes what should be assessed in a particular field experience, it falls to the school to make a summative assessment: that is, a judgement encapsulating all the evidence of the pre-service teacher’s achievement up to that point (Taras, 2005). Candidates are often left wondering about whose decision counts, and why (Allen, 2011), which, in the context of high-stakes assessment, is quite sobering. At play here are a number of considerations, which include the types of instrument that provide relevant feedback and reliable results; how the assessment is carried out and by whom; and who has authority (whose voices ‘count’) in making decisions about summative assessment outcomes. These are issues that provide the focus of policy and research debate (as noted earlier) and that inform changes to practice, frequently arising from deliberations in the context of school– university partnership (e.g. Allen, Howells & Radford, 2013; Darling-Hammond, 2006b) and, more recently, in the collaborative third space in teacher education. The conceptual third space, which sits beyond the usual dualism of school and university, is proving particularly helpful in that it ‘involve[s] a rejection of binaries such as practitioner and academic knowledge and theory and practice and involve[s] the integration of what are often seen as competing discourses in new ways – an either/or perspective is transformed into a both/also point of view’ (Zeichner, 2010, p. 92). The coming together of these different knowledge types and perspectives allows us to reconsider whose knowledge and expertise counts in the education of teachers (Zeichner, Payne & Brayko, 2015) and to think about summative assessment ‘as part of a teaching and learning system that creates a set of coherent, well-grounded supports for strong teaching throughout the profession’ (Darling-Hammond, 2013, p. vii). Often generated through these kinds of professional partnership and collaboration, interesting approaches have emerged internationally that respond to the call for greater integration of theory and practice and that conceptualize and enact summative assessment in different ways, such as the boundary brokering/crossing approach.
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Boundary Crossing Montecinos, Walker and Maldonado (2015) report on a boundary crossing approach in Chile, framed through Wenger’s inter-organizational learning theory, which extends the traditional practicum triad (pre-service teacher, mentor teacher and university supervisor) to include school administrators as a key link for bridging institutional boundaries. Teacher candidates are assessed in this approach via an observation protocol that includes shared evaluation input from in-service teachers, school administrators and university supervisors. As noted by Montecinos et al. (2015), school administrators have been shown to have the capacity to significantly support and enhance teacher development and assessment outcomes through providing instructional leadership and facilitating the sharing of tools and practices. With regards to the work leading up to the summative evaluation, the program’s evaluators concluded that ‘[t]he activities around which supervisors and administrators can broker present opportunities for rethinking the effectiveness and efficiency of role assignments, the tools, and processes developed to carry out the joint enterprise of preparing prospective teachers’ (Montecinos et al., 2015, p. 7). Other research studies of the boundary crossing approach have adopted the conceptual tools of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and expansive learning (e.g. Anagnostopoulos, Smith & Basmadjian, 2007; Edwards, 2011; Kerosuo & Toiviainen, 2011; Zeichner, Payne and Brayko, 2015). Zeichner et al. (2015), for instance, used CHAT to frame their study of a partnership between Ohio State University (OSU) and a local community group in which teacher candidates’ learning was enhanced through taking place in ‘a changing mosaic of inter-connected activity systems’ (Engeström, 2001, cited in Zeichner et al., 2015, p. 124). Teacher candidates’ fieldwork was jointly mediated by an OSU professor and a community leader, and summative assessment tasks, such as a narrative self-study, were co-designed and co-evaluated. According to the researchers, this type of boundary crossing approach, framed by CHAT, enables teacher educators to re-evaluate and reconceptualize the ways in which they work in collaboration with schools and communities to teach and assess those in p re-service (Zeichner et al., 2015).
Clinical Practice Another approach that spans theory and practice, and that can be seen to incorporate elements of boundary crossing (e.g. Many, Fisher, Taylor & Benson, 2011), is clinical preparation. This is an evidence-based approach, enjoying global popularity (Burn & Mutton, 2013), that has been referred to as ‘critical for teacher development’ (Grossman, 2010, p. 1) and the ‘Holy Grail’ of teacher education (Darling-Hammond, 2014, p. 547). By way of illustration of a summative assessment approach within a clinical model, I draw on Conroy, Hulme and Menter (2013), who researched and
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reported on a University of Glasgow pilot scheme – the Glasgow West Teacher Education Initiative (GWTEI) – involving Diploma in Education students undertaking field experience in clusters of schools comprising at least one secondary school and a number of associated primary schools. In this scheme, university tutors are situated within each of the school clusters where they work closely with teacher mentors in development and assessment activities over a sustained period, with the aim of more effectively aligning research and scholarship with both practical knowledge and skills and professional abilities and dispositions (Conroy et al., 2013). All teacher candidates are assessed against the national benchmark competences (at the time of the study, the Scottish Standard for Initial Teacher Education, now the Standard for Provisional Registration). A point of difference in this model, as distinct from its predecessors, is that ongoing formative assessment and feedback, jointly conducted and provided by the teacher and university tutor, play a large role in preparing students for their assessment against the Standard. There is only one summative assessment per placement, which is jointly constructed by the university tutor and teacher mentor, ‘representing a significant advance for all parties, most especially for the [pre-service teacher], since they … receive a more consistent account of their performance and abilities than has sometimes been the case’ (Conroy et al., 2013, p. 565). This collaborative approach to assessment design is intended to ensure that proper consideration is given to the command and accuracy of content and pedagogic knowledge, and that the criteria for providing evidence of such command and accuracy are in no way diminished compared to the traditional approach to assessment. In their evaluation of the GWTEI, Menter et al. (2012, cited in Conroy et al., 2013) concluded that teacher candidates’ learning was generally enhanced by the specific nature of this clinical model. Candidates reported being able to link theory and practice in more meaningful ways, and they valued the collaborative, cross-institutional input into the program. From these findings, it is reasonable to claim that the GWTEI approach can prove instructive to teacher educators in their design of summative assessment. Challenges associated with summative assessment in clinical models mirror, in some ways, those of the TPA approach, outlined above. Capturing evidence of teacher candidates’ achievement up to a given point, and making judgements about that evidence, is difficult in the cross-institutional environment of clinical preparation. Grossman (2010) refers to the ‘organizational and institutional fragmentation that surrounds those who are learning to teach’ (p. 1), and to the fact that the design of high-quality clinical experiences and assessment requires ‘bridging a number of divides: between professional knowledge and skilled practice; between universities and PK-12 schools; and between the settings in which prospective teachers learn and the contexts of their early years of teaching’ (p. 1). Additionally, one cannot overlook the labour intensity of such approaches, for both school and university staff. In the case of university academics, for
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example, there is often an inherent tension in juggling the demands of teaching and assessing candidates through their clinical preparation, with the expectations of a research university (e.g. Hauessler Bohan & Many, 2011). These types of tension for staff might well be mitigated as we advance into an era where meaningful involvement in partnerships becomes more highly valued and recognized as a core responsibility, as evidenced in higher education and teaching professional standards.
Conclusion and implications In recent years, we have witnessed the growth of a deficit view of formal education in many countries, due largely to falling student standards as judged by international measures of student achievement, such as PISA. Education is seen as a problem that needs to be ‘fixed’, with teacher education frequently hailed as the necessary remedial intervention. Thus, we find ourselves working in a highly scrutinized teacher education environment, in which we are held accountable for the outcomes of our students who, in turn, are held accountable for theirs. The ‘accountability imperative in education’, according to Cochran-Smith (2010, p. viii), has moved over the past 50 years ‘from the prudent use of resources to the effective production of desired results’ (p. xiv). Central to the measurement of ‘desired results’ are summative assessment approaches and practices. In this chapter, I have provided insight into some of the key factors that are currently shaping summative assessment internationally as it relates to teacher candidates’ coursework and workplace performance. As reflected in the conceptual themes framing the chapter, these fields of professional learning endeavour are embedded in the contemporary educational imperatives of responding to standards-based teacher education; providing evidence of impact; and integrating theory and practice. In the discussion above, I have pointed to ways in which assessment has been/is being incorporated into teacher education models that have been designed to address these imperatives. While some assessment approaches, such as the teacher performance assessment, are becoming quite widespread, others, including fieldwork assessment in the boundary crossing model, are more at the cutting edge of what is emerging internationally. With all of these approaches, there are opportunities, as well as contradictions and tensions, associated with their design, implementation, quality assurance, sustainability and scalability. A number of these have been noted. Based on the findings presented in this chapter, I now provide three implications for future directions and further work. First, the central driver in how summative assessment approaches are conceived worldwide is that of highstakes standardization and professional accountability. While standards have played a (key) role in this area for some time, they are now centre-stage and appear likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. This has clear implications
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for future directions in teacher education assessment practices. Second, we have witnessed the emergence of a number of new assessment approaches, which, while addressing the requisite standards, are conceived within a more creative and holistic structure than those focused fundamentally on the standards. The Chilean boundary-broker model reported on by Montecinos et al. (2015), which draws on Wenger’s framework for examining social learning across communities of practice, is a case in point. Notably in this, as in a number of other approaches such as the portfolio, there is a dissolution of the traditional notions of ‘formative’ and ‘summative’ assessment, with ongoing formative assessment informing the end judgement that ‘encapsulates all the evidence up to a given point’ (Taras, 2005, p. 468). One might suggest, as others long have (e.g. Scriven, 1967), that preserving the notion of formative and summative assessment as a duality is not always conducive to best practice. A change in nomenclature to a more all-encompassing term, such as ‘congruent assessment’, might be beneficial. Third, having focused in this chapter on the extant literature, it became evident to me as a practising teacher educator that there are many innovative and seemingly highly effective approaches to summative assessment that have not yet been evaluated and/ or had study results published. This perhaps speaks to the work intensification of academics whose time is absorbed by the design and delivery of assessment (among other work practices), with little left over for subsequent research. Like others before me who have identified this gap in the literature, I would welcome a growth in the number of contributions to the field across international contexts.
Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the funding support provided by the Deakin University Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation, and the valuable feedback provided by Research Assistant Dr Gary Levy on earlier drafts of this chapter.
Note 1 In accredited Australian initial teacher education programs (as elsewhere), however, the university holds final responsibility for the award of grades.
References Allard, A. C., Mayer, & Moss, J. (2014). Authentically assessing graduate teaching: Outside and beyond neo-liberal constructs. Australian Educational Researcher, 41(4), 425–443. Allen, J. M. (2011). Stakeholders’ perspectives of the nature and role of assessment during practicum. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(4), 742–750.
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Allen, J. M., & Wright, S. (2013). Integrating theory and practice in the pre-service teacher education practicum. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 20(2), 136–151. Allen, J. M., Ambrosetti, A., & Turner, D. (2013). How school and university supervising staff perceive the pre-service teacher education practicum: A comparative study. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(4) (online resource). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2013v38n4.9 Allen, J. M., Howells, K., & Radford, R. (2013). A ‘Partnership in Teaching Excellence’: Ways in which one school–university partnership has fostered teacher development. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 41(1), 99–110. Allen, J. M., & Wright, S. E. (2014). Integrating theory and practice in the pre-service teacher education practicum. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 20(2), 136–151. Anagnostopoulos, D., Smith, E. R., & Basmadjian, K. G. (2007). Bridging the university–school divide: Horizontal expertise and the ‘two-worlds pitfall’. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(2), 138–152. Anderson, M., & Scamporlino, R. (2013). The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne: A clinical model for pre-service teacher preparation. The International Schools Journal, 32(2), 33–42. Aubusson, P., & Schuck, S. (2013). Teacher education futures: Today’s trends, tomorrow’s expectations. Teacher Development: An International Journal of Teachers’ Development, 17(3), 322–333. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2014). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Melbourne: author. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2015). Classroom ready: Demonstrating the impact on student learning of initial teacher education programs. Melbourne: author. Burn, K., & Mutton, T. (2013). Review of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ in initial teacher education. London: BERA. Caughlan, S., & Jiang, H. (2014). Observation and teacher quality: Critical analysis of observational instruments in preservice teacher performance assessment. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 375–388. Cochran-Smith, M. (2010). Foreword. In M. M. Kennedy (Ed.), Teacher assessment and the quest for teacher quality: A handbook (pp. xiii–xix). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cochran-Smith, M., and the Boston College Evidence Team. (2009). ‘Re-culturing’ teacher education: Inquiry, evidence, and action. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 458–468. Cochran-Smith, M., Baker, M., Burton, S., Cummings Carney, M., Chang, W.-C., Fernández, M. B., Keefe, E. S., Miller, A. F., Sánchez, J. G., & Stern, R. (in press). Teacher quality and teacher education policy: The U.S. case and its implications. In M. Akiba & G. LeTendre (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of teacher quality and policy. New York: Routledge. Connell, R. (2009). Good teachers on dangerous ground: Towards a new view of teacher quality and professionalism. Critical Studies in Education, 50(3), 213–229. Conroy, J., Hulme, M., & Menter, I. (2013). Developing a ‘clinical’ model for teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 39(5), 557–573. Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). (2013). CAEP accreditation standards. Washington, DC: Author. Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). (2015). CAEP evidence guide. Washington, DC: author. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006a). Assessing teacher education: The usefulness of multiple measures for assessing program outcomes. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(2), 120–138. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006b). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L. (2009). Recognizing and enhancing teacher effectiveness. International Journal of Educational and Psychological Assessment, 3, 1–24. Darling-Hammond, L. (2013). Getting teacher evaluation right: What really matters for effectiveness and improvement. New York: Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (2014). Strengthening clinical preparation: The Holy Grail of teacher education. Peabody Journal of Education, 89(4), 547–561.
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Darling-Hammond, L., Newton, S. P., & Wei, R. C. (2013). Developing and assessing beginning teacher effectiveness: The potential of performance assessments. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 25(3), 179–204. Dinham, S. (2015). Issues and perspectives relevant to the development of an approach to the accreditation of initial teacher education in Australia based on the evidence of impact. Melbourne: AITSL. Dinham, S. (2014). Primary schooling in Australia: Pseudo-science plus extras times growing inequality equals decline. In Australian College of Educators, What Counts as Quality in Education? (pp. 8–15). Carlton South, Victoria: Australian College of Educators. Retrieved from: http://www.austcolled.com. au/documents/item/80 Duckor, B., Castellano, K. E., Téllez, K., Wihardini, D., & Wilson, M. (2014). Examining the internal structure evidence for the performance assessment for California teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 402–420. Edwards, A. (2011). Building common knowledge at the boundaries between professional practices: Relational agency and relational expertise in systems of distributed expertise. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(1), 33–39. Feuer, M. J., Floden, R. E., Chudowsky, N., & Ahn, J. (2013). Evaluation of teacher preparation programs: Purposes, methods, and policy options. Washington, DC: National Academy of Education. Grossman, P. (2010). Learning to practice: The design of clinical experience in teacher preparation. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, & National Education Association. Hauessler Bohan, C., & Many, J. E. (2011). Clinical teacher education: Reflections from an urban professional development school network. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Kerosuo, H., & Toiviainen, H. (2011). Expansive learning across workplace boundaries. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(1), 48–54. Louden, W. (2015). Standardised assessment of initial teacher education: Environmental scan and case studies. Melbourne: AITSL. Many, J. E., Fisher, T., Taylor, D., & Benson, G. (2011). The work and insights of professional development school boundary spanners in clinical teacher education. In C. Hauessler Bohan & J. E. Many (Eds.), Clinical teacher education: Reflections from an urban professional development school network (pp. 33–53). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Menter, I., Baumfield, V., Carroll, M., Dickson, B., Hulme, M., Lowden, K. & Mallon, W. (2012). The Glasgow West Teacher Education Initiative: A Clinical Approach to Education: Evaluation Report. Glasgow: School of Education, University of Glasgow. Montecinos, C., Walker, H., & Maldonado, F. (2015). School administrators and university practicum supervisors as boundary brokers for initial teacher education in Chile. Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 1–10. Mutemeri, J., & Chetty, R. (2011). An examination of university–school partnerships in South Africa. South African Journal of Education, 31(4), 505–517. Okhremtchouk, I., Newell, P., & Rosa, R. (2013). Assessing pre-service teachers prior to certification: Perspectives on the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). Education Policy Analysis Archives, 21(56), 1–27. Pecheone, R. L., & Chung, R. R. (2006). Evidence in teacher education: The Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). Journal of Teacher Education, 57(1), 22–36. Sato, M. (2014). What is the underlying conception of teaching of the edTPA? Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 421–434. Scriven, M. (1967). The methodology of evaluation. In R. W. Tyler, R. M. Gagne, & M. Scriven (Eds.), Perspectives on curriculum evaluation (pp. 39–83). Chicago: Rand-McNally. Spillane, J., & Miele, D. (2007). Evidence in practice: A framing of the terrain. In P. Moss (Ed.), Evidence and decision making, the 106th yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (pp. 46–73). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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Taras, M. (2005). Assessment – summative and formative: Some theoretical reflections. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53(4), 466–478. Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2014). Action now: Classroom ready teachers report. Canberra, ACT: Department of Education. United Kingdom Department of Education. (2011). Teachers’ standards: Guidance for school leaders, school staff and governing bodies. London: author. Wiliam, D., & Black, P. (1996). Meanings and consequences: A basis for distinguishing formative and summative functions of assessment? British Educational Research Journal, 22(5), 537–548. Worrell, F., Brabeck, M., Dwyer, C., Geisinger, K., Marx, R., Noell, G., & Pianta, R. (2014). Assessing and evaluating teacher preparation programs. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Zeichner, K. M. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1), 89–99. Zeichner, K. M., Payne, K. A., & Brayko, K. (2015). Democratizing teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), 122–135.
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53 Formative Assessment in Teacher Education S u s a n M . B ro o k h a r t
How is formative assessment used in teacher education courses, fieldwork, and professional development? Teachers cannot learn what they do not see modeled. How well do teachers learn to use formative assessment in their own teaching? This chapter addresses these two questions, within pre-service education and within in-service professional development. An introductory section presents theory and research about formative assessment as the frame for examining both questions. The next two sections address the questions of how formative assessment is modeled and taught and with what results for teachers’ practice, in preservice teacher education and in-service professional development respectively. The research cited in these sections comes from a database search, using the terms ‘formative assessment’ and ‘teacher education’. Criteria for inclusion were that the research related to one or both of the two research questions. The search resulted in articles from Australia, Canada, Egypt, Hong Kong, Libya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A concluding section brings themes together and discusses their application to teacher learning.
Formative Assessment through the Lens of Learning Theory Formative assessment, also called assessment for learning,1 is assessment undertaken during the process of learning to inform the learner as she moves from some current level of capability toward mastery of an intended learning outcome.
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Sometimes this process is outlined as three questions: ‘Where am I going?’, ‘Where am I now?’, and ‘What do I do to close the gap?’ (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Sadler, 1989). This is the frame for both of the questions tackled in this chapter: the use of formative assessment in teachers’ own education and their use of formative assessment with their students. Formative assessment is the mechanism by which all learners – both adults and children – become involved in their own learning.
What Does Formative Assessment Look Like? Formative assessment in classrooms begins with students understanding what it is they are intending to learn (Andrade, 2010; Black & Wiliam, 1998; Cizek, 2010; James & Pedder, 2006; Sadler, 1989), which is sometimes called sharing learning targets and criteria for success. Feedback to students, from various sources including teacher, self, peer, and resources, is a second important aspect of formative assessment in the classroom (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Other formative assessment strategies in the classroom include student goal setting and keeping track of their own learning, making student thinking visible through the use of open questions by both teachers and students, frequent checking for understanding by various means (e.g. exit tickets, whiteboards), and the formative use of summative tests. Interest in formative assessment is international in scope (OECD, 2005). It is more widespread in countries where the self- and coregulation of learning have traditionally been valued (Allal, 2011) and less so in countries with a history of heavy reliance on examinations (Carless, 2011).
How Does Formative Assessment Involve Learners in Their Own Learning? Formative assessment takes seriously cognitive and constructivist understandings of learning.2 These approaches describe how a learner makes meaning by adding new learning experiences to prior understandings, moving ultimately to mastery of her learning goal as she currently conceives it. In this regard, formative assessment stands in contrast to more transmission-based views of learning that conceive of learning as an expert filling up a learner’s mind with information and then checking to see how much the learner has retained (Shepard, 2000). When students engage in self-regulation of learning, they set learning goals, implement strategies to reach those goals, monitor and assess their progress toward those goals, establish a productive learning environment, and maintain a sense of self-efficacy (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011, p. 1). Student self-regulation at all phases in informed by external feedback – from teachers, tasks, and other sources (Butler & Winne, 1995; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006) – and these can be considered part of the co-regulation of learning (Allal, 2011). Formative assessment feeds all of these phases, from setting learning goals (understanding
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the learning target) through gathering evidence (e.g. from teacher feedback or self-assessment) and deciding what to do next. Differences in self-regulation of learning are an important source of achievement differences among students (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011), and formative assessment is especially helpful for lower achievers (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Formative assessment, by involving learners in their own learning, helps them follow the self-regulation process and thus maximizes learning opportunities (Andrade & Brookhart, 2014).
What Changes in Learning and Teaching Support Formative Assessment? Many teachers, trained in teaching practices derived from transmission-based understandings of learning, have not made the switch themselves to an understanding that students need to actively construct learning (Box, Skoog, & Dabbs, 2015; Furtak, Ruiz-Primo, Shemwell, Ayala, Brandon, Shavelson, & Yin, 2008; Shepard, 2000; Stiggins, 2002). Skillfully implementing effective formative assessment practices requires a sea change in educators’ thinking, from ‘What am I going to teach?’ to ‘What will students try to learn?’. The ‘sea change’ idiom means a profound transformation, not some small alteration. It is an apt metaphor for the profound shift from ‘instructivist’ (Box et al., 2015, p. 972) or ‘social efficiency’ (Shepard, 2000, p. 4) teaching to constructivist teaching, necessary for developing the kind of learning culture that supports formative assessment. Many well-meaning teachers paste formative assessment strategies onto otherwise unchanged beliefs about teaching and learning. In fact, some educators develop misconceptions about formative assessment as they affix ‘new learning’ about formative assessment ‘techniques’ to old conceptions of learning – for example, using an ‘exit ticket’ strategy and then counting the results as a quiz grade. This results in practices that, at best, do not take advantage of the power of formative assessment and, at worst, are harmful to learners and learning. Black (2015) noted that a lack of understanding of the complexity and slow pace of change in teaching and in the beliefs that underlie teaching and assessment practices hinders professional development in formative assessment. The evidence in this review supports a similar conclusion. To use formative assessment effectively, both pre-service teacher education and in-service professional development needs to cultivate a sea change in teachers’ approach to assessment. This requires time and attention to teacher beliefs, not just didactic instruction in formative assessment strategies. And it requires teacher educators modeling these techniques and teachers experiencing them. The two sections below show clearly that a sea change is needed but is only achieved in part, and only with some projects. Proofs of concept – projects where teachers learned formative assessment strategies and students benefitted – are found in both pre-service and in-service teacher education. However, successful examples are still unusual enough to warrant publication as new research, and
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there are many publications where it is clear a sea change was not achieved and the outcomes of the reported project were less than hoped for.
Formative Assessment in Pre-Service Teacher Education Several theoretically based literature reviews, in general (DeLuca, 2012; Otero, 2006; Weasmer & Woods, 1997) or in the context of learning to teach in a specific discipline (Lewis, 2008), addressed formative assessment in pre-service education. All mentioned the sea change in some way, describing how teacher candidates, teacher educators, or both needed to change their perspective on learning and assessment. DeLuca (2012) argued that even in a strong accountability context, as in the US and Canada currently, teacher candidates need to learn to use formative assessment and change their perspectives from a transmission-based view of teacher education to a more constructivist view. Smith (2011) made a similar argument based on research in Norway. Otero (2006) emphasized the practical outcome of a change in perspective from transmission-based view of learning to a more cognitive view. Pre-service teachers need to move from thinking ‘They [pupils] don’t get it’ to thinking ‘What do they get?’ (p. 254). Lewis (2008) described secondary science teachers’ perspectives on assessment and instruction. Science teachers who are not skilled at formative assessment evaluate recall, and may be unwilling to change their practices because they believe what they are doing is working. These teachers’ assessments produce a list of students well-ranked according to their level of recall, which is what they are looking for. A change in assessment perspective is required to evaluate what students are thinking rather than what they have memorized. Similarly, science teachers who are not skilled at inquiry methods may believe that students who are doing ‘hands-on’ work are learning science, even when they are following cookbook laboratory directions. A change in perspective about learning is required to give students tasks that require thinking.
Formative Assessment in Teacher Education Courses Recent individual studies bear out what these reviews described. Evidence is mixed about the use of formative assessment in teacher education courses. Some studies find teacher educators modeling high-quality formative assessment in their classes and challenging students to implement similar practices in their future teaching. Others find teacher educators using no formative assessment or misguided formative assessment. Thus different studies have different answers to the question of whether formative assessment is taught in teacher education courses and whether teacher educators model formative assessment in those courses. Some studies would answer, basically, yes (DeLuca, Chavez, & Cao, 2013; DeLuca & Klinger, 2010; Dysthe & Engelsen, 2004; Grainger & Adie,
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2014; Jones, 2014; López-Pastor, Pintor, Muros, & Webb, 2013; Ryan, 2006; Smith, Hill, Cowie, & Gilmore, 2014). Others would answer, basically, no, not much, or not very effectively (DeLuca & Bellara, 2013; El Ebyary, 2013; Siegel & Wissehr, 2011; Wininger & Norman, 2005). The differences may partly be explained by different study designs and contexts. However, positive outcomes were more likely when a project took a truly formative approach, and negative outcomes were more likely when a project tried to add ‘formative assessment strategies’ into the repertoire of students who maintained a basically transmission-based view of learning. Studies with positive results
Three studies surveyed pre-service students across institutions: in New Zealand (Smith et al., 2014), Norway (Dysthe & Engelsen, 2004), and Spain (López-Pastor et al., 2013). Smith and colleagues (2014) found significant changes in pre-service teacher assessment beliefs, knowledge, and skills from the first to third year of their programs. Dysthe & Engelsen (2004) found students using digital portfolios increased formative assessment opportunities. López-Pastor and colleagues (2013) found that various formative assessment projects in ten learning modules led to more student engagement, fewer failures, and better work. Two studies surveyed pre-service students at a single institution. DeLuca and Klinger (2010) studied Canadian students’ perceived confidence in the practice, theory, and philosophy of assessment. Grainger and Adie (2014) studied Australian students’ responses to a course that included providing feedback, using criteria, and coming to consensus on the quality of student work. Both studies found positive responses. Two studies looked at a project within specific teacher education classes. DeLuca et al. (2013) found that students in a measurement course in a US university increased in confidence in their practice. Ryan (2006) found students in science teacher education in the UK using confidence-based assessment (weighting answers to assessment questions by their confidence level) increased both the number of their correct answers and their confidence. All of these studies with generally positive results have in common a description of formative assessment as assessment undertaken to inform the learner and support improvement. Studies with challenging results
In contrast, four studies of formative assessment in teacher education coursework ran up against traditional transmission-based approaches to learning and assessing (DeLuca & Bellara, 2013; El Ebyary, 2013; Siegel & Wissehr, 2011; Wininger & Norman, 2005). Two studies found that the traditional view still prevails and that formative assessment is not well represented in teacher education materials. Wininger and Norman (2005) analyzed educational psychology textbooks in the US, reasoning that educational psychology is usually the first,
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and often the only, course where assessment is taught in teacher education. Seventeen out of twenty textbooks mentioned formative assessment but with an average page coverage of zero to one page. DeLuca and Bellara (2013) found there was greater alignment between professional standards documents and teacher education course syllabi than policy documents, and that assessment for learning was more evident in policy documents, not in teaching documents. Two studies described a struggle between constructivist and transmissionbased views where, for the present, transmission-based views prevailed. Siegel and Wissehr (2011) studied how pre-service science teachers understood assessment tools and purposes. Teacher candidates overwhelmingly indicated they believed that major assessment purposes were to uncover student misconceptions and to check for understanding and endorsed many formative assessment methods and tools. However, the unit plans they produced included a heavy emphasis on worksheets, homework, and presentations, and less emphasis on teacher questioning and other formative practices, than they had endorsed in the survey. El Ebyary (2013) interviewed faculty in foreign language teacher education programs at nineteen different universities in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and found many positive attitudes toward formative assessment but little use of formative assessment methods. The interviews had ‘the feel of summative use of formative assessment’, the author wrote.
Formative Assessment in Fieldwork and Student Teaching Evidence is also mixed about the success and effectiveness of pre-service teachers’ formative assessment practices in their fieldwork. Some studies have reported high-quality practice and good outcomes for teacher candidates and their pupils, often as a result of specific projects focusing on formative assessment (Jones, 2014; Nilsson, 2013; Willis, 2015). Others have reported that student teachers are not able to implement much in the way of formative assessment practices in student teaching (Bannister & Linder, 2015; Luttenegger, 2009). Jones (2014) described a formative assessment project in a post-graduate program in modern foreign languages in the UK. Students improved their understanding of formative assessment and used it in their classrooms. Important to the theme of this chapter, students’ views of assessment and learning began to shift (p. 286): ‘Data show a shift toward the student teachers’ finding strategies to enable pupils to become more self-regulated in their learning’ and student teachers ‘Found ways to make all assessment formative’. In Australia, Willis (2015) reported on teacher education designed to model feedback loops for candidates and intentionally engineered to challenge transmission views of learning. After the first loop, most students commented on benefits to themselves; after the second loop, they also commented on what they learned; and after the third loop, they also engaged in critical commentary about the task and criteria. Most found the feedback loops to be helpful. A few, however, still
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wanted to be told whether they were correct, a reminder of how difficult a change in perspective about learning and assessment can be. In Sweden, Nilsson (2013) gave science student teachers a set of formative assessment questions about learning intentions, procedures, assessment, and prior knowledge on which the student teachers reflected as they planned lessons. This device assisted them in making the needed change in focus from their teaching performance to students’ learning. Two case studies provide evidence that sometimes student teachers are not able to use formative assessment practices in their classrooms. Bannister & Linder (2015) described how an early childhood student teacher in the US who learned formative assessment in teacher education valued it. However, she was not able to use it in class because of the transmission-based approach to learning used by her cooperating teacher. In Luttenegger’s (2009) study of elementary student teachers in the US, none of the students had an understanding of how to use formative assessment practices in their classes and did not do so. In conclusion, a good handful of educators and programs are working to make formative assessment a larger part of teacher education than it currently is. These efforts succeed sometimes but are still rare. The largest stumbling block is the needed change in approach to learning, from a view that learning means transmitting information to students to a view that learning means students making their own meaning through self-regulatory processes that require formative assessment evidence. As long as there are textbook authors, teacher education faculty, and cooperating teachers who have not made this shift, the struggle will continue. As these views recede, formative assessment will find a larger place in teacher education more generally, informed by the early successes reviewed here.
Formative Assessment in In-Service Professional Development Two reviews of research on formative assessment in in-service professional development were located, both from the US. Both (Schneider & Randel, 2010; Trumbull & Gerzon, 2013) searched for insights on characteristics of effective professional development in formative assessment, with effectiveness being indicated by changes in teacher practices and ultimately increases in student learning. Their conclusions were remarkably similar. Effective professional development in formative assessment requires administrative support, individualization and attention to teachers’ varied learning needs, attention to teachers’ content knowledge, collaborative learning, coherence with other aspects of the local school culture and context, and a commitment of time commensurate with the magnitude of the change being asked of teachers – what this chapter would term the sea change in approach to learning and assessment. Willis, Adie, and Klenowski (2013), writing in the Australian context, reached similar conclusions. These factors are related.
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Deep content knowledge is required to interpret students’ work in terms of their thinking, identifying understandings and misconceptions without blaming students for not reaching some desired point on a learning progression. A constructivist stance is required in order to use assessment to move students forward rather than interpreting lack of understanding as their failure to properly receive transmitted knowledge.
Studies of Using Formative Assessment in a Course or Training Several studies of in-service teacher development were conducted in graduate or continuing education courses in formative assessment for practicing teachers. These studies varied in course design as well as use of assessment. Two studies focused on specific formative assessment strategies. Tinoca and Oliveira (2013) studied a two-semester online professional development program in Portugal, whereby policy teachers are required to learn about formative assessment. The course included electronic portfolios, face-to-face portfolios, and several other assignments, each with the opportunity for self-reflection against criteria. Gikandi (2013) studied a two-semester post-graduate course in New Zealand using open online reflective journals. Two studies focused on formative assessment more broadly. Wolsey (2008) analyzed the type of feedback online instructors gave and asked students how they perceived and used it. Students preferred complex affirmations that identified and explained strengths of the work. They found critical comments useful if they were specifically linked to criteria. Webb (2010) studied beginning teachers in a post-graduate program in the UK that used formative assessment and instructional technology. She identified inherent tensions between the need to develop collaborative learning and the need to improve individual performance. Both studies’ findings were consistent with a view of the learner as an active constructor of knowledge.
Studies of Formative Assessment Projects in Participating Schools Several studies reported on formative assessment projects in schools. Some espoused a top-down approach where a particular program was designed and then rolled out in schools, in a traditional, and sometimes transmission-based, method. Some were more inquiry based. Results were mixed. The University of Hawaii and Stanford University created embedded formative assessments and accompanying professional development for a science curriculum and rolled it out to schools (Ayala et al., 2008). The project did not have the desired effects on teacher practices, student motivation, achievement, or conceptual change (Furtak et al., 2008). Many of the teachers did not use the
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prescribed sequence or spend much time in open discussions with students about their thinking. Teachers who did quality implementation had larger pupil achievement pre-post gain scores (Furtak et al., 2008). This project and its approach did not help many teachers develop constructivist practices; rather, the ‘formative assessments’ became simply another tool for transmission-based teaching. The Every Child a Reader and Writer (ECRW) program (Poppers, 2011) was rolled out to elementary schools in the San Francisco area. Summer teacher training emphasized using information to adjust instruction, suggesting a teacher-directed view of formative assessment. Despite teacher and student improvements, there was no evidence that students of ECRW teachers met state writing standards at a greater rate than non-ECRW students. Similar to the science project described above, students of high-implementing teachers were more likely to meet state writing standards than students of low-implementing teachers. Some top-down programs were more successful. The Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative (SVMI, Foster & Poppers, 2011) designed formal formative assessment tasks and scoring protocols. Teachers met to score and analyze student work and identify common errors and next steps. Pupils of a group of teachers that participated intensively in the program improved on both the SVMI tasks, on their state test, and in future enrollment in Algebra I. Zavala, Alarcón, and Benegas (2007) described a set of tutorials in introductory physics in Mexico. The tutorials were designed to break the transmission-based cycle teachers had experienced when they learned physics and included self-assessment of their own misconceptions in physics, working on their own weak points, and extending from this learning ways to take their pupils’ prior knowledge into account in their teaching. Several formative assessment projects included intentional inquiry-based components. Ash and Levitt (2003) presented two projects in the US designed to help teachers use science inquiry learning methods and formative assessment methods to transform their views of teaching and learning. DeLuca, Klinger, Pyper, and Woods (2015) described a professional development program in Canada that featured teachers and principals using the method of instructional rounds to collect formative information about the teachers’ learning. Willis and Adie (2014; Adie & Willis, 2014) explored how teachers annotating student work samples improved teachers’ understanding of the Australian education standards. The resulting understanding of criteria and standards led teachers to help their pupils make meaning of their work. Teachers used work samples with their pupils and began paying attention to more learning-related aspects of pupil work rather than surface features. The Learning How to Learn (LHTL) project in the UK (James & Pedder, 2006; Marshall & Drummond, 2006; Pedder, 2006) found three factors described teachers’ approaches to classroom assessment: making learning explicit, promoting learning autonomy, and a performance orientation. The first two are consistent with formative approaches to assessment and learning. Nevertheless, only
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about 20 percent of teachers’ lessons embodied the ‘spirit’ of assessment for learning, basing assessment on ideas rather than procedures and promoting pupil autonomy (Marshall & Drummond, 2006). Instead, many teachers’ practices conformed to the ‘letter’ of assessment for learning – that is, they used desired procedures but without the underlying formative approach; they had not made the sea change. Bailey, Huang, and Escobar (2011) described a program designed to help US kindergarten English Language Learners use academic language in science. Teachers improved in the degree to which they communicated success criteria to students and the degree to which they evoked and interpreted evidence of student learning during instruction. Buck and Trauth-Nare (2009) studied a US teacher who tried to implement formative assessment in her classroom after professional development. She had some success at shifting her practices, and with positive student responses, although a few high-achieving students wanted to return to ‘behaviorist-based assessments’ (p. 486). Carless (2011) reported on teachers in Hong Kong who experimented with formative assessment strategies after learning about them in professional development. He was particularly interested in what the teachers would try, and what would be effective, in a Confucian-heritage context with a strong tradition of reliance on summative assessment. Two strategies especially caught teachers’ interest. One was the formative use of summative tests (FUST), analyzing test results to inform further instruction. Another was peer learning in small groups, both across and within classes, followed by individual assessment. Several professional development programs use intentionally designed professional learning communities. Cleaves and Mayrand (2011) described Mathematics Learning Communities, focused on teacher examination of student work in mathematics. This US program resulted in improvement of mathematical dialog among teachers, who in turn asked students to explain their thinking more. Three reports described the use of Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs), using a framework designed by Wiliam (2016). Jonsson, Lundahl, and Holmgren (2015) described a project in Sweden that was successful in changing teachers’ assessment for learning practices; nevertheless, most assessment practices remained more teacher-centered than intended. Hargreaves (2013) described the use of TLCs in the UK to promote expertise in assessment for learning. They too found some changes in teachers’ practices, especially regarding feedback, but found changes in practice constrained by the school context. Wylie and Lyon (2015) described the US Keeping Learning on Track (KLT) program, again with mixed results. Teachers improved significantly in giving formative feedback, but did not change in their use of some other formative assessment practices. Many practices remained teacher-centered and transmission-based, and in many cases formative assessment information was not used to adjust instruction.
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Studies of Practicing Teachers’ Formative Assessment Practices or Beliefs Several studies examined teacher formative assessment practices or beliefs from the informal teacher development that comes with the exposure to new ideas inherent in professional practice. Box et al. (2015) found that the assessment theories of three high school biology teachers in the US predicted their formative assessment use and quality. Gottheiner and Siegel (2012), also in the US, found middle school science teachers had difficulty interpreting students’ naïve conceptions and using them to inform instruction. Volante and Beckett (2011) found Canadian teachers reported using questioning strategies, feedback without grades, student self-assessment, and FUST with success. They noted difficulties with using peer assessment. Gamlem and Smith (2013) investigated lower secondary students’ responses to classroom feedback in Norway. Students distinguished positive feedback – both pointing out strengths and making suggestions for improvement – from negative feedback, and valued the positive. They valued honest feedback and noted difficulties with using peer assessment because peers were not always honest with one another. Smith and Engelsen (2012) investigated the critical role of the principal in changing school culture, teacher practices, and student assessment capabilities.
Conclusion Studies of pre-service and in-service teacher education in formative assessment testify to both the possibilities and difficulties of changing from a focus on transmission-based teaching to a focus on learning.
Pre-service Teacher Education Whether formative assessment practices are used in teacher education classes and developed as part of teacher candidates’ repertoire of effective teaching practices depends on the beliefs about learning and the approach to assessment espoused by the respective teacher educators and teacher candidates. Many of the studies of formative assessment in pre-service teacher education explicitly mentioned the sea change – the needed shift from transmission-based views of learning and assessment to more constructivist orientations necessary for teacher education students to learn truly formative uses of assessment (Bannister & Linder, 2015; DeLuca, 2012; El Ebyary, 2013; Jones, 2014; Lewis, 2008; Nilsson, 2013; Otero, 2006; Smith et al., 2014; Willis, 2015). Evidence about the quality and effectiveness of teaching formative assessment in pre-service teacher education was mixed. Effective modeling and teaching of formative assessment can happen in pre-service teacher education, and
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sometimes does. Such examples are unusual enough to count as publishable new knowledge. In these reports, it is not uncommon for the outcomes to be at the level of practices and strategies rather than deep, theoretical reorientations of beliefs about how students learn. To the extent that a transmission-based view of learning and assessment prevails in the post-secondary education context, it will be difficult for teacher education students to experience the sea change they will need to become formative assessors and constructivist teachers.
In-service Professional Development As for pre-service teacher education, effective modeling and teaching of formative assessment can happen in in-service teacher professional development, and sometimes does, but such occasions are exceptional enough to be reported. Outcomes are often at the level of practices and strategies. This is exacerbated in professional development by the tendency of teachers to press for practical strategies and the systemic problem that much teacher professional development is delivered in the form of one-off workshops. When sea changes have been reported for professional development in formative assessment, they have typically been in the context of teacher learning communities and other ongoing professional development programs where the kind of long-term learning required for changes in beliefs can happen. As for pre-service teacher education, many of the studies of formative assessment in in-service teacher professional development explicitly mentioned the needed shift from behaviorist or transmission-based views of learning and assessment to more constructivist orientations (Ash & Levitt, 2003; Black, 2015; Box et al., 2015; Buck & Trauth-Nare, 2009; Gottheiner & Siegel, 2012; Hargreaves, 2013; James & Pedder, 2006; Marshall & Drummond, 2006; Trumbull & Gerzon, 2013; Verberg, Tigelaar, & Verloop, 2013; Volante & Beckett, 2011; Willis et al., 2013; Wylie & Lyon, 2015; Zavala et al., 2007). This review supports previous findings about professional development in formative assessment (Schneider & Randel, 2010; Trumbull & Gerzon, 2013) and in general (Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, & Fung, 2007) that effective professional development in formative assessment requires administrative support, individualization, attention to teachers’ content knowledge, collaborative learning and trialing of strategies, coherence with other aspects of the local school culture and context, and plenty of time. In addition, this review supports the notion that professional development in formative assessment needs to involve teachers in experiencing formative assessment (Ash & Levitt, 2003; Gikandi, 2013; Noyce & Hickey, 2011; Tinoca & Oliveira, 2013; Willis & Adie, 2014). Participating in formative assessment supports teachers’ self-regulation of their own learning (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011), which can be expected to increase the effectiveness of their learning. In addition, the experience likely helps teachers make the needed sea change from a transmission-based to a constructivist approach to learning and assessment.
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In-service professional development also requires administrative support (James & Pedder, 2006; Noyce & Hickey, 2011; Smith & Engelsen, 2012; Swaffield & MacBeath, 2006), Administrators need to understand the necessary re-orientation or sea change teachers need to bring a truly formative approach to learning and assessment into their practice. They help embed this change into their school by their cultural leadership (Swaffield & MacBeath, 2006) – for example, by modeling an interest in learning over scoring and by a use of learning-related, instead of grade-related, language. In addition, administrators must provide the resources, time, and support that teachers need to change their approach to learning and assessment.
Application to Extending Research on Formative Assessment in Teacher Education The sea change metaphor is also useful in examining the research itself. The discussion of formative assessment and the design of each study suggests the researcher’s own stance on formative assessment. In this regard, some research studies are more helpful that others in advancing the field. As others have pointed out (e.g. Shepard, 2000), the beliefs of the researchers who study formative assessment will affect the kind of interventions they design and the kind of outcomes they measure. Transmission-based views of learning and assessment were apparent in some of the top-down, tightly scripted programs delivered to teachers, a likely reason for their lack of success. The obvious next step for research on formative assessment in teacher education is to make sure the next generation of research models principles of effective formative assessment.
Application to Supported Teacher Learning Teacher education in formative assessment will move forward to the degree that schools, coaches, mentors, and professors experience the sea change and act on it in their own teaching (Smith, 2011). On the learner side, pre-service and inservice teachers must conceptualize themselves as learners, not as compliers. As the studies showed, this proves difficult for some teachers after a lifetime of socialization otherwise. Nevertheless, some of the successful projects have shown the possibilities and described how, when the shift is made, teachers, their colleagues, and their pupils can focus on forming learning.
Notes 1 Some define ‘assessment for learning’ as assessment undertaken for the purpose of enhancing learning, and only call it ‘formative assessment’ if the evaluation is actually used for students’ regulation of learning (James & Pedder, 2006). In this chapter, the two terms will be used as synonyms.
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2 In this chapter, the term ‘constructivist approach to learning and assessment’ will be used to mean approaches based on constructivism, social cognitive theory, social constructivism, and socio-cultural theory – that is, theories of learning that posit that the learner constructs meaning, whether individually or in dialog with others, as opposed to receiving and memorizing/storing information. The latter approach, called a ‘transmission-based approach to learning and assessment’ in this chapter, derives from behaviorist or associationist theories of learning.
References Adie, L., & Willis, J. (2014). Using annotations to inform an understanding of achievement standards. Assessment Matters, 6, 112–136. Allal, L. (2011). Pedagogy, didactics and the co-regulation of learning: A perspective from the Frenchlanguage world of educational research. Research Papers in Education, 26(3), 329–336. Andrade, H. L. (2010). Students as the definitive source of formative assessment: Academic self-assessment and the self-regulation of learning. In H. L. Andrade & G. J. Cizek (Eds.), Handbook of formative assessment (pp. 90–105). New York: Routledge. Andrade, H. L., & Brookhart, S. M. (2014, April). Assessment as the regulation of learning. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA. Ash, D., & Levitt, K. (2003). Working within the zone of proximal development: Formative assessment as professional development. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 14(1), 23–48. Ayala, C. C., Shavelson, R. J., Ruiz-Primo, M. A., Brandon, P. R., Yin, Y., Furtak, E. M., Young, D. B., & Tomita, M. K. (2008). From formal embedded assessments to reflective lessons: The development of formative assessment studies. Applied Measurement in Education, 21(4), 315–334. Bailey, A. L., Huang, Y. D., & Escobar, M. (2011). I can explain: Academic language for science among young English language learners. In P. E. Noyce & D. T. Hickey (Eds.), New frontiers in formative assessment (pp. 143–158). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Bannister, N. A., & Linder, S. M. (2015). Recasting a traditionally summative assessment as an intentionally formative experience. The Educational Forum, 79(2), 190–199. Black, P. (2015). Formative assessment – An optimistic but incomplete vision. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy, and Practice, 22(1), 161–177. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–73. Box, C., Skoog, G., & Dabbs, J. M. (2015). A case study of teacher personal practice assessment theories and complexities of implementing formative assessment. American Educational Research Journal, 52(5), 956–983. Buck, G. A., & Trauth-Nare, A. E. (2009). Preparing teachers to make the formative assessment process integral to science teaching and learning. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 20(5), 475–494. Butler, D. L., & Winne, P. H. (1995). Feedback and self-regulated learning: A theoretical synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 65(3), 245–281. Carless, D. (2011). From testing to productive student learning: Implementing formative assessment in Confucian-heritage settings. New York: Routledge. Cizek, G. J. (2010). An introduction to formative assessment: History, characteristics, and challenges. In H. L. Andrade & G. J. Cizek (Eds.), Handbook of formative assessment (pp. 3–17). New York: Routledge. Cleaves, W., & Mayrand, S. (2011). What were they thinking? A closer look at student work in mathematics learning communities. In P. E. Noyce & D. T. Hickey (Eds.), New frontiers in formative assessment (pp. 33–48). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. DeLuca, C. (2012). Preparing teachers for the age of accountability: Toward a framework for assessment education. Action in Teacher Education, 34(5–6), 576–591.
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DeLuca, C., & Bellara, A. (2013). The current state of assessment education: Aligning policy, standards, and teacher education curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(4), 356–372. DeLuca, C., Chavez, T., & Cao, C. (2013). Establishing a foundation for valid teacher judgement on student learning: The role of pre-service assessment education. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 20(1), 107–126. DeLuca, C., & Klinger, D. A. (2010). Assessment literacy development: Identifying gaps in teacher candidates’ learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 17(4), 419–438. DeLuca, C., Klinger, D., Pyper, J., & Woods, J. (2015). Instructional rounds as a professional learning model for systemic implementation of Assessment for Learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & and Practice, 22(1), 122–139. Dysthe, O., & Engelsen, K. S. (2004). Portfolios and assessment in teacher education in Norway: A theorybased discussion of different models in two sites. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(2), 239–258. El Ebyary, K. M. (2013). Profiling formative assessment culture in EFL teacher education programs in the Middle East. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(12), 2169–2177. Foster, D., & Poppers, A. E. (2011). How can I get them to understand? Formative assessment and reengaging students in core mathematics. In P. E. Noyce & D. T. Hickey (Eds.), New frontiers in formative assessment (pp. 13–31). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Furtak, E. M., Ruiz-Primo, M. A., Shemwell, J. T., Ayala, C. C., Brandon, P. R., Shavelson, R. J., & Yin, Y. (2008). On the fidelity of implementing embedded formative assessments and its relation to student learning. Applied Measurement in Education, 21(4), 360–389. Gamlem, S. M., & Smith, K. (2013). Student perceptions of classroom feedback. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 20(2), 150–169. Gikandi, J. (2013). How can open online reflective journals enhance learning in teacher education? Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 21(1), 5–26. Gottheiner, D. M., & Siegel, M. A. (2012). Experienced middle school science teachers’ assessment literacy: Investigating knowledge of students’ conceptions in genetics and ways to shape instruction. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 23(5), 531–557. Grainger, P. R., & Adie, L. (2014). How do preservice teacher education students move from novice to expert assessors? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(7), 89–105. Hargreaves, E. (2013). Assessment for learning and Teacher Learning Communities: UK teachers’ experiences. Teaching Education, 24(3), 327–344. Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. James, M., & Pedder, D. (2006). Beyond method: Assessment and learning practices and values. The Curriculum Journal, 17(2), 109–138. Jones, J. (2014). Student teachers developing a critical understanding of formative assessment in the modern foreign languages classroom on an initial teacher education course. The Language Learning Journal, 42(3), 275–288. Jonsson, A., Lundahl, C., & Holmgren, A. (2015). Evaluating a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning in Sweden. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 22(1), 104–121. Lewis, E. B. (2008). Content is not enough: A history of secondary Earth science teacher preparation with recommendations for today. Journal of Geoscience Education, 56(5), 445–455. López-Pastor, V. M., Pintor, P., Muros, B., & Webb, G. (2013). Formative assessment strategies and their effect on student performance and on student and tutor workload: The results of research project undertaken in preparation for greater convergence of universities in Spain within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Journal of Further and Higher Education, 37(2), 163–180. Luttenegger, K. C. (2009). Formative assessment practices in reading instruction in pre-service teachers’ elementary school classrooms. Journal of Education for Teaching, 35(3), 299–301. Marshall, B., & Drummond, M. J. (2006). How teachers engage with Assessment for Learning: Lessons from the classroom. Research Papers in Education, 21(2), 133–149.
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Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199–218. Nilsson, P. (2013). What do we know and where do we go? Formative assessment in developing student teachers’ professional learning of teaching science. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(2), 188–201. Noyce, P. E., & Hickey, D. T. (2011). Conclusion: Lessons learned, controversies, and new frontiers. In P. E. Noyce & D. T. Hickey (Eds.), New frontiers in formative assessment (pp. 223–237). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2005). Formative assessment: Improving learning in secondary classrooms. OECD and Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. doi: 10.1787/9789264007413-en Otero, V. K. (2006). Moving beyond the ‘get it or don’t’ conception of formative assessment. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 247–255. Pedder, D. (2006). Organizational conditions that foster successful classroom promotion of Learning How to Learn. Research Papers in Education, 21(2), 171–200. Poppers, A. E. (2011). Identifying craft moves: Close observation of elementary student writing. In P. E. Noyce & D. T. Hickey (Eds.), New frontiers in formative assessment (pp. 89–105). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Ryan, C. (2006). Confidence-based assessment in science: An illustrative case study. Journal of Science Education, 7(2), 106–109. Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18(2), 119–144. Schneider, M. C., & Randel, B. (2010). Research on characteristics of effective professional development programs for enhancing educators’ skills in formative assessment. In H. L. Andrade & G. J. Cizek (Eds.), Handbook of formative assessment (pp. 251–276). New York: Routledge. Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4–14. Siegel, M. A., & Wissehr, C. (2011). Preparing for the plunge: Preservice teachers’ assessment literacy. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 22(4), 371–391. Smith, K. (2011). Professional development of teachers – A prerequisite for AfL to be successfully implemented in the classroom. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37(1), 55–61. Smith, K., & Engelsen, K. S. (2012). Developing an Assessment for Learning (AfL) culture in school: The voice of the principals. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 16(1), 106–125. Smith, L. F., Hill, M. F., Cowie, B., & Gilmore, A. (2014). Preparing teachers to use the enabling power of assessment (pp. 303–323). In C. Wyatt-Smith, V. Klenowski, & P. Colbert (Eds.). The enabling power of assessment 1: Designing assessment for quality learning. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer International. Stiggins, R. (2002). Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment for learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 758–765. Swaffield, S., & MacBeath, J. (2006). Embedding Learning How to Learn in school policy: The challenge for leadership. Research Papers in Education, 21(2), 201–215. Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development. Wellington, New Zealand Ministry of Education. http://educationcounts.edcentre.govt.nz/ publications/curriculum/2515/15341 Tinoca, L., & Oliveira, I. (2013). Formative assessment of teachers in the context of an online learning environment. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(2), 214–227. Trumbull, E., & Gerzon, N. (2013). Professional development on formative assessment: Insights from research and practice. San Francisco: WestEd. Verberg, C. P. M., Tigelaar, D. E. H., & Verloop, N. (2013) Teacher learning through participation in a negotiated assessment procedure. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(2), 172–187.
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Volante, L., & Beckett, D. (2011). Formative assessment and the contemporary classroom: Synergies and tensions between research and practice. Canadian Journal of Education, 34(2), 239–255. Weasmer, J., & Woods, A. M. (1997). Teacher preparation: A revision process fostered by formative assessment. The Clearing House, 71(2), 113–116. Webb, M. (2010). Beginning teacher education and collaborative formative e-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(5), 597–618. Wiliam, D. (2016). Leadership for teacher learning: Creating a culture where all teachers improve so that all students succeed. West Palm Beach, FL: Learning Sciences International. Willis, J. (2015). Learning through feedback loop metaphors. Curriculum Matters, 10, 193–212. Willis, J., & Adie, L. (2014). Teachers using annotations to engage students in assessment conversations: Recontextualising knowledge. The Curriculum Journal, 25(4), 495–515. Willis, J., Adie, L. E., & Klenowski, V. (2013). Conceptualising teachers’ assessment literacies in an era of curriculum and assessment reform. Australian Educational Researcher, 40(2), 241–256. Wininger, S. R., & Norman, A. D. (2005). Teacher candidates’ exposure to formative assessment in educational psychology textbooks: A content analysis. Educational Assessment, 10(1), 19–37. Wolsey, T. D. (2008). Efficacy of instructor feedback on written work in an online program. International Journal on E-Learning, 7(2), 311–329. Wylie, E. C., & Lyon, C. J. (2015). The fidelity of formative assessment implementation: Issues of breadth and quality. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 22(1), 140–160. Zavala, G., Alarcón, H., & Benegas, J. (2007). Innovative training of in-service teachers for active learning: A short teacher development course based on physics education research. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 18, 559–572. Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (2011). Self-regulated learning and performance: An introduction and overview. In B. J. Zimmerman & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (pp. 1–12). New York: Routledge.
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54 Teacher Assessment from Pre-service through In-service Teaching Mistilina Sato and Sara Kemper
Assessment as an educational practice happens both inside the classroom and as a function of assessing and appraising teachers and their teaching. This chapter will discuss how assessment is used both in pre-service teacher education and in in-service teacher development. We will consider both how assessments at particular moments throughout the teaching career serve filtering or gatekeeping functions and how those assessments can shape the process of teacher development.
Teacher Assessment across the Teaching Career A fundamental question that education leaders in every country and jurisdiction wrestle with is who should be eligible to teach? Historically, eligibility criteria included personal and idiosyncratic characteristics as well as the personal networks of those seeking a job as teacher (Sedlak, 2008). In modern times we have turned to establishing minimal competencies and regulatory systems to determine who is eligible to teach in schools. All of these systems require various forms of assessment of prospective and practicing teachers’ competencies and accomplishments. We will consider four points along the teaching career continuum where assessments serve as filters for advancing a person into and along a teaching career: (1) at the point of entry into teacher preparation programs, (2) at the point of exit from teacher preparation programs, (3) at the point of hire into a
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Entry into teacher preparaon
Exit from teacher preparaon/ receiving a credenal
Employment process
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Advancing in the teaching profession
Figure 54.1 Points along the teaching career continuum where assessments serve as filters for advancing a person into and along a teaching career
teaching position, and (4) at the point of advancing to a higher status within the teaching profession (Figure 54.1). We will discuss each of these assessment gateways in turn.
Entering Teacher Preparation In many nations, teacher preparation has become an activity taken up in institutions of higher education (IHEs). Formerly the domain of local normal schools devoted solely to the pedagogical preparation of beginning teachers, teacher preparation is now the work of colleges and universities. With teacher preparation firmly situated in higher education, many of the same admissions requirements typically used in higher education are applied to prospective teachers. For example, in China, students admitted to IHEs to become teachers take the nationwide gaokao exam for college placement. Once admitted to a college or university, students who have declared teaching as their intended field begin the education program in their first year of study (Sato, 2017). Similarly, in Singapore, entry into teacher education is nationally governed and jointly managed by the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Education (NIE, the only teacher preparation institution in Singapore). Candidates are assessed on their academic achievement, communications skills, and motivation for joining the profession (Goodwin, 2012). Students who apply to become teachers are first screened for minimum qualifications, including being in the top 30 percent of their age cohort, completion of relevant secondary and university programs, and evidence of interest in children and education. They also must pass literacy tests in English, the language of instruction in Singapore. Those who make it through these first two screening processes participate in interviews conducted by a panel of school leaders which focus on attitudes, aptitude, and personality, and may include practical tests or activities. The process is highly selective, with only one in eight applicants advancing through the selection interview and being admitted to the NIE preparation programs (Goodwin, Low, & Darling-Hammond, 2017). In Finland, entry into teacher education is determined through both a national entry examination and locally designed interview processes at eight Finnish universities charged with preparing the nation’s teachers. Of about 20,000 applicants for admission to a given teacher preparation program, only 10 percent
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are admitted. Successful applicants have earned top scores on a Matriculation Examination for graduation from upper secondary school, demonstrated relevant out-of-school experiences (such as prior experience working with children), successfully completed the VAKAVA – a three-hour national teacher preparation entrance exam requiring the interpretation of educational research articles – and completed an interview assessing their understanding of educational issues, their personality, and their interpersonal skills (Hammerness, Ahtiainen, & Sahlberg, 2017; Sahlberg, 2012). In the United States, students are admitted to a college or university based on an admission packet that frequently requires a minimum grade point average (GPA) or review of the high school transcript, standardized tests scores on one of the nationally recognized college readiness exams, such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) or the American College Test (ACT), written personal statements or essays, and recommendation letters. These requirements are typical for both undergraduate- and graduate-level teacher preparation programs. At the undergraduate level, a prospective teacher may not formally enter the teacher preparation major or track until the end of the second year or beginning of the third year of college study. It is typical for programs to have further assessment requirements for entry into the formal teacher preparation program within the institution. These may entail a pre-professional skills test, which is often a regulatory requirement at the state level, completion of a practicum course designed to provide prospective teachers with provisional and supervised experience working with children in school environments, or a minimum college GPA based on completed courses. Similarly, in Australia and Canada, selection into teacher education programs is governed at the state level. In both countries, there is movement toward more federally standardized expectations for entry into teacher education, including higher academic standards and more consistent approaches to assessing prospective candidates’ suitability for teaching and cultural sensitivity (DarlingHammond et al., 2017). We see across these examples a variety of approaches to screening prospective teachers into teacher preparation programs, with some nations using generalized criteria for entry into IHEs and some using very specific criteria related to aptitudes and experiences directly related to the study of and practical work of teaching. Use of standardized tests for entry into teacher preparation includes exams of content knowledge (China’s gaokao), college readiness (United States’ ACT or SAT), language (Singapore’s literacy exam), and interpreting educational issues and research (Finland’s VAKAVA). The implications of using such assessments for selection into teacher preparation will be discussed in a later section.
Earning a Teaching Credential Teaching in most countries is a regulated activity (World Bank, 2013), meaning that a license, certificate, or credential is needed in order to gain employment
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within schools run by the local jurisdiction. We will use the term credential to refer to the official regulatory identification of approved teachers. Teacher credentials typically indicate that the holder has met the minimum level of qualifications or competencies required by the awarding agency. Thus, teacher credentialing systems have been established as filtering mechanisms to move some prospective teachers into the ranks of credentialed teachers while simultaneously rendering some candidates ineligible to teach. The process for obtaining a teaching credential is defined at various levels of the governing systems. For example, in the United States, Canada, and Australia, teaching credentials are awarded at the state level, resulting in multiple distinct systems for entry into teaching within a given nation. By contrast, teacher credentials are awarded in China by the national government based on performance in a national exam. The question of what should be included in the required qualifications for credentialing has long been debated. Many countries have turned to professional teaching standards as guiding frameworks for determining what a beginning teacher should know and be able to do (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). In the United States, the articulation of teaching standards began in the 1980s with the creation of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which outlined standards for accomplished teaching and developed assessments to determine whether teachers’ instruction and professional collaboration met those standards. The development of the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium standards by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, 2011) in the United States established related teaching standards for beginning teacher licensure in the early 1990s (they have since been revised). Currently, several high-performing jurisdictions, as measured by student performance on the international PISA assessments, have codified a distinct body of knowledge and skills for teaching and built their teacher preparation and credentialing system around these standards for professional teaching practice and collaboration. The standards have many commonalities as shown in Table 54.1. In Singapore, the statement of competencies has been developed by the NIE. In Canada, provincial governments determine standards for the teaching profession, and in Australia, the profession-led Institutes on Teaching play a similar statebased role. In China, standards are set by the Chinese Ministry of Education. With this general consensus on the domains of knowledge, practice, and ethical tendencies assessed for teacher credentialing, teacher preparation curricula have many similarities across nations. For example, beginning teachers are typically expected to have a strong foundation in their disciplinary content knowledge. Beginning teachers are also typically expected to have a basic understanding of child psychology, learning theory, pedagogical approaches, and approaches to organizing learning environments. Beginning teachers are often expected to demonstrate a moral or personal commitment to children, their families, and communities, as well as a strong sense of ethical behavior in working for the public good. Finally, teachers are expected to know how to engage in professional
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Know the content and how to teach it
Professional knowledge
Professional practice Plan for and implement Instructional design effective teaching and Teaching implementation learning
Subject knowledge Pedagogical content knowledge General education knowledge
Know students and how Understand student attitudes they learn and behavior; physical and mental development; cultural characteristics
Commitment to students and student learning
China Ministry of Education Standards for Teaching
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
Ontario Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession
Table 54.1 Professional teaching standards across five jurisdictions
Skills - Reflective skills and thinking dispositions
Knowledge of - Self - Pupil - Community - Subject content - Pedagogy - Educational foundation and policies - Curriculum - Multicultural literacy - Global awareness - Environmental awareness
Learner-centered values
Application of content assessment
Content knowledge
Learner development Learning differences
United States Interstate Singapore’s National Institute of Teacher Assessment and Education Attributes of Support Consortium 21st Century Teaching Professionals Standards
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Personal accomplishment and behavior Review and development
Engage in professional learning
Teacher identity
Understanding and awareness Service to the profession and of career community Communication and cooperation
- Pedagogical skills - People management skills - Self-management skills - Administrative and management skills - Communication skills - Facilitative skills - Technological skills - Innovation and entrepreneurship skills - Social and emotional intelligence
Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/caregivers, and the community
Source: Summarized from Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).
Leadership in learning communities
Create and maintain Classroom management and supportive learning educational activities environments Education teaching evaluation Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Professional learning and ethical practice
Leadership and collaboration
Planning for instruction Instructional strategies Learning environments
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collaboration and, in some cases, how to exercise leadership in the service of the teaching profession. Typically, teacher credentials are awarded upon completion of a teacher preparation experience and, in some jurisdictions, upon demonstration of competencies on summative assessments. In the former approach, experiential qualifications are typically met by successfully completing a program of higher education courses and clinical or field-based learning hours. Assessments within this approach might include any course-based requirements that result in passing marks and reports of time spent in clinical settings, sometimes without attention to the actual expectations for candidates during that time. In the latter approach to credentialing, candidates are required to demonstrate a set of competencies (e.g. a set of knowledge, skills, or capacities) aligned with the standards described above. Competencies including knowledge of a particular disciplinary domain, proficiency in reading, writing, and basic mathematical reasoning, and command of general and/or domain-specific pedagogical practices are often assessed using standardized written examinations. Assessments of competencies in particular skills and capacities for teaching tend to be more performance-oriented. Performance-based assessments in teacher education may serve both formative (learning) purposes as well as summative (outcomes) purposes and can include observation protocols, on-demand performance tasks that use problem-based scenarios or simulations, child case studies, and portfolio assessments that use video and student work sampling as evidence from practice (Wei & Pecheone, 2010). These types of assessment ask candidates to demonstrate their ability to enact teaching practices. Through the resulting feedback and coaching processes that support the development of teaching practice, the assessments themselves serve as educative processes for the candidate while they are learning to teach (Wei & Pecheone, 2010). As we continue to work toward more reliable and valid ways to assess these standards-based performance domains, teacher educators wrestle with determining appropriate focal areas for assessing teaching and learning interactions – for example, an instructional interaction such as a class discussion, a lesson that spans a designated time period, a sequence of instruction that may span several lessons, or a unit of instruction that may span weeks of time (Forzani, 2014). Similarly, jurisdictions vary on how strong to make the filter between the preparation experience and the credential to teach. As policy contexts shift more toward outcomes-based approaches to teacher assessments (World Bank, 2013) and accountability for teacher education programs increases, performance assessments are receiving more attention and are undergoing a transformation to become more reliable pedagogical tools for pre-service teachers (Wei & Pecheone, 2010). In recent years, jurisdictions in the United States and Australia have been moving toward adopting standardized teacher performance assessments that are administered near the end of the teacher preparation program as an authentic-to-practice, outcome-based measure of teacher performance (Mayer, Pecheone, & Merino, 2012; Pecheone & Chung, 2006; Sato, 2014).
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Hiring Decisions Holding a credential from the national or state level regulatory agency is not enough to secure a teaching position. The credential merely makes one eligible to be hired. The hiring process itself is another assessment moment for prospective teachers. The most common form of assessment used at the point of hire is the review of the candidate’s résumé and the interview process. Hiring decisions are usually made locally and in response to specific local needs and contexts. Delli (2010) reports that, ‘it might be assumed that teacher competence and preparation would be the main criteria assessed when hiring teachers. However, recent scholarship has suggested that psychological and contextual factors may be equally influential, if not more so, in real-world hiring decisions’ (p. 150). Structured interviews have been shown to have considerably more reliability and validity than unstructured interviews because the former more predictably assess competence and afford a more standardized interview process. As a result, these interviews elicit more comparable information across multiple candidates (Delli, 2010). Our current research literature does not adequately link pre-employment hiring decisions with post-employment job performance. Studies of this nature have primarily leveraged the standardized results from large-scale, commercially available interview protocols, which enable researchers to draw more robust conclusions about their predictive validity relative to locally designed protocols. These studies show some moderate correlations between pre-employment interview scores and post-employment performance measures for teachers (Delli, 2010). Delli (2010) recommends, however, that commercially available interview protocols are not the single best answer to the complex process of making a hiring decision. These interview protocols should be considered as one tool among many indicators of a teacher candidate’s prospective success and their use should be carefully considered in light of budgetary implications, legal considerations, validity research on the instruments, and locally developed employee selection system guidelines. Those in the position of making hiring decisions are also interested in the consequences of their hiring decision in terms of the impact that the hired teachers have on the students they teach. Labor economists have probed the relationships between particular pre-hire teacher qualifications and student outcomes, a branch of research that has been almost exclusively conducted within Unites States contexts (Goldhaber, 2011). For example, Rockoff, Jacob, Kane, and Staiger (2011) studied the extent to which a wide range of teacher characteristics predicted future effectiveness of teachers. They surveyed new math teachers in New York City about their teaching-specific content knowledge, cognitive ability, personality traits, feelings of self-efficacy, and scores on a commercially available teacher selection instrument and linked these measures to available student achievement data. The authors
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concluded that individually, the metrics they examined do not reliably predict very large differences in teacher effectiveness. However, when taken together as a set of cognitive predictors (e.g. attending a more selective college, SAT math score, SAT verbal score, math knowledge for teaching) and non-cognitive predictors (e.g. extraversion and conscientiousness on a personality test, personal efficacy ratings, general efficacy ratings), these composite measures are positively and significantly related to student achievement. From a labor market perspective, the authors suggest that if school districts want to increase the effectiveness of their teacher workforce, gathering a broad base of information on potential employees can be beneficial in the employment decision. Their findings also suggest that while more information for screening purposes at the hiring stage can be beneficial, the ‘data on job performance may still be a more powerful tool for improving teacher selection than data available at the recruitment stage’ (p. 45). This suggests that the context of early career teaching is an important factor for determining job success and impact on students.
Advancement and Development of In-service Teachers Following the initial credentialing process and employment, teacher assessment may take on many forms and have various purposes and outcomes. Even in a single school or school system, a teacher may participate in multiple forms of assessment – some optional, some mandatory – complicating cross-national comparisons. However, teachers in most countries are assessed at some point in their teaching career, whether formally through a sanctioned appraisal system, informally through feedback conversations with school personnel, or voluntarily as part of a career advancement opportunity. Occasions for the assessment of in-service teachers reviewed in this section include teacher performance appraisal (evaluation) and tenure, re-credentialing, advancement along a career ladder, and master teacher designation. While discussed separately here, it is important to note that these types of assessment may overlap in a given system. Teacher performance appraisal, tenure, and re-credentialing
Assessment for teacher performance appraisal may occur as soon as novice teachers begin their teaching duties and may last throughout their entire teaching career. According to the 2013 results of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) (OECD, 2014), a survey of teachers and school leaders in 34 countries, evidence for formal teacher appraisal is most often obtained from classroom observations and analysis of student test score data (see the shaded columns in Table 54.2). The frequencies of various sources of feedback to teachers are displayed in Table 54.2. The most common areas of focus for appraisals include student performance, student behavior and classroom management, and pedagogical competencies in teaching the subject field(s), with nearly 90 percent
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8 19 22 6 15 45
16 39 32 12 24 21
44
9 15
11 20 20
Feedback from Feedback following student assessment of surveys teachers’ content knowledge
Source: Adapted from OECD (2014), p. 132, based on TALIS results.
External individuals or bodies School principal Member(s) of school management team Assigned mentors Other teachers (not a part of the management team) I have never received this type of feedback in this school
Feedback following classroom observation
35
7 18
9 24 27
Feedback following analysis of student test scores
46
7 12
6 24 22
Feedback following selfassessment of teachers’ work
Table 54.2 Percentage of teachers receiving feedback from various personnel and sources of feedback data
45
5 14
8 23 22
Feedback from surveys or discussion with parents
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of surveyed teachers reporting each of these to have ‘moderate’ or ‘high’ importance in the feedback they receive (OECD, 2014, p. 134). TALIS results indicate several outcomes of teacher appraisal, including changes in teachers’ practice, improved teacher satisfaction, and increased teacher self-efficacy. Around the world, teacher appraisal is primarily conducted for developmental purposes to identify teachers’ strengths and weaknesses and to prompt professional learning and improved teaching practice (OECD, 2014). Only a third of reporting teachers, on average, reported that the feedback they received is ‘linked to the likelihood of their career advancement’ (p. 137). In other words, it appears that for a majority of teachers, assessment results at this career stage do not serve as filters for advancement or promotion. Teachers in some countries do participate in a teacher appraisal process for the purpose of career advancement. In South Korea, for example, the Teacher Appraisal for Professional Development program identifies highly rated teachers for a ‘study and research year’ – similar to a sabbatical for university professors – to advance their professional learning and teaching practice. Teachers receiving sub-standard appraisals are required to enroll in professional development programs according to their specific needs (Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, & Park, 2010, as cited in OECD, 2014). A second example of a teacher appraisal process with meaningful career consequences is the teacher tenure process in the United States. The tenure process serves to protect experienced teachers in a particular school system from being dismissed without just cause or due process. Securing tenure typically requires satisfactory teaching performance over a specified period of time as agreed upon by a teacher’s employer and the collective bargaining unit (union) of which he or she is a member. As such, tenure decisions are usually informed by the results of the teacher appraisal process used within a given school system. Teachers in some countries must renew their teaching credentials after a certain period of time, a process we refer to here as re-credentialing. An assumption underlying re-credentialing requirements is that effective teaching, over time, requires ongoing professional development. As such, requirements for re-credentialing often include the documentation of continuing education hours. For example, teachers in Hong Kong must demonstrate 150 hours of continuing professional development every three years to maintain their teaching credentials (Draper, 2012). For teachers in other countries, required professional development time is built into the teaching calendar, as is the case in the United Kingdom and in Finland, where teachers are entitled to several days of professional development (MacBeath, 2012; Sahlberg, 2012). Advancement along a career ladder
Institutionalized career advancement opportunities for teachers have become commonplace in some parts of the world. For example, Singapore’s Ministry of
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Education has developed three professional development tracks for experienced teachers interested in advancing their careers: a Teaching Track for aspiring master teachers, a Leadership Track for those interested in educational administration, and a Senior Specialist Track for teachers who wish to develop specialized skills and knowledge in a particular domain of education. Progress along these tracks requires enrollment in and completion of supplementary degree programs developed by the National Institute of Education (Goodwin, 2012). In Finland, where all teachers are required to earn a Master’s degree, experienced teachers have ‘rightful access’ to additional graduate study to advance their careers and develop professionally. Teachers are encouraged to pursue doctoral degrees in education, which many obtain while teaching simultaneously (Sahlberg, 2012). Teachers in China are formally classified into four ‘grades’ or ranks: probationary status, second level, first level, and senior teacher. They progress from one grade to the next based on their professional competence and status among their peers. To advance, teachers submit an application at the district level that may include a written summary of their work in the past few years, written tests to show their language competence, a list of awards and prizes, recognition of students’ accomplishments, and research papers on teaching. Additionally, they may be asked to participate in interviews and be observed by experienced teachers. A committee of experts – typically subject area coordinators or teacher professional development staff who themselves have been recognized for their accomplished teaching – review the applications and make decisions about rank advancement. The district limits the number of teachers they advance to higher ranks, which increases the competitiveness of a successful application (Sato, 2017). The national distribution of teachers across these ranks shows that senior titled teachers comprise an elite group with only 6.6 percent of teachers holding this rank, compared to 46.1 percent at the first level, 42.7 percent at the second level, and 4.6 percent holding the lowest rank (Gang, 2010). In jurisdictions where formal career ladders are not in place, there are some opportunities for practicing teachers to gain official designation as a master teacher, such as National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification in the United States or the Chartered Teacher Programme in the United Kingdom. National Board Certification (NBC) is widely recognized by state education agencies, which often grant standard in-state licenses and offer financial incentives for board-certified teachers. The certification process includes a written assessment of disciplinary and pedagogical content knowledge, analysis of student work samples and video of practice, and documented impact and accomplishments as a teaching professional (NBPTS, 2016). In Scotland and Wales, experienced teachers in the Chartered Teacher Programme elect to complete 12 training modules each comprising 150 hours of study in exchange for a teaching bonus provided by the government. Completion of the Programme occurs through ‘continuous assessment rather than through formal exams’ (MacBeath, 2012, p. 71).
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The number and frequency of assessments for in-service teachers in many countries reflects the commitment of schools systems to teachers’ continued education and professional development. While assessment is generally conducted to prompt teacher development, its consequences may also include changes in pay, opportunities for career advancement, and, in some cases, dismissal from a teaching job or from the profession altogether.
The Effects of Teacher Assessments on Pre-Service and In-Service Teacher Development The purposes of assessment vary across the teaching career continuum. At some junctures they serve as filters that select some people over others for entry into teacher preparation, for employment in a particular school, or for advancement to the next stage of a teaching career. In other moments, assessments serve more formative purposes, as tools used to support the ongoing development of teachers. In this section we discuss the effects that these various forms of assessment have on teachers and on teacher development processes.
Teacher Assessments as Filters Entry requirements into teaching are frequently debated among education researchers and stakeholders. Labor economists view them as barriers to entry into the profession (Angrist & Guryan, 2008), while many educators view them as professional qualifications (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017), and the public views them as a symbolic guarantee that a teacher has met some minimal qualifications before their child is released into their care and tutelage. In nations such as Finland and Singapore, where teaching is highly professionalized, entry into teacher preparation is very competitive, and the multiple required entry assessments filter through only the top-performing candidates. In nations such as China and the United States, teacher preparation has lower entry requirements, while exiting teacher preparation and receiving a credential to teach is dependent on passing standardized tests. When assessments are used to filter out people who want to be teachers, we should critically examine instances in which any identifiable populations are systematically filtered out and what the mechanism for such systematic bias might be. On the one hand, we want assessments to ensure a high quality teaching force by selecting the most competent and best-suited candidates for teaching jobs. On the other hand, we want to ensure that the assessments do not inadvertently yet systematically exclude high-potential teachers as a result of biased design. For example, the use of standardized tests for teacher credentialing in the United States has raised much debate in the research literature. As teacher preparation programs in the United States strive to diversify their candidate pools,
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researchers are finding the screening effects of standardized tests disproportionately eliminate candidates from certain ethnic, racial, and language backgrounds (Petchauer, 2012; Smith, 2000). There are several trade-offs that must be considered when establishing entry requirements for teaching. Highly selective criteria (e.g. performance standards on tests, prior academic performance) correspond with the desire to recruit academically talented individuals. This, in turn, can help raise the social status of the profession and even contribute to increasing the overall salaries of teachers (Angrist & Guryan, 2008). However, an emphasis on qualifications other than academic talent such as community expertise, experience with children, and cultural and language assets may yield a teaching corps better suited for the relational work of teaching. Furthermore, given the risk of cultural bias associated with measures of academic talent, de-emphasizing these criteria may reduce the likelihood of inadvertently excluding teachers from non-dominant cultural backgrounds and provide greater access to the teaching profession which has historically served – and continues to serve, in some countries – as a profession for social mobility. After entry, however, teacher assessments function more to identify areas for further development and to advance teachers in their career and less to filter teachers out of the profession altogether. Data from TALIS suggest that persistently low results on teacher evaluations do not tend to predict dismissal from employment (OECD, 2014). The rationale for these staffing decisions is not discussed in the TALIS analysis.
How Teacher Assessments Influence the Design of Teacher Preparation When professional and jurisdictional agencies establish standards and regulations that prospective teachers must meet in order to be credentialed, those regulations have strong shaping effects on the design of the teacher preparation program curriculum and the assessments used within those programs. For example, when competency-based models of teacher education were introduced in the United States in the mid twentieth century, they were founded upon ‘values of social efficiency and scientific management, hereditarian theories of individual differences, and behaviorist learning theories served by scientific measurement of ability and achievement’ (Valli & Rennert-Ariev, 2002, p. 203). These forms of teacher education were viewed by critics as isolating the complex tasks of teaching into technical skills that can be reproduced void of social context. As we now see teacher education using a professional standards-based approach to guide curriculum development and assessment design, the grounding theories underpinning these standards tend toward cognitive and constructivist learning theories and equity-based teaching practices. Rather than viewing learning to teach as a process of knowledge and skill accumulation, teaching is viewed as a set of complex interactions over time that are situated in social and historical
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contexts. This view would require that assessments of performance be based on the intellectual work of making decisions in the face of uncertainty and be evaluated according to assessors’ professional judgment rather than clear-cut distinctions of accuracy on tests of knowledge. Valli and Rennert-Ariev (2002) studied seven institutions of higher education in the United States in the wake of the adoption of a performance standardsbased teacher education model. The authors developed a heuristic to delineate the distinctions between the professional standards approach to describing and assessing teaching and the competency-based models of describing and assessing teaching that were popular in the mid twentieth century (Table 54.3). The central focus of the study was how institutions interpreted a state mandate to use performance-based standards and assessments as the basis for teacher-education program reform efforts. In their analysis, they found that programs moved toward the performance standards approach in their reform efforts, while still holding on to some of the technical approaches to teaching about teaching and assessing teacher candidates’ knowledge and skills. With regard to performance standards, they saw examples of learner-centered, context-dependent teaching, assessments that involved teacher candidates in judging the quality of their teaching, and performance rubrics that honored the multiple dimensions of teaching. However, they also found that ‘standards and knowledge representations most closely linked to the intellectual and moral foundations of teaching were often minimized’ (p. 220). When and how to assess the moral foundations of teaching matters a great deal in shaping the teacher preparation experience. For example, in Finland and Singapore, teachers’ personality, moral commitments, or dispositions are assessed at the point of entry into teacher preparation with the expectation that these are defining characteristics of a teacher and should be screened early in the Table 54.3 Comparative dimensions of competency vs. professional standards-based teacher education (Valli & Rennert-Ariev, 2002, p. 205)
View of teacher View of knowledgebase for teaching View of teaching View of assessment
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Competency/PerformanceBased Teacher Education
Professional Standards-Based Teacher Education
Technician Rote tasks Atomistic Behavioral Rules/propositions Teacher-centered Context-independent Outside judgment Simulated Frequency of behavior
Professional Messy problems Integrated Cognitive Dilemmas/cases Learner-centered Context-dependent Shared responsibility Authentic settings Quality of teaching
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selection process. In the United States, commitments to students, community, and colleagues are typically assessed during teacher preparation, and many hold that these aspects of teaching can be developed during the preparation experience (Murrell, Diez, Feiman-Nemser, & Schussler, 2010). This stance reflects the fundamental belief that dispositions are patterned behaviors and are defined by teachers’ actions and not their internal attributes (Villegas, 2007). In the United States, debates about what dispositions matter for teaching and how to teach and assess them have been taking place since dispositions were introduced into professional standards in the 1990s. Recently, the focus of preparing teachers for dispositions toward social justice in the nation’s schools has been a focus of debate (Villegas, 2007). Villegas argues, ‘Given the salient role that schools play in shaping students’ life chances and the obligation that teachers have to teach all students fairly, teacher education can ill-ignore the conspicuous pattern of disparities in the distribution of school benefits across groups’ (p. 371). Most often, dispositions for teaching in the United States are assessed via an inventory of observable behaviors and, when needed, via individual conferences between the teacher candidates and a teacher educator (Rose, 2013), with some programs experimenting with new evidence-based performance assessments for dispositions (Beaton, Cushing-Leubner, Kim, Sato, Schornack, & Tobin, 2016).
Linking Teacher Assessment to Teacher Effectiveness Several studies have sought to identify the set of requirements for entry into teaching that best predict teachers’ eventual impact on student achievement. Research in this arena has found that the observable characteristics of teaching candidates account for a very small portion of the variation in teachers’ effectiveness once employed (Goldhaber, 2002, 2011; Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2006). However, some studies have shown that those who entered the classroom without a full preparation experience (e.g. entering via fast-track preparation or lateral entry from another profession with short-term preparation) are less effective in terms of student achievement outcomes than those who experienced a more thorough preparation experience (Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, & Wykoff, 2006; Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Heilig, 2005; Kane et al., 2006). For practicing teachers, evidence from TALIS suggests a mismatch between teacher appraisal outcomes and teachers’ own estimations of quality teaching in their schools. On average, less than 40 percent of teachers reported that ‘the bestperforming teachers in their schools receive the greatest recognition’ (OECD, 2014, p. 140). Almost half of teachers reported that their schools’ appraisal systems are ‘largely undertaken simply to fulfill administrative requirements’ (p. 120). These findings call into question both whether appraisals are measuring what they are intended to measure and the assumption that appraisals serve as an incentive to improve the quality of teaching. If teachers do not trust that strong
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teaching performance will consistently result in promotion or recognition, the motivational potential of assessment results will likely not be realized.
Assessment as Professional Capacity Building The various functions and forms of assessment in a teacher’s career reviewed in this chapter have significant implications for the teaching profession as it is viewed both from within the field of education and without. The use of assessments to filter out aspiring teachers who do not meet a minimum standard or to advance high-performing teachers to the next rung of a career ladder not only impacts individual teachers undergoing these assessments, but also signals to the broader community that teaching, as a profession, is held to a defined set of standards. Assessments can signal to teachers that their roles are reducible to a finite set of knowledge and skills to be mastered and reproduced, as is implied by standardized written tests. Assessments can also signal that teaching is a complex, intellectual activity that requires skills of analysis and reflection, as is implied by more recently developed performance assessments of teaching. If assessment results are viewed by teachers as inconsistent markers of teaching performance, teachers may feel that their own professional judgment is ostensibly questioned. If assessments create predictable patterns of career advancement based on transparent, yet multi-dimensional requirements, assessments may serve as an incentive toward quality and leadership. Few would debate that students deserve top quality teachers. Teacher assessments must serve as a process for ensuring this for students while simultaneously honoring the complexity of teaching, creating educative and advancement opportunities for teachers, and serving as trusted accountability measures for those peering at education results from the outside. As Darling-Hammond and Lieberman (2012, p. 169) suggest, ‘Perhaps the central challenge for educators is whether they can create means for self-regulation that are sufficiently robust that they will inspire public confidence in the process’.
References Angrist, J. D., & Guryan, J. (2008). Does teacher testing raise teacher quality? Evidence from state certification requirements. Economics of Education Review, 27(5), 483–503. Beaton, J., Cushing-Leubner, J., Kim, S. J., Sato, M., Schornack, M., & Tobin, J. (2016, April). Power and potential in a dialogic framework for the formative assessment of dispositions for teaching. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Education Research Association. Washington, DC. Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wykoff, J. (2006). How changes in entry requirements alter the teacher workforce and affect student achievement. Education Finance and Policy, 1(2), 176–216.
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Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). (2011, April). Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards: A resource for state dialogue. Washington, DC. Darling-Hammond, L., Burns, D., Campbell, C., Goodwin, A. L., Hammerness, K., Low, E.-L., McIntyre, A., Sato, M., & Zeichner, K. (2017). Empowered educators: How high-performing systems shape teaching quality around the world. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D. J., Gatlin, S. J., & Heilig, J. V. (2005). Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach for America, and teacher effectiveness. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(42), 1–51. Darling-Hammond, L., & Lieberman, A. (Eds.) (2012). Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices. New York: Routledge. Delli, D. A. (2010). Hiring decisions. In M. Kennedy (Ed.), Teacher assessment and the quest for teacher quality: A handbook (pp. 149–162). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Draper, J. (2012). Hong Kong: Professional preparation and development of teachers in a market economy. In L. Darling-Hammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices (pp. 81–97). New York: Routledge. Forzani, F. M. (2014). Understanding ‘core practices’ and ‘practice-based’ teacher education: Learning from the past. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 357–368. Gang, D. (Ed.) (2010). National survey and policy analysis for teacher professional development in primary and secondary schools. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press. Goldhaber, D. (2002). The mystery of good teaching: Surveying the evidence on student achievement and teachers’ characteristics. Education Next, 2(1), 50–55. Goldhaber, D. (2011). Licensure: Exploring the value of this gateway to the teacher workforce. In E. A. Hanushek, S. Machin, & L. Woessmann (Eds.). Handbook of the economics of education, Vol 3 (pp. 315–340). Amsterdam: North Holland. Goodwin, A. L. (2012). Quality teachers, Singapore style. In L. Darling-Hammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices (pp. 22–43). New York: Routledge. Goodwin, A. L., Low, E.-L., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Empowered educators in Singapore: How high-performing systems shape teaching quality. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hammerness, K., Ahtiainen, R., & Sahlberg, P. (2017). Empowered educators in Finland: How highperforming systems shape teaching quality. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Kane, T. J., Rockoff, J. E., & Staiger, D. O. (2006). What does certification tell us about teacher effectiveness? Evidence from New York City. NBER Working Paper 12155. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Kim, K., Kim, G., Kim, S., Kim, J., Kim, J., & Park, J. (2010). OECD review on evaluation and assessment frameworks for improving school outcomes: Country background report for Korea. Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI). MacBeath, J. (2012). Teacher training, education or learning by doing in the UK. In L. Darling-Hammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices (pp. 66–80). New York: Routledge. Mayer, D., Pecheone, R., & Merino, N. (2012). Rethinking teacher education in Australia: The teacher quality reforms. In L. Darling-Hammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices (pp. 110–129). New York: Routledge. Murrell, P. C., Jr., Diez, M. E., Feiman-Nemser, S., & Schussler, D. L. (2010). Teaching as a moral practice: Defining, developing, and assessing professional dispositions in teacher education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (2016). About certification. Retrieved from http:// boardcertifiedteachers.org/about-certification. OECD (2014). TALIS 2013 results: An international perspective on teaching and learning. OECD Publishing.
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Pecheone, R. L., & Chung, R. R. (2006). Evidence in teacher education: The Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). Journal of Teacher Education, 57(1), 22–36. Petchauer, E. (2012). Teacher licensure exams and black teacher candidates: Toward new theory and promising practice. The Journal of Negro Education, 81(3), 252–267. Rockoff, J. E., Jacob, B. A., Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2011). Can you recognize an effective teacher when you recruit one? Education Finance and Policy, 6(1), 43–74. Rose, S. (2013, January–March). How do teacher preparation programs promote desired dispositions in candidates? Sage Open, 1–8. doi: 10.1177/2158244013480150 Sahlberg, P. (2012). The most wanted: Teachers and teacher education in Finland. In L. Darling-Hammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices (pp. 1–21). New York: Routledge. Sato, M. (2014). What is the underlying conception of teaching of the edTPA? Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 421–434. Sato, M. (2017). Empowered Educators in China: How high-performing systems shape teaching quality. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sedlak, M. W. (2008). Competing visions of purpose, practice, and policy: The history of teacher certification in the United States. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D. J. McIntyre, & K. E. Demers (Eds.), Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (3rd ed.) (pp. 855–885). New York: Routledge. Smith, G. P. (2000). The minority teacher shortage and testing. Multicultural Perspectives, 2(3), 34–38. Valli, L., & Rennert-Ariev, P. (2002). New standards and assessments? Curriculum transformation in teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34(2), 201–225. Villegas, A. M. (2007). Dispositions in teacher education: A look at social justice. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(5), 370–380. Wei, R. C., & Pecheone, R. L. (2010). Assessment for learning in preservice teacher education: Performance-based assessments. In M. Kennedy (Ed.), Teacher assessment and the quest for teacher quality: A handbook (pp. 69–132). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. World Bank (2013, April). What matters most for teacher policies: A framework paper. The Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) Working Paper Series No. 4. Downloaded from worldbank.org/education/saber.
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55 Functions of Assessment in Relation to Sociocultural Teacher Education Approaches B ro n w e n C o w i e a n d B e v e r l e y C o o p e r
Introduction Educational assessment is a critical ingredient in the educational process. From the evaluation of individual student performance to the evaluation of teachers, schools, national and international education systems, assessment practices influence what is made visible and valued by the different education stakeholders – children, teachers, school leaders, families, professional developers, policymakers and so on. In this chapter we outline the implications of a sociocultural approach to teacher education and assessment. From this perspective teacher learning involves the movement of teachers from peripheral (novice) to full (expert) participation in the specific practices and ways of knowing, thinking and valuing that define effective participation in the community of teachers. This perspective positions learning as a situated and social process and links teacher classroom and professional activities and assessment practices with identity change/ development (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). We apply insights from this framing to some of the enduring problems of practice associated with teacher learning and assessment including what comes to count as ‘quality’ teaching and how to evidence and judge this, and how to facilitate communication and shared understanding amongst the various communities involved in education. First we set out the broad parameters of a sociocultural understanding of learning, teacher education and assessment.
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A sociocultural orientation to teacher education and assessment Drawing on Vygotsky (1978), sociocultural theorists focus on meaning making as a social process that is situated in and influenced by the particular cultural, material and historical context of its accomplishment (Wertsch, 1991). From this perspective, knowledge is not merely a set of facts or ideas; it is embodied in the ways of talking, valuing, acting and being involved in day-to-day interactions in a particular community. Learning and developing competency in the valued practices of a community implies becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities afforded by the network of relations, roles, resources and practices that exist within that community (Engeström, 2001; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Sociocultural theories construe teacher learning as the development of expertise in the repertoire of ideas, commitments and practices associated with the community of teachers, albeit these aspects vary across contexts and countries. The implications for teacher education are that we can no longer assume that student teachers and teachers can learn about content and appropriate teaching practices in their campus-based teacher education programme or professional development programme and be ready and able to enact these practices in a different community/setting. Learning is therefore a lifelong process that takes place across the various contexts of teachers’ lives. Teacher education needs to engage teachers in cycles of classroom experimentation followed by reflection on their practice over time, although not exclusively. There is a place for professional learning conversations to support teacher learning within and across contexts (Putnam & Borko, 2000). From a sociocultural view, learning and knowing are understood as embodied in actions and interactions within an environment. Therefore assessing a learner’s knowledge without taking into account the activity system of which they are part does not make sense (Moss, Pullin, Gee, Haertel & Young, 2008). A sociocultural orientation highlights the consequences of assessment, especially the broader social consequences (Moss, Girard & Haniford, 2006). Gipps (1999) and Moss et al. (2008) point out that assessment influences the sorts of knowledgeable identities that different contexts and approaches to assessment invoke, accept, respect and or are compatible with (see also Lemke, 2001). That is, assessment is capable of ‘making up people’ (Stobart, 2008). Thus a sociocultural stance to teacher education and assessment highlights that student teachers, teachers and teacher educators are each positioned sometimes as learners about assessment and sometimes as subjects of assessment, albeit in different ways and for different purposes. The distinction between assessment purposes and functions is relevant here – purposes are simply potentials (Hickey & Pellingrino, 2005); learners may or may not experience a teacher’s actions as she or he intends and so a teacher’s actions may or may not act to achieve their intended purpose (Cowie, 2005).
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In the following sections we explore some of the possible ideal/theoretical and actual functions a sociocultural framing of assessment in teacher education has to offer in ameliorating and or exacerbating some of the problems of practice in teacher education. For the purposes of the chapter we anchor our analysis on three themes: •• the way assessment shapes and frames possible and legitimate identities within and between contexts; •• the implications of assessment as a situated social and cultural practice and product; •• the role assessment can play as a boundary object in connecting communities and assisting in the development of shared understandings.
We draw on research conducted within an explicitly sociocultural frame and research that addresses issues of interest in the context of the chapter.
Functions of assessment within a sociocultural approach Assessment Validates and Values Particular Ways of Being – It Shapes Identity A sociocultural orientation to assessment and teacher education draws attention to how assessment influences the formation of teacher professional identity – what comes to be seen as ‘good’ teaching and what counts as valued learning. This means that it is important assessment is consistent with our vision of ‘good’ teaching and with the learning we value. Concurrently it is important to acknowledge that our understanding of learning and our goals for education give shape to the expectations we have, the performances we value and, by implication, the assessment evidence we look for and the criteria that inform our judgements and actions (Sato, 2014). In this section we consider the implications of different assessment purposes, discuss the implications of the move to define criteria and performance standards for teacher practice and student learning, and outline current understandings of what constitutes teacher assessment literacy. Different assessment purposes – different teacher-assessor identities
Sociocultural approaches to learning, teaching and assessing focus on the knowledge and experience that individuals bring to learning and seek to understand their potential in the context of an assisted performance. When assisting performance is the goal, assessment is entangled with how teachers might best support learning. Consequently, formative assessment (Black & Wiliam, 1998) has priority for teachers and for students as learners. Learners’ interests and ideas are key catalysts for learning within a sociocultural frame (Bell, Tzou, Bricker & Baines, 2012) and so assessment needs to
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provide opportunities for all learners to demonstrate what they know using procedures and modes/media most appropriate to them given their language ability, culture, past experiences and so on. Hence, a sociocultural orientation provides an inclusive framing for the equity question ‘Whose knowledge counts?’ (Stobart, 2008). An important function of assessment in teacher education therefore is to support teachers to develop strategies to elicit and build on learners’ funds of knowledge (González, Moll & Amanti, 2005). Genuine attention to student funds of knowledge as a curriculum resource involves a repositioning of teacher and student authority with respect to curriculum that teachers and students can find challenging. Adding complexity, teachers need to balance their responsiveness to students’ ideas and interests with what they are required to teach, which can require dialogue with school leaders and the community (Penuel, Shepard & Davidson, 2015). Crossouard (2011), in a study using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), identified the tensions that arise for teachers in relation to their responsibilities for the formative and summative assessment of student learning. These two purposes entail very different power relations. Summative assessment positions teachers as judges of student performance whereas formative assessment, ideally, involves teachers as supporters of learning. Within formative assessment expertise is more horizontal than hierarchical (Klenowski, 2012) and teacher and student roles are reconfigured so they become jointly responsible for learning as a social activity (Marshall & Drummond, 2006; Pryor & Crossouard, 2008). Adopting a sociocultural view blurs the distinction between instruction and formative assessment and between learning and formative assessment because each of these activities is framed as a social practice and a social product. This renders formative assessment practices largely invisible in the classroom interactional context (Gipps, 1999; Moss, 2008). In light of this some scholars have proposed that a sociocultural view places instruction, assessment and testing on a continuum of assessment formality, thereby overturning the conventional distinction between formative and summative assessment (Hickey, 2015). However, in the semi-public arena of the classroom, informal interactions between teacher and student can provide information that helps students move forward and they can simultaneously communicate summative judgements that have consequences for students’ sense of themselves as learners (Cowie, 2005). Self-assessment is fundamental to a sociocultural view of learning and it is both a goal and a process for teacher education. As Bourke (2014) notes: ‘Selfassessment at tertiary level is a critical pedagogical and assessment tool to support students in their transition to professional careers where on-going learning and assessment is required’ (p. 908). The implication is that assessment as part of teacher education needs to create a context for and help learners (teachers and their students) to develop the reflexive habits of mind that will enable them to take responsibility for their learning and its assessment (Grossman & McDonald, 2008). At the same time, assessment needs to create a context in which teacher
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educators, including professional development providers, are able to learn about their student teachers/teachers and about the efficacy of their practice. Assessment literacy as central to being a ‘good’ teacher-assessor
Stiggins (1991) first introduced the term ‘assessment literacy’ in the early 1990s as a way of explaining the assessment capacities teachers required. He noted that educators who were assessment literate knew what to assess, why to assess, how to assess and the possible negative consequences of poor and misguided assessment. Since then assessment literacy has moved centre stage as an essential teacher competency. As Popham (2011) points out, teachers need to be knowledgeable about assessment for two reasons: (1) they need to be able to use assessment to meet the educational needs of their diverse students (see also Darling-Hammond, 2006), and (2) they need to understand and be able to use data for teacher and school accountability purposes. Over time a number of definitions for assessment literacy have emerged (e.g. Abell & Siegel, 2011; DeLuca & Klinger, 2010). Hay and Penney (2013) offer an explicitly sociocultural interpretation of assessment literacy as ‘the development of knowledge and capacities to implement assessment and interpret the outcomes of assessment in a manner that is critically aware and that optimizes the value of assessment for all students’ (p. 74). They argue teachers need to be able to enact socially just approaches, to be alert to the consequences of assessment and inclined to query the apparent ‘naturalness’ of assessment practices. Willis, Adie and Klenowski (2013) also recognize the need for teachers to critically inquire into their own assessment practices. They assert that teachers need multiple different assessment literacies as they move across and within different communities of stakeholders (Willis et al., 2013). Scarino (2013) notes that working simultaneously towards multiple interrelated goals renders the development of assessment literacy complex because it entails consideration of beliefs, understandings and worldviews alongside change in practice. Looking across these formulations we can see that a sociocultural approach emphasizes the situated and social nature of practice and elevates consequences, including the wider social, ethical and affective impacts of assessment. There is also an imperative to consider the wider power and policy context for assessment. Standards – tools for framing, driving and judging what constitutes learning and quality teaching
The articulation of performance standards as a basis for guiding and gauging student learning and what graduate and practising teachers should be able to do is a policy trend internationally (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). The specification of performance standards for student learning has implications for the autonomy and agency teachers can expect and are able to exercise over
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curriculum (Gerrard & Farrell, 2014). These standards, along with learning progressions, can inform and focus teacher assessment, but they come with the potential to constrain teacher attention to whether students are learning what they intend, what Torrance and Pryor (1998) call convergent assessment, rather than what students are actually learning (divergent assessment). This runs counter to the sociocultural recognition and valuing of what students bring to learning. For teachers, current standards include aspects associated with supporting equitable outcomes for diverse learners and building relationships with colleagues, parents/caregivers and communities (e.g. Education Council New Zealand, 2015; Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2014; National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 2012). They also set out expectations for teacher assessment knowledge and skill. These standards can, and are, being used to frame, drive and evaluate what constitutes effective teaching with the results used for a range of accountability purposes. Performance against these standards is high stakes for systems, schools and individual teachers through the way standards, and the judgements based on them, open up and close down what teachers and society come to view as quality teaching. In sociocultural theory terms these externally specified standards have implications for teacher identity through the way they circumscribe what counts as valued. Ideally, standards serve as tools that guide and inform teacher decision-making as part of teacher formative selfassessment (Smith, 2013) but, as with standards for student learning, they come with the danger their use will lead to ‘criteria compliance’ (Torrance, 2007). That is, student teachers and teachers will aim to ‘fabricate’ a performance that meets external demands rather than engaging in experimentation and critical reflection (Webb, 2006). Peck, Gallucci and Sloan (2010) note that teacher educators often experience the use of such assessment protocols as a demoralizing loss of autonomy and integrity. However, they also describe how one teacher education programme negotiated their use in a manner responsive to local values and concerns, highlighting that externally provided standards can serve as tools that inform and guide student teacher/teacher self-assessment. At this time it would seem that a key role of teacher education is to ensure student teachers/teachers understand the critical issues related to accountability frameworks and effective classroom assessment and how to manage any potential tensions between the two.
Assessment as a Situated Social-cultural Process and Product When learning and knowing are viewed as social processes that are contextdependent and emerge over time, assessment practices need to reflect this. In this section we discuss the shift to focus on performance assessment,
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moderation as a situated social process and the need for teachers to re/contextualize assessment tools.
Assessment practices need to capture performance in context
Current interest in the use of case studies, exhibitions, portfolios, problem-based inquiries (or action research) and observation (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000) to generate assessment data is congruent with a sociocultural understanding of learning as a situated social practice that evolves over time. These support the generation of diverse kinds of evidence, and different evidence from different learners in ways that value both the product and process of learning (Gipps, 1999). Each of them provides space for learners to express themselves and their emerging identities and therefore has the potential to support teachers and teacher educators to learn in and from practice. They can be used formatively and/or summatively to inform decisions about the quality of teachers, student teachers and teacher preparation programmes (Knight, Lloyd, Arbaugh, Gamson, McDonald, Nolan, & Whitney, 2014). Here we use portfolios to illustrate this potential. Portfolios can be experienced as a tool of mediation and negotiation into the teaching profession and hence as a tool for identity construction for teachers and those responsible for assessing them. When learners (students, student teachers, teachers) are able to choose and organize content, portfolios support learners to take responsibility for their learning, assessment and evaluation. When a portfolio includes lesson plans, samples of student work, video and audio of classroom action and teacher reflection on action, student teachers/teachers and teacher educators can jointly examine and analyse this material as part of negotiating shared meaning, with both parties construed as agentic in and through this process (Abrami & Barrett, 2005). Portfolios can also serve as evidence of teaching competence. Berrill and Addison (2010) note that the sociocultural theoretical understanding that identity and competence are fluidly interdependent means that portfolios can serve a dual identity-development/competence-demonstration function. They caution this is only possible when the portfolio creator understands the expected competencies as the repertoires of the teaching profession and that these repertoires can be enacted in multiple ways. In this case teacher educators can more effectively support teachers to make the portfolio their own. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) provides opportunities to enhance portfolios with authentic artefacts of practice. Admiraal and Berry (2016) describe how a postgraduate teacher education programme successfully used video narratives to assess student teachers’ teaching competencies, to promote connections amongst different competencies and to situate these in practice to show their development over time. Structured guidance, including clarity of assignment aims, format and criteria, enabled student teachers to reflect on their teaching in a personally meaningful way and explicitly connect these ideas to
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their long-term development. How to balance the documentation of individual and collaborative work is a dilemma irrespective of whether the portfolio is digital or more traditional. Moderation as a situated social process
The exercise of judgement is central to all assessment. While standards were introduced to ensure greater consistency and reliability in assessment, evidence is emerging of variability in teacher judgments even when standards are accompanied by annotated samples of student work (Wyatt-Smith, Klenowski & Gunn, 2010). This is not surprising from a sociocultural perspective because the introduction of standards has emphasized the individual and largely ignored the influence of teacher and school communities in teacher judgement practices (Wyatt-Smith & Klenwoski, 2013). Researchers in Australia (Klenowski & Wyatt-Smith, 2014), New Zealand (Hipkins & Robertson, 2011), Switzerland (Allal, 2013) and Finland (Hermansen, 2014) have highlighted that teacher judgement needs to be understood as a cognitive act and socially situated social process: even individual teacher evaluative acts are shaped by the collective practices of a teacher’s professional community (Allal, 2013). Experience of moderation as a social process is required for the development of a ‘community of moderators’ and to foster shifts in teacher identity as an assessor (Klenowski & Adie, 2009). This experience can enable teachers’ tacit knowledge to be made explicit and ensure teachers are mindful of the role of different referents as they make moderation decisions. Both expert and novice assessors can learn from each other in an assessment community and new knowledge and practices, beyond the pooling of knowledge, can arise through the process of coming to a shared understanding. This process relies on all those involved feeling safe to support and challenge each other as part of reaching a shared understanding of the meaning of student work in relation to a specified standard (Klenowski & Adie, 2009). Studies in this field are an important reminder that different teachers can experience the same conversation quite differently and highlight the need to attend to whose voice is given priority (Coburn, Toure & Yamashita, 2009). Dissensus is inevitable and can be used productively to come to more reliable judgements (Haigh & Ell, 2014). The need for teachers/schools to (re)contextualize assessment tools and practices
A sociocultural orientation recognizes that teacher practice and learning involves the interaction of teachers’ beliefs, what they can do and what is possible and desirable for them to do in a particular situation and with certain people, and the available resources. It acknowledges that teacher response to new initiatives and tools is shaped by how, and if, past practices and philosophies (their own and
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those that are dominant within their context) resonate with new initiatives. As such it is helpful in explaining variations in teacher assessment practices. The distinction between teachers who enact the ‘letter’ and those who enact the ‘spirit’ of formative assessment is particularly useful in this regard. Marshall and Drummond (2006) found that teachers who used recommended strategies and techniques (mediating artefacts) such as peer assessment and wait time, without an associated focus on learning as a social process and joint teacher–student responsibility, failed to foster the student agency that is foundational to the spirit of formative assessment. On the other hand, Webb and Jones (2009), drawing on activity theory, highlight that a focus on tools is a necessary stage in teacher development but that the choice of mediating artefacts and their order of introduction is important because the culture in a given context will favour some forms of assessment over others. With regard to the functions of assessment in teacher education this will apply equally to teachers and to teacher educators as they work across varying contexts to implement assessment for learning purposes. Hermansen’s 2014 study with teachers in Norway illustrates the need for teachers to recontextualize assessment tools and strategies to suit their practice and particular students through the distinction between teacher mastery and teacher appropriation of tools. Mastery involves using a tool as intended by others, and appropriation includes an emotional aspect whereby one makes the tool/text ‘one’s own’ (Werstch, 1991, p. 293). Hermansen and Nerland (2014), employing concepts and perspectives from social practice theory, demonstrated that teachers need to revisit and review established practices and principles when working collaboratively as part of making new concepts and artefacts relevant within their specific curriculum and institutional context. These findings echo those of Carless (2005), who worked with teachers in Hong Kong, Cooper and Cowie (2010) and Bourke, Mentis and O’Neill (2013), who worked with teachers in New Zealand, and Black, Harrison, Hodgen, Marshall and Serret (2011) working in England. Together these studies highlight the influence of school level factors such as leadership support and the culture for collaboration alongside teacher views and capabilities. They also identify the influence of external factors such as high-stakes testing and professional development policies (Fulmer, Lee & Tan, 2015). Overall, these studies highlight that teacher education for assessment takes place in a dynamic social, cultural and political context and that this context is not necessarily limited by a geographical boundary.
Assessment Can Bridge Community Boundaries Sociocultural views of learning recognize that people belong to multiple communities and that, as part of teaching and learning, student teachers and teachers necessarily belong to and interact with a number of communities, each with their own values, practices and ways of thinking and acting. The coordination of
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goals, understandings and practices across the boundaries of these various communities is widely recognized as a key challenge for teachers and those charged with supporting their professional learning. Research within a sociocultural perspective is offering new insights into the role assessment can and does play in exacerbating and ameliorating this challenge. Assessment can be a point of tension and/or it can act as a boundary object that supports the development of common knowledge across communities. In this section we discuss the functions of assessment at the university–school boundary and between home and school. Assessment across the university–school boundary
There is a substantial body of work that discusses the challenges for student teachers, university-based teacher educators, school-based teacher educators (associate teachers, mentor teachers) and school leaders and administrators in developing a shared understanding of each other’s learning and assessment priorities and practices (Borko & Mayfield, 1995; Montecinos, Walker & Maldonado, 2015). Researchers from Australia (e.g. Rorrison, 2010), from Norway and Israel (e.g. Tillema, Smith & Lesham, 2011), and from the USA (e.g. Doerger & Dallmer, 2008) are among those who have documented the challenges associated with different assessors making comparable summative decisions about student teacher practice. The ideas student teachers have learned in their university courses may be contradicted by what they learn from peers and/or from their mentor teacher while on practicum (Humphrey & Wechsler, 2007). Assessable university coursework may not be linked with student teacher practicum experience in a way that integrates theory and practice (Allen, Ambrosetti & Turner, 2013). All of which means that as student teachers move between the communities of school and the university there is considerable potential for conflict in the messages they hear and the activities they experience. This can be seen as problematic when coherence of aims, values and understandings of effective practice across the various sites and communities that student teachers experience is viewed as optimal (Darling-Hammond, 2006). On the other hand, Engeström (2001) raises the possibility that contradictions can be conceptualized and experienced as opportunities and ‘sources of change and development’ (p. 137). Ward, Nolen and Horn (2011) put forward the notion of ‘productive friction’ as the dissonance experienced by student teachers when the conflict between two or more communities leads to more sophisticated practice. In the context of productive friction, conflicts and tensions between the different communities stimulate student teachers to reflect on their practice in ways that move them towards a focus on improving student learning. Nonetheless, these practices need to be negotiated with both communities for student teachers to be successful in both. Teacher education can usefully include experiences for student teachers to learn how to negotiate the introduction of new and different assessment practices. This can be productive in accelerating the adoption of challenging and new ideas.
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A number of authors have developed the notion that assessment practices and documentation of different kinds can, in different ways, serve as a boundary object that supports the development of shared understandings and coherence across the school and university communities (Moss, Girard & Greeno, 2008). Nolen, Horn, Ward and Childers (2011) argue that assessment tools and practices, along with the artefacts they generate, can act as bridges to communication and as tools for learning and development between the university and school communities. A recent study by Montecinos, Walker and Maldonado (2015), which documented the significant role school administrators/leaders play in creating conditions to support student teachers, reminded us of the need to consider the role student teacher assessment processes can and might play in brokering understandings between school leaders and university-based practicum supervisors and evaluators. Bridging the home–school boundary
Reports of student achievement are a key form of home–school communication but there is potential for assessment to be used to inform and support home– school partnerships focused on supporting children’s learning (Epstein & Sanders, 2006; Mehlig & Shumow, 2013). In the New Zealand context ‘learning stories’ (Carr, 2001) document student learning using images and text. Typically, they include spaces for student, teacher and family commentary, and ideas for next steps in students’ learning. Learning stories have been shown to have a formative learning function for children, and for teachers in the development of their understanding of a particular child and productive ways of interacting with them. They also have benefits for family understanding of curriculum and how they might participate in and support their child’s learning and development (Mitchell et al., 2015). Also in New Zealand, teachers used home learning books as boundary objects that moved between home and school in support of children accessing and then sharing family funds of knowledge. Research into how to help student teachers to communicate student assessment information to parents is only just emerging (Mehlig & Shumow, 2013) but it would seem to be an important area for future development.
Looking to the future It is important to acknowledge that assessment is very much part of everyday activities and interactions outside as well as inside educational settings as we aim to understand, develop and use different assessments in different contexts. Baird, Hopfenbeck, Newton, Stobart and Steen-Utheim (2014) argue that sociocultural approaches do not uniquely point to particular assessment practices but, in our view, they offer a useful lens for reconfiguring some of the long term
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challenges to do with assessment and its impacts on teacher education. A sociocultural perspective recognizes that assessment is embedded in many if not all interactions, not just in formal ‘testing’ situations. It acknowledges assessment has a powerful influence on teacher and learner identities and that these identities have affective/relational as well as conceptual/intellectual aspects and implications (Gipps, 1999). A sociocultural stance reminds us that in striving to understand and enhance how assessment might affirm and inform teaching and learning we need to consider the system not just the individual teacher. Once we look into the school context through a sociocultural lens we are confronted with the realization that teachers’ assessment learning and decisions are made in complex, multilayered social contexts. The options and opportunities teachers have, and the choices they make, are not always or only individual ones. Rather, a teacher’s assessment practice is ‘negotiated, overtly or tacitly, with students, parents, colleagues, administrators, state governments, and national curriculum and assessment bodies’ (Nolen, 2011, p. 320). It also alerts us to the way assessment policies and tools such as performance standards, reporting requirements and recommended (formative) assessment strategies influence what comes to be seen as worth learning and doing through the way they embody particular power relations and assumptions about learning, about students and their families and about teachers and schools. The different stakeholders need to be aware of the various purposes for and functions of assessment, how to judge the quality of an assessment and the potential for unforeseen consequences arising from assessment. Because of its influence on what comes to be seen as valued and valuable, assessment needs to focus on what we value in relation to teaching quality and what it means to be an effective teacher and learner. Recent developments, whether linked with a genuine concern about equity and/or a response to competitive pressures associated with the notion of a ‘knowledge economy’, raise questions about who gets to decide on the focus and form of assessment (what counts as evidence), who sets the criteria for quality and how these criteria are interpreted and judgements enacted, and whose voice is prioritized when evaluating the implications of assessment for curriculum and possible identities (Sato, 2014). There is some debate around the merits of different sociocultural theories, with some scholars warning that Wenger’s elaboration of a ‘community of practice’ neglects power relations. Crossouard (2011), Bourke, Mentis and O’Neill (2013) and Webb and Jones (2009), for example, have turned to CHAT as a way of accounting for identities, tensions, discourse and conflict. Engeström’s (2001) conceptualization of contradictions and tensions as inherent to activity systems frames dilemmas as endemic to teaching and as sources of generative learning. This viewpoint is likely to be useful when considering the different communities involved in teacher education and their varied perspectives on assessment. The changing role of teachers with regard to the affordances provided by collaborative classroom learning environments and the greater use of ICT makes
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it harder and more complex to assess the impact of individual teacher practice. Sociocultural theories are well positioned to explore the implications of new tools for how performance might be documented, reflected on and used to inform practice, and how communities might be brought into closer connection. If the function of assessment in a sociocultural frame for teacher education is to provide opportunities for teachers and student teachers to demonstrate and develop the identities and expertise they need to carry out the complex set of practices required for teaching diverse students in a range of contexts and communities, frequent, varied and collaborative opportunities are required to achieve this.
References Abell, S., & Siegel, M. (2011). Assessment literacy: What science teachers need to know and be able to do. In D. Corrigan, J. Dillon, & R. Gunstone (Eds.), The professional knowledge base of science teaching (pp. 205–221). Dordrecht: Springer. Abrami, P., & Barrett, H. (2005). Directions for research and development on electronic portfolios. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 31(3). Admiraal, W., & Berry, A. (2016). Video narratives to assess student teachers’ competence as new teachers. Teachers and Teaching, 22(1), 21–34. Allal, L. (2013). Teachers’ professional judgement in assessment: A cognitive act and a socially situated practice. Assessment in Education, 20(1), 20–34. Allen, J., Ambrosetti, A., & Turner, D. (2013). How school and university supervising staff perceive the pre-service teacher education practicum: A comparative study. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(4), 108–128. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2014). Australian professional standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/ standards/ Baird, J.-A., Hopfenbeck, T. N., Newton, P., Stobart, G., & Steen-Utheim, A. T. (2014). Assessment and learning: State of the field review. Oslo: Knowledge Centre for Education. Bell, P., Tzou, C., Bricker, L., & Baines, A. (2012). Learning in diversities of structures of social practice: Accounting for how, why, and where people learn science. Human Development, 55(5–6), 269–284. Berrill, D., & Addison, E. (2010). Repertoires of practice: Re-framing teaching portfolios. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(5), 1178–1185. Black, P., Harrison, C., Hodgen, J., Marshall, B., & Serret, N. (2011). Can teachers’ summative assessments produce dependable results and also enhance classroom learning? Assessment in Education, 18(4), 451–469. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7–74. Borko, H., & Mayfield, V. (1995). The roles of the cooperating teacher and university supervisor in learning to teach. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(5), 501–518. Bourke, R. (2014). Self-assessment in professional programmes within tertiary institutions. Teaching in Higher Education, 19(8), 908–918. Bourke, R., Mentis, M., & O’Neill, J. (2013). Using activity theory to evaluate a professional learning and development initiative in the use of narrative assessment. Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(1), 35–50. Carless, D. (2005). Prospects for the implementation of assessment for learning. Assessment in Education, 12(1), 39–54. Carr, M. (2001). Assessment in early childhood settings: Learning stories. London: Paul Chapman.
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Coburn, C. E., Toure, J., & Yamashita, M. (2009). Evidence, interpretation, and persuasion: Instructional decision making at the district central office. Teachers College Record, 111(4), 1115–1161. Cooper, B., & Cowie, B. (2010). Collaborative research for assessment for learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(4), 979–986. Cowie, B. (2005). Pupil commentary on assessment for learning. The Curriculum Journal, 16(2), 137–151. Crossouard, B. (2011). Using formative assessment to support complex learning in conditions of social adversity. Assessment in Education, 18(1), 59–72. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Constructing 21st-century teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 57, 300–314. Darling-Hammond, L., & Lieberman, A. (Eds.) (2012). Teacher education around the world. Changing policies and practices. London: Routledge. Darling-Hammond, L., & Snyder, J. (2000). Authentic assessment of teaching in context. Teaching and Teacher Education 16(5–6), 523–545. DeLuca, C., & Klinger, D. A. (2010). Assessment literacy development: Identifying gaps in teacher candidates’ learning. Assessment in Education, 17(4), 419–438. Doerger, D., & Dallmer, D. (2008). Maintaining high standards in a pass/fail practicum. The International Journal of Learning, 15(5), 173–178. Education Council New Zealand (2015). Graduating Teacher Standards: Aotearoa New Zealand. Retrieved from http://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/graduating-teacher-standards Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–56. Epstein, J. L., & Sanders, M. G. (2006). Prospects for change: Preparing educators for school, family, and community partnerships. Peabody Journal of Education, 8(2), 81–120. Fulmer, G., Lee, I., & Tan, K. (2015). Multi-level model of contextual factors and teachers’ assessment practices: An integrative review of research. Assessment in Education, 22(4), 475–494. Gerrard, J., & Farrell, L.(2014). Remaking the professional teacher: Authority and curriculum reform. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(5), 634–655. Gipps, C. (1999). Socio-cultural aspects to assessment. Review of Research in Education, 24, 355–392. González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Grossman, P., & McDonald, M. (2008). Back to the future: Directions for research in teaching and teacher education. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 184–205. Haigh, M., & Ell, F. (2014). Consensus and dissensus in mentor teachers’ judgments of readiness to teach. Teaching and Teacher Education, 40, 10–21. Hay, P., & Penney, D. (2013). Assessment in physical education: A sociocultural perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Hermansen, H. (2014). Recontextualising assessment resources for use in local settings: Opening up the black box of teachers’ knowledge work. The Curriculum Journal, 25(4), 470–494. Hermansen, H., & Nerland, M. (2014). Reworking practice through an AfL project: An analysis of teachers’ collaborative engagement with new assessment guidelines. British Educational Research Journal, 40(1), 187–206. Hickey, D. T. (2015). A situative response to the conundrum of formative assessment. Assessment in Education, 22(2), 202–223. Hickey, D. T., & Pellingrino, J. W. (2005). Theory, level, and function. Three dimensions for understanding transfer and student assessment. In J. P. Mestre (Ed.). Transfer of learning from a modern multidisciplinary perspective (pp. 251–293). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Hipkins, R., & Robertson, S. (2011). Moderation and teacher learning: What can research tell us about their interrelationships? Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Humphrey, D. C., & Wechsler, M. E. (2007). Insights into alternative certification: Initial findings from a national study. Teachers College Record, 109(3), 483–530.
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Klenowski, V. (2012). Raising the stakes: The challenges for teacher assessment. Australian Educational Researcher, 39(2), 173–192. Klenowski, V., & Adie, L. (2009). Moderation as judgement practice: Reconciling system level accountability and local level practice. Curriculum Perspectives, 29(1), 10–28. Klenowski, V., & Wyatt-Smith, C. (2014). Assessment for education: Standards, judgement and moderation. London: Sage. Knight, S. L., Lloyd, G. M., Arbaugh, F., Gamson, D., McDonald, S. P., Nolan, J., Jr., & Whitney, A. E. (2014). Performance assessment of teaching: Implications for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 372–374. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lemke, J. L. (2001). Articulating communities: Sociocultural perspectives on science education. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(3), 296–316. Marshall, B., & Drummond, M. J. (2006). How teachers engage with Assessment for Learning: Lessons from the classroom. Research Papers in Education, 21(2), 133–149. Mehlig, L., & Shumow, L. (2013). How is my child doing?: Preparing pre-service teachers to engage parents through assessment. Teaching Education, 24(2), 181–194. Mitchell, L., Cowie, B., Clarkin-Phillips, J., Davis, K., Glasgow, A., Hatherly, A., Rameka, L., Taylor, L., & Taylor, M. (2015). Continuity of Early Learning: Case studies of assessment practice. Wellington, New Zealand: Education Counts. Montecinos, C., Walker H., & Maldonado, F. (2015). School administrators and university practicum supervisors as boundary brokers for initial teacher education in Chile. Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 1–10. Moss, P. A. (2008). Sociocultural implications for assessment I: Classroom assessment. In P. A. Moss, D. C. Pullin, J. P. Gee, E. H. Haertel, & L. Young (Eds.), Assessment, equity, and opportunity to learn (pp. 222–258). New York: Cambridge University Press. Moss, P. A., Girard, B. J., & Greeno. J. G. (2008). Sociocultural implications for assessment II: Professional learning, evaluation, and accountability. In P. A. Moss, D. C. Pullin, J. P. Gee, E. H. Haertel, & L. Young (Eds.), Assessment, equity and opportunity to learn (pp. 295–332). New York: Cambridge University Press. Moss, P.A., Girard, B. J., & Haniford, L. C. (2006). Validity in educational assessment. Review of Research in Education, 30, 109–162. Moss, P. A., Pullin, D. C., Gee, J. P., Haertel, E. H., & Young, L. (2008). Assessment, equity, and opportunity to learn. New York: Cambridge University Press. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. (2012) What teachers should know and be able to do. Retrieved from http://www.boardcertifiedteachers.org/about-certification/five-core-propositions Nolen, S. (2011). The role of educational systems in the link between formative assessment and motivation. Theory Into Practice, 50(4), 319–326. Nolen, S., Horn, I. S., Ward, C. J., & Childers, S. A. (2011). Novice teacher learning and motivation across contexts: Assessment tools as boundary objects. Cognition and Instruction, 29(1), 88–122. doi: 10.1080/07370008.2010.533221 Peck, C. A., Gallucci, C., & Sloan, T. (2010 ). Negotiating implementation of high-stakes performance assessment policies in teacher education: From compliance to inquiry. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 451–463. Penuel, W., Shepard, L., & Davidson, K. (2015). What have we learned about improving assessment for learning? Research synthesis for the Research + Practice Collaboratory. Popham, W. J. (2011). Assessment literacy overlooked: A teacher educator’s confession. The Teacher Educator, 46(4), 265–273. Pryor, J., & Crossouard, B. (2008). A socio-cultural theorization of formative assessment. Oxford Review of Education, 34(1), 1–20.
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Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4–15. Rorrison, D. (2010). Assessment of the practicum in teacher education: Advocating for the student teacher and questioning the gatekeepers. Educational Studies, 36(5), 505–519. Sato, M. (2014). What is the underlying conception of teaching of the edTPA? Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 421–434. Scarino, A. (2013). Language assessment literacy as self-awareness: Understanding the role of interpretation in assessment and in teacher learning. Language Testing, 30(3), 309–327. Smith, K. (2013) Formative assessment of teacher learning: Issues about quality, design characteristics and impact on teacher learning. Teachers and Teaching, 19(2), 228–234. Stiggins, R. J. (1991). Assessment literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 72(7), 534–539. Stobart, G. (2008). Testing times: The uses and abuses of assessment. London: Routledge. Tillema, H. H., Smith, K., & Leshem, S. (2011). Dual roles – conflicting purposes: A comparative study on perceptions on assessment in mentoring relations during practicum. European Journal of Teacher Education, 34(2), 139–159. Torrance, H. (2007). Assessment as learning? How the use of explicit learning objectives, assessment criteria and feedback in post-secondary education and training can come to dominate learning. Assessment in Education, 14(3), 281–294. Torrance, H., & Pryor, J. (1998). Investigating formative assessment. Teaching, learning and assessment in the classroom. Buckingham: Open University Press Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ward, C. J., Nolen, S., & Horn, I. S. (2011). Productive friction: How conflict in student teaching creates opportunities for learning at the boundary. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(1), 14–20. Webb, P. T. (2006). The choreography of accountability. Journal of Education Policy, 21(2), 201–214. Webb, M., & Jones, J. (2009). Exploring tensions in developing assessment for learning. Assessment in Education, 16(2), 165–184. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Willis, J., Adie, L., & Klenowski, V. (2013). Conceptualising teachers’ assessment literacies in an era of curriculum and assessment reform. The Australian Educational Researcher, 40(2), 241–256. Wyatt-Smith, C., & Klenowski, V. (2013). Explicit, latent and meta-criteria: Types of criteria at play in professional judgement practice. Assessment in Education, 20(1), 35–52. Wyatt-Smith, C., Klenowski, V., & Gunn, S. (2010). The centrality of teachers’ judgement practice in assessment: A study of standards in moderation. Assessment in Education, 17(1), 59–75.
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56 Functions of Student-centred Approaches to Assessment in Teacher Education S u re t t e v a n S t a d e n a n d B r i g i t t e S m i t
Introduction This chapter attends to learning-centred (also referred to as student-centred) approaches to assessment in teacher education. The term ‘student-centred’ is used in this chapter, since ‘learners’ in the South African context refers to school-going children, while ‘students’ denotes those individuals who are registered and studying at tertiary institutions. The student-centred approach is nested in constructivist thinking, assuming a dynamic relationship between the teachereducator and the student-teacher, where the teacher-educator assumes the role of coach and mentor and the student-teacher is an active participant in the assessment process. This relationship implies that assessment is not solely the domain of some removed intellectual authority. Instead, the student-teacher plays an active role in learning and assessment, through a process of collaboration and dialogue. A constructivist approach suggests active participation in and interaction with assessment tasks, which are facilitated by the teacher-educator. For example, dialogue between the teacher-educator and the student-teacher can be fostered through the negotiation of assessment task criteria. Such dialogue can lead to authentic, functional and individualised assessment in a learning context that is meaningful for the student-teacher. The inseparably linked elements of student learning and assessment, assessment for learning during learning task execution, and the principles of good assessment are the core beliefs underpinning the learning-centred approach to teaching assessment. This chapter begins by presenting a case study of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme, which we offered in a leading university in
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South Africa. In foregrounding the chapter with an illustrative case study we discuss how constructivism, as a theoretical perspective of a person-centred approach to assessment, can be instructed in higher education. The chapter also provides a review of literature on how person-centred assessment in teacher education can be taught. Lastly, the chapter concludes with the implications for teacher education practices in terms of what and how in-service teachers can learn. It also speaks to how effective practices within particular domains in teacher education can be transformed in light of possible future directions in teacher education assessment research from a person-centred perspective.
A Case Study of Student Teacher Assessment Practice in South Africa: Postgraduate Certificate in Education programme In this section, a case study from a South African university setting is used to illustrate three aspects of the classroom dynamics in teaching assessment. First, a picture is painted of the diversity of the student population in terms of background, academic proficiency and experience to provide the reader with a context against which this person-centred assessment takes place. Second, the relationship between the teacher-educator and the student-teacher is elaborated to provide evidence that assessment is not imparted to students from a place of authority, but that the student-teacher plays an active role in learning and assessment, through a process of collaboration and dialogue. Third, the case study explores attempts to develop a deep learning approach among students, where two different but interrelated approaches are explored, namely student-centred learning and assessment and the accompanying role of feedback and formative assessment from a person-centred approach, which ensures that assessment forms part of the learning process. The PGCE is presented as part of the professional teacher training qualifications presented by the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. It is a professional qualification that has grown in popularity among students who wish to obtain a teaching qualification after having obtained their first degrees. These first degrees vary between anything from a general Bachelor’s degree to a degree in Commerce, Natural Science, Performing Arts or Theology. At a specific university in South Africa, the programme has seen a rise in numbers over the last few years, from a start of 96 registered students in 2013 to an increase of 130 registered students in 2014 and, most recently, 180 registered students in 2015. Future plans for an even greater influx of students could see the programme accommodating as many as 400 students. The programme is still dominated by female students, who comprise more than 80 per cent of students who register to specialise in teaching in the Senior
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Phase (Grades 7–9). Student ages vary greatly – from as young as 23 to 40 and older. Reasons students cite for wanting this professional certificate in teaching include: •• unhappiness with their original choice of study in which they obtained a first degree; •• desire for a change of career; •• initially being discouraged by friends and family to follow a career in teaching and now wanting to pursue their initial choice; •• being encouraged by friends and family (often themselves being in the teaching profession) to study teaching and now pursuing teaching after completing a first degree; •• (for older students) their children leaving home, creating the opportunity to pursue meaningful studies that would allow them to follow their passion; •• not being able to obtain gainful employment with only their first degrees; and •• being refused entry into fields of study that require strict selection criteria (e.g. Psychology).
Alongside the various reasons cited for entering into the PGCE programme are also varied levels of achievement therein. While some students excel in the theoretical training of their modules, others fail persistently across multiple modules. Reasons for inadequate academic achievement may include: •• •• •• ••
inadequate English language proficiency; inability to attend class regularly due to family responsibilities; having to travel long distances and make use of unreliable public transportation; being diagnosed with emotional problems (such as major depression and bipolar disorder) that have not been disclosed before entry into the programme and that make keeping up with the programme content and activities more difficult; and •• financial difficulty, specifically for those students with bursaries that only make provision for tuition fees.
In light of these challenges, the programme specifically aims to develop and assist the students not only professionally but also personally. A specific anomaly observed in this programme is that many students fail to make the grade in the theoretical part of their training, yet flourish and excel once they engage in teaching practice in schools. This begs various questions regarding the ability of students to handle academic pressure and adhere to assignment deadlines and examinations but also regarding the potential role that formative assessment can still play in assisting students to use assessment not only of learning but assessment for learning and assessment as learning – phrases coined by Bennett (2011). The following example of a person-centred task is provided to illustrate how students are furnished with scaffolded support for the completion of tasks in as authentic a manner as possible of how their own assessment practice can be informed. As part of one of the core modules presented to students in assessment in the PGCE programme, students are requested to bring any test, examination or assessment exercise that they may have used to assess their students in the area of specialisation to the contact session. Students are then placed in pairs to critically discuss the rationale for the assessments’ use, how the instruments align
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with the goals they want to achieve with their students, reasons for item selection and possible strengths or weaknesses with regard to issues of practicality, authenticity, fairness, objectivity, validity and reliability. Students are encouraged to provide critical yet constructive feedback to each other in thinking through their respective assessment tasks. The aim of this exercise is to stimulate sound learning practices among students, while involving students actively in engaging with criteria, quality and their own and peer attempts at using assessment effectively. Following this exercise of critically thinking through an existing assessment task, students are then guided in the assembly of a test, examination or assessment task (regardless of its formative or summative nature) and the use of an assessment framework as a blueprint for planning the test, examination or assessment exercise. Based on the theoretical principles of good assessment, students are then shown how possible revisions, eliminations or improvements of items can be made in an effort to ensure that the assessment task is as closely aligned to the learning outcomes as possible to gauge student achievement, whether for summative or formative purposes, as accurately as possible. The exercise concludes by providing students with an opportunity to plan and construct their own test, examination or assessment exercise in their area of specialisation, using the assessment framework as a blueprint to guide their thinking. In this way, students are taken through a process, starting by discussing their own work critically in light of their theoretical knowledge, then exposing them to the idea and function of an assessment framework, and then allowing them to apply their new-found skills in the improvement of a test, examination or assessment. In providing feedback on this exercise, students not only become aware of problems in their thinking and planning around assessment, but the facilitator uses tangible evidence of student work to provide further assistance, guiding students to understand the outcomes they should reach to enhance their own teaching practice at school. While the matter of student-centred learning is well researched, the notion of a person-centred approach to assessment is less prominent in the literature. Given the empirical evidence from our case study, where this approach was actively used, we claim that person-centred assessment enhances knowledge retention and depth of understanding, and that a deep appreciation of the content is valuable for student teachers. Considering that skills such as lifelong learning and independent problem-solving are facilitated, appropriate assessments were designed in our case study to make independent meaning-making visible. Student feedback on this exercise indicates that it allowed students for the first time to think critically about planning and designing their own assessment tasks. In this way, the responsibility of using assessment in a fair, valid and reliable way comes to the forefront, where student teachers are confronted with thoughts about using assessment as a tool for learning in their own teaching practice. One student in particular related her own story of a disgruntled parent who doubted the students’ use of an assessment task. Having applied her mind critically to the task,
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applying principles of the assessment framework to guide her thinking allowed the student ample evidence to convince the parents that the assessment had indeed been used in alignment with the goals she set out to achieve and as a tool for further assistance of the students in her class. This signals that the teaching of assessment as part of a teacher education qualification at a tertiary institution highlights the double-edged nature of assessment: while teaching student teachers about assessment, we are also educating teachers to learn to think about their own assessment of students when they begin teaching. The following section deals with the issue of assessment in teacher education in more detail.
Assessment in Teacher Education A Student-centred Approach to Assessment Worldwide, the face of higher education is changing. These changes are observed in the increased numbers of students and (in some countries) what Barrington (2004) refers to as the ‘massification’ of higher education. Yorke (2003) refers to differentially salient features of higher education across the world – namely, an increasing concern with attainment standards, leading to greater emphasis on summative assessments of outcomes, increasing student/staff ratios, with implications for individual attention that students can expect to receive, and changes in curricular structures in favour of greater unitisation, more frequent assessments of outcomes and less opportunities for formative feedback – that place the sector under pressure. The demands, in addition to teaching, placed on staff result in added pressure to be seen as ‘research active’, able to generate funds, perform public service and engage in intra-institutional administration (Yorke, 2003). Increases not only in the numbers but also in the diversity of the student population are challenging the way in which things are done within the sector. Lea, Stephenson and Troy (2003) argue that increases in the number of mature students, international students and students with disabilities have changed the needs of students. Meanwhile, teaching and learning in higher education remain inseparably linked. As Healey (2000) stresses, the scholarship of teaching is as much about learning as it is about teaching. Accordingly, Rust (2002) claims that there has been a paradigm shift, specifically in English-speaking countries, over the last decade, from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning in higher education. In the United Kingdom, for instance, far greater emphasis is now placed on the development of skills – specifically, more general, transferable ‘life’ skills. Accompanying this shift has been an increased emphasis on the development of study guides and materials in terms of intended student-learning outcomes (Rust, 2002). Despite these paradigmatic shifts, there still seems to be a significant lag in the connection between changes in teaching methods and changes in how assessment is conducted.
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For most courses, study materials are written in terms of the coursework accompanied by four or five learning outcomes, yet the assessment tasks associated with these outcomes are questionable at best. In this regard, Rust (2002) cites examples of students being encouraged to read more widely on the topic of discussion; yet if the examination can be answered sufficiently by question spotting, the extent of learning that has actually occurred remains limited. Similarly, the mere inclusion of the word ‘evaluate’ in any question does not necessarily mean that students’ evaluation skills are, in fact, being assessed. In many cases, the answer can be provided from memory or from notes that have been written during lectures or contact sessions. The examples cited by Rust (2002) may point to the distinction that needs to be made between deep and surface approaches to learning, specifically in light of the changing landscape of higher education. Characteristics of the surface approach are a reliance on a heavy workload, with an excessive amount of course work or material; a high number of class contact hours; and little opportunity for in-depth engagement with subject matter, linked to limited subject choices or methods of study, ultimately culminating in a threatening or anxiety-provoking assessment experience (Rust, 2002). Opposed to the surface approach is the deep approach to learning, whereby students are encouraged to want and need to know, borne out of an intrinsic motivation and a curiosity generated through interaction with others from a well-structured knowledge base. This means that subject content is taught within integrated wholes and knowledge is required to be related to other knowledge (Rust, 2002). When students take the deep approach to their work, they are more likely to be intrinsically motivated, with an understanding of the relevance and importance not only of what they are learning but also of how they will be assessed. If students regard an assessment task purely as an obstacle to get through in order to pass, they are likely to take a surface approach to learning. In order to develop a deep learning approach among students, two different but interrelated approaches are explored: student-centred learning and assessment and the accompanying role of feedback and formative assessment from a person-centred approach, which ensures that assessment forms part of the learning process. Student-centred learning implies active engagement in learning and learner responsibility for the management of learning (Nicol & Mafarlane-Dick, 2006). Learning is not regarded as a simple acquisition process based on teacher transmission. Instead, the student-centred perspective is conceptualised as a process whereby students actively construct their own knowledge by interacting with subject content, transforming and discussing it with others so as to make internalised meaning and connections with what is already known (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Lea et al. (2003) in this context describe student- centred learning as a reliance on active rather than passive learning, an emphasis on deep learning and understanding, increased responsibility and accountability on the part of the student, an increased sense of autonomy on the part of the
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student and an interdependence between the teacher and the student, based on mutual respect whereby students are consulted about the teaching and learning process. Kanjee and Mthembu (2015) add their voices to this argument by stating that once teachers change their understanding and beliefs about assessment, their teaching practice will also change. Stiggins (2009), as cited by Kanjee and Mthembu (2015) proposed seven assessment competencies – namely, the ability to connect assessment to clear purpose, clarifying achievement expectations, applying proper assessment methods, developing quality assessment exercises and scoring criteria, avoiding assessment bias, communicating effectively about student achievement and using assessment as an instructional intervention. The last two points in particular speak to a concept of ‘learning oriented assessment’ (or LOA), as referred to by Carless (2015), which aims to promote assessment as a way of developing productive student learning processes, regardless of its formative or summative nature. LOA is encapsulated by three principles that state that assessment should be designed to stimulate sound learning practices among students, it should involve students actively in engaging with criteria, quality and their own and peer performance, and feedback should be timely to support current and future learning (Carless, 2015). These principles make it clear that a person-centred approach to teaching and assessment shifts the emphasis from the teacher to the student, and that the diversity of student needs must be appreciated and accommodated (Lea et al., 2003). Furthermore, student-centred teaching, aims and focuses more on the students and their learning than on the teacher and teaching (Postareff, Lindblom-Ylänne & Nevgi, 2007). Student-centred learning and assessment encourages students to construct their own knowledge in striving to become independent learners. Baeten, Kyndt, Stryuven and Dochy (2010) recognise various definitions and forms of student-centred learning, but all seem to agree that such learning aims to foster deep learning and understanding. Based on the case study we claim that student-centred learning and accompanying assessment has the potential to enhance educational outcomes for students in higher education. Lea et al. (2003) support this claim that student-centred learning has the potential to enhance learning motivation, retention and knowledge, depth of understanding and an appreciation for the content that is taught. Assessment of student learning is an important task in the teaching and learning process (Ma & Zhou, 2000). In general, assessment is regarded as the process of gathering information to monitor progress and make educational decisions. Similarly, Boston (2002) refers to assessment as all diagnostic activities that students and teachers undertake to alter teaching and learning. Assessment may refer to tests but may also include other forms of information gathering, such as observations and interviews, and therefore relies on multiple and diverse sources to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand and can do. According to Gareis and Grant (2015), the essence of assessment is, on the one hand, the evaluation of learning achievement or the progress of learners towards the achievement of learning intentions, and, on the other, the assessment of the
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learning process and how learners are assisted to reach said learning intentions. According to Black (1998), the aim of assessment should always be to improve learning. Given the empirical evidence from our case study, where the person-centred approach was actively used, we claim that person-centred assessment enhances knowledge retention, depth of understanding and a deep appreciation of the content that is valuable for student teachers. Considering that skills such as lifelong learning and independent problem-solving are facilitated, appropriate assessments were designed in our case study to make independent meaning-making visible. Yet while the idea of a person-centred approach holds promise as introduced to students in this case study example, its limitations should be kept in mind. In South Africa’s developing context, where the emphasis is still on summative assessment (as described by Kanjee and Mthembu, 2015), teacher educators might first want to establish a true understanding of the uses of formative assessment or assessment for learning before a person-centred approach is realistic. An unexplored question for our context is the extent to which a personcentred approach can work in teacher education where high stakes examinations are still the main method of qualification attainment. Faced with large class sizes and variability in student ability, background and socio-economic challenges, the person-centred approach may only prove to be one element of many that are still needed to scratch the surface of an adequate understanding of the true nature of formative assessment.
The Role of Feedback and Formative Assessment in Teacher Education The role of assessment in higher education extends the general definition of assessment even further, as noted by Boud and Falchikov (2007). Traditionally, assessment in higher education played a twofold role: one of certification, the other of facilitating learning. These two roles pose a daunting challenge in that institutions of higher education today do not merely have to provide qualifications. Instead, with these institutions as catalysts of lifelong learning, higher education places a focus on learning outcomes, the use of graduate attributes and the promotion of key skills in service of an agenda of employability (Boud & Falchikov, 2007). The process of assessment culminates in the effective use of results to improve subsequent learning. Despite this aim, assessment still has a role to fulfil, specifically in the effective use of formative assessment (also referred to as continuous assessment or assessment for learning). Authors like Bennett (2011) acknowledge the distinction between formative and summative assessment, as originally proposed by Scriven (1967), but take the debate further by referring to ‘the definitional issue’ and the split that has occurred in the way in which formative assessment is viewed. On the one hand, formative assessment is viewed by test publishers as a sort of diagnostic test with scores that could
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claim to have some diagnostic value better suited to instructional times and marking periods than to daily lessons. On the other hand, education researchers view formative assessment as a process, characterised not so much by its ability to produce a diagnostic score, but by how its results can be used to adapt teaching to meet students’ needs. It is in this latter case where the use of formative assessment often falls short in myriad functions that assessment is supposed to play in providing feedback to students, offering diagnostic information for the teacher, providing information for record keeping, providing evidence for reports and directing curriculum and instructional changes (Earl, 2013). Against this background, assessment in higher education (and, in this case, teacher education specifically) poses similar challenges in the way in which traditional functions of summative and formative assessment have been regarded and practised, as can be seen from the following examples. The role of summative assessment in higher education has traditionally been to certify a level of knowledge attainment at a point of completion of a course of programme. Formative assessment in higher education poses a different set of challenges, in that it should aim to focus assessment on learning, it should separate grading and feedback and it should be optimised through the use of peer- and self-assessment. Indeed, by definition, formative assessment, as contributor to student learning through the provision of information about performance (Yorke, 2003), is more complex than it may initially appear or in comparison with summative assessment. In support of this description of the complexity, Boud and Falchikov (2007) state that formative assessment is still in need of improvement, and evidence of deficient, perfunctory feedback in constructive comment is still rife in higher education contexts where, when provided, feedback is often too late to enable students to benefit from it. More than a decade ago, Harlen and James (1997) already stated that, more often than not, formative and summative assessment are conflated, meaning that there is little evidence that genuine formative assessment is taking place. In many cases, teachers turn their assessment practices into a series of ‘mini’ assessments, each of which is nothing more than summative in nature. Even in higher education, these practices are exercised, with the consequence that, while policy documents and theory make space for the distinction between the two modes, the differences between them remain blurred. In light of the problems involved in the effective use of assessment as a tool for learning with understanding, the role of formative assessment in providing improved student success could be revisited in the teaching and learning process, specifically in higher education. In 1998, influential work by Black and Wiliam (1998), in an extensive review of 250 journal articles and book chapters, found that formative assessment has the potential to raise standards and assist low-achieving students and students with disabilities. While Black and Wiliam’s work focused on children of school-going age, could the same potential of formative assessment not also exist for students in higher education environments? Can
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the question still be asked regarding how assessment could be used to encourage students to want to learn and feel able to learn (Stiggins & Chappuis, 2005)? In attempts to understand formative assessment and the role that it can play, Harlen and James (1997) write from the assumption that an important aim of education is to learn with understanding. These authors explain that learning with understanding involves interaction with people, ideas and events in the real world. In this way, the link between formative assessment and the person-centred approach become concrete and what Brookhart (2001) refers to as ‘the formative process’ (p. 154). Students must have a concept of their learning goal and the ability to compare their current performance against what is expected. Teachers, on the other hand, are responsible for providing timely feedback in order for students to close the gap between what is current and what is expected, and this feedback itself is often called ‘formative’. According to Gipps (1999), such a situation would ensure a teacher-student relationship based on power with the student instead of power over the student. The nature of formative assessment lends itself to this view of assessment from a sociocultural perspective, as it is not only a criterion-referenced activity but also student-referenced (or ipsative). This means that the judgement of a student’s work is not only based on the summative score obtained for the work as a whole, but also in terms of the effort that has gone into the task, the particular context of the student’s work and the progress that the student has made over time. In judgement of the work, feedback is not just given in terms of the criteria of the task, but is also dependent on the student and how the feedback could assist and encourage the student in further learning. In this regard, McMillan (2007), as cited by Ahmed and Teviotdale (2008), argues that, for formative assessment to be effective, it should improve student motivation and learning. If this aim is to be achieved, teachers must construct a cycle of continuous learning that involves their evaluation of student work and behaviour, intertwined with feedback to students and instructional correctives. The ideas of immediacy and specificity are echoed by Stiggins and Chappuis (2005), who are of the view that formative assessment can be instrumental in reducing classroom achievement gaps on condition of four principles, namely: 1 Assessment should be driven with a clear purpose in mind; 2 Achievement expectations must be appropriate and clearly specified; 3 The assessment methods used must be regarded as teaching tools and must accurately reflect the intended targets in service of proficiency; 4 The intended users of assessment should receive results in a timely, understandable and helpful manner.
Echoing the work of Stiggins and Chappuis (2005), and reflective of how McMillan (2007) views the role of formative assessment, Nicol and MacfarlaneDick (2006) identify seven principles of good feedback practice, as synthesised from their literature review:
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•• Effective feedback clearly states what good performance is in terms of goals, criteria and expected standards; •• It facilitates the development of self-assessment and reflection in learning; •• Feedback should deliver high quality information to students about their learning; •• Feedback should encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning; •• Effective feedback should encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem; •• In providing effective feedback, it should close the gap between current and desired performance; •• The information provided by feedback should provide information to help shape teachers’ teaching.
In Bennett’s view (2011), essentially, formative assessment should suggest how instruction should be modified, while, at the same time, impressionistically suggesting to the teacher what students know and can do. Looking at summative and formative assessment as two sides of the same coin, Bennett (2011) therefore states that summative assessment should, besides fulfilling its primary purposes, advance learning, while formative assessment should add to the teacher’s overall informal judgement of student achievement. In this definition, formative assessment does not fall into the category of either test or process, but is rather viewed as a thoughtful integration of process and purposefully designed methods or instruments. While the work of Stiggins and Chappuis (2005) and Bennett (2011) specifically refer to school classroom practice, we are of the view that these characteristics and principles are equally important and applicable to the teacher education landscape in efforts to develop thoughtful assessment practice among teachers once they start teaching.
Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions: Constructivist Underpinnings in Student-centred Assessments Mention of the work of Black and Wiliam (1998) can be found in any literature on the aspects of assessment and its formative purposes makes. Their work – specifically their emphasis on formative assessment as the interaction between teachers, students and subjects within ‘communities of practice’ – provides a theoretical framework (Higgins, Hartley & Skelton, 2002). In essence, Black and Wiliam take a constructivist approach to learning, viewing students as more than mere receptacles for transmitted information but rather as active creators and mediators of meaning within their particular learning contexts. The student is therefore not considered as a controlled respondent to stimuli as in the behaviourist paradigm (Karagiorgi & Symeou, 2005). Gipps (1999) writes that a postmodern world based on constructivist ideas is characterised by the notion that knowledge does not exist objectively or independent of the knower. Ideas around ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ are not only hugely complex and subjective but also
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politically saturated. Similarly, Lunenberg (2011) explains that constructivism describes the dynamic relationship between how teachers teach and how students learn. In the constructivist view, students are responsible for their own learning, given that there is a learning atmosphere in which teachers value student thinking, where cooperative learning and authentic assessment of student understanding take place. Lunenberg (2011) refers, in this regard, to five principles of constructivist teaching – namely, posing problems and their relevance to students, structuring teaching around primary concepts, seeking and valuing students’ points of view, adapting curricula to address students’ suppositions and assessing student learning in the context of teaching. In their discussion of constructivism, Carlile and Jordan (2005) state that the teacher cannot be in charge of the students’ learning, since students have to find their own meaning in situations which are inevitably individual because of different experiences of being in the world. Carlile and Jordan (2005) thereby also stress the centrality of student-centred learning and the fostering of independent learning through the use of what they refer to as negotiated learning strategies and learning contracts. These views hold certain implications for practice, namely: •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• ••
A teaching approach from the students’ perspective and values; Acknowledgment of student diversity in terms of ability, age, gender, culture, nationality; Encouraging reflection as part of learning; Presenting an overview of the topics to be taught, including their purpose and objectives; Explanations of the relevance of topics; Building on what is already known; Encouraging active, discovery and independent learning; Giving timely feedback on performance; and Constructively aligning objectives, strategies and assessment.
Karagiorgi and Symeou (2005) mirror these views and warn that learning that focuses exclusively on individual construction of knowledge is inadequate. Rather, the students’ experiential world is used to negotiate between individual and societal knowledge. These two cannot be separated and form a dialectical relationship. To support this idea that constructivism is not merely based on students’ own views but rather a negotiation between individual and societal knowledge, Alters and Nelson (2002) refer to problems with preconceived ideas when it comes to teaching evolution to students in higher education, a topic that is often misunderstood and poorly taught as well as understood. Alters and Nelson (2002) refer to these misconceptions as being either ‘from-experience’ misconceptions, self-constructed misconceptions or taught-and-learned misconceptions. Use of constructivist principles could improve in the way in which contentious topics (such as evolution) can be taught if the teacher (or facilitator) is able to provide students with situations in which they can examine the adequacy of, argue about and test their prior conceptions. Stumbling upon contradictions could allow students a further opportunity to acquire more scientifically
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appropriate concepts, thus becoming increasingly skilled in the process of concept acquisition. Because of constructivist views that place the student and their experience at the centre of learning, assessment can not be regarded as objective and purely scientific. Assessment too is value laden and socially constructed and is required to be diverse, examining the quality and structure of student learning that has taken place in greater depth (Gipps, 1999). While, for example, it is sufficient to use multiple-choice questions or short-answer tests to test knowledge, other types of assessment (including essays, small group tasks and projects) are needed to assess the process of learning and understanding to inspire a deeper level of learning (Gipps, 1999). According to Zane (2009), assessment that is founded on constructivist ideas bases learning upon the complex and integrated nature of the real world. Therefore, boundaries in the real world should be reduced to a manageable size, meaning that assessment should be designed to gather evidence across all facets of competency, integrated into the curriculum, sequenced to support a coherent pedagogy of learning, situated in multiple contexts, and should use multiple modes to account for differences across students, domains and contexts.
Implications This chapter provided an overview of assessment in teacher education by focusing on student-centred principles of assessment, by virtue of formative assessment and appropriated by constructivist paradigmatic assumptions in a teacher education setting. An illustrative case study was presented as an example to complement the literature on the changing nature of the higher education landscape vis-à-vis student diversity and student numbers at institutions of higher education worldwide. This example concluded with an illustration of one of the ways in which student-centred learning and assessment, using a constructivist approach, plays out in a varied, developmental setting where students add a range of experiences, challenges and reasons for being trained as a professional teachers to the learning opportunity. In light of the changing face of higher education worldwide, it is important for learning and teaching to take place to ensure that students are adequately prepared for employment. In ensuring that higher education institutions place learning at the forefront, it has to be ensured that deep approaches to learning are facilitated and developed. One such aspect of the deep approach presents itself in the form of student-centred learning, which implies active engagement in learning and learner responsibility for the management of learning. Attempts at student-centred learning cannot be effective or plausible in an assessment environment that does not support or echo active engagement as
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espoused by student-centredness. Harlen and James (1997) state that it is important not only that summative and formative assessment be disentangled but also that formative assessment be used in a genuinely formative way. Formative assessment implies practices about what the students know and can do (Bennett, 2011). In this regard, Gipps’ (1999) words are noteworthy and echo the sentiments of this chapter: Perhaps most important, we need to encourage teachers to bring pupils in to the process of assessment, in order to recognize their social and cultural background, and into self- assessment, in order to develop their evaluative and metacognitive skills. All of these acts are, on the basis of this review, both possible and necessary if assessment is to be more equitable and fulfil its promise to aid and support high quality learning. (p. 387)
References Ahmed, N., & and Teviotdale, W. (2008). Formative assessment in higher education. In BMAF Annual Conference 2008. The learning and teaching agenda in the UK: National perspectives but common concerns? 28–30 April. Edinburgh, UK. (Unpublished). Alters, B. J., & Nelson, C. E. (2002). Perspective: Teaching evolution in higher education. Evolution, 56(10), 1891–1901. Baeten, M., Kyndt, E., Struyven, K., & Dochy, F. (2010). Using student-centred learning environments to stimulate deep approaches to learning: Factors encouraging or discouraging their effectiveness. Education Research Review, 5(3), 243–260. Barrington, E. (2004). Teaching to student diversity in higher education: How Multiple Intelligence Theory can help. Teaching in Higher Education, 9(4), 421–434. Bennett, R. E. (2011). Formative assessment: A critical review. Assessment in Education, 18(1), 5–25. Black, P. (1998). Testing: Friend or foe? Theory and practice of assessment and testing. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7–74. Boston, C. (2002). The concept of formative assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 8(9), 1–20. Boud, D., & Falchikov, N. (2007). Aligning assessment with long-term learning. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(4), 399–413. Brookhart, S. M. (2001). Successful students’ formative and summative uses of assessment information. Assessment in Education, 8(2), 153–168. Carless, D. (2015). Learning-oriented assessment: Conceptual bases and practical implications. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(1), 57–66. Carlile, O., & Jordan, A. (2005). It works in practice, but will it work in theory? The theoretical underpinnings of pedagogy. In G. O’Neill, S. Moore, & B. McMullin (Eds.), Emerging issues in the practice of university learning and teaching (pp. 11–25). Dublin: AISHE. Earl, L. M. (2013). Assessment as learning: Using classroom assessment to maximise learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Gareis, R., & Grant, L. W. (2015). Teacher-made assessments: How to connect curriculum, instruction and student learning. New York: Routledge. Gipps, C. (1999). Socio-cultural aspects of assessment. Review of Research in Education, 24(1), 355– 392. Harlen, W., & James, M. (1997). Assessment and learning: Differences in relationships between formative and summative assessment. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 4(3), 365–379.
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Healey, M. (2000). Developing the scholarship of teaching in higher education: A discipline-based approach. Higher Education Research & Development, 19(2), 169–189. Higgins, R., Hartley, P., & Skelton, A. (2002). The conscientious consumer: Reconsidering the role of assessment feedback in student learning. Studies in Higher Education, 27(1), 53–64. Kanjee, A., & Mthembu, J. (2015). Assessment literacy of foundation phase teachers: An exploratory study. South African Journal of Childhood Education, 5(1), 142–168. Karagiorgi, Y., & Symeou, L. (2005). Translating constructivism into instructional design: Potential and limitations. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 8(1), 17–27. Lea, S. J., Stephenson, D., & Troy, J. (2003). Higher education students’ attitudes to student-centred learning: Beyond ‘educational bulimia’? Studies in Higher Education, 28(3), 321–334. Lunenberg, F.C. (2011). Critical thinking and constructivism techniques for improving student achievement. National Forum of Teacher Education Journal, 21(3), 1–9. Ma, J., & Zhou, D. (2000). Fuzzy set approach to the assessment of student-centered learning. IEEE Transactions on Education, 43(2), 237–241. McMillan, J. H. (Ed.). (2007). Formative classroom assessment: Theory into practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199–218. Postareff, L., Lindblom-Ylänne, S., & Nevgi, A. (2007). The effect of pedagogical training on teaching in higher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(5), 557–571. Rust, C. (2002). The impact of assessment on student learning. Active Learning in Higher Education, 3(2), 145–158. Scriven, M. (1967). The methodology of evaluation. In: R. W. Tyler, R. M. Gagne, & M. Scriven (Eds.), Perspectives of curriculum evaluation (pp. 90–102). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Stiggins, R., & Chappuis, J. (2005). Using student-involved classroom assessment to close achievement gaps. Theory into Practice, 44(1), 11–18. Thorndike, E. L. (1931). Human learning. The Century psychology series. New York & London: The Century Co. Yorke, M. (2003). Formative assessment in higher education: Moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. Higher Education, 45(4), 477–501. Zane, T. W. (2009). Performance assessment design principles gleaned from constructivist learning theory (Part 1). TechTrends, 53(1), 81–89.
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57 Functions of Assessment in Social Justice Teacher Education Approaches Va l e r i e F a r n s w o r t h
Introduction Social justice in education is conceived of in this chapter as encompassing the policies, practices and social relations that are based on principles of social justice and equity. The ‘social’ in ‘social justice’ means we turn our attention in particular to social structures and ideologies that structure social relations and hierarchies (van Dijk, 1998), typically organised in Western societies by race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and religion shaped by ideologies such as racism, sexism, heterosexism and adultism (Griffin, Hardiman & Jackson, 2007). Given that inequalities in societies based on these social categories are longstanding and pervasive (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010), creating, developing and realising social justice in education tends to take on a form of social activism and, if successful, impacts upon social change. With this framing of social justice in mind, the focus of this chapter is on the particular challenges for teacher education, with specific attention given to the functions of assessment in relation to learning about social justice and becoming a social justice educator. While previous chapters in this Handbook have discussed the various social and cognitive functions of assessment, I would like to consider the dialogic and reflexive functions of assessment in particular. For assessments to have this function, I argue, they must be seen as formative rather than summative. My claims are based on principles of social justice which on the one hand mean that learning to be a social justice teacher is a challenging, ongoing process and on the other hand recognise the potential for summative assessment to inhibit learning and
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exclude learners, for example by determining access to more advanced learning or qualifications. I briefly take up this topic in a section of the chapter discussing the issues and tensions that can arise given the contexts in which teachers work and the principles of social justice. In the main body of the chapter, I aim to develop a case for using assessment in social justice teacher education to support teachers’ learning, reflective practice and their ability to act in socially just ways. The argument is based on a particular view of social justice in education, which turns my attention to certain dimensions of learning to become a teacher. Several ideas for how assessment can work in tandem with these learning goals are offered. The type of assessment I discuss is formative assessment, which tends to be in the form of feedback about the student’s learning and about what is needed to reach a given goal or expectation. To count as formative assessment, this feedback needs to be given with a view to supporting their learning. In the case of teacher education and social justice, we might expect to find teacher candidates receiving feedback from their university-based teacher educators and their school-based mentors. However, we can widen this to the communities impacted most by the practices entailed by a social justice approach to education.
Social justice in education In response to concerns that a lack of consensus on the meaning of social justice has led to inconsistencies across teacher education programmes in the US (Zeichner, 2009), Cochran-Smith (2010) published a theory of social justice in the Second International Handbook of Educational Change. The three key principles she presents relate to: (1) equity in learning opportunities and outcomes for students; (2) recognition and respect for all social groups and being an agent of change to create equitable systems and structures; and (3) ‘directly acknowledging the tensions and contradictions that emerge from competing ideas about the nature of justice and managing these in knowingly imperfect, but concrete ways’ (pp. 453–454). These principles are just one way to break down what counts as a social justice approach to education and are the starting point for this chapter because underpinning all teacher education approaches, regardless of their social justice agenda, are the ‘beliefs and assumptions about the nature and purposes of schooling, teaching, teachers, and their education that gives shape to specific forms of practice in teacher education’ (Zeichner, 1983, p. 3). The principles of social justice outlined above suggest that a component of teacher education should be the interplay between the beliefs, language and practices that enable teachers and students to challenge the assumptions, practices and language that reinforce inequities, disrespect others and marginalise groups of people. Assessment can be an approach that supports learning of social justice
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beliefs and practices if we think of teachers’ beliefs and assumptions as developing and nuanced.
The Nuances of Social Justice: A Developmental Perspective A distinction in social justice discussions is also often made between ‘talking the talk’ and ‘walking the walk’ (Cochran-Smith, 2004). One interpretation of this might be that simply talking about valuing equality and inclusion reflects only a nod to social justice. Social justice education would, in this strict sense, only be recognised in the actions taken by educators and school leaders (Apple & Beane, 2007). Such actions range from classroom practices whereby teachers employ culturally relevant pedagogy, to school policies that ensure equity in opportunity to participate in school activities across all social groups of students and their families, to mediating disputes in the playground in which hateful speech or discrimination is invoked. This latter example highlights that ‘talk matters’ (Fennimore, 2000) because we ‘do things with words’ (Austin, 1975). Words, talk and discourse are not only fundamental to the conduct of all social activity: they also create contexts of meaning. This creation of meaning occurs on the level of action and at the institutional level to create a school culture, for example. These different levels of meaning are critical to the enactment of social justice at all levels (Sleeter & Cornbleth, 2011). An assessment approach to support the development of a social justice teacher would involve providing feedback on social justice beliefs and practices. Feedback would be on multiple dimensions (e.g. words, images, meanings) as well as contexts and levels of social interaction (e.g. classrooms, school yards, teachers’ lounge). The teacher educator would assess teacher candidates’ practices that attempt to challenge inequities, question attitudes/beliefs and critically analyze situations. In other words, we can demand more than a nod to the concept of equity, while still recognising the teacher on a developmental journey by assessing social justice beliefs and practices as nuanced. This means assessing language and the cognitive dimensions that feed into our words and deeds as well as the practices and accomplishments of teachers who engage with social justice.
Social Justice: The Big Picture A common feature of both words and actions is that they can have an impact on social relations (societally) as well as on particular individuals. Social justice education means teachers and other school staff are producing words and actions that create more socially just social relations on societal, organisational, group and individual levels (Nieto & Bode, 2008). It also means counteracting injustices, whether this be through social recognition and respect of individuals and groups or through a more equitable redistribution of social goods and services across social groups (Fraser, 1997). For instance, a teacher may choose to
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provide extra support for students they see as disadvantaged in some way or a teacher may make instructional decisions on the basis of an educational goal that includes developing young people’s critical consciousness. The idea is that the teacher can be an instrument of change to the extent that their actions can both directly and indirectly affect systems of ideologies and the social and institutional structures they support (Ayers, Quinn & Stovall, 2009). Teachers can, for instance, practise what Gloria Ladson-Billings (1994) calls ‘culturally relevant pedagogy.’ Similarly, Luis Moll and colleagues (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992) have illustrated how ‘funds of knowledge’ embedded in households and communities can be drawn upon in teaching. Apple (2011) emphasises the intricate global, cultural knowledge and critical understandings required of teachers who embrace critical pedagogies and teach within diasporic communities. Critical pedagogies, such as those inspired by bell hooks and her book Teaching to Transgress (1994), would also fall within the sorts of practices I wish to highlight. Such practices would involve rethinking and reconceptualising, with students, traditional conceptualisations in education such as ability. It would also involve engaging students in wider discussions and reflections on society, along the lines of Freire’s (1993) critical examinations of the sources of oppression. An example of such a practice is provided by Gutierrez (2008) in her account of a programme through which traditional conceptions of literacy were challenged and new forms of literacy were conceptualised to honour and engage with the lives of students from non-dominant communities. Assessment in teacher education would look for and encourage practices that further social justice through teachers’ enactments of curricula, pedagogy and assessment. Feedback could also be a way to highlight any contradictions between social justice beliefs and practices in order to ‘feed forward’ (Gibbs, 2006) into future actions and pedagogic practice.
The Importance of Dialogue In line with the third principle outlined at the start of this section (CochranSmith, 2010), I argue that social justice actions fall upon a spectrum and that social justice is a moving target that is highly contextual. Social justice education, in effect, takes on many forms, which has implications for assessment. Similar actions may have different impacts depending on the context, which is understood to be emergent and produced through the ongoing interaction and the situated meanings produced in the language used in a particular activity (Gee, 1999). Contexts, defined by cultural and personal norms and practices, are constructed through a society’s cultural history as well as the more specific history of the event that is unfolding. Given this complexity and our individual meaning making of a situation and narrative lives (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990), individuals will perceive and react to the words and deeds of others in various and, often, unpredictable ways. It is no surprise then that social justice is a practice that is imperfect and inconsistent.
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Recognising these contextual variations means that the standards we hold for social justice will be changing over time and place. Moreover, what counts as socially just words and deeds will be emergent and evolving over time. This suggests that socially just words and deeds cannot be pre-defined. However, they could be defined on an ongoing basis, through dialogue. Such dialogue, I argue, could be with the communities the words and actions are meant to or will affect but can also be a form of reflective dialogue with the self. Dialogue in relation to social justice can be understood in two ways. Firstly, dialogue can refer to discussions in real time. In other words, social justice in education means talking with your pupils, fellow educators and family, as well as local community members, to consider the issues impacting equity and justice in the educational provision, how these issues are experienced and perceived and how they might be addressed (Valli, 1997). Lawrence-Lightfoot (2003) has highlighted the role of dialogue between parents and teachers in the struggle for social justice. The second meaning of dialogue I wish to put forward is that which underpins Bakhtin’s work on literary theory and language. Bakhtin has contrasted dialogic with monologic discourse (Bakhtin, 1981). Dialogic discourse is that which incorporates the ‘voices’ or genres of others into a newly created discourse, while monologic discourse is more of a parroting of other ‘voices’ without integrating them into one’s own voice. Dialogic discourse is associated with social justice to the extent that it would mean teachers are integrating the voices of others in their words, which may be spoken in social interactions but could also emerge in narratives. Narratives can be the stories we tell ourselves and what we tell others as we negotiate our identities (Goodson, 1992), which, as I will discuss next, is a key aspect of becoming a teacher for social justice. This meaning of dialogue is implied in Freire’s (1993) approach to critical pedagogy and critical theory more widely (Fook, 2014). The related concept is that of ‘dialectical praxis’, which is ‘a process that involve[s] placing opposing ideas in dialogue with each other to develop new ideas or situations’ (McLaren & Ryoo, 2012). This is another central aspect of social justice in that the path to social change involves constructing new structures and visions for an equitable and just society (Sleeter & Delgado Bernal, 2004). Dialogue, as both discursive and dialogic, can take place between various parts of the learning system, for example between the school and the trainee teacher, the program provided by the university and the trainee teacher, and between the trainee teacher and students, as well as between the trainee teacher and the teachers they work alongside and learn from. Dialogue in this sense could help to shape these contexts to be more socially just. Assessment in the context of social justice teacher education would aim to enable such dialogue in the support of teacher development.
Implications of Power and Privilege There are also nuances to social justice that need to be constantly and carefully considered. I will provide two examples to give some flavour of these nuances.
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The first nuance is a facet of the inequity or imbalance in social status and what it means to have an ‘us and them’ ideology (van Dijk, 1998). An illustration of this imbalance is given by McIntosh (1998), whose list of privileges she has as a white woman includes not having to speak on behalf of her race. One approach to addressing this imbalance is for us to avoid placing the onus of social change and the critical evaluation of society on the marginalised ‘other’ or non-dominant groups. Instead, those who are in positions of social privilege should educate themselves. This can mean reflecting on one’s own social position and experience in comparison to others. It can mean reading literature and engaging with various accounts and artistic representations of marginalisation and experiences of inequity, poverty and exclusion. Consequently, social justice teacher education by and large has a knowledge and understanding component as well as a strong reflective component. This also means that dialogue is not the default approach but is necessarily combined with a degree of self-awareness and critical thinking in advance of engagement in dialogue with others. Ideally, this approach leads to a more collaborative and inclusive approach to achieving social justice. The second nuance worth highlighting has been put forth by Lisa Delpit (1988). What she helps us to recognise is that social justice is not simply about listening to what others want and taking actions on those without any critical reflection or discussion. Her specific concern is with language and the teaching of ebonics, a social language used by African Americans. While teaching in ebonics may be a culturally responsive pedagogic practice (Gay, 2010), it does not teach the young people the culture of power; specifically it is not teaching students fluency in the dominant social language (Delpit, 1988). Michael Young (2008) offers a similar mistake in education reform when he argues that we should bring knowledge back in, after what he sees as a shift too far in the direction of skills. In other words, we are not doing our students favours if we ‘dumb down’ the curriculum or shunt them off to vocational courses that have no knowledge basis. Social justice education in this scenario would be more along the lines of what Rose (2005) argues for, whereby vocations are taught as domains of knowledge not simply skills. Their work highlights the complexities of achieving social justice and the need for critical dialogue about these issues. Assessment can again provide an avenue for such dialogue to the extent that the process engages multiple perspectives on education, teachers’ practices and beliefs.
Social justice in teacher education The in-depth study of knowledge and power in education coupled with opportunities to develop an identity as a social justice educator, as well as skills in practices that support social justice education, are critical features of teacher education for social justice (Gay, 2002; Gordon, 2000; Sleeter & Delgado Bernal, 2004). Taking the three key components of social justice teacher
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education to be reflective practice, critical dispositions and understandings of social inequity, and pedagogic practices (Bell et al., 2016), I will outline a potential role for assessment in teacher education. The above discussion suggests that in terms of assessment of social justice we might focus on words, deeds and narratives, but how would this work? The mediating factor seems to be beliefs, which are integral to identity, discourse and practice (Wenger, 1998). My aim in this section is to reflect upon some possible roles for assessment that align with the aspects of social justice education I have outlined above.
Critical Dispositions and Perspectives on Justice A key assumption in social justice teacher education is that beliefs inform actions. The dispositions, knowledge and beliefs of a teacher are understood as informing their pedagogic practices (Villegas, 2007), hence unpacking and challenging these belief systems and understandings of power, whiteness, social group identity and social inequalities are essential to being a social justice teacher (Howard, 2006). Assessment could be a part of this learning process. It would be a way for the trainee teacher to apply their knowledge about inequalities and test this with others, for example. The assessment undertaken by the trainee teacher, in the format known as 360-degree assessment or peer assessment, could be of a project, paper or performance completed by fellow trainee teachers. The assignment being assessed would have a clear social justice angle, designed to support the trainee teachers’ exploration of key topics in education, social justice and inequality. As with any pedagogy that aims to develop critical thinking, consideration of multiple perspectives is essential. Feedback could be a way to offer these multiple perspectives, with peers questioning each other about whether they have considered alternative views or explanations for what is being discussed. Feedback would be in the form of questions or subjective ‘I’ statements, presented in a way so as to encourage dialogue. Guidance could be given on the sorts of questions to ask, which could develop into questions the teacher asks herself in reflection, a topic addressed later in this chapter. Learning about society and oppression, potentially confronting one’s own implicit role in systems of inequality, can be unnerving and emotional, often leaving the learner in an ambiguous space until they work out their own stance and approach to redress these issues (Florio-Ruane & deTar, 2001). This means that, in the case of social justice, assignments to be used in formative assessments need to be carefully designed and relationships between peer assessors should be cultivated to establish trust. There should be common ground rules and starting assumptions that accept the sensitivity of these subjects, respecting the experiences of others and taking it as given that social justice is, as argued above, too nuanced and dynamic for any one view or approach to be definitive. Experience with this sort of feedback on the work of others could be a foundation for future social justice action. For instance, it can potentially lead to the
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teacher candidate one day engaging in the sort of activist and action research practices described by Beckett (2016), practices which require the social justice teacher to call out the practices and actions of others that they consider to be unjust and to construct more democratic forms of education. The transfer of knowledge into practice is not straightforward or automatic (King, 1999). However, it has been soundly argued that reflection on this knowledge is a cognitive process that can support this transfer process (Sannino, 2008). Reflection is also proposed as a component of teacher education (LadsonBillings, 2001).
Reflective Practice Numerous authors have proposed critical reflection as a tool to help teachers deal with uncertainty and cope with problems they face in the classroom (Dewey, 1933; Schön, 1983, 1987; Van Manen, 1977). At a basic level, reflective practice involves scrutiny of a situation which brings forward and questions the understandings and assumptions underpinning the situation (Schön, 1983). In the context of social justice there is an emphasis on reflecting on understandings and assumptions about the discourses, structures, practices and ideologies that shape the educational experiences of all students and create inequities for some. As such, reflective practice is not simply a matter of rationalising one’s practice. Rather, reflection should lead the teacher ‘to make meaning from the situation in ways that enhance understanding so that she or he comes to see and understand the practice setting from a variety of viewpoints’ (Loughran, 2002, p. 34). Some of the things teachers might reflect upon are student learning, instructional processes and their subject area content (Valli, 1997). Zeichner and Liston (1996) suggest that the reflective teacher will consider their own pedagogic practice and not only whether it is working but also how the practice is working and for whom. Reflection on one’s practice, which is then in dialogue with understandings of power and inequality in society, can support the development of a teacher who enacts a social justice agenda. In social justice education, a disposition towards self-reflection and learning is key (Zeichner and Liston, 1987, 1996), and a useful set of attitudes for reflection have been proposed by Dewey (1933): openmindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness. The type of reflective practice which Jay and Johnson (2002) call the ‘critical’ type involves a questioning of the values inherent in their practice and their political implications. The process is intended to lead the teacher to make changes to their practice in ways that ensure quality and respect for differences. Teacher education and training that aims to support social justice in education will involve this critical type of reflective practice. More specifically, teacher education should support teachers in connecting their understandings of systems of inequity to their own personal experiences, beliefs and actions (Bell, 2007; King, 1991).
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Another aspect of reflection is focused on self-awareness and is often referred to as reflexivity (Villegas, 2007). Reflexivity can be thought of as a dialogue with the self about how the self has been engaged in the world and critically assessing the assumptions that underlie the actions we took, and the impact those actions may have had. This reflexivity can be a strong foundation from which to reflect on practices as described above. However, reflexivity can be a difficult process as it often means recognising one’s own power and privilege, which can lead to feelings of guilt and distress. As such social justice teacher education also includes a degree of emotional labour and collegial support. To support reflection and reflexivity, I would like to propose an approach to assessment that I will call Assessment for Reflection, which can be seen as along similar lines as another framework for assessment known as Assessment for Learning or AfL. AfL uses both summative and formative assessment to support students in their learning (Sambell, McDowell & Montgomery, 2008). I prefer to refer to Assessment for Reflection to signal a difference in what is learned. In the context of social justice, I wish to focus on learning to be critically reflective. Another key difference is that I see these as being self-assessments, a practice already part of many teacher education programmes (Loughran and Hamilton, 2016). However, by calling this Assessment for Reflection, we emphasise that the purpose is not to judge but to push each other to reflect critically on what has been observed, experienced or shared by others (e.g. through narrative). Selfassessments, written by trainee teachers, could be assessed by non-dominant individuals as well as by peers, mentors and teacher educators. These external assessors would be guided to focus on issues relating to social justice and address the thinking, beliefs and emotions that lie behind the practices, actions and language usage. They would also be anonymous in order to avoid putting the teacher candidates in unnecessarily uncomfortable positions, particularly for those just beginning their learning journeys. It should be recognised that a degree of unlearning (King, 1991) often needs to take place. The teacher candidate will have had a lifetime of exposure to the ideologies, structures, discourses and arrangements that marginalise non-dominant groups (add to this the discourses that avert attention from structural issues towards deficit perspectives that blame individuals or at least expect individuals to pull themselves up from their bootstraps). Assessment for Reflection but also dialogue can support this unlearning, if structured to do so. The curriculum, pedagogy and assessment of teacher education would be organised so as to highlight and unpack ideologies, structures, discourses and arrangements of education. It would need to provide opportunities to discuss and construct alternative visions and approaches that could be discussed with those who would be impacted by the changes being considered. Through discussion, actions would be planned and implemented. Informed by critical race theory and critical theory as well as narrative methods and reflective practice, we often see essays, journals and other formats supporting reflection used in
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teacher education (Zeichner, Melnick & Gomez, 1996) which can be part of Assessment for Reflection to the extent that they are used for reflection. I would also argue that although the end goal with Assessment for Reflection is reflexivity, a reflective stance is in itself a step on the journey there. Moreover, as noted already, the end goal of social justice is not perceivable but emergent. One way to be responsive to this dynamism is to be reflexive. Assessment can be useful in supporting reflexivity to the extent that it turns the lens upon the self as a teacher for social justice. For instance, in being reflexive a teacher may ask, how have I acted in relation to my vision for myself as a social justice educator? S/he may ask, where have I gone off track or where have I surprised myself? Reflexive dialogue can be with an imagined other or with a real other, such as a fellow educator. Such assessment, to work well, needs to have a learning purpose rather than a certification purpose. It needs to be seen as developmental and supportive of the individual on a journey towards a multi-dimensional and critical approach to social justice education. Assessment can function as a mirror or tool for continuing professional development. However, safe spaces need to be created to enable discussion of these issues. Part of creating a safe space, which relates to assessment, is avoiding or at least overcoming the fear of failure which can arise when one’s ability to achieve social justice appears daunting or impossible. This reflective and reflexive stance is an important precondition to engaging in pedagogic practices and actions, and these also need scaffolding.
Pedagogic Practices and Actions Social justice education is ultimately about the actions and practices of individuals in educational contexts. There are, as noted above, various frameworks for social justice which bring into frame distinct practices and actions. Based on the principles of social justice (Cochran-Smith, 2010), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994), critical pedagogy (Freire, 1993) and power (Delpit, 1988), we can argue that social justice education means teachers are supported and enabled to challenge misconceptions and stereotypes in their interactions with students and colleagues, and can identify and utilise materials in the classroom that create inclusive, empowering and critical learning environments. Their pedagogic practices and daily interactions with students and colleagues are based on principles of social justice and reflexivity. Such practices and actions are learned. From a social learning theory perspective, this learning happens through peripheral engagement with a ‘community of practice’, of which through processes of alignment and identification one comes to negotiate full membership as a practitioner (Wenger, 1998). Thompson has argued that a necessary part of engaging with social justice is to performatively try on new assumptions (Thompson, 2003). This is especially important for those teachers who typically experience education from positions of privilege given the historical status and ideologies of Western societies (Frankenberg, 1993).
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Taking these points together means pre-service teachers need opportunities to learn through practising as a teacher, but having a sort of test space to try on ideas and identities is also important. Assessment that is formative could play a role in providing pre-service teachers with these performative opportunities. One possibility is to utilise technologies that allow for virtual play and digital gaming, allowing for trial and error learning in a low risk context. In a virtual world, feedback to teachers could be in real time, involving teacher educators, colleagues in schools, and representatives of non-dominant communities who choose to be involved in the education of teachers (a similar approach is taken in medical education, where patient carer communities are involved in supporting trainee doctors in patient communication, for instance). In a digital game, teacher educators could make use of a common feature in digital games which gives the player feedback in response to actions taken by the player of the game (Gee, 2004). Games or ‘virtual internships’ (Arastoopour et al., 2016) could be designed to provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to try on identities as social justice teachers and gain feedback on their actions. If the ‘communities of practice’ approach to learning (Wenger, 1998) is taken, discussions around social justice could include the practices and repertoires that define the local community of practice, made up of those who identify as teachers for social justice (including those in training). This would mean the community of practice was collaboratively defining the approaches to assessment they would use to support each other’s learning. The experts in the community – those who enact social justice practices in their classrooms, for example – would be recognised and teacher candidates would be peripheral participants in this community of practice, learning alongside experts.
Issues and Tensions It is important that assessment in this context is not measured or translated into a score or scale given the subjective and interrelational dimensions of social justice. If some judgement is to be made, this should be on a pass/fail basis with the criteria for pass being strong enough to deflect superficial engagement in a task, but weak enough to avoid disengagement from those who have cautiously decided to engage in the journey towards social justice. In my own research (Farnsworth, 2010), I was not assessing student teachers’ learning but, rather, I was trying to understand their process of development. Reflecting this developmental stance, I have proposed functions for assessment that are formative and support the development of knowledge, critical reflection and practice. Another issue to consider is whether assessing practices at an early stage of a teacher’s development could negatively impact on their confidence and motivation if the goals set are unrealistic goals and not achieved. This is why I have proposed a nuanced perspective to social justice education, one which includes
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beliefs and language as well as actions and pedagogic practices as subject to formative assessment. The above framing of social justice in education also has implications for how that assessment is done, namely in collaboration with the various communities intended to be supported, recognised and respected. As such, assessment needs to be dynamic and multi-dimensional. Furthermore, recognising that assessments of social justice are ‘knowingly imperfect’ (Cochran-Smith, 2010, pp. 453–454), assessment processes should be integrated throughout the curriculum and should be longitudinal. Tensions in the learning environment due to resistance to social justice education (King, 1991) can mean there are people who do not engage with the feedback or assessment activities. This can throw off the learning environment for others. The solution to this probably lies with pedagogy and the curriculum rather than assessment, although these clearly intersect. While pedagogy and curriculum will focus on what to teach and how, assessment can be used to support critical understanding of the content and critical reflection on one’s engagement with the learning activities provided by a teacher education programme or course. Adeptness in questioning and critical stances is particularly important in a context that tends to divert attention from issues of social justice to issues of individual deficit and resilience (Gutierrez, 2008). In other words, teacher candidates may receive conflicting messages from the schools they visit and from the wider educational discourses and practices to which they are exposed; and, from a social justice perspective, we want teachers to question these messages and assumptions. The pressures of performativity and requirements dictated through certain educational policies could also discourage student teachers from engaging fully in the learning and teaching opportunities provided by their programme. Assessment for Reflection can support their learning and development and can allow ‘communities of practice’ to emerge that can further support learning. Thus, while there are limits to what assessment can do, and for that matter what teacher education can accomplish, there are also possibilities. Formatively assessing social justice principles and practices in a teacher education programme can provide one additional lever to encourage the learning that is so important. Given the many conflicting messages and complexities of education and society, teacher education needs to have a strong dialogic component. Assessment can contribute to this if it is framed as a tool for reflection.
Conclusion Social justice in education is about equity and recognition but also about creating more equitable systems and structures (Cochran-Smith, 2010). However, achieving social justice is an ongoing struggle and there are multiple complexities and contradictions which need to be recognised and addressed. Assessment that is formative and hence supports development can be a tool to attend to these complexities
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and contradictions. The focus of this chapter was on how assessment could support the learning and development of teachers where the ultimate aim is achieving social justice in education. Implicit in the framing of social justice provided here is reflection (Zeichner, 1983). That is, those who practice social justice are those who are reflective about their words and deeds as well as their position in society and their understanding of education in terms of social group ideologies, knowledge and power. Given this, my focus has been on the function of assessment in relation to a process of reflective practice, which can enable teacher candidates on their journey toward a social justice orientation. Assessment can be part of a teacher education course that provides and engages with social justice at multiple levels and dimensions of society (Nieto and Bode, 2008). It can also play a key role in dialogue that is both discursive (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2003; Valli, 1997) and dialogic (Bakhtin, 1981). In sum, assessment can have a role to play in supporting teachers in becoming social justice educators by providing opportunities for critical reflection, thinking and practices that support social justice principles. Formative assessment, or what I have called Assessment for Reflection, can complement existing strategies and also new developments in technology, such as virtual worlds and digital games. Assessment or feedback on learning can also work in tandem with creating a community of practice and can be a way to collaborate with the communities disaffected by education. In recognising the global, societal and systemic factors that impact on the capabilities (Sen, 2010) of teachers, and the multiple and changing instantiations of social justice, teacher education must have a multi-pronged approach to developing social justice teachers. Assessment can be one component of this.
References Adams, M., Bell, L. A., Goodman, D., & Joshi, K. (Eds.). (2016). Teaching for diversity and social justice (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2011). Global crises, social justice, and teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(2), 222–234. Apple, M. W., & Beane, J. A. (2007). Democratic schools: Lessons in powerful education (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Arastoopour, G., Shaffer, D.W., Swiecki, Z., Ruis, A.R., & Chesler, N.C. (2016). Teaching and assessing engineering design thinking with virtual internships and epistemic network analysis. International Journal of Engineering Education, 32(3B), 1492–1501. Austin, J. L. (1999, 1975). How to do things with words. In A. Jaworski and N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader (pp. 63–75). London: Routledge. Ayers, W., Quinn, T., & Stovall, D. (Eds.) (2009). Handbook of social justice in education. New York: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. M. [1934–41] (1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays. M. Holquist (Ed.); C. Emerson and M Holquist (Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
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Beach, K. (1999). Consequential transitions: A sociocultural expedition beyond transfer in education. Review of Research in Education, 24: 101–139. Beckett, L. (2016). Teachers and academic partners in urban schools: Threats to professional practice. Taylor & Francis Group. Bell, L. A. (2007). Theoretical foundations for social justice education. In M. Adams, L. A. Bell, & P. Griffin (Eds.), Teaching for diversity and social justice (2nd ed.) (pp. 1–14). New York: Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M. (2010). Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second international handbook of educational change: Part 1 (pp. 445–468). Netherlands: Springer. Connelly, M. F., & Clandinin, J. D. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Delpit, L. D. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review 58(3): 280–298. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relations of reflective thinking to the educative process (2nd revised ed.). Boston, MA: D.C. Heath. Farnsworth, V. (2010). Conceptualizing identity, learning and social justice in community-based learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(7): 1481–1489. Fennimore, B. (2000). Talk matters: Refocusing the language of public schooling. New York: Teachers College Press. Florio-Ruane, S., & deTar, J. (2001). Teacher education and the cultural imagination: Autobiography, conversation and narrative. New York: Routledge. Fook, J. (2014). Social Justice and Critical Theory. In M. Reisch (Ed.), Routledge international handbook of social justice (pp. 160–172). New York: Routledge. Accessed on: 11 December 2015: https://www. routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315857534.ch11 Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis-St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press. Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the ‘postsocialist’ condition. New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Books. Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106– 116. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London & New York: Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2004). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gibbs, G. (2006). Why assessment is changing. In C. Bryan & K. Clegg (Eds.), Innovative assessment in higher education (pp. 23–36). London: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (Ed.) (1992). Studying teachers’ lives. London: Routledge. Gordon, J. A. (2000). Color of teaching. London & New York: RoutledgeFalmer Griffin, P., Hardiman, R., & Jackson, B. (2007). Conceptual foundations of social justice education. In M. Adams, L. A. Bell, & P. Griffin (Eds.), Teaching for diversity and social justice (2nd ed.) (pp. 35–66). New York: Routledge. Gutierrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the Third Space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York & London: Routledge.
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Howard, G. R. (2006). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Jay, J. K., & Johnson, K. L. (2002). Capturing complexity: A typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(1), 73–85. King, J. E. (1991). Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and miseducation of teachers. Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 133–146. Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Ladson-Billings, G. (2001). Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2003). The essential conversation: What parents and teachers can learn from each other. New York: Ballantine Books. Loughran, J., & Hamilton, M. L. (Eds.) (2016). International handbook of teacher education, volume 2. Netherlands: Springer. Loughran, J. J. (2002). Effective reflective practice: In search of meaning in learning about teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 33–43. McLaren, P., & Ryoo, J. J. (2012). Revolutionary critical pedagogy against capitalist multicultural education. In H. K. Wright, M. Singh, & R. Race (Eds.), Precarious international multicultural education: Hegemony, dissent and rising alternatives (pp. 61–81). Rotterdam, Boston and Taipei: Sense Publishers. McIntosh, P. (1998). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Excerpted from Working Paper 189, White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in Women’s Studies. Accessed 4 July 2016: http://www.cirtl.net/files/PartI_ CreatingAwareness_WhitePrivilegeUnpackingtheInvisibleKnapsack.pdf Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2008). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Rose, M. (2005). The mind at work: Valuing the intelligence of the American worker. New York: Viking. Sambell, K., McDowell, L., & Montgomery, C. (2008) Assessment for learning in higher education. Abingdon: Routledge. Sannino, A. (2008). From talk to action: Experiencing interlocution in developmental interventions. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 15(3), 234–257. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. A. (1997). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sen, A. K. (2010). The place of capability in a theory of justice. In H. Brighouse & I. Robeyns (Eds.), Measuring justice: Primary goods and capabilities (pp. 239–253). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sleeter, C.E., & Cornbleth, C. (2011). Teaching with vision: Culturally responsive teaching in standardsbased classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Sleeter, C. E., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2004). Critical pedagogy, critical race theory, and antiracist education: Implications for multicultural education. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed.) (pp. 240–261). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Thompson, A. (2003). Tiffany, friend of people of color: White investments in antiracism. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(1), 7–29. Valli, L. (1997). Listening to other voices: A description of teacher reflection in the United States. Peabody Journal of Education, 72(1), 67–88. van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London: Sage. Van Manen, M. J. (1977). Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical. Curriculum Inquiry, 6(3), 205–208.
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Villegas, A.M. (2007). Dispositions in teacher education: A look at social justice. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(5), 370–380. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level: Why equality is better for everyone. London: Penguin Books. Young, M. F. (2008). From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the curriculum. Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 1–28. Zeichner, K. (2009). Teacher education and the struggle for social justice. New York: Routledge. Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1987). Teaching student teachers to reflect. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 23–48. Zeichner, K. (1983). Alternative paradigms of teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 34(3), 3–9. Zeichner, K. M., Melnick, S. L., & Gomez, M. L. (Eds.). (1996). Currents of reform in preservice teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press.
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Section X
The Education and Learning of Teacher Educators Stefinee Pinnegar
Attention to the preparation and learning of teacher educators is a fairly recent topic in the conversation surrounding research on teacher education. Yet, just as teachers often assert they taught themselves to teach, most teacher educators would argue that they taught themselves to be teacher educators (Arizona Group, 1995). Thus a focus on the preparation and learning of teacher educators is a recent, but important, addition to the research conversation surrounding teacher education. The purpose of this section is an examination of how teacher educators are prepared and what contributes to their learning. Each of the chapters provides important insights into this phenomenon. The section begins with a chapter by Jean Murray that defines who teacher educators are. Then under the able hand of Robert Kleinsasser we engage in an exploration of the complex work life of the teacher educator. Linor L. Hadar and David L. Brody examine formal processes, practices, and programs focused on teacher educators’ professional learning. Finally, with Mary Lynn Hamilton, I (Stefinee Pinnegar) explore inquiry into teacher educator experience and practices. In Chapter 58, Murray considers the range of possibilities as well as the roles of context and situation in determining who might be considered a teacher educator. She peruses assignments across the university, within schools or school districts, in terms of the roles and responsibilities assigned, and in relationship
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to whether, at a particular institution, teacher education occurs primarily at the university or within schools. Her explication of the complexity and particularity of international venues of teacher education leads to more sophisticated understanding of processes for educating teachers and those participating. She illuminates the impact of context and situation in determining who and what a teacher educator is. She underscores the importance of naming oneself a teacher educator and aggravates rather than settles our understanding – reminding us that arts and science faculty providing future teachers with subject matter knowledge, district people arranging placements and practicum, and faculty in and across colleges of education are potentially teacher educators. She notes not all teacher educators began as teachers. She explores the neoliberal incursion into defining teacher educators, exploring the current dichotomy where governments insist that teacher educators simultaneously provide future teachers with more academic and more practical experiences in their preparation. While Murray settles on a restricted definition of teacher educators (those working in higher education settings focused on preparing teachers), her wider discussion of who might be considered a teacher educator opens avenues for productive future research. For example, how might academics teaching service courses adjust their curriculum if they recognized their role in the education of teachers? How do teacher educators respond to the tensions between more traditional teacher education and practicum experiences in preparing teachers? How might a more thorough examination of the differences and similarities of teacher educator practices (begun here with Jean Murray) enrich teacher education? In Chapter 59, labeled a ‘quest’, Kleinsasser examines teacher educators’ work. He makes clear the range of activities that make up their work and its interlocking and interwoven character. He labels and explores teacher educators’ work, first through research and then personal experience, revealing patterns in the work. He investigates the settings and contexts of teacher educators’ work. He argues that the way that teacher education is situated in universities and schools can open opportunities for teacher educators but can also limit them. He reminds us as well that many of these possibilities and limits persevere across institutional and international boundaries, occurring not only in American contexts but in international contexts as well. He describes teacher educator knowledge as a ‘burgeoning tapestry’, arguing that teacher educators draw on a variety of knowledges and that the variety is necessary if teacher educators are to meet the diverse challenges as well as political and institutional difficulties they confront daily. Finally, he characterizes the work of the teacher educator as professional development wherein we, as teacher educators, face contentious experiences and depend on complicated interrelationships of knowledge in order to traverse this landscape. In this process, we become teacher educators. He reminds us that it is our work as teacher educators that enables us to negotiate this complex and contentious landscape. Future examinations of the work of teacher educators might profitably explore the intertwined knowledges that teacher educators draw on in
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practice. Future research might also examine distinctions between teaching science, math, social studies, arts, or physical education in tension with what teacher educators need to know to teach others to teach these various subjects. Taking up Kleinsasser’s quest framework, teacher educators might explore further the moral and ethical dilemmas they face in their work and in their examinations unpack the political and pragmatic tensions inherent in the work of teacher education. In their review of the literature, Hadar and Brody articulate three foci enabling us to think in sophisticated ways about teacher educator development and learning. Included are the process of becoming a teacher educator, the need to attend to role and practice, and the importance of teacher educators’ continued learning. Their chapter reviews research in each of these areas by providing a view of the landscape of becoming a teacher educator, taking up appropriate roles and practices, and continuing to learn across our professional lives. Hadar and Brody also articulate two kinds of work in this area: learning that emerges from teacher educators studying their practice, and studies of formally organized programs of teacher educator professional development. One of their contributions is the provision of summaries of three of their studies of teacher educator development. As I read their studies, I was struck with the kinds of professional learning teacher educators naturally engage in as part of their work. While this point was made by Kleinsasser as well, in reading their examples I began to recognize how teacher educators might profitably explore how their learning and development emerges as they engage in designing and enacting their curriculum and pedagogy. Further, others across national boundaries and differing contexts might explore the efficacy of particular approaches and responses to supporting the development of teacher educators. Future studies could focus more clearly on what teacher educators learn as they engage in their practice and the process underlying their learning. Teacher educators are often responsible for the professional development of teachers, yet Hadar and Brody make clear that little work has explored the impact of participation in professional development of teachers on the learning of teacher educators. In the last chapter, Pinnegar and Hamilton articulate the value of teacher educators exploring their own experiences as teacher educators in knowing, becoming, and doing teacher education (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015). They argue for the promise of engaging in research that excavates teacher educators’ knowing about teaching, teacher education and schooling, and publishing it. We unfold, articulate, and document the value of intimate scholarship where teacher educator studies of practice and programs are subjective in nature, provide trustworthy accounts, and invite readers to shift, transform, and deepen knowing of their practice by interrogating the studies provided in relationship to their experience. They provide accounts of strong studies exemplifying intimate scholarship (artsbased methods, autoethnography, action research, narrative inquiry, narrative research, and self-study of practice), demonstrating the contributions of this kind of scholarship. Such inquiries reveal what it means to be a teacher educator, the
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knowing embedded in this work, and the knowledge they contribute to research on teaching and teacher education. This chapter can provoke rich future research opportunities. The most obvious inquiries might explore existing methodologies and their shaping and alteration when enacted from the perspective of intimate scholarship. Further research can focus on any of the issues raised in this section taken up from the subjective stance and openness of intimate scholarship. Exploring questions from the relational ontological space of intimate scholarship will contribute to knowledge of teacher educator learning and development. The chapters are provocative. First, reading them pushes the reader forward in his/her development as a teacher educator. The arguments made and the research discussed thrust readers into a zone of maximal contact – they reconsider their past as students, perhaps teachers, and now teacher educators, shift understanding in this present moment and position themselves differently in future experiences as teacher educators and what it means to be one (Bakhtin, 1981). Second, the individual chapters in this section focus on particular themes: definition of teacher educators (Murray), the work of teacher educators (Kleinsasser), the learning of teacher educators (Hadar and Brody), and the knowledge teacher educators hold (Pinnegar and Hamilton). Interestingly, attention to all four of the themes occurred in each chapter. Indeed, each author addressed the other themes of the section as part of their exploration of the particular focus of his/ her chapter. Thus, the themes of the section were interwoven across all the chapters. All four chapters articulate the difficulty of providing a definition noting how teacher education occurs in a variety of settings, crossing many institutional boundaries, and involving educators positioned in different roles. Each chapter provides commentary on the work of teacher educators. All of the chapters comment on the knowledge and learning of teacher educators. Finally, each chapter explores and articulates teacher educator knowledge that emerges when teacher educators study their own practices and learning. Just as significantly, Murray, Kleinsasser, Hadar and Brody, Pinnegar and Hamilton assert the contribution studies of teacher education practice make to the individual growth and learning of teacher educators. Most importantly, these chapters make clear that in order to understand teacher education and improve it, teacher educators need to begin with teacher educators’ knowledge rather than from imposed frameworks of knowledge for teacher education (Clandinin, 2000). As teacher educators, we have much to contribute to this discourse and the most important route is through inquiries focused on how we define ourselves, the work we do, and the advances in our learning, or examinations of our knowing and practice. What this section of this Handbook makes clear is the vital role of teacher educators for preparing new teachers. It makes public important practices teacher educators instantiate in their role as curriculum planners (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988) and the value of examining their action and thinking as they take up and enact these practices.
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References Arizona Group: Guilfoyle, K., Hamilton, M. L., Pinnegar, S, & Placier, M. (1995). Becoming teachers of teachers: The paths of four beginners. In T. Russell & F. Korthagen (Eds.). Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections on teacher education (pp. 35–55). London: Falmer Press. Bakhtin, M. M. [1934–41] (1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays. M. Holquist (Ed.); C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Clandinin, J. (2000). Learning to teach: A question of knowledge. Education Canada, 40(1), 28–35. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1988). Teachers as curriculum planners. Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press. Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (2015). Knowing, becoming, doing as teacher educators: Identity, intimate scholarship and inquiry. Bingley: Emerald.
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58 Defining Teacher Educators: International Perspectives and Contexts Jean Murray
This chapter takes the view that teacher educators are central to the field of teacher education. They are present as expert guides throughout the teacher life cycle: they design, implement and evaluate pre-service teacher education programmes and are sometimes similarly involved in providing professional learning opportunities for serving teachers; their pedagogies aim to model and exemplify the best of professional practice for both schools and higher education (Loughran, 2006); the commitments they make to ‘the public good’ and particularly their missions to serve education are often noted. Furthermore, meta-analyses of teacher education research in the USA (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005) and the UK (Menter, Hulme, Murray, Campbell, Hextall, Jones, Mahony, Procter, & Wall, 2010) indicate that teacher educators also undertake much of the research that informs learning and teaching in the field. Yet, despite these assertions – which many teacher educators will share – teacher educators are not always a well defined or widely recognised group. This is despite the clear membership claims and definitions created in some national contexts or across certain professional sub-groups (for example, the Self-Study (S-STEP) research community). The general lack of a shared definition becomes particularly evident when working transnationally. So when teacher educators from different countries meet to discuss their work some of the first and most pressing questions asked are often, ‘who is recognised as a teacher educator in your country?’, ‘do all these educators claim or accept that membership?’ and ‘who else might claim or be considered for membership of the occupational group?’ In many international contexts, then, there is a ‘problem of definition’ (Ducharme, 1993, p. 2) in trying to discuss teacher educators as a stable, homogeneous and
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clearly demarcated occupational group. This problem, which has persisted over time and national contexts, is commonly attributed to a number of factors including the very different types and structures of teacher education system found internationally, the breadth of the field, its lack of clear boundaries separating it from other academic fields, and the reluctance of some academics and teachers to be identified as teacher educators. This problem of definition, first identified decades ago in the USA, has in many ways has been exacerbated by recent shifts in the field of teacher education. As Davey (2013, p. 21) reports in her work on teacher educators in New Zealand, ‘the problems of identification and delimitation with respect to who is, and is not, a teacher educator have persisted to the present’ with this ‘vagueness’ around definition increasing in the last two decades because of moves to make in-school mentors more responsible for the preparation of future teachers in some jurisdictions, and an increasing reliance on casualised staff to provide parts of their teacher education programmes in others. (p. 20)
It is the key questions around definition which this chapter aims to address. In the process of answering them, other questions also emerge, including: what differing definitions of the occupational group have there been over time? How do these definitions change in different places and teacher education systems? What factors affect changes in the membership of the group? How is inclusion affected by institutional contexts, work roles, personal biographies, identities and practices? The analysis below provides examples of the differing definitions of the occupational group there have been over time and how these definitions have changed in different countries and teacher education systems. Achieving a full international review of all the literature about definitions of teacher educators in a chapter of this length is clearly impossible. It is certainly unrealistic, for example, to try to trace the layers of variation which exist across large countries, such as the USA or Canada, where teacher education may be a national, state or provincial responsibility. This chapter is therefore written from the personal perspective of a teacher educator based in the UK but working in international contexts over the past three decades. A particular influence on the formation of the chapter has been the experience of participating in a European Commission initiative since 2011. The chapter therefore foregrounds some recent developments in European teacher education which have challenged accepted definitions of teacher educators; European research on these changes is used to illustrate the resulting issues. These pan-European patterns of shifts in policies and practices – and some of the effects on teacher educators – are also mirrored in other continents and countries, albeit sometimes in different timeframes. Relevant exemplars from research in these contexts have therefore been drawn into this analysis to give wider international perspectives. Here the focus is, in the main, on European and/ or Anglophone nations, although limited perspectives from Asia and Africa are also included. In this analysis the chapter makes only a limited exploration of the
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complexities of teacher education as a field and the roles and identities of teacher educators, as these areas are covered in other chapters in this handbook. The quantity of research on teacher educators has certainly grown in the last ten years but is still not extensive (Davey, 2013; Izadinia, 2014). Most studies focus on what will be called here the ‘core’ or ‘traditional’ group of teacher educators working in and employed by a Higher Education Institution (HEI) of some sort. Davey (2013, p. 21) narrows the definition further in seeing many studies as dominated by analyses only of ‘pre-service teacher educators’. Diversities and differentiations within the group are stated in some studies, but this awareness is not always translated into the research methodology – for example, by giving clear sampling criteria or explaining the types of educator included. Consequently, it is not always clear what kind of work the educators concerned are undertaking, including whether they are teaching pre- and/or in-service programmes or are active researchers. There are also other methodological factors to consider: most of the research is small-scale and practice-based, conducted and reported by teacher educators who are practitioners and/or researchers and policymakers in the field, and based on various self-report methods. These characteristics of teacher education research are not necessarily problematic in themselves, of course, but they do mean that the perspectives given are usually those of ‘insiders’ in the field and that there are limits to the coherent accumulation of findings capacity for impact on the field (Menter et al., 2010).
Teacher educators’ positions within teacher education Despite the many contestations around definitions, the centrality of teacher educators to all aspects of teacher education has – perhaps unsurprisingly – long been a key part of an intra-professional consensus which sees the occupational group as vital to the health of teacher education. This conviction has not, however, always been well communicated to those outside the field, including school teachers, policymakers and other stakeholders. Policymakers in particular have been much slower to recognise it. With teacher education now positioned as both an international policy problem and a potential lever for strengthening the school sector (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012), policymakers have regularly proposed changes to existing pre- and in-service programmes, created new routes into teaching, mandated new competencies or standards for student teachers to attain and devised rigorous auditing or inspection procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher learning. In most of these policy documents the importance of teacher educators in the system remains largely ‘hidden’ or overlooked. Commentators have often attributed tendencies to overlook teacher educators to the historical positioning of teacher education as low status within the
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university sector (Furlong, 2013). Teacher educators are thus positioned as both ‘inside/outside the ivory tower’ (Maguire, 1994, p. 24), participating in a feminised occupation, undertaken predominantly by women, and inevitably influenced by gendered and classed discourses and practices associated with teaching and the care and nurture of children (Murray & Maguire, 2007). Nevertheless, the ‘over-looking’ of teacher educators in policymaking is odd, to say the least, given the stress placed on the central importance of teachers in schooling (OECD, 2005). As Davey states, If the quality of teaching in schools in determined in large part by who teachers are, and how, and what they teach then the quality of teacher education is also likely to be similarly affected by who teacher educators are, and how, and what they teach. (2013, p. 4, italics in the original)
When attention has been paid to teacher educators and their practices, the comments have often been critical and dismissive. In England in the 1980s, for example, teacher educators were routinely portrayed as misguided ideologues, over-influenced by socialist or communist dogma and campaigning for revolutionary social change. Epitomising these kind of attacks, discourses of derision about teacher educators survived from the 1980s, occasionally ‘shape changing’ and re-surfacing in new forms but reaching new renewed and stronger iterations from 2010 onwards. Ferocious attacks on teacher educators have since come from policymakers, the media and stakeholders within other sectors of education, with teacher educators seen as professionally incompetent and misguided and as ‘enemies of promise’, inhabitants of a ‘Red Planet’ and part of ‘the Blob’ of the educational establishment (Gove, 2013). In these and similar attacks, teacher educators are positioned as destructive forces, ranged against educational reforms designed – in theory – to achieve social justice for marginalised social groups (Gove, 2013). Such attacks on teacher educators have, of course, occurred in other jurisdictions, including the USA and Australia. For example, Levine’s devastating report (2005) on the failures of teacher education in the USA judges that, Teacher education faculty …. are disconnected from the schools. They are disconnected from the arts and sciences. They engage in research disconnected from policy, practice and the academy. (p. 45)
He also refers to teacher education professors ‘with limited real-world experience … out of date, more theoretical than practical’ whose research is ‘subjective … faddish, impractical, out of touch, inbred and politically correct’ and has ‘failed to address the burning problems in the nation’s schools’ (p. 47). In a similar vein, Mayer (2013) refers to Australian press reports savaging teacher training there as being ‘sub-standard, flawed and ideologically bent’, having ‘overwhelmingly failed’ and being ‘too variable and … largely unsatisfactory to both teachers and principals’.
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The negative attention and/or omissions from policymakers now show signs of changing, however – at least in some national and transnational contexts. As indicated above, in 2011 a European Commission initiative began with a series of consultations including both teacher educators and government stakeholders to investigate how the European Union’s 28 member states might implement improvements to their teacher education systems. This initiative resulted in the publication of a report – Supporting Teacher Educators for Better Learning Outcomes (European Commission, 2013). For the first time in the pan-European policy agenda, this report, issued with advisory status across all member states, positioned teacher educators themselves as a major factor in achieving improvements in teacher education and consequently schooling. The report explicitly states, for example, that ‘(r)eforms that enhance the quality of teacher educators can make a significant improvement to the general quality of teaching and therefore raise pupil attainment’ (p. 1). This report then recognises the centrality of teacher educators in reform, acknowledges their importance as educators of teachers and makes them subjects of the gaze of European policymakers. Achieving this kind of positive recognition from policymakers makes it all the more important that, as an occupational group, teacher educators have confidence in their work and are able to make and justify their claims to centrality in the education process clearly. And in order to do that they need to be able to define their occupational group and assert its expertise.
The Problems of Definition The work of Ducharme (1993) explored the issue of definition through a study of teacher educators working in universities in the USA. Later work (Ducharme & Ducharme, 1996) analysed the large-scale RATE (Research About Teacher Education) studies, again conducted in the USA, and designed to look at the demographics of teacher educators employed by universities. The 1993 analysis listed the types of teacher educator found as ‘school person, scholar, researcher, methodologist, and visitor to a strange planet’, with these types differentiated by the degree by which individuals’ behaviours were judged to be like those of school teachers or of academics in other disciplines within the university (Ducharme 1993, p. 6, citing Ducharme, 1986). The work which these teacher educators did and the roles they undertook in relation to teaching and research, probably major factors influencing these behaviours, are not fully explored in the study. The study does, however, identify that the major satisfactions of teacher education were associated with teaching roles, particularly with participating in student learning. It also shows that most teacher educators had prior experience of school teaching and argues that that experience remained the dominant professional influence for some teacher educators, even in the higher education context.
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The 1996 analysis by Ducharme and Ducharme was designed to give a larger scale demographic picture of teacher education departments in the USA. The staffing within these departments was characterised as stable, with little staff movement. Teacher educators tended to be older than academics in other fields, and had a low status in university academic hierarchies. Again, the majority had worked in schools prior to entering higher education. The occupational group was predominantly Caucasian in ethnic origin. The few teacher educators from ethnic minority groups were often working in urban institutions. The occupational group was predominantly male and, in particular, there were few women in the senior ranks of teacher education departments. Women experienced differing patterns of socialisation and career progression and were characterised as the workhorses of teacher education, being more likely to devote a greater proportion of their time to academic service and a lesser proportion to research and scholarly activity than men. Their promotion opportunities were therefore likely to be more restricted. Women were also more likely to work in elementary teacher education and in school-focused work. All those involved in fieldwork in schools worked longer hours but were less well rewarded in terms of promotion than other sub-groups. These educators were seen as predominantly of lower middle or middle class origins. Their families had restricted experience of higher education; they were often the first in their families to go to university and had attended low ranking institutions. In the RATE survey analysis, as in Ducharme’s earlier work, the structure and status of the employing institution and its varying expectations and norms were all important factors in determining the identity of its teacher educators. This was a particular factor in terms of the pressure to research and publish. From Ducharme’s work, a picture emerges of a far from homogeneous occupational group. Other research from the USA in a similar timeframe confirms this view of the fragmented and diverse nature of the staffing for teacher education departments at this time. Turney and Wright’s (1990) study of teacher educators in Australia shows the same patterns. None of this research makes even passing references to recognising school-based mentors as teacher educators, yet teacher education partnerships between schools and universities were well underway in the USA at this time.
Teacher educators and changes in teacher education in Europe and beyond In Europe, the problem of defining who counts as a teacher educator has in many ways been exacerbated by recent shifts in the field. These shifts have brought further contested definitions of the occupational group. Two major shifts in teacher education in Europe can be defined here. The first is a pan-European ‘turn to the practical’ (Furlong, 2013) or ‘practicum turn’ (Mattsson, Eilertson &
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Rorrison, 2011). This reflects wider international trends, particularly in Anglophone nations such as the USA and Australia, to increase the amount of practical training and learning in schools, including – but not limited to – traditional school-based practice (the practicum). As Groundwater-Smith (2011, p. ix) articulates, this ‘practical turn’ has involved exploring ‘professional practice knowledge and the ways in which our understandings impact upon the design and enactment of … “the practicum curriculum”’. This turn is exemplified across Europe, for example, in recent policy shifts recommending more emphasis on ‘practical work’ in schools within pre-service programmes (European Commission, 2015), as well as greater degrees of partnership between schools and universities. In some countries, entirely schoolled teacher education routes or fast track routes (such as those modelled on the Teach for America scheme) have expanded the traditional occupational group to include recognition of teacher educators working in schools. This is certainly the case in the school-based teacher education systems emerging in the Netherlands and England (Van Velzen & Volman, 2009; McNamara & Murray, 2013). The second trend is ‘a university turn’ (Murray, 2014) in which pre-service work has moved further into the university sector. A number of European countries, including Portugal, Ireland and Norway, have now followed the example of Finland by consolidating more of their pre-service provision within universities (rather than colleges of education) and often raising qualifications to Master’s level. There is also a pattern of offering continuing professional development at Master’s level for serving teachers. Raising qualification levels in this way necessarily involves more time in the research-rich environments of the university, more sustained student teacher involvement in the development of research-literacy and the use of existing research to inform practice and active engagement in research (BERA RSA,1 2014); in short, the depth and breadth of teacher education in the university sector increases. Master’s level qualifications are also important signifiers of national commitments to strengthening the academic and cognitive elements of teacher education. In Scotland, teacher education policy has also taken a ‘university turn’, albeit of a slightly different kind. With pre-service consistently based in universities and at under-graduate degree level since the 1990s, the Donaldson Review of 2011 gave further importance to the role of higher education as ‘central to building the kind of 21st-century profession which this Report believes to be necessary’ (2011, p. 104). But Donaldson (2011, p. 88) recommended under-graduate ITE (Initial Teacher Education) degrees which combine in-depth academic study in areas beyond education with professional studies and development (which) involve staff and departments beyond those in schools of education. (my italics)
The departments of education in Scotland have therefore needed to engage far more with other disciplines, revising their programmes to become more diversified and, in some cases, to include five year pre-service Master’s qualifications.
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International contexts beyond Europe have, of course, also seen shifts in the levels and types of pre-service teacher education qualification offered, and these shifts have similarly affected the occupational definitions and work of teacher educators. An example here is the changes in primary teacher education which Davey (2013, pp. 14–15) describes in New Zealand – from pre-degree level courses offered in six Colleges of Education before the mid 1990s to degree level study (through 85 different qualifications offered nationally) in universities and other institutions last decade. More recently, ‘fast track’ or alternative programmes have added further diversity. As Davey’s study of a group of teacher educators working in this fast changing context shows, there are very significant variations in how professional identities, work and roles are articulated and lived out. Hill and Haigh’s work (2012) analyses one aspect of the changes to teacher education in New Zealand by focusing on teacher educators’ reactions to accelerating imperatives around research engagement. In Europe, both the ‘practice turn’ and the ‘university turn’ have diversified definitions of the occupational group of teacher educators. As indicated earlier, the former has meant enhanced focus on the roles of serving school teachers as teacher educators, as in the school-based teacher education systems in the Netherlands and England (Van Velzen & Volman, 2009; McNamara & Murray, 2013). In England, where partnership between schools and universities has been mandatory for more than 30 years, both mentors in schools and higher education based faculty have long been acknowledged as having key roles in pre-service. But recent policy changes introducing an alternative, school-led route have brought greater numbers of school-based teacher educators into the pre-service system. In addition to traditional mentoring roles, these educators often take on full roles in recruiting, teaching and assessing pre-service teachers. Van Velzen’s work in the Netherlands (Van Velzen & Volman, 2009) shows the development of school–university partnerships in teacher education, the emergence of a new co-ordinating group of school-based teacher educators and the extension of mentoring roles. The school-based teacher educator group may work in schools but in many ways their roles and practices are close to those of university-based teacher educators. These studies show increasingly sophisticated models of ‘second order practice’ (Murray, 2002) or expertise in teaching teachers (Loughran, 2006) being implemented by school-based teacher educators in Dutch classrooms. Van Velzen’s work explains that these changes have occurred in the Netherlands, because many student teachers are now educated in school–higher education partnerships, with schools taking on co-responsibility for teacher education. These changes have involved a transformation of the practicum into ‘guided work-based teacher education’ (Van Velzen & Volman, 2009). Following Mattsson et al. (2011), this transformation is seen as offering student teachers opportunities to develop situated and contextualised professional knowledge and the disposition to act wisely in practice. Co-teaching is important here as part of the Collaborative Mentoring Approach (CMA),
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which Van Velzen developed in a recent project (Van Velzen & Volman, 2009). CMA consists of cycles of three collaboratively prepared and evaluated lessons: the first lesson taught by the mentor; the second involving co-teaching between student and mentor; and the third taught by the student teacher alone. This enactment of practice means that the mentor is able to model pedagogical techniques and classroom routines. In Norway, too, the development of mentoring as an expert form of ‘teaching about teaching’ has brought the work and identities of mentors closer to those of university-based teacher educators (Ulvik & Sunde, 2013). The Donaldson report, now being implemented in Scotland, also recommended major changes to pre-service teacher education, including more extensive partnerships between universities and schools, in which teachers were encouraged to take on greater responsibility as ‘teacher educators’ (Donaldson, 2013, p. 98). It clearly states that ‘all teachers should see themselves as teacher educators and be trained in mentoring’ (2013, p. 94). As in the Carter Review (DfE, 2015) – a report published in England which also recommends the extension and strengthening of mentoring – the implication here is that any teacher can become a good mentor, given the right guidance. In the USA, as partnership traditions have grown from the starting points in the 1990 report of the Holmes Group, models of hybrid teacher educators (Klein, Taylor & Onore, 2012; Martin, Snow & Torrez, 2011) have been identified in which educators may work in schools and/or universities, but their practice is always conceptualised as happening in and around a ‘third space’. This type of practice too broadens the occupational group of teacher educators well beyond the traditional or core group defined by Ducharme in 1993. The ‘university turn’ potentially brings other academics into the occupational group. So, for example, when the Donaldson Report recommended the introduction of under-graduate teaching degrees that combined ‘in-depth academic study in areas beyond education with professional studies and development’, it necessarily involved ‘staff and departments beyond those in schools of education’ (2013, p. 88). University departments of education in Scotland have therefore needed to engage far more with academics from other disciplines teaching on those degrees, many of whom are now potentially positioned as teacher educators, since they teach intending teachers in their lectures and seminars. Many of these academics would certainly not automatically see themselves as teacher educators. Indeed, given the scale and organisational methods of many university education systems, they may not even be aware of the presence of student teachers in their lecture halls or seminar rooms. Yet policy shifts suggest widening the occupational group to include this group of academics, operating as teacher educators, even if in often removed and remote ways and even if they would not easily recognise or claim the identity of ‘teacher educator’. Under the influence of these ‘turns’ in teacher education, then, the occupational group could be expanded to include both school teachers and academics
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from disciplines outside education who are still involved in teaching or guiding prospective teachers. These changes are formalised in the recent European report, referred to above (European Commission, 2013, p. 8), which defines ‘all those who actively facilitate the (formal) learning of student teachers and teachers’ – anywhere in the school or HE systems – as teacher educators (my italics). A further definition in the report is also inclusive, seeing teacher educators as all those who ‘guide teaching staff at all stages in their careers, model good practice, and undertake the key research that develops our understanding of teaching and learning’ (p. 6). This definition means that across Europe, teacher educators may be working in HEIs and/or schools; they may also be working in a variety of roles – teaching, guiding and developing prospective teachers as they develop new knowledge bases and skills in different ways and in different areas of expertise. But, again, there are real issues about such inclusive definitions of the occupational group in terms of who claims, recognises, owns and enacts identification as a teacher educator. There are also issues around how the group and any distinctive practices or knowledge areas it claims may be diluted to the point of disappearance by such wide inclusion criteria. Because these newer, inclusive definitions of the occupational group are largely still in development, the next section of the chapter reverts to a more restricted definition of who counts as a teacher educator. As indicated earlier, these individuals are nearly all in some kind of academic post (that is, they are faculty members) within departments of education in an HEI of some type, usually a university. These educators form a core or traditional group, many of whom might well recognise and claim the title of ‘teacher educator’. As signalled earlier, most of the available empirical studies also focus on this relatively well established group of teacher educators. This group may initially seem relatively homogeneous to an outsider, but even here there are distinct structural differences, varying entry qualifications and routes and differing roles, work patterns and institutional expectations; these exist even before taking into account the – often inter sectional – dimensions of gender, ethnicity and class, alongside personal experiences and attributes.
The traditional group of teacher educators Looking at the traditional core group and its inclusion criteria necessitates analysing the differentiations within it and the very varied higher education contexts within which teacher educators now work. This is important because many research studies indicate that the structure, status, varying expectations and norms of the employing institution are important in determining teacher educators’ roles and identities. Since Ducharme’s work in the early 1990s, the university sector world wide has expanded and diversified considerably (Marginson & van der Wende, 2009), globalisation has become a significant factor in the ways in which many institutions are marketed, neo-liberal practices have brought
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extensive regimes of performativity and audit, and changing employment practices have brought increased casualisation. Internally, each university consists of various disciplines and fields of study. Within a discipline, each group of academics has a defined territory, knowledge base and differing academic practices, differentiated by the processes of knowledge production and dissemination. These differentiations create internal hierarchies of disciplines within each university. As indicated earlier, departments of education – particularly when they are heavily invested in pre-service teacher education – have often been perceived as low status in relation to other disciplines (Labaree, 2004; Furlong, 2013). This might still be so in some high status universities, but in other (often newer) universities and colleges, teacher education may form an important part of the institutions’ missions and their core business. It can therefore be misleading to position teacher educators – automatically – as a low status occupational group, working within a low status part of higher education: rather consideration needs to be taken of the status and power of the education department within the institution before forming any judgements. Further differentiation between teacher educators occurs through the types of route on which faculty work and their roles within each taught programme. For example, in some types of under-graduate route, there may be a core group of teacher educators involved in teaching education disciplines (such as sociology, philosophy, history and psychology), curriculum methods, foundation courses or preparing students for the practicum. On many graduate or post-graduate courses, particularly those of only one year duration commonly found in Anglophone countries, such as England, Australia and New Zealand, teacher educators’ work is likely to be located only in the department of education and to focus in the main on practice-orientated curriculum and methods courses (McNamara, 2010). In countries offering Master’s level post-graduate courses of two or more years’ duration, particularly those following Nordic models, teacher educators’ work will also include those teaching courses defined as ‘subject matter, pedagogical content knowledge, educational studies, research methods and preparation for the practicum’ (Kansanen, 2013, p. 281). It is a commonly found assumption that teacher educators’ practice is based on high levels of scholarship and knowledge of relevant research (Loughran, 2006), but requirements for teacher educators to be actively involved in personal research and to publish their work vary across universities, often depending on how research-intensive the institution is. In addition, some teacher educators may be employed on ‘full’ academic contracts (in which academic work includes research, teaching and service), others on ‘teaching-only’ contracts (in which conventional models of research engagement are not required). The latter group are often easily excluded from engaging in personal research by the weight of their teaching duties. The practices of auditing individual or institutional research productivity, as found in countries such as New Zealand, Australia and the UK, can also act as powerful criteria for defining which teacher educators are or are
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not ‘active researchers’. Countries such as Canada, the USA and Hong Kong, China, operate ‘tenure track’ systems, which enable similar differentiations between teacher educators. Not all teacher educators, then, are – or can be – actively pursuing and publishing their personal research. Yuan’s (2014) study of teacher educators in Hong Kong shows, for example, how two teacher educators at different career stages and on different types of contract enact their identities as researchers and teachers in the fast changing contexts of reform in their university. The impact of requirements for research engagement is also identified in Robinson and McMillan’s (2006) research into how institutional changes in South Africa affect the identities of a group of teacher educators making the transition from a college of education to an HEI. Many universities employ teacher educators to support the practicum, whether by a direct model of ‘supervision’ involving observations and assessments of student teaching, or by requiring work in partnership with mentors and schools to support student learning. Some of these educators may be on part-time or casual (hourly paid) contracts, with little job security. But most of these workers would claim to be teacher educators and they also form an important part of the ‘core’ occupational group, despite their seemingly marginal participation (by time) in higher education. We know that teacher educators often enter higher education for unplanned reasons (Martinez, 2008; Mayer, Mitchell, Santoro & White, 2011). The formal recruitment criteria in use can often determine many of these differentiations within the occupational group, even before the individual starts work. The literature indicates that there are two main routes into teacher education (Van Velzen, Van der Klink, Swennen & Yaffe, 2010; Mayer et al., 2011): first, teacher educators who have previously worked as school teachers (termed ‘the practitioner pathway’ by Davey, 2013, p. 48) and, second, teacher educators who hold doctorates – whether in education or in another discipline – and enter HE-based teacher education to continue their academic careers (Davey’s ‘academic pathway’, 2013, p. 48). Davey (2013) also identifies a third – or hybrid – entry route where work as a teacher educator is combined with doctoral study. Having prior school teaching experience before entering teacher education is a common expectation in many – but by no means all – national contexts. This requirement in turn means that teacher educators tend to be older than the average academic. Demographically, it is challenging to provide exact pictures of the typical teacher educator in any national context at the present time. Large-scale demographic studies of teacher educators, such as the RATE study in the USA, referred to above, or Turney and Wright’s 1990 study of Australian teacher education, are rarely conducted nowadays. But evidence collated from smaller scale studies in various national contexts shows differences in the current demographic picture when contrasted with older ones. This newer body of research indicates, for example, distinct shifts in the gender balance within the occupational group but fewer changes in terms of the representation of ethnic minorities. In contrast
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to the Ducharme and Ducharme (1996) analysis, Goodwin and Kosnik (2013, p. 341), for example, describe teacher educators in the USA as a group predominantly female and ‘mono-cultural, mono-racial in make-up’. Despite being more numerous, women are still more likely to work in elementary teacher education and to undertake fieldwork in schools – again, both areas of work within teacher education sometimes considered lower status and less well remunerated. Changes in the status of academic work, particularly in teacher education, and the specific impacts of policies have contributed to general changes in gender demographics. Many more women came into teacher education in England, for example, as the academic status of the work was perceived to decline from the mid 1980s onwards (Maguire & Murray, 2006). A major influence here was the requirement in 1984 for all teacher educators to have ‘recent and relevant’ knowledge of schooling; this brought large number of school teachers – and many more women – into higher education as teacher educators.
Conclusion This chapter has addressed questions around definitions of teacher educators including ‘who can be included in this occupational group?’ and ‘who might claim membership of it?’. The problems of definition have been shown to be long-standing, with current shifts in the field of teacher education exacerbating it. As illustrated, those definitions of the occupational group have changed over time, with a range of policy factors changing the inclusion criteria and consequently the demographics of its members. The group is also defined differently across national systems, with expansion of the group to include school-based teacher educators of various types in systems where a ‘practical turn’ is happening in teacher education and academics in disciplines outside education in systems where a ‘university turn’ is occurring. The highly inclusive definitions of teacher educators, found in recent, influential European reports, which define both of these new groups as teacher educators, are in many ways only commendable and common sense representations of an expanding occupational group; teachers in schools and academics in many disciplines do teach or guide student teachers during their university education and further professional development, working alongside a core group of teacher educators in teacher education departments. But this chapter has also argued that there are real issues about such inclusive definitions in terms of who ‘claims, recognises, owns and enacts’ identification as a teacher educator and around how distinctive practices or knowledge areas which teacher educators claim may be diluted. The chapter has also drawn on a selection of the available empirical research studies to define and explore the core or traditional group of teacher educators. It has identified that, while this core group may initially seem relatively homogeneous, there are distinct structural differences in the HEIs in which they work. These
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play out in varying entry requirements and routes and differing roles, work patterns and institutional expectations. Teacher educators then enter the field bringing with them varying qualifications, types of experience and personal attributes, and going into different types of role and work pattern in sometimes very different types of HEI. These differences exist even before taking into account dimensions of gender, ethnicity, age and class, alongside personal experiences. In combination, this multiplicity of factors means that there are high levels of diversity and difference to be considered within the core occupational group; this further complicates the ‘problem of definition’. This is important to acknowledge because teacher educators filter their experiences of teaching and researching through their personal value systems and orientations to their work. The questions ‘who is a teacher educator?’, ‘who can – or might be – included in this occupational group?’ and ‘who claims membership of it?’ can only then be answered by looking at long-standing occupational traditions of diversity, difference and attention to practices, roles and values and personal experiences and orientations.
Note 1 BERA is the British Educational Research Association; the RSA is the Royal Society of Arts in the UK.
References BERA-RSA (2014). Research and the teaching profession. Building the capacity for a self-improving education system. Final report of the BERA–RSA inquiry into the role of research in teacher education. Author: London. Retrieved from: https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BERARSA-Research-Teaching-Profession-FULL-REPORT-for-web.pdf. Accessed November 2014. Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. M. (Eds.) (2005). Executive summary. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education (pp. 1–36). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Darling-Hammond, L., & Lieberman, A. (eds) (2012). Teacher education around the world. London: Routledge. Davey, R. (2013). The professional identity of teacher educators: Career on the cusp? London: Routledge. Department for Education (DfE) (2015). The Carter review of initial teacher training (ITT). London: DfE. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carter-review-of-initial-teacher-training. Accessed August 2015. Donaldson, G. (2011). Teaching Scotland’s future: A report of the review of teacher education in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Ducharme, E. R. (1993). The lives of teacher educators. New York: Teachers College Press. Ducharme, M., & Ducharme, E. (1996). A study of teacher educators: Research from the USA. Journal of Education for Teaching, 22(1), 57–70. European Commission (2013). Supporting teacher educators: For better learning outcomes. Brussels: European Commission. European Commission. (2015). Strengthening teaching in Europe: New evidence from teachers compiled by Eurydice and CRELL. Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/education/library/policy/teaching-professionpractices_en.pdf. Accessed August 2015.
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Furlong, J. (2013). Education – An anatomy of the discipline: Rescuing the university project? London: Routledge. Goodwin, A. L., & Kosnik, C. (2013). Quality teacher educators = quality teachers? Conceptualizing essential domains of knowledge for those who teach teachers. Teacher Development, 17(3), 334–346. Gove, M. (2013). I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our schools. Daily Mail, 23 March. Retrieved from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refusesurrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-berates-new-enemiespromise-opposing-plans.html. Accessed 24 March, 2013. Groundwater-Smith, S. (2011). Foreword. In M. Mattsson, T. Eilertson, & D. Rorrison (Eds.) (2011), A practicum turn in teacher education (pp. ix–xiii). Rotterdam: Sense. Hill, M., & Haigh, M. (2012). Creating a culture of research in teacher education: Learning research within communities of practice. Studies in Higher Education, 37(8), 971–988. Izadinia, M. (2014). Teacher educators’ identity: A review of the literature. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(4), 426–441. Kansanen, P. (2013). Teaching as a Master’s level profession in Finland: Theoretical reflections and practical solutions. In O. McNamara, J. Murray, J., & M. Jones (Eds.), Workplace learning in teacher education (pp. 279–292). London: Springer. Klein, E., Taylor, M., & Onore, C., Strom, K., & Abrams, L. (2012). Finding a third space in teacher education: Creating an urban teacher residency. Teaching Education, 24(1), 27–57. Labaree, D. F. (2004). The trouble with ed schools. New York: Yale University Press. Levine, A. (2005). Educating school teachers. New York: The Education Schools Project Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education. London: Falmer. Maguire, M. (1994). Women who teach teachers. Gender and Education, 5(3), 269–281. Maguire, M. and Murray, J. (2006). Changes and continuities in teacher education: International perspectives on a gendered field. Gender and Education, Special Edition, 19(3), 283–296 Marginson, S., & van der Wende, M. (2009). The new global landscape of nations and institutions. In Higher education to 2030 – Volume 2: globalisation (pp. 17–65). Paris: OECD. Martin, S. D., Snow, J. L., & Franklin Torrez, C. A. (2011). Navigating the terrain of Third Space: Tensions with/in relationships in school–university partnerships. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(3), 299–310. Martinez, K. (2008). Academic induction for teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 36(1), 35–51. Mattsson, M., Eilertson, T., & Rorrison, D. (Eds.) (2011). A practicum turn in teacher education. Rotterdam: Sense. Mayer, D. (July, 2013). Policy-driven reforms and the role of teacher educators in professionalising teacher education. Keynote Presentation at the ISATT Conference, University of Ghent, Belgium. Mayer, D., Mitchell, J., Santoro, N., & White, S. (2011). Teacher educators and ‘accidental’ careers in academe: An Australian perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(3), 247–260. McNamara, O. (2010). Une approche technique et rationaliste: La formation des enseignants en Angleterre. Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, 55(4), 49–60. McNamara, O., & Murray, J. (January, 2013). Teacher educators and research-informed teacher education across the UK. Presentation to the Higher Education Academy Summit on Teacher Education. Milton Keynes. Menter, I., Hulme, M., Murray, J., Campbell, A., Hextall, I., Jones, M., Mahony, P. Procter, R., & Wall, K. (2010). Teacher education research in the UK: The state of the art. Revue suisse des sciences de l’éducation, 32(1), 121–142. Murray, J. (2002). Between the chalkface and the ivory towers? A study of the professionalism of teacher educators working on primary initial teacher education courses in the English education system. Collected Original Resources in Education, 26(3), 1–530. Murray, J. (2014). Teacher educators’ constructions of professionalism: Change and diversity in teacher education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 42(1), 7–21.
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Murray, J., & Maguire, M. (2007). Changes and continuities in teacher education: International perspectives on a gendered field. Gender and Education, Special Edition, 19(3), 283–296. OECD (2005). Annual Report 2005 45th Anniversary. Paris: OECD. Robinson, M., & McMillan, W. (2006). Who teaches the teachers? Identity, discourse and policy in teacher education. Teachers and Teacher Education, 22(3), 327–336 Turney, C., & Wright, R. (1990). Where the buck stops: The teacher educators. Sydney: Sydmac Academic Press. Ulvik, M., & Sunde, E. (2013). The impact of mentor education: Does mentor education matter? Professional Development in Education, 39(5), 754–770 Van Velzen, C., & Volman, M. (2009). The activities of a school-based teacher educator: A theoretical and empirical exploration. European Journal of Teacher Education, 32(4), 345–367 Van Velzen, C., Van der Klink, M., Swennen, A., & Yaffe, E. (2010). The induction of teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 61–75. Yuan, R. (2014). Understanding higher education-based teacher educators’ identities in Hong Kong: A sociocultural linguistic perspective. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, (4), 379–400.
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59 A Quest for Teacher Educator Work Robert Kleinsasser
The field of teacher education has been contentious since its inception, as actors within the field and outside of it argue about what we should be teaching and why. (Kennedy, 2015, p. 1)
Teacher educators are actors within the field of teacher education. What type of work do teacher educators engage in as they daily promote teaching and learning? How do teacher educators find their work in a contentious field such as teacher education? What is the work of teacher educators? This quest explores teacher educators’ work in social, cultural, and institutional experiences considering roles and relationships within various settings and contexts (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). It further considers diverse voices (e.g. Elbaz, 1991) that express, enact, and shape various landscapes of teacher educator work. The chapter begins by sketching a brief background and describing literature selected and used in this particular quest. The second section defines teacher educators and begins to contemplate teacher educator work. The ensuing three sections present patterns to begin responding to the questions given above and include: teacher educator settings and context, teacher educator knowledge, and teacher educator professional development. The chapter’s final section offers contemplations and revisits the questions posed at the start of the quest.
Background and Literature Selection As I started this quest to research teacher educators’ work, patterns of a teacher educator’s life seemed forthright. In just a matter of minutes, my particular
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teacher educator canvas took shape. I teach four graduate courses yearly (some face-to-face, some online, some 15 weeks, some 7½ weeks), attend meetings of the programs with which I am involved, and represent Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (TC) faculty on the Arizona State University Curriculum and Program Committee, the Memorial Union Board, and TC’s Non-Tenured Personnel Evaluation Committee. I develop research projects that turn into research articles, try to develop research grants, and work with a weekly writing group. I am book review editor of a national educational journal and serve on the editorial board of an international educational journal. As I contemplated this initial, albeit simple interpretation a lens started clarifying that my colleagues perform similar and additional tasks; landscapes of teacher educators’ work become plausibly infinite – a canvas of a particular teacher educator’s work could be vast and the landscapes of teacher educators’ work abounding. The traditional categories of research, teaching, and service breach the complexity of teacher educator work, while miniscule attributes of teacher educators’ tasks and duties confound realities where teacher educators daily interact. Additionally, numerous influential books, chapters, and articles by teacher educators through the years surely – I assumed – contributed evidence of teacher educators’ work. Yet, upon closer scrutiny, it became clearer that teacher education is a very broad topic (e.g. Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Lanier & Little, 1986) including specific practices teachers implement to assist students’ learning (e.g. Ball and Forzani, 2009; Forzani, 2014), general ideas of teacher education and professional development of teacher educators (e.g. Korthagen, Loughran, & Russell, 2006; Loughran, 2011, 2014; Russell & Loughran, 2007), teacher educator pedagogies (e.g. Korthagen & Kessels, 1999; Loughran, 2006), teacher educator self-study (e.g. Hamilton and Pinnegar, 2014; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2011; Samaras, Guðjónsdóttir, McMurrer, & Dalmau, 2012), partitioning fluid practices of teaching (e.g. Kennedy, 2015), and considering teaching and teacher education through American Educational Research Association (AERA) presidential addresses (e.g. Cochran-Smith, 2016; Darling-Hammond, 2016). Each author, each literature fragment, among numerous others, offers pieces to a robust puzzle of teacher education that construes and triggers real and potential teacher educators’ work. Alas, finding ‘teacher educator work’ is easier said than accomplished within academic literature. I was aware of three focus journal issues pertaining to a growing interest in teacher educator research: two in the Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy (McNicholl, Ellis, & Blake, 2013; Murray & Kosnick, 2011) and the other one in the Journal of Teacher Education (Knight, Lloyd, Arbaugh, Gamson, McDonald, & Nolan, 2014). I was further reminded of works such as The Lives of Teacher Educators (Ducharme, 1993), Becoming a Teacher Educator (Swennen & van der Klink 2009) and The Professional Teacher Educator (Lunenberg, Dengerink, & Korthagen, 2014). These alerted me to accessible landscapes of teacher educator work.
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A search using ‘teacher educator’ and ‘teacher educator work’ in SCOPUS displayed a litany of possibilities writ large with teaching, teachers, or education/ teacher education. I then utilized SCOPUS’ advanced search mechanisms, winnowing a selection process that tapped 20 articles. Five focused on teachers, with some implicating teacher educators but not specifically focusing on them. This left 15 articles (starred [*] in the References) concerning teacher educator work between 2010 and 2015, certainly not exhaustive, but culled from over 3000 entries. I then studied these 15 articles, reviewed the literature cited above, and added a few citations from readings that caught my attention concerning teacher educator work. There are limitations (e.g. use of selected database, term/word focus, Englishwritten manuscripts) to this exercise; nonetheless, the literature offered an avenue for a teacher educator work quest others can adapt, modify, or alter.
Toward Defining Teacher Educators and Their Work Teacher educators have been contextually defined. For example, in the USA they are: ‘Those who hold tenure line positions in teacher preparation in higher edu cation institutions, teach beginning and advanced students in teacher education, and conduct research or engage in scholarly studies germane to teacher education’ (Ducharme, 1993, p. 6). In the Netherlands, teacher educators are ‘all those who teach or coach (student) teachers with the aim of supporting their professional development’ (Lunenberg et al., 2014, p. 5, italics original). In the UK, teacher educators are usually qualified teachers with substantial experience of school teaching and teach on pre-service or initial teacher education courses. ‘Teacher educators usually enter higher education without doctorates or sustained experience of conducting personal research’ (Murray, Czerniawski, & Barber, 2011, p. 261). More recently, within an American study, teacher educators are characterized as ‘university-based doctoral-prepared faculty who engage in teacher educating – that is, the preparation of preservice or future teachers’ (Goodwin, Smith, Souto-Manning, Cheruvu, Tan, Reed, & Taveras, 2014, p. 300). Teacher educators from Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK provided evidence that the majority of them ‘were able to move quite easily between the worlds of school teaching and university but some were also aware of the tensions and differences between these two professional contexts’ (Williams, 2014, p. 324). These teacher educators relied on their teaching contexts yet saw themselves as both one and the other (see also Caspersen, 2013). The work these (and other) teacher educators undertake include teacher educators’ professional responsibilities and values, pedagogies for teacher education, and scholarship (Murray, Swennen, & Shagrir, 2009, p. 29) and academic work, ‘what lecturers [professors] and other members of staff actually do, and how this is changing’ (citing Tight, 2004 in Ellis, McNicholl, Blake, & McNally, 2014, p. 33). Three patterns illustrate aspects that further clarify teacher educator work in the following sections.
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Teacher Educator Settings and Contexts One could argue that teacher education is a specialised field without specialists. Many ‘fall into’ it and there is a lack of systematic preparation for teacher educators, whether they emerge from schools or the academy. (Mayer, Mitchell, Santoro, & White, 2011, p. 258)
Falling into the work of teacher education from schools to universities signals at least two settings where teacher educators work. Obvious contexts cover universities, schools, and their classrooms; yet learning environments of various kinds could also encompass departments or ministries of education in various states, provinces, and/or countries. There are now types of learning environment that include charter schools and language schools for numerous students seeking to study in various countries, principally English-speaking ones (e.g. ELICOS in Australia), along with private learning environments. In Viet Nam, for instance, Project 2020 encourages the study of English starting in earlier grades and seeks to place English as a second language for the general Vietnamese populace (Ministry of Education and Training, 2013). Teacher educator work embodies assorted settings and contexts. Much initial teacher education research investigates identity – teacher educator identity more precisely. Within this extensive identity focus, one gleans that many teacher educators initially start out as teachers, transform into teacher educators, and spend time in more than one setting. In fact, more recent literature clarifies how teacher educators came to work where a majority now find themselves, in universities. As teacher educators develop their identity (perhaps identities), an evolving pattern emerged in various countries, where teacher educators started in classrooms and schools, sometimes moved to some type of intermediate institution, and then to universities, providing observations that teacher educator work includes practices and theories, teaching and researching, experiences and qualifications, and academic and professional aspects. For instance, Mayer et al. (2011) considered some Australian teacher educators falling into ‘accidental careers’, regardless of career path. These authors indicated chance played a major role with their sample of teacher educators who ‘had extensive experience in either primary or secondary schools, but did not have doctoral qualifications. A few came with minimum school teaching experience and with higher degree qualifications’ (p. 252). Such sentiment was shown by authors in other countries. Khan (2011) considered two Pakistani teacher educators making a transition from novices to experts. ‘They were asked to teach subjects that they had never studied; they were required to counsel students; they had to conduct lesson observations and feedback sessions during school visits; and they were required to report on their school visits’ (p. 331). Smith (2011) sketched two types of Norwegian higher education institution: university colleges and universities. The former dealt with pre-school and primary school teacher education, the latter with lower and upper secondary school teacher
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education. Smith argued that context and situation offer opportunities to explore moments of contingency that influence actions and decisions made by teachers (and presumably teacher educators). Menter (2011) identified what he termed ‘academic subtribes’ in Scottish universities: former college staff, long-standing university staff, newly appointed university staff, and temporary university staff. Menter’s historical panorama reinforces patterns possibly repeated in various countries as teacher education moves from various establishments (e.g. colleges, academies, schools) to university environments. Through cultural, social, and institutional lenses, descriptions of what Menter termed ‘fractured teacher education’ contributed evidence disclosing tensions between academic and professional teacher education roles (e.g. teacher or researcher), responsibilities (e.g. subject or curriculum specialists), and performances (e.g. academic or professional development). Menter articulates many contradictory tendencies and practices among (and within) the four subtribes and concluded that the ‘history of educational provision and ideologies has intersected and interacted with distinctive trajectories of particular institutions that have employed a range of staff over time, and how these interactions can create changing demands on those staff’ (p. 306). Nuttall, Brennan, Zipin, Tuinamuana, and Cameron (2013) echoed similar tendencies in present-day Australia where they grappled with an absence of the ‘teacher educator’ in institutional job advertisements that included ‘ambivalent positioning of research in the work of teacher educators’ (p. 339). The similarities between some evidence from Scotland and Australia highlighted what Nuttall et al. (2013) concluded: ‘teacher education, as a system of activity with its own distinctive artefacts and objects, exists in considerable tension with wider systemic imperatives to maintain institutional status, meet budget pressures and ensure a teaching-focused workforce’ (p. 341). Shagrir (2015) compared a non-university-affiliated model (NUA-model) of teacher education (Israel) with a university model (U-model) (USA). She examined the nature of characteristics of teacher educators’ professional activities using what she termed a ‘narrative research’ method. Shagrir concluded that both models encourage professional academic development and valuate teaching and professional functioning. Nonetheless, in the NUA-model, teacher educators’ orientation was teaching and practice (with some interest in research and publications), whereas in the U-model, teacher educators’ orientation focused on the salient features of scholarship and research. She further compared and contrasted these teacher educators in the areas of cooperation with the field of practice and informal relations with students. She reported that teacher educators in the NUA-model developed and maintained intense and ongoing working relations with schools while teacher educators in the U-model did not maintain ongoing relations with the training schools. However, she found that teacher educators in the NUA-model had few informal relationships with their students, whereas teacher educators in the U-model (where students and faculty participate in various campus events) ‘maintain informal relationships and personal contacts and they continually monitor their students, even in their professional lives’ (p. 218).
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Additionally, Caspersen (2013) compared Norwegian teacher educators, novice and experienced teachers through survey data and showed converging, diverging, and inconsistent data with regard to some of the above mentioned tensions. Three hypotheses and numerous sub-hypotheses highlighted divisions between teacher education and practice in schools, variations at the individual level, and how teacher educators’ and teachers’ attitudes influenced different academic backgrounds within teacher education. The extensive quantitative analyses led Caspersen to conclude that, contrary to what some teacher educators might expect: ‘teacher educators do not emphasize theoretical knowledge any more than school teachers’; ‘teachers in schools seem to place a greater emphasis on practical skills, at least skills concerning order and discipline’; and there were ‘no differences in the emphases placed on theoretical knowledge and practical skills by the three groups of teachers’. In particular, ‘The hypotheses stating that teachers with a “more academic” background will place greater value on academic knowledge, less on practical skills and have a more positive attitude toward inclusion, is partially supported among teacher educators (hypothesis 3a) but partially rejected among teachers in schools (hypothesis 3b)’ (p. 117). Caspersen’s (2013) and Shagrir’s (2015) findings resonated with my experiences as a liaison with two professional development schools (elementary and middle, and middle and high school) in my first job as an assistant professor in a curriculum and instruction department. The involvement with teachers, student teachers, and cooperating teachers provided me with practices where we worked together, both practically and theoretically. It was the teachers in these professional development schools (PDSs) that offered ideas, from instruction to research, for my university job requirements. The student teachers and I assisted the teachers in relating theory to practice. It was the interaction with teachers, cooperating teachers, student teachers, and the PDS students that alerted everyone to academic and professional aspects including learning, teaching, and (action) researching. Settings and contexts afford teacher educator experiences that exhibit the contributions of, and strains between and among, practitioners, theoreticians, teachers, students, and professors, and both contentedness and tensions that exist amid practices, theories, instruction, teaching, and learning. These and other tendencies persevere in many teacher education environments worldwide. Individual canvasses and collective landscapes of teacher educator work currently afford sketches but still await contours, textures, and intensity to continue clarifying teacher-education puzzles.
Teacher Educator Knowledge However, there is something different about the professional lives of teacher educators in academe and it is in part that difference that produces a unique set of stresses that teacher educators have to respond to. (Gilroy, 2011, p. 241)
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Authors of recent articles tend to mesh teacher educators’ knowledge and work when writing about teacher educators and/or teacher education. The work of particular authors, described in this section, offers professional, practical, theoretical, and empirical (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods) documentation from various perspectives including their own, professional organizations, and pre-, new, and practicing teacher educators. Content teacher educators are also studied and researched and attention is even given to a government’s teacher education policy. Murray et al. (2009) paint with broad strokes, introducing standards from American and Dutch teacher education associations. They provide in table form (p. 31) eight Standards for Master Teacher Educators of the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE, 2007) including: teaching, cultural competence, scholarship, professional development, program development, collaboration, public advocacy, and teacher education profession. They also share the Dutch Association of Teacher Educators’ (VELON) summary of standards that include: fundamentals of the work of teacher educators, interpersonal and pedagogical skills, pedagogy of teacher education, working in an organization, working with colleagues, working in a broader context, and working at one’s own development (Murray et al., 2009, p. 32). Murray et al. (2009) offered panoramic sketches of teacher educators in England, Israel, and the Netherlands who ‘work in complex social contexts’ with ‘differing actors and stakeholders’ with often differing but legitimate goals (p. 33). They described teacher education in England being funded by the Training and Development Agency and inspected by Ofsted (a government-funded body) who ‘create strong regulatory frameworks for teacher education and for teacher educators’ work, especially on pre-service courses’ (p. 34). They acknowledged that most teacher educators were effective schoolteachers and instruct teacher education courses encompassing: ‘teaching students in university; supervising students on school placements; engaging in scholarship and research; service to the school sector; and service to the university (academic administration)’ (p. 35). Israeli teacher educators moved from a practice orientation to an academic and disciplinary orientation, where they teach, undertake research, present at conferences, and publish articles and books. Research focused on pedagogies of teacher education and learning patterns of students. The Netherlands have two types of teacher educator: experienced primary and secondary educators and those who studied at a traditional university (going straight from a university to being a higher education teacher). ‘Teaching in teacher education is seen as a complex task, involving a wider range of pedagogical knowledge, skills and understanding. This type of competence-based, practice-based and student-centred education asks from teacher educators that they are able to “teach” their subject and the accompanying subject pedagogy’ (p. 39). Dengerink, Lunenberg, and Kools (2011), Koster, Dengerink, Korthagen, and Lunenberg, (2008), and
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Lunenberg et al. (2014) detail clarifications concerning how teacher educators in the Netherlands consider their roles and professional development. Goodwin and Kosnik (2013) developed commentary concerning a knowledge base for teacher educators and presented ideas for five knowledge domains: personal knowledge, contextual knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, sociological knowledge, and social knowledge. These knowledge domains could stimulate alternative thinking about what teacher educators should know and be able to do. Goodwin et al. (2014) put some of these and other domains to the task by completing a mixed methods study of surveys (N = 293) and interviews (N = 20) with higher education faculty self-identifying as teacher educators. The survey consisted of eight categories of item: theoretical knowledge, ability to apply theory, content knowledge, research familiarity, ability to conduct research, interpersonal skills, reflection, and professional activities. The interview data further clarified the preparation of teacher educators (happenstance, luck related to doctoral work, and lack of explicit development of teaching skills or pedagogies), the foundational elements to the work of teacher educators (‘(a) bridging knowledge and practice; (b) self-directed, lifelong learning; (c) collaboration; and (d) negotiating multiple and conflicting agendas’ [p. 292]), and recommendations about preparation (foundation of educational theories, knowledge about teacher education discipline, apprenticeship and mentorship in teaching and research, professional life in the university). Goodwin et al. concluded that their respondents’ experiences provided little evidence of a curriculum for, or coherent codified pedagogy of, teacher education. They further suggest: ‘our data show that too many academics who may be hired to do teacher education work are not necessarily prepared, qualified, or even choose to do this work’ (p. 298). Kosnik, Cleovoulou, Fletcher, Harris, McGlynn-Steward, and Beck (2011) canvassed their initiative in a Canadian university: ‘Becoming Teacher Educators’ included discussing scholarly articles, observing and interviewing teacher educators, analyzing curriculum methods and foundation course outlines, and examining different types of teaching- or research-intensive university, among others. They completed a three-year self-study that comprised monthly agendas, reflective notes on the meetings, year-end questionnaires, and year-end focus groups. These authors shared four overarching themes (many times through quotes by individual voices): developing knowledge of teacher education, developing the skills of teacher education researchers, developing an identity as teacher educators, and influencing practice as teacher educators. Williams, Ritter, and Bullock (2012) perused self-study literature by beginning teacher educators who considered transitioning from classroom teacher to teacher educator (the authors did not clarify their methodology, contexts, countries, or subject matter). The themes from this review provided three key ideas: (1) learning as experience (making meaning within the nexus of multimembership), (2) learning as belonging (the role of community in becoming a
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teacher educator), and (3) learning as practice (developing a personal pedagogy of teacher education). Williams et al. firmly recommended that faculties of education ‘embrace the notion of being learning communities that recognize and value the experiential knowledge of teaching that new teacher educators bring with them’ (p. 257). Ellis, et al. (2014; see also Ellis, Glackin, Heighes, Norma, Nicol, Norris, Spencer, & McNicholl, 2013) studied the labor of 13 teacher educators in Scottish and English higher education institutions. Utilizing work diaries, interviews, observations, and a participatory data analysis workshop, they created a list of ten job dimensions: course management, personnel activities, external examination at another institution, examination at own institution, marking, professional development, research, relationship maintenance, working with a group of students, and tutoring an individual student. They suggested that teacher educators defined ‘proletarianisation’ as unacknowledged and devalued expertise, ‘uncapitalised within the political economy of Education as a discipline – and underexploited in the education of teachers’ (p. 41). Ellis et al. (2014), extensively discussed relationship maintenance (a domain where teacher educators spent the most time), yet warned, ‘Relationship maintenance may be necessary work but it is not necessarily academic work’ (p. 41, italics in original). Berry and Van Driel (2013) focused on 12 science teacher educators in four institutions in Australia and the Netherlands. The science teacher educators participated in two interviews and the authors reported that similarities included emphasis on implementing innovative practices (causing tension with schools’ practices) and making science attractive for students in schools. Differences focused on individuals – how their personal background and individual career path influenced personal aims and approaches within methods courses. The authors concluded that ‘science TEs [teacher educators] expertise seems to be related to the ad hoc ways in which they enter the profession, plus the apparent lack of a structure that could help them develop their practice as a community’ (p. 125). Literacy teacher educators were also researched. Kosnik, Menna, Dharamshi, Miyata, and Beck (2013) studied 28 mid-career senior literacy teacher educators in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia. They concluded their participants were influenced by their own experiences as classroom teachers; a mentor encouraged them to pursue a doctorate; their doctoral research continued to be central to their research; they often feel underappreciated by their colleagues and student teachers; they value highly the affective qualities of being a literacy/English teacher educator; and they see being an inquirer as a necessity. (p. 537)
Kosnik, Dharamshi, Miyata, and Cleovoulou (2014), seemingly with the same participants as Kosnik et al. (2013), further uncovered how literacy teacher educators wanted to assist their student teachers. One theme examined knowledge development that included research, pedagogy, and a field of literacy. Particularly
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relevant for teacher educator work, these literacy teacher educators wanted to assist student teachers with specific skills that included, among others, recognizing that all students are different, thinking creatively, using assessment to understand pupils, democratizing knowledge, viewing pupils as intellectual resources, and having a broad conception of literacy (Kosnik et al, 2014., p. 53). The authors noted that their participants held strong progressive views of literacy that resulted in tensions with student teachers. Manara (2013) conversed with four Indonesian English language teacher educators to understand their profession and professional identity constructions. Using respondents’ voices, Manara presents struggles with identity and professional recognition where learning, ‘happened in contradictions, tensions, dilemmas, and paradoxes that the teacher educators’ experienced in their professional works and lives’ (p. 1208). Subject matter expertise has consequences for teacher educators’ work, at least with commencing evidence from studying science, literacy, and language teacher educators. An area of teacher educator knowledge less studied but becoming more of a focus in various countries concerns teacher educator policy. Childs (2013) considered policy documents and key politicians’ speeches for policy formation by England’s Conservative–Liberal coalition government. Childs’ interrogation analyzed policy to filter responses to three questions: who are teacher educators?, what do they do?, and what is the future for teacher educators? Childs ends her foray into a government’s teacher educator policy by stating that: ‘what does remain clear is that there is considerable flux about who the teachers [sic] educators are, where they will come from, and where they will be based and what their work will be’ (p. 327). As I contemplated these issues in light of my academic experiences, I started (re)forming my meaning(s) with teacher educator connotations into content, pedagogical content, and pedagogical psychological knowledges (Shulman, 1986). As a teacher educator I complete tasks as professor, researcher, and graduate advisor, mixing these (and other) types of knowledge. I continue memberships in various professional organizations (e.g. AATG, AECT, and AERA) that maintain standards and yield networks. I live and work in Arizona that adheres to an English-only policy for teachers in public schools. All this weaves a burgeoning tapestry of assorted knowledge threads that helps provide responses to a unique set of teacher educator stresses daily encountered. There is still much to understand concerning individual and collective teacher educator knowledge tapestries that influence teacher educator work, the more recent literature beginning to identify a sundry of salient threads.
Teacher Educator Professional Development Yet, the voices and experiences of study participants illustrate that the field of teacher education has focused minimal attention on what teacher educators should know and be able to
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do, on how they should be deliberately prepared to know it, and on how they must be supported, mentored, and appropriately inducted into the profession as scholar-practitioners. (Goodwin et al., 2014, p. 299)
Professional development for teacher educators is gaining traction, and thus attention. Williams (2014) interviewed 18 teacher educators in Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK. She sought to understand teacher educator work in a third space (working between universities and schools). The research questions considered some challenges teacher educators face and how previous classroom teacher experiences contributed to pedagogy in the third space. The three themes used were from the author’s self-study research and included shifting identities, changing perspectives, and negotiating relationships. Williams concluded ‘the study revealed that many teacher educators value dialogue and engagement with mentors and student teachers and that many use these interactions to further develop their own practice’ (p. 10). Williams further acknowledged that the third space offered these teacher educators opportunities to be colleagues, peers, and equal partners to mentor teachers and to ‘negotiate potential difficult relationships between teachers, teacher educators and, at times, student teachers’ (p. 11). Boei, Dengerink, Geursen, Kools, Koster, Lunenberg, and Willemse (2015) examined a year-long professional development program using data from 13 teacher educators completing registration procedures in the Netherlands. The program welcomes teacher educators from different backgrounds, is grounded in teacher educators’ practices, and encourages teacher educators to expand their professional network. The authors commented on the participants appreciating working with peers, discussing implications of theoretical and practical practices, becoming more aware of their role(s) as teacher educators, and changing their professional behavior. The participants said ‘they had broadened their theoretical knowledge and that they were willing to spend more time on reading literature’ (p. 359). Livingston (2014) acknowledged the research on teacher educators’ identities and contexts and pondered three areas of argument that included discussion of teachers and teacher educators: implications for the complexity and diversity of teaching for teacher education and teacher educators, diversity of teacher educator identities and roles of teachers’ career-long professional development, and teacher educators working in collaboration (p. 219). Livingston envisaged professional development of teacher educators similar to that of teachers, promoting a dynamic model of partnership that would facilitate teachers as learners, as well as teacher educators. Shteiman, Gidron, Eilon, and Katz (2010) considered 18 experienced Israeli teacher educators who discussed the writing of their own books and how such writing contributed to their cognitive, emotional, and teacher education practices. These participants found their writing nurtured their instruction, compelling Shteiman et al. to urge further investigation of how writing and professional development are linked.
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The potential for professional development (pre- and in-service) for teacher educators is vast. The potential context(s) and knowledge content area(s) are infinite. Questions such as in what context?, what knowledge?, whose context?, and whose knowledge? further qualify teacher education and teacher educator work as contentious academic arenas. The interactions among teacher educators in varying contexts hold potential for understanding teacher educator professional development. The interactions between teacher educators and other educational stakeholders in differing contexts hold meaning-making potential for how teacher work is understood by teacher educators, administrators, policymakers, and government officials, among many other stakeholders. Professional development adds complexity to teacher educator work schemes of any kind.
Contemplating Teacher Educator Work Much has been said about the complexity of teaching and teacher learning and the need for research that reflects that complexity. We assume that teacher educator learning and teacher educator preparation are similarly complex. However, we lack a well-developed knowledge base that would explicate this complexity. (Knight et al., 2014, p. 268)
My quest for teacher educator work continues to clarify a complexity of (some possibly contentious) work that I am involved in as a professional still very much in the throes of developing as a scholarly teacher educator. I remain even more intrigued with the complexity (and contentiousness) that teaching, teacher education, and teacher educator work afford. In moving this quest to closure the following contemplations come to mind. As teacher educator identity research reifies the significance of settings and contexts, teacher educator work requires it be appropriately situated so that it becomes clearer what type of work particular settings and contexts require of teacher educators. The literature on teacher educator identities serves as a fertile foundation to additionally consider what type of work teachers accomplish with their lived (and varied) identities (their own and identities others project on them). Stories within teacher educator workplaces splashed on canvasses and portrayed in landscapes, individually and collectively, will add to the hues emerging from a youthful but maturing awareness of teacher educator work. As threads of teacher educator knowledge are identified, and their meanings recognized and pinpointed in teacher educator work, a more nuanced meaning of teacher education and teacher educator work formulates complexities and contentions. A tightening and loosening weave of threads makes for valuable tensions that clarify and confound teacher educator work. How teacher educator knowledges relate to each other are as relevant as identifying Shulman’s (1986) teacher knowledges (e.g. Paulick, Grossschedl, Harms, & Moeller, 2016). Teacher research and teacher educator research are two separate areas of scholarship, yet are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The professional literature continues
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to grapple with how to discuss and write about these two areas; nonetheless, the converging, diverging, and inconsistent traits and issues among them require further weaving and – perhaps – untangling. Professional development and teacher educator work seem integrally related to each other. Yet does teacher educator work influence the professional development of teacher educators or does professional development influence the work of teacher educators? Whose professional development matters and how does professional development operate on canvasses and landscapes using textured threads with various colors? Ideas from third space, pre- and in-service teacher educator programs, and other forms of professional development all have their place, but when various aspects of these present themselves, how does teacher educator work become lived, experienced, and defined? In broad strokes, initial responses to the three questions that began this quest might now include that teacher educator work includes three patterns involving teacher educator settings and contexts, teacher educator knowledge, and teacher educator professional development. Settings and contexts promulgate and constrain teacher educator work, contributing expansive real and potential canvasses and landscapes within teacher education. Threads of teacher educator knowledge include, at least, professional knowledge (e.g. from professional organizations), types of content and pedagogical knowledge, and government policies that shape and form teacher educator work. These knowledges encourage a vast array of working relationships among students, colleagues, and others; they shape and form ways of teaching, learning, scholarship, and service (pedagogy, practices, supervising placements, conducting research, public advocacy, etc.). Professional development additionally challenges teacher educators to consider productive and operative activities and attend to academic tasks that accomplish professional responsibilities, in various settings and contexts. Enduring canvasses and landscapes depicting teacher educator work remain elusive if not ephemeral; yet canvasses and landscapes of teacher educator settings and contexts, knowledge with varying shapes and forms, and arrays of professional development present opportunities to capture contentious and complex teacher educator work.
REFERENCES Note: The starred [*] references refer to the articles from the author’s SCOPUS search explained in the ‘Background and Literature Selection’ text (pp. 1033–1035). Association of Teacher Educators (ATE). (2007) Quality standards for teacher educators. http://www. ate1.org/pubs/Standards.cfm (accessed 23 March 2017). Ball, D. L., & Forzani, F. M. (2009). The work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497–511. doi: 10.1177/0022487109348479 *Berry, A., & Van Driel, J. H. (2013). Teaching about teaching science: Aims, strategies, and backgrounds of science teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(2), 117–128.
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Boei, F., Dengerink, J., Geursen, J., Kools, Q., Koster, B., Lunenberg, M., & Willemse, M. (2015). Supporting the professional development of teacher educators in a productive way. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 41(4), 351–368. doi: 10.1080/02607476. 2015.1080403 *Caspersen, J. (2013). The valuation of knowledge and normative reflection in teacher qualification: A comparison of teacher educators, novice and experienced teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 30, 109–119. *Childs, A. (2013). The work of teacher educators: An English policy perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 39(3), 314–328. Clandinin, D. J., & Rosiek, J. (2007). Mapping a landscape of narrative inquiry: Borderland spaces and tensions. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 35–75). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cochran-Smith, M. (2016). Teaching and teacher education: Absence and presence in AERA presidential addresses. Educational Researcher, 45(2), 92–99. Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. M. (2005). Studying teacher education. Washington, DC: AERA, and Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Darling-Hammond, L. (2016). Research on teaching and teacher education and its influences on policy and practice. Educational Researcher, 45(2), 83–91. *Dengerink, J., Lunenberg, M., & Kools, Q. (2011). What and how teacher educators prefer to learn. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 41(1), 78–96. Ducharme, E. R. (1993). The lives of teacher educators. New York: Teachers College Press. Elbaz, F. (1991). Research on teachers’ knowledge: The evolution of a discourse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 23(1), 1–19. *Ellis, V., McNicholl, J., Blake, A., & McNally, J. (2014). Academic work and proletarianisation: A study of higher education-based teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 40, 33–43. *Ellis, V., Glackin, M., Heighes, D., Norma, M., Nicol, S., Norris, K., Spencer, I., & McNicholl, J. (2013). A difficult realisation: The proletarianisation of higher education-based teacher educators. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 39(3), 266–280. Forzani, F. M. (2014). Understanding ‘core practices’ and ‘practice-based’ teacher education: Learning from the past. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 357–368. doi: 10.1177/0022487114533800 Gilroy, P. (2011). Editorial. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 241. *Goodwin, A. L., & Kosnik, C. (2013). Quality teacher educators = quality teachers? Conceptualizing essential domains of knowledge for those who teach teachers. Teacher Development, 17(3), 334–346. Goodwin, A. L., Smith, L., Souto-Manning, M., Cheruvu, R., Tan, M. Y., Reed, R., & Taveras, L. (2014). What should teacher educators know and be able to do? Perspectives from practicing teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 284–302. doi: 10.1177/0022487114535266 Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (2014). Self-study of teacher education practices as a pedagogy for teacher educator professional development. In C. J. Craig, & L. Orland-Barak (Eds.), International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (Part A) (Advances in research on teaching, volume 22, pp. 137–152). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. doi: 10.1108/S1479-368720140000022010 Kennedy, M. (2015). Parsing the practice of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/0022487115614617 Khan, H. K. (2011). Becoming teacher educators in Pakistan: Voices from the government colleges of education. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 325–335. Knight, S. L., Lloyd, G. M., Arbaugh, F., Gamson, D., McDonald, S. P., & Nolan, Jr., J. (Eds.) (2014). Editorial: Professional development and practices of teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 268–270. doi: 10.1177/0022487114542220 Korthagen, F. A. J., & Kessels, J. (1999). Linking theory and practice: Changing the pedagogy of teacher education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 4–17.
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Korthagen, F. A. J., Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(8), 1020–1041. Kosnik, C., Cleovoulou, Y., Fletcher, T., Harris, T., McGlynn-Steward, M., & Beck, C. (2011). Becoming teacher educators: An innovative approach to teacher educator preparation. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 351–363. *Kosnik, C., Dharamshi, P., Miyata, C., & Cleovoulou. (2014). Beyond initial transition: An international examination of the complex work of experienced literacy/English teacher educators. English in Education, 48(1), 41–62. *Kosnik, C., Menna, L., Dharamshi, P., Miyata, C., & Beck, C. (2013). A foot in many camps: Literacy teacher educators acquiring knowledge across many realms and juggling multiple identities. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 39(5), 523–540. Koster, B., Dengerink, F., Korthagen, F., & Lunenberg, M. (2008). Teacher educators working on their own professional development: Goals, activities and outcomes of a project for the professional development of teacher educators. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 14(5–6), 567–587. Lanier, J., & Little, J. (1986). Research in teacher education. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 527–569). New York: Macmillan. *Livingston, K. (2014). Teacher educators: Hidden professionals? European Journal of Education, 49(2), 218–232. Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding teaching and learning about teaching. London: Routledge. Loughran, J. (2011). On becoming a teacher educator. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 279–291. Loughran, J. (2014). Professionally developing as a teacher educator. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 271–283. doi: 10.1177/0022487114533386 Lunenberg, M., Dengerink, J., & Korthagen, F. (2014). The professional teacher educator: Roles, behavior, and professional development of teacher educators. Boston, MA: Sense Publishers. *Manara, C. (2013). English language educators’ professional learning as a site of identity struggle. Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 21(3), 1193–1212. McNicholl, J., Ellis, V., & Blake, A. (2013). Introduction to the special issue on the work of teacher education: Policy, practice and institutional conditions. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 39(3), 260–265. Mayer, D., Mitchell, J., Santoro, N., & White, S. (2011). Teacher educators and ‘accidental’ careers in academe: An Australian perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 247–260. Menter, I. (2011). Four ‘academic sub-tribes’, but one territory? Teacher educators and teacher education in Scotland. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 293–308. Ministry of Education and Training. (2013). Competency framework for English language teachers: User’s guide. Hanoi: Vietnam Education Publishing House. Murray, J., Czerniawski, G., & Barber, P. (2011). Teacher educators’ identities and work in England at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 261–277. Murray, J., & Kosnik, C. (Eds.). (2011). Introduction: Academic work and identities in teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 243–246. Murray, J., Swennen, A., & Shagrir, L. (2009). Understanding teacher educators’ work and identities. In A. Swennen & M. van der Klink (Eds.), Becoming a teacher educator: Theory and practice for teacher educators (pp. 29–43). Netherlands: Springer. *Nuttall, J., Brennan, M., Zipin, L., Tuinamuana, K., & Cameron, L. (2013). Lost in production: The erasure of the teacher educator in Australian university job advertisements. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 39(3), 329–343.
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Paulick, I., Grossschedl, J., Harms, U., and Möller, J. (2016). Preservice teachers’ professional knowledge and its relation to academic self-concept. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(3), 173–182. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M.L. (2011). Narrating the tensions of teacher educator researcher in moving story to research. In J. Kitchen, D. Ciuffetelli Parker, & D. Pushor (Eds.), Narrative inquiries into curriculum making in teacher education (Advances in research on teaching, volume 13, pp. 43–68). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. doi: 10.1108/S1479-3687(2011)00000130006 Russell, T., & Loughran, J. (Eds.). (2007). Enacting a pedagogy of teacher education: Values, relationships and practices. London: Routledge. *Samaras, A. P., GuÐjónsdóttir, H., McMurrer, J. R., & Dalmau, M. C. (2012). Self-study of a professional organization in pursuit of a shared enterprise. Studying Teacher Education, 8(3), 303–320. *Shagrir, L. (2015). Factors affecting the professional characteristics of teacher educators in Israel and in the USA: A comparison of two models. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 45(2), 206–225. doi: 10.1080/03057923.2013.828395 Shteiman, Y., Gidron, A., Eilon, B., & Katz, P. (2010). Writing as a journey of professional development for teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 339–356. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Smith, K. (2011). The multi-faceted teacher educator: A Norwegian perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 37(3), 337–349. Swennen, A., & van der Klink, M. (Eds.). (2009). Becoming a teacher educator: Theory and practice for teacher educators. Netherlands: Springer. Williams, J. (2014). Teacher educator professional learning in the third space: Implications for identity and practice. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 315–326. doi: 10.1177/0022487114533128 *Williams, J., Ritter, J., & Bullock, S. M. (2012). Understanding the complexity of becoming a teacher educator: Experience, belonging, and practice within a professional learning community. Studying Teacher Education, 8(3), 245–260. doi: 10.1080/17425964.2012.719130
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60 Professional Learning and Development of Teacher Educators L i n o r L . H a d a r a n d D a v i d L . B ro d y
Introduction The teacher educators’ role in preparing the next generation of teachers is at the heart of the educational enterprise. Teacher educators hold much responsibility for the success and quality of teacher education programs, and thus for the quality of teaching. In response to this awareness, research interest about teacher educators is increasing. Three major foci have come to light in this literature. The first centers on the process of becoming a teacher educator and on induction into the profession; the second pays attention to their role and practice; and the third addresses their continued learning and professional development. In this chapter, we will map the terrain of professional learning and development of teacher educators. We will first examine their learning needs and the significance of their professional learning. We will then map different frameworks for teacher educators’ professional learning in light of the many ways in which this issue is studied in varied contexts. We will end our discussion with implications for further research. Before delving into research on teacher educators’ professional learning, we will clarify our definition of this group. While one might think that such delineation is obvious, researchers relate to this group by focusing on different subgroups within the profession. Teacher educators are not one monolithic group, and the profession differs from country to country (Lunenberg & Hamilton, 2008). In addition to these socio-cultural distinctions, professional profiles of teacher educators vary within national contexts (Koster, Brekelmans,
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Korthagen, & Wubbels, 2005). This diversity was elaborated by Cochran-Smith (2003) who stressed that: In teacher education programs ... many of those who work closest with prospective teachers … are not ‘regular’ higher education faculty members, or what is referred to in the literature as the ‘teacher education professoriate.’ Instead, … many teacher educators are part-time, adjunct, temporary, and/or clinical faculty and fieldwork supervisors; graduate students who supervise as part of financial assistantships or part-time jobs; and school-based personnel who work as site-based supervisors, coordinators, and school-university liaisons. (p. 22)
Thus teacher educators form a heterogeneous array of practitioners (Lunenberg, Dengerink, & Korthagen, 2014), resulting in various definitions. Some have noted that finding an agreed upon description of the profession is difficult (Lunenberg et al., 2014). In this chapter, we build on Lunenberg et al.’s (2014) description of teacher educators as faculty engaged in training pre-service teachers, and we address those affiliated with an institution of higher education. Like others (Davey, 2013; Koster et al., 2005) our definition excludes cooperating, mentor teachers and other professionals engaged in in-service training. We follow the approach found in those studies that university affiliated practitioners differ in their professional profile from those who are affiliated with school contexts. While our definition focuses on teacher educators working in higher education institutions we address many profiles outlined by Cochran-Smith (2003). In our attempt to map the research concerning teacher educators’ professional learning we found that within our definition of this population, these different profiles are important, as they imply diverse professional learning needs. Appreciation of those varied needs requires a deep understanding of the nature of the profession and an adequate response to the needs and expectations of teaching about teaching within the academy (Loughran, 2014). From the start, a teacher educator’s professional development is shaped by the nature of their evolving identity, reflected through their different paths into the profession. These paths are accompanied by expectations of knowledge and practice inherent in the enterprise of teacher education itself.
Teacher educators’ paths into the profession and their diverse professional learning needs Many teacher educators around the world follow the traditional route of school teacher to teacher educator. These bring with them considerable professional knowledge gained through teaching in the school context (Murray, 2008a). In making the career transition to higher education they encounter distinctive and unfamiliar practices, norms and expectations (Murray, 2005; Murray & Male, 2005). Adjusting teaching expertise from the school sector to the university
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setting means acquiring new professional skills (Murray, 2008a; Williams, Ritter, & Bullock, 2012). One aspect of these needed skills relates to the pedagogy of teaching adult learners. A second aspect involves understanding that teaching about teaching must be informed by knowledge of practice that goes beyond recounting one’s own teaching experiences or passing-on of methods (Loughran, 2011). Teacher educators are expected to embrace the world of ideas, theories, research, and practice that constitute the pedagogy of teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2005). They are also expected to become researchers of teaching and generators of knowledge about teaching and learning. The shift from teacher to teacher/researcher grows out of an expectation of academic work and is central to the professional learning needs of those whose background rests primarily in school teaching. Another group of teacher educators consists of academics who enter the profession through the conventional route of all academics in higher education. Those appointed by universities may be subject specialists or researchers in an educational or subject area (European Commission, 2013), without prior classroom experience. This group typically does not undergo initial training or preparation for the teacher educator profession; nonetheless their adjustment to the role implies specific professional learning needs (Bullock & Ritter, 2011). These relate mostly to providing pedagogic modeling for future teachers and managing demands of multiple school stakeholders such as students, administrators, and mentor teachers (Williams et al., 2012). While those two profiles of teacher educator have different professional learning needs, research systematically reports lack of sufficient training or support for either group (Harrison & McKeon, 2008; Murray, 2008a; Zeichner, 2005). Rather, teacher educators usually learn through practice in ways that are often unstructured, solitary, and dependent on individual endeavor, and their professional learning is rarely organized systematically (Lunenberg et al., 2014). In a recent literature review conducted for our book on teacher educators’ professional learning in communities (Hadar & Brody, 2017), we used both Google Scholar and ERIC databases with the search terms: ‘teacher educators’ and ‘professionalism/ professional learning/ professional development’. We found that counting on oneself to develop professionally is not only a consequence of lack of sufficient training but also a central characteristic of teacher educators’ professional role. This role emerged as crucial for this group in Koster, Dengerink, Korthagen, & Lunenberg’s (2008) survey showing that the teacher educators strongly endorsed the importance of professionalism, including working on one’s own competencies. This suggests that professional learning is a normative component of their role. Another way of viewing this nurturance of professionalism is lifelong learning, a term mentioned in the European Commission’s (2013) treatise on obligations of teacher educators. Teacher educators are encouraged to expand their repertoire of skills as an essential feature of their extended learning journey. ‘Teacher Educators must themselves be open to constant evolution in their own professional body of knowledge, skills
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and attitudes, and must be able to adapt rapidly to changing needs’ (European Commission, 2013, point 34). Assigning responsibility for themselves as learners combined with diverse needs as they enter the profession highlights the importance of their professional learning. Moreover, the professional learning component of teacher educators’ role may be attributed to growing awareness of their centrality in preparing future teachers. This responsibility heightens their need for continuous professional learning. As key actors for educational quality (Swennen, Jones, & Volman, 2010), teacher educators’ ongoing learning is also seen as crucial for curricular change in many countries such as China (Zhu, 2010), Greece-Cyprus (Karagiorgi & Nicolaidou, 2013), the Netherlands (Koster et al., 2008), and Israel (Zohar, 2008). Furthermore, advancing education through continuous professional development is clearly stated in the European Commission’s publication, Supporting Teacher Educators. In order to modernize education, teacher educators need to develop their own knowledge and skills, making essential the highest quality continuous professional development as well as accessing support throughout their careers (European Commission, 2013). As such, various frameworks for teacher educators’ learning become a central aspect of their professional lives. Awareness of the importance of teacher educators’ professional learning prompted a call for a systematic study of this domain (Loughran, 2014; Smith, 2003) and generated a body of research forming the basis of our discussion of teacher educators’ professional learning.
Teacher educators’ professional learning frameworks Teacher educators’ responsibility for their own continuing learning has yielded a major path for professional learning. We term this path the ‘self-guided track’, in which they engage in research individually or in groups. In addition, our literature review has revealed several organized programs for their professional learning, which we call the ‘structured track’. This track constitutes formal programs, courses, workshops, seminars, or conferences specifically designed for them. The literature details multiple implementations of these routes for their professional learning at various career stages. We expand on these two pathways below.
Self-guided Professional Learning In characterizing the professional development of teacher educators, Loughran (2014) argues that autonomy and responsibility for their own learning distinguishes them from school teachers, who rely on outside authorities to set a learning agenda. As such, self-guided professional learning has become the most common path for teacher educators’ development. An important form of this
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type of learning is research activity, serving as a foundation for their professional development (Loughran, 2014). While conducting research constitutes a central means for complying with formal professional learning requirements, many regard research itself as critical in teacher educators’ professional role. Cochran-Smith (2005), for example, suggests that they are obligated to research their practice, making their knowledge public for the overall benefit of teacher education. In an earlier work CochranSmith (2003) promoted ‘inquiry as a stance’, meaning that they should pose questions and use empirical data to improve and deepen their practice. The role of teacher educator as researcher has also been promoted by professional organizations around the world (European Commission, 2013; Klecka, Odell, Houston, & McBee, 2009; Snoek & van der Sanden, 2005). Furthermore, in reviewing literature on teacher educators, Lunenberg et al. (2014) categorized the researcher role as the second of their six professional roles. In pursuit of professionalism (Murray, 2008b), teacher educators engage in many forms of research. In many cases they use their own professional contexts as research sites (Cochran-Smith, 2005) for exploring issues of their own practice. Teacher educators who research their own practice achieve dual goals: professional learning and building new knowledge for themselves and others. In fact, Korthagen, Loughran, and Lunenberg (2005) recognized that much of the research in and about teacher education is conducted by teacher educators themselves. This research emphasis finds expression most commonly in self-studies, which are regularly carried out in this professional learning track. Indeed, the self-study literature reveals considerable research in which teacher educators explore their own practice to understand and improve their work. Our examination of this body of research focuses on its efficacy for professional learning. Selected examples follow, showing how applications of this methodology promote various aspects of this professional learning. These examples were selected as they reflect current interest raised by teacher educators in relation to their professional learning and professionalism. In one study, pre-tenured faculty researched their own practice, forming a community of scholars to advance themselves professionally (Gallagher, Griffin, Parker, Kitchen, & Figg, 2011) and concluded that this group strengthened commitment to teacher education in teaching and scholarship. Latta and Buck (2007) explored the risks and opportunities in a collaborative self-study, concluding that collaboration is valuable for professional development. Kitchen, Ciuffetelli Parker, and Gallagher (2008) also documented the benefits of collaborative self-study as a form of faculty development, highlighting how it promotes engagement. Williams and Power (2010) in their self-study explored uses of reflection for examining identity and practices. They suggested that self-study is essential for establishing teacher educators’ deep understanding of practices and identities. Another example is collaborative action research and self-study conducted over four years by Israeli teacher educators (Margolin, 2011), showing how reflection
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served as a legitimate research activity. Kitchen (2005) explored changes in selfunderstanding by examining his development as a teacher educator, concluding that looking backward at his experience enabled him to move forward professionally. In their reflective study, Lunenberg and Hamilton (2008) explored their professional development as teacher educators, concluding that the lack of formal professional learning programs leads teacher educators to rely on personal knowledge in their practice. Finally, Jasman (2010) examined her involvement in five self-study projects, explaining the nature of professional learning and importance of ‘professional learning journeys’ (p. 305). Self-study as a platform for professional learning is by no means limited to aspects dealing directly with ‘being a teacher educator’ or ‘teacher educator as a profession’. The areas of investigation vary widely. In their review of teacher educators’ self-study literature, Vanassche and Kelchtermans (2015) found four overarching themes. The first concerns the impact of pedagogical interventions on student teachers’ learning and development. The second encompasses an analysis of differences between teacher educators’ normative beliefs and aspirations and actual teaching practices. The third deals with making practice more socially just. The fourth covers broader theoretical pedagogical interests such as transition from teacher to teacher educator and relating teaching practice to personal values, biography, and experiences. Whether teacher educators look at their own professional life or explore other areas of interest, self-study is undoubtedly a valuable path for improvement of practice and professional growth ( Cochran-Smith, 2005; Loughran, 2005; Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014). Although self-study research forms a central self-directed path for professional learning, it is not the only line of research in which teacher educators engage. Similar to colleagues in higher education, many teacher educators conduct scholarly research in their academic discipline. Locating examples of such studies is unfeasible; nevertheless in a multi-year research project in the US conducted 20 years ago, Ducharme (1996) found that teacher educators, at different levels and discipline areas, reported spending between 13 to 25 percent of their time on scholarly research. She also reported that such research was more common among faculty teaching foundation courses than didactics or pedagogy. These examples of research indicate that this activity is an integral component of the professional learning process of many teacher educators. Their process of researching their practice increases the quality of reflection on practice and is an essential aspect of quality control procedures (Shteiman, Gidron, Eilon, & Katz, 2010). Research endeavors enable teacher educators to acquire and develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes important to their work (Koster et al., 2008).
The Structured Professional Learning Track In addition to the self-guided track, programs initiated for teacher educators’ professional learning are becoming more common in different countries.
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We categorized the structured professional learning programs into two main paradigms. The first refers to programs initiated by associations for teacher educators (or sometimes by academic institutions). These serve the needs of teacher educators from different institutions and are usually conducted in a central location. The second is programs initiated within specific institutions providing learning opportunities for their own faculty. In programs initiated by professional associations, teacher educators from different academic institutions voluntarily participate in a variety of professional learning activities. Through these programs they meet colleagues from other institutions with similar learning interests. One example is the MOFET Institute in Israel, founded by the Ministry of Education specifically for professional learning of teacher educators. The organization has developed a wide range of cross-disciplinary learning tracks including instruction and mentoring, academic management, research, and information and communication technologies (Reichenberg, Kleeman, & Sagee, 2013). Learning takes place in various forms such as lectures, practical experiences, conferences, and small group meetings. MOFET also provides a wide range of support and mentoring for teacher educators seeking to engage in research. Studies reviewing the benefits of different programs in this model for teacher educators in Israel indicate their appreciation of these programs for improving professional skills and building their professional self. Moreover, the combination of teacher educators from different institutions promotes discovery of new pedagogies for teaching and learning and becoming a member of a teacher educators’ community (Reichenberg et al., 2013). Another example of the formal model for professional learning is the Professional Quality of Teacher Educators, initiated by The Association of Dutch Teacher Educators (Koster et al., 2008). This voluntary program addresses both training for certification of teacher educators and ongoing professional development after four years of active participation. Joining this project during the induction period leads to certification as a teacher educator through setting a professional standard, self-assessment, and ongoing professional development. At a later stage, teacher educators undergo a re-registration procedure. This aspect is based on peer coaching in which they assess needs, formulate goals, and develop a plan for their own development. As the process unfolds, they construct a portfolio containing a description of how they met their professional development and the outcomes achieved. Teacher educators in this project address learning needs through both structured and unstructured experiences. Participants reported positive changes in knowledge and behavior. The process was also found to contribute to teacher educators’ self-esteem, moral development, and enthusiasm for the profession as well as a sense of efficacy for further autonomous learning (Koster et al., 2008). Professional associations in other countries also provide learning opportunities for teacher educators. For example, the Hungarian Association of Teacher Educators created a Teacher Educator Academy offering several short courses
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covering a wide range of topics. In Canada an initiative called Becoming Teacher Educators involved monthly meetings on a voluntary basis for three years (Kosnik, Cleovoulou, Fletcher, Harris, McGlynn-Stewart, & Beck, 2011). The sessions included learning activities such as observing other teacher educators, reading and discussing relevant literature, and dialoguing about teaching experiences. In Belgium, professional networks of teacher educators at a regional level enable participants from different institutions to work together on curriculum development and innovation in their practice. In addition to these country-based professional learning opportunities, the Association of Teacher Educators in Europe has established forums for collegial discourse and initiated research and development communities to promote professional development (Association for Teacher Education in Europe, ATEE, 2015; Smith, 2003). Similarly, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education offers professional seminars, meetings, and online communities (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, AACTE, 2015). Different studies concerning the outcomes of these programs consistently report benefits such as developing skills and professional and academic identity (Lunenberg et al., 2014). The second structured model for teacher educators’ professional learning constitutes institutional workshops, seminars, or programs organized by the higher education institution specifically for their own faculty needs. These in-house programs take various shapes and forms and address the specific requirements of the teacher education institution/department or its faculty. There are numerous faculty development programs in teacher education institutions/departments around the world; hence it is not feasible to provide a systematic overview of the entire arena. The areas that these programs address also vary widely. In attending to current emphasis on 21st-century skills, some institutions direct their faculty learning at integrating various technologies into the learning process (Cherup & Snyder, 2015). Others provide learning opportunities in areas that they perceive as important for pre-service teachers, such as the global awareness project (University of Maryland College Park, 2015) in which teacher educators participate in a series of meetings and in projects developed together over the course of an academic year to enhance their expertise through attention to global awareness. Our own professional learning endeavor is another example of such an in-house format (Brody & Hadar, 2011; Hadar & Brody, 2013a). In our case the learning focused on implementing higher order thinking in their courses. Additional examples include projects emphasizing learning of particular skills such as facilitation (van Es, Tunney, Goldsmith, & Seago, 2014), reflection (Jacobs, Assaf, & Lee, 2011) and inclusive practice (Florian, 2012). Professional learning for teacher educators in specific areas such as mathematics or language learning have also been reported (Zaslavsky & Leikin, 2004). Models for the different structured professional learning programs also vary. The traditional workshop or course format is used in several countries (e.g Kosnik et al., 2011). Sharing practice is another framework for in-house professional
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learning, and can include teacher educators observing each other’s classes and exchanging feedback, or co-constructing curricula and learning arrangements for student teachers (Loughran, Korthagan, & Russell, 2008; Schuck, Aubusson, & Buchanan, 2008). The communal learning model for teacher educators is also popular (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Hadar & Brody, 2017; Poyas & Smith, 2007; Zellermayer & Margolin, 2005). Looking at the examples of the structured professional learning programs (and into the research conducted on these programs) mentioned above it seems that the different models for structured professional learning prove to be a valuable path for professional learning on many levels. It can thus be reasonably argued that the attention paid to teacher educators’ professionalism is rapidly growing. Since Korthagen’s (2000) questioning why teacher educators are not more widely discussed in the professional literature and Smith’s (2003) specific call for attention to teacher educators professional learning, much has been done in this area. Research attention into the different frameworks is also gaining momentum. One recent example is a special issue of the Journal of Teacher Education in 2014 that specifically addressed the professional development and practices of teacher educators, and another example is this chapter focused on the issue. This growing body of research has yielded knowledge about teacher educators’ professional development, which leads us to ask: What kinds of knowledge does this research provide? How is that knowledge constructed? And what do we still need to find out?
Research into teacher educators’ professional learning Knowledge about teacher educators’ professional learning concerns mostly the benefits or different outcomes of various endeavors (a sample of those many outcomes were already mentioned above). This knowledge stems either from research into professional learning programs for teacher educators or from selfstudies. Researches into professional learning programs are mostly conducted by independent researchers or by initiators of the different programs and not by the teacher educators who participate in the programs (e.g. Murray, 2008a; Harrison & McKeon, 2010; Shagrir, 2010). In relating to the benefits and outcomes of these different programs, research mostly relies on qualitative methodology documenting teacher educators’ experience, using interviews as the main source of evidence (e.g. Tillema & Kremer-Hayon, 2002, 2005; Shagrir, 2010; Shteiman et al., 2010). Another common methodology for understanding teacher educators’ professional learning is the case study (e.g. Harrison & McKeon, 2008). These studies usually combine different sources of data to understand various aspects of teacher educators’ professional learning, including observations, reflective journals, recording of sessions, and video analysis (e.g. Jones, Stanley, McNamara, & Murray, 2011; Zhu, 2010; Otero et al., 2005).
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Some studies use quantitative methods which employ descriptive statistical analysis of qualitative data sources (e.g. Boei, Dengerink, Geursen, Kools, Koster, Lunenberg, & Willemse, 2015). Few studies employ mixed-methods research in which qualitative data is supported by surveys of specific areas of interest (e.g. Karagiorgi & Nicolaidou, 2013; Lunenberg et al., 2014). Rigid quantitative studies into professional learning programs are almost completely absent in the literature. One possible reason for the lack of quantitative data can be attributed to the small number of participants in the different programs. Another reason concerns the contextuality of the different programs which might disrupt attempts to compare benefits or outcomes across different programs, countries, or professional environments. The second most common source of knowledge concerning professional learning of teacher educators is teacher educators’ self-studies. Unlike research on specific professional development programs, self-studies, in which teacher educators themselves explore issues related to their practice, provide a first order perspective on their professional learning experience. As shown in the examples of self-studies above, in this type of research teacher educators produced reflective accounts of their own professional development (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014), which is based on a systematic approach (Loughran, 2004). Moreover, self-studies provide information that is deemed important for the teacher educators themselves and are not based on a set of pre-defined research questions created by external researchers. As such, analysis of different self-studies provides knowledge into authentic issues and challenges teacher educators face and want to study in this professional learning process. Additional insights have been gained through secondary analysis based on the corpus of self-studies. Secondary analyses of self-studies (e.g. Berry, 2004; Jasman, 2010; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015; Zeichner, 2007) provide an integrated perspective on this corpus of literature revealing common concerns and professional interests among teacher educators. A broader perspective has been achieved through syntheses of self-studies, literature reviews, and other forms of research on teacher educators’ professional development (e.g. Lunenberg & Willemse, 2006; Lunenberg et al., 2014). As such, the multiple studies and the various methodologies provide significant information concerning teacher educators’ professional learning throughout their career. As our review above indicates, studies on professional learning address primarily benefits or outcomes. Little empirical research has been carried out regarding how teacher educators learn in those different frames and what measures effectively support their professional growth. This lacuna in the literature was also addressed by Bates, Swennen, and Jones (2011) in their call for more research not only on what it means to become a teacher educator but also to learn as one, and by Loughran (2014), who asked ‘But what does it really mean to professionally develop as a teacher educator?’ (p. 1). Some research efforts in this area are beginning to emerge. In attending to his question Loughran (2014) himself offered ‘one way of conceptualizing
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the major landmarks teacher educators face in their professional development journey’ (p. 2). His framework addresses issues teacher educators constantly encounter through the professional development trajectory. He claims that this journey is shaped by their evolving identity as they engage in understanding the nature of the profession in relation to curriculum and pedagogy of teaching and learning about teaching and the way in which it is conceptualized. Teacher educators’ understanding of their own profession means engaging in research both as a source of reference that is interpreted, critiqued, and applied in the context and by conducting research on their practice. According to Loughran (2014) this process is overarched by the teacher educators’ awareness of their beliefs and values as embedded in their own work and that of their students. In analyzing teacher educators’ collaborative talk about student learning, we also demonstrated that their professional learning is built upon engagement in research as a reference in their discourse as well as developing an inquiry stance to their practice (Hadar & Brody, 2016). We presented another effort to conceptualize teacher educators’ professional learning trajectory (Brody & Hadar, 2011). Different from Loughran (2014), who conceptualized the major issues teacher educators’ encounter throughout their career, we explored teacher educators’ development trajectory in a structured professional development program based on the communal model, in which teacher educators explored a new pedagogy for their practice. We proposed a model that delineates passages which the teacher educators traversed as they grappled with the complexities and challenges of a professional development experience in a communal context. This model includes four stages. The first stage is anticipation and curiosity, which were manifested by teacher educators’ interest in the possibilities of professional growth and change. The second stage involves withdrawal, in which optimism and excitement shift to skepticism and the construction of protective mechanisms. The third stage is awareness, in which teacher educators emerge from the stagnation of withdrawal to a broadening of their professional knowledge landscape (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995). The fourth stage signals change, in which the awareness of the previous stage is translated into a renewal of teaching practice. In another study (Hadar & Brody, 2013b) we analyzed teacher educators’ professional learning trajectory using storyline methodology and showed how they negotiate dissonance throughout this journey and which revealed itself as critical moments on the storyline. In a different line of research into the characteristics of teacher educators’ professional learning (Hadar & Brody, 2016) we analyzed the features of teacher educators’ discourse in community and showed how their talk is related to the professionalism of this group. Additionally we examined characteristics of the facilitator–teacher educator interaction and its functions for teacher educators’ learning (Brody & Hadar, 2016).
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Some concluding thoughts and implications for further research As our review shows, much activity and interest has come to light regarding teacher educators’ professional learning. It is apparent that the research community realized that teacher educators form a unique population in need of its own specialized knowledge base. The assumption that teacher educators are no different from teachers and that a good teacher will become an effective teacher educator is less prevalent in the field. Teacher educators’ learning is now appreciated as a complex endeavor (Knight et al., 2014), while existing research in this field has begun to reflect on that complexity. While many studies document teacher educators’ learning, little is known about how their actual professional learning differs from that of teachers. We suggest that the literature in the field should move one step beyond the descriptive material prevailing in this type of research and provide a window into the actual learning process that takes place among teacher educators in those multiple learning frameworks. This conceptualization holds promise for continued research that can add more depth to our understanding of teacher educators’ professionalism. Another issue concerns the use that teacher educators actually make of the growing literature. While it seems that some of the research detailed above has yielded knowledge of direct relevance to teacher educators’ practice, it is unknown to what extent they are aware of it and make use of this knowledge in the daily practice (Lunenberg et al., 2014). For example, engaging in self-study or other forms of research does not necessarily mean that teacher educators are aware of how research by others can be applied to their own practice. Furthermore, they may be unaware that other teacher educators have explored similar issues. Many research efforts are focused solely on the individual, thus diminishing the potential for wider application (Clift, 2004). We thus suggest that the research community address the issue of visibility of the various research efforts. This broader exposure to the growing body of literature can result in teacher educators gaining a solid understanding of what is entailed in being a teacher educator. Knowledge of research about their professional practice could enhance teacher educators’ professional agency and create strong leadership in this most central educational field. Professional development of teacher educators is, thus, a central pillar for improving education in general. This point is eloquently stated by Smith (2003): ‘Professional development for teacher educators is too important not only to teacher education, but also to the educational system as a whole, to be left in a virginal state regarding research and documentation’ (p. 213).
REFerences American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). (2015). No title. Retrieved from http:// aacte.org/about-aacte
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Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE). (2015). No title. Retrieved from http://www.atee1. org/home Bates, T., Swennen, A., & Jones, K. (2011). Teacher educators – a professional development perspective. In T. Bates, A. Swennen, & K. Jones (Eds.), The professional development of teacher educators (pp. 7–19). London: Routledge. Berry, A. (2004). Self-study in teaching about teaching. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 1295–1332). Dordrecht: Springer. Boei, F., Dengerink, J., Geursen, J., Kools, Q., Koster, B., Lunenberg, M., & Willemse, M. (2015). Supporting the professional development of teacher educators in a productive way. Journal of Education for Teaching, 41(4), 351–368. Brody, D., & Hadar, L. (2011). ‘I speak prose and I now know it.’ Personal development trajectories among teacher educators in a professional development community. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(8), 1223–1234. Brody, D. L., & Hadar, L. L. (2016). The role of the facilitator in professional development communities for teacher educators. Conference paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association. Washington DC, April 8–12. Bullock, S. M., & Ritter, J. K. (2011). Exploring the transition into academia through collaborative selfstudy. Studying Teacher Education, 7(2), 171–181. Cherup, S., & Snyder, L. (2015). A model for integrating technology into teacher education: One college’s journey. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 3(1), 47–56. Clandinin, J., & Connelly, F. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes: Secret, sacred, and cover stories. In F. Connelly, & J. Clandinin (Eds.), Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes (pp. 3–15). New York: Teachers College Press. Clift, R. T. (2004). Self-study research in the context of teacher education programs. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 1333–1366). Dordrecht: Springer. Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Learning and unlearning: The education of teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(1), 5–28. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). Teacher educators as researchers: Multiple perspectives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 219–225. Davey, R. (2013). The professional identity of teacher educators: Career on the cusp? London & New York: Routledge. Ducharme, M. (1996). A study of teacher educators: Research from the USA. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 22(1), 57–70. European Commission. (2013). Supporting teacher educators for better learning outcomes. European Commission: Education and Training: Author. Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/education/ policy/school/doc/support-teacher-educators_en.pdf Florian, L. (2012). Preparing teachers to work in inclusive classrooms: Key lessons for the professional development of teacher educators from Scotland’s Inclusive Practice Project. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(4), 275–285. Gallagher, T., Griffin, S., Parker, D. C., Kitchen, J., & Figg, C. (2011). Establishing and sustaining teacher educator professional development in a self-study community of practice: Pre-tenure teacher educators developing professionally. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(5), 880–890. Hadar, L. L., & Brody, D. L. (2013a). The interaction between group processes and personal professional trajectories in a professional development community for teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(2), 145–161. Hadar, L.L., & Brody, D.L. (2013b). Critical moments in the process of educational change: Understanding the dynamic of change among teacher educators. Conference Paper presented at Biannual Meeting European Association of Reseach in Learning and Instruction. Munich, August 27–31.
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Hadar, L. L., & Brody, D. L. (2016). Talk about student learning: Promoting professional growth among teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 101–114. Hadar, L. L., & Brody, D. L. (2017). Teacher educators’ professional learning in communities. London: Routledge. Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (2014). Self-study of teacher education practices as a pedagogy for teacher educator professional development. In C. J. Craig, & L. Orland-Barak (Eds.), International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (Part A) (Advances in research on teaching, volume 22, pp. 137–152). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Harrison, J., & McKeon, F. (2008). The formal and situated learning of beginning teacher educators in England: Identifying characteristics for successful induction in the transition from workplace in schools to workplace in higher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 31(2), 151–168. Harrison, J., & McKeon, F. (2010). Perceptions of beginning teacher educators of their development in research and scholarship: Identifying the ‘turning point’ experiences. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(1), 19–34. Jacobs, J., Assaf, L. C., & Lee, K. S. (2011). Professional development for teacher educators: Conflicts between critical reflection and instructional-based strategies. Professional Development in Education, 37(4), 499–512. Jasman, A. M. (2010). A teacher educator’s professional learning journey and border pedagogy: A metaanalysis of five research projects. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 307–323. Jones, M., Stanley, G., McNamara, O., & Murray, J. (2011). Facilitating teacher educators’ professional learning through a regional research capacity-building network. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 263–275. Karagiorgi, Y., & Nicolaidou, M. (2013). Professional development of teacher educators: Voices from the Greek-Cypriot context. Professional Development in Education, 39(5), 784–798. Kitchen, J. (2005). Looking backward, moving forward: Understanding my narrative as a teacher educator. Studying Teacher Education, 1(1), 17–30. Kitchen, J., Ciuffetelli Parker, D., & Gallagher, T. (2008). Authentic conversation as faculty development: Establishing a self-study group in a faculty of education. Studying Teacher Education, 4(2), 157–171. Klecka, C. L., Odell, S. J., Houston, R. W., & McBee, R. J. (2009). Visions for teacher educators: Perspectives on the association of teacher educators’ standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Knight, S. L., Lloyd, G. M., Arbaugh, F., Gamson, D., McDonald, S. P., & Nolan, J. (2014). Professional development and practices of teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 268–270. Korthagen, F. (2000). Teacher educators, from neglected group to spearheads in the development of education. In G. Willems, J. Stakenborg, & W. Veugelers (Eds.), Trends in Dutch teacher education (pp. 36–49). Leuven-Apeldoorn: Garant. Korthagen, F., Loughran, J., & Lunenberg, M. (2005). Teaching teachers – studies into the expertise of teacher educators: An introduction to this theme issue. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 107–115. Kosnik, C., Cleovoulou, Y., Fletcher, T., Harris, T., McGlynn-Stewart, M., & Beck, C. (2011). Becoming teacher educators: An innovative approach to teacher educator preparation. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(3), 351–363. Koster, B., Brekelmans, M., Korthagen, F., & Wubbels, T. (2005). Quality requirements for teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 157–176. Koster, B., Dengerink, J., Korthagen, F., & Lunenberg, M. (2008). Teacher educators working on their own professional development: Goals, activities and outcomes of a project for the professional development of teacher educators. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 14(5–6), 567–587. Latta, M. M., & Buck, G. (2007). Professional development risks and opportunities embodied within self-study. Studying Teacher Education, 3(2), 189–205. Loughran, J. J. (2004). A history and context of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of selfstudy of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 7–39). Dordrecht: Springer.
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Loughran, J. (2005). Researching teaching about teaching: Self-study of teacher education practices. Studying Teacher Education, 1(1), 5–16. Loughran, J. (2011). On becoming a teacher educator. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(3), 279–291. Loughran, J. (2014). Professionally developing as a teacher educator. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 271–284. Loughran, J., Korthagen, F., & Russell, T. (2008). Teacher education that makes a difference: Developing foundational principles of practice. In C. J. Craig, & L. F. Deretchin, (Eds.), Imagining a renaissance in teacher education (pp. 405–421). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Lunenberg, M., & Hamilton, M. L. (2008). Threading a golden chain: An attempt to find our identities as teacher educators. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(1), 185–205. Lunenberg, M., & Willemse, T. M. (2006). Research and professional development of teacher educators. European Journal of Teacher Education, 29(1), 81–98. Lunenberg, M., Dengerink, J., & Korthagen, F. (2014). The professional teacher educator: Roles, behaviour, and professional development of teacher educators. Rotterdam: Springer Science & Business Media. Margolin, I. (2011). Professional development of teacher educators through a ‘transitional space’: A surprising outcome of a teacher education program. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38(3), 7–25. Murray, J. (2005). Re-addressing the priorities: New teacher educators and induction into higher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 28(1), 67–85. Murray, J. (2008a). Teacher educators’ induction into higher education: Work-based learning in the micro communities of teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 31(2), 117–133. Murray, J. (2008b). Towards the re-articulation of the work of teacher educators in higher education institutions in England. European Journal of Teacher Education, 31(1), 17–34. Murray, J., & Male, T. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: Evidence from the field. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 125–142. Otero, V., Peressini, D., Meymaris, K. A., Ford, P., Garvin, T., Harlow, D., Reidel, M., Waite, B., & Mears, C. (2005). Integrating technology into teacher education: A critical framework for implementing reform. Journal of Teacher Education, 56(1), 8–23. Poyas, Y., & Smith, K. (2007). Becoming a community of practice – the blurred identity of clinical faculty teacher educators. Teacher Development, 11(3), 313–334. Reichenberg, R., Kleeman, S., & Sagee, R. (2013). The professional development of teacher educators in the context of The School of Professional Development at The MOFET Institute. In M. Ben-Peretz, S. Kleeman, R. Reichenberg, & S. Shimoni (Eds.), Teacher educators as members of an evolving profession (pp. 105–134). Rowman & Littlefield Education. Schuck, S., Aubusson, P., & Buchanan, J. (2008). Enhancing teacher education practice through professional learning conversations. European Journal of Teacher Education, 31(2), 215–227. Shagrir, L. (2010). Professional development of novice teacher educators: Professional self, interpersonal relations and teaching skills. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 45–60. Shteiman, Y., Gidron, A., Eilon, B., & Katz, P. (2010). Writing as a journey of professional development for teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 339–356. Smith, K. (2003). So, what about the professional development of teacher educators? European Journal of Teacher Education, 26(2), 201–215. Snoek, M., & van der Sanden, J. (2005). ‘Teacher educators matter’. How to influence national policies on teacher education? The position paper of the Dutch Association of Teacher Educators (VELON) on educating teachers in the Netherlands. Association for Teacher Education in Europe. Retrieved: http:// atee2005.nl/download/papers/45_bb.pdf Swennen, A., Jones, K., & Volman, M. (2010). Teacher educators: Their identities, sub-identities and implications for professional development. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 131–148. Tillema, H. H., & Kremer-Hayon, L. (2002). ‘Practicing what we preach’ – teacher educators’ dilemmas in promoting self-regulated learning: A cross case comparison. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(5), 593–607.
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Tillema, H., & Kremer-Hayon, L. (2005). Facing dilemmas: Teacher-educators’ ways of constructing a pedagogy of teacher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 10(2), 203–217. University of Maryland College Park. (2015). GATE – global awareness in teacher education. Retrieved from: http://www.education.umd.edu/international/CurrentInitiatives/GATE.html van Es, E. A., Tunney, J., Goldsmith, L. T., & Seago, N. (2014). A framework for the facilitation of teachers’ analysis of video. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 340–356. Vanassche, E., & Kelchtermans, G. (2015). The state of the art in self-study of teacher education practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(4), 508–528. Williams, J., & Power, K. (2010). Examining teacher educator practice and identity through core reflection. Studying Teacher Education, 6(2), 115–130. Williams, J., Ritter, J., & Bullock, S. M. (2012). Understanding the complexity of becoming a teacher educator: Experience, belonging, and practice within a professional learning community. Studying Teacher Education, 8(3), 245–260. Zaslavsky, O., & Leikin, R. (2004). Professional development of mathematics teacher educators: Growth through practice. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 7(1), 5–32. Zeichner, K. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: A personal perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 117–124. Zeichner, K. (2007). Accumulating knowledge across self-studies in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 36–46. Zellermayer, M., & Margolin, I. (2005). Teacher educators’ professional learning described through the lens of complexity theory. The Teachers College Record, 107(6), 1275–1304. Zhu, H. (2010). Curriculum reform and professional development: A case study on Chinese teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 373–391. Zohar, A. (2008). Teaching thinking on a national scale: Israel’s pedagogical horizons. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 3(1), 77–81.
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61 The Promise of the Particular in Research with Teacher Educators S t e f i n e e P i n n e g a r a n d M a r y Ly n n H a m i l t o n
… you will find parts of the truth (along with much error) everywhere and the whole truth nowhere. The deepest mistake, he supposed, is to think that your little shard of mirror can reflect the whole. (Appiah, 2006, p. 6)
Where did we begin and how did we get here? We entered the academy at the height of what was labeled the process-product research movement (e.g. Brophy & Good, 1986). As researchers began studying teachers and teaching more carefully, they came to understand that how teachers thought about their teaching was not only interesting (e.g. Berliner, 1986; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Lampert, 1984; Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986) but also influenced their practice and their development as teachers (e.g. Bullough, Knowles, & Crow, 1991; Clandinin, 1985). Research on teaching turned toward studies of teacher thinking and researchers began to recognize the potential contribution of teacher knowledge to our understanding of teaching, the learning-to-teach process, and teacher development (Clandinin, Davies, Hogan, & Kennard, 1993). It became clear that studying teachers’ personal practical knowledge for teaching (Clandinin, 1989) had the potential to reveal new knowledge about teaching and open doors for understanding more clearly the learning-to-teach process. In the mid-1990s, many teacher educators turned toward examinations of their own experience and practice as teacher educators. Hamilton and Pinnegar (1998) articulated the path that led from the contribution of teachers’ understanding of
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teaching to the significant contribution that research on teacher education undertaken from the perspective of teacher educators might make: As teacher educators we recognize that we are teachers. We believe that research on teaching practice by teachers holds invaluable promise for developing new understandings and producing new knowledge about teaching and learning. Formalizing such study of practice through self-study is imperative … the value of self-study depends on the researcher/teacher providing convincing evidence that they know what they claim to know … self-study undertaken with rigor … lead(s) to both reconstruction and reconceptualization of teacher education. (pp. 243–244)
These teacher educator/researchers, studying their own practice and experience, realized that what they wanted to understand about teaching and being teacher educators were things they knew from being inside those practices. As a result, studies of teacher educators, teacher education programs, and research on teacher education developed. The most promising research practices were qualitative in nature and oriented toward uncovering knowing in terms of teacher educators’ experience and practice (Arizona Group, 1995, 1997, 2000; Clandinin, 1995; Clandinin et al., 1993; Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2004). In this milieu, in addition to the development of self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP) research, other scholars using a variety of research practices (e.g. autoethnography, arts-based research, narrative inquiry) began examining their own experience as teacher educators with beliefs, experiences, and practices becoming central to their research. In constructing this chapter, we sought exemplars of the issues we address here that employed intimate scholarship. To prepare for this chapter we sought works of intimate scholarship – the autoethnography, arts-based research, narrative inquiry, and S-STEP mentioned above – across venues (for example, but not limited to, journals like Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching, Studying Teacher Education, books and chapters written by S-STEP scholars, and the Proceedings of the Herstmonceux Castle Conferences). We used ERIC and Google Scholar as search engines to identify examples (since 2000) that provided well-written and strong scholarship, offered explicit information about the methodologies and strategies employed in their research, and represented a range of international contexts. During this review, we looked for works that demonstrated the methodological strength of the particular genre of qualitative research while explicitly describing the activity of researchers/participants in the study. We also considered the contribution that the work makes to the larger research conversation in teacher education. Strands relevant to our endeavor that emerged included the relationship between belief and practice, examination of particular practice (whether new or typical), and exploration of teacher education as an enterprise. We looked for articles that best represented the exploration of the particular to serve as exemplars.
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What are the relevant tensions in research in teacher education? At this point in time, teacher educator/researchers using these research practices stand at an interesting spot in the history of research on teaching and now teacher education (Bullough, 2014). From our perspective on this terrain, we can see teacher education and teacher education research simultaneously as promise and at peril. The promise/peril involved in teacher education research conducted from the subjective knowing of teacher educators highlights three tensions surrounding this research. As countries increasingly acknowledge the place of education in ensuring the future success and progress of their countries, they recognize the value of good teachers and teaching and therefore programs and educators who teach teachers (OECD, 2005, 2010a, 2010b; UNESCO, 2010, 2013). In response to this recognition some countries offer support for teachers and teacher educators (Orland-Barak & Craig 2014, 2015a, 2015b for more detail). Other countries, such as the US (where we live), choose to legislate, mandate, control, and constrain. The disparities between the intense attention to reform and the desire to develop deeper understandings of teaching and preparing teachers (e.g. Smith, 2016; Orland-Barak, 2016) broadened teacher education as a research enterprise toward inclusion of its international nature. We begin here by exploring three tensions that emerge from an orientation toward examination of personal practical knowing evident in teacher educators’ experience, thinking, and practice (see Clandinin, 1985 for details on personal practical knowing). One tension exists around research paradigms. The emergence of teacher education research occurred as educational researchers embraced qualitative research while almost simultaneously privileging large-scale, multi-site quantitative research. Evidence for this schism emerges in the review of some teacher educator/researchers’ work. For example, Cochran-Smith (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, 2009), an early advocate of practitioner research, also asserted the need to provide economic and intellectual preference for large-scale multi-site quantitative studies (Cochran-Smith, 2005). On the one hand, the teacher education research community exhibits a philosophic and methodological commitment to studying experience and practice as teachers and teacher educators as a vital tool for responding to dilemmas and providing better information to guide policymakers. On the other hand, the orientation to generalizability, objectivity, statistical analysis, and multi-site databases has gained precedence. As the earlier Appiah (2006) quote illustrates, often the technicalities that quantitative researchers utilize narrow the study’s focus to the size of a mirror shard. Just as importantly, assertions and understandings developed from the practical knowledge of teacher educators may be seen as no more illuminating than the mirror shard. Maxine Greene (1999) described the power of juxtaposing the two paradigms, arguing that statistical, multi-site strategies allow us to ‘see small’ (across the
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horizon of teacher education research) and that intimate, vulnerable, and experiential studies allow us to ‘see big’. Greene (1999) argued for this juxtaposition to enable releasing the imagination to develop new responses to old difficulties. Studies that allow teacher educator/researchers to examine their own experience, learning, and practice enable them to draw forward theories of teaching and learning, reveal how theories work, and inform practice in ways that can release the imagination. For example, Mansur and Friling (2013) become puzzled at their students’ responses to a carefully crafted, problem-based, constructivist assignment in their teacher education program. As they took up the study, they described the program and the program’s theoretical/research base and the assignment. They examined student responses and their own understandings and then provided insight into the teaching practices to engage pre-service teachers. Offering details about their context in an Israeli teacher education program, the teacher educator/researchers allow teacher educators elsewhere to consider what they learned when conceptualizing teacher education within different contexts. A second tension comes in the privileging of the North American voice in research on teaching and teacher education (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015). While this voice is privileged, international research on teacher education is gaining status (e.g. Korthagen, 2010; Loughran & Hamilton, 2016; Mansfield, Beltman, Broadley, & Weatherby-Fell, 2016; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). With the embrace of international research in teacher education in the research conversation, teacher educator/researchers and policymakers might more clearly see the value of the particular as an instantiation of and variation on issues evident in the lived experiences of students and practitioners. Thinking how we conceive and apply ideas and theories across different contexts affords insight as we consider our own particular dilemma, as the Mansur and Friling (2013) study reveals. In her inquiry into her identity as an African-Canadian teacher educator, McNeil (2011) explored the resistance she experienced when teaching critical theory in her course. Her experiences, framed in her Canadian context and attentive to autobiographical experiences with her grandmother, afford insight for others grappling with student resistance to research-based ideas and practices. Dewey’s (1938/1997) identification of continuity and interaction as the components of experience, and Schwab’s (1978) discussion of the holistic quality of the practical, represent a third tension found in research on teacher educators and teacher education. To understand and develop helpful responses to teacher education requires a holistic understanding of experience where researchers make visible and grapple with experiences involved and entwined within a teacher education program. Such research accounts for and brings discernment in terms of understanding the continuity and interaction of experience. Also, it makes more visible the holistic quality of particular practices. Putnam (2005) argues that we are in the midst of a third enlightenment emerging from the work and philosophy of Dewey. He indicts the quantitative paradigm for failing to provide robust answers to the intractable problems of human life. He argues that what is needed
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are studies of the particular. Careful rigorous studies of the particular are valuable because they enable others to see more clearly the context and elements of unsuccessful and robust responses to such challenges. When we explore these perspectives, we come to understand the promise of understanding the particular in order to develop more thoughtful responses tailored to the intractable problems of teacher education within our own contexts. An example of this comes in Brubaker’s (2015) study of his practice of negotiating assignments and grades with his students. He reveals the challenges of this approach by making public interactions with a pre-service teacher he suspects of plagiarism. Brubaker identifies three phases of the negotiation, adds nuances to our understanding of the process of allowing student choice, and reveals the challenges of this approach. Making public his interactions with Franklin, Brubaker provides a model of how such practices can be enacted. We are enlightened not only by the careful examination of his practice but also because he carefully builds on and utilizes research on negotiation from other social science fields. Another example comes from Hughes’ (2008) autoethnography when he examines parallels between his experiences with Maggie and her experiences with her student D. His work provides insight into working across barriers of race, class, and gender in order to construct more caring centers within teacher education. His contextualization of his work enables others to determine ways his experience might be helpful to their learning. Both of these studies make clear how attention to the particular and articulating our knowing as teacher educators has the potential to inform others and build on research from other paradigms. Putnam’s (2005) argument makes clear that traditional research methodologies that focus on objectivity and generalizability do not always provide the details of the particular that might be helpful in responding to the intractable problems of education. His arguments provide a strong basis for empirical studies that turn toward the ongoing problems of teacher education.
What kind of knowledge is revealed in this work? Teacher educator/researchers engaged in this work hold a view of teacher educator knowledge as experiential and embodied. Similar to Clandinin and Connelly’s (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly and Clandinin, 1985) conception of teacher knowledge as personal and practical knowing, teacher educators who take up this work do so from the standpoint that they themselves are in the best position to examine, excavate, and analyze understandings of their experience and practice. They shun distance between researchers and researched and orient themselves to ontology rather than epistemology (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), investing in developing new understandings of experience and practice. As Bullough and Pinnegar (2004) argue, those engaged in this research make visible their integrity and demonstrate a willingness to be accountable for
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their practice and understandings of their experience as well as for the quality of their scholarship. Teacher educators’ practices and experiences have multi-dimensionality. The ethical paradoxes surrounding commitments to the education and potential of both our pre-service students and their future students potentially provides rich avenues for exploring our knowing, and the conflicts, politics, and joys of our work. All aspects of our practice and our experience provide rich fodder for contributions to research conversations in teacher education. Studies of individual practices such as Meyer-Mork’s (2010) exploration of her use of cognitive coaching to deepen her students’ ability to develop more complex reflection, or Brubaker’s (2015) examination of negotiation, help us strengthen and broaden our own practices and our understanding of them. Davey and Ham’s (2010) study of what they came to understand about the learning and development of teacher educators through their work mentoring them enables us to understand better both mentoring and collaboration within a context of teacher education. Feldman’s (2002) study explored his political challenge of negotiating a space for teacher education within a content area department outside the college of education. Through an extensive exploration of his positioning in his department, he uncovers his fundamental belief in the significance of his work as a teacher educator and his commitment to it. This gave him the insight needed to interact with his colleagues from a position of strength. Teacher educators doing this work are usually willing to make public their successes as well as their failures along with the learning that emerges as they analyze the empirical evidence they gather. There are many such studies conducted from within this framework. One of our favorites is an early S-STEP study conducted by Placier (1995). The headings within the study are fiasco #1 and fiasco #2 as she explores her fairness and equity in grading practices. This work reveals the problematics of making a judgment that pre-service teachers who fail classes are unmotivated, disinterested, or unengaged. While S-STEP research is one methodology for engaging in this work, teacher educators also take up study of their experience and practice using narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and arts-based research.
Why does personal history matter and contribute to the research conversation? In a classic article of this genre, Clandinin (1995) makes visible her struggle with the challenge for teacher educators to live mundane stories that are oppositional to the sacred stories of teacher education. In an exploration of her personal history as a teacher candidate, teacher, and teacher educator, Clandinin reveals her awareness of the sacred story of teacher education and her struggle as a teacher educator to live a story of teacher education that stands in opposition to that sacred story. She makes clear through this narrative inquiry how necessary it is
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for teacher educators to live the story of teacher education they value in order to shift the sacred story of ‘university teacher as expert story’ (p. 26) to an alternative one. She also notes with reluctance, ‘I began to wonder if my story as a teacher educator could change if the horizons did not change as well’ (p. 27). She argues further ‘that telling and living stories that compete with the sacred story result in tensions that lead to questionings, awakenings, to transformations’ (pp. 30–31). While uneasy and unsure that her living a competing story could indeed shift and transform the sacred story, she asserts, ‘Without imagining, living and telling new competing stories that question the plotline of the sacred story, little in my lived story as a teacher educator and little in the professional knowledge landscape can change’ (p. 31). As teacher educators, we see that Clandinin’s story resonates with our story and experiences with the many challenges to teacher education. Those of us who resist the current sacred story of teacher education see ways to resist and the value of doing so. Clandinin’s study makes us wakeful to the possibility of shifting sacred stories through telling and living alternative plotlines. More powerfully than other arguments for the transformation of teacher education, this study makes visible how, regardless of context, one might engage in resistance and transformation. As teacher educators, we lead busy lives. We constantly negotiate multiple institutional boundaries, navigate competing theoretical frames, and respond to challenges in developing and expanding the practical knowledge of future teachers. The work sometimes feels both overwhelming and impossible (Arizona Group, 1995) as we attempt to sustain ourselves. Keyes and Craig (2012) utilize narrative inquiry to provide an insightful investigation into sustainability as teacher educators. Their account resonates with us as they make visible their sacred stories, their gendered stories, and their stories of power. Their use of interpretive tools burrows and broadens our understanding of our sustainability and makes visible the layered and complex nature of the landscape of teacher educator/researchers.
How might we develop understandings of teacher education that have power and value? In this section we begin by exploring the shared characteristics of research methodologies for inquiring into teacher education that we argue have the most value for informing and transforming knowing in teacher education and as teacher educators. We consider connections to our understanding of intimate scholarship. By the chapter’s end we point to ways that research can sustain teacher educators in their work while attending to the ethical issues incumbent on research endeavors using these methodologies. After identifying common and unique characteristics of these methodologies (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), we labeled them ‘intimate scholarship’ as they
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seem to reveal particular and embodied understandings of teacher education experience and practice; the thinking process involved in teacher educator pedagogy; the depth teacher educators bring to their knowledge of teaching/teacher education; and the sustainability of learning and the life of teacher educators. Just as our unpacking the works of Clandinin (1995), Brubaker (2015), Mansur and Friling (2013), Feldman (2002), and Keyes and Craig (2012) have revealed, intimate scholarship uncovers knowledge about teaching and teacher education. Additionally, reading this scholarship can sustain and strengthen teacher educators because it resonates with them, offering insight into challenges faced and providing possible directions and strategies for response in practice and context.
Intimate Scholarship As teacher educators engaged in intimate scholarship (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015), we work in the midst of experience and practice and, as we inquire into it, we learn and grow. In the inquiry, our understanding shifts, we experience tension, resolve problems, and develop relationships. We experience resistance. We resist. Much of what teacher educators know that is of value to research in teacher education is tacit, practical, and developed in our moment-to-moment interactions with students, colleagues, and texts. As teacher educators engaged in teacher education we position ourselves (when we take up inquiries into our own experience, practice, or understanding), to uncover, reveal, enact, and expand our embodied and experiential knowing about teaching, teacher education, and becoming a teacher educator. Intimate scholarship can be characterized by explorations into the particular from the perspective of the person who engages in the experience, memory, or practice being inquired into. In engaging in such scholarship, our work exists on shifting ground. This scholarship embraces subjectivity and the work seeks to make explicit and available to others what we know from our perspective within the experience, from our memories, and about our practice. Scholars using these strategies and methodologies stand in a place of vulnerability – just like Placier (1995) in her study we are positioned to reveal our foibles and flaws. This scholarship remains open as we continue learning throughout our work. As we frame our puzzle, as we collect our data, as we engage in analysis, as we develop our publishable account, our knowing can and will shift. Further, as we, or others, read it, what we present may shift our understanding and new questions will emerge. Rather than seeking foundational criteria for knowing offered by quantitative analysis, intimate scholars offer new understandings of experience with attention to ontology rather than generalizability or warrants for truth. We work to provide careful, empirically grounded accounts of what is and what we come to know through our inquiry into the issue. The basis for making assertions is based in dialogue (a process of constantly questioning ourselves), the research literature, past experiences, and being questioned by colleagues and participants. Grounded in the authority of experience,
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dialogue as a process for knowing served as a basis for confidence in assertions and/or explanations. Scholars demonstrate trustworthiness and rigor as they document shifts in their thinking, draw connections to other studies, and attend to details. Inquiry in intimate scholarship, fundamentally relational and oriented to ontology, exists in uncertain space. This means that studies using these methodologies develop divergent and practically grounded understandings and knowing about teaching, teacher education, and teacher educators. In this section, we have visited characteristics of intimate scholarship. Regardless of the methodology, the intimate scholar focuses clearly and completely on coming-to-know the particular – the particular practice, event, experience, interaction, or response. We believe that intimate scholarship holds great promise for contributing to research conversations in teaching and teacher education because of its relational foundation. To demonstrate the value that these kinds of research study contribute to our understanding of teacher education, we examine exemplary studies of intimate scholarship. We consider these studies in terms of what they communicate about the particular methodology, the contributions they make to the broader research conversation, and the ways researchers use aspects of their methodology to establish trustworthiness. We begin with work of Coia and Taylor (2005, 2013). Their 2005 piece articulates the tenets of their work and provides scholars interested in this kind of inquiry with guidance for their work. They ground their work in autoethnography and assert its value for studying their work as teacher educators: Autoethnography resonated for us because of its insistence on the sociopolitical context of our stories … it is essential for us to examine our teaching with the context of the sociopolitical and cultural portraits of teacher and teaching that are created by others. (Coia & Taylor, 2013, p. 9)
In their 2013 article they enquire into whether they continue to honor the principles of feminist pedagogy in their current practices and excavate the research process used in their earlier work. Through their exploration of feminist pedagogy and an examination of their earlier work, they identify what they consider to be basic characteristics of feminist pedagogy – uncertainty and unknowability. Then they seek to determine whether these characteristics are actually identifiable in their current practice. Their examination provides readers with an autoethnographic probe of their practices, where they conclude: We have grappled seriously with the issue of whether we are the feminist teachers we think we are … reflect[ing] on the larger more amorphous questions of identity and identification. It is by working through these issues that we gain understanding and a new approach to our practice. We have to look outside the classroom to understand ourselves in it. (p. 15)
Coia and Taylor make visible the inquiry process by constructing their account in a way that demonstrates the interweaving of questioning, gathering
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data, reading, challenging each other’s ideas, seeking evidence, analyzing and interpreting evidence, and providing conclusions; it offers an exemplar of the intimate scholarship required in autoethnography. Furthermore, the study reveals their construction of feminist pedagogy, its representation within their practice, and their development as feminist pedagogues and teacher educators. Moreover, they provide an invaluable statement of criteria for evaluating the trustworthiness of autoethnography as they embrace and explore the concepts of vulnerability, ambiguity, and doubt in their work. Finally, they demonstrate through their exploration of the research, their examination of earlier accounts, and their descriptions and analysis of their current practices what it means to be feminist pedagogues and what difference that might make in being teacher educators and enacting teacher education. We label narrative inquiry as a methodology under intimate scholarship using several sources (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Caine, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Earlier in this chapter, we identified two powerful narrative inquiries as exemplars of this work. One is Clandinin’s (1995) classic examination of the experience of shifting the sacred story of teacher education; the other we will examine more fully here is a study by Keyes and Craig (2012). Keyes and Craig take up the puzzle of their experience of being sustained as teacher educators. They articulate the beginnings of their relationship and its development, with Keyes as the primary voice and Craig living alongside. Initially, Keyes presents a series of what she calls tracings and what Craig labels ‘small stories’ (p. 36). Her tracings position her in the landscape of teacher education – within her faculty, in relationship to the question, in the politics of teaching teachers in general, in the politics of her own college of education, and in a mentor relationship with other beginners. At this point she takes up her research puzzle by listing what obviously represent a series of small stories that describe her experience of being sustained. The list, in many ways, recapitulates her understanding of the positioning of the tracings – referencing her place, her relationships, the politics (local and more widespread) – and recognizes the positive responses to the work she does. After presenting her initial tracing she laments educators’ forgetfulness about how policies and mandates do not exist on an abstract plane yet impact on the lives and living of others. Then she turns to two additional tracings: one she labels a reinterpretation of place and the other an exploration of vulnerability. In her presentation of these small stories, she provides details and edges with which we connect her experience to ours and to the larger issues on the landscape of teacher education reform. Using the three-dimensional narrative space to push the narratives across time – inward and outward – and places, this practice of presenting stories to interrogate and explore them reveals and pushes forward the nuanced and potential understandings of experience that emerge. Next Craig moves backward to interrogate Keyes’ understandings of what sustains her and forward to her own stories of being sustained as a teacher educator. The narratives juxtapose
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the joys that sustain and the concerns and laments that drain us. As the research unfolds, Keyes and Craig reveal critical aspects of this methodology: stories, living alongside, three-dimensional narrative space, and relational exploration of research through citation to support recall by readers of their own understandings of the politics of being a teacher educator. Earlier in this chapter we provided exemplars of quality S-STEP research along with useful tools for guiding researchers through this methodology (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). While S-STEP research uses strategies similar to general qualitative methodologies, distinctions exist with its focus on practice, its commitment to change, and its position of self within the work. S-STEP researchers adhere to responsible research principles and make visible within the text how that occurred. Usually missteps, course adjustment, and learning emerge as the authors establish their authority of experience as a basis for judging quality. During the research authors reframe practice and illuminate potential significance for the work for understanding teacher education or being teacher educators. Quality S-STEP work always turns back on itself – making clear not only its contribution to the research conversation but also to the learning and practice of the scholar engaged in the study. Mansur and Friling (2013) demonstrate how helpful an explanation of an assignment’s theoretical underpinnings can be when designing assignments and practices in our settings. Their exploration of the initial failure of the assignment and their response to it led to a study of how assignments engaging students in problem-based learning might be better structured. A study by Lovin, Sanchez, Leatham, Chauvot, Kastberg, & Norton (2012) builds on the work of research in teaching mathematics and the role of belief in guiding teaching practice. They demonstrate the relationship between belief and practice as well as how sharpening understanding of belief in terms of practice can lead to stronger teaching practice. In addition, they come to understand that while mathematics education does much to teach their future teacher educators appropriate mathematics education practices, it attends not at all to ways of teaching teachers about such practices. Snow and Martin (2014) explore how their opportunity to enact their role as teachers within public school settings and working with public school students strengthens their practice and identity in their work as university teacher educators. LaBoskey and Richert (2015) constructed an issue of Studying Teacher Education that presents studies conducted by their pre-service students and grounded in social justice. As a whole issue, it represents a S-STEP by LaBoskey and Richert to explore whether S-STEP work can support the learning and development of pre-service teachers in the development of their teaching practice. Their exploration of their own practice and of their own pre-service teachers/students’ practices reveal understandings of the value and difficulty of engaging beginning teachers in this work, and the ways that individual students’ studies contribute to our understanding of the reasoning and knowledge
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of beginning teachers and what they take from teacher education. In turn, when we pair this work with Clandinin, Davies, Hogan, and Kennard’s (1993) work, which uses narrative inquiry to explore this process, understandings of the nuances of educating beginning teachers and their understandings of their development expands. Arts-based research represents another methodology labeled intimate scholarship and offers another opportunity to consider the challenge of representation of this work within the traditional research venues. Pioneers in this field like Lynn Butler-Kisber identify alternative representations of data as installations, art works, photography, and poetry to present their work and alternative sources for public discourse like her online journal Learning Landscapes (http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/). One study emerging from New Zealand and published in Qualitative Inquiry offers an exemplar of this work. Fitzpatrick and Fitzpatrick (2014) use poetry to open the emotional edges involved in the advisor–student relationship around the dissertation process. Like Coia and Taylor (2013), Fitzpatrick and Fitzpatrick provide understandings concerning practices in mentoring. Using poetry to communicate with each other they reduced and renegotiated the power relationships between the mentor and mentee as they exposed tensions and learning in poetic form to uncover the aspects of this critical relationship. They placed their analysis against Ball’s (2012) exploration of performativity, articulating ways in which using A/r/tography strategies such as poetry allows them to resist neoliberal incursion and provides evidence for their claim to have renegotiated the power relationship.
What have we learned about the promise of this research? We return to Appiah’s (2006) quote. Through our exploration of strong studies that use various forms of intimate scholarship (e.g. autoethnography, arts-based methods, narrative inquiry, S-STEP) and our explication of what they contribute to the larger research conversation, we bring together and integrate shards of mirrors. Doing this produces results similar to Greene’s juxtaposition of seeing big and seeing small – we release our imaginations. As teacher educators we learn from and develop our understandings that can guide our practice as teacher educators in designing programs, conducting research, engaging the politics of the field, and, most importantly, educating new teachers. We can embrace the findings of this research that emerge as scholars interrogate their experiences (past and present), their practices, and their beliefs because it is expressed in language that resonates with our personal practical knowing as teacher educators.
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References Appiah, K. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. New York: W.W. Norton. Arizona Group: Guilfoyle, K., Hamilton, M. L., Pinnegar, S., & Placier, M. (1995). Becoming teachers of teachers: Alternative paths expressed in beginners’ voices. In F. Korthagen, & T. Russell (Eds.), Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections on teacher education (pp. 35–55). London: Falmer Press. Arizona Group: Guilfoyle, K., Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (1997). Obligations to unseen children. In J. Loughran, & T. Russell (Eds.), Teaching about teaching: Purpose, passion and pedagogy in teacher education (pp. 183–209). London: Falmer Press. Arizona Group: Guilfoyle, K., Hamilton, M. L., Pinnegar, S., & Placier, M. (2000). Myths and legends of teacher education reform in the 1990s: A collaborative self-study of four programs. In J. Loughran, & T. Russell (Eds.), Exploring myths and legends of teacher education: Proceedings of the third international conference on self-study of teacher education practices (pp. 20–25). Herstmonceux: 23–27. Ball, S. (2012). Performativity, commodification and commitment: An I-Spy guide to the neoliberal university. British Journal of Educational Studies, 60(1), 17–28. doi: 10.1080/00071005.2011.650940 Berliner, D. C. (1986). In pursuit of the expert pedagogue. Educational Researcher, 15(7), 5–13. Brophy, J., & Good, T. L. (1986). Teacher behavior and student achievement. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd edition) (pp. 328–375). NY: MacMillan Publishing Company. Brubaker, N. (2015). Critical moments in negotiating authority: Grading, accountability, and teacher education. Teaching Education, 26(2), 222–246. doi: 10.1080/10476210.2014.996742 Bullough, R. V., Jr. (2014). Recalling 40 years of teacher education in the USA: A personal essay. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(5), 474–491. Bullough, R. V., Jr., & Pinnegar, S. (2004). Thinking about thinking about self-study. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. L. Russell (Eds.) International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 313–342). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Bullough, R. V., Jr., Knowles, J. G., & Crow, N. A. (1991). Emerging as a teacher. London: Routledge. Clandinin, D. J. (1985). Personal practical knowledge: A study of teachers’ classroom images. Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4), 361–385. Clandinin, D. J. (1989). Developing rhythm in teaching: The narrative study of a beginning teacher’s personal practical knowledge of classrooms. Curriculum Inquiry, 19(2), 121–141. Clandinin, D. J. (1995). Still learning to teach. In T. Russell, & F. Korthagen (Eds.), Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections on teacher education (pp. 25–34). London: Falmer. Clandinin, D. J. (2013). Engaging in narrative inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Clandinin, D. J., & Caine, V. (2013). Narrative inquiry. In A. A. Trainor, & E. Graue (Eds.), Reviewing qualitative research in the social sciences (pp. 166–179). New York: Routledge. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Clandinin, D. J., & Rosiek, J. (2007). Mapping a landscape of narrative inquiry: Borderland spaces and tensions. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 35– 76). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Clandinin, D. J., Davies, A., Hogan, P., & Kennard, B. (Eds.) (1993). Learning to teach, teaching to learn: Stories of collaboration in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Clark, C. M., & Peterson, P. L. (1986). Teachers’ thought processes. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd edition, pp. 255–296). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). The new teacher education: For better or for worse? Educational Researcher, 34(7), 3–17. doi: 10.3102/0013189X034007003 Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1993). Inside/outside: Teacher research and knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press.
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Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. New York: Teachers College Press. Coia, L., & Taylor, M. (2005). From the inside out, and the outside in: Co/autoethnography as a means of professional renewal. In C. Kosnik, C. Beck, A. R. Freese, & A. P. Samaras (Eds.), Making a difference in teacher education through self-study (pp. 19–33). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Coia, L., & Taylor, M. (2013). Uncovering our feminist pedagogy: A co/autoethnography. Studying Teacher Education, 9(1), 3–17. doi: 10.1080/17425964.2013.771394 Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1985). Personal practical knowledge and the modes of knowing: Relevance for teaching and learning (pp. 174–198). In E. Eisner (Ed.), Learning and teaching the ways of knowing: NSSE yearbook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Davey R., & Ham, V. (2010) ‘It’s all about paying attention!’ … but to what? The ‘6 Ms’ of mentoring the professional learning of teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 229–244. Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone colophon of Simon & Schuster. Feldman, A. (2002). Bec(o/a)ming a teacher educator. In C. Kosnik, A. R. Freese, & A. P. Samaras (Eds.), Making a difference in teacher education through self-study (pp. 66–70). Herstmonceux: Self-Study of Teacher Education Practice SIG. Retrieved August 30 2015 from: http://www.castleconference. com/conference-history.html Fitzpatrick, E., & Fitzpatrick, K. (2014). Disturbing the divide: Poetry as improvisation to disorder power relationships in research supervision. Qualitative Inquiry, 21(1), 50–58. doi: 1077800414542692 Greene, M. (1999). Releasing the imagination: Essays on the education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (1998). Conclusion: The value and promise of self-study. In M. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Reconceptualizing teaching practice: Self-study in teacher education (pp. 235–246). London: Falmer Press. Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (Eds.) (2015). Knowing, becoming, doing, as teacher educators: Identity, intimate scholarship, inquiry (Advances in research on teaching, volume 26). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Hughes, S. A. (2008). Maggie and me: A black professor and a white urban school teacher connect autoethnography to critical race pedagogy. The Journal of Educational Foundations, 22(3/4), 73–95. Keyes, D., & Craig, C. J. (2012). Burrowing and broadening in the storied place of teacher education. In E. Chan, D. Keyes, D., & V. Ross (Eds.), Narrative inquirers in the midst of meaning-making: Interpretive acts of teacher educators (Advances in research on teaching, volume 16, pp. 23–50). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Korthagen, F. A. J. (2010). Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behavior and teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(1), 98–106. LaBoskey, V., & Richert, A. (Eds.) (2015). Self-study for and by novice elementary classroom teachers with social justice aims and the implications for teacher education. Studying Teacher Education, 11(2), 97–102. Lampert, M. (1984). Teaching about thinking and thinking about teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 16(1), 1–18. Leinhardt, G., & Greeno, J. G. (1986). The cognitive skill of teaching. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(2), 75–95. Loughran, J., & Hamilton, M. L. (Eds.) (2016). International handbook of teacher education, volumes 1 & 2. Dordrecht: Springer. Loughran, J. J., Hamilton, M. L., LaBoskey, V. K., & Russell, T. L. (Eds.) (2004). International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices, parts 1 & 2. Dordrecht: Springer. Lovin, L. H., Sanchez, W. B., Leatham, K. R., Chauvot, J. B., Kastberg, S. E., & Norton, A. H. (2012). Examining beliefs and practices of self and others: Pivotal points for change and growth for
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mathematics teacher educators. Studying Teacher Education, 8(1), 51–68. doi: 10.1080/ 17425964.2012.657018 Mansfield, C., Beltman, S., Broadley, T., & Weatherby-Fell, N. (2016). Building resilience in teacher education: An evidenced informed framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 77–87. Mansur, R., & Friling, D. (2013). ‘Letting go’ vs. ‘holding on’: Teacher educators’ transformative experiences with the Kite Syndrome. Studying Teacher Education, 9(2), 152–162. McNeil, B. (2011). Charting a way forward: Intersections of race and space in establishing identity as an African-Canadian teacher educator. Studying Teacher Education, 7(2), 133–143. doi: 10.1080/17425964.2011.591137 Meyer-Mork, J. (2010, August). ‘Oh, I say…!’ Reflecting upon my role as a preservice teacher supervisor. In L. Erickson, S. Pinnegar, & J. Young (Eds.), The Eighth International Conference on Self-Study of teacher education Practices: Navigating the public and private: Negotiating the diverse landscape of Teacher Education (pp. 164–167). Provo, UT: Brigham Young University. OECD. (2005). Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2010a). Comparing education statistics across the world. Quebec: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. OECD. (2010b). Teachers’ Professional Development – Europe in international comparison – An analysis of teachers’ professional development based on the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Belgium: OECD. Orland-Barak, L. (2016). Mentoring. In J. Loughran, & M. L. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education, volume 2 (pp. 105–142). Dordrecht: Springer. Orland-Barak, L., & Craig, C. (2014). International teacher education: Promising pedagogies introduction. In C. J. Craig & L. Orland-Barak (Eds.), International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (Part A) (Advances in research on teaching, volume 22, pp. 1–11). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Orland-Barak, L., & Craig, C. (Eds.) (2015a). International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (Part B). (Advances in research on teaching, volume 22B). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Orland-Barak, L., & Craig, C. (Eds.) (2015b). International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (Part C). (Advances in research on teaching, volume 22C). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L. (2009). Self-study of practice as a genre of qualitative research: Theory, methodology, and practice. Dordrecht: Springer. Placier, M. (1995). ‘But I have to have an A’: Probing the cultural meanings and ethical dilemmas of grades in teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 22(3), 45–64. Putnam, H. (2005). Ethics without ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schwab, J. J. (1978). The practical: Translation into curriculum. In I. Westbury, & N. J. Wilkof (Eds.), Joseph J. Schwab: Science, curriculum, and liberal education – Selected essays (pp. 365–384). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, K. (2016). Functions of assessment in teacher education. In J. Loughran, & M. L. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education, volume 2 (pp. 405–428). Dordrecht: Springer. Snow, J. L., & Martin, S. D. (2014). Confessions of practice: Multi-dimensional interweavings of our work as teacher educators. The New Educator, 10(4), 331–353. UNESCO. (2010). Education For All Global Monitoring Report – Reaching the marginalized. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO Associated Schools. (2013). Third collection of good practices: Intercultural dialogue in support of quality education. UNESCO: Paris. Vanassche, E., & Kelchtermans, G. (2015). The state of the art in Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(4), 508–528.
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Section XI
The Evolving Social and Political Contexts of Teacher Education Beatrice Ávalos
The section is centred on the orientations, influences and demands impacting teacher education that arise from global changes in society and policy contexts and which are particularized in different geographical locations. The section is diverse in its thematic approaches. It ranges from a posited reconfiguration of teacher education and teacher educator identity afforded by technology and its various tools and forms to the challenges of embedding in teacher education the funds of knowledge and relevant practices that are part of both communities and indigenous cultures. With an eye on global realities, the section considers the internationalization of teachers and teacher education and its policies as well as the contested effects of ideological postures derived from neo-liberalism and new public management approaches. It discusses as well the influence of international organizations over teacher and teacher educational policies in countries with more fragile educational systems. The section begins with a conceptual analysis by Deed of how institution-based teacher education as well as the identities and agencies of teacher educators are changed with the impact of technology. School-lessness is the central concept underlying discussions in the chapter. In its ‘virtual campus’ form, school-lessness
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challenges both the traditional authority displayed by teacher educators and the contextual milieu in which teacher education operates. The positive impact of technology is described as enabling a more equitable teacher–educator/learner– teacher relationship, a greater range of theoretical and practical learning possibilities afforded by the diversity of technology and communication tools and systems and ‘distributed cognition’ leading to the equitable spread of learning benefits in the teacher education process. Payne and Zeichner propose a widening of the concept of institutionalized teacher education. To this end, the authors distinguish the traditional university-based system centred on academic knowledge and school-based practical preparation (Teacher Education 1.0) from the ‘fast track’ or ‘early entry’ into the profession alternatives using a ‘techno-rational approach’ and schools as the main teacher education tools (Teacher Education 2.0). They then propose a third, enriched and more complete concept of teacher preparation, which is not just academic and school-based but which draws from knowledge distributed in the community (Teacher Education 3.0). On the basis of this postulate, they discuss ways in which communities are, and can be, part of teacher education: (a) as resources in terms of the funds of knowledge available in the community; (b) as a recruitment space to service the community – for example, in rural and indigenous contexts; and (c) as partners seeking solutions to social justice problems affecting candidates, schools and communities. The chapter notes barriers that make this move a difficult one but also ways in which co-working towards more relevant teacher education can take place. The chapter by Ávalos and Razquin looks broadly at research on the policy contexts in which teacher education currently takes place in many world locations. It considers two viewpoints from which to study and interpret policy: the human rights and capacity perspective exemplified in Amartya Sen’s (2009) understanding of social justice and the neo-liberal perspective that links policy formulation to free-market principles and competitive institutional settings. The chapter examines research on the following themes: (a) the effectiveness of alternatives that emphasize learning to teach in school-based situations over university academic preparation; (b) teacher educator mediation of standards-based policies that impinge on their professional beliefs and practices; (c) internationalization of teacher policies, the globalization of teacher education alternatives and their relationship to national systems and traditions; and, finally, (d) the role of international organizations in shaping teacher policy, particularly in the less developed countries. In their chapter, Paine, Aydarova and Syahril also focus on the global context but more closely on its effects on people, discourse, forums, standardization and ‘imaginaries’ related to teacher education. Through analysis of policy discourse the authors exemplify how differences resulting from migration are being handled and the need to prepare teachers for diversity. Among the positive tools used for this purpose they highlight calls for a ‘culturally responsive pedagogy’, the
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use of teacher narratives and biographies as a tool for reflection and learning, ‘service learning’ and the provision of international experiences for teachersto-be. On the other hand, the authors are critical of how useful directives for improving teaching and teacher education circulate around the world, such as the concept of ‘learner-centred pedagogy’. Also questioned is the role of international associations concerned with the ‘teaching profession’ that are sometimes grandiose in their formal purposes but contradictory or confusing in their proposals and relation to the targeted situations. In the wake of standardizing discourses in teacher education, the authors call for more dialogue and openness to contradictory voices and to country-specific knowledge as well as to particular voices, such as those of teacher educators. The final chapter, authored by Madden and Glanfield, brings out the need for connections with indigenous people and groups. In fact, more than a formal connection, Madden and Glanfield advocate for the ‘indigenization of teacher education’, applying the concept both to initial institutional preparation as well as to in-service professional development activities. This indigenization or involvement of indigenous voices is expressed not as the addition of one more factor into the teacher education composite but rather as a connecting of ‘pedagogical pathways’ in the charting of teacher education routes. Pedagogical pathways are defined as ‘configurations that guide, shape and constrain’ the pedagogical process and its assumptions, purposes, goals, central themes and methods. They are stages in a process of growing involvement of indigenous people and culture in the teacher education process. Taken together, the themes and underlying research discussed in these chapters highlight important factors and tendencies which affect traditional institutionalized teacher educational forms in developed parts of the world as well as improvement processes taking place in less developed countries or locations. Among these themes, the following four are coincidental in their content and suggestions. The first one highlights what might be described as the evolving nature of institutionalized teacher education resulting from the impact of technology and the enactment of ‘virtual campuses’ as well as from international agreements such as the Bologna Process and its raising of requirements for teaching to a master’s degree level. Secondly, the chapters are critical of reductionist policies that narrow the scope for the professional preparation of teachers, be it through standardization of its processes or through diminishing the professional nature of teaching to a ‘bundle’ of skills described and applied regardless of contextual diversity. A third theme is the impact of globalization trends in terms of travelling policies and travelling school populations and how this affects teacher education programmes. Here the concern is both about the nature of some of these policies, especially those aligned with neo-liberal competitiveness based on measurable learning outcomes, as well as about their validity in the light of local education needs. In turn, the impact of globalization on migration of students poses a new challenge as to how teachers should be prepared for the diversity of student
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populations they are likely to meet as well as for the understanding of their contexts of origin. The fourth theme that arises in different ways from the research and discussions in the chapters refers to the opening of the traditional teacher education space to communities and indigenous groups, not as participants to be referred to, or described, but as co-constructors in the preparation of teachers, the teacher education processes and their enactment. The above chapter themes also point to further avenues for research. There is scope for research that brings together a focus on de-institutionalized teacher education centred on new ways of learning and of teacher educator/future teacher relationships. These are occurring in mixed classroom and technological spaces as in the school-less situation that Deed depicts or in reversed teacher/student tasks, as in the ‘flipped classroom experience’ (Bishop & Verleger, 2013). Equally of interest would be research on what are considered to be effective teacher education alternatives in terms of the quality and innovativeness of the classroom teaching exhibited by new teachers in their diverse contexts. Following the theme of examining less formal and more open teacher education it would be useful to have research reviews or original ethnographic research related to experiences where teacher educators work with community and indigenous educators who are professionally able to enlighten on cultural diversity guided by principles of social justice. To end, another line of research suggested in the chapters has to do with ‘globalization’ and ‘internationalization’ of teacher education resulting from policy travelling, exporting of innovations from one context to another and international directives for the improvement of quality, especially in disadvantaged country contexts and populations. While over time there has been much research on some of these issues, its focus has tended to be local rather than across countries and world regions. There is room for research that looks comparatively at global policy emphases and institutional reforms in teacher education provisions with an eye on the number and quality of teachers prepared under such provisions who work with disadvantaged populations and remain professionally active over a reasonable period of time.
References Bishop, J. L. & Verlerger, M. (2013). The flipped classroom: A survey of research. Retrieved 14 August 2016: http://www.studiesuccesho.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/flipped-classroom-artikel.pdf Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice. London: Allan Lane – Penguin Books.
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62 Adapting to the Virtual Campus and Transitions in ‘School-less’ Teacher Education Craig Deed
Technology and workplace fragmentation This chapter presents a review and analysis of literature on digital technology trends that are likely to impact on teacher educators’ work and identity. Teacher educators include academics, practitioners and teachers, working in a diversity of workplace environments including higher education, schools and other community and cultural institutions (Murray & Kosnik, 2011). Contemporary teacher educators work at the intersection of innovation and convention, and multiple professional narratives are emerging from new contexts that differ from historical, cultural and institutional accounts of practice (Zilber, Tuval-Mashiach, & Lieblich, 2008). A framing metaphor of ‘school-lessness’ is used to explain challenges to the routine and authority of the teacher educator. School-lessness broadly references learning environments that are representative of the affordances of digital spaces, including openness and the individualization of learning. Examples of schoolless contexts include informal, virtual or off-campus learning environments. The virtual campus is made up of multiple nested spaces, with interaction and connectivity between those of an institutional nature and others more representative of school-less contexts. A primary argument made here is that digital technology fragments and intensifies the contextual milieu of teacher preparation and expands the scope and reach of teacher educator work and identity into different learning environments
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beyond the formal structured campus experience. The splintering effect of digital technology is apparent in virtual contexts affording unconventional, or schoolless, possibilities for learning. As a result, new technology has augmented the latitude for work, identity and agency. Changes to teacher educator work and identity are considered in terms of agency or power to think and act differently according to current and evolving workplace contexts. Teacher educator knowledge of practice is grounded in interactions that are enculturated in the institutional conventions of higher education and school settings (Juzwik, 2006). New technologies have had a considerable impact on teaching and learning and provide an example of a radical shift from institutional stability to uncertainty (Giddens, 1984). The expansive and interactive nature of technology has reconstituted ‘our relations with objects, spaces and each other’ (Beer & Burrows, 2007, p. 2). The concept of social networking, as an example, extends theoretical scholarship from formal collaboration to include informal sharing and conversation – valuing openness and individualized learning choice and outcomes. Teacher educators now find themselves engaged with inside and outside colleagues, students and others through social media, e-portfolios, learning management systems, webinars, wikis and professional learning communities, bringing knowledge and advocacy beyond conventional learning time and space (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009). Although a range of actions may be perceived, these must be balanced with the practicalities of achieving the purposes of teacher education. This provides scope for transition and adaptation of professional agency and identity: beliefs and values, individual and social working practices, expertise, judgement and knowledge creation and application (Henkel, 2005; Trede, Macklin, & Bridges, 2012). While this chapter does not have ambitions to draw a comprehensive map of teacher educator work and identity, it does seek to examine those aspects contested and redrawn by the affordances of digital technology.
The virtual campus Digital technology has made a significant impact on higher education, encompassing a diverse range of learning tools and approaches. In one sense, the structural authority and formality of the institutional lecture hall and seminar or tutorial room is being transformed by the rapid flow of ideas, content and course material to the virtual campus. This is exemplified in Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). The e-learning phenomena was embraced with minimal consideration of its impact on teaching and learning practices, or on higher education academic identity, although with considerable excitement about the access, business and marketing opportunities (Clow, 2013; Yuan & Powell, 2013). New forms of institutional e-learning and mobile or m-learning are constantly being created and offered. In short, the virtual campus is characterized as
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the achievement of institutional educational purposes across multiple formal and school-less learning environments. The recontextualizing of learning environments implies that teaching is transiting to more unstructured, off-campus, virtual and irregular settings. This assumes that both the educator and learner are able to modify and adopt teaching and learning behaviours appropriate to this mode of education (McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010). The virtual campus experience includes formal digital lectures as well as social learning using mobile technology, including tablets and smart-phones. Teacher educator work involves using multi-media performance tools and applying expertise gained in communication using film and animation. Further examples of virtual campus learning include hand-held mobile learning and immersive online experiences, including gaming, multi-modal representation and communication and the pervasive use of social networking (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012). Mobile technology enables learning that is personalized, learner-centred, situated, collaborative and ubiquitous (Collinson, 1999; Solvberg & Rismark, 2012). This has changed the language of where, how and when learning occurs, with the lecture hall being succeeded by a plurality of learning experiences. This affects the way teacher educators conceptualize the purpose and scope of participatory practices of their students (Greenhow et al., 2009). This democratization of knowledge development requires teacher educators to consider their role in teacher preparation.
Teacher educator identity Identity refers to a dynamic sense of traditional and projected professional roles and values that are enacted in a particular institutional context (Billot, 2010). Identity is a function of the agency of teacher educators – characterized as an individual contestation of habitual teaching practices through a deliberate seeking of and interaction with affordances, interpretations and perspectives of the learning environment. While influences on agency are complex, digital technology affords novel versions of workplace activity (Brannen & Nilsen, 2005). Identity is developed as a result of interactions between the professional role and the context for action (Briggs, 2007; Henkel, 2005). For Dinkelman (2011, p. 309) and others, identity is ‘both claimed by teacher educators and given to them via the roles and institutions that frame the profession’. The building or creating of individual identity is embodied in day-to-day work practice (Bruner, 1991), involving positioning and critically framing the individual’s and others’ teacher education practices (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Identity draws on tradition and cultural conventions of teaching and teacher education to inform perceptions and judgements of appropriateness and competence (Juzwik, 2006; Young & Erikson, 2011).
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The impact of technology and the virtual campus on educator identity has been examined in a diverse set of research literature over the past decade. This includes discussion of the pervasive impact of technology on time, space and forms of teaching environment (Goodyear, 2006); the implications of learning analytics on academic practice (Ferguson, 2012); critiques of the measurement and correlation of academic work and student experience in online learning environments as an example of the wider characterization of the neo-liberalization of higher education (Biesta, 2010; Gibbs, Ylijoki, Guzmán-Valenzuela, & Barnett, 2014); technology as a driver of innovation in higher education teaching practice (Beetham & Sharpe, 2013); and the shift from formal to informal teaching environments and practices (Roxå & Mårtensson, 2015). Much research literature is focused on the transitional challenges for academics responding to digitally mediated change, including dealing with uncertainty and disruption of traditional and valued practices (Barcan, 2013). This means that academic staff are often at a formative stage of building practice knowledge for working effectively in new online teaching environments (Hanson, 2009). The widespread influence of digital technology on teaching and learning environments and related work practices means there is significant latitude for transitional and adaptive identities to emerge (Swennen, Jones, & Volman, 2010). While there is extensive debate about the impact of the virtual campus, here I want to identify key aspects of day-to-day work of teacher educators within these emerging entities. It is acknowledged that any modelling of complex systems such as higher education cannot identify the impact of technology on every process and routine (Levin et al., 2013). I have taken an approach in this chapter to identify the agent-based reaction to action possibilities of digital technology. This provides a frame for explaining critical elements of educator work and practice within higher education, making a contribution to wider discourse analysing complex theoretical implications of technology and education. Being a teacher educator is understood in relation to a professional community of practice made up of cultural, contextual and interactional experiences, influences and resources – beyond and within the virtual campus (Trede et al., 2012). Later, I characterize emerging forms of work and identity in the virtual campus as symbolic activities. This is a deliberate identification of the different work and identity required in digital contexts. Yet, while there is considerable scope for diverse individual identities to emerge from practice in new contexts, these are likely to remain coupled with historical, cultural, routine, institutional or relational accounts of the teacher educator role and responsibilities (Dinkelman, 2011; Zilber et al., 2008). Established professional identities, although loosely constraining, provide a common language, tools and resources that can be woven into the constitution of individual identity, making them recognizable within broader historical, institutional and cultural patterns and expectations and critical positioning of practice (Wertsch, 1998).
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‘School-lessness’ – a framing metaphor One way to consider the virtual campus is through the metaphor of ‘schoollessness’ – a way of framing the generative expressions and authorizations for new educational time and space (Deed & Lesko, 2015). While school-lessness is an ambiguous concept, allowing multiple interpretations, it is loosely identifiable in efforts to simultaneously push away from and to look back at a formal campus-based experience. Moving towards a school-less state, conversely, leads to a clearer sense of what is being left behind. School-lessness can be thought of in contrast to ‘school’, although, importantly, both states have the same purpose. Here, school is conceived in terms of institutionally bound teaching in formally timetabled time and space, hierarchical knowledge transmission, educator regulation of learning behaviour, routine teaching practice and limited learner agency. In contrast, school-lessness tends to emphasize uncertainty and disruption, evident in alternative teaching practices, personalization of learning, distributed expertise, experiential, situated and embodied pedagogy and use of unconventional and virtual time and space. While acknowledging that both of these conceptions are an abstracted representation of education, they serve the argument that contextual expressions and authorizations both afford and constrain teaching and learning activities (Brannen & Nilsen, 2005). One characteristic of the school-less or virtual campus is openness – open accessibility and interaction with virtual networks of experts, resources and information (Kimmerle, Moskaliuk, Cress, & Thiel, 2011). Openness is evident in collective intelligence, distributed expertise and expansive learning and in student-oriented pedagogies, including individualized learning, agency, social learning, self-regulation and autonomy (Deed & Edwards, 2013; Prain et al., 2013; Stefanou, Perencevich, DiCintio, & Turner, 2004). One example of openness is found in communities of practice, an influential concept in teacher education (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Putnam & Borko, 2000). Outside expertise or experiences from community participants with cultural or contextual differences can excite complex and fertile learning conversations (Deed, Edwards, & Gomez, 2015). Technology provides opportunities for engaging with loosely bound communities with a range of experiences and expertise. This follows Lankshear and Knobel (2007) and others who argue that expertise is open, dynamic and globally distributed. The implication is that interaction within a widely dispersed community improves quality through continual sharing, questioning, revision and reflection. Yet Engeström, Brown, Christopher, and Gregory (1997) and others have noted the possibility of unexpected events and a lack of coordination in such networks – an ever present risk that expansive systems may disintegrate into disparate individual fragments (Kangasoja, 2002). This chaotic interaction is
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somewhat evident in contemporary students use of social and immersive media (McLoughlin & Lee, 2010; Oblinger, 2004). The cumulative effects of interactions in digital environments are a form of collective or distributed intelligence (Brabham, 2008; Levy, 1997). As individuals engage in varying ways with knowledge production using a range of technological tools and practices through posting, questioning and linking ideas, data and information, this creates user-generated content through participative interaction that is accessible and usable by others (Levy, 1997). Possibilities are created for learning beyond a single institution or school and experiences/perspectives across diverse contexts can contribute to knowledge generation activities (Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula, 2007). Related to openness is the individualization of learning, evident in approaches that acknowledge the mutuality of educator and learner experiences (Edwards, 2005). Individualization of learning is possible where digital technology disrupts institutional, large group-oriented teaching routines – affording learner movement between various forms of social interaction and individual learning space (Laurillard, 2009). Digital technology enables active learning, where students create and learn in their own learning context, and is flexible as to where and when learning occurs (Resta & Laferriere, 2007). Learning is not bound by traditional time and space constraints of institutional routine and convention, offering flexibility and potential to engage with new and different perspectives (Caillier & Riordan, 2009). Teacher educators, and students, don’t just occupy the role, identity or institutional space provided for them. Rather, they are expected to actively occupy the school-less classroom, making choices about using it to afford the individualization of learning through connectivity and interactivity. This occupation of different formal and informal learning spaces challenges the idea the knowledge must be ‘taught’ or ‘learnt’ in a specific context at a scheduled time. Technology increases the capacity for teacher educators to customize aspects of a learning environment to create an individual learning space (McLoughlin & Lee, 2010). Individual spaces, being more distant from teacher educator control, may afford particular learning approaches such as representation and practice of knowledge and abstract thinking and practice of strategies for solving complex learning problems, while formal modes of structuring, framing and assessment of learning remain largely in spaces under the control of teacher educators. As a framing metaphor for the virtual campus, school-lessness provides a means of interpreting and explaining digital contextual interactions, relationships and tensions. Work and identity in a different space often involve the reworking of conventions and routines, and this creates a transitional environment. Schoollessness is typified in learning environments of the virtual campus, including informal learning communities, social networking and gaming environments and individual learning spaces.
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A school-less space separates identity from a prescriptive authority role (Berman, 1983; Siedentop, 2014). It assumes equality and reciprocity of learner and educator authority and status. Agency at the virtual campus is evident in learning experiences that blend formal and informal learning, including the use of social and mobile technology (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012). Social media, as an example of school-less space, is useful for building social and community identity, networking and learning; and it affords educational purposes including communication, collaboration and resource sharing (Mazman & Usluel, 2010). Thought of in this way, the metaphor of school-lessness can frame a range of teaching and learning permutations that acknowledge individual difference and diversity.
The effect of school-lessness: action possibilities and symbolic activities A primary impact of digital technology on teacher educator work and identity is the re-contextualization of the conventional educational context. This has expanded the action possibilities of the context and conditions for teacher educators’ work. Of course, these action possibilities are not always perceived or taken up, although they can drive multiple composite versions of work and identity. Action possibilities of the metaphor of school-lessness are not absolute but rely on teacher educators to perceive what is possible and how this possibility can be enacted, while achieving the purposes and intentions of institutional teacher preparation. Action possibilities are translated by each individual in relation to beliefs, values and perceptions of capacity, context and purpose (Ertmer, 2005); and they are grounded in past, current and imagined experience (Kelly, 2006). It is reasonable to consider possibilities as transactional, as they involve reasoned choices; agency is then required to enact these possible choices. As such, action possibilities of school-less environments can be expressed as dichotomies: control/ freedom, visibility/invisibility, capability/inability, individual/collaborative and innovation/tradition. The possibilities of the virtual campus are relative to perceptions of contextual constraints and possibilities, given the professional role and intention of a teacher educator. Intentionality draws on formalized routines of teacher preparation, with action possibilities offering a dynamic set of orienting influences involving awareness of the physical, social and structural contextual possibilities and constraints for activity (Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007). One possibility of school-lessness is the extent to which teacher educators can or should control learning activities (Bernstein, 1996). Conversely, how much freedom can or should they allow for learner choice and autonomy? This will vary according to learning context, with more control likely to be used in institutional environments and less in individual learning spaces. It is generally assumed
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that less educator control in unstructured and irregular environments will lead to learners taking greater control of their own engagement and learning (Selwyn, 2007). Conversely, the flexible nature of school-less environments, characterized in terms of openness and individualized learning environments, suggest increased levels of freedom for productive and engaging learning approaches and activities (Conole, De Laat, Dillon, & Darby, 2008). One example of the control/ freedom tension is the structure of learning materials. Is it necessary to have learning materials organized sequentially from weeks one to ten, for example, or could it be possible to have all learning materials available from the first week, giving students the freedom to navigate a learning pathway? The work and identity of a teacher educator in this scenario is to exert control by defining an assessable endpoint for the multiple learning pathways and to be visibly accessible and responsive to student interactions in forums and social networking (Coomey & Stephenson, 2001). A further action possibility is related to the pervasive use of social media among pre-service teachers. Teacher educators may elect to become either visible or invisible in informal community space for personal and social interaction with the experience and narratives of peers and others. Informal social networking spaces provide opportunity for informal interaction between teacher educators and pre-service teachers – encouraging a range of perspectives and ideas to emerge. Depending on the capability/inability of an individual teacher educator, technology also affords multi-modal representation of knowledge, providing opportunity for demonstrating, applying and communicating learning processes and outcomes. Digital technology has ensured that a tension is played out between the action possibilities of innovative or entrepreneurial teacher educators and traditional practitioners. The balance of innovation and traditional practices emerges from engagement with new technology, an orientation for pedagogical experimentation, expert practitioner knowledge and an immersion in traditional contexts or institutional routine and memory. This engagement is likely to include: pedagogy that recognizes the mutuality between pre-service teacher, teacher educator, task and contextual interactions; interactions between individuals using formal learning management systems and social media, cultivating a culture of a networking community with co-responsibility for engagement and learning; and adopting a mindset where these interactions have power to challenge conventional teaching routines. This allows for educators to either work individually or more collaboratively with near and distant peers. Innovation is based on an understanding that teacher education is not about teaching routines and transmissive telling; rather, that the complex nature of practice needs to be explored in the context of integration of theory and practice. Innovative practices are likely to emerge from engaging with learning approaches and preferences that are coherent with the capacity of digital technology for social learning (McLoughlin & Lee, 2010). Pedagogy that enables representation
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and communication using multiple media, actively engaging with collective intelligence networks, social learning with distributed peers and co-regulation of individualized learning experiences are all examples of innovative approaches (Dede, 2010). Symbolic activities are those practices that are intentionally and purposefully enacted by drawing on the action possibilities of school-lessness. The symbolism of engagement with the affordances of new contexts acts to signal an educator’s changing identity. Symbolic activities are the routines, tools and language used by teacher educators. Symbolic activities provide an identity marker: a result of interactions between professional role and context (Briggs, 2007). They involve positioning and framing practices, using cultural and interactional resources and influences that are understood within a professional community of practice (Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Trede et al., 2012). Symbolic activities are also closely related to practices and processes enacted within a context, showing how different aspects of teacher educator practice knowledge can be applied and developed in variable contexts (Gholami & Husu, 2010). Examples of symbolic activities in school-less contexts include social connections and interactions, sharing ideas and perspectives, multi-modal representation and communication of knowledge and ideas and educator presence through online forums and social media. In all of these learning experiences, the teacher educator has to consider how to steward ‘their’ pre-service teachers – making meaning from learning experiences, critically integrating theory and practice, reflexively building practice knowledge and adopting a disposition to seek and explore different perspectives and diverse experiences. Education systems continue to provide a policy and regulatory framework for teacher preparation, but technology provides alternative means of conceptualizing the means of integrating and assessing theoretical and practical knowledge. While technology has led to an intensification and expansion of teacher educators’ connectivity and interactivity, there remains uncertainty about how to best use digital technologies in practice (Starkey, 2010). There is a sense of reciprocity between the symbolic activities used by the teacher educator and the subsequent pre-service teacher’s activity (Verloop, Van Driel, & Meijer, 2001). This development of teacher educator expertise in working effectively in digital learning environments is an ongoing process of acquiring and consolidating a set of skills specific to this context (Sternberg, 1999). For example, in order to share ideas, a teacher educator may post a link on Twitter to their latest publication. The symbolic process in this instance is networking – using social media in order to connect with a distributed network of peers. The frequency of Twitter posting and the number of followers are likely to influence the reach and effect of the activity, based on a decision about the extent of visibility required. The educator could decide to use the possibilities of social media to become visible in order to seek feedback, offer conversational prompts or propose reflective questions – if the intention is to direct the online discussion
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(Laurillard, 2009). Alternatively, a teacher educator may make a reasoned choice to withdraw from the use of social media and become an invisible observer if the pedagogical intention is to allow students to have more conversational freedom. The impact of choices drawn from action possibilities and enacted through symbolic activities are immediately experienced by students. The nature of the experience is conducted in a medium that allows for instantaneous feedback from students. This informs the teacher educator of the veracity of their choices and actions in the virtual campus, which may inform subsequent activity.
Transitions in teacher educator work and identity The school-less learning environment, mediated by digital technology, is not merely a backdrop for action but an active variable in both teaching and learning processes (Taylor & Huang, 2011). School-less contexts provide particular conditions for construction and enactment of professional work and identity (Schau & Gilly, 2003). The example of the virtual campus affords contextual opportunities to demonstrate competence in technologically-mediated interaction and connectivity; learning communities; online learning pedagogies; professional and practitioner interactions; and the design of learning and assessment activities. Professional work and identity become more porous via online presence and interactions with networks of peers, students and others (Schau & Gilly, 2003). For instance, identity and reputation may be impacted by setting up a Twitter account, encouraging students to become followers and then interacting for the purposes of learning using this forum. Interactions on social media can also provide a means of identity co-construction and building awareness of trending issues (Lamb & Davidson, 2005). An academic who notes a social media trend among their students about confusion over an assessment task and then immediately responds by posting a clarification is actively co-constructing a certain professional identity based on what they do in relation to the student experience (Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006). This can be contrasted with an example of the passive academic who relies on the lecture hall to provide the impetus for identity construction. Interactive communication technologies provide a set of choices for teacher educators to construct identity through the way they interact and respond to their pre-service teaching students. Social media offers a particularly potent means of enacting this identity shift and transmission (Pratt et al., 2006). Aside from technical competence, construction of identity has a human and social aspect that can be signalled using social networking technology (Bullough, 2005). However, this is a complex relationship as teacher educators also have to consider establishing professional boundaries, meaningful connections and networks, efficient use of time and coherence with social networking tools and teaching or research priorities (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2013).
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Transitions between the established and school-less learning environments are a function of attempts to achieve the purposes of teacher preparation through consideration of the action possibilities of control/freedom, visibility/invisibility, capability/inability, individual/collaborative and innovation/ tradition. Transitions must also account for durable values and beliefs about academic role and identity: academic freedom and autonomy, professional participation in a research community, generation of knowledge that benefits the community and engagement in a cultural and disciplinary narrative (Clarke, Hyde, & Drennan, 2013). The transitional process is both reasoned and reflexive, as teacher educators experience and engage with the possibilities and constraints of school-less contexts. While the affordances of the virtual campus indicate potent possibilities, institutional routines exert considerable restraint against a wholesale transition to new learning environments. This suggests that any transition is far from straightforward. Rather, transitioning between established and uncertain routines suggests a degree of experimentation and critical reflection on how the purpose and intention of teacher preparation is served in each contextual encounter. Transition is consistent with the notion that work and identity are formed, explored and re-formed through exploratory agency (Mehta, 2013).
Adapting to the virtual campus What now can be said about emerging forms of teacher educator work and identity? The above discussion leads to three conclusions: teacher educator work involves connectivity and interaction with multiple interrelated institutional and school-less learning environments in order to achieve the purposes of teacher education; teacher educators experience and interpret these contexts by making choices about perceived action possibilities; and they engage with these possibilities through reflexive enactment of symbolic activities. Teacher educators are unlikely to passively experience future learning spaces; they need to authoritatively interpret, participate and react in a dynamic way to the constraints and possibilities of each new context (Greeno, 2009). The teacher educator can only do this by becoming expert in recognizing and making the most of the affordances of a range of learning spaces that they are likely to use (Deed, Cox, & Edwards, 2014). This means considering the resources and potential of different spaces for the resolution of certain kinds of learning. In effect, this argument means that the principal work of the teacher educator is based on their immersive experience and knowledge of pedagogy. Adapting to school-less contexts involves transitioning between institutional conventions, routines and resources and the action possibilities of emerging learning environments. Transitional agency is directly linked to current and future expertise, informing the teacher educator’s knowledge and skills across a
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range of contexts and events (Billett, 2009). The transition process is informed by insight, mindfulness and actions in diverse learning environments.
Implications for Teacher Education The metaphor of school-lessness raises critical questions about how teacher education can adapt to new teaching and learning opportunities, account for emerging individual needs versus collectively defined needs of pre-service teachers and integrate socially networked activities with pragmatic economic and social expectations of employability (Rodriguez, 2013). Implications for teacher education emerge from the practice of teacher educators: •• In order to prepare pre-service teachers to teach in a range of contexts – modelling responsiveness to the possibilities of institutional and school-less learning environments; defining and delivering quality teaching and learning experiences; effective use of collective knowledge, resources, social media tools and networks; and multi-media representation and communication. •• As a means of developing teacher practice knowledge – application of expertise to create and teach effectively in a range of institutional, community and individual learning environments. This includes consideration of strategies to support this capacity, such as presence, interactivity, responsiveness and communication. •• To prepare pre-service teachers for contested and complex educational contests – development and enactment of pedagogy to build capacity for problem solving, higher order thinking, complex modelling and differentiation of learning and assessment tasks. •• To accommodate neomillennial learning styles, preferences and approaches – implementation of pedagogy that frames individual approaches to learning, including mindfulness of individual student approaches and experiences; using a range of co-regulated approaches to engage students in quality learning. •• Cultivation of relationships and partnerships with employer organization – participation in networked communities of learning, interacting and learning from near and distant peers and others; building professional communities; collegiality of teacher educators and related professional networks.
These approaches are demonstrated in pedagogy that builds on the mutuality of teacher educator, pre-service teacher and contextual interactions; networked and distributed ‘classroom’ spaces joined by the common purpose of learning; and a teaching and learning mindset that opportunistically recontextualizes historical industrial enclosures of school time and space.
Beyond the school-less campus? What, then, is beyond school-lessness? Perhaps the first step is to ask whether the cultural and institutional function of the formally structured campus experience is so fragile that it can be superseded. Regardless of the answer, educators and learners must find a way to respond to the paradox of uncertainty and possibility evident in a metaphor of school-lessness and claim control over the
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chaotic assembly of interactivity and connectivity that technology affords. The complex work of teacher educators will continue to encompass preparation of practitioners for complex and diverse school contexts; responsiveness to regulatory frameworks; applying expertise in pedagogical philosophies and models; building partnerships with education authorities and providers; awareness and contribution to educational research; and professional learning (Knight et al., 2015). This role will be need to be enacted within unsettled institutional and complex school-less contexts. Any idealized model of wholesale colonization of a school-less campus and beyond is speculative. It is more likely that a distinct range of individually theorized and contextually enacted practices will emerge. It seems premature to say that the transition between institutional and school-less educational environments has moved towards a settled space – indeed, a greater range of digitally mediated approaches are emerging in an exponential fashion. One could argue that this represents further expansion and fragmentation of teacher educator work and identity.
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Greenhow, C., Robelia, B., & Hughes, J. E. (2009). Web 2.0 and classroom research: What path should we take now? Educational Researcher, 38(4), 246–259. Greeno, J. (2009). A framework bite on contextualizing, framing, and positioning: A companion to Son and Goldstone. Cognition and Instruction, 27(3), 269–275. Hanson, J. (2009). Displaced but not replaced: The impact of e-learning on academic identities in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(5), 553–564. Henkel, M. (2005). Identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment. Higher Education, 49(1/2), 155–176. Juzwik, M. (2006). Situating narrative-minded research: A commentary on Anna Sfard and Anna Prusak’s ‘Telling Identities’. Educational Researcher, 35(9), 13–21. Kangasoja, J. (2002). Complex design problems: An impetus for learning and knotworking. Retrieved 21 May, 2011, from http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/publications/files/47/ICLS2002_Kangasoja.pdf Kelly, P. (2006). What is teacher learning? A socio-cultural perspective. Oxford Review of Education, 32(4), 505–519. Kimmerle, J., Moskaliuk, J., Cress, U., & Thiel, A. (2011). A systems theoretical approach to online knowledge building. AI & SOCIETY, 26(1), 49–60. doi: 10.1007/s00146-010-0281-7 Knight, S., Lloyd, G., Arbaugh, F., Gamson, D., McDonald, S., Nolan, J., & Whitnet, A. E. (2015). Five-year retrospective. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(5), 410–414. Lamb, R., & Davidson, E. (2005). Information and communication technology challenges to scientific professional identity. The Information Society, 21(1), 1–24. Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2007). Researching new literacies: Web 2.0 practices and insider perspectives. E-Learning and Digital Media, 4(3), 224–240. Laurillard, D. (2009). The pedagogical challenges to collaborative technologies. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4(1), 5–20. Levin, S., Xepapadeas, T., Crépin, A.-S., Norberg, J., de Zeeuw, A., Folke, C., Hughes, T., Arrow, K., Barrett, S., Daily, G., Ehrlich, P., Kautsky, N., Mäler, K.-G., Polasky, S., Troell, M., Vincent, J.R., & and Walker, B. (2013). Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems: Modeling and policy implications. Environment and Development Economics, 18(2), 111–132. doi: 10.1017/S1355770X12000460 Levy, P. (1997). Collective intelligence: Mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace (R. Bononno, Trans.). New York: Plenum. McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., & Cormier, D. (2010). The MOOC model for digital practice. University of Prince Edward Island. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. (2010). Personalized and self-regulated learning in the Web 2.0 era: International exemplars of innovative pedagogy using social software. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(1), 28–43. Mazman, S. G., & Usluel, Y. K. (2010). Modeling educational usage of Facebook. Computers & Education, 55(2), 444–453. Mehta, J. (2013). From bureaucracy to profession: Remaking the educational sector for the twenty-first century. Harvard Educational Review, 83(3), 463–488. Murray, J., & Kosnik, C. (2011). Academic work and identities in teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37(3), 243–246. Oblinger, D. G. (2004). The next generation of educational engagement. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 8, 1–18. Prain, V., Cox, P., Deed, C., Dorman, J., Edwards, D., Farrelly, C., Keeffe, M., Lovejoy, V., Mow, L., Sellings, P., Waldrip, B., & Yager, Z. (2013). Personalised learning: Lessons to be learnt. British Educational Research Journal, 39(4), 654–676. Pratt, M. G., Rockmann, K. W., & Kaufmann, J. B. (2006). Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents. Academy of Management Journal, 49(2), 235–262. Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4–15.
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Resta, P., & Laferriere, T. (2007). Technology in support of collaborative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 19(1), 65–83. Rodriguez, O. (2013). The concept of openness behind c and x-MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Open Praxis, 5(1), 67–73. Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2015). Microcultures and informal learning: A heuristic guiding analysis of conditions for informal learning in local higher education workplaces. International Journal for Academic Development, 20(2), 193–205. Schau, H. J., & Gilly, M. C. (2003). We are what we post? Self-presentation in personal web space. Journal of Consumer Research, 30(3), 385–404. Selwyn, N. (2007). The use of computer technology in university teaching and learning: A critical perspective. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23(2), 83–94. Sfard, A., & Prusak, A. (2005). Telling identities: In search of an analytical tool for investigating learning as a culturally shaped activity. Educational Researcher, 34(4), 14–22. Sharples, M., Taylor, J., & Vavoula, G. (2007). A theory of learning for the mobile age. In A. Andrews & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The Sage handbook of e-learning research (pp. 221–247). London: Sage. Siedentop, L. (2014). Inventing the individual: The origins of Western liberalism. London: Allen Lane. Solvberg, A., & Rismark, M. (2012). Learning spaces in mobile learning environments. Active Learning In Higher Education, 13(1), 23–33. doi: 10.1177/1469787411429189 Starkey, L. (2010). Teachers’ pedagogical reasoning and action in the digital age. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 16(2), 233–244. Stefanou, C. R., Perencevich, K. C., DiCintio, M., & Turner, J. C. (2004). Supporting autonomy in the classroom: Ways teachers encourage student decision making and ownership. Educational Psychologist, 39(2), 97–110. Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Intelligence as developing expertise. Contemporary Education Psychology, 24(4), 359–375. Swennen, A., Jones, K., & Volman, M. (2010). Teacher educators: Their identities, sub-identities and implications for professional development. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 131– 148. doi: 10.1080/19415250903457893 Taylor, L., & Huang, H. W. (2011). Student engagement in online multimedia communication. Paper presented at the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, Nashville, USA. Trede, F., Macklin, R., & Bridges, D. (2012). Professional identity development: A review of higher education literature. Studies in Higher Education, 37(3), 365–384. Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2013). Scholars and faculty members’ lived experiences in online social networks. The Internet and Higher Education, 16(1), 43–50. Verloop, N., Van Driel, J., & Meijer, P. (2001). Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5), 441–461. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press. Young, J., R, & Erikson, L. B. (2011). Imaging, becoming and being a teacher: How professional history mediates teacher educator identity. Studying Teacher Education, 7(2), 121–129. Yuan, L., & Powell, S. (2013). MOOCs and open education: Implications for higher education. Bolton: JISC CETIS. Zilber, T., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Lieblich, A. (2008). The embedded narrative: Navigating through multiple contexts. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(6), 1047–1069.
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63 Multiple Voices and Participants in Teacher Education Katherina A. Payne and Ken Zeichner
This chapter explores issues related to whose knowledge counts in teacher education; specifically, we examine new ways to structure the preparation of teachers that draw on the expertise of multiple stakeholders. Although university knowledge currently dominates the preparation of teachers globally, teacher education’s space within the university is increasingly being challenged by the public writ large, governmental policies, and private educational entrepreneurs (Moon, 2016a). Following an examination of the current state of affairs in teacher education across varied international contexts, we argue for an epistemological shift in preparing teachers toward greater inclusivity of school, i.e. P-12educator, and community knowledge alongside university knowledge. Within this argument, we consider an important conceptual difference between the ideas of partnership and collaboration, and we examine programs that move toward collaboration and more democratic forms of teacher education. We conclude with a discussion of how this transformative view of teacher education, built upon the collaborative efforts of universities, schools, and communities, can renew teacher education’s commitment to providing capable, effective, and informed teachers for all students.
A Brief Overview of the State of Teacher Education Globally, teacher education occurs in a variety of programs; however, it has increasingly moved into university settings in many countries. In Europe, the formal education of teachers dates back to the French école normale near the end
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of the 17th century; German seminaries for teachers existed as far back as 1698; and the earliest English teacher-training college was started in Southwark, London in 1798 (Moon, 2016a). In the United States the first normal school was started in 1839 (Fraser, 2007). From these early beginnings, countries have taken various pathways toward moving teacher education into university settings. In the United States, the move to university teacher education took place in the 1930s, England in the 1970s, France in the 1990s, and South Africa in the 2000s (Moon, 2016a). Today, in many countries, teacher education is primarily provided by universities, either directly or through routes endorsed by universities. There are, however, countries where non-college and university providers of teacher education are increasing. For example, in the United States, providers such as The Relay Graduate School of Education and Match Teacher Residency are examples of private providers that not only exist outside of traditional universities but are also influencing larger policy decisions around the preparation of teachers (Zeichner, 2016). Across contexts, the influence of politics and positioning of education as an ideological battleground has impacted teacher education. Despite each country’s varied history of teacher education, globally there is a trend toward rethinking and restructuring teacher education (Ellis & McNicholl, 2015). The argument for this restructuring is closely tied to increased attention to educational attainment and educational equity. Moon (2016a) states that with continued progress in education, noting that over 40 percent of the population in the UK and 80 percent in South Korea go on to higher education, there is greater attention from parents to the quality of their children’s education and consequentially to the quality of their teachers. Governments see the regulation of teachers and teacher education as key to their ability to provide high quality education to all students. In some countries, this increased focus on teacher education has led to the consolidation of the preparation of teachers into a university system of teacher education (e.g. Canada, Finland, Korea, Japan, and Thailand), where there can be multiple pathways within one system. For example, Finland’s reform of its education system in the 1960s led to teacher education’s move into universities with the aim of making all teachers familiar with research both in academic subject matter and pedagogy (Niemi, 2016). In other countries, particularly ones where university systems have not been able to meet the demand for new teachers, new educational entrepreneurs have turned their attention to teacher education. These entrepreneurs have pushed for policies that deregulate the preparation of teachers (and often public schooling writ large) to allow for more alternative pathways in teacher education, including nonuniversity providers, e.g. the proliferation of Teach for All (Olmedo, Bailey, & Ball, 2013). Still others, such as England, have moved much of teacher education out of universities and into school settings (Ellis, 2010). Each approach to the restructuring of teacher education highlights a different view of the knowledge necessary to teach diverse groups of students, as well as
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1103
how problems in education are framed in each context. Two primary kinds of knowledge about teaching and learning currently dominate the field – academic knowledge and practical knowledge. We give a brief overview of these two kinds of knowledge and then move to argue for inclusion of a third form of knowledge, community knowledge. We view learning as a social and cultural process. Teachers need to learn about communities where their students live so that they can better relate to their students and families, as well as how to support student learning by drawing on the expertise and knowledge culturally embedded in communities (Zeichner, Bowman, Guillen, & Napolitan, 2016; Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Working with communities toward educational justice as part of the broader social movement for equity is essential to transform teacher education (Anyon, 2014).
University Teacher Education and Academic Knowledge The traditional model of college- and university-based teacher education emphasizes the knowledge of universities, or what is often termed academic knowledge. Teacher candidates learn what and how to teach in a variety of courses at the university – such as social foundations courses that examine the role of schooling in society, and specific methods courses focused on pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 2004). Teacher candidates are supposed to take this academic knowledge gained in university courses and apply it in field experiences in schools. This model highlights what Clandinin (1995) has referred to as ‘the sacred theory into practice story’. The perception of the theory–practice divide has led to efforts to coordinate university coursework with field components of teacher education; however, there has been little success in coordinating these areas of knowledge (Anderson & Stillman, 2011; Zeichner, 2010). One avenue to alleviate this divide has been the establishment of school-university partnerships and partner and professional development schools (Boyle-Baise & McIntyre, 2008). Yet partnering tends to have distinct differences from collaborating. In the case of most universityschool partnerships, universities have maintained authority over the construction and dissemination of knowledge for teaching and teacher education (Duffy, 1994; Zeichner, 2010), and schools remain as application spaces for this knowledge (Barab & Duffy, 2000). There has most often been a lack of attention to the knowledge, both theoretical and practical, existing in and produced by schools. Too often, partnering has been a matter of convenience for universities rather than a paradigmatic move toward acknowledging the expertise and knowledge embedded in schools. There are efforts in some programs to better coordinate these varied sources of expertise through mediated coursework that occurs in schools and in concert with teachers. For example, at the University of Luxembourg, Max (2010), drawing
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on third generation cultural-historical-activity theory (CHAT) (e.g. Engeström, 2007), details reform efforts in the internship that have occurred during initial teacher education. Max’s use of CHAT highlights the contradictions, and possible productive tensions, of different social relations and bodies of knowledge coming together. Importantly, Max details how the program created a ‘boundary-crossing object’ (in this case, a study theme co-constructed among the teacher candidates, classroom teachers, and university tutors) to facilitate collaboration between the university and internship sites. Boundary-crossing objects are most often products that are co-constructed by the varied institutions; these objects require the expertise of all stakeholders to fully take shape (see also Anagnostopoulos, Smith, & Basmadjian, 2007). This effort toward joint work highlights the importance of drawing concurrently on university and school knowledge in support of teacher candidate learning. In another example, the University Teacher Education Program (UTEP), at the University of Chicago, specifically attends to geographical knowledge in ‘context-specific teacher preparation’ (Kapadia-Matsko & Hammerness, 2014, p. 130). Throughout the program, teacher candidates participate in coursework and experiences that interrogate the federal and state policy context, the public school context, the specific district context, and finally the classroom and student context. At the district and classroom level, particular attention is paid to the geographical context (in this case, urban Chicago) as well as the local socio-cultural context. Kapadia-Matsko and Hammerness note that, ‘UTEP’s context-specific focus, which encompasses the racial, economic, and cultural particularities of Chicago, as well as localized knowledge about routines, procedures, and curriculum of Chicago Public Schools’ creates a multidimensional framework for the program, which is anchored in multicultural education research. This context-specific framework supports teacher candidates in identifying the multiple and varied dimensions of contextual knowledge important for teaching in urban schools. The reality of learning to teach is complex (e.g. Gatti, 2016); however, the structure of university-based teacher education has been fundamentally undemocratic and too often has failed to foster the incorporation of knowledge and expertise of schools and communities. Often where universities have partnered with schools and communities, there has been little systematic work done to plan for how teacher candidates will access and utilize the knowledge they encounter while working with P-12 educators and communities. Consequently, unmediated opportunities in schools and communities may do more harm to teacher candidate learning by leading to reinforcement or production of stereotypes (Baumgartner & Buchanan, 2010; McDiarmid, 1992; Sleeter, 2001). Current moves beyond theorizing about collaboration and toward implementing this intricate work show promise for alleviating the divide between university and school (Max, 2010; Anagnostopoulos, et al., 2007).
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Early-Entry Programs and Practitioner Knowledge While there has always been a variety of pathways into teaching, in recent years neoliberal reforms have created a varied and ever changing marketplace for teacher education. Kretchmar and Zeichner (2016) describe this phenomenon in the United States as ‘Teacher Education 2.0’. Educational entrepreneurs, who deem themselves ‘reformers’ and who critique university teacher education as outdated, have called their programs ‘Teacher Prep 2.0’ to emphasize what they deem as innovation in the field. Positioning themselves as ‘reformers’ sets the stage for these programs to simultaneously dismantle existing university-based teacher education, which they define as obsolete, and bring innovation to the field (Childress, 2016). This innovation often focuses narrowly on raising students’ standardized test scores. While prevalent in the United States (e.g. Teach for America, TNTP/ The New Teacher Project, Match Teacher Residency), these programs have also proliferated globally, in England with Teach First and through Teach for All’s global network of providers in 40 countries across Europe, Central and South America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.1 It is important to note that these programs do not exist in countries like Canada, Finland and Singapore, where governments insist on the same high standards for all new teachers. Many of the new non-university programs developed by social entrepreneurs are fast track or early-entry programs. These early-entry teacher education programs place teacher candidates in schools with very little pre-service preparation, often consisting of a matter of weeks of consolidated coursework and possibly a field placement in a summer school site, before they assume full responsibility for a classroom. The knowledge emphasized here is schoolbased, or practical knowledge about teaching. As well as providing little preservice preparation, these early-entry programs reify practitioner knowledge and discredit theoretical knowledge of teaching as having ‘no practical bearing’ (Caperton & Whitmire, 2012, p.77) on teaching. While practitioner knowledge certainly has a space in teacher education, too often these reformers frame the decision about what knowledge counts as either theory or practice rather than as both theory and practice. In addition to Teacher Education 2.0 programs’ narrow focus on raising students’ standardized test scores, this method of teacher education represents a very techno-rational approach to teaching. Specifically, Teacher Education 2.0 often draws on classroom management strategies devoid of context, culture, or relationships. Additionally, many of these programs most often deem social foundations coursework as ‘non-essential’ (Walsh & Jacobs, 2007), which further separates teacher candidates from developing any contextualized understanding of the students and schools in which they will teach.
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Teacher Education 3.0 – A Transformative Vision for Teacher Education Not very many university-based 1.0 or 2.0 programs incorporate community-based knowledge into teacher preparation (e.g. Murrell, 2001). The current instantiations of teacher education are insufficient to prepare teachers to be successful with increasingly diverse populations. This is particularly salient as we consider the large number of refugees and immigrants entering many countries throughout the world, countries that may not have previously experienced the diversification of their schooling populations. Even in places where multicultural content and social justice rhetoric is common in university-based teacher education, the hidden curriculum of most current program models (Ginsburg & Clift, 1990) often illustrates a lack of respect for P-12 educator and community knowledge (Zeichner, in press). We argue that teacher education needs to draw on the knowledge and assets of the communities and families that teacher education is preparing teachers to serve. Ignoring this knowledge denies beginning teachers access to the contextual and cultural knowledge that is necessary for them to be successful in supporting student learning and development. Only through learning from and collaborating with students’ families and communities can teacher education provide avenues for teacher candidates to learn the necessary capacities, particularly a relational capacity (Gatti, 2016), to ensure success for all students. To be clear, we are not arguing for this knowledge instead of university-based or school-based knowledge; rather, we argue that there exists expertise in each domain of knowledge, and we need all three knowledge bases to prepare teacher candidates.
An Epistemological Shift If teacher education truly seeks to transform itself, then programs must consider whose knowledge counts in the shaping and reshaping of teacher education. This shift goes beyond who participates; the shift must be deeper and address how the stakeholders in teacher education relate and work with each other. There is a history of partnerships among universities and schools (e.g. The Holmes Partnership, 2007); however, this history is fraught with issues of unequal power dynamics between universities, often cast as experts, and P-12 educators in schools, who are cast as deficient and in need of professional development. Duffy (1994) argues for a ‘spirit of collaborative egalitarianism’ (p. 596) in these efforts to bring together universities and schools. He notes that this collaboration must begin with an authentic problem to which both university personnel and school personnel bring expertise and a need to solve it. Additionally, Teitel (2003) argues that even the words ‘partnership’ and ‘collaboration’ have been overused and misused to the point where the concepts often lack meaning to the
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institutions involved. For example, this issue continues presently in the United States with the proliferation of new teacher residency programs, often touted as a panacea to center teacher education in clinical practice (e.g. National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010). These programs, which prepare teachers for specific school districts and attempt to maintain ongoing partnerships with schools, often lack a cohesive vision (Gatti & Catalano, 2015) of both teacher candidate learning and school development goals, as well as genuine collaboration of school and university teacher educators. Most efforts in collaboration between universities and schools continue to ostracize knowledge and expertise situated in communities. However, there is a growing cadre of voices calling for a greater role for community knowledge and participation in teacher education. Just as academic knowledge gets pinned to universities and practical knowledge to schools, contextualized or ecological knowledge of children, culture, and learning resides, in part, in communities. Murrell (2001) defines a community teacher as ‘one who possesses contextualized knowledge of the culture, community, and identity of the children and families he or she serves and draws on this knowledge to create the core teaching practices necessary for effectiveness in diverse setting’ (p. 52). Key to Murrell’s definition and the argument made here is that the knowledge is contextualized. Contextualized knowledge is based in the schools and communities for which teacher education prepares teachers. In other words, while teacher candidates can learn particular sets of knowledge and skills within university classrooms and schools, nevertheless, other sets of knowledge and skills must be learned within the particular setting of the community. Not only does knowledge need to be contextualized in Murrell’s (2001) sense, thereby being inclusive of knowing the particularities of schools and communities, but it also needs to be woven together with the knowledge teacher candidates gain through experiences at universities and in schools. Here, we draw on Cole’s (1996) definition of context as ‘that which weaves together’ as opposed to ‘that which surrounds’ (p. 135). Teacher Education 3.0 necessitates the weaving together of knowledge from universities, schools, and communities. To maintain separate spheres of knowledge risks the mediation of learning being left to teacher candidates (e.g. Valencia, Martin, Place, & Grossman, 2009); additionally, maintaining separate spheres of knowledge risks the continued dominance of university knowledge over school and community knowledge. Further still, maintaining separate spheres of knowledge ignores the need to come together around the common problem of educational equity and develop solutions that are mutually beneficial to children, teacher candidates, and the multiple institutions involved in teacher education.
Teacher Education and Community Knowledge Teacher education programs that have engaged with community knowledge have done so in three ways: 1) as a resource for teacher candidate learning about, and
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developing skills to work with families and communities; 2) as a recruitment space from which teacher education programs can grow and draw directly on the human assets of communities; and 3) as co-laborers in teacher education that seek solutions to issues of social justice that affect teacher candidates, schools, and communities. Below, we detail each of these approaches and give examples representative of the approach. We recognize that teacher education programs can move among these approaches. We do not present these as a hierarchical typology; however, we argue that the third approach, which strives for mutually beneficial collaboration with communities, best represents the epistemological shift necessary for Teacher Education 3.0. Communities as resources. Teacher education programs often frame communities as resources to support teacher candidate learning about diversity (e.g. Seidl & Friend, 2002; Sleeter, 2001). Zeichner, et al. (2016) argue that within the literature on teacher-family-community relationships there are three major approaches: involvement, engagement, and solidarity. Viewing communities as resources for teacher candidate learning is defined within this typology as an effort to involve and engage communities. An involvement approach affords teacher candidates opportunities to develop relationships with families to bolster the school-home connection. Often involvement focuses on communicating school culture and curriculum, as well as how families can support children’s learning outside of school. While the involvement approach begins with the knowledge situated at schools, the engagement approach begins with knowledge situated in families. These ‘funds of knowledge’ (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) become resources for the school to support culturally sustaining and rele vant pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012) in the classroom. Teacher candidates most often encounter engagement approaches through foundations or multicultural education courses and community-based field placements (BoyleBaise, 2005; McDonald, Bowman & Brayko, 2013; Seidl & Conley, 2009). At the University of Arizona in the United States, Clift, Da Silva Iddings, Jurich, Reyes, and Short (2015) detail their programmatic changes to better involve and engage families in teacher education. Teacher candidates engage in program assignments that involve families in elements of coursework, fieldwork, and in the physical location of the program. In coursework, teacher candidates learn to access community funds of knowledge through different projects. One such project, ‘family story backpacks’ (Clift et al., 2015, p. 166), encourages families to share their own knowledge about a specified theme (e.g., birthday traditions), which is then brought into classroom instruction. This programmatic shift began at the university; however, Clift et al. (2015) assert that the inclusion of school and community partners early in the process framed these partners as co-teacher educators. Communities as sources for teachers. Learning about a community to communicate and develop relationships is at the core of the resource approach. At the core of this next approach is beginning with the community as a place to recruit,
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or source, teacher candidates. These programs begin with the recognition that deep contextualized community knowledge develops over time and through prolonged engagement. Recruiting teacher candidates from communities to become teachers for those very same communities affords the possibility of beginning with community assets as a given. This position is similar to Haberman’s (2011) conclusion that teaching particular dispositions through coursework is illusive; rather, teacher education programs should select for particular dispositions identified as necessary to work with a population of students. Programs that begin with the premise of selecting teacher candidates from communities are situated in both urban (e.g. Skinner, Garreton, & Schulz, 2011) and rural areas (e.g. Delany & Wenmoth, 2001). Many of these programs are based in Indigenous communities, such as in Canada (Archibald, 2015; Reid, 2004), Australia (Reid, 2004) and New Zealand (Delaney & Wenmoth, 2001). Many of the efforts within this recruiting and sourcing strand also exemplify the third approach to teacher-family-community relationships: solidarity. According to Zeichner et al. (2016), the solidarity approach begins with ‘understanding that educational inequalities (e.g. opportunity and/or achievement gaps) are part and parcel of broad, deep, and racialized structural inequalities in housing, health, employment, and intergenerational transfers of wealth’. As such, teacher education that seeks to be transformative must work alongside communities toward educational justice as part of the broader social movement for equity. One example of Indigenous teacher education that aims to bring more Aboriginal people into teaching and to ameliorate teacher shortages in Aboriginal communities is the Aboriginal Teacher Education program, funded by the Canadian province of Alberta and run by the University of Alberta in collaboration with several colleges in Aboriginal communities.2 Focusing resources on recruiting people who live in Aboriginal communities to become teachers in their communities is in sharp contrast to the dominant approach of parachuting in teachers from outside these communities to teach. Outside teachers typically know very little about the communities in which they teach, do not stay for long periods of time, and contribute to perpetuating chronic teacher shortages in Indigenous communities. Programs that draw from communities readily acknowledge the lack of diversity in the teaching field, both in teacher candidates as well as teacher educators. Kitchen & Hodson (2013) note that the ‘legacy of colonization’ means there are not enough teacher candidates ‘who combine professional credentials with competency in language and culture’ for traditional university-based programs. As such, they argue that ‘Aboriginal education’ must ‘begin with available human resources and help them to become agents of culturally responsive education for Aboriginal youth’ (Kitchen & Hodson, 2013, p. 146). Kitchen & Hodson (2013) looked at how teacher educators, who were Nishnawbe-Aski, of other Aboriginal ancestry, and Euro-Canadian learned to ‘live alongside’ teacher candidates to support Aboriginal teacher candidate learning. This case illustrates the need to
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focus on the diversity of both teacher candidates and teacher educators; in other words, if teacher educators hope to work in solidarity, then they must concurrently learn alongside and from communities. Communities in collaboration. Also within the solidarity approach are programs that reach out to communities to collaborate in the work of teacher education. While universities often initiate this collaboration by reaching out to communities to begin joint work around preparing teachers, continued collaboration is dependent on universities recognizing and ‘lifting up’ the expertise of communities in the preparation of teachers. These programs push back against the historical hegemony of university knowledge by assuming a listening stance toward communities. Here, communities are viewed as the experts on issues that broadly affect social justice and more specifically with regard to the contextually and culturally specific knowledge teachers need to have to be successful. At Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana (USA), an interdisciplinary group of university faculty representing elementary education, early childhood education, literacy education, educational foundations, and educational psychology have collaborated with a local school, early childhood center, and neighborhood to pilot a new model of teacher education. Students in their Schools within the Context of Community program commit to a full community immersion for an entire semester (Zygmunt & Clark, 2016). During that semester, teacher candidates are placed at either an elementary school or an early childhood center, work at the local community center, and are mentored by a community mentor, who is seen as a ‘cultural ambassador’ (Zygmunt & Clark, 2016, p. 13). Teacher candidates also engage in ‘critical service learning’ (Zygmunt & Clark, 2016, p. 14; see also Mitchell, 2008) by collaborating with the community to address identified needs. This final piece underscores the solidarity approach, where teacher candidates work alongside community members to authentically participate in mobilizing efforts that support change for marginalized communities (Zygmunt & Clark, 2016). Different from seeing the community only as a resource for teacher candidate learning, the Schools within the Context of Community program frames their work as ‘an opportunity for the university and community to come together in the joint enterprise of training teachers to be intentional and impactful in their work with diverse populations of children and families’ (Zygmunt & Clark, 2016, p. 17). The shift toward collaboration draws on the expertise in different organizations to work toward solving community problems. In another example, the University of Washington-Seattle developed over time its Community, Family, and Politics (CFP) strand in teacher education. Community-based educators participated in co-planning and facilitating field seminars for teacher candidates that were inclusive of a broad array of multicultural and multigenerational community members. These seminars included topics such as race and privilege, communicating and developing positive relationships with families, the school-to-prison pipeline, contemporary social justice movements, and teaching against the grain (Zeichner, Payne, & Brayko, 2015).
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The CFP strand also included geographically based small group conversations to address the varied concerns across a large urban area (Zeichner et al., 2016).
Implications Teacher education needs to fundamentally shift whose knowledge is accessed and included in the preparation of teacher candidates. Key to this shift is how P-12-educator and community knowledge and expertise inform teacher education. There are a number of barriers to making this shift that we must acknowledge. First, histories of colonization create deep distrust between many communities and the educational entities serving their children. Given their positions of power and the hegemony universities have had in teacher education across the globe, we argue that universities need to take the lead in shifting the judgment on whose knowledge counts in the education of new teachers. It is not acceptable for teacher educators in universities and schools to ignore the perspectives of the communities that they are supposed to be serving. Second, the institutional structures within and the political positioning of both universities and schools make this shift difficult. As seen in the examples in this chapter, building inter-institutional collaboratives in teacher education is time-, resource-, and emotionally intensive work (Guillen, 2016). In addition to a lack of collaborative structures, both schools and university teacher education have faced increased political pressures that diminish their agency to make changes to their own institutions, all while being defunded by the very governments calling for change. Fueled by neoliberal ideologies, governments position education through more schooling as the means for individual citizens’ social mobility (Moon, 2016b; Labaree, 1997). The place of teacher education in universities became solidified by this push for increased schooling (Moon 2016a). Yet this increased focus on the quality of teaching then allowed for the public and policy makers to claim that teachers and schools, and thereby teacher education, were ‘not doing enough for individuals’ and ‘denying opportunities for individuals’ to advance. Teachers, and thereby schools and teacher education, have become a central space for governments to regulate. This regulation concurrently calls on schools and teachers to solve issues of equity in society while not making the education of teachers a priority, particularly in terms of financial investment. Moon (2016b) notes that, with the exception of Finland, increased government intervention limits the academic freedom and autonomy of universities to organize teacher education. Third, the institutional goals of universities, P-12 educators, and communities do not always align with one another. Universities are more often given responsibility to produce knowledge for their fields rather than for application in their local communities. Even when there is a direct application link, the impetus for the research more often emerges from an academic need than a
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community-driven need. P-12 educators have goals thrust upon them by shifting regimes in government and are too often in the cross-hairs of ideological and political battles. Additionally, teachers, a key to collaboration, are not always consulted when school leaders set goals to partner with universities. Community leaders are beholden to the needs of their people and their goals are too often co-opted (Russakoff, 2015). Finally, even when universities, schools, and communities enter into partnerships with one another, they do not necessarily collaborate. In partnerships, there has often been limited investment beyond stating that a university works with a particular school or community-based organization. Additionally, power hierarchies are likely to remain as partners maintain their traditional institutional boundaries and cultures. However, if teacher education makes an epistemological shift toward collaboration, universities must work with and include the expertise of P-12 educators and communities in the construction of more expansive knowledge. This vision reflects the concept of ‘leveling’ that can occur in ‘third spaces’ or contexts in which individuals surrender outward status and come together to engage more as equals (Oldenburg, 1999). It is unclear if these collaborative spaces can exist within current institutional structures for university or non-university programs, or if new, hybrid spaces must be created that allow for genuinely collaborative work in teacher preparation. Given the arguments made, the examples explored, and the limitations of our analysis, we offer a few suggestions for policy and practice. First, we recommend incentivizing teacher education programs of all types to develop the relationships with P-12 educators (including teacher associations and unions) and communities necessary to enact this shared responsibility in education. The focus here needs to be on acknowledging and pushing back on the existing power relationships to create equitable spaces for different sets of expertise to come together. The structure of the program is less important than the attention to the equity of relationships. Second, we recommend that teacher education programs create more opportunities for members of local communities and schools to engage in the planning, implementation, and continued evaluation of teacher education. We propose collaborative opportunities in the spirit of solidarity rather than bringing in ‘guests’ to contribute to an already established program of study. Third, we recognize the immense work being done to include school and community knowledge in teacher education programs and encourage those programs still in the inclusive phase to move toward engagement and solidarity work with communities.
Conclusion When it comes to the preparation of teachers, current debates in the field tend to focus on an either/or scenario. Historically, the debate has framed the choice as
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either university-based programs or non-university programs. As privatization has become a part of teacher education in some countries, the debate is often framed in these countries as either a choice between university-based, i.e. traditional, structures or entrepreneurial, i.e. ‘innovative’, structures. Both debates obfuscate the larger issue of whose knowledge is accessed and included in structuring teacher education programs. Neither university-based, nor early-entry, nor 2.0 programs3 readily include the knowledge of P-12 educators and communities in genuinely collaborative ways. While in some cases programs work directly with a network of schools, such as the Relay Graduate School’s partnerships with charter schools, there is little recognition in these programs of the expertise from the broader communities these schools are intended to serve. University programs also rarely access P-12 educator or community expertise in deep and lasting ways. Too often, policy makers seek to find a silver-bullet solution to these debates, while concurrently ignoring the time- and resource-intensive work that needs to occur to truly create transformative teacher education. In some countries, the continued focus on networks of partnership schools, along with the new interest in teacher residencies (e.g. Klein, Taylor, Onore, Strom, & Abrams, 2013) perpetuates the notion that teacher education can tinker with its structures to make lasting changes. Teacher education needs to attend to relationships among the varied sources of expertise foundational to any restructuring. Otherwise, programs will merely replicate hierarchies that already exist; universities and entrepreneurial programs will maintain knowledge dominance without transformation, while schools and communities will remain spaces of practice with little say in the education of teachers who work with their children. We have suggested that teacher education must make a paradigm shift4 in how we think about whose expertise should contribute to and who should be responsible for the education of professional teachers. We believe that without the shift in power relationships and the formation of the kind of collaborative alliances that we have suggested, the future of teaching as a profession and the university’s role in teacher education are in serious danger. Neither schools nor universities or other providers can educate teachers alone; even together, schools and universities or other providers cannot educate teachers well without accessing the expertise that exists in the communities. Teacher education needs to imagine ways to access and collaborate with the knowledge and expertise situated in all three spaces – university or other provider, school, and community. Only through collaborative efforts mediated through intensive joint work can teacher education imagine new possibilities that break out of inherently undemocratic structures.
Notes 1 See http://teachforall.org/en/our-network-and-impact/network-partners for a comprehensive listing of global partners in Teach for All. 2 http://www.atep.ualberta.ca/
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3 Not all programs classified as Teacher Education 2.0 are early-entry programs. Some are longer residency-style programs (Zeichner, 2016). 4 A 2010 national report on teacher education in the US has referred to the kind of paradigm shift that we are calling for as ‘turning the education of teachers upside down’ (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010, p. ii).
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Olmedo, A., Bailey, P. L., & Ball, S. J. (2013). To infinity and beyond…: Heterarchical governance, the Teach for All network in Europe and the making of profits and minds. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 492–512. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97. Reid, C. (2004). Negotiating racialized identities: Indigenous teacher education in Australia and Canada. Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing. Russakoff, D. (2015). The prize: Who is in charge of America’s schools? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Seidl, B.L., and Conley, M.D. (2009). (Re)Writing new possibilities for teaching lives: Prospective teachers and multicultural apprenticeships. Language Arts, 87(2), 117–126. Seidl, B., & Friend, G. (2002). Leaving authority at the door: Equal-status community-based experiences and the preparation of teachers for diverse classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(4), 421–433. Shulman, L. (2004). The wisdom of practice: Essays on teaching, learning and learning to teach. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Skinner, E. A., Garreton, M. T., & Schultz, B. D. (2011). Grow your own teachers: Grassroots change for teacher education. Teaching for social justice. New York: Teachers College Press. Sleeter, C. E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: Research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, (52)2, 94–106. Teitel, L. (2003). The professional development schools handbook: Starting, sustaining, and assessing partnerships that improve student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Valencia, S., Martin, S., Place, N., & Grossman, P. (2009). Complex interactions in student teaching: Lost opportunities for learning. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(3), 304–322. Walsh, K., & Jacobs, S. (2007, September). Alternative certification isn’t alternative. Washington, DC: National Council on Teacher Quality. Zeichner, K. (in press). Advancing social justice and democracy in teacher education: Teacher preparation 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Kappa Delta Pi Record. Zeichner, K. (2010) Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 89(11), 89–99. Zeichner, K. (2016). Independent teacher education programs: Apocryphal claims, illusory evidence. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center Brief. Zeichner, K., Bowman, M., Guillen, L., & Napolitan, K. (2016). Engaging and working in solidarity with local communities in preparing the teachers of their children. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 277–290. Zeichner, K., Payne, K. A., & Brayko, K. (2015). Democratizing teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), 122–135. Zygmunt, E., & Clark, P. (2016). Transforming teacher education for social justice. New York: Teachers College Press.
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64 The Role of Policy as a Shaping Influence on Teacher Education and Teacher Educators: NeoLiberalism and its Forms1 B e a t r i c e Áv a l o s a n d P a u l a R a z q u i n Introduction The influence of international and national education policy on teachers and teacher education is part of the history of education development around the world (Connell, 1980; Wang, Coleman, Coley & Phelps, 2003). However, more recently, teacher policy is also being shaped by principles, orientations and assumptions linked to broader concepts of society, the economy and forms of government. In this respect, current education policy environments may be analysed around two basic orientations (Chabbott & Ramírez, 2000): (a) a human rights’ and capacity perspective involving the notion of equitable and just societies that support the development of persons both as individuals and as social actors (Sen, 2009); and (b) a neo-liberal socio-economic perspective that links education policy formulation to competitive, free-market institutional contexts (Friedman & Friedman, 1980). National states and their teacher policy structures and dynamics move between and around these two poles of influence. Some societies have policy frameworks that more closely approximate the goal of an equitable society, such as Finland (Sahlberg, 2011), while others have educational policies more aligned with goals of individual liberties and competitive markets, such as England (Furlong, 2013). Within and across these two ‘grand policy narratives’ there are also policy emphases related to quality assurance in teacher education that take on the form of ‘new public management’ (Lingard & Rawolle, 2010) expressed in standards,
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accountability pressures and teacher control (Neubauer, 2007) as well as narratives supporting a role for teacher educators and their institutions that is well anchored on research (Sahlberg, 2011; BERA, 2014). This chapter reviews transnational research literature that delves into the current global policy environment, examining how it interacts with and influences national teacher education policies and institutions. In its first section, the chapter examines research dealing with challenges to the traditional goals and operation of teacher education in the form of competitive alternatives and of quality control measures inspired in new public management approaches. The second section covers research centred on the interactions between transnational policy agreements and national teacher education institutions and processes, including the globalisation of alternatives to teacher education. The third section analyses the influence of international organisations over teacher education policy on the basis of policy studies. Each one of the three sections begins with a brief review of the main topics handled by the relevant research and then focuses more closely on research articles and topics that provide particular insight into the themes discussed. The research pieces discussed were selected on the basis of a search in three data bases – the Thompson Reuters Web of Science, Scopus Abstract and Citation Data Base and SciEL0 – in order to cover as much as possible work produced over the last fifteen years around the world (2000–2015). As a whole, the review offers evidence on how grand orientations exemplified in neo-liberal approaches interact with national policy contexts and their priorities, and whether or not policy respects the professional nature of teaching and the occupation of teachers. In this sense the review also considers the mediation exerted by teacher educators between macro policy influences and actual policy implementation.
Teacher education, neo-liberal policies and ‘new public management’ instruments Neo-liberal ideology is usually described in terms of the mix between liberal ideas that value individuality and freedom and economic instruments such as liberalisation of markets, competition and incentives. In education neo-liberal policies advocate and support a transformed role of the state from being less of an initiator and administrator of institutions and more of a protector of schools’ and universities’ free enterprise and development. In turn, new public management concepts provide the state with a role in assuring quality through diverse mechanisms based on evidence provided by externally measured results. A noticeable number of studies in different countries consider critically the effects of these orientations over teacher education policy (Sleeter, 2008; Zeichner, 2010; Furlong, 2013; Baltodano, 2012; Tang, 2015).
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The impact of neo-liberal principles in education takes different forms depending on policy traditions and country contexts, but more and more the research literature points to its increased global influence since the nineteen eighties (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). While a large amount of the research that examines the impact of neo-liberal ideology over teacher education policies is produced in Anglophone countries (the USA, Australia, England, Ireland, New Zealand), there also is evidence of ‘creeping influences’ in other locations, such as Russia (Aydarova, 2014), Hong Kong (Tang, 2015) and Chile (Ávalos, 2015). In line with natural differences in policy emphases in each one of these contexts, there are also differences in the themes and manner in which research approaches them. This review considers studies that examine effects of neo-liberal policies on the institutional basis of teacher education and studies that consider the impact of new public management quality control instruments over the tasks of teacher educators.
The Institutional Basis of Teacher Education and the Emergence of Alternative Paths Over time, teacher education came to be described in terms of what kind of knowledge and practical experience is needed to prepare teachers who are deemed to be professionals. The practice of teaching for learning needed to rest on a solid basis of content and pedagogical content knowledge, of psychological and sociological knowledge relevant to the work with different age groups and school populations and of a historical and philosophical perspective of education (Furlong & Lawn, 2011; Shulman, 2004). It also became progressively evident that a good programme of teacher education should be built on research and engage future teachers in activities that include research as a learning tool (Sleeter, 2014; Reid & O’Donoghue, 2004). Thus, many countries in Europe, Asia, North and South America, South Africa and the Pacific gradually upgraded teacher education to tertiary and university level, even though around 15 per cent of countries continue to prepare teachers at secondary level. Traditionally, teacher education is organised in concurrent programmes of four to five years’ duration or delivered through consecutive programmes in which the professional component follows the learning of academic disciplines. More recently, teacher education has been raised to master’s degree level in EU countries. However, this recognised institutional basis for teacher education is being altered in the policy contexts of the USA and England on the basis of accentuating the view that teaching is a ‘craft’ handled by teacher ‘technicians’ rather than by professionals (Zeichner, 2014; Furlong, 2013). This has led to policies that allow for a diversity of post-graduate routes into teaching conducted in schools, with or without connections to universities, or by a variety of private consortia. Although resorting to alternative paths into teaching has sometimes responded to the scarcity of formally prepared teachers in subject areas such as science
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and mathematics, its promotion beyond these needs is considered to narrow the broad educational role of teachers and has been widely criticised (Furlong, 2013; Sleeter, 2008; Zeichner, 2014). Alternative paths to the teaching profession are defined differently according to their location. In the USA, for example, they are understood as any form of access to teaching that differs from ‘traditional’ teacher education involving university coursework and fieldwork experience (Schuls & Trivitt, 2013). England, on the other hand, uses the medical training model to encourage school-based routes into teaching (Maguire, 2014). Its School Direct teacher education path allows schools under certain conditions to prepare teachers directly or in association with universities. One of the most important alternatives in terms of its global scope is the Teach for All (TFA) (2015) network, which recruits graduates wishing to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years and provides them with a short induction and opportunities for formal teacher certification as they teach. In poor countries a host of alternatives, including ill-prepared contract teachers, are used to alleviate the lack of trained teachers to deal with the rapid expansion of enrolments promoted by global education development goals (UNESCO, 2013–14). Research evidence on the impact and quality of alternative routes to teaching is mixed and has mostly been produced in the USA, reaching inconclusive results. For example, Henry, Bastian, Fortner, Kershaw, Purtel, Thompson and Zulli (2014) compared the effects in North Carolina of teachers prepared through in-state and out-of-state traditional and alternative programmes as well as through the Teach for America alternative. Using state test scores for elementary, middle and high school mathematics and reading as well as scores for high school science and social studies, the researchers found differences in teacher effectiveness according to teacher education type. In general, traditionally instate trained teachers were more effective than alternative-path teachers (excluding Teach for America) and more effective than out-of-state trained teachers. Teach for America teachers in turn had better results in elementary mathematics and reading as well as middle and high school mathematics, science and English. On the other hand, research in Arkansas showed no significant difference in third grade student achievement that could be traced to different teacher education routes, although content knowledge as measured by licensure tests had significant effects on student achievement scores (Schuls & Trivit, 2013). Research comparing teacher education on the basis of programme-quality attributes rather than effects on test scores offers some evidence that traditional universities are better than alternative programmes in the focus of the preparation. Thus, a study by Mitchell and Romero (2010) looked at the differences between ‘internship’ programmes attached to university teacher education programmes and those organised by the California districts. Using on-site observations and interviews, document analysis and focus groups, the authors examined the extent to which ‘internship’ programmes redefined the content and structure
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of the teacher preparation received by the teacher interns and whether these programmes had the teacher or the employing school district as their primary client. They conclude that traditional university programmes implementing internships programmes did not actually reformulate much of the focus of their teacher education programme and tended to emphasise the teacher education objectives rather than the employing school’s needs. On the other hand, the district-managed internships were more linked to the schools and their culture. Overall, research on the effects and quality of traditional versus alternative preparation for teaching provides some evidence in favour of traditional programmes. However, there is little information on the quality of the different programmes in relation to preparing for the array of tasks teachers perform nor on student achievement effects beyond those measured by existing tests.
Teacher Education Quality and Regulatory Mechanisms Pressures to achieve learning results in the form of what is known as ‘new public management’ control procedures (Ball, 1993; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2014) constitute one of the major driving forces of educational policy in the current neo-liberal contexts of comparison and competition. They affect both traditional and alternative teacher education provisions through systems of institutional and programme accreditation and through standards-based tests of future teacher knowledge and practice. Teacher educators in many national contexts are facing the impact of external measures of accountability and control that may contrast with the views of teaching and teacher preparation held by their teacher education programmes. Depending on the implications that these forms of control have in terms of programme review and change, teacher educators react or mediate the policy demands in different ways (Alexiadou & Essex, 2016; Peck, Gallucci, & Sloan, 2010; Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2014; Tang, 2015). In California, for example, a study examining the involvement of teacher educators in an externally mandated review process concluded that the programme accountability pressures led to new forms of engagement among academics and students, the achievement of a clearer articulation between courses and fieldwork and a ‘reimagining’ of the entire teacher education programme (Peck et al., 2010). A study in Ireland highlighted different ways of teacher educator engagement with demands of a new accreditation process, which was described as a capacity to respond with ‘multiple performance scripts’ (Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2014). One of these scripts represented an accepted compliance with requirements of the process and willingness to provide all the information requested. Another one was proactive and expressed responsibility in offering suggestions to improve the teacher education programme. What emerges from these examples is a mix of effects of ‘new public management’ requirements involving standards setting and related accountability
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mechanisms together with reactions of teacher educators in line with their professional beliefs. The formulation and use of standards need not necessarily be an instrument of control and accountability. Standards for teacher education offer an opportunity to describe what is required of a professional teacher in knowledge, capacities and dispositions and thus can serve to orient teacher education reform (Danielson, 2007; Tuinamuana, 2011; Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 2000). However, narrow forms of standards, imposed from without the profession, can curtail the breadth of teacher education orientations and the professional decision-making of teacher educators while supporting a technical rationality that disregards the complexities of teaching (Aydarova, 2014; Delandshere & Petrovsky, 2004; Ginsburg & Kingston, 2014; Pullin, 2004; Tuinamuana, 2011).
Globalisation, transnational agreements and national policies Another perspective for examining teacher education policy considers the impact of global events, such as the economic crisis in the late 2000s on teacher education in Ireland and Australia (Clarke & Killeavy, 2012; Ling, 2012; Moran, 2012), transnational policy agreements, such as the EU’s Bologna Process, or the spread beyond their countries of origin of alternative paths into teaching, such as TFA (Blumenreich & Gupta, 2015; Friedrich, 2014; Rice, Volkoff, & Dulfer, 2015). Globalisation affects societies as a whole but also individuals as marked by their race, gender, religion or geographical region (Apple, 2011). We examine below research referring to three cases of geographical interrelations that have or are affecting teacher education provisions: the impact of the EU’s Bologna Process, policy interaction and divergence within the UK and tensions between local and global in the case of TFA.
Impact of the EU Agreements on Teacher Education The Bologna Process encompasses agreements among European countries to facilitate comparability in higher education requirements and qualifications (European Commission, 2010). Its main thrust into teacher education has been to favour the ‘professionalisation’ of teachers through the setting of higher requirements for entry into teacher education, the establishment of standards or competency frameworks and the raising of teacher preparation to master’s degree level (undergraduate plus two years of master’s degree studies). Several studies have reviewed the way in which the member countries are aligning with the process, detailing how the guidelines are being mediated in particular contexts as well as the complexities of enacting the agreed changes (Page, 2015; Caena, 2014; Aydarova, 2014; Grossman & Sands, 2008). On the basis of document analysis, Page (2015) examined responses to pressures influencing
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reform in England, France and Germany. Given their own situations, including teacher shortages and problems in recruiting new teachers, the three countries have responded in different ways to the Bologna Process requirements. All three countries have established a system of standards, and France and Germany have implemented the master’s degree requirement while England has left it optional. But each one of the three countries has also experienced some form of conflict between their system as it was and having to change it in line with the Bologna requirements. In the case of France the difficulty has been the location of the traditional ‘Concours’, or competitive examination for licensure, that in the old system preceded a year of school internship and which is now awkwardly placed in the middle of the master’s degree programme (Hyatt & Meraud, 2015). The professional definition of teaching in England, with its emphasis on teaching as a practical ‘craft’ only marginally related to academic preparation and research, seemingly contradicts the spirit of the Bologna declaration. There also appear to be tensions in Germany between the traditional academic emphasis on university teacher education and the need for practical preparation in schools related to work with culturally diverse school populations (Page, 2015). In another country study (Aydarova, 2014) examined the impact of the Bologna Process on the formulation of standards and curriculum for English teachers in Russia, arguing that they reflect more of a ‘technocratic’ view of teachers and teaching which is detached from the valuable tradition of Russian education.
Nations within Nations: Diversity in the UK On the basis of examining policy convergence and divergence as well as contextual effects, the study by Beauchamp, Clarke, Hulme and Murray (2015) focuses on the place of research in teacher education standards as formulated in the four countries that make up the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). The process revealed similarities in the standards of Scotland and Northern Ireland regarding their emphasis on research and reflective analysis. In Wales there was reference to candidates needing to connect with research evidence but no explicit mention of academic research in the content standards. There was much less evidence of a concern for research-based teaching in England where the thrust of policy papers is on teachers acquiring a knowledge base that is ‘practical, relevant and focused around contemporary, experiential knowledge of schooling’ (Beauchamp et al., 2015, p. 159). According to the authors, the differences can be traced to the role of national institutional structures, political actors and veto players in local policies. Policy documents show that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales share broader concerns about developing national identities; there is also an emphasis on social justice and comprehensive education found in Scottish and Northern Ireland policy discourse. English policy documents, on the other hand, are less influenced by cultural beliefs and more by a ‘generic’ return to the practical. Despite the observed differences
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which tend to place Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales closer to a researchbased teacher education profession than is the case for England, the authors conclude with the need to examine more closely the role played by research in all of the four systems as well as the effectiveness of what it means to have an ‘enquiry led professional learning’ (Beauchamp et al., 2015, p. 166).
Globalising a Non-Traditional Path into Teaching Earlier in the chapter we referred to the emergence of paths into teaching that differ from traditional teacher education. While most of these are in place in the USA and in England, there is now evidence of their transference to other countries around the world. This is the case for the TFA programme (Teach for All, 2015). Three pieces of research for Argentina (Friedrich, 2014), Australia (Rice et al., 2015) and India (Blumenreich & Gupta, 2015) alert us to how the programme relates to the educational systems of these countries. All three studies reflect the enactment of the main tenets of the TFA programme in terms of recruiting highly qualified candidates without teaching preparation, with leadership potential and who clearly embrace teaching with a missionary conviction (Friedrich, 2014). They also coincide in there being a sort of detachment between these traits and the realities of the country contexts in which they teach. Thus, Blumenreich & Gupta (2015) in comparing the USA and Indian websites note that the Indian website’s language is closer to the language of corporate business than to the highly relational characteristics of Indian cultural interactions and that the teaching style supported is less in line with the constructivist emphasis in Indian curricular directives. Friedrich (2014) considers the mindset of the Enseñá Argentina teachers compared to how the regular Argentine teacher force analyses and understands the educational system, detecting in them a more technical view of teaching, which turns them into ‘outsiders’ in relation to the rest of the Argentine teacher force. The TFA teachers in Australia (Rice et al., 2015) are also reductive regarding the locus of poor learning results, as they mainly attribute these to the people involved (poor teacher and leadership quality) and are much less sensitive to the impact of school and teacher working conditions.
Role of international organisations in shaping teacher and teacher education policy International organisations, especially donor agencies, play a role in creating and disseminating global policies and ideas that shape how teachers are educated, what teachers do and who they are (Ball, 1993; Verger & Altinyelken, 2013; Verger, Novelli, & Altinyelken, 2012). The dissemination and influence may be brought into play via two distinctive mechanisms: (a) enforcement, through
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conditions for developing countries seeking external financial aid, and (b) by putting together, establishing and validating global agendas and frameworks on what works for teacher education policies. One way in which international organisations shape teacher education is through financial aid to low-income countries for education sector reforms, often aligned with other macroeconomic loan arrangements. Although international cooperation has assumed different forms in the history of education development (Mundy, 1998, 2002), a crucial element over the years has been the lending conditions, some of which have direct consequences for teachers. The education loans of the 1980s and 90s were part of broader macroeconomic structural adjustment projects of stabilisation of public accounts, in which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) played a central role, together with regional development banks. Even though in most developing countries preservice teacher education is ‘donor free’ (Steiner-Khamsi, Mossayeb, & Ridge, 2007), adjustment programmes favoured cost-saving and cost-cutting policies that affected teacher education and teachers more generally. The development agenda of the 2000s centred on the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) goals. It encouraged the alignment of macroeconomic stability, fiscal austerity, economic growth and poverty reduction plans with EFA plans to expand and universalise primary education in low-income countries. Enhancing the status, morale and professionalism of teachers figured high in the EFA discourse (UNESCO, 2015). Yet for countries receiving assistance through EFA global aid partnerships, teacher related policies mirrored lending conditions and led to harmful consequences for teacher education (Ball, 1993; World Bank Independent Evaluation Group, 2006). Conditionals were articulated in the form of financial ‘benchmarks’, such as wage ceilings and ‘caps’ on teacher recruitment and class size. The benchmarks were presented as ‘indicative’ and did not need to be applied rigidly. Yet, in tightly defined recurrent budgets, hiring non-professional teachers on contract at reduced salaries and providing in-service and school-based teacher certification and induction became the ‘norm’ in many developing countries (Bourdon, Frölich, & Michaelowa, 2007; Fyfe, 2007; Kingdon, Aslam, Rawal, & Das, 2012; Marphatia, Moussié, Ainger, & Archer, 2007; Muralidharan & Sundararaman, 2013). This prompted the development of dual teacher certification systems, parallel teacher labour markets and in some countries severe shortages of certified teachers (UNESCO, 2015). The transition from the EFA global education development discourse to the education targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015–2030 has brought increased attention to monitoring quality and learning targets (UN General Assembly, 2015; World Education Forum, 2015) and with it the strengthening of emerging financial cooperation tools for international organisations to shape education plans more generally, including teacher and teacher education policies. The World Bank, seconded by financial partners, reckons that the
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right incentive structures will help overcome the quality and inequity challenges that hinder learning and will boost accountability (World Bank, 2015a, 2015b). Financial disbursements are more and more conditional upon pre-agreed results being achieved, and Results-Based Financing (RBF) or cash for delivery is the new cooperation ‘tool’. The RBF lending requirements appear to shift global teacher policies from the cost-efficient teacher measures of the EFA years to measures that would link positively to improved learning outcomes and teacher effectiveness: raising entry standards for teaching education; teacher testing for certification and licensing; test, merit and need-based recruitment processes; grooming great teachers through induction, teacher assessment and effective professional development; and teacher performance management and pay (Bruns & Luque, 2014; Global Partnership for Education, 2013). Some authors argue that current teacher policies have not necessarily changed (Ball, 1993; de Koning, 2013; Robertson, 2012). Only their rationale has shifted, from the explicit, albeit challenged and occasionally contested lending conditions and benchmarks on the teachers’ bill (De Renzio & Hanlon, 2007; Ginsburg & Lindsay, 1995; Takala, 2003) to symbolic rationales of ‘performativity’ aligned with global governance mechanisms of control and power. These symbolic rationales do not only affect teacher education structures and processes towards achieving greater teacher effectiveness: they also create new roles and subjectivities for teachers. Some studies do a good job at showing traces of teacher policy alignment with international organisations’ discourses and recommendations (namely the outcome of the influence rather than a description of the processes themselves) – for example, by way of content analysis of teacher policy texts (Guimarães, 2012; Rasmussen & Zou, 2014). Research for Indonesia, Jamaica and some Latin American countries shows that technical assistance, the hiring of international consultants, supervision or study visits to other countries, over-representation of external donors in policy setting, design and implementation, and the underrepresentation of teachers and other local actors are some of the mechanisms that seem to work well for the global teacher policy borrowing and propagation to occur (Almeida & Tello, 2014; Broekman, 2013; Gulpers, 2013). Thus, while the international organisations’ influence on teacher and teacher education policies through enforcement has been more widely documented, empirical accounts on how and why the construction of a global agenda shapes national or local teacher education policies are more scarce (Verger et al., 2012).
In synthesis Reflecting upon the thrust of the body of teacher education policy research considered in this review, there is a clear sense in which it highlights more
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commonalities in its themes than it does the national particularities of teacher education. The review covered many geographical locations, but the main policy themes and issues considered were largely similar across these locations. In this respect we were able to distinguish two major thematic emphases, which we synthesise below. The first thematic group includes research in some of the richer countries that is uncovering a narrow understanding of teacher professionalism in teacher education policies. In other words, the effectiveness of teachers is being considered in policy as either the sole product or the main product of the level of their curricular content knowledge as provided by a university degree and/or that teachers are formed as they merge in and assimilate the teaching culture and practices of schools. This explains the rationale of policies, mostly in the USA and England, that limit the scope for academic professional preparation while supporting alternative training paths conducted by non-academic organisations or by schools (Furlong, 2013; Zeichner & Peña Sandoval, 2015). Research examining effects of these alternative paths for teacher effectiveness measured by school learning results does not support their value over traditional forms of teacher education. Paradoxically, the second main centre of attention of the research reviewed is the importance of high quality preparation for teachers, also expressed in international policy (OECD, 2005) and international studies (Barber & Mourshed, 2007). This has occurred in various ways. One of them involves raising the quality of intake of teacher candidates for teacher education institutions, following the example of Finland and other Nordic countries and expressed in the Bologna agreement as well as in UNESCO documents focused on Education for All (UNESCO, 2013–14). It has also meant raising professional teacher preparation to master’s degree level in European countries and working towards improvement of the clinical quality of teacher education programmes. But, unlike Finland, a number of these policies also support quality assurance mechanisms involving the setting of narrow standards and high stakes examinations along with institutional competition, which authors see as the effect of neo-liberal tendencies. Furthermore, these instruments of quality control have become part of a travelling policy with impact beyond the North American and European countries, reaching to Latin America and Asia (Ávalos, 2015; Tang, 2015). Teacher education quality has also become highly relevant in countries in the poor and less developed south. After years of implementation of the EFA policy movement and the setting of MDGs for development of these countries and peoples, only recently have there been clear policy formulations centred on the need to attract, retain and deploy teachers and provide them with adequate preparation and working conditions (UNESCO, 2013–14). However, as stated in the document, these commendable policy recommendations are in danger of falling in line with managerial policies linked to cost-saving and measurable results. In this sense, they may end up emphasising narrow technical forms of teacher effectiveness as well as belittling the development of the social and inclusive aspects of
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teachers and teaching, which in fact are key conditions for assisting the poor to improve their well-being and lives. In the face of the tendencies we have reviewed in this article derived from neoliberal ideology (markets and competitiveness), from public management tendencies (control through standards setting and student results) and from transnational agreements, teacher educators have reacted in diverse ways. Research is showing that these range from creative engagement with institutional reforms required by accrediting and other policy-setting bodies to ‘multiple scripts’ responses within institutions that range from compliance to pro-active involvement in designs for teacher education improvement The range of interesting analysis of the ways in which teacher education policy is being formulated, of the effects of policy interactions between transnational agreements and national applications and the ways in which policies are mediated by teacher educators all offer material to engage critically but also creatively in teacher education improvement through research that is not just responsive to ‘effectiveness concerns’ but equally or more so to human rights and capacity development for a more inclusive and humane society (Sen, 2009).
Note 1 Acknowledgment is due to support funding from Basal Funds for Centres of Excellence, Project FB003.
References Alexiadou, N., & Essex, J. (2016). Teacher education for inclusive practice – responding to policy. European Journal of Teacher Education 39(1), 5–16. Apple. M. W. (2011). Global crises, social justice, and teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 62(2), 222–234. Ávalos, B. (2015). Chile: Effectiveness of teacher education. In S. Schwartzman (2015), Education in South America, 201–220. London: Bloomsbury. Aydarova, O. (2014). Universal principles transform national priorities: Bologna Process and Russian teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 37, 64–75. Ball, S. (1993). What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 13(2), 10–17. Baltodano, M. (2012). Neoliberalism and the demise of public education: The corporatization of schools of education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies 25(4), 487–507. Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2007). How the World’s Best Performing Systems Come Out on Top. London: McKinsey & Co. Beauchamp, G., Clarke, L., Hulme, M., & Murray, J. (2015). Teacher education in the United Kingdom post devolution: Convergences and divergences. Oxford Review of Education 41(2), 154–170. BERA. (2014). The Role of Research in Teacher Education. Reviewing the evidence. Interim Report of the BERA–RSA Inquiry. London: British Education Research Association. Blumenreich, M., & Gupta, A. (2015). The globalization of Teach for America: An analysis of the institutional discourses of Teach for America and Teach for India within local contexts. Teaching and Teacher Education 48, 87–96.
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Bourdon, J., Frölich, M., & Michaelowa, K. (2007). Teacher Shortages, Teacher Contracts and their Impact on Education in Africa (June, 2007). Dijon: Institute for Research in the Sociology and Economics of Education. Broekman, A. (2013). The rationale and effects of accountability policies on the work and motivation of teachers: evidence from Indonesia. In A. Verger, H. K. Altinyelken, & M. de Koning (Eds.), Global Managerial Education Reforms and Teachers: Emerging Policies, Controversies and Issues in Developing Countries, 19–36. Brussels: Education International, Research Institute/University of Amsterdam, IS Academy ‘Education and International Development’. Bruns, B., & Luque, J. (2014). Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. doi:10.1596/ 978-1-4648-0151-8 Caena, F. (2014). Comparative ‘glocal’ perspectives on European teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education 37(1), 106–122. Chabbott, C., & Ramirez, F. O. (2000). Development and education. In M. Hallinan (Ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Education, 163–188. New York: Kluwer Academic. Clarke, M., & Killeavy (2012). Charting teacher education policy in the Republic of Ireland with particular reference to the impact of economic recession. Educational Research 54(2), 125–136 Connell, W. F. (1980). A History of Education in the Twentieth Century World. Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre. Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. de Koning, M. (2013). Contract teacher policies in India: Debates on education quality and teachers’ professional status. In A. Verger, H. K. Altinyelken, & M. de Koning (Eds.), Global Managerial Education Reforms and Teachers: Emerging Policies, Controversies and Issues in Developing Countries, 91–108. Brussels: Education International, Research Institute/University of Amsterdam, IS Academy ‘Education and International Development’. De Renzio, P., & Hanlon, J. (2007). Contested Sovereignty in Mozambique: The Dilemmas of Aid Dependence. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. Delandshere, G., & Petrovsky, A. (2004). Political rationales and ideological stances of the standardsbased reform of teacher education in the US. Teaching and Teacher Education 20(1), 1–15. European Commission (2010). Focus on Higher Education in Europe 2010: The Impact of the Bologna Process. Brussels: Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. Friedman, M., & Friedman, R.D. (1980). Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt Brace Friedrich, D. S. (2014). Global microlending in education reform: Enseñá por Argentina and the neoliberalization of the grassroots. Comparative Education Review 58(2), 296–321. Furlong, J. (2013). Globalization, neo-liberalism and the reform of teacher education in England. Educational Forum 77(1), 28–50. Furlong, J., & Lawn, M. (Eds.) (2011). Disciplines of Education. Their Role in the Future of Education Research. London: Routledge. Fyfe, A. (2007). The use of contract teachers in developing countries: Trends and impact. Working Paper No 252. Geneva: International Labor Office, Sectoral Activities Program. Ginsberg, R., & Kingston, N. (2014). Caught in a vise: The challenges facing teacher preparation in an era of accountability. Teachers College Record 11(1), 1–48 Ginsburg, M. B., & Lindsay, B. (Eds.) (1995). The Political Dimension in Teacher Education: Comparative Perspectives on Policy Formation, Socialization and Society. London/Washington, DC: The Falmer Press. Global Partnership for Education. (2013). Strategic Plan 2012–2015. Washington, DC: Global Partnership for Education. Grossman, G. M., & Sands, M. K. (2008). Restructuring reforms in Turkish teacher education: Modernisations and development in a dynamic environment. International Journal of Educational Development 24(1), 70–80.
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Guimarães, S. (2012). Public policies and teacher education in Brazil after 1990. Policy Futures in Education 10(3), 263–273. Gulpers, E. E. (2013). Teacher accountability in an era of financial scarcity: The case of Jamaican primary education reform. In A. Verger, H. K. Altinyelken, & M. de Koning (Eds.), Global Managerial Education Reforms and Teachers: Emerging Policies, Controversies and Issues in Developing Countries, pp. 37–54. Brussels: Education International, Research Institute/University of Amsterdam, IS Academy ‘Education and International Development’. Henry, G., Bastian, K., Fortner, C. K., Kershaw, D.C., Purtell, K., Thompson, C. L., & Zulli, R. A. (2014). Teacher preparation policies and their effects on student achievement. Education Finance and Policy, 9(3), 264–303. Hyatt, S., & Meraud, J. (2015). Teacher education in France under the Hollande government: Reconstructing and reinforcing the republic. Journal of Education for Teaching 41(3), 218–234. Kingdon, G. G., Aslam, M., Rawal, S., & Das, S. (2012). Are Contract and Para-Teachers a Cost Effective Intervention to Address Teacher Shortages and Improve Learning Outcomes? Protocol. London: University of London, Institute of Education, Social Science Research Unit, EPPI-Centre. Ling, L. (2012). Teacher education, the global financial crisis, frogs and bicycles. Educational Research 54(2), 213–224. Lingard, B., & Rawolle, S. (2010). Globalization and the rescaling of educational politics and practice. In M. A. Larsen (Ed.). New Thinking in Comparative Education, 33–52. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Maguire, M. (2014). Reforming teacher education in England: ‘an economy of discourses of truth’. Journal of Education Policy 29(6), 774–784. Marphatia, A. A., Moussié, R., Ainger, A.-M., & Archer, D. (2007). Confronting the Contradictions: The IMF, Wage Bill Caps and the Case for Teachers. Johannesburg: Action Aid. Mitchell, D. E., & Romero, D. E. (2010). The politics and practice of alternative teacher certification. Education Administration Quarterly 46(3), 363–394. Moran, A. (2012). Crises as catalysts for change: Re-energising teacher education in Northern Ireland. Educational Research 54(2), 137–147. Mundy, K. E. (1998). Educational multilateralism and world (dis)order. Comparative Education Review 42(2), 448–478. Mundy, K. E. (2002). Retrospect and prospect: Education in a reforming World Bank. International Journal of Educational Development 22(5), 483–508. Muralidharan, K., & Sundararaman, V. (2013). Contract Teachers: Experimental Evidence from India (NBER Working Paper Series 19440). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Neubauer, D. (2007). Globalization and education: Characteristics, dynamics, implications. In P. D. Hershock, M. Mason, & J. N. Hawkins (Eds.), Changing Education: Leadership, Innovation and Development in a Globalizing Asia Pacific, 29–62. Hong Kong: Springer and Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong. OECD. (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers. Paris: OECD. Page, T. M. (2015). Common pressures, same results? Recent reforms in professional standards and competences in teacher education for secondary teachers in England, France and Germany. Journal of Education for Teaching 41(2), 180–202. Peck, C. A., Gallucci, C., & Sloan, T. (2010). Negotiating implementation of high-stakes performance assessment policies in teacher education: From compliance to inquiry. Journal of Teacher Education 61(5), 451–463. Pullin, D. (2004). Accountability, autonomy and academic freedom in educator preparation programs. Journal of Teacher Education 55(4), 300–312. Rasmussen, P., & Zou, Y. (2014). The development of educational accountability in China and Denmark. Education Policy Analysis Archives 22(121). http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1693. Retrieved 30 March 2017. Reid, A., & O’Donoghue, M. (2004). Revisiting enquiry-based teacher education in neo-liberal times. Teaching and Teacher Education 20(6), 559–579.
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Rice, S., Volkoff, V., & Dulfer, N. (2015). Teach For/Teach First candidates: What conclusions do they draw from their time in teaching. Teacher and Teaching: Theory and Practice 21(5), 497–513. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, R. (2010). Globalizing Education Policy. London: Routledge. Robertson, S. (2012). Placing teachers in global governance agendas. Comparative Education Review 56(4), 584–607. Sahlberg, P. (2011). What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? New York: Teachers’ College Press. Shulman, L. S. (2004). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. In The Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning and Learning to Teach, pp. 217–248. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Schuls, J. V., & Trivitt, J. (2013). Teacher effectiveness: An analysis of licensure screens. Educational Policy 29(4), 645–675. Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice. London: Allan Lane – Penguin Books. Sleeter, C. (2008). Equity, democracy, and neoliberal assaults on teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 24(8), 1947–1957. Sleeter, C. (2014). Toward teacher education research that informs policy. Educational Researcher 43(3), 146–153. Solbrekke, T. D., & Sugrue, C. (2014). Professional accreditation of initial teacher education programmes: Teacher educators’ strategies – between ‘accountability’ and ‘professional responsibility’. Teaching and Teacher Education 37, 11–20. Steiner-Khamsi, G., Mossayeb, S., & Ridge, N. (2007). Curriculum & Student Assessment, Pre-Service Teacher Training: An Assessment in Tajikistan & Kyrgystan. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College. Takala, T. (2003). Analysis of the Education for All Fast-Track Initiative. Helsinki: Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Tang, S. (2015). The creeping of neo-liberal influences in Hong Kong. Asia-Pacific Education Research 24(2), 271–282. Teach for All. (2015). Retrieved: 30.10.2015: https://vimeo.com/teachforall Tello, C., & Pinto da Almeida, M. L. (2014). Políticas educativas e profissionalização docente na América Latina. Revista Lusófona de Educação(26), 161–174 Tuinamuana, K. (2011). Teacher professional standards, accountability, and ideology: Alternative discourses. Australian Journal of Education 36(12), 72–82. UN General Assembly. (2015). Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations. UNESCO. (2013–14). EFA Global Monitoring Report: Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. (2015). Education for All 2000–2015: Achievements and Challenges. Paris: UNESCO. Verger, A., & Altinyelken, H. K. (2013). Global education reforms and the new management of teachers: A critical introduction. In A. Verger, H. K. Altinyelken, & M. de Koning (Eds.), Global Managerial Education Reforms and Teachers: Emerging Policies, Controversies and Issues in Developing Countries, 1–18. Brussels: Education International, Research Institute/University of Amsterdam, IS Academy ‘Education and International Development’. Verger, A., Novelli, M., & Altinyelken, H. K. (2012). Global education policy and international development: An introductory framework. In Global Education Policy and International Development: New Agendas, Issues, and Policies, 3–33. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Wang, A. H., Coleman, A. B., Coley, R. J., & Phelps, R. P. (2003). Preparing Teachers around the World. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. World Bank Independent Evaluation Group. (2006). From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes: An Unfinished Agenda. An Evaluation of World Bank Support to Primary Education (Conference Edition). Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. (2015a). Snapshot: The rise of results-based financing in education. Brief. Retrieved: 29 March 2017. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/644321467997874151/The-rise-ofresults-based-financing-in-education-2015
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World Bank. (2015b). World Bank Group doubles results-based financing for education to US$5 billion over next 5 years [press release]. Retrieved 29 March 2017: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/ press-release/2015/05/18/world-bank-group-doubles-results-based-financing-for-education-to-us5billion-over-next-5-years World Education Forum. (2015). Incheon Declaration. Education 2030: Towards Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education and Lifelong Learning for All. Incheon: World Education Forum. Yinger, R. J., & Hendricks-Lee, M. (2000). The language of standards and teacher education reform. Education Policy 14(1), 94–106. Zeichner, K. (2010). Competition, economic rationalization, increased surveillance, and attacks on diversity: Neo-liberalism and the transformation of teacher education in the U.S. Teaching and Teacher Education 26(8), 1544–1552. Zeichner, K. (2014). The struggle for the soul of teaching and teacher education in the USA. Journal of Education for Teaching 40(5), 551–568. Zeichner, K., & Peña Sandoval, C. (2015). Venture philanthropy and teacher education policy in the US: The role of the New Schools Venture Fund. Teachers College Record 117(5), 1–44.
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65 Globalization and Teacher Education Ly n n P a i n e , E l e n a Ay d a ro v a a n d I w a n S y a h r i l
Despite the ubiquitous and multifaceted manifestations of globalization in our lives, examinations of teacher education policies and practices in the context of globalization remain relatively uncommon (for exceptions, see Bruno-Jofre & Johnston 2014; Loomis, Rodriguez, & Tillman 2008; Paine, Blömeke, & Aydarova 2016). To address this gap, this chapter examines how the movement of people, ideas, and policy actors across national borders has positioned teacher education at the intersection of global influences and transnational forces. One key dimension of globalization is the movement of people across borders. For teacher education, this means preparing teachers for increasing diversity in classrooms, given the rise of migration/immigration. But it is not only school pupils who are migrating. Teacher education also now serves a pool of (future) teachers who themselves are on the move, as teachers – before or after their teacher preparation – travel across national boundaries to work. Globalization also entails the movement of ideas across local contexts. Ideas of good teaching, and what this means for teacher education, circulate with greater range and speed as a consequence of the heightened connections of globalization. Finally, in this period of what some describe as a world of networked connectivity, we note the rise of new mechanisms for trading and standardizing teacher education policies. The expansion of international assessments, comparative research, and international consulting have supported the growth of new forums for the discussion and development of ideas related to teacher education/teacher development (such as the International Summit of the Teaching Profession), the reach of new teacher education networks (like Teach for All, the international network of Teach for America, and its counterpart organizations in other countries), and the influence
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of global corporate actors (like McKinsey and Pearson) on local and national teacher education policies and programs. This chapter begins by exploring what constitutes globalization and why it has become relevant to teacher education. We then explore the movements of people and ideas by considering examples of three prominent phenomena: (1) the implications of immigration and migration on the work of and challenges for teacher education, (2) globally circulating ideas about teaching and teacher education, and (3) the rise of tighter connections through new networks and new actors engaged in shaping teacher education globally. The chapter concludes with a critical consideration of the role of research and implications for new lines of inquiry in teacher education. We imagine the teacher education community as participants in a discourse that has shifted scales through international links and is characterized by both growing standardization and attempts to subvert it.
Viewing globalization as a context of teacher education Commentators on globalization in popular culture often highlight the increased connections across the globe and movement of goods and services. We take the view that globalization’s relevance for teacher education is not only the result of the physical movement of materials and people but the exchange or transporting of ideas and the growth of international, transnational, or even so-called global perspectives on teaching and teacher education. In this chapter we focus on discourses of teacher education – practice, research, and policy – shaped by globalization. To gain insights into these discursive transformations, the flows of ideas and people are particularly important to understand, as are spaces and networks. Such flows have contributed to the emergence of global imaginaries, ‘a constructed landscape of collective aspirations … mediated through the complex prism of modern media’ (Appadurai, 1996, p. 31). In these new imaginaries, how we think about and talk about teacher education (and teaching) is not understood within local norms. Rather, in the global neoliberal imaginaries, distant actors and norms no longer rooted in a particular location help shape the arguments for what teacher education should look like and be (Paine et al., 2016). Seen discursively, globalization offers new warrants and justifications for the policies, practices, and study of teacher education. Seen materially, globalization creates new challenges for teacher education as it now must prepare teachers for teaching increasingly diverse student bodies to be participants in both their nation(s) and a highly interconnected world (Zhao, 2010). The past decade has witnessed a marked rise in the international attention given to teaching and teacher education as a policy focus and a topic of comparative research. International organizations (e.g. UNESCO, the World Bank, etc.)
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have developed indicators for teachers and teaching. The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) study and the IEA Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) studies have been pioneers in making it possible to talk about teacher learning comparatively. All this contributed to making teacher development a topic that makes sense – and can be discussed – beyond a single country’s borders (Motivans, 2012). These policy reports, international data sets, and research studies frame teachers, teacher education, and teaching in particular ways (Robertson, 2012). They reinforce the ‘common sense’ of talking about teacher education as a common problem, with standardized metrics and shared solution sets. Against this backdrop, we explore the influence on teacher education of three phenomena associated with globalization: the movement of students and teachers, globally circulating ideas, and new transnational networks and actors.
The Movement of Students and Teachers: Challenges to Teacher Education Movement of students and implications for teacher education. The last twenty years has witnessed a marked growth in international migration. The number of international immigrants rose from 154 million in 1990 to 175 million in 2000 to 232 million in 2013 (United Nations, 2013). The growing trend means that there is an increasing possibility for teachers around the globe, in particular in destination countries,1 to have students of immigrant background. In the USA one in four schoolchildren is now an immigrant or US-born child of immigrants (Tamer, 2014). In Europe the recent influx of immigration has changed the school demographics as well. For instance, in Spain the immigrant student enrollment has increased ten times since the early 2000s, making up almost 10 percent of the student body (Gómez-Hurtado & Coronel, 2015). In Italy the immigrant student enrollment has multiplied threefold over the last decade (Contini & Herold, 2015). In 2015, with the sudden rise in refugees and immigrants to Europe, the phenomenon grew even starker. While the immigration trend worldwide does not follow a uniform pattern,2 migration has heightened the importance of preparing teachers to work with student diversity. Studies suggest that teachers in many nations feel they lack the preparation needed to teach the linguistic and cultural diversity they face in their classrooms. While in one Danish study (Horst & Holeman, 2007) 88 percent of 268 teachers sampled had immigrant students in their classes, only 25 percent had had any attention paid to multicultural education in teacher preparation. BravoMoreno (2009) claims that Spanish teacher education works on ‘the assumption of a homogenous classroom’ (p. 425). Work by Kalekin-Fishman, Pitkanen, and Verma (2002) points to both the need and difficulty for teacher preparation in Finland, France, Israel, Germany, Greece, and the UK to help prospective teachers learn to teach immigrant children.
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The increase in immigration and the need for teacher preparation to deal with its effects on schools have even affected countries not before seen as destination countries nor known for cultural and linguistic diversity. For example, the rise in immigration in South Korea since 2000 has met with teachers ‘having difficulty understanding cultural differences of the minority students, leading to a kind of cultural ignorance even as they earnestly attempt to help minority students achieve academic success’ (Kim & Kim, 2012, p. 248).3 But, interestingly, countries with a history of immigration, such as Israel and Canada, also report that teachers feel unprepared to work with diverse students and need more multicultural training (Gerin-Lajoie, 2012; Goodwin, 2002). As migration increases, the discussion of this challenge for teacher education grows. The Organisation for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (OECD, 2010a, 2010b) has made explicit policy recommendations both for pre-service and in-service teacher education, suggesting courses that directly deal with diversity and ‘teaching in a multicultural setting’ to ‘help teachers to become more aware of diverse student needs, to focus on potentials and opportunities rather than deficits, and to develop didactic skills to support second language learners’ (p. 57). Researchers also increasingly talk about the importance of diversity as a theme for and in teacher education (see, for example, KalekinFishman et al., 2002). Yet in contrast to policy reports, the academic community typically couches its critiques and recommendations in terms of social justice (Planas & Civil, 2009), antiracism, empathic consciousness (Schröttner, 2012), or global competence (Zhao 2010). In this context, literature in many countries explores possibilities for increasing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow teachers to support the learning of all students. Many studies focus on helping teachers – pre-service and in-service – develop knowledge of culture and language, as well as skills that position immigrant students as knowers. We note three examples of broadly discussed teacher education strategies for addressing diversity which have taken on international or global aspects: culturally responsive pedagogy, the use of narratives, and service learning, or cultural immersion. The concept of culturally responsive pedagogy informs teacher education discussions internationally. Having first entered conversation in the context of the USA, it is now much more widely discussed, reflecting both the prominence of international migration as an issue and the flow of educational ideas internationally. In the USA, Goodwin (2002) highlights culturally responsive pedagogy as a relevant pedagogical strategy for teachers to use when teaching immigrant children because ‘it guides teachers to begin where children are and to build on what they know and bring’ (p. 167). Gómez-Hurtado and Coronel (2015) discuss the importance of culturally relevant pedagogy to address the increased diversity in Spanish schools. Gordon (2006) highlights the absence of culturally relevant pedagogy approaches in Japanese teachers’ practices for immigrant communities in Tokyo and neighboring cities. Yet research in and outside the USA reminds
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readers that awareness to cultural diversity does not necessarily guarantee teachers can translate this awareness into practice. Teachers sometimes have other conflicting worldviews, such as an assimilationist stance, that leads to teaching in tension with culturally relevant pedagogy (Eisikovits, 2008). The importance of teacher narrative and teachers’ own biographies is another theme in literature on cultural diversity. For example, Kim, Ates, and Grigsby (2015) propose that student teachers, practicing teachers, and teacher educators working with immigrant students use cultural narratives as a pedagogical tool to address issues of language, culture, identity, and diversity. They argue that narratives, as culturally constructed stories, can be used to compare and contrast interpretations of shared experiences. This can lead to the cultivation of empathy and cross-cultural understanding that can promote culturally responsive teaching. A third strand of discussion of teacher education and immigration/migration looks to service learning and international experience as ways to deepen teachers’ capacity to attend to diversity. Advocates recommend service learning in teacher education programs to cultivate empathy for and understanding of immigrant students and the roles of teachers in supporting their learning (Bollin, 2007; Tilley-Lubbs, 2011). Some speak to the potential of international service learning in pre-service teacher education (Mbugna, 2010). Advocates argue for the power of cross-cultural immersion in the preparation of new teachers and the enhanced understanding of experienced teachers (Merryfield & Kasai, 2004; Sleeter, 2008). Programs increasingly incorporate international study and teaching practice to help future teachers be prepared for a diverse classroom (Dunn, Dotson, Cross, Kesner, & Lundhal, 2014; Kabilan, 2013; Mahon & Cushner, 2002; Xu, Chen, & Huang, 2015). International teacher migration and teacher education. Issues of teacher education for global competence and teacher education for diversity in the context of migration have gotten much attention. What has received less attention is how international migration affects the teaching force itself and particularly ways in which it interacts with initial teacher education and in-service professional development. Increasingly, teachers seek employment in schools beyond their national borders: South African teachers in UK schools (Manik, Maharaj, & Sookrajh, 2006), international teachers from India, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe in US schools (Brown & Stevick, 2014; Dunn, 2013), immigrants from the former USSR in Israeli schools (Michael, 2006), and teachers from Englishspeaking countries in UAE, Qatari, and Omani schools (Kirk, 2013). Noting the intensifying flows of international teacher mobility, Education International – or the global federation of teacher unions – issued a report that sought to address the vulnerable status of migrant teachers in receiving societies (Caravatti, Lederer, Lupico, & Van Meter, 2014). Teachers’ motivations for mobility vary: challenging work conditions, low pay, armed conflicts, or the lack of high quality professional preparation in home countries (Ochs, 2007).
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Teacher education in the context of these flows comes to occupy a contradictory position. On the one hand, the state or external donors that fund teacher preparation expect programs to guarantee a supply of teachers for national schools; on the other hand, pre-service teachers who desire employment opportunities beyond national borders challenge the program offerings as suitable or unsuitable for their future professional success. In some contexts this contradictory position is fraught with conflict as policy-makers attempt to hold teacher education programs accountable for graduates’ employment in national schools, whereas pre-service teachers pursue training in these programs to accumulate cultural and linguistic capital to move abroad (Aydarova, 2016). In these cases, investments in the human capital that teacher education programs represent bear returns for other countries, subjecting small or weak states to further brain drain and teacher loss (Ochs, 2007). To address the challenges of teacher loss in sending countries, to regulate the qualification recognition in receiving societies, and to protect the rights of migrant teachers, the British Commonwealth member states developed the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol in 2004 (Miller, Ochs, & Mulvaney, 2008). UNESCO has considered adopting the principles outlined in the protocol in contexts beyond the Commonwealth states for managing not only voluntary but also involuntary teacher migration (Penson & Yonemura, 2012). Inter-state regulation, however, does not always address the needs of teachers in new cultural contexts. Apart from the challenge of getting their qualifications recognized in new contexts (Guo, 2013), international teachers often report a lack of preparation for dealing with the behavior problems and classroom management issues that they face in UK or US classrooms (Dunn, 2013; Ochs, 2008). Many teachers also report limited knowledge of school policies and educational practices in new contexts (Dunn, 2013); teachers of color who migrate to new contexts often feel unprepared for the racism and discrimination they face in receiving societies. While these teachers are brought in to meet the needs of receiving societies, their own needs of professional development are rarely met adequately and systematically. Not completely invisible, but certainly a predominantly silenced minority, these teachers are often left to fend for themselves in schools (Dunn, 2013). Recent research offers a fairly disturbing indictment of the limited ways teacher education and professional development take this changing context – of teachers moving across borders – into account.
The Movement of Ideas: Globally Circulated Visions and the Challenge to Recognize Local Contexts The growing communication between national policy actors, international exchange, development assistance, and networks of scholarship have led to what appears to be increasingly shared rhetoric about a vision of what counts as good
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teaching and hence what the desired outcome of teacher education should be. In particular, the idea of learner-centered pedagogy (hereafter, LCP) is a kind of ‘traveling policy’ (Thompson, 2013). There has been, according to one observer, an ‘explosion’ of documents and rhetoric calling for this kind of teaching (Ginsburg, 2009, p. 2), such that LCP has become ‘a pedagogical buzzword in educational policy and practice’ (Ahn, Cha, Ham, Ju, Kim, Ku, Lee, & Park, 2013, p. 2). Different terms are used in different contexts – from ‘active learning’ (Ginsburg, 2009) to ‘child centered pedagogy’ (Sriprakash, 2010) to, in China, suzhi jioayu, or what is often translated in English as ‘education for quality’ (Kipnis, 2006). But all share a commitment to transforming teacher-driven didactic approaches to teaching and putting students’ active learning at the center. The idea of LCP is not new, yet internationally the push for it as an idea of ‘best practice’ gained significant momentum from the late 1980s on, especially after the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All (EFA): Meeting Basic Learning Needs, jointly organized by the UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank. The document that came out of that meeting, World Declaration on Education for All, argued that ‘active and participatory [instructional] approaches are particularly valuable in assuring learning acquisition and allowing learners to reach their fullest potential’ (WCEFA, 1990, Article 4). Subsequent World Bank support gave further weight to this. Ten years later the Dakar Framework reiterated the importance of ‘well trained teachers and active-learning techniques’ (UNESCO, 2000, p. 17). Since then USAID’s global Education Strategy has focused on a similar theory of change: ‘Improving instruction is a complex task that entails . . . supporting improved teacher training . . . [toward] adoption of teaching methods that involve students in the learning process’ (2005, p. 9). In other words, policy recommendations make LCP a central focus of teacher development. Research studies echo this theme. In a review of the International Journal of Educational Development from 1981–2010, Schweisfurth (2011) found 72 articles focused specifically on LCP, including studies from 34 different countries across four regions of the world. With the support of widely circulating research and endorsed by aid agencies, the press to reform teaching – and to rely on teacher education as a way to bring new ideas into schools – has been a hallmark of educational efforts globally. We can point to many examples of how visions of good teaching – as a kind of traveling policy – now inform visions of good teacher education. One rich case comes from the idea of PAKEM in Indonesia. An acronym that has come to take on particular policy and pedagogical significance over two decades, PAKEM stands for teaching that supports active, creative, effective, and joyful learning. As a recent USAID document outlined: A teacher’s role is to facilitate an effective learning that: •• Encourages students to actively interact with the environment •• Develops critical and creative habits
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•• •• •• ••
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Takes place in a joyful/fun atmosphere Encourages students to do higher order thinking skills Uses materials in the nearby learning environment Encourages cooperation among students (USAID PRIORITAS, 2013)
Drawing its support from and referencing an eclectic mix of sources – from Confucius to Temple University (US) scholar Melvin Silverman – this reform notion has evolved over time through the confluence of aid agencies from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Intel Education, now also embraced by Indonesia’s own Ministry of Education (Gora & Sunarto, 2010). Where the initial efforts were focused on classrooms, attention now falls on teacher education. Pre-service teacher educators are encouraged to rethink their content and pedagogy to support this vision of teaching. The push to revise pre-service education in ways that support an ambitious new vision of teaching is present in Indonesia and many countries, and similar trends are visible in in-service education as well. Yet, as Schweisfurth’s (2011) review of studies indicate, the wide circulation of ideas about good teaching and what this means for teacher development does not mean that LCP professional development effort has in fact transformed teaching. In reviewing the experience of PAKEM in Indonesia, one study found the policy’s effort to introduce active learning had basically failed ‘due to a combination of technical, political and cultural factors’ and the borrowing of external approaches without sufficient regard for the ‘cultural context’ (Heyward, 2014). Similarly, Vavrus and Bartlett’s study of teacher learning efforts in Tanzania documents teachers’ mixture of appreciation for some aspects of LCP and incorporation of LCP activities in their practice with rejection of LCP’s epistemological assumptions and limited ability to enact it due to material and contextual constraints (such as the entrance examination) (Vavrus and Bartlett, 2013). Vavrus (2009) calls for a recognition that pedagogy must be seen as ‘contingent’. Yet in the context of globalization’s connections, frequent sharing, and global gaze, LCP is often treated as ‘best practice’. One critic notes: ‘The pedagogy . . . is often presented as if it were value-free and merely technical’ (Tabulawa, 2003, p. 9), with principles ‘whose application has tended to be oblivious to the context in which they are being applied’ (Tabulawa, 2013, p. xiv).
Global Connections, New Networks and New Actors in Teacher Education One outcome of the increasing connections of globalization is the rise of new networks and new mechanisms for disseminating ideas about teacher education (policies, programs, and practices). There are many such examples, but here we consider one: the International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP), which has recently emerged as the gathering place for trading policies
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that target teachers. Allegedly initiated by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as an opportunity to learn what other countries are doing in education, ISTP brings together the ministers of education, teacher union leaders, education experts, and outstanding teachers from the top-performing countries in the The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessment. The Summit is organized by the OECD, which administers PISA and TALIS assessments, Education International, the global federation of teachers’ unions, and the government bodies responsible for education in the host countries. The sponsors of the Summit are ‘a mix of philanthropic organizations and corporations, all with an interest in the governance of teachers’ (Robertson, 2012, cited in Dale, 2014, p. 47). Among them are Pearson, the Ford Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Google. In the years since its commencement the formula for the Summit arrangements has become routine. The OECD prepares background reports, which provide structure for the Summit’s program and are then discussed by the participants. The background reports highlight key practices that top-performing countries engage in and provide suggestions for possible reform directions. After the Summit, the OECD publishes an extended version of this report with elaborated proposals from the background report. The Asia Society publishes final reports as well, highlighting both the key points that were brought up for the discussion and the commitments that each country made for the improvement of their education. ISTP acts as a mechanism for knowledge dissemination; it streamlines and sharpens messages. OECD reports, serving as both background and culminating products, reinforce the message about teachers’ key role in revamping the system and what works in the teaching profession. For example, the Asia Society (2011) report states that the Summit participants recognize that ‘teachers are the single most important in-school ingredient when it comes to student achievement and that the quality of an education system rests on the quality of its teachers’ (p. 4). Even though this position has been questioned elsewhere (Kumashiro, 2015), it emerges as internationally accepted ‘common sense’. The OECD ‘signature’ policies of recruiting professionals with no teacher preparation or using evaluation to improve instruction are the consistent messages presented throughout these reports. At the end of the event, countries’ delegations pledge what reform measures they are going to implement in their home countries. These pledges are then used to evaluate progress made during the next year’s Summit. Such a process encourages and contributes to standardization of teacher policies among the participating countries. As delegates from other countries are invited to watch the events and news of the Summit spreads internationally, it sets an exemplar for the rest of the world to follow. The focus on initial teacher preparation emerged during the first summit in 2011. That discussion was led by Finland, where currently all teachers are
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required to have master’s degrees from teacher preparation programs before they can be licensed to teach. The Finnish delegation described their model as a: research-based teacher preparation system . . . in which teachers are expected to understand and be involved in research . . . have strong content knowledge, a broad repertoire of pedagogical approaches, and training in diagnosing students with learning difficulties and in differentiating instruction . . . Strong clinical experience under the supervision of master teachers is also an important part of the training in schools associated with the universities. (Asia Society, 2011, p. 8)
At the conclusion of the summit, participants expressed commitment to ‘raising the quality and rigor of teacher-training programs, linked to professional standards’ (Asia Society, 2011, p. 27). Despite these claims, both the background and ensuing OECD reports identified three principles for ensuring ‘high quality initial teacher education’: clear standards for what teachers have to know and be able to do in their subjects, school-based teacher preparation models over academic preparation, and ‘more flexible structures of initial teacher education … opening up new routes into the teaching career’. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the USA stood as an example of the first principle. The second principle of schoolbased teacher preparation was offered without an example that demonstrates its effectiveness. For the last principle (more flexible routes), however, the supporting evidence pointed to how teachers are prepared to participate in research in Finland, Japan, and China. Therein lies the contradiction: the principle articulated (and set in bold in the text) suggests that ‘high quality initial teacher education’ can be effective even if it is completely bypassed, whereas the examples and the explanations describe contexts where the required university-based teacher education is demanding, rigorous, and robust (Sahlberg, 2012). Ultimately, this example illustrates the disconnect between the agendas pursued by the OECD through its reports and the practices actually pursued by the top-performing countries towards its own measures of success. Selectively using international studies and data, OECD reports frame the conversations and steer a particular discussion about teacher education. By 2015, the common sense generated by the summits’ reports converged on the notion of ‘raising the rigor of teacher preparation programs to equip prospective teachers with strong subject matter skills and extensive clinical experience’ (Asia Society, 2015 p. 23). This framing of initial teacher education omits attention to pedagogical skills. Additionally, clinical experience is singled out as the solution to the problems that plague teacher education programs. The summits’ mechanism for generating common sense is also problematic as it excludes voices of teachers and teacher educators. Blogs and newspaper articles written by teachers and educators who attended are peppered with testimonies of watching others discuss their profession, with rare opportunities to participate in the discussion. Even the pictures from the summits present a relatively standard
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format – a square table that includes all official delegations and seats in the back for the observers. Teachers’ lack of opportunities to share their perspectives contradicts the messages by the delegations that teachers need to be actively involved in reform processes.4 The rise of such transnational networks and actors on the teacher education scene give currency to the power of a model to be borrowed across contexts. From our review, it appears that these new global networks and actors are changing both the stakeholders in teacher education and the terms of the conversation.
Globalization’s Contradictory Voices: The need for Dialogue While these circulating ideas and the growing importance of new actors in teacher education appear to move towards some convergence around ideas of what constitutes the goals of and best practices in teacher preparation, it is clear that there are contradictory tendencies in the voices about teacher education today. On the one hand, for example, the focus on the need to attend to cultural diversity or to help teachers develop a learner-centered pedagogy reflects an ambitious vision of teaching and hence raises the bar for teacher education in every country. At the same time, calls for more flexible entry into teaching, stronger clinical approaches that reduce the engagement with university-based teacher preparation, and fast-track approaches to teacher development all speak to a narrowed vision of teacher education (Crowley, 2016; Furlong, Barton, Miles, Whiting, & Whitty, 2000; Youens, McIntyre, & Stevenson, 2016; Zeichner, 2010). Both tendencies reflect the impact of global processes and international exchange. Teacher education discussions today exist within global conversations. These conversations are characterized by multiple and sometimes conflicting voices. As international networks and growing awareness of globalization shape how teacher education is viewed, the voices of teacher educators are, as the ISTP experience suggests, too often marginalized. Teacher educators and researchers of teacher education need to be part of the ‘global’ conversation. These shifts of globalization create a need for new lines of inquiry in teacher education research. Already an abundance of scholarly writing acknowledges the context of globalization, but the field needs more empirical analyses of how the movements of people and ideas and the shifts in scale have affected both what teacher education programs attempt to do and the impact of their work. For example, while there are normative claims about the importance of developing global competence in teachers and their students, more analysis of the effects of different approaches are needed. And to what extent is culturally relevant pedagogy a concept that has global resonance and shares the same meaning everywhere? How does the contingent and contextual nature of teaching – the subject
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of teacher education – interact with widely circulating notions of best practice in teacher education? We have a small number of context-specific case studies, but analytic effort that ranges across individual cases could generate new insights into persistent challenges in teacher education reform. Finally, the recent increase in international teacher mobility and the rise of new networks and actors call for research that is not bound by national education systems. For example, what is the role, scope, and impact of networks and transnational actors on teacher learning? In the context of globalizing forces shaping how teacher education is viewed, it is more important than ever that teacher education researchers and teacher educators play an active role. Research must be attentive to contradictory voices. In the wake of standardizing discourses in teacher education, we note an important cross-current that reflects the ‘rising particularity’ that is one outcome of globalization (de Sousa Santos, 2006). For example, in the same time that LCP has become the dominant refrain in teacher education discussions around the world, there has been emerging interest in local and indigenous pedagogies. Tabulawa, in his critique of the imposed ‘borrowing’ of LCP as a one-size-fits-all solution to improving teaching, argues for the importance of context; in his discussion of teaching reforms in Botswana, he explores epistemological traditions within African schooling that must be considered alongside any discussion of LCP. Similarly, a growing number of Chinese scholars critique the value of learner-centered teaching (Li, 2016) and advocate for a recovering of ‘authentic’ Confucian pedagogical traditions (Wu, 2011; Deng, 2011). In short, while there may appear to be standardization in some visions informing teacher education, there is also a push back and challenge to such a vision. Within the research community we need more knowledge of the range of these voices. What it means to be a teacher today, in this period of heightened and intense connection, and what that means in terms of preparing teachers and supporting their learning must, of course, be understood from the experience of those most engaged in the work. Globalization allows for easier exchange of materials, participation in international conferences, and circulation of education journals. Yet for all the attention to international exchange of information and practices, there are not yet well-established mechanisms that allow authentic dialogue. For learning through dialogue that can take place across different contexts, we need sustained conversation. That this kind of conversation is not a familiar part of institutional, policy, or research life is clear. That it is necessary to offset what otherwise are simple generalizations, facile comparisons, and limited understanding is also clear.
Notes 1 10 top immigrant-destination countries in 2013 with 51 percent of world immigrants: the USA, Russian Federation, Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab of Emirates, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, and Spain (http://esa.un.org/unmigration/documents/The_number_of_international_ migrants.pdf).
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2 For instance, the large number of immigrants going to Taiwan and Saudi Arabia are chiefly migrant workers, mostly low skilled. Their migration does not impact the destination country’s school system as the receiving governments in these two countries have a strict policy on immigrants’ permanent settlement and migrants’ reunification with their families. In other cases there is the emergence of a particular pattern specific to a region, such as the Early Study Abroad phenomenon in East Asian countries such as China and South Korea (Song, 2011). Many families in these countries send their school-aged children as early as possible before college to schools in English-speaking countries to acquire English, with the thought that the ability to be fluent in English will enhance the students’ academic success in the educational market (e.g. passing top college English entrance exams in home country). 3 In fact, the South Korean educational system has created a new teacher role – bilingual teacher – charged with providing both language support to non-native speakers and multicultural education to all students in a school. Special teacher education programs have been developed to train such teachers (Jin, 2016). 4 Social media and other virtual outlets offer evidence of and voices of protest. During the summit in Amsterdam, one of the participants tweeted: ‘Same tune as #ISTP2013 however more government control, more (mis)management in schools, and protesting students’.
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Kumashiro, K. (2015). Review of proposed 2015 federal teacher preparation regulations.Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Li, X. (2016) Mis-placed learner-centred pedagogy: A Chinese perspective. Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Conference on East–West Reciprocal Learning in Education: Research on Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education in a Global View. Chongqing, China. Loomis, S., Rodriguez, J., & Tillman, R. (2008). Developing into similarity: Global teacher education in the twenty-first century. European Journal of Teacher Education 31(3), 233–245. Mahon, J., & Cushner, K. (2002). The overseas student teaching experience: Creating optimal culture learning. Multicultural Perspectives, 4(3), 3–8. Manik, S., Maharaj, B., & Sookrajh, R. (2006). Globalisation and transnational teachers: South African teacher migration to the UK. Migracijske i etničke teme, 22(1–2), 15–33. Mbugua, T. (2010). Fostering culturally relevant/Responsive pedagogy and global awareness through the integration of international service-learning in courses. Journal of Pedagogy/Pedagogický casopis, 1(2), 87–98. Merryfield, M. M., & Kasai, M. (2004). How are teachers responding to globalization? Social Education, 68(5), 354–359. Michael, O. (2006). Multiculturalism in schools: The professional absorption of immigrant teachers from the former USSR into the education system in Israel. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(2), 164–178. Miller, J. (2009). Teaching refugee learners with interrupted education in science: Vocabulary, literacy and pedagogy. International Journal of Science Education, 31(4), 571–592. Miller, P. W., Ochs, K., & Mulvaney, G. (2008). International teacher migration and the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol: Assessing its impact and the implementation process in the United Kingdom. European Education, 40(3), 89–101. Morgan, J. (2012, August 16). Non-teaching bodies will be players, Pearson boss says. Times Higher Education. Available from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/non-teaching-bodies-willbe-players-pearson-boss-says/420876.article Motivans, A. (2012). Rationale and meeting objectives. Presentation to the Indicators for Teachers and Teaching Expert Group Meeting, October, Institute for Statistics, UNESCO, Paris. Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C., & Barber, M. (2010). How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better. London: McKinsey & Co. Ochs, K. (2007). Implementation of the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol: Considering the education systems and context. Perspectives in Education, 25(2), 15–24. OECD. (2010a). Closing the gap for immigrant students: Policies, practice, and performance. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2010b). Educating teachers for diversity: Meeting the challenge. Paris: OECD. Paine, L., Blömeke, S., & Aydarova, O. (2016). Teachers and teaching in the context of globalization. In D. H. Gitomer & C. A. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (5th ed.) (pp. 717–786). Washington, DC: AERA. Penson, J., & Yonemura, A. (2012). Next steps in managing teacher migration: Papers of the Sixth Commonwealth Research Symposium on Teacher Mobility, Recruitment and Migration. London: UNESCO & Commonwealth Secretariat. Planas, N., & Civil, M. (2009). Working with mathematics teachers and immigrant students: An empowerment perspective. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 12(6), 391–409. Robertson, S. (2012). Placing teachers in global governance agendas. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 584–607. Sahlberg, P. (2012). The most wanted: Teachers and teacher education in Finland. In L. DarlingHammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world (pp. 1–21). Routledge. Sánchez, P., & Machado-Casas, M. (2009). At the intersection of transnationalism, Latina/o immigrants, and education. The High School Journal, 92(4), 3–15. Schröttner, B. T. (2012). The need for global consciousness. In D. A. Urias (Ed.), The immigration & education nexus (pp. 21–36). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
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66 Research in Indigenizing Teacher Education B ro o k e M a d d e n a n d F l o re n c e G l a n f i e l d
At the heart of international scholarship and development that calls for Indigenous perspectives in all levels and aspects of education around the world (e.g. Classen, 1999; Cook, 1999; Findlay, 2000; Gopinathan, 2006; Heckt, 1999; King, 1999; Ma Rhea & Russell, 2012; Owuor, 2007; Snively & Corsiglia, 1988; United Nations, 2008) lies the work of Indigenous scholars (e.g. Barnhart & Kawagley, 2003; Battiste, 1998; Battiste & Barman, 1995; Battiste, Bell, & Findlay, 2003; Bishop, 1996, 1999; Cajete, 1994; Graveline, 1998; Kawagley, 1995; Kirkness, 1980, 1999; Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991; Kirkness & More, 1981; Smith, 1997; Smith, 1999). They outline the central position of Indigenous peoples in widespread efforts to Indigenize education. They consistently emphasize the importance of acknowledging, engaging, and including Indigenous voices – that is, Indigenous cultures, knowledge systems, experiences, and priorities for education – within teacher education. In this chapter we offer a response to the following questions: How is the process of Indigenizing teacher education being taken up within international teacher education research? and How are Indigenous voices situated within the research? Herein, the term teacher education refers to a) Faculty of Education coursework for initial teacher qualification and graduate studies and b) professional development (PD) or leadership development/learning for in-service teachers. Teacher educators refers to those who design, deliver, and assess formal teacher education. In alignment with our use of the terms teacher education and teacher educators, teachers is used to refer to pre-service teachers, teachers practicing in schools, and teachers enrolled in graduate studies.
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We detail the development of this chapter that engages and expands a previous and related review of literature that sorted studies according to pedagogical pathways (Madden, 2015). We then describe the methodology that guided our review and organization of the literature that concentrates on both Indigenous education coursework within Faculties of Education and studies of in-service teacher education. The analysis combines pathways across institutions in order to examine Indigenous voices and explores differences across Faculties of Education and school districts/individual schools to identify pedagogical pathways extensions. We conclude by looking forward to a future pathway for Indigenizing teacher education.
Research in Indigenizing Teacher Education: Building on Pedagogical Pathways In the previous review of literature from 2000–2012 (Madden, 2015), pedagogical pathways (i.e. learning from traditional Indigenous models of teaching; pedagogy for decolonizing; Indigenous and anti-racist education; and Indigenous and place-based education) were conceptualized as a means of organizing relevant teacher education and Indigenous education studies by their specific focus on Faculty of Education coursework. Pedagogical pathways were presented as configurations that guide, shape, and constrain the movement of pedagogy. Assumptions about education and teaching, associated purposes and goals, central themes, and pedagogical methods comprise and arrange a pedagogical pathway that influences, but does not determine, the learning journey. Some elements of a pathway remain constant while others fluctuate, and the journey is continuously contextual, distinct, relational, and unforeseeable. It was demonstrated that pathways are often thought to differently lead to transformation. Generally, pathways towards Indigenizing teacher education pursue particular individual and systemic shifts likely to result in educational change that improves schooling for Indigenous students and communities. However, pursuit of school improvement does not ensure this goal will be achieved. This transformative pedagogical production often hinges on the assumption that teachers will make sense of (their relationship to) Indigenous content shared within teacher education and then ‘successfully’ adapt and apply their understandings for classroom practice. However, movement of knowledge-practice between educational institutions is typically non-linear and the process complex (e.g. Dion, 2007; St. Denis, 2011; Schick, 2000; Sleeter, 2005; Strong-Wilson, 2007). Pedagogy refers to the flow of movement that may produce desired transformational shifts. Pedagogy, distinguished from pedagogical pathways, always already exceeds pathways in ways that, at once, may be considered productive and problematic. This chapter updates and expands the previous review of literature (Madden, 2015) in four key ways. First, the studies that give shape to the four pedagogical
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pathways are updated to include recent international perspectives (i.e. 2013– 2015). Second, we analyze and organize studies that focus on in-service teacher education according to three of four pedagogical pathways. Third, we examine pedagogical pathways for the inclusion of Indigenous voices. Fourth, we detail key extensions to pedagogical pathways that guide in-service teacher education.
Pedagogical Pathways: Methodological Considerations and Organization In developing this chapter we followed the original methods (Madden, 2015) of locating, surveying, and, analyzing scholarship that concentrates on both Faculty of Education coursework and in-service teacher education. Two search engines (Summon and Google Scholar) were utilized through a variety of (combinations of) key terms (e.g. ‘Indigenous’, ‘Aboriginal’, ‘teacher education’, ‘pre-service teachers’, ‘in-service teachers’, ‘teacher educators’, ‘professional development’) to locate potential articles for review.1 We also manually surveyed two journals that focus on teacher education (Teaching and Teacher Education and Teaching Education), three journals that focus on Indigenous education (Canadian Journal of Native Education, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, and Journal of American Indian Education), and one journal that focuses on decolonization (Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society). Five special journal issues on Indigenous education (Canadian Journal of Environmental Education Special Issue 17 – Decolonizing and Indigenizing Environmental Education, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies Special Issue 33(4) – Racism, Colonialism, and Film in Canada, and In Education Special Issues 17(3), 19(2), & 19(3) – Indigenous Education in Education) were also surveyed. Inclusive of the 23 studies reviewed previously by Madden (2015), a total of 47 studies were systematically analyzed for this chapter. Thirty-two studies that focus on Faculty of Education coursework and 15 studies that focus on in- service teacher education were considered. To sort studies according to pedagogical pathways, conceptions of Indigenous education and teacher education were examined with regard to their a) theoretical underpinnings, b) purpose and goals, c) central themes, and d) pedagogical methods.
Indigenizing Faculty of Education coursework Four pedagogical pathways utilized by teacher educators in Indigenous education coursework were organized: 1 Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching (e.g. Anuik & Gillies, 2012; Brayboy & Maughan, 2009; Kitchen & Raynor, 2013; Phillips & Whatman, 2007; Sanford, Williams, Hopper, &
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McGregor, 2012; Styres, 2011; Tanaka, 2009, 2015; Tanaka, Williams, Benoit, Duggan, Moir, & Scarrow, 2007; Williams & Tanaka, 2007); 2 Pedagogy for decolonizing (e.g. Chinnery, 2010; den Heyer, 2009; Dion, 2007; Hook, 2012; IsekeBarnes, 2008; Korteweg, Fiddler, Bissell, Primavesi, Clarke, & Moon, 2014; Oberg, Blades, & Thom, 2007; Pridham, Martin, Walker, Rosengren, & Wadley, 2015; Riley, Howard-Wagner, & Mooney, 2015; Taylor, 2014; Wolf, 2012); 3 Indigenous and anti-racist education (e.g. James, Marin, & Kassam, 2011; Kameniar, Windsor, & Sifa, 2014; Mackinlay, 2012; Mackinlay & Barney, 2012, 2014; Morgan & Golding, 2010; O’Dowd, 2010; Tompkins, 2002); 4 Indigenous and place-based education (e.g. Chambers, 2006; Korteweg, Gonzalez, & Guillet, 2010; Scully, 2012).
It is important to highlight the winding nature of the pathways (Marker, 2011) that often meet as well as diverge. Likewise, we recognize teacher educators’ capacities to travel on as well as connect multiple pathways in responding to particular situations, needs, and goals that arise as they negotiate engagement with Indigenous knowledges and pedagogical methods in their own teaching, while preparing teachers to do similar work differently in schools.
Indigenizing in-service teacher education While much of what is known about teacher education and Indigenous education emerges from the context of university coursework, a few studies shine light on preparing practicing teachers to engage Indigenous education topics and issues relevant to Indigenous students and communities in school classrooms. While smaller in quantity and scope, the body of literature that focuses on Indigenizing in-service teacher education suggests that exemplars of school-based initiatives can also be organized according to three of four pedagogical pathways that guide university coursework: 1 Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching (e.g. Chartrand, 2012; Te Ava, RubieDavies, & Ovens, 2013; Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009); 2 Pedagogy for decolonizing (e.g. Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh, & Teddy, 2007, 2009; Dion, Johnston, & Rice, 2010; Garcia, 2011; Garcia & Shirley, 2012; Hynds, Sleeter, Hindle, Savage, Penetito, & Meyer, 2011; Korteweg, Fiddler, Friesen, Gonzalez, Goodchild-Southwind, Higgins, Hill, Madden-Costello, & Root, 2010; Owens, 2015; Strong-Wilson, 2007; Whalan & Wood, 2012); 3 Indigenous and place-based education (e.g. Nicol, Archibald, & Baker, 2013; van der Way, 2001).
The absence of in-service teacher education research that can be organized according to an Indigenous and anti-racist pedagogical pathway corresponds with calls to further attend to the shared spaces between Indigenous education and anti-racist education (e.g. Biermann, 2011; Lawrence & Dua, 2011; Madden, 2016) as well as teachers’ requests for supports to negotiate Indigenous, multicultural, and additional examples of anti-oppressive education (e.g. Korteweg et al., 2010; St. Denis, 2011).
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Analysis Madden (2015) traces the guiding constraints (i.e. assumptions about education and teaching, related purposes and goals, central themes, and pedagogical methods) that comprise and arrange each pathway and animates the pedagogical approaches using coursework exemplars and teacher educators’ cautionary notes. Herein we explore the relationships between pedagogical pathways and Indigenous voices and trace three extensions to pedagogical pathways utilized within professional development (PD) or leadership development/learning for in-service teachers. While glances at elements of pedagogical pathways are presented within this chapter, we direct those who are interested in a comprehensive overview of pathways to the original review of literature.
Pedagogical pathways and Indigenous voices Each pedagogical pathway draws on unique approaches to create space for Indigenous standpoints, with varying degrees to which Indigenous peoples determine how and for what purposes their perspectives and knowledges are utilized in teacher education. Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching promotes Indigenous knowledges within Faculties of Education and schools through honoring both Indigenous teachings and the traditional modes through which they are transmitted. Honoring does not equate to replication, and traditional approaches are often modified significantly in teacher education. Consider the Faculty of Education coursework exemplar in which Lil’wat scholar Dr Lorna Williams and Songhees Master Carver Clarence ‘Butch’ Dick mentored a group of 36 teacher candidates at one time, compared to two or three learners in a traditional teaching context (Tanaka et al., 2007). Further, the construction of a Thunderbird/Whale protection and welcoming pole and its installation in accordance with local protocols were shaped by the time–space constraints imposed by the initial teacher qualification program. As in the pole carving course, most studies considered involved Indigenous Elders, knowledge holders, and artists in activating living Indigenous knowledges through co-learning and investigation throughout coursework and PD. As a result, this pathway presents abundant opportunities for first-hand inclusion of Indigenous experiential, relational, and traditional knowledges. Moreover, cultural mentors were often involved in design, development, and delivery of teacher education. This works towards advancing Indigenous leadership and selfdetermination applied to education within and beyond educational institutions, providing adequate supports are in place (e.g. funding for honoraria, long-term contracts, welcoming environments, and collaborative program design).
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Often, this pathway does not explicitly draw on Indigenous voices to explore the unique political positions and rights of Indigenous communities. This differs from decolonizing, anti-racist, and place-based pathways that consider Indigenous–non-Indigenous relationships through a focus on colonial relations of power that marginalize particular groups while privileging others. Omission of exploration of the relationship between power and Indigenous communities and knowledges has the potential to limit strategies for engaging apathetic or resistant teachers who do not view themselves as implicated in Indigenous education. Further, it may enhance the conditions for appropriation of Indigenous knowledges or perpetuate colonial ways of knowing about Indigenous–non-Indigenous relationships (e.g. Indigenous peoples and knowledges are romanticized and/or relegated to the past). Pedagogy for decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-racist education, and Indigenous and place-based education have theoretical roots in a critical paradigm yet typically make space for Indigenous knowledges on their own terms. Each pathway is differently concerned with the central task of reshaping contemporary Indigenous–non-Indigenous relationships through teacher transformation. The inclusion of Indigenous counter-narratives and development of frames for understanding these often marginalized experiences, perspectives, histories, and knowledges in terms of relations of power play central roles in supporting individual and systemic transformation in all three pedagogical pathways. Specifically, teacher educators argue these shifts lead to the deconstruction of problematic subject positions and interconnected systems of oppression in schools as well as responses to the priorities and needs of Indigenous students and communities. Decolonizing education is commonly described as the tailored enactment of two interconnected and recursive processes: deconstructing and reconstructing (Battiste, 2013). With respect to pedagogy for decolonizing in teacher education, deconstructing often draws on pedagogical approaches and materials (e.g. primary source documents, the work of Indigenous artists and authors) that address the exploitative history of education for Indigenous peoples. Teachers are involved in examining historical and ongoing colonial systems founded in knowledge and standards of engagement predicated on colonizing relations. Reconstructing introduces teachers to forms of Indigenous resistance to ongoing impacts of colonialism and regeneration of cultural practices that shape possibilities for Indigenous education. In general, studies that are guided by an Indigenous and anti-racist pathway focus on examining problematic perceptions of racialized and Indigenous peoples and groups. Racialized and Indigenous signals the intersection of two categories of identity, as well as gestures towards the diversity housed within the grouping Indigenous (e.g. one who identifies as Indigenous may not necessarily identify as racialized and/or may acknowledge white or light skin privilege). It is argued that problematic perceptions are largely shaped by colonial narratives/ mythology and ensconced through ongoing colonial effects, including fractured,
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antagonistic, and/or paternalistic Indigenous–non-Indigenous relationships. Counter-narratives in various forms (e.g. guest lecturers, facilitators, film) support: a) integration of multiple, nuanced representations of Indigeneity that challenge existing stereotypical images, b) analysis of relations of power in situated contexts to provide a basis for understanding ‘the struggles of subjugated populations in their Indigenous homelands’ (Jiwani, 2011, p. 340), and c) interrogation of teachers’ privilege and views of racialized and Indigenous peoples and groups to illuminate how individuals are produced within and reproduce interconnected systems of oppression. Teacher educators who engage Indigenous and place-based education characteristically advocate for the introduction of teachers to local ‘places where wisdom sits’ (Patterson, as cited in Basso, 1996). It is put forth that this approach brings teachers in relation with situated Indigenous knowledges as well as Indigenous–non-Indigenous histories and contemporary realities that emerge from interconnected relationships formed in and through place. Developing a renewed understanding of the places they inhabit positions teachers to regenerate an enhanced relationship to the present ‘in the spirit of reconciliation’ (Korteweg et al., 2010). Learning to practice local Indigenous ways-of-being that improve the social (with concentration on Indigenous–non-Indigenous relationships) and ecological life of places might be thought of as joining and extending learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching and pedagogy for decolonizing. In addition to revisionist histories of colonial events and experiences that challenge stereotypical, appropriated, and/or censored (mis)representations, Pedagogy for decolonizing and Indigenous and place-based education include examples of Indigenous agency and cultural practice. Both pedagogical pathways consider the role of land in the construction of knowledge, as well as current disputed and deleterious relationships with/in place when conceptualizing transformation. Nonetheless, only Indigenous and place-based education presents Indigenous voices as emerging from an Indigenous ecology of placed relations among human, natural, and spirit beings (Cajete, 1994). Indigenous and anti-racist education draws on Indigenous counter-narratives of racialization and racism in the contemporary colonial circumstance of continued occupation of Indigenous territories in the form of nation-states. This pathway is unique in that it illuminates ongoing colonial strategies through exploration of connections between colonization, racialization, racism, and whiteness. However, it risks echoing the overwhelming presence of ‘damage-centered research’ (Tuck, 2009) on and narratives about Indigenous peoples that can obscure examples of resilience and cultural resurgence as well as reinforce the impression that victimization and suffering is the primary condition of Indigeneity. Pedagogy for decolonizing calls for an action component that supports a larger global Indigenous decolonizing agenda (e.g. Battiste, 2013; Smith, 1999). Teachers are invited to reconfigure their personal and professional biography with Indigenous peoples and knowledges to work to dismantle oppressive
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colonial systems and support Indigenous self-determination. The action component of Indigenous and anti-racist education and Indigenous and placebased education concentrates on teacher transformation that affects change in schools, notably through the production of students as critical agents working towards a more socially just and ecologically responsible way-of-being in placed relations. In general, the roles of those whose perspectives, experiences, and knowledges are integrated in these three pedagogical pathways are limited with respect to the overall framing that supports the sharing of their voices. According to the studies analyzed, Indigenous knowledge holders and cultural mentors who were not designated as teacher educators were rarely involved in pre-service or in-service teacher education design or facilitation beyond one or two sessions. Accordingly, we do want to mark the significant command of, and responsibility for, Indigenous voices that teacher educators and teachers hold in each of the critical Indigenous pathways (i.e. pedagogy for decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-racist education, and Indigenous and place-based education). Plurality is positioned as a resource that provides in shifting and unknowable teacher education contexts. Thus, selecting one pathway over another is neither the goal of our review nor a recommendation we make to teacher educators. Teacher educators are encouraged to connect pathways in charting their own route, taking into account their unique place, positions, talents, students, and priorities. They are also urged to learn from analysis of pedagogical pathways as well as draw inspiration and heed warnings from those who have journeyed beforehand. This section combines the perspectives of teacher educators who work in Faculties of Education with those who work at school district and individual school levels to examine the relationship between pedagogical pathways and Indigenous voices. The process of Indigenizing teacher education can also be analyzed across educational institutions (i.e. Faculties of Education and school districts/individual schools). In the following section, we trace three extensions to pedagogical pathways for in-service teacher education. Extensions exemplify unique school-based partnerships, applications for practices, and ways in-service teachers are contributing to ongoing and circular processes of Indigenizing and decolonizing education, respectively.
Pedagogical Pathways Extensions Organizing in-service teacher education on the topic of Indigenous education revealed three key school-based extensions to Indigenizing teacher education. Our focus on engagement with Indigenous perspectives and experiential and traditional knowledges will continue, including guidance provided (or not) by Indigenous peoples and groups regarding the inclusion of Indigenous voices.
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Firstly, in-service teacher education is often informed by and draws support from school partnerships for Indigenous education initiatives and reform. Overall, these collaborations pursue wellness and enhanced academic success for Indigenous students, with targeted and sustained teacher education consistently identified as a critical avenue towards school improvement. In general, in-service teacher education on the topic of Indigenous education aims to shift teachers’ (mis)understandings of Indigeneity and align their practices with the Indigenous education commitments specified. The majority of studies reported collaboration between school administrators (both at school district and independent school levels), Indigenous university researchers and their allies, Indigenous community members (e.g. Elders, parents, artists, students, teachers), Indigenous community organizations, and/or the Department/Ministry of Education in designing extended professional or leadership development/learning for practicing teachers (i.e. Bishop et al., 2007, 2009; Dion et al., 2010; Hynds et al., 2011; Korteweg et al., 2010; Nicol et al., 2013; Owens, 2015; Te Ava et al., 2013; van der Way, 2001; Whalan & Wood, 2012; Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009). As a result, the occasions for Indigenous leadership and self-determination applied to education were greatly enhanced. For example, Yunkaporta and McGinty (2009) were invited by an Australian provincial Department of Education to work with a remote school with a majority population of Aboriginal students. The aims were to strengthen relationships with the Aboriginal community and introduce perspectives and ‘pedagogies drawn from local lore, language and the sentient landscape’ (p. 55). Before working closely with teachers who largely identified as non-Aboriginal, Yunkaporta (‘the Indigenous facilitator’) spent several months ‘making links with community members, organisations, students and teachers, while negotiating the world of local cultural knowledge, protocols, relationships’ (p. 59). The teachings that emerged in both oral (e.g. story) and print form (e.g. local research, archival texts) were then developed with community support into program ideas and eventually a curricular unit. The unit was initially introduced by the facilitator in order to elicit students’ feedback to inform the next round of planning and in-service teacher education in the form of action research. The remaining in-service literature reviewed represents examples whereby participation in research made possible through university–school district or university–school collaboration is conceptualized as teacher education. Garcia (2011) and Garcia and Shirley (2012) involved Hopi/Tewa educators in applying the theoretical frameworks of TribalCrit (Brayboy, 2005) and Red Pedagogy (Grande, 2004, 2008) to analyze their own curriculum and pedagogical approaches. Garcia and Shirley (2012) argue this led teachers to ‘rediscover history from an Indigenous perspective and develop a critical Indigenous consciousness of Indigenous peoples’ history with colonization and assimilation’ (p. 83). Likewise, Strong-Wilson (2007) involved Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal teachers in decolonizing literature circles aimed at supporting teachers to examine
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their classroom practices in relation to juxtaposed master and counter-stories, and the sources of knowledge that inform them. Chartrand (2012) explored, articulated, and applied Anishinaabe pedagogy grounded in a place-consciousness perspective2 in her work as an Aboriginal education consultant in a Canadian school district. Secondly, unique extensions to pedagogical pathways concerning applications for practice were presented within in-service teacher education scholarship. Specific strategies aimed at supporting teachers in translating theory and practice as well as troubleshooting and refining their attempts to engage Indigenous education were common. For example, Bishop et al. (2007) facilitated and studied a kaupapa M¯aori research and PD project aimed at generating student narratives that link M¯aori secondary students’ aspirations for self-determination with their experiences of how schools support and limit this purpose. The collaborative storying processes engaged 70 M¯aori students in a series of in-depth, semi- structured interviews. Stories of experience and meaning were also collected from 50 wh¯anau (family) members, five principals, and approximately 80 teachers. As one component of the larger project, student narratives were used within PD to facilitate teacher reflection and shift some teachers’ problematic perceptions of marginalized students. From these efforts, an Effective Teaching Profile (ETP) document was created that: explicitly reject[s] deficit theorising as a means of explaining Maori ¯ students’ educational achievement levels, and [advocates that teachers take] an agentic position in their theorizing about their practice; that is, practitioners expressing their professional commitment and responsibility to bringing about change in Maori ¯ students’ educational achievement by accepting professional responsibility for the learning of their students. (Bishop et al., 2007, p. 736)
The ETP then grounded a ‘PD intervention’ in 12 secondary schools that consisted of five components: an initial induction workshop; a series of structured classroom observations and feedback sessions; a series of collaborative, problem-solving sessions based on evidence of student outcomes; and specific shadow-coaching sessions (see also Bishop et al., 2009, Hynds et al., 2011). After six years of supporting and researching PD interventions within the original schools, significant improvements in Maori student engagement and academic achievement were reported. A third unique addition that accompanied in-service teacher education was participating teachers being invited to contribute to the ongoing and circular processes of Indigenizing education through sharing their experiences and learning outcomes with larger school, urban, and scholarly communities. For example, Dion et al. (2010) report that as one component of the Urban Aboriginal Education Pilot Project (UAEPP) in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), teachers were involved in PD. As with Bishop et al. (2007), many interconnected forms of supporting teachers in their classrooms took place, including: offering
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a series of PD workshops and individual meetings; providing appropriate unit plans, sample lessons, and associated resources; assisting in implementing curricular goals and teaching visions; and involving teachers in a large, multidisciplinary Arts-Based Project that connected them with ‘an Aboriginal storyteller, artist, or musician, who visited their classroom and worked with students over a period of several weeks’ (p. 36). Following the Arts-Based Project, teachers were invited to demonstrate reciprocity through showcasing their work in a local art exhibition as well as sharing their lesson and unit plans through a TDSB online platform for teachers. Dion et al. (2010) found that UAEPP initiatives in general, and participation in PD specifically, produced shifts in teachers’ understandings and practices that resulted in school improvement and enhanced academic success for Aboriginal students. In general, scholars report that teachers who participated in school-based teacher education initiatives cited increased awareness of Indigenous-nonIndigenous relationships and Indigenous education in general as well as improved teaching and learning conditions for Indigenous students. To sustain ‘the larger, much longer process of decolonizing and Indigenizing [schools]’ (Dion, 2010, p. iv), recommendations were made to provide teachers with ongoing, intensive PD for continued learning as well as support to negotiate feelings of anxiety and discomfort (e.g. Bishop et al., 2007; Dion et al., 2010; Korteweg et al., 2010; Strong-Wilson, 2007; see also Haig-Brown Research & Consulting, 2009). Further, teachers suggested broadening professional or leadership development on the topic of Indigenous education to include administrators and support staff in schools (Korteweg et al., 2010).
Looking Forward in Indigenizing Teacher Education Our review drew on pedagogical pathways as an organizational tool to illustrate the approaches engaged when Indigenizing Faculty of Education coursework and in-service teacher education. We interpret the calls of Indigenous scholars for Indigenous peoples to have roles and voices in framing teacher education as acts of self-determination. As such, we analyzed pathways with respect to engagement with Indigenous cultures, knowledge systems, experiences, and priorities for education. The process of Indigenizing teacher education was also analyzed across educational institutions. Three extensions to pedagogical pathways for in-service teacher education were traced that aim to enhance institutional and community partnerships for Indigenous education, support classroom teachers in translating theory–practice, and establish Indigenous education as a large-scale, necessary, and celebrated educational reform. While the majority of studies we reviewed on in-service teacher education reported collaboration between school administrators, Indigenous and ally
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university researchers, Indigenous community members, Indigenous community organizations, and/or the Department/Ministry of Education in designing extended professional or leadership development/learning for practicing teachers, we did not see evidence of collaboration to this extent within the research around Faculty of Education coursework. Similarly, we were often unable to determine the degree to which Indigenous communities or community members were involved in initiating and sustaining the collaborations for practicing teachers. Hence, there might be space in Faculty of Education coursework and research in Indigenizing teacher education in general to consider a new pedagogical pathway that is situated within Indigenous communities and defined by the educative priorities of communities. Such a pathway could be named Indigenous community-driven (Eisinger & Senturia, 2001) teacher education. We are aware of research that involves teachers learning from Indigenous communities, notably examples wherein research was initiated and designed by those communities (e.g. Donald, Glanfield, & Sterenberg, 2011, 2012; Young, Joe, Lamoureux, Marshall, Moore, Orr, Parisian, Paul, Paynter, & Huber, 2012). However, while reviewing Indigenizing teacher education literature, articles such as those listed in the previous statement did not emerge, possibly because the community-driven research and/or the researchers involved were not explicitly located in relation to teacher education research. We imagine that there could be many new possibilities for researchers working with Indigenous communities to position themselves and their collaborative research within the field of teacher education. This would create wide-scale opportunities for teacher education researchers to learn from community-initiated relationships that are working to realize Indigenous scholars’ dreams of Indigenous peoples having a role in framing how and for what purpose institutions and teacher education programs engage with Indigenous cultures, knowledge systems, experiences, and priorities for education.
Notes 1 We recognize the key terms utilized influence the body of scholarship located and may exclude studies that rely on Indigenous languages or alternate markers of identity. 2 Chartrand (2012) defines a place-consciousness perspective as ‘a useful lens in understanding how to maintain the integrity of Aboriginal knowledge sources. It can be used to understand local ways of teaching and learning that inform our modern conceptions of Aboriginal education’ (p. 154).
References Anuik, J., & Gillies, C. L. (2012). Indigenous knowledge in post-secondary educators’ practices: Nourishing the learning spirit. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 42(1), 63–79. Barnhardt, R., & Kawagley, A. O. (2003). Culture, chaos and complexity: Catalysts for change in indigenous education. Cultural Survival Quarterly, 27(4), 59–64.
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Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Battiste, M. (1998). Enabling the autumn seed: Toward a decolonized approach toward Aboriginal knowledge, language and education. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 22(1), 16–27. Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Publishing. Battiste, M., & Barman, J. (Eds). (1995). First Nations education in Canada: The circle unfolds. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Battiste, M., Bell, L., & Findlay, L. M. (2003). Decolonizing education in Canadian universities: An interdisciplinary, international, indigenous research project. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 26(2), 82–95. Biermann, S. (2011). Knowledge, power and decolonization: Implications for non-Indigenous scholars, researchers and educators. In G. J. S. Dei (Ed.), Indigenous philosophies and critical education: A reader (pp. 386–398). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Bishop, R. (1996). Whakawhanaungatanga: Collaborative research stories. Palmerston North, NZ: The Dunmore Press Ltd. Bishop, R. (1999). Maori research: An indigenous approach to creating knowledge. In N. Robertson (Ed.), Maori and psychology: Research and practice – The proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Maori and psychology research unit (pp. 1–6). Hamilton, NZ: Maori & Psychology Research Unit. Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T., & Teddy, L. (2007). Te Kotahitanga phase III whanaungatanga: Establishing a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations in mainstream secondary school classrooms. Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Ministry of Education. Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Cavanaugh, T., & Teddy, L. (2009). Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing Maori students in New Zealand. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5), 734–742. Brayboy, B. (2005). Toward a tribal critical race theory in education. The Urban Review, 37(5), 425–446. Brayboy, B., & Maughan, E. (2009). Indigenous knowledges and the story of the bean. Harvard Educational Review, 79(1), 1–21. Cajete, G. (1994). Look to the mountain: An ecology of Indigenous education. Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press. Chambers, C. (2006). ‘The land is the best teacher I have ever had’: Places as pedagogy for precarious times. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 22(3), 27–38. Chartrand, R. (2012). Anishinaabe pedagogy. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 35(1), 144–162. Chinnery, A. (2010). What good does all this remembering do, anyway? On historical consciousness and the responsibility of memory. In G. Biesta (Ed.), Philosophy of education (pp. 397–405). Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Classen, C. (1999). Other ways to wisdom: Learning through the senses and across cultures. International Review of Education, 45(3/4), 269–280. Cook, B. J. (1999). Islamic versus western conceptions of education: Reflections on Egypt. International Review of Education, 45(3/4), 339–357. den Heyer, K. (2009). Sticky points: Teacher educators re-examine their practice in light of a new Alberta social studies program and its inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives. Teaching Education, 20(4), 343–355. Dion, S. D. (2007). Disrupting molded images: Identities, responsibilities and relationships teachers and Indigenous subject material. Teaching Education, 18(4), 329–342. Dion, S., Johnston, K., & Rice, C. (2010). Decolonizing our schools: Aboriginal education in the Toronto District School Board. Retrieved from: http://ycec.edu.yorku.ca/files/2012/11/Decolonizing-OurSchools.pdf on 12/12/2015. Donald, D., Glanfield, F., & Sterenberg, G. (2011). Culturally relational education in and with an Indigenous community. In Education: Exploring our Collective Educational Landscape, 17(3), 72–83. Donald, D., Glanfield, F., & Sterenberg, G. (2012). Living ethically within conflicts of colonial authority and relationality. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 10(1), 53–76.
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Eisinger, A., & Senturia, K. (2001). Doing community-driven research: A description of Seattle partners for healthy communities. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 78(3), 519–534. Findlay, L. (2000). Always Indigenize! The radical humanities in the post-colonial Canadian university. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 31(1/2), 307–326. Garcia, J. (2011). A critical analysis of curriculum and pedagogy in Indigenous education: Engaging Hopi and Tewa educators in the process of praxis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Garcia, J., & Shirley, V. (2012). Performing decolonization: Lessons learned from indigenous youth, teachers and leaders’ engagement with critical indigenous pedagogy. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28(2), 76–81. Gopinathan, S. (2006). Challenging the paradigm: Notes on developing an indigenized teacher education curriculum. Improving Schools, 9(3), 261–272. Grande, S. (2004). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Grande, S. (2008). Red pedagogy: The un-methodology. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and Indigenous methodologies (pp. 233–254). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Graveline, F. J. (1998). Circleworks: Transforming Eurocentric consciousness. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Haig-Brown Research & Consulting (2009). The schools speak: Creating conditions for success of First Nation, Métis and Inuit students in the Simcoe County District School Board. Retrieved from: https:// www.scdsb.on.ca/Programs/Program Documents/The-Schools-Speak.pdf on 12/06/2015 Heckt, M. (1999). Mayan education in Guatemala: A pedagogical model and its political context. International Review of Education, 45(3/4), 321–337. Hook, G. (2012). Towards a decolonising pedagogy: Understanding Australian Indigenous studies through critical whiteness theory and film pedagogy. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 41(02), 110–119. Hynds, A., Sleeter, C., Hindle, R., Savage, C., Penetito, W., & Meyer, L. H. (2011). Te Kotahitanga: A case study of a repositioning approach to teacher professional development for culturally responsive pedagogies. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(4), 339–351. Iseke-Barnes, J. (2008). Pedagogies for decolonizing. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 31(1), 123–148. James, C. E., Marin, L., & Kassam, S. (2011). Looking through the cinematic mirror: Film as an educational tool. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33(4), 354–364. Jiwani, Y. (2011). Pedagogies of hope: Counter narratives and anti-disciplinary tactics. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33(4), 333–353. Kameniar, B., Windsor, S., & Sifa, S. (2014). Teaching beginning teachers to ‘think what we are doing’ in Indigenous education. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(2), 113–120. Kawagley, A. O. (1995). A Yupiaq worldview: A pathway to ecology and spirit. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. King, L. (1999). Learning through the soul: Concepts relating to learning and knowledge in the Mayan cultures of Mexico. International Review of Education, 45(3/4), 367–370. Kirkness, V. (1980). The education of Canadian Indian children. Child Welfare League of America, LX(7), 447–455. Kirkness, V. (1999). Aboriginal education in Canada: A retrospective and a prospective. The Journal of American Indian Education, 39(1), 14–30. Kirkness, V. J., & Barnhardt, R. (1991). First Nations and higher education: The four Rs – respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility. Journal of American Indian Education, 30(3), 1–15. Kirkness,V., & More, A. J. (1981). The structure of the Native Indian Teacher Education and ‘Indianness’. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Conference, Los Angeles, CA.
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Kitchen, J., & Raynor, M. (2013). Indigenizing teacher education: An action research project. The Canadian Journal of Action Research, 14(3), 40–58. Korteweg, L., Fiddler, T., Bissell, A., Primavesi, L., Clarke, M., & Moon, M. (2014). Circles of hope in Indigenizing mainstream teacher education. In G. Sheppard (Ed.), Creating circles of hope in teacher education. Retrieved from https://zone.biblio.laurentian.ca/dspace/bitstream/10219/2185/3/ circles%20of%20hope%20e-book.pdf on 12/07/2015. Korteweg, L., Fiddler, T., Friesen, J., Gonzalez, I., Goodchild-Southwind, M., Higgins, M., Hill, M., MaddenCostello, B., & Root. E. (2010). The Lakehead Public School Board’s Urban Aboriginal Education Project review and research study (PDF document). Retrieved from http://ontariodirectors.ca/UA_ Pilot_Project/files/Lakehead%20RE/UAEP_FINAL_REPORT_Review%20and%20Research%20 Study_LK_July16.pdf on 12/07/2015. Korteweg, L., Gonzalez, I., & Guillet, J. (2010). The stories are the people and the land: Three educators respond to environmental teachings in Indigenous children’s literature. Environmental Education Researcher, 16(3), 331–350. Lawrence, B., & Dua, E. (2011). Decolonizing antiracism. In M. J. Cannon & L. Sunseri (Eds.), Racism, colonialism, and indigeneity in Canada (pp. 19–28). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Ma Rhea, Z., & Russell, L. (2012). The invisible hand of pedagogy in Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 41(1), 18–25. Mackinlay, E. (2012). PEARL: A reflective story about decolonising pedagogy in Indigenous Australian studies. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 41(1), 67–74. Mackinlay, E., & Barney, K. (2012). Pearls, not problems: Exploring transformative education in Indigenous Australian studies. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 41(1), 10–17. Mackinlay, E., & Barney, K. (2014). PEARLs, problems and politics: Exploring findings from two teaching and learning projects in Indigenous Australian studies at The University of Queensland. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(1), 31–41. Madden, B. (2015). Pedagogical pathways for Indigenous education with/in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 51, 1–15. Madden, B. (2016). Tracing spectres of whiteness: Discourse and the construction of teaching subjects in urban Aboriginal education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2015.1127211 Marker, M. (2011). Teaching history from an Indigenous perspective: Four winding paths up the mountain. In P. Clark (Ed.), New possibilities for the past. Shaping history education in Canada (pp. 97– 112). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Morgan, S., & Golding, B. (2010). Crossing over: Collaborative and cross-cultural teaching of Indigenous education in a higher education context. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 39(Supplement), 8–14. Nicol, C., Archibald, J. A., & Baker, J. (2013). Designing a model of culturally responsive mathematics education: place, relationships and storywork. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 25(1), 73–89. O’Dowd, M. (2010). ‘Ethical positioning’: A strategy in overcoming student resistance and fostering engagement in teaching Aboriginal history as a compulsory subject to pre-service primary education students. Education in Rural Australia, 20(1), 29–42. Owens, K. (2015). Changing the teaching of mathematics for improved Indigenous education in a rural Australian city. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 18(1), 53–78. Owuor, J. (2007). Integrating African Indigenous knowledge in Kenya’s formal education system: The potential for sustainable development. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 2(2), 21–37. Phillips, J., & Whatman, S. (2007). Decolonising preservice teacher education: Reform at many cultural interfaces. Paper presented at The World of Educational Quality: 2007 AERA Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL. Retrieved from: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/7333/1/7333.pdf on 12/03/2015. Pridham, B., Martin, D., Walker, K., Rosengren, R., & Wadley, D. (2015). Culturally inclusive curriculum in higher education. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 44(1), 94–105.
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Riley, L., Howard-Wagner, D., & Mooney, J. (2015). Kinship online: Engaging ‘cultural praxis’ in a teaching and learning framework for cultural competence. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 44(1), 70–84. St. Denis, V. (2011). Silencing Aboriginal curricular content and perspectives through multiculturalism: ‘There are other children here’. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33(4), 306–317. Sanford, K., Williams, L. Hopper, T., & McGregor, C. (2012). Indigenous principles informing teacher education: What we have learned. In Education, 18(2), 18–34. Schick, C. (2000). By virtue of being White: Resistance in anti-racist pedagogy. Race Ethnicity & Education, 3(1), 83 –102. Scully, A. (2012). Decolonization, reinhabitation and reconciliation: Aboriginal and place-based education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 17(1), 148–158. Sleeter, C. (2005). How white teachers construct race. In C. McCarthy, W. Crichlow, G. Dimitriadis, & N. Dolby (Eds.), Race, identity and representation in education (2nd ed.) (pp. 243–256). New York: Routledge. Smith, G. H. (1997). Kaupapa Maori: Theory and praxis. The International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education. Auckland: The University of Auckland. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies. London/New York: Zed Books Ltd. Snively, G., & Corsiglia, J. (1988). Discovering Indigenous science: Implications for science education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, San Diego, CA. Strong-Wilson, T. (2007). Moving horizons: Exploring the role of stories in decolonizing the literacy education of white teachers. International Education, 37(1), 114–131. Styres, S. (2011). Land as first teacher: A philosophical journeying. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 12(6), 717–731. Tanaka, M. (2009). Transforming perspectives: The immersion of student teachers in Indigenous ways of knowing (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1664 on 12/01/2015. Tanaka, M. (2015). Finding courage in the unknown: Transformative inquiry as Indigenist inquiry. In Education, 21(2), 65–88. Tanaka, M., Williams, L., Benoit, Y. J., Duggan, R. K., Moir, L., & Scarrow, J. C. (2007). Transforming pedagogies: Pre-service reflections on learning and teaching in an Indigenous world. Teacher Development, 11(1), 99–109. Taylor, R. (2014). ‘It’s all in the context’: Indigenous education for teachers. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(2), 134–143. Te Ava, A., Rubie-Davies, C., & Ovens, A. (2013). Akaoraora’ia te peu’a to’ui tupuna: Culturally responsive pedagogy for Cook Islands secondary school physical education. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 42(1), 32–43. Tompkins, J. (2002). Learning to see what they can’t: Decolonizing perspectives on Indigenous education in the racial context of rural Nova Scotia. McGill Journal of Education, 37(3), 405–422. Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428. United Nations (2008). United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf on 12/12/2015. van der Wey, D. (2001). Exploring multiple serendipitous experiences in a First Nations setting as the impetus for meaningful literacy development. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 25(1), 51–67. Whalan, F., & Wood, K. (2012). Action learning based professional development. In N. Burridge, F. Whalan, & K. Vaughan (Eds.), Indigenous education: A learning journey for teachers, schools and communities (pp. 23–32). Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishers. Williams, L., & Tanaka, M. (2007). Schalay’nung Sxwey’ga: Emerging cross cultural pedagogy in the academy. Educational Insights, 8(3). Retrieved from http://www.ccfi.educ. ubc.ca/publication/ insights/v11n03/articles/williams.html. on 12/07/2015.
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Wolf, S. J. (2012). Critical citizenship, popular theatre, and the social imagination of pre-service teachers. In R. Mitchell and S. Moore (Eds.), Politics, participation and power relations: Transdisciplinary approaches to critical citizenship in the classroom and community (pp. 35–49). Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publications. Young, M., Joe, L., Lamoureux, J., Marshall, L., Moore, D., Orr, J-L., Parisian, B., Paul, K., Paynter, F., & Huber, J. (2012). Warrior women: Remaking postsecondary places through relational narrative inquiry. Bingley: Emerald. Yunkaporta, T., & McGinty, S. (2009). Reclaiming Aboriginal knowledge at the cultural interface. The Australian Educational Researcher, 36(2), 55–72.
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Section XII
A Reflective Turn Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin
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67 Pushing Boundaries for Research on Teacher Education: Making Teacher Education Matter Jukka Husu and D. Jean Clandinin In this last chapter, we stop and look backward to our original intentions for the Handbook, to the many chapters that were written, reviewed, and rewritten, and draw forward thoughts pointed toward the future. We turn again to our opening thoughts, particularly to Boyer’s (1990) words that shaped initial work on conceptualizing the Handbook: that is, that a scholarship of integration involves ‘doing research at the boundaries where fields converge’ and discerning ‘larger intellectual patterns’ (p. 19). We also revisit the ways we saw the possibility of a scholarship of disruption emerging from a close study of the enduring issues in teacher education, and from attending closely to discerning what fields are, or should be, at the boundaries of the field of teacher education. We saw the possibility of conceptualizing this scholarship of disruption by including unheard voices and by opening up what counts as research in teacher education to research undertaken within previously unattended-to contexts and with a range of theoretical and methodological frames. It was, and continues to be, our hope that we can highlight the importance of working within a dialectic between a scholarship of integration and a scholarship of disruption. We revisit our thoughts on how the Handbook is a genre, perhaps one of the few, where we can explore a scholarship of integration as well as open up the possibilities for a scholarship of disruption, a scholarship where we think about intellectual patterns that cut across a range of research as well as opening questions around which fields edge the field of research on, and for, teacher education. Working within a dialectic between integration and disruption allows the possibility for making visible gaps, silences, omissions, and tensions. In this way perhaps we discern new ways forward for research in teacher education.
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We can easily advocate for the value of the research represented in the chapters of this Handbook. We believe that the chapters present research that asks us to think about current conditions in teacher education, about the constraints, barriers, and possibilities that are present and how these constraints, barriers, and possibilities might shape where we are heading in teacher education. We hope that the chapters contribute to discussions of what we are up to across the continua of teacher education in local, national, and international contexts. As we complete the Handbook, we acknowledge that research in teacher education will not be able to offer explanatory and predictive theories that are the ideal for, and hallmark of, research in the natural sciences. We know that these are not the wisest ways to think about the goals we should hold for research in teacher education. Teacher education, a web of highly complex social phenomena, cannot be studied within a conventional meaning of the word ‘science’. Research in teacher education is not done in order to build and develop theories but to contribute shared understandings that will help ‘in elucidating where we are, where we want to go, and what is desirable according to diverse sets of values and interests’ in our societies (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 167). This requires constant re-examination of our basic premises in, and for, teacher education. We take up Flyvbjerg’s point as we understand that what we are trying to do in research in, and for, teacher education is not to come up with answers, solutions, or theories but to deepen our understandings of the complexities of how we are thinking about, and engaging in, the practices and policies of teacher education. It is research, understood as searching again, through these complex phenomena that allows us to come to new insights and, perhaps, to wiser practices. As we become more thoughtful about how we understand the complexities of teacher education through our research perhaps we can more thoughtfully engage, and engage others, in the practices and policies of teacher education.
Emerging intellectual patterns In this last chapter, in our return to, and review of, the chapters and section introductions, we outline five intellectual patterns that we discerned. We realize there may be other intellectual patterns that we did not discern, but these five seem particularly compelling to us. As we outline each intellectual pattern, we try to make explicit the ways each contributes to a dialectic between a scholarship of integration and a scholarship of disruption in research in teacher education.
Intellectual Pattern 1: Research into mapping the landscape of teacher education One intellectual pattern emerged in the first chapters as we attempted to map the landscape of teacher education over time, over diverse contexts, and
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working with a definition of teacher education on a continuum from pre-service teacher education to in-service teacher education. This pattern echoed and reverberated through many of the chapters as authors offered insights that highlighted certain parts of the multiple possible maps of the landscape of teacher education. Reading and rereading the chapters in Section I of the Handbook as well as Jerry Rosiek’s introduction to the Section, we are reminded again that the making of maps depends on many factors: how we orient the map; our positions as mapmakers; the scale chosen for the map; the time in which any map is made; what we include as borders and borderlands; and, indeed, what we include and what we leave out. While sometimes people see maps as value neutral, it is clear from even a superficial consideration of world maps that mapping is not a neutral activity. The chapters in the Handbook offer us ways to see the multiplicity of the landscape of teacher education. As we read the chapters, we see multiple, sometimes overlapping, views of the field of teacher education throughout. However, these multiple views of the ‘intellectual landscape of teacher education scholarship should not be considered comprehensive’, as Rosiek notes. We recognize that even within such a large and inclusive handbook as this one, we are still offering only some possible readings of research in teacher education. There is no ‘single accurate picture of the current state of teacher education’ (Rosiek) nor of research in teacher education. As Gavin Brown states in his chapter, it is important to remind ourselves of ‘What we don’t know about teacher education’: peer-reviewed research published in English does not reveal the truth of teacher education. The chapters in the Handbook, both in Section I and in other sections, offer us different possibilities for ways forward in teacher education research. Rosiek makes clear in his introduction to Section I that maps ‘play a part in constituting the future of the territory they editorially represent’. What we do in our mapping of the landscape of teacher education and research in teacher education does, indeed, play a part in constituting the future of some lines of research. It is our hope, as we consider the multiple intellectual patterns that emerge from the Handbook, that we highlight ‘intellectual and political possibilities and thus draw scholarly world travelers (Lugones, 1987) to some areas of inquiries over others’ (Rosiek). Even though the chapters in the Handbook offer us multiple maps, they move us in different directions, offering us possibilities for enriching and complicating the dialectic between the scholarships of integration and disruption. We also, as Rosiek states, understand that the actions of mapping itself are a kind of intervention into what counts as research in teacher education. We believe that many chapters offer ways of thinking and doing teacher education research with new emphases and priorities. When chapters are placed side by side, as, for example, in Sections II and III on identity and agency, even more
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ways of thinking and doing teacher education research become visible. The array of possibilities enables certain actions and ways forward, at the same time as it makes other possibilities less visible and less open to action. While we hope the Handbook offers maps of possibility for moving forward into what is surely ‘an always indeterminate future’ (Rosiek), we acknowledge that the ways in which we engaged in mapping the landscape of research in teacher education makes some future directions more possible. We acknowledge our act of mapping is a kind of intervention in the field of teacher education research. Research in teacher education cannot be understood without situating it in the local and the particular of states and countries as well as in particular times and contexts. Chapter authors throughout the Handbook highlight the importance of the contextual. However, research in teacher education is deeply situated in multiple nested contexts and so attending to the local and particular is not enough. Mapping the landscape of teacher education in this way reminds us again of the importance of carefully situating research in teacher education in ways that allow readers to understand the political contexts and times in which the research is/ was undertaken. As we consider contexts of time and place in which teacher education and teacher education research is enacted, we need to carefully attend to the political narratives at work within states and provinces and in, and across, countries before, after, and during the research. In diverse national contexts, there is more and less control over the ways that teacher education is undertaken. This is both a general and a particular point. As Cheryl Craig and the authors in Section VII show, the nested milieux that surround teacher education in subject matter areas such as Social Studies and Civic Education and in Early Years Education are strongly influential in teacher education and in research in teacher education. Without an understanding of the larger complex temporal, social, political, and institutional contexts at work, the research on, and for, teacher education cannot be understood in ways that move us forward. What is learned and how and when it can be used by researchers and practitioners in other teacher education settings and contexts is always provisional and always partial. However, even accounting for the larger political narratives at work, we need a more nuanced attention to the social and institutional narratives at work. As Beatrice Avalos and the chapter authors in Section XI make clear, political narratives shape, sometimes differentially, teacher education and teacher education research. Florence Glanfield and Brooke Madden show there are different pedagogical pathways to indigenizing the curriculum of teacher education and, as a consequence, the possibilities for research into indigenizing teacher education. Whether and how research is situated nationally and within the particular shapes what any research study can tell us about the landscape. In a somewhat similar vein, Craig Deed shows that research into the impact of educational technologies on teacher education is shaped by local and particular contexts and programs as well as by the larger social and institutional narratives at work.
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Intellectual Pattern 2: Research into the particular and the generalizable in teacher education: Multiple methodological and theoretical stances A second emergent intellectual pattern is how the work represented in the Handbook relates to the issues of the particular and the generalizable in teacher education and research in, and for, teacher education. Reviewing the chapters calls us to remember the two-dimensional motivations for teacher education research that aspires both to deepening and extending our fundamental understandings of teacher education as well as to developing its practices and policies. For us, this is a reminder of how teacher education research can be understood by considering this two-dimensional system, with higher or lower concern for improving ways teacher education is enacted in practice on one dimension and higher and lower concern for improving foundational understandings of teacher education on the other dimension. These two motivations for teacher education research do not happen independently of each other; rather, they are often combined to various degrees, as many chapters show. As the chapters draw on different theoretical approaches within the contexts where they were used, we hope the Handbook can clarify what we can learn from the practical results and the inherent understandings the chapters provide. Using different theoretical frames as connective tissues we aim to show readers how particular theoretical frames drive research tasks, position research in different contexts, and bring a different set of interpretations to understand and develop research in teacher education as well as in teacher education practices. We hope readers can find ‘use-inspired’ (Stokes, 1997) teacher education research from the chapters. We also discern from the review of the chapters and section introductions how the methodologies of the research drew on both large data sets and smaller, more focused data sets. We are reminded of Maxine Greene’s (1995) distinction between seeing big (that is, seeing the particularities of individuals and institutions) and seeing small (that is, seeing the patterns and trends in an area). Greene writes about the distinction in this way: To see things or people small, one chooses to see from a detached point of view, to watch behaviors from the perspective of a system, to be concerned with trends and tendencies rather than the intentionality and concreteness of everyday life. To see things or people big, one must resist viewing other human beings as mere objects or chess pieces and view them in their integrity and particularity instead. One must see from the point of view of the participant in the midst of what is happening if one is to be privy to the plans people make, the initiatives they take, the uncertainties they face. (p. 10)
Rereading the Handbook chapters is a sharp reminder that by seeing things big we are brought into details ‘with particularities that cannot be reduced to statistics or even to the measurable’. Yet, rereading Greene’s words in relation with
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the chapters, we see again the importance of learning to see both ways: that is, both big and small. Greene suggests that in learning to look both ways – that is, in ways that allow us to see big and small – we are most able to imagine new possibilities that will move us forward. Drawing on what she suggests, we need to learn from research in teacher education when we see the particularities and when we see the trends and patterns. As we bring the Handbook to a close, we are hopeful for the benefits of a wide array of context-sensitive empirical research: that is, empirical research that allows us to see both big and small. For us, this draws attention to the importance of imagining new research directions in order to respond to the enduring puzzles that frame this Handbook. Continuing to play with the importance of seeing both ways we are reminded of the push toward what is called ‘big data’. While some chapters suggest that the use of big data is important and helpful, chapter authors also see the importance of ‘small data’, the kind of data that most often results from using various qualitative research methods such as self-study, narrative inquiry, case studies, and perception studies. We are confident that including studies that use different kinds of data and different theoretical framings allows us to understand and develop teacher education in various and demanding contexts; as Greene (1995) notes, it is in seeing both ways that we will be able to move to reform. Teacher education research benefits from integrative use of theories to explore contexts in which issues tend to appear dichotomous, but, as many of the Handbook chapters show, deeper exploration reveals complex intersections, intersections that can be useful to moving in new and previously unimagined directions. The more integrative use of theories and methods can bring researchers and their research together in order to offer better intellectual and practical implications for teacher education. We are aware of the growing movement to apply big data through various ‘learning analytics’ to create more manageable educational systems at all levels. Many of the Handbook’s chapters share concerns about ways big data and adaptive learning systems are being used to advocate for redefinition of teacher education. In their chapter, Payne et al. speak about ‘travelling policies’ which now inform visions and practices of teacher education globally. Bullough, in his Section IV introduction, is even more cautious as he warns of reducing the moral work of teaching simply to a set of measurable skills. Throughout the Handbook many authors argue against narrowing teacher education as ‘the acquisition of discrete skills and behavior modification detached from broader social contexts and culturally relevant forms of knowledge and inquiry’ (Roberts-Mahoney, Means, & Garrison, 2016). There are many precedents for looking at teacher education as ultimately a context-dependent endeavor. While some chapters search for ways to advocate through creating generalizable ways to think about complex issues, they are also deeply attentive to their local cases and contexts. The chapters cultivate careful analysis, even as they are also concerned with values. Teacher education requires
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value-laden choices, care, ethical judgement, and personal commitment from all its participants. Many chapters also attend to power issues. Power is active in many socio-political settings in, and related to, teacher education but also on more individualistic levels of ‘activist scholarship’, such as the research Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay and Florence Henderson present in their chapter. In her Section III introduction, Lily Orland-Barak acknowledges power perspectives by claiming that ‘as a collective, teachers, teacher educators, and communities can influence the broader struggle for social justice in society’. Attending to issues of power, values, and context in teacher education research is evident. Reading the chapters again sharpens our understanding about how the enduring issues/puzzles of teacher education need constant re-examination. For once we acknowledge that context matters, and that teacher education everywhere poses unique challenges, how should we pursue theoretically rich and practically helpful teacher education research? Many chapter authors point out, in different ways, that teacher education can only be understood when there is close study of the multiple contexts, issues of power and authority, and the values in which teacher education is embedded.
Intellectual Pattern 3: Research focus into teacher and teacher educator learning As we review the chapters, we are reminded that keeping our research focus only, and too closely, on the learning of children and youth in classrooms keeps hidden the equally central importance of the learning of teachers, both pre-service and practicing, and teacher educators, in research in teacher education. Too close a focus on K-12 classrooms as the only sites of learning and children and youth as the only learners is problematic, as some authors in the Handbook remind us in their chapters. Auli Toom, in her introduction to Section VIII, draws attention to the importance of the ‘gaps in the research literature that should be filled in order to understand the phenomenon of teacher competence more thoroughly and to support teachers’ learning throughout their careers’. Without close attention to teachers as learners across the continua of teacher education, we fail to recognize the importance of creating schools and classrooms as sites for teacher learning. While Toom does not make explicit the places both in and outside of schools where teacher learning occurs, she does make explicit the importance of attending to teacher learning across teachers’ careers. In Douwe Beijaard’s introduction to Section II he raises important questions around teacher learning as he explores the links between teacher learning and identity learning. He wonders if it is ‘necessary to do specific “identity work” in teacher education or must teacher education in essence be identity development itself, where identity is not only a learning outcome but – simultaneously – an
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ongoing learning process as well’. How learning to teach should be best accomplished and supported is largely a question of pedagogies used in pre- and inservice teacher education, as Juanjo Mena notes in his Section VI introduction. Mena underlines the task of pedagogies of teacher education to ‘organize knowledge, skills and experiences in order to understand practice’ and to take up challenges in learning teaching in teacher education. Mena’s focus is on the learning of teachers as they take up the tasks of teaching. In different ways, the authors and section editors highlight the importance of teacher learning as a central concern in research in teacher education: Toom frames her interest around learning competencies; Beijaard frames his around learning identity; Mitchell frames his interest in ‘a search for situated understanding that places ideas and events in their social, historical, and cultural contexts’. Orland-Barak picks up the importance of attending to teacher learning when she notes that chapter authors in Section III raise questions about how learning environments contribute to ‘the sense of professional agency that develops (and the kind of gaps perceived) amongst student teachers at different stages of their learning’. In the introduction to Section X, Pinnegar notes one theme that cuts across the chapters in that section relates to the learning of teacher educators and the knowledge teacher educators hold. As Pinnegar notes, it is valuing and attending to teacher educators’ knowledge that is crucial as we engage in research in teacher education. Mistilina Sato, in her introduction to Section IX, raises a similar point, noting that authors of chapters in that section ‘discuss how teacher candidates, practicing teachers, and teacher educators are each positioned sometimes as learners about assessment and sometimes as subjects of assessment’. Sato and Pinnegar redirect our attention from a focus on children and youth as students in classrooms as the only learners to which we need to attend in research in teacher education to teachers and teacher educators as learners, both as they begin their work and across their careers. Woven across the Handbook chapters is another theme that suggests we need to look more broadly at the learning of teachers and teacher educators, in the sense that learning occurs both formally and informally across the lives and careers of teachers and teacher educators. When we keep our research focus too tightly on the formal places of learning of teachers and teacher educators, we miss multiple sites of learning, in both public and private spaces in which lives are composed over time. In her chapter, Anne Edwards speaks about ‘the learning dialectic between person and practice or culture, where individual and collective shape each other and where the professional knowledge and values embedded in practices are important’. Beijaard, in his introduction to Section II, helps us begin to move to broader understandings of teacher – and, we would argue, teacher educator – learning over time and in and out of formal learning opportunities. We hope that some Handbook chapters manage to disrupt the fixed setting of ‘who are the key learners in teacher education’ and ‘where and how are the
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learners learning’. As many chapters demonstrate the importance of studying teacher learning during teacher education, we look for new pedagogical tools and methods to further support this broader attentiveness to learning in teacher education. We also look for new directions in research that can help us attend in multi-perspectival ways in which children, youth, teachers, and teacher educators can all be understood as learning simultaneously, albeit with different contents, different learning goals, and different future-oriented trajectories. In this way, and others, perhaps we can more clearly see, or make connections between, the multiple ways in which learning is occurring and the multiple people who are learning in teacher education research.
Intellectual Pattern 4: Who are teacher educators and where are the places of teacher education? A fourth intellectual pattern we discern from reading the chapters and section introductions is, perhaps, not a new pattern but one that became evident in some unexpected ways. While the idea of stretching the boundaries around who should be named as teacher educators has been evident in earlier literature, such as Goodlad, Soder, and Sirotnik’s (1990) call to consider not only those who work in faculties and colleges of education but also those who work in faculties of arts and sciences as teacher educators, we notice many calls for the inclusion of others as teacher educators. Increasingly visible is research that includes as teacher educators those in communities of practice, such as cooperating and mentor teachers, school administrators, and other student teachers. Jean Murray, in her chapter, explicitly asks who might be considered a teacher educator. Pinnegar in her introduction to Section X, the section in which Murray’s chapter is found, pulls forward research that suggests that those involved in service learning and other experiential learning should also be included as teacher educators. Payne and Zeichner highlight the need for research in teacher education to be conducted with families and community members and in community places. For them, families, community members, and community places are also teacher educators. Beatrice Ávalos, in her introduction to Section XI, draws attention ‘to the opening of the traditional teacher education space to communities and indigenous groups not as participants to be referred to, or described, but as co-constructors in the preparation of teachers, the teacher education processes and their enactment’. Within many chapters in Sections X and XI, our attention is drawn to broader understandings of who are the teacher educators. As we push these ideas forward we begin to see that place is of tremendous importance as a consideration in teacher education. Many chapters highlight the importance of place, including university classrooms, distance learning sites, and school classrooms. But teacher education occurs also in the communities in which the students, student teachers, teachers and teacher educators live. Thus,
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teacher education is also ‘working agentically with families and other services’, as Edwards reminds us. We also see the power of place when we move outside ‘school’ places in experiential learning sites, art galleries, and museums to understand that place shapes the ways and possibilities of learning. Many chapters in the Handbook attune us to see how different places also work in agentic ways: that is, as active participants in teacher education research. While many chapters do not expressly note the importance of attending to students, children, and youth as teacher educators, by stretching the boundaries around who counts as teacher educators we see that there is an important research gap: people positioned as students also need to be seen as teacher educators. Many teacher educators and teachers, including ourselves, often speak of how students, children, youth, other teachers, families, and family members have educated us as teachers. Viewing teacher and teacher educator learning as social, cultural, familial, and institutional processes opens up the perspectives on who teacher educators are, what these extended groups of teacher educators teach to teachers, and how these diverse teacher educators support teachers’ learning in, and from, communities. In their chapter, Cook-Sather and Baker-Doyle speak about ‘invitations to the co-construction of work’ and describe a project that positions students as teacher educators. As part of learning to teach, teacher candidates develop the skills necessary to understand and navigate the moral work of teaching (Gholami & Husu, 2010). As we broaden the boundaries around who counts as teacher educators, we also draw attention to autobiographical influences as important teacher educators. Attending to the prior and present personal knowledge landscapes (Clandinin, Schaefer, & Downey, 2014) in which teachers and prospective teachers live, we highlight the range of people, places, and things who need to be named as teacher educators. This stretches us far beyond those in faculties of education or even faculties of arts and sciences. Beijaard, in his introduction to Section II, also shapes similar conversations around teacher identity as he raises questions about research in teacher identity making. There is a rich field of research in teacher education that opens up questions of who counts as teacher educators and what are the places of teacher education. This more inclusive boundary disrupts some of the ways that teacher education has been conceptualized.
Intellectual Pattern 5: Finding ways to live teacher education research in practice A fifth intellectual pattern emerging across the chapters relates to the disconnect between what we know in theory and research and what is happening in practices of teacher education. While we know change is needed in teacher education, we
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wonder if there is a lack of change in pedagogical approaches – for example, how we engage with developing agency or the moral work of teaching. Is it, as Grossman and McDonald (2008) suggest, that we are more familiar with ‘pedagogies of investigation’ than ‘pedagogies of enactment’? While Grossman and McDonald offer us two terms, those of investigation and enactment, we suggest that there are other ways of thinking about the relations between theory, research, and practice. While it may be, in part, that the lack of connection between theory, research, and practice is a result of a different kind of pedagogy, as they suggest, we wonder about the importance of the ways researchers in teacher education position themselves and their research in relation to practice. Sometimes there is a sense that research and theory are still, too often, seen as something to be applied to practice rather than something to be held in dialogic relation with practice. This is an old tension in teacher education and we see it in the chapters in the Handbook. We are also struck by the complexity of trying to represent the work we do as teacher educators when we are situated in the multiple layered contexts of teacher education. We know that many teacher educators are trying to push into different ways of living out teacher education. Yet we are somewhat surprised that many chapters that espoused a more critical edge do not move into the ways in which their critical edges are lived out in practices in teacher education. We see Celia Oyler, Jenna Morvay, and Florence R. Sullivan highlighting some innovative practices in teacher education, as do Glanfield and Madden and others. As Douwe Beijaard writes in the introduction to Section II, we see Oyler, Morvay, and Sullivan foregrounding issues of social (in)justice. As is clear from their chapter, they draw attention to studies where teacher education is undertaken for social action. As Beijaard writes, ‘they explore how students, teachers, teacher educators, and nonprofit leaders – all moved by their own critical consciousness – forge unique relationships that exceed the typical school-university partnership’. It is teacher education that works toward building the critical consciousness that enables teachers to integrate activism into their work and identities as teachers. They show us this reshaped teacher education practice as represented in research and in practice. We know that such critically informed teacher education practice does occur, and we wonder if the ‘genres’ and spaces available in publications are too constraining for such renewing voices. Should the publications be open for more multiple styles of presentation through which what is innovatively done in teacher education would be shown and analyzed? lisahunter, Theo Wubbels, Mary Lynn Hamilton, and Jean Clandinin designed a special issue of Teaching and Teacher Education, entitled ‘Moving Beyond the Scholarly Text’ (2014), in order to push beyond words as the only medium we should work with as we develop teacher education and teacher education research. Perhaps we need to do much more of this kind of opening up of spaces in our publications. We also wonder if those who are engaged in living and researching in these days of increasing pressure in the academies across the world do not have the
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time to write about/share their research. We wonder how to open spaces where these practices and research on them can be made more visible in ways that move us to change. We wonder if we need to find ways to better connect the living and telling of our practices with the inquiry into the living and telling of our teacher education practices.
Concluding remarks As we end this remarkable Handbook, we turn again to thoughts of what it means to edit a Handbook that is, in our view, more than a collection of articles. We are hopeful that the ways in which we conceptualized and structured the Handbook, the ways we invited authors to join with us, and the ways we offer comments that show the complexity around the enduring issues we identified will, in part, inspire future dialogue about what we can learn from research in teacher education, what we can learn from placing diverse ideas alongside each other, and how engaging in dialogue might lead us in new directions in research in teacher education and in the practice and policy of teacher education.
References Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Clandinin, D. J., Schaefer, L. & Downey, C. A. (2014). Narrative conceptions of knowledge. London: Emerald. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gholami, K. & Husu, J. (2010). How do teachers reason about their practice? Representing the epistemic nature of teachers’ practical knowledge. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1520–1529. Goodlad, J., Soder, R. & Sirotnik, K. (1990). Places where teachers are taught. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Grossman, P. & McDonald, M. (2008). Back to the future: Directions for research in teaching and teacher education. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 184–205. lisahunter, Wubbels, T., Clandinin, D. J. & Hamilton, M. L. (2014) Moving beyond text: Editorial for Special Issue. Teaching and Teacher Education, 37(January), 162–164. Lugones, M. (1987) Playfulness, ‘world travelling’, and loving perceptions. Hypatia, 2(2), 3–19. Roberts-Mahoney, H., Means, A. J. & Garrison, M. J. (2016). Netflixing human capital development: Personalized learning technology and the corporatization of K-12 education. Journal of Educational Policy, 31(4), 405–420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2015.1132774 Stokes, D. E. (1997). Pasteur’s quadrant: Basic science and technological innovation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
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Index
Page numbers in bold indicate tables and in italic indicate figures. End of chapter notes are indicated by a letter n between page number and note number. Aalto University, Finland, 702 Abednia, A., 639, 640 ableism, 375 Abolfazli, M., 241 Aboriginal Australians, 483–4, 1157 Aboriginal Teacher Education program, Alberta, 1109–10 absolutism, moral, 412 abstract knowledge, 739 academic freedom, 101–2 academic knowledge, 739, 1103–4 accommodation, in teacher identity formation, 183 accommodative resistance, 445 accountability systems, 30–1, 70, 75, 81–4, 85, 873–4, 1121–2 Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (ACTE), Pakistan, 74 Achinstein, B., 448, 452, 453, 496 action based studies, 84 action possibilities of school-lessness, 1091–3 action research, 553, 614–15, 615, 617, 641–2 activism, teacher, 228–43, 290, 475 activity theory, 603, 604, 854 Adadan, E., 564 Adamson, B., 450 adaptive expertise, 549, 827–31, 829 Addams, Jane, 39, 40 Addison, E., 969 Adeosun, O., 748 Adichie, C., 302 Adie, L., 931, 935, 970 Adler, S., 652, 654 Admiraal, W., 969
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AERA see American Education Research Association (AERA) affective-motivational teacher characteristics, 789–90 Afghanistan, 494 African Americans, 201, 239, 498, 999 after-school classes, China, 133 agency see teacher agency Agenda for Education in a Democracy, 336 agonistic foundational debates, 36–7 agreeableness, 901 Ahmed, N., 988 Ai Weiwei, 133 AITSL see Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) Akerson, V.L., 863, 864 Akkerman, S.N., 144, 145, 154 al Bandary, M.S., 74 Al-karasneh, S.M., 654 ALACT model, 538, 538 Aladdin’s Lamp children’s cultural centres, Finland, 702 Alayyar, G., 673 Albania, 241 Alcock, S., 753 Alcorn, N., 753 Alemi, M., 241 Alexander, R., 874, 875 all-graduate profession, 59–60 Allal, L., 970 Allan, J., 376 Allard, A.C., 234, 914–15 Alleman-Ghionda, C., 474 Allen, Jeanne Maree, 910–23 ally-work, 230–1
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Almonte-Acosta, S.A., 658–9 Alsup, J., 180–1 Alters, B.J., 990 Althof, Wolfgang, 387–400 Altman Dautoff, D., 466 Aman, R., 484 ambivalent nostalgia, 306 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), 1056 American Education Research Association (AERA), 561, 689 American Indian Education for All (IEFA) law, Montana, US, 484–5 Anderson, G., 444 Anderson, J.R., 532 Anderson, M.A., 181, 195 Andersson, P., 165, 169 Andreotti, V., 329 Andrews, M., 469 Anishinaabe pedagogy, 1158 Annette, J., 461 Anti-Dialogic Professional Development, 236 anti-foundationalism, 35, 36 anti-racism education, 239, 485, 599, 1152, 1154–6 see also culturally relevant pedagogy anti-war movements, 596 anti-work, 230 anxiety, and professional competencies, 790 Anyon, J., 599–600 Anzaldua, G., 11 Appadurai, A., 1134 Appiah, K., 1065, 1067, 1076 Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) program, 586 Apple, M.W., 475, 483, 870, 997 Appleman, D., 164 Appleton, K., 199 application-oriented learning, 147, 148, 152 apprenticeship model, 53–5, 58 Archer, M., 272, 273 Archibald, J., 294, 303 Argentina, 305, 1124 Arievitch, I., 270–1 Aristotle, 36, 336, 422–4, 539 Armstrong, D., 762 Armstrong, K., 469 Aronson, B., 613 Arthur, J., 346 articulated teacher education program model, 736–7 arts-based research, 1076 arts education see creative arts education Ash, D., 935 Asher, N., 377 Ashton, P.T., 900 Asia and the Pacific competency-based teacher education, 872 Early Study Abroad, 1145n2
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educational reforms, 555 evaluation of teacher education programs, 71–2, 76, 85 professional competencies, 876–7 social studies and civic education, 656–9 see also individual countries Asia Society, 1141, 1142 Asian American teacher recruitment, 497 Aspland, Tania, 55 Assaf, L.C., 197, 202, 204 Assembly of First Nations, Canada, 294 assessment, 887–91 across teaching career, 944–60, 945 and assessment, 959–60 boundary crossing approach, 920, 922 as boundary objects, 971–3 career advancement, 954–6 clinical models of, 920–2 Confucian-heritage societies, 127–9, 130–1 constructivist perspectives, 928–9, 930, 932, 934, 937–8, 989–91 of evidence of impact, 916–18 feedback, 986–9, 995, 996, 997, 1000, 1004 filtering functions of, 893–906, 897, 904, 905, 944–60, 945 formative, 128, 687–8, 890–1, 910–11, 927–40, 966, 986–9, 992, 994–1006 formative use of summative tests (FUST), 936 hiring decisions, 951–2 learning oriented assessment (LOA), 985 of non-academic attributes, 893–4, 897, 897, 898, 899–906, 904, 905 physical education teacher education, 687–8 portfolios, 39, 640–1, 755, 969–70 re-credentialing, 954 selection into teacher education, 893–906, 897, 904, 905, 945–6, 956–8 situational judgment tests, 902–6, 904, 905 and social justice, 994–1006 sociocultural perspectives, 963–75 in standards-based teacher education, 912, 913–16, 913 student-centred approaches, 979–92 summative, 910–23, 913, 966, 987, 992, 994–5 and teacher effectiveness, 896–7, 918, 959–60 and teacher identity formation, 965–8 teacher performance appraisal, 952–4, 953, 959–60 teacher performance assessments (TPAs), 914–16, 918 teacher tenure process, 954 teaching credentials, 946–50, 948–9, 954, 956–9, 958 technical vocational education and training, 739–41 of theory and practice integration, 918–22
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Index
assessment for learning, 128, 687–8 see also formative assessment assessment literacy, 967 assessment of learning, 687–8 assimilation, in teacher identity formation, 183 Association of Teacher Educators (ATE), US, 1039 Association of Teacher Educators in Europe, 1056 Atay, D., 569 attachment theory, 393 Atteberry, A., 896–7 Attwood, P.F., 480 Au, W., 475, 477, 482 Aubusson, P., 111 Australia community interaction, 463 competency-based teacher education, 872 creative arts education, 704, 705–6 culturally relevant pedagogy, 618 educational reforms, 115, 555, 673 evaluation of teacher education programs, 72 formative assessment, 931, 932–3, 935 history of teacher education, 55 Indigenous pedagogies, 1157 Indigenous student drop-out rates, 483–4 learning about others, 461, 465 micropolitics, 447 moral and ethical responsibilities, 354 neoliberalism, 1119 physical education teacher education, 682, 684 practical teaching experiences, 1023 school-based teacher education, 1124 selection into teacher education, 905, 946 sexual identities, 602 social justice issues, 373 summative assessment, 913, 914–15, 917 teacher activism, 234 teacher educators, 1020, 1022, 1027–8, 1035, 1036, 1037, 1041, 1043 teacher identity, 202, 203, 212 teacher performance assessments, 914–15 teaching credentials, 947, 948–9, 950 Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), 913, 914, 948–9 Ausubel, D.P., 540 authentic learning activities, 173 Authentic Teacher Assessment (ATA), Australia, 914–15 Autio, Tero, 876, 877, 881–2 autobiographical inquiry, 305, 374 autoethnographic inquiry, 374, 479–80 autonomy epistemological, 260, 261 moral, 389, 407 situational, 260, 261 teacher, 260–1, 262, 425, 768 Ávalos, Beatrice, 746, 1081–4, 1117–28, 1172, 1177
Book 2.indb 1183
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Aveling, N., 620 Avraamidou, L., 196 Avramidis, E., 769 awareness days, 370 awareness, development of, 541 Aydarova, Elena, 1133–45, 1174 Aydarova, O., 955 Aydin, S., 568 Baehr, J., 422 Baeten, M., 985 Baildon, M.C., 654, 656 Bailey, A.L., 936 Bainbridge, J.M., 636, 644–5 Baird, J.-A., 973–4 Bajaj, M., 240–1 Baker-Doyle, Kira J., 354–64, 1178 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 458, 459–60, 869–70, 998 Bakhtin, M.M., 380 Bakkenes, I., 147–9 Balakrishnan, V., 407 Bali, 202, 203 Ball, Deborah Loewenberg, 813 Ball, S., 443, 1076 Ball State University, Indiana, US, 1110 Ball, Teresa, 59 Ballet, K., 444 Baltodano, M., 757 Bamberg, M., 306, 308–9 Banathy, B.H., 93, 97, 99, 101 Bandura, A., 895 Banks, J.A., 473 Bannister, N.A., 933 Barab, S.A., 860–1, 863, 865 Barad, Karen, 29, 38, 41 Barak, J., 461 Barazzoni, R., 287 Barnett, W.S., 754 Barone, T., 707 Barrington, E., 983 Barrón, N.L., 478 Bartlett, L., 1140 Bartolomé, L.I., 476 Basso, K., 303 Bates, T., 1058 Bateson, M.C., 302, 303 Bauman, Z., 336 Baumert, J., 807–8 Baumfield, V., 716–17 Baxter-Magolda, M.B., 517 Beauchamp, C., 160, 164, 166 Beauchamp, G., 1123–4 Beck, Clive, 107–19 Becker, Gary, 492 Beckett, D., 937 Beckett, L., 1001
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Becoming Teacher Educators program, Canada, 1056 Beijaard, Douwe, 139–42, 144–5, 152, 161, 177–89, 211, 212, 1175–6, 1178 Belgium, 1056 beliefs see teacher beliefs Belize, 55 Bell, Andrew, 54 Bell, J.S., 305 Bell, L.A., 470n1 Bell, R.L., 861 Bellara, A., 932 Ben Said, S., 168 Benin, S.Y., 234 Bennett, R.E., 981, 986, 989 Benson, P., 201, 643 Bentham, Jeremey, 435 Bentley, Arthur, 880 BERA see British Educational Research Association (BERA) Bereiter, C., 259, 532, 541 Bergem, T., 346 Berger, P., 411 Bergmann, J.R., 414 Berkowitz, M., 412 Berliner, D.C., 537, 820, 824, 825 Bernstein, B., 686 Berrill, D., 969 Berry, Amanda K., 561–73, 969, 1041 ‘Best Evidence Synthesis Programme’, 33 Bhabha, H., 460, 462 Biesta, G.J.J., 4, 696 big data, 1174 ‘Big Five’ personality framework, 901 Bigelow, B., 464 bildung/didaktik traditions, 876 bilingual teachers, 1145n3 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 1141 Bishop, J.L., 1084 Bishop, R., 1158 Black, P., 128, 910–11, 929, 971, 986, 987, 989 Blair, L., 197 Blase, Jo, 449 Blase, Joseph, 441–2, 443, 444, 449 blogging, 171 Blom, S., 168–9 Blomberg, G., 170, 174 Blömeke, Sigrid, 565–6, 783–98, 805, 806, 824, 843–4 Bloom, A., 356, 362 Blumenfeld-Jones, D., 413 Blumenreich, M., 1124 Bobbitt, F., 321 Bocala, C., 863 Bode, B.H., 336 Boei, F., 1043 Bohle Carbonell, K., 827
Book 2.indb 1184
Bois, W.E.B. Du, 493 Boler, M., 308 Bolivia, 484 Bologna Process, 465, 629, 666, 669, 672, 1083, 1122–3, 1127 Booth, S., 541, 722 Borko, H., 149, 163, 371, 839 Boston, C., 985 Boston College, US, 40, 918 Botswana, 1144 Boud, D., 986, 987 boundary crossing approach to assessment, 920, 922 Bourke, R., 966, 971, 974 Bouzar, P.B., 716 Bowers, J., 531, 532 Bowles, S., 595 Bown, O.H., 821 Box, C., 937 Boyatzis, R.E., 903 Boyer, E.L., 1, 5, 11, 1169 Boylan, Mark, 369–82 Boym, S., 306 Bozalek, V., 308 Braidotti, Rosie, 38 Brandom, R., 277 Bransford, J., 107, 812, 827, 828 Brantmeier, E.J., 470n1 Braun, H., 127 Bravo-Moreno, A., 1135 Brayboy, B.M.J., 41, 239–40, 616 Brazil community interaction, 293–4, 295, 296 evaluation of teacher education programs, 77–9, 77 private schooling, 133 Brekelmans, Mieke, 826 Brickhouse, N.W., 144 British Council, 653–4 British Educational Research Association (BERA), 118, 689 British Journal of Religious Education, 716–17 Britzman, Deborah, 357, 601 Brock University, Canada, 463 Broderick, A.A., 375 Brody, David L., 1049–60 Broek, S., 733 Broekman, H., 397 Bronkhorst, L.H., 826 Brookfield, S., 100 Brookhart, Susan M., 927–40, 988 Brosky, D., 444, 449 Brouwer, N., 540 Brown, Gavin T.L., 10, 123–35, 1171 Brown, J.S., 162–3, 173, 854, 855–6, 859 Brown, Keffrelyn, 40 Brown, L., 617
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Index
Brown, P., 568 Brown, Tony, 665–77 Brownlee, J., 522 Brubaker, N., 1069, 1070 Bruce, C.D., 186 Bruner, J., 220, 302–3 Bruno-Jofre, Rosa, 51, 57 Bryk, A., 115 Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, 360–2 Buchanan, J., 618 Buchanan, M.T., 716 Buchholtz, G., 566 Buck, G.A., 936, 1053 Budano, C., 569–70 Buehl, M.M., 340, 341, 343, 900 Bulgaria, 77–9, 77, 844 Bullough, Robert V., Jr, 1, 179, 333–6, 355, 425, 426, 445–6, 453, 744–57, 1069–70, 1174 Burbules, N., 4 Burn, K., 199, 204 Butler, J., 324, 328 Butler-Kisber, Lynn, 1076 Cabaroglu, N., 642 Caena, F., 803 CAEP see Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), US Caetano, A., 256 Calabrese Barton, A., 304 Calderhead, J., 514, 826–7 calling, teacher, 425–6 Camacho, M.M., 461 Cambridge Cluster School, Massachusetts, US, 391, 392 Cammisa, Rebecca, 464 Campbell, E., 426–7 Campos, B., 73 Canada community interaction, 294–5, 296 creative arts education, 704 culturally relevant pedagogy, 617, 618 English language teacher education, 639 evaluation of teacher education programs, 75 formative assessment, 930, 931, 935, 937 immigration, 1136 Indigenous pedagogies, 1158–9 Indigenous student drop-out rates, 483–4 Indigenous teacher education, 294–5, 296, 1109–10 lack of teacher diversity, 494 learning about others, 463 narrative and agency, 308 recruitment of underrepresented students, 501–2 school-based teacher education, 1105 selection into teacher education, 946 sexual identities, 600, 602
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social justice issues, 373 social studies and civic education, 655, 656 social theories and agency, 291–2, 295 teacher activism, 234–6, 239–40 teacher educators, 1028, 1040, 1041, 1056, 1068 teacher identity, 167, 180 teacher motivation, 426 teaching credentials, 947, 948–9 Canado, M.L.P., 644 Canniff, J., 410 capabilities for a healthy democracy, 309, 311n2 Capraro, R.M., 567 Carcamo, R.A., 746 Cardona, C.M., 465 care, ethics of, 403 career advancement, 954–6 career and technical education, 728–42 career models, 821–3 Carless, D., 936, 971, 985 Carlile, O., 990 Carlson, J., 562 Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1141 Carnegie Foundation, 500 Carr, D., 303, 422–3 Carr, M., 973 Carrigan, N., 477 Carter, K., 275–6, 308, 791 Carter Review, England, 1025 Cartwright, P., 476 case students, in Lesson Study, 151–4 cash for delivery, 1125 Caspersen, J., 1038 Castagno, A.E., 616 Castner, Daniel, 869–83 Catholic Church, Ireland, 98–9 Caughlan, S., 910 Center for Civic Education (CCE), US, 655 Chai, C.S., 522 Chan, Cheri, 545–56 Chan, J., 278–9, 280 Chan, K.W., 518, 522 Chang, P., 308 Change Laboratories, 603, 604 Changing Education through the Arts (CETA), US, 705 Chappuis, J., 988, 989 Character Education Efficacy Beliefs Inventory (CEEBI), 347 charter schools, 133 Chartered Teacher Programme, UK, 955 Chartrand, R., 1158, 1160n2 Chase, W.G., 519 CHAT see cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) Chater, M., 716 Chen, C., 446–7 Cherrington, Sue, 160–74 Chiang, M-H., 551
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Chicago State University, US, 294, 295, 296 child-centred pedagogy, 130, 132, 287, 288, 1139–40, 1144 Child Development Associate (CDA) qualification, US, 755 child marriage, 129 Childs, A., 1042 Chile early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 744, 745–7, 757 neoliberalism, 1119 summative assessment, 920, 923 China after-school classes, 133 career advancement, 955 creative arts education, 703 developmental learning approaches, 522 early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 745, 749–52, 757 Early Study Abroad, 1145n2 educational reforms, 555 English language teacher education, 638 evaluation of teacher education programs, 77–9, 77 gaokao exam, 945 history of teacher education, 56, 61 learner-centered pedagogy, 1139, 1144 micropolitics, 450 pedagogical approaches, 126–7, 128 professional learning communities, 878 selection into teacher education, 945, 946 shifan system, 23 situated cognition approaches, 862–3 social studies and civic education, 651, 657–8 social theories and agency, 291 teacher educators, 1052 teacher identity, 167–8, 169–70, 201 teacher planning, 841–2 teacher professionalism, 133 teaching credentials, 947, 948–9 Cho, Y., 329 Choi, Y., 655 Christensen, E., 447, 685 Christensen, J., 821–2 Christie, P., 49–50 Chubbuck, S.M., 452 Chukwura, E.N., 747 Chung, R.R., 916 Chung, Simmee, 633–45 CIPP Evaluation Model, 80 Cirocki, A., 641 citizenship education, 493–4, 649–61 civic education, 493–4, 649–61 civil rights movement, 596 Civil Rights Project, 221 Claiborne, L.B., 407
Book 2.indb 1186
Clandinin, D. Jean, 1–20, 180, 181, 212, 213, 304, 305, 307, 308, 529, 530, 536, 554, 627–8, 1069, 1070–1, 1074, 1076, 1103, 1169–80 Clark, Caroline T., 230–1 Clark, C.M., 838, 839 Clark, P., 1110 Clarke, D., 828–30, 829 Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), 396, 896 classroom management, developmental discipline, 393 Classroom Video Analysis (CVA) Instrument, 784 Claxton, G., 275 Clayton, C.D., 857 Cleaves, W., 936 Clemitshaw, G., 653 Clift, R.T., 1108 clinical models of summative assessment, 920–2 Clinical Praxis Exam, Australia, 914, 917 CMA see Collaborative Mentoring Approach (CMA) co-construction of work, 359–60, 363 Cobb, P., 531, 532 Cochran, K.F., 570 Cochran-Smith, M., 30, 116, 473, 482, 546, 554, 879, 913, 918, 922, 995, 996, 1005, 1050, 1053, 1067 codes of conduct, 354–5, 421, 427, 768–9 Coe, R., 896 cognition distributed, 854 epistemic, 258, 259, 262 and practice, 278 see also situated cognition approaches Cognitive Activation in the Classroom Project (COACTIV), 784 cognitive apprenticeship, 162–3, 173, 531, 854, 855–6, 858–65 cognitive-developmental approach to moral education, 387–400, 395, 403, 407 cognitive dissonance, 478–9 cognitive learning theory, 531–2, 540, 541 cognitive perspectives on teacher planning, 837, 838–40 cognitive schemata, 531 cohort group learning, 539 Coia, L., 1073–4 Coldron, J., 154 Cole, M., 126, 1107 Colgan, L., 859–60, 863, 864 collaboration in critical teacher education, 381 in language teacher education, 639 micropolitical perspective, 450–1 in situated cognition approaches, 861–2, 864 in teacher planning, 840–2, 845–6, 847, 848 collaborative apprenticeship, 171 collaborative learning orientation, 147
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Index
Collaborative Mentoring Approach (CMA), 1024–5 Collanus, M., 202, 204 collective agency, 286–96, 358–9 collective teacher inquiry, 358–9, 360, 361, 363 collectivism vs individualism, 125, 126 Coloma, R.S., 317, 327 color-blind discourse, 480 color consciousness, 480 Colucci-Gray, L., 212 commonplaces of curriculum, 627–8, 634–7, 638–9, 644, 649, 650, 699–700, 728, 729, 730, 734, 739 Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol, 1138 communities of practice, 161–2, 530, 539, 553, 671, 854, 974, 989, 1003–4, 1089 and professional competencies, 855, 856, 857–65 and teacher identity formation, 172–3 communities, pre-service class, 112–13 community interaction, 1107–12 in constructivist teacher education, 548–9 culturally relevant pedagogy, 614–15, 615, 616–18 learning about others, 460–2 and school-based teacher education, 238 service learning, 375, 462–4, 466–7, 616–18, 1110, 1137 and teacher activism, 230–1, 236–7 and teacher agency, 280–2, 292–6, 309–10 community knowledge, 1106, 1107–12 community mapping, 238 Community of Teachers program, 860–1 compassion, 468–70 competencies see professional competencies competency-based teacher education, 144, 813–14, 871–5 and assessment, 957, 958, 958 technical vocational education and training, 732, 740–1 complexity theory, 40 concern-based pedagogies, 144 concurrent teacher education program model, 736, 737 Confessional religious education, 714 Confucian-heritage societies, 126–9, 797–8, 936 Confucianism, 53, 703, 863, 1144 Conle, C., 308 Connecting Classrooms initiative, 653–4 Connelly, F.M., 180, 212, 304, 305, 307, 308, 530, 554, 628, 1069 Conroy, J., 920–1 conscientiousness, 901 conscientization, 223–4, 229, 230, 231, 233–42, 476, 477, 596, 599, 603, 605, 620 consecutive teacher education program model, 736, 737 consequentialism, 336, 403 conservative orientations towards social justice, 370, 371, 375, 376
Book 2.indb 1187
1187
Consortium of Critical Pedagogy, 237 constructivist learning theories, 108–9, 110–11, 113, 545–56 and assessment, 928–9, 930, 932, 934, 937–8, 989–91 and neoliberalism, 554–6 and religious education, 720–1 and STEM education, 673–4 see also cognitive-developmental approach to moral education; social constructivism content knowledge see pedagogical content knowledge; subject knowledge expertise Content Representation (CoRe) tool, 564–5, 568, 572 context commonplace see milieu commonplace contextual factors professional competencies, 783–98, 785, 793, 795 teacher identity formation, 160, 166–8 teacher learning patterns, 146, 146, 148, 152 contextualized knowledge, 1107 continuing professional development (CPD), 5–6, 101, 107, 114–19 critical, 236–7 effectiveness of, 149–50 formative assessment, 933–7, 938–9 Indigenizing, 1152, 1153–60 professional competencies, 820–31, 829, 855, 857–66 re-credentialing, 954 religious education, 716 situated cognition approaches, 170–1, 857–66 social studies and civic education, 654–6 stage models of, 820–3 teacher educators, 1042–4, 1045, 1052–60 teacher planning, 848–9 technical vocational education and training, 736 technological pedagogy, 588 continuous assessment see formative assessment continuum of teacher education, 5–6, 101, 107–19 assessment, 944–60, 945 Conway, Paul F., 836–49 Cook-Sather, Alison, 354–64, 553–4, 1178 Cooke, Sandra, 419–30 Cooper, Beverley, 963–75 Copeland, W.D., 535 CoRe tool, 564–5, 568, 572 Coronel, J.M., 1136 cosmopolitanism, 3–4, 10 Council for Citizenship and Learning in the Community (CCLC), UK, 461 Council for Higher Education in Israel, 74 Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), US, 74–5, 755–6, 913, 916, 917 Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), US, 947 Council of Youth Research, 237–8 counter-hegemonic pedagogies, 232–3, 476, 877
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Counts, G.S., 288 Cowie, Bronwen, 963–75 CPD see continuing professional development (CPD) Craig, Cheryl J., 627, 1071, 1074–5, 1172 Crawford, P.D., 407 CRE see critical religious education (CRE) creative arts education, 570–1, 696–709 Creative Partnerships Programme, UK, 704–5 Cribb, A., 595 Crick, R.D., 836 criteria compliance, 968 Crites, S., 302, 303 critical compliance, 445 critical consciousness, 223–4, 229, 230, 231, 233–42, 476, 477, 596, 599, 603, 605, 620 critical democracy, 477–8 critical dispositions, 1000–1 critical emotional praxis, 377–8 critical epistemology, 378 Critical Friends Protocols, 200 critical imagination process, 476 critical incidents, 427–8 critical narrative inquiry, 307 critical orientations towards social justice, 370, 371 critical pedagogy, 475–6, 482, 594–606, 870–1, 875–7, 997, 998 critical personal narratives, 479–80 critical professional development, 236–7 critical race theory, 381, 475, 599 critical realism, 40, 714, 719, 721, 723 critical reflection, 374, 427–8, 429, 477, 479–80, 619 language teacher education, 638, 640–1 critical religious education (CRE), 713, 718–24 critical service learning, 1110 critical teacher education, 320, 369–82, 371, 594–606 decolonial, 483–5 multicultural, 473–83 critical theory, 33–4, 35, 37, 43n4, 475 Critical Web Reader, 654 Croatia, 841 Cross, Beverly E., 210–25 cross-cultural relationship building, 497–8 Crossouard, B., 966, 974 Cuba, 463 Cuddapah, J.L., 857 Cuenca, A., 167 cultural competence, 474, 477, 549, 875–7 cultural differences, 123–35 Confucian-heritage societies, 126–9, 130–1 education of girls, 129–30, 131 professional competencies, 797–8 unpredictability in schooling, 131–4 cultural heritage, and teacher identity, 200–1 cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), 920, 966, 974, 1103–4
Book 2.indb 1188
cultural-historical theories, 603–5 teacher agency, 269–83 cultural moral relativism, 410–13, 414 cultural synchronicity, 495–6 culturally relevant pedagogy, 216, 220–1, 610–22, 615, 997, 1136–7 culturally responsive teaching, 40, 198–9, 200–1, 205, 474–5, 477, 478, 690, 999 culture, and narrative, 302–3 Cummins, J., 635, 636, 637 Cunningham, Peter, 55 Curl, H., 361 curriculum reform see educational reforms Curry, M., 447 Cutri, R.M., 478 Cyprus, 305–6, 373, 478, 1052 Dagenais, D., 234 Dakar Framework, 1139 Dalai Lama, 469 Dalgarno, N., 859–60, 863, 864 Dall’Alba, G., 823 Dallmer, D., 972 Daly, N., 195 dance education, 699 see also creative arts education Daniel, G.R., 862 Danielson, C., 873 Danielsson, A., 145, 198, 204 Darder, A., 475–6 Darling-Hammond, L., 107, 210, 546, 550, 614, 812, 873–4, 914, 915, 919, 948–9, 960 Davey, R., 1018, 1019, 1020, 1024, 1028, 1070 Davies, B., 319, 325 Davis, E.A., 564 Davis, J.D., 845 Davison, C., 635, 636, 637 Day, J.M., 413 Daza, S.L., 318, 328 DBME see domain-based moral education (DBME) de Groot, A.D., 825 de Jager, B., 859 De Jesús, A., 474 de La Salle, Jean Baptiste, 55 De Lissovoy, N., 483 de Ruyter, D.J., 428 Deakin University, Australia, 914–15 Dean, B., 657 decision making, in teacher planning, 838–40, 841, 847–8 declarative knowledge, 739 decolonial teacher education, 483–5 decolonization, 329 decolonizing pedagogy, 485, 1152, 1154–6 deconstruction, 34, 479 Dee, T.S., 495
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
Deed, Craig, 1084, 1085–97, 1172 defiant nostalgia, 306 Delaney, S., 805 Delgado, R., 475 deliberate practice, 519, 793, 826 deliberative communication, in moral education, 413–14 Delli, D.A., 951 Delpit, Lisa, 999 DeLuca, C., 930, 931, 932, 935 democratic consequentialism, 336 demonstration schools, 61 demoralization, resisting, 363–4 Dengerink, J., 1039–40 Denmark, 33, 482, 1135 Denscombe, M., 642 Depaepe, F., 784 DePaepe, Marc, 60 Derrida, J., 323 Derry, J., 276–7 Dervin, F., 473, 479–80 Desimone, L.M., 149, 150, 151 developmental discipline, 393 developmental learning approaches, 513–24, 516 see also cognitive-developmental approach to moral education developmental work research (DWR), 603, 604 Dewey, John, 4, 36, 39, 40, 61, 115, 124, 132, 287, 288, 336, 359, 467, 499–500, 546, 552, 640, 732, 880, 1001, 1068 Dey, N., 873 diabetes, 688 dialectic, in critical pedagogy, 476 dialectical praxis, 998 dialogical self theory, 187 dialogue and moral development, 405–6 and social justice, 997–8 and teacher identity formation, 153–4, 155–6, 187 Dick, Clarence ‘Butch’, 1153 Dickey, M.D., 861 didactic relation, 766, 769–71 didactic triangle, 765–71, 876 didactical expertise, 145, 152 differentiation practices, 770 digital games, 1004 digital literacy, 578 digital technology see technology Dillon, J., 666 Dimitropoulos, A., 666, 669 Dinham, J., 706 Dinham, S., 917 Dinkelman, T., 1087 Dion, S.D., 1158–9 Dis/Crit, 381
Book 2.indb 1189
1189
disability, 465 and critical teacher education, 372, 375, 376, 381 inclusive education, 761–72 disabled teachers, 376 discontinuity aspect of teacher identity, 144, 145, 146, 154, 155 discursive formation, 675 distantiation, in teacher identity formation, 183, 184 distributed cognition, 854 distributive justice, 370 diversity and cultural moral relativism, 410–12 culturally relevant pedagogy, 216, 220–1, 610–22, 615, 997, 1136–7 culturally responsive teaching, 40, 198–9, 200–1, 205, 474–5, 477, 478, 690, 999 and immigration, 1135–8 inclusive education, 761–72 inclusivity politics, 502–3 and privileged identities, 217–18 recruitment and retention of underrepresented students, 491–505 and selection into teacher education, 956–7 see also critical teacher education Dodson, A., 335 Doerger, D., 972 Dolan, A.M., 653 Dolan, Rose, 90–104 Dolk, M., 533 Doll, W.E., Jr, 218, 223 domain-based moral education (DBME), 392–3, 397–8 Donaldson, G., 701–2, 895, 1023, 1025 Donaldson Review, Scotland, 1023, 1025 Donche, V., 147 donor agencies, 1124–6 Dotger, B.H., 169 Dottin, E.S., 901 Downey, C.A., 180 Doyle, W., 839 Drake, C., 196, 604 drama education, 570–1, 699 see also creative arts education Draper, R., 445–6, 453 Drost, B.R., 843 Drummond, M.J., 935–6, 971 D’Souza, L.A., 170 dualism, 516, 517 Dubois, W.E.B., 39 Ducharme, E.R., 1021–2, 1029, 1035 Ducharme, M., 1021–2, 1029, 1054 Duckor, B., 914 Dudley, P., 830 Duffy, G.G., 1106 Dunbar-Hall, P., 202, 203
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Duncan, Arne, 1141 Dündar, S., 653 Dunne, J., 276 Durden, T.R., 477 Durkheim, E., 405 Durksen, Tracy, 893–906 Dutch Association of Teacher Educators (VELON), 1039, 1055 Dweck, Carol, 762, 767–8 DWR see developmental work research (DWR) Dyson, B., 686 Dysthe, O., 931 e-learning, 1085–97 EAL see English as an Additional Language (EAL) early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 744–57 Early, D.M., 756 early-entry programs, 55, 168–9, 216, 238, 549–52, 604, 666, 667–72, 1023, 1024–5, 1102, 1105, 1119–20, 1124, 1142 Early Study Abroad, Asia, 1145n2 Eason, R., 704 ebonics, 999 ecological perspectives teacher agency, 271 teacher planning, 837, 840–2 edTPA portfolio assessments, 755 Education for All goals, 1125, 1127 Education International, 23–4, 1141 educational movements, 287–8 educational reforms, 115, 124, 555, 666, 672–5, 1102, 1105 Bologna Process, 465, 629, 666, 669, 672, 1083, 1122–3, 1127 global education reform movement, 124, 870, 872, 877 and teacher identity, 204–6, 242 see also school-based teacher education Edwards, Anne, 184, 269–83, 292, 1176, 1178 effortful thinking, 258, 259, 262 EFL see English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Egypt, 932 Ehrich, L., 445 Eick, C.J., 862 Eisner, E., 102, 630 El Ebyary, K.M., 932 El Hani, C.N., 857, 863, 864 Elbaz, F., 811 Elbaz-Luwisch, F., 308 electronic portfolios, 640–1 Ell, F., 752, 753 Elliott, R.G., 518, 522 Ellis, Viv, 276, 280, 594–606, 1041 Ellsworth, E., 597–8, 881 emotionality, 377–8
Book 2.indb 1190
emotions and teacher identity formation, 160 and virtue ethics, 422–3 empathy, 468–70, 478 empowerment, 597–8 encounter with others, 374 Endedijk, M.D., 147, 149 Eneau, J., 260 Engelsen, K.S., 931, 937 Engeström, Yrjo, 273–4, 603, 920, 972, 974, 1089 engineering education see STEM teacher education England creative arts education, 703, 704–5 diversity, 599 educational reforms, 115, 672–5, 1123 history of teacher education, 54–5, 58, 59, 61–2, 1102 mentoring, 1025 neoliberalism, 1119 pedagogical approaches, 124, 130 professional competencies, 875–6 religious education, 714–15, 718–24 school-based teacher education, 604, 666, 667–8, 670, 1023, 1024, 1102, 1105, 1119–20 selection into teacher education, 898 sexual identities, 600, 601 social studies and civic education, 652, 653 teacher agency, 274, 279, 280 teacher beliefs, 346 teacher educators, 1020, 1027–8, 1029, 1039, 1041, 1042 teacher learning patterns, 148 teacher planning, 843 English as a Foreign Language (EFL), 633–45 English as a Second Language (ESL), 633–45 English as an Additional Language (EAL), 633–45 English Language Arts, 633–45 English Program in Korea (EPIK), 643 Englund, T., 413–14 ENTEP see European Network on Teacher Education Policies (ENTEP) entrepreneurial identity, 242 entry requirements, teacher education programmes, 102–3 Enyedy, N., 196 epistemic agency, 258–9, 262, 276 epistemic beliefs, 522 epistemic cognition, 258, 259, 262 epistemic culture, 275 epistemic relativism, 719, 720, 721 epistemological autonomy, 260, 261 epistemological beliefs, 516, 518 epistemological reasoning, 516–17, 516 epistemological thinking model, 515–18, 516 epistemology, 30–1 challenging, 378 of the zero point, 483
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
Epstein, S., 533, 535 Equality Act (2010), UK, 600 Equity Network, 238 Ericsson, K.A., 519, 824–5, 826 Erikson, E., 211 ESL see English as a Second Language (ESL) Esland, G.M., 720 Esteban-Guitart, M., 213 Estola, E., 308 Estonia, 186, 187 Eteläpelto, A., 212 ethic of discomfort, 478 ethical codes, 354–5, 421, 427, 768–9 ethical literacy, 355, 362 ethical realism, 36 ethical self-care, 380–1 ethics of care, 403 and narrative research, 306–7 poststructuralist, 369, 379–81 professional, 354–5, 421, 427, 768–9 virtue, 335–6, 403, 419–30 see also moral and ethical education Eudaimonia, 422, 423 Eurocentrism, 483 Europe Bologna Process, 465, 629, 666, 669, 672, 1083, 1122–3, 1127 evaluation of teacher education programs, 72–3, 76, 85, 1121 immigration, 1135 physical education teacher education, 682, 684 practical teaching experiences, 1022–3 teacher educators, 1021, 1022–6, 1056 university-based teacher education, 666, 669–70, 1023 see also individual countries Europe 2020 plan, 482 European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP), 733 European Commission, 108, 482, 733, 874, 1018, 1021, 1026, 1051–2 European Higher Education Commission, 465 European Network on Teacher Education Policies (ENTEP), 666, 669 European Teacher Education Area, 669 European Training Foundation (ETF), 733 Eurydice, 69 evaluation of teacher education programs, 68–87, 85, 1121–2 Asia and the Pacific, 71–2, 76, 85 Europe, 72–3, 76, 85, 1121 Finland, 72–3, 76, 77–80, 77, 85, 87 Middle East, 73–4 national level survey of, 77–9, 77
Book 2.indb 1191
1191
North America, 74–5, 76, 85, 1121 Singapore, 71, 72, 76, 80–1, 85, 87 Evans, C., 147 Everington, J., 716 Every Child a Reader and Writer (ECRW) program, US, 935 Evetts, J., 272–3 evolutionary psychology, 335 Ewing, Robyn, 696–709 expansive learning, 920 expert mediation, 273–7, 278–80 expertise see professional competencies; subject knowledge expertise; teacher expertise explicit moral education, 409 exploratory talk, 153 external learning orientation, 147 externalisation, 275 extraversion, 901 Fachdidaktik, 561, 765 Fairbrother, G.P., 657–8 faking, in selection assessments, 902 Falchikov, N., 986, 987 Fallona, C., 410, 421 familial obligations, 126–7 families diversity in, 373 and teacher agency, 280–2, 309–10 Farahmandpur, R., 480 Farnsworth, Valerie, 994–1006 Farrell, T.S.C., 552, 640 fast-track teacher education, 55, 168–9, 216, 238, 549–52, 604, 666, 667–72, 1023, 1024–5, 1102, 1105, 1119–20, 1124, 1142 FATIH program, Turkey, 578 feedback, assessment, 986–9, 995, 996, 997, 1000, 1004 fees, teacher education, 102–3 Feiman-Nemser, S., 96–7, 107–8 Feldman, A., 1070 feminist theory, 36, 39, 596, 1073–4 Fenstermacher, G., 342, 343, 345, 387, 421 Ferfolja, T., 602 Fernandez-Balboa, J.M., 686 Fernandez, C., 879 Fessler, R., 821–2 Fickel, L.H., 616 field experiences, 61, 1022–3, 1024–5 constructivist perspectives, 549–52 culturally relevant, 616–18 formative assessment, 932–3 pedagogical content knowledge development, 566–71 physical education, 684–6 service learning, 375, 462–4, 466–7, 616–18, 1110, 1137
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situated cognition approaches, 862–3 social studies and civic education, 653 summative assessment, 915, 919, 921 see also community interaction Fielding, M., 357, 361 figured worlds, 458–9 filtering functions of assessment, 893–906, 897, 904, 905, 944–60, 945 financial aid, 1124–6 Fine, M., 222, 223 Finland career advancement, 955 continuum of teacher education, 118 creative arts education, 702 educational reforms, 675, 1102 English language teacher education, 642 ethical codes, 768 evaluation of teacher education programs, 72–3, 76, 77–80, 77, 85, 87 history of teacher education, 60 immigration, 1135 inclusive education, 764–5, 769 micropolitics, 447 moral and ethical responsibilities, 355–6 narrative and agency, 306–7 professional competencies, 876, 879 religious education, 714 school-based teacher education, 1105 selection into teacher education, 899, 905–6, 945–6, 957–8 systems view, 90–1, 92, 94, 96, 99, 103 teacher identity, 169, 183–4, 202, 205, 212 teacher planning, 841 university-based teacher education, 1023, 1141–2 Finnish Arts Council, 702 Finnish Cultural Foundation, 702 Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council (FINEEC), 72–3, 80 Fiske, J., 217 Fitch, S., 197 Fitts, P.M., 519 Fitzclarence, L., 682 Fitzpatrick, E., 1076 Fitzpatrick, K., 1076 Fives, H., 340, 341, 343, 900 fixed mindset, 768 Fixsen, D.L., 204 Flessner, Ryan, 286–96 flipped classroom, 1084 Floden, R.E., 840 Flores, M.T., 167 Florian, L., 292, 763, 764 fluid identities, 215–17 Flyvbjerg, B., 1170 Follett, Mary Parker, 39
Book 2.indb 1192
Ford Foundation, 1141 formative assessment, 128, 687–8, 890–1, 910–11, 927–40, 966, 986–9, 992, 994–1006 formative use of summative tests (FUST), 936 Forzani, F.M., 871–2 Foucault, Michel, 320, 321–3, 325–6, 380–1, 675 foundationalism, 32, 36 Fox, D.L., 195, 198 Fox, N.J., 318 Fox, R., 720 France educational reforms, 1123 history of teacher education, 55, 58, 59, 1101–2 immigration, 1135 professional competencies, 794 religious education, 714 Frankenberg, E., 221 Frankfurt School, 33, 876 Franzak, J.K., 200 Fraser, C., 212 Free School Movement, 288 Free Teacher Education (FTE) program, China, 291 Freedman, S.W., 164 Frees, B.S., 750, 751 Freire, Paulo, 36, 221, 224, 296, 475, 476, 477, 483, 547, 596, 875, 997, 998 Friedrich, D.S., 1124 Friedrichsen, P.J., 566–7 Friend, G., 239 Fries, K., 546 Friling, D., 1068, 1075 Fritz, E., 204, 212 Froebel, Friedrich, 62 Fullan, M., 550 Fuller, FF., 820–1 functional-pragmatic concept of competence, 824 funds of identity, 213 funds of knowledge, 198, 213, 238, 280, 478, 616, 997, 1108 Furlong, John, 61, 63, 514, 1022 FUST see formative use of summative tests (FUST) Gachago, D., 308–9, 311n2 Gallagher, S., 549 Gamlem, S.M., 937 Gandhi, L., 327 gaokao exam, China, 945 Garcia, J., 1157 Gardinier, M.P., 241 Gardner, Phil, 55 Gareis, R., 985–6 Gary Schools, Chicago, 61 Gasser, Luciano, 387–400 Gay, G., 474, 613, 618 Gee, J.P., 213, 633 Gellel, A.-M., 716
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
gender and cultural moral relativism, 411 education of girls, 129–30, 131 marginalization of women, 217 gender identities see sexual identities genealogical studies, 34 general pedagogical knowledge, 788, 789, 810–11 generational gaps, 216–17 Georgakopoulou, A., 306, 308–9 Germany bildung/didaktik traditions, 876 educational reforms, 1123 evaluation of teacher education programs, 77–9, 77 history of teacher education, 55–6, 58, 1102 immigration, 1135 pedagogical content knowledge development, 565–6 professional competencies, 789, 794 teacher planning, 844, 848 university-based teacher education, 669 Gerzon, N., 933 gestalt level of teacher learning, 532–4, 533, 860 Gestalt psychology, 533 Gewirtz, S., 595 Geyer, N., 640 Ghaith, G., 204 Gholaminejad, R., 213 Gibbs, G., 997 Gibson, R., 707 Gikandi, J., 934 Gilleece, L., 841 Gilroy, P., 1038 Gintis, H., 595 Gipps, C., 964, 988, 989, 991, 992 girls, education of, 129–30, 131 Giroux, H.A., 596, 875 Gitomer, D.H., 809 GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), 733 Glanfield, Florence, 1149–60, 1172, 1178 Glasgow West Teacher Education Initiative (GWTEI), Scotland, 921 Glass, R.D., 238 Gleason, Tristan, 29–42 Global Doing Democracy Research Project, 335 global education reform movement, 124, 870, 872, 877 global knowledge economy, 492 globalism, 435–6, 492–4 globalization, 1083–4, 1122–6, 1133–45 Goepel, J., 757 Goh, P.S.C., 873, 874 Gold, B., 792 Goldenberg, P., 674 Goldstein, T., 375, 602
Book 2.indb 1193
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Golombek, P.R., 308 Gómez-Hurtado, I., 1136 Gomez, Mary Louise, 457–70 Gonzales, L., 275–6 good character, virtue of, 423 Goodlad, J.I., 336, 1177 Goodman, J., 445 Goodman, Y.M., 636 Goodwin, A.L., 874, 1029, 1035, 1040, 1042–3, 1136 Goodwin, C., 791 Google, 1141 Gordon, J.A., 499, 1136 Gordon, M., 554 Gorodetsky, M., 461 Gottheiner, D.M., 937 governmentality, 325–6 Graduand Teacher Competencies Framework (GTCF), Singapore, 80 Grainger, P.R., 931 Grangeat, M., 857, 859 Grant, C.A., 479 Grant, D.A., 838 Grant, L.W., 985–6 grassroots social action projects, 235–7 see also community interaction Graue, E., 198–9 Gray, P., 857, 859 Greca, I.M., 857, 863, 864 Greece, 639, 873, 874, 1052, 1135 Green, T., 341, 342, 345 Greene, Maxine, 303, 1067–8, 1076, 1173–4 Greeno, J.G., 162, 163, 530, 531, 532, 541, 855 Grier, J.M., 165 Griffioen, J., 821 Grossman, P.L., 7, 8, 193, 202, 529, 921, 1178 Groundwater-Smith, S., 1023 Grow Your Own (GYO) programs, US, 236, 294, 295, 296 growth mindset, 768, 771 Gu, M., 201 Guasp, A., 601 guided participation, in moral education, 406–7, 408–9 Guidelines for Preschool Education, China, 750 Guiterrez, K.D., 304 Gujarati, J., 165 Guo, K.L., 750, 752 Gupta, A., 1124 Gutierrez, K.D., 603–4, 997 Gutstein, Eric ‘Rico’, 290 GYO see Grow Your Own (GYO) programs, US Haag, S., 450–1 Haas, C., 482 Haberman, M., 1109 Habermas, Jürgen, 413
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habituation, 424, 427 Hacking, Ian, 40 Hadar, Linor L., 1049–60 Haddix, M.M., 617, 619 Hahl, K., 479–80 Haigh, M., 1024 Hall-Kenyon, Kendra M., 425, 426, 744–57 Halpern, R., 755, 756 Ham, V., 1070 Hamilton, Mary Lynn, 3–4, 185, 1054, 1065–76, 1178 Hammerness, K., 828, 1104 Hamre, B.K., 399, 901 Han, X., 751, 752 Hannfin, M.J., 861 Hannum, E., 878 Hansen, D.T., 3, 4, 358, 412, 414, 425 Hanushek, E.A., 895 Harasym, S., 328 Hardee, S.C., 485 Harfitt, Gary, 545–56 Hargreaves, A., 363, 533, 550, 822, 877 Hargreaves, E., 936 Harlem Renaissance, 39 Harlen, W., 987, 988, 992 Harris, R., 872 Haslanger, S., 457 Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), US, 600 Hattie, J., 761–2 Hauser, M.D., 335 Haverford College, Pennsylvania, 360–2 Hawe, E.M., 655 Haworth, L., 849 Hay, P., 687, 967 Hayes, S., 686 Hays, S., 307 He, M.F., 308 Head, F.A., 357–8 Healey, M., 983 health and physical education, 682 health issues, sociocultural, 688 Hedegaard, M., 277–8 Heer, Kal, 317–30 hegemonic schooling, 232–3 hegemony, 327, 476 Heggarty, S., 555 Heikkinen, H., 308 Heilbroner, R.L., 476 Heilbrun, C., 302 Heinz, M., 899 Heinzer, S., 394 Helgevold, N., 845–6, 848 Hellberg, K., 165, 169 Helms, J.V., 195 Hennissen, Paul, 513–24 Henry, G., 1120 Herbst, Jurgen, 56
Book 2.indb 1194
heritage languages, 217–18 Hermansen, H., 276, 970, 971 Hernandez, C.M., 614 Hernández-Hernández, F., 212 Hersh, R.H., 390, 391 heteronormativity, 370, 375, 377, 481, 600–2 Heyward, S., 1140 Hiebert, J., 808 Higgins, C., 421–2, 424 Higgins, J., 594 high stakes testing, 38–9, 130, 968, 986, 1127 Confucian-heritage societies, 127–9, 130–1 faking, 902 stereotype threat, 495 see also standardized testing Higher Education Act (1965), US, 75 Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), 71–2 Hill, M., 1024 Hipkins, R., 970 hiring decisions, 951–2 Hirsch, M., 306 Hirst, P.H., 720 history of teacher education, 23–4, 49–64, 1101–2 apprenticeship and work-based learning, 53–5, 58 knowledge, skills and behaviours, 59–62 normal school or training college model, 23, 55–7, 58 pre-industrial trends, 52–3 university model, 57–8 Hodge, S., 872 Hodkinson, H., 448–9, 857–8 Hodkinson, P., 448–9, 857–8 Hodson, J., 618, 1109–10 Hoekstra, A., 147, 534, 535, 536–7 Hofer, B.K., 522–3 Hofstede, G., 125, 126 Hökka, P., 212 Holeman, A., 1135 Holguín, B.R., 477 Holland, Dorothy, 271, 457, 458–9, 460, 463 Hollingsworth, H., 828–30, 829 Holmes Group, 1025 Holodynski, M., 792 home-school communication, 973 homophobic bullying, 370, 375, 377, 379, 601 homosexuality see sexual identities Hong, J., 444 Hong Kong educational reforms, 555 English language teacher education, 642, 643 evaluation of teacher education programs, 72 formative assessment, 936 neoliberalism, 1119 pedagogical approaches, 127, 128 professional competencies, 876–7
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Index
re-credentialing, 954 teacher agency, 278–9, 280 teacher educators, 1028 teacher identity, 201 hooks, bell, 997 hopefulness, 425, 426 Hopi/Tewa educators, 1157 Hopkins, J., 485 Hopmann, S., 876 Horn, I.S., 858 Horst, C., 1135 Hossain, S., 200–1 Hou, H., 167–8, 169–70, 862–3 House of Commons Education Committee, UK, 895 Howard, J.M., 497 Howard, T.C., 474, 619 Hoyle, Eric, 55, 441 Hu, B.Y., 749, 750 Huber, Janice, 301–11 Huber, M., 182 Huberman, M., 822, 823 Huddleston, T., 656 Hughes, S.A., 1069 human flourishing, 422, 423 Human Rights Education, 240–1 humanizing education, 493 Hume, A., 568 Hungarian Association of Teacher Educators, 1055–6 Hungary, 905, 1055–6 Husu, Jukka, 1–20, 1169–80 Hutcheon, L., 480 hybrid discourse of professional competency, 878–9 hybrid teacher educators, 1025 Hyland, N.E., 379, 380 hyperreality, 223 Hyson, M., 755 I-positions, 187 I’Anson, J., 717 identity and agency, 154, 183–4, 229, 271 see also sexual identities; teacher identity formation ideologically inscribed identities, 215–17 IEA see International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Ige, K.M., 747, 748 IHRE see Institute for Human Rights Education (IHRE) Illinois Wesleyan University, US, 464 ILO see International Labour Organization (ILO) imaginary worlds, 458 IMF see International Monetary Fund (IMF) immediate teaching behaviour, 533 immigrant groups, 219 immigration, 493, 1083–4, 1135–8, 1144n1, 1145n2 implicit moral education, 409
Book 2.indb 1195
1195
IMTPG see Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) in-service teacher education see continuing professional development (CPD) inclusive education, 761–72 inclusivity politics, 502–3 India, 171 community interaction, 281–2 competency-based teacher education, 873 education of girls, 129–30 learning about others, 466 private schooling, 133 school-based teacher education, 1124 teacher activism, 240–1 teacher migration, 1137 teacher professionalism, 133 technology, 587 Indian Control of Indian Education Policy (ICIE), Canada, 294 Indiana University, US, 654, 860–1 Indigenizing teacher education, 1149–60 Indigenous education, 613 Indigenous language restoration programs, 484 Indigenous pedagogies, 657–8, 1150–9 Indigenous peoples, 25, 1084 culturally responsive teaching, 611, 613, 616 decolonial teacher education, 483–5 early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 752, 753 narrative and agency, 302, 303 student drop-out rates, 483–4 teacher activism, 233, 234–6, 239–40 Indigenous studies, 39, 40–1, 502 Indigenous teacher education, 53, 233, 294–5, 296, 618–19, 1109–10 Indigenous traditional models of teaching, 485, 1151–2, 1153–4 individualization of learning, and technology, 1090 individualized instruction, 113–14 Indonesia, 1042, 1125, 1139–40 induction see internship and induction inequality and cultural moral relativism, 410–12 and privileged identities, 217–18 and selection into teacher education, 956–7 see also critical teacher education; sexual inequality informal in-service learning, 116–17 Ingersoll, R.M., 498 Ingham, A., 686 inner speech, 405 innovative professional discretion, 849 Innu people, Canada, 235–6 inquiry-based learning, and teacher identity, 196, 198, 204 Institute for Human Rights Education (IHRE), 240–1 Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice, 236
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institutional power, 325–6 InTASC see Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) standards, US intentionalist perspective, 342–3 inter-organizational learning theory, 920 Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG), 829–30, 829 intercultural teacher education, 473–83 see also culturally relevant pedagogy intergenerational narratives of trauma, 305–6 internal learning orientation, 147 internalisation, 275 international accords for teacher education, 465, 1083, 1122–3 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), 84, 650–1, 1135 International Labour Organization (ILO), 733 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 1125 international organizations, 1124–6, 1134–5 International Reading Association (IRA), 638 international study, 549, 1137 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP), 1140–3 International Vocational Education and Training Association (IVETA), 733 internationalisation, 549 internship and induction, 821, 1120–1 micropolitics in, 444–7, 452–3 see also practical teaching experiences interpretivism, 32, 35, 37, 42n2, 43n4 intersectionality, and teacher identity, 376–7, 381, 479 Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) standards, US, 75, 755–6, 947, 948–9 interthinking, 153 intimate scholarship, 1072–6 intuitive-experiential bodymind system, 533 intuitive test theory, 127 IRA see International Reading Association (IRA) Iran, 213, 241, 639, 640 Ireland evaluation of teacher education programs, 1121 moral and ethical responsibilities, 357 neoliberalism, 1119 public expenditure on education, 91 religious education, 714 selection into teacher education, 899 social studies and civic education, 653 systems view, 90–2, 94, 95, 96, 97–9, 103 university-based teacher education, 1023 Isbell, D.S., 195 Islamophobia, 482 Israel evaluation of teacher education programs, 74, 77–9, 77
Book 2.indb 1196
immigration, 1135, 1136 narrative and agency, 308 pedagogical content knowledge development, 563–4, 568 teacher educators, 1037, 1039, 1043, 1053–4, 1055, 1068 teacher migration, 1137 teacher planning, 841 ISTP see International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) Italy evaluation of teacher education programs, 77–9, 77 immigration, 1135 social theories and agency, 287–8 teacher agency, 273–4 teacher planning, 841 Izadinia, M., 160, 161, 166, 167, 170 Jackson, C.K., 896 Jackson, R., 717 Jamaica, 1125 James, C., 617 James, M., 935–6, 987, 988, 992 James Madison Legacy Project, 655 James, William, 40, 901 Janssen, F., 846, 849 Janzen, M.D., 326 Japan English language teacher education, 643 evaluation of teacher education programs, 71 history of teacher education, 53, 56 immigration, 1136 Lesson Study, 830, 842, 879 professional competencies, 879 social studies and civic education, 653, 657 teacher planning, 841, 842 Japan Institution for Higher Education Evaluation (JIHEE), 71 Japanese Exchange and Teaching (JET) program, 643 Jarrett, O.S., 476 Jasman, A.M., 1054 Jay, J.K., 1001 Jenkins, J.M., 571 Jenlink, P.M., 101 Jerome, L., 653 Jester, T.E., 616 Jiang, H., 910 Jita, L., 205 job satisfaction, 257, 796, 821 John, P.D., 843 Johnson, K.E., 308 Johnson, K.L., 1001 Johnson, L.E., 901 Johnson, R., 476 Johnston, C.C., 165
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
Johnston, James Scott, 51, 57 Jones, E.N., 388 Jones, J., 932, 971, 974 Jones, K.A., 843 Jones, S., 378 Jonsson, A., 936 Jordan, 654 Jordan, A., 990 Joseph, P., 356–7, 362, 869 Judge, Harry, 58 judgemental rationality, 719, 721 Jurasaite-Harbison, Elena, 224 Jurow, A., 862 Jussila, J., 73 Just Community approach, 390–2 Kaartinen, A., 169 Kabilan, M.K., 641 Kafu, Patrick, 53 Kagan, D.M., 820 Kaiser, Gabriele, 566, 783–98 Kalekin-Fishman, D., 1135 Kanjee, A., 985, 986 Kanno, Y., 168, 198 Kansanen, P., 765, 1027 Kantianism, 429 Kanu, Y., 327, 329 Kapadia-Matsko, K., 1104 Kaplan, L., 633 Kapoor, I., 327, 329 Karagiorgi, Y., 990 Karasawa, Tomitaro, 53 Karp, A., 569 Kasten, S.E., 195 Katz, L., 756 Katz, P., 202 Keddie, A., 452 Kekes, J., 411–12, 414 Kelchtermans, Geert, 185, 205, 356, 441–54, 1054 Kellner, D., 320, 475 Kelner, S.P., 903 Kemper, Sara, 944–60 Kennedy Center, US, 705 Kennedy, M.M., 111, 115, 119, 179 Kenny, A., 200 Kenya, 53, 716 Kersting, N.B., 792 Kestere, Iveta, 60–1 Keyes, D., 1071, 1074–5 Khan, H.K., 1036 Khan, M.A., 641 Kim, H., 861 Kim, J., 329 Kim, L.H., 1136 Kim, M., 354 Kim, S., 1137
Book 2.indb 1197
1197
Kim, S.K., 1136 Kinach, B.M., 565 Kincheloe, J.L., 215, 223, 225, 878, 879, 880, 881 Kindt, I., 199 kinesiology, 682–3 King, P.M., 517 Kinslow, K., 438, 501 Kirby, Vicky, 38 Kirk, D., 686 Kitchen, J., 618, 1053, 1054, 1109–10 Kitchener, K.S., 517 Klassen, Robert, 426, 893–906 Klehr, Mary, 292 Klein, E., 605 Kleinsasser, Robert, 1033–45 Klenowski, V., 970 Klieme, E., 824 Klinger, D.A., 931 Knight, S.L., 530, 1044 Knobel, M., 1089 knowledge abstract, 739 academic, 739, 1103–4 community, 1106, 1107–12 contextualized, 1107 declarative, 739 funds of, 198, 213, 238, 280, 478, 616, 997, 1108 general pedagogical, 788, 789, 810–11 leadership, 449–50 practical, 36, 305, 536, 539, 739, 811, 824, 1105 procedural, 806, 810, 903 propositional, 806, 810 secondary, 261 see also pedagogical content knowledge; subject knowledge expertise knowledge building, 259 knowledge economy, 492, 974 Knowledge Quartet, 784 knowledge-related actions, 258–9 knowledge-sharing systems, 117–18 knowledge work, 276 Kobara, T., 657 Koehler, M.J., 581, 581, 582, 583 Kohlberg, L., 389–90, 403, 407, 422 Kohli, R., 236–7 Kole, J.J., 428 Kopcha, T.J., 859 Korb, M.P., 533 Korthagen, Fred A. J., 174, 180, 520, 528–41, 826–7, 860, 865, 1053, 1057 Kosnik, Clare, 107–19, 1029, 1040, 1041–2 Koster, B., 1039–40, 1051 Kotz, D.M., 482 Kouhpaeenejad, M.H., 213 Kraehe, A.M., 201 Krainer, K., 784
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Kreitz-Sandberg, S., 481 Kretchmar, K., 1105 Kristeva, J., 323 Kristjánsson, K., 423 Kuhn, D., 517 Kumashiro, K.K., 380 Kunter, M., 807–8, 900 Labaree, David, 52–3, 57 Laboratory School, University of Chicago, US, 61, 287 LaBoskey, V., 1075–6 Lacan, J., 323 Lachuk, Amy Johnson, 457–70 Ladson-Billings, Gloria, 221, 467, 473–4, 612–13, 620, 997 Lagerwerf, B., 533, 536 Laine, Sonja, 761–72 Lakehead University, Canada, 501–2 Lall, R., 498 Lalvani, P., 375 Lambert, J., 308 Lanas, M., 205 Lancaster, Joseph, 54 Landless Workers’ Movement, Brazil, 293, 294 Landry-Thomas, Kerii, 491–505 Lange, T., 197 language diversity in schools, 217–18 Indigenous language restoration programs, 484 and poststructuralism, 323–4 Language Enhancement and Academic Discourse Skills (LEADS), Singapore, 80 language teacher education, 569 English, 633–45 formative assessment, 932, 936 teacher educators, 1041–2 Lankshear, C., 1089 Lapsley, D.K., 393 latent state-trait theory, 901 Latour, Bruno, 38, 41 Latta, M.M., 1053 Latvia, 60–1 Laughter, J., 613 Lauricella, A.M., 617 Lave, J., 161–2, 173, 278, 404, 463, 530, 531, 549, 854, 856, 860 Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., 998 Lawthong, N., 658 Lea, M.R., 863 Lea, S.J., 983, 984–5 leadership knowledge, 449–50 learner-centred pedagogy, 130, 132, 287, 288, 1139–40, 1144 learner commonplace, 627–8, 637, 699, 728 learning communities, 112–13, 116, 199–200, 654–5, 878, 936
Book 2.indb 1198
Learning How to Learn (LHTL) project, UK, 935–6 Learning Mathematics for Teaching Project (LMT), 784 learning oriented assessment (LOA), 985 learning stories, 973 Learning to Learn from Mathematics Teaching Project, 784 Lecky, P., 533 Lee, D., 878 Lee, Jennifer, 658 Lee, T.S., 613 Lee, Wing On, 649–61 Lee, Y.J., 859 Leeferink, H., 529–30 legitimate peripheral participation, 161, 854 Leijen, Ä., 185, 186, 187 Leko, M.M., 858, 863–4 Lemke, J.L., 533 Lemosse, Michael, 58 LePage, P., 347, 348 lesson planning, 836–49, 890–1 lesson preparation method, in moral education, 397–8 Lesson Study, 144, 145, 148, 151–4, 155–6, 830, 842, 845–6, 879 Leuhmann, A.L., 171 Leung, F.K.S., 797 level reduction, 536–7 levelling, 550 Levinas, E., 336, 380 Levine, A., 1020 Levine, A.C., 843 LeVine, R.A., 124–5 Levitt, K., 935 Levitt, Theodore, 435–6 Lewis, C., 842 Lewis, E.B., 930 Leyva, D., 746 LGBTQ identified teachers, 376 LGBTQ students, 219–20, 230–1 and critical teacher education, 370, 375, 377, 378, 379–80, 600–2 Li, H., 750–1 Li, K., 749 Li, M., 751–2, 756 Li, X., 480 Li, Y., 841–2 Li, Yi, 633–45 Liakopoulou, M., 873, 874 Liberal religious education, 714–15, 718–20 Libya, 932 Lieberman, A., 960 lifelong learning, 656, 986 Lim-Teo, S.K., 565 liminal spaces, 357–8, 360, 361, 363 Lincoln Center, US, 705 Lincoln Schools, New York, 61 Lincoln, Y.S., 213
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
Linder, S.M., 933 linguistic diversity, 217–18 lisahunter, 681–91, 1178 Liston, D.P., 1001 literacy assessment, 967 digital, 578 ethical, 355, 362 micropolitical, 443–4, 446–7, 451–3 religious, 714, 720, 721 literacy education see language teacher education Literacy Education and Diverse Settings (LEADS) program, 239 literacy rates Nigeria, 747 Pakistan, 373 literature education, 699 see also creative arts education Little, J.W., 840 Liu, T.C., 861–2, 864 Liu Xiabo, 133 Livingston, C., 839 Livingston, K., 1043 Llinares, S., 784 Lloyd, G.M., 674 LOA see learning oriented assessment (LOA) Locke, Alaine, 39 Logan Square Neighborhood Association, Chicago, US, 294 logic models, 84 Lopes Cardozo, M.T.A., 484 López-Pastor, V.M., 931 Lorde, A., 303 Lortie, D., 685 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) iPad program, US, 578 Lotringer, S., 322 Loughran, John, 513–24, 564–5, 717, 1001, 1052–3, 1058–9 Loutzenheiser, Lisa, 317–30 Lovin, L.H., 1075 Lucas, T., 612, 621 Luckmann, T., 411 Lunenberg, F.C., 990 Lunenberg, M., 1035, 1039–40, 1053, 1054 Luttenegger, K.C., 933 Lyon, C.J., 936 Lyotard, J.F., 321 Lytle, S., 116, 879 McBeath, J., 955 McCarty, T.L., 613 McClelland, D.C., 785 McConaghy, C., 373 McCreery, E., 716 McDermott, M., 707
Book 2.indb 1199
1199
McDonald, M., 7, 8, 529, 1178 McDuffie, A.R., 571 Macfarlane-Dick, D., 988–9 McGarr, O., 357 McGettrick, B., 660 McGinty, S., 1157 McInerney, P., 477 McIntosh, P., 999 MacIntyre, A.C., 424 McLaren, P.L., 215, 223, 225, 475–6, 480, 483, 595, 875, 998 Maclellan, Effie, 187, 253–63 McMahon, M., 848–9 McMillan, J.H., 988 McMillan, W., 1028 McNamara, O., 357 McNeil, B., 1068 Macy, L., 636, 644–5 Madden, Brooke, 41, 233, 485, 1149–60, 1172, 1178 Madrid, D., 644 Maguire, Meg, 594–606, 1020 Mahoney, P., 355 Major, Jae, 610–22 Malaguzzi, Loris, 287–8 Malaysia, 132, 873, 874 Malins, P., 482 managerialist discourses, 242 see also new public management Manara, C., 1042 Mann, Horace, 287 Mansfield, C.F., 186 Mansur, R., 1068, 1075 Manzon, Maria, 649–61 Mao Tse-Tung, 108 M¯aori, 484, 618–19, 752, 753, 1158 Margolin, I., 1053–4 Marker, M., 621 Marmon Silko, L., 302 Marsh, Monica Miller, 869–83 Marshall, B., 935–6, 971 Martin, S.D., 1075 Marton, Ference, 541, 721, 722 Marx, Karl, 476 Maskit, D., 823 Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), 1086 master’s degree level teacher education, 79, 94, 103, 748, 955, 1083, 1119, 1122–3 Mata, L., 873 Match Teacher Residency, US, 1102 mathematics content knowledge, 788–9, 792, 813 mathematics education formative assessment, 936 professional competencies, 784, 788–9, 792, 813 teacher planning, 844 see also STEM teacher education
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mathematics pedagogical content knowledge, 789, 792 Mathematics Teaching and Learning to Teach Project (MTLT), 784 Mattson, M., 1022, 1024 Maugham, Emma, 41 Maulana, R., 826 Max, C., 604, 1103–4 May, H., 498 Mayer, D., 1020, 1036 Mayer, R.E., 824 Maynard, T., 514 Mayrand, S., 936 MDGs see Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Mead, G.H., 211, 269, 271 Meaney, T., 197 meaning-oriented learning, 147, 148, 152, 153 measures and instruments character, 429 moral educational competences, 396–8, 399–400 situational judgment tests, 902–6, 904, 905 teacher beliefs, 347–8 teaching effectiveness, 896 Medgyes, P., 643 media arts education, 699 see also creative arts education mediated morals, 409–10 mediation, 273–7, 278–80 Meijer, Paulien C., 144, 145, 154, 177–89 Melbourne Taxonomy for Clinical Teaching, Australia, 917 Melvin Silverman, 1140 Memon, N., 716 Mena, Juanjo, 509–12, 513–24, 1176 Menter, I., 921, 1037 mentoring, 667–8, 1024–5 developmental approaches, 514–15, 519–20, 523–4 micropolitical perspective, 444–6, 448–9 in moral education, 428 and pedagogical content knowledge development, 570–1, 572 and teacher agency, 273–7, 278–80 and teacher identity formation, 166, 167, 170 teacher planning, 845–6, 848 Mercer, Neil, 143–56 Meri, M., 765 meta-positioning, 187 Metcalf, K.K., 844 Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences, Chile, 746 Metsäpelto, R.-L., 905–6 Metzler, M., 684 Mexico educational reforms, 675 formative assessment, 935
Book 2.indb 1200
Indigenous student drop-out rates, 483–4 learning about others, 461, 464 teacher planning, 844 Meyer-Mork, J., 1070 Michalsky, T., 568 Michie, Gregory, 289–90 micropolitical literacy, 443–4, 446–7, 451–3 micropolitical perspective, 441–54 microteaching, 550–1 Middle East, 73–4 see also individual countries Middleton, S., 329 Miele, D., 918 Mignolo, W.D., 483 migration, 493, 1083–4, 1135–8, 1144n1, 1145n2 milieu commonplace, 627–8, 637, 649, 699, 728, 729, 730 Millennials, 216–17 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 1125, 1127 Mills, G., 641, 642 Millwater, J., 445 Milson, A., 347, 348 mindsets, 767–8, 771 minority students recruitment and retention of, 491–505 see also diversity Mirra, N., 237–8, 477–8 Misco, T., 653 Mishra, P., 581, 581, 582, 583 Mislevy, R., 127 Mitchell, Chaunda A., 491–505 Mitchell, D.E., 1120–1 Mitchell, Roland W., 435–9, 462, 491–505, 1176 Moate, J., 642 mobile technology, 1087 ‘model’ schools, 61 models of teacher education, 52–8 moderation, as situated social process, 970 MOFET Institute, Israel, 1055 Moll, Luis C., 213, 997 monitorial system, 54 Montaño, T., 228, 237 Monte-Sano, C., 569–70 Montecinos, C., 920, 922, 973 Montgomery, D., 474 MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), 1086 Moon, B., 1102, 1111 moral and ethical education, 333–6 co-construction of work, 359–60, 363 cognitive-developmental approach, 387–400, 395, 403, 407 collective teacher inquiry, 358–9, 360, 361, 363 cultural moral relativism, 410–13, 414 developing moral reasoning and imagination, 354–64 developmental discipline, 393
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
domain-based moral education (DBME), 392–3, 397–8 guided participation, 406–7, 408–9 Just Community approach, 390–2 liminal spaces, 357–8, 360, 361, 363 moral developmental theory, 389–90, 403, 407, 422 moral dilemma discussion, 390, 413–14, 427–8 moral educational competences, 394–8, 395, 399–400, 812 poststructuralist ethics, 369, 379–81 sociocultural perspectives, 403–15 teacher beliefs, 344–50 virtue ethics, 335–6, 403, 419–30 see also critical teacher education moral aspects of teacher education, 53, 56–7, 61–2 moral autonomy, 389, 407 moral development sociocultural perspectives, 404–7 stage model of, 389–90, 403, 407, 422 moral dilemma discussion, 390, 413–14, 427–8 moral educational competences, 394–8, 395, 399–400, 812 moral functioning, 404–5 moral imagination, 354–64 moral mediational means, 404–5, 406, 409–10 moral pluralism, 411–13, 414 moral reasoning, 354–64, 389–90 moral relativism, 410–13, 414 moral self, 405 Moral Sphere Theory, 336 Moral Work of Teaching Framework, 347–8 Morales, J.A., 477 Morgan, W., 601 Morrell, E., 237–8, 477–8 Morvay, Jenna, 228–43, 1175, 1178 Moss, P.A., 964 motherhood, ideal forms of, 62 motivation see teacher motivation Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, Ohio, US, 239 Mthembu, J., 985, 986 Mulcahy, David, 41 multicultural education courses, 372, 375 multicultural teacher education, 473–83 see also culturally relevant pedagogy multiple teacher identities, 144–5, 146, 154, 155, 196–7, 198, 215–17 Munby, H., 843 Muñoz, R.A., 482 Munthe, Elaine, 836–49 Murdoch University, Australia, 704 Murphy, L., 458 Murphy, Shaun, 681–91 Murray, Jean, 1017–30, 1035, 1039, 1177 Murray, O.J., 602 Murrell, P.C., Jr, 1107
Book 2.indb 1201
1201
music education, 699 see also creative arts education Musset, P., 594 Myers, J., 656 Myles, J., 167 Myrsky project, Finland, 702 Naci, K., 642 NAEYC see National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) standards, US Nanda, P., 130 Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 80 narrative, 40 in conscientization, 233–5 in language teacher education, 639 and social justice, 998 and teacher agency, 301–11 in teacher identity formation, 180–1, 182, 306 narrative shifting, 308 Narvaez, D., 347, 393 Nast, H.J., 364 National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) standards, US, 755–6 National Board Certification (NBC), US, 955 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), US, 807–8, 878, 947, 955, 1142 National Board of Education, Finland, 79 National Center for Education Statistics, US, 494 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), New Zealand, 753 National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Nigeria, 748 National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), US, 74, 1107 National Council for Teaching Mathematics, US, 673 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), US, 650 National Council of Educational Standards, US, 703 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), 638, 873 National Curriculum Standards for Teacher Education, China, 751 National Education Association (NEA), US, 768 National Geographic Network of Alliances for Geography Education, 655 National Indian Brotherhood, Canada, 294 National Institute of Education, Finland, 955 National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore, 72, 80, 945, 947, 948–9 National Research Council, US, 827 National Teacher Evaluation System (NTES), Chile, 747 Native Americans, 1157 community interaction, 294–5, 296 decolonial teacher education, 484–5 narrative and agency, 302, 303 teacher activism, 235–6, 239–40 Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs), 643–4
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Native Indian Teacher Education Program (NITEP), University of British Columbia, Canada, 294–5, 296 Nayler, J., 452 NBPTS see National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), US NCATE see National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), US NCTE see National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) negotiation, in internship and induction, 445–6 Nelson, C.D., 305 Nelson, C.E., 990 Nelson, M.M., 564 neo-conservative ideology, 378 neoliberalism, 242, 336, 378, 482–3, 554–6, 757, 1083, 1105, 1117–28 Nerland, M., 971 NESTs (Native English Speaking Teachers), 643–4 Netherlands developmental learning approaches, 522 mentoring, 1024–5 moral and ethical responsibilities, 388 realistic teacher education, 537–40, 538, 860 school-based teacher education, 1023, 1024 situated cognition approaches, 859, 860 social studies and civic education, 655 stages of teacher development, 821 teacher educators, 1035, 1039–40, 1041, 1043, 1052 teacher identity, 186–7, 211 teacher learning patterns, 147–8 teacher planning, 841 Network Electronic Portfolio, 641 Neuman, M., 449–50 neuroticism, 901 new materialism, 38–9, 41 new public management, 1117–22 New South Wales Institute of Teachers, Australia, 354 New York Collective of Radical Educators Inquiry to Action Groups, US, 236 New Zealand changes to teacher education, 1024 competency-based teacher education, 872 culturally relevant pedagogy, 618–19 decolonial teacher education, 484 early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 745, 752–4, 756, 757 educational reforms, 673 formative assessment, 931, 934 history of teacher education, 59 home-school communication, 973 Indigenous student drop-out rates, 483–4 lack of teacher diversity, 494 learning stories, 973 neoliberalism, 1119
Book 2.indb 1202
pedagogical approaches, 124 pedagogical content knowledge development, 568 positivist programs, 33 school-based teacher education, 666 social studies and civic education, 655 teacher educators, 1018, 1027–8, 1076 Nias, J., 363 Nichol, J., 859 Nicol, D.J., 988–9 NIE see National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore Nieto, J., 615–16, 617 Nieto, S., 474 Nigeria, 465–6, 744–5, 747–9, 756–7 Nigerian Certificate of Education (NCE), 748 Nilssen, V.L., 570 Nilsson, P., 564–5, 933 niqab bans, 493 NITEP see Native Indian Teacher Education Program (NITEP), University of British Columbia, Canada NNESTs (Non-Native English Speaking Teachers), 643–4 No Child Left Behind legislation, US, 33, 754 Noddings, N., 112, 336, 469, 553 Nolen, S., 973, 974 non-academic attributes, assessment of, 893–4, 897, 897, 898, 899–906, 904, 905 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and teacher activism, 240–2 Non-Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs), 643–4 Noone, L., 476 normal school model, 23, 55–7, 58 Norman, A.D., 931–2 normativity, challenging, 375–6 North America educational reforms, 555 evaluation of teacher education programs, 74–5, 76, 85, 1121 physical education teacher education, 682, 684 see also individual countries North American Federal Trade Agreement, 464 Norton-Meier, L.A., 604 Norway evaluation of teacher education programs, 73, 85 formative assessment, 930, 931, 937 mentoring, 1025 teacher agency, 276 teacher beliefs, 346 teacher educators, 1036–7, 1038 terrorist attack, 493 university-based teacher education, 1023 Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT), 73 Norwich, B., 769
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Index
nostalgia, narratives of, 305–6 Novak, J.D., 540 novice-to-expert model, 518–20 Nucci, Larry, 392–3, 397–8 Null, Wesley, 870 Nussbaum, M., 3, 308, 309, 311n2, 469 Nuttall, J., 1037 Oancea, Alys, 61–2 obesity, 688 occupational professionalism, 273 O’Donoghue, T., 51 OECD see Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) O’Flaherty, J., 357 Ofsted, England, 1039 Ogawa, R., 453, 496 O’Grady, K., 717, 718 Ohio State University, US, 239, 920 Okhremtchouk, I., 915 Olafson, L., 522 Oldenburg, R., 550 Oliveira, I., 934 Ololube, N.P., 465–6 Olsen, B., 161, 164, 181, 211, 212, 213, 224, 231 Olson, J.K., 204 Oman, 74, 426, 905, 1137 O’Neill, Sue Catherine, 853–66 Oner, D., 564 ongoing teacher education see continuing professional development (CPD) online classroom simulations, 654 Online School of Civic Education, 241 Ontario Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession, Canada, 948–9 Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance, Canada, 75 onto-ethical turn, 37–42 ontological realism, 719, 720, 721 ontology of experience, 40 Oosterheert, I.E., 147 openness, 901, 1089–90 Opfer, V.D., 147, 149, 150 Oppenshaw, Roger, 59 oppression and cultural moral relativism, 410–12 and privileged identities, 217–18 racial realism, 494–5 see also critical teacher education oral tradition of teacher education, 53 Orfield, G., 221 organisational professionalism, 272–3 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 23–4, 33, 90, 555, 665, 701, 703, 733, 899, 1135, 1136, 1141, 1142 Organization for Justice in Teaching, 237
Book 2.indb 1203
1203
Orgill, M.K., 174 Orland-Barak, Lily, 247–51, 1175, 1176 Osbourne, J., 666 Oser, F., 394 Osguthorpe, R., 9, 345, 347–8, 426 Otero, V.K., 930 overseas study, 549, 1137 overt compliance, 445 ownership, in teacher identity formation, 182, 184 Oyler, Celia, 228–43, 1175, 1178 Ozola, Iveta, 60–1 Ozugul, G., 844–5 PACT see Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), US Page, T.M., 1122–3 Paige, R., 755 Paine, Lynn, 58, 793–4, 1133–45, 1174 Pajares, M., 341 PAKEM, Indonesia, 1139–40 Pakistan, 74, 373–4, 657, 1036 Palmer, Parker, 554 Paluck, E.L., 480 Pang, M.F., 722 Pantic’, N., 253, 292, 808, 873 Panwapa, 503–4, 505n1 parallel teacher education program model, 736, 737 Pardo, M., 746 Parent Mentor Program, Chicago, US, 294 Paris, D., 613 Park, K.M., 797 Parker, B., 466 participatory action research, 614–15, 615, 617 patriarchy, 481 Patrick, C.L., 901 Patterson, Fiona, 893–906 Patton, M.Q., 83 Pavlenko, A., 305 Payne, Katherina A., 286–96, 1101–14, 1177 PDSs see professional development schools (PDSs) Pea, R., 278 Pearson Education, 755, 1141 Pecheone, R.L., 916 Peck, C.A., 968 Pedagogia da Terra, Brazil, 293–4, 295, 296 pedagogic practices and actions, 1003–4 pedagogical content knowledge, 394, 397, 561–73, 686, 739, 765 mathematics, 789, 792 and professional competencies, 788–9, 811–13 technological, 580–4, 581 pedagogical expertise, 145, 152 pedagogical relations, 765, 766 pedagogy child-centred, 130, 132, 287, 288, 1139–40, 1144 counter-hegemonic, 232–3, 476, 877
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critical, 475–6, 482, 594–606, 870–1, 875–7, 997, 998 culturally relevant, 216, 220–1, 610–22, 615, 997, 1136–7 decolonizing, 485, 1152, 1154–6 developmental learning approaches, 513–24, 516 history of, 60–1 Indigenous, 657–8, 1150–9 realist, 720–2 technological, 577–89, 581 three-level (gestalt-schemata-theory) model of teacher learning, 528–41, 860 vocational, 739–41 see also constructivist learning theories Pedder, D., 150, 935–6 Pedretti, E.G., 198 peer coaching, 571 peer supported learning, 538–9 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 40 Penetito, W., 484 Penney, D., 967 People’s Education Movement, 236 performance appraisal, 952–4, 953, 959–60 Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), US, 914, 915 performance-driven assessment, 670 performance-oriented learning, 147 performance standards, 967–8 Perry, W.G., 516–17 personal beliefs see teacher beliefs personal factors professional competencies, 783–98, 785 teacher identity formation, 160, 164–6, 178–81 teacher learning patterns, 146, 146, 148, 152 personality tests, 898 personality traits, assessment of, 901, 902, 904–6, 904 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 56 PETE see physical education teacher education Peterman, Francine, 193–206 Peterson, P.L., 838 Petish, D., 564 Phelan, A., 330 phenomenography, 721, 723 Philip, T.M., 234 Philippines, 658–9, 1137 Phillion, J., 308 philosophy in research, 29–42 agonistic debates, 36–7 critical theory, 33–4, 35, 37, 43n4, 475 interpretivism, 32, 35, 37, 42n2, 43n4 new materialism, 38–9, 41 onto-ethical turn, 37–42 positivism and post-positivism, 32–3, 35, 37, 43n4 poststructuralism, 34–5, 37, 38, 43n4 teacher practical knowledge research, 35–6, 37 phonics, 115
Book 2.indb 1204
phronesis, 422, 423–4, 427 physical education teacher education, 569, 571, 681–91 Piaget, Jean, 113, 403, 407, 532, 547 Pianta, R.C., 399 Picower, Bree, 229, 290 Pierce, J.L., 182, 184 Pillen, M.T., 181, 186–7, 197 Pinar, W.F., 871, 875, 876 Ping, W., 751 Pinnegar, Stefinee, 1011–14, 1065–76, 1176 Pippin, James, 68–87 PISA see Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Pitfield, M., 570–1 Pittard, E., 599 place-based education, 485, 1152, 1154–6 Placier, M., 1070, 1072 Placier, P., 771–2 planning, teacher, 836–49, 890–1 PLC-METS, 171 PLCs see professional learning communities (PLCs) pluralism, moral, 411–13, 414 Poikkeus, A.-M., 905–6 Poland, 62, 841 policy, 1117–28 globalization of, 1138–40 see also educational reforms policy-led curriculum change, 672–5 Political Skill Inventory, 449 political, social, and cultural responsibilities, 435–9 critical multicultural teacher education, 473–83 decolonial teacher education, 483–5 learning about others, 457–70 micropolitical perspective, 441–54 Ponder, G.A., 839 Pontifical Catholic University, Chile, 746 Popham, W.J., 967 Popkewitz, T.S., 475 Popova, Maria, 499 portfolio assessments, 39, 640–1, 755, 969–70 Portugal, 73, 934, 1023 positioning theory, 445 positivism, 32–3, 35, 37, 43n4 Posner, M.I., 519 post-positivism, 32–3 post-racial discourse, 480 postcolonial theory, 34 teacher agency, 317–19 teacher identity formation, 213–15, 214 Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), South Africa, 980–3 postmemories, 305–6 postmodernism teacher agency, 317–19, 320–3 teacher identity formation, 210–11, 213–25, 214
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
poststructuralism, 34–5, 37, 38, 43n4 recruitment and retention of underrepresented students, 491–505 teacher agency, 317–19, 323–6 teacher identity formation, 213–15, 214, 479, 480 poststructuralist ethics, 369, 379–81 potentiating environments, 275 Power, A.M., 391 power, and governmentality, 325–6 power distance, 125, 126 Power, F.C., 391 Power, K., 1053 power relations, and identity, 220–1 practical knowledge, 35–6, 305, 536, 539, 739, 811, 824, 1105 practical teaching experiences, 61, 1022–3, 1024–5 constructivist perspectives, 549–52 culturally relevant, 616–18 formative assessment, 932–3 and pedagogical content knowledge development, 566–71 physical education, 684–6 service learning, 375, 462–4, 466–7, 616–18, 1110, 1137 situated cognition approaches, 862–3 social studies and civic education, 653 summative assessment, 915, 919, 921 see also community interaction practical wisdom, 422, 423–4, 427 ‘practising’ schools, 61 practitioner research, teacher educators, 1027–8, 1051, 1052–4, 1065–76 pragmatism, 36, 39, 40, 336 pre-reflective thinking, 517 Price, J., 642 Priestley, M., 271, 839 primary values, 411–12 principled resistance, 453 prior experiences, and teacher identity, 164–6, 194–7 private schooling, 133 privileged identities, 217–18 problem-based learning, 143 Problem Solving Cycle, 171 problematic learning, 148, 152 procedural knowledge, 806, 810, 903 process and implementation studies, 84 process-product research, 33, 254–5 process-related actions, 258, 259 productive friction, 972 professional competencies, 777–81 adaptive expertise, 549, 827–31, 829 continuing professional development, 820–31, 829, 855, 857–66 critical pedagogy discourse, 870–1, 875–7 cultural competence, 474, 477, 549, 875–7 definitions, 805–8, 824
Book 2.indb 1205
1205
hybrid discourse, 878–9 moral and ethical, 394–8, 395, 399–400, 812 personal, situational, and social determinants of, 783–98, 785, 793, 795 situated cognition approaches, 853–66 status quo discourse, 870, 871–5, 877 teacher knowledge, 788–9, 792, 796–7, 803–15, 811 teacher planning, 836–49 transactional discourse, 879–83 see also professionalism professional cultures, and teacher identity, 201–3 professional development see continuing professional development (CPD) professional development schools (PDSs), 61, 118, 550, 1038 professional ethics, 354–5, 421, 427, 768–9 professional identity formation see teacher identity formation professional interests, 446–7 professional learning communities (PLCs), 113, 116, 878, 936 Professional Quality of Teacher Educators model, 1055 professional uncertainty, 847–8 professionalism, 133, 272–3, 356, 421, 425, 716, 768 see also professional competencies Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 90, 91, 92, 665, 670, 675, 764, 876–7, 899, 1141 Project 2020, Vietnam, 1036 project-centred learning, 143 Project STAR experiment, Tennessee, US, 495 propositional knowledge, 806, 810 Puerto Rico, 655 Pullin, D.C., 964 pupil-teacher system, 53–5 Putnam, H., 1068–9 Putnam, R., 163 Qatar, 1137 Quadros, S., 875 qualified relativism, 412–13, 414 qualified teacher status (QTS), England, 875–6 quality of teacher education see evaluation of teacher education programs quantum mechanics, 38 quasi-reflective thinking, 517 Queensland University of Technology, Australia, 463 queer theory, 481, 601–2 Quijano, A., 483 Race: the Power of an Illusion (television series), 220 Rachels, J., 410–11 racial and ethnic identities and critical teacher education, 372, 373, 480 see also diversity
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racial realism, 494–5 Raffe, David, 51 Rai, P., 281–2 Rajuan, M., 181 Ramsey, Paul, 56 Randel, B., 933 Rashidi, N., 639 RATE (Research About Teacher Education) study, 1021–2, 1028 rational planning model, 837 rational system, 535 Ratnam, T., 466 Ravitch, Diane, 50–1 Razquin, Paula, 1117–28 RBF see Results-Based Financing (RBF) re-credentialing, 954 realism critical, 40, 714, 719, 721, 723 ethical, 36 ontological, 719, 720, 721 racial, 494–5 realist pedagogy, 720–2 realistic teacher education, 537–40, 538, 827, 860 reasoning epistemological, 516–17, 516 moral, 354–64, 389–90 reciprocal causation, 895 recruitment and retention of underrepresented students, 491–505 Red Pedagogy, 1157 reflection and reflective practices, 40, 256, 345, 793, 826–7 and assessment, 1001–3 constructivist pedagogies, 552–3 critical reflection, 374, 427–8, 429, 477, 479–80, 619, 638, 640–1 culturally relevant pedagogy, 618, 619 inclusive education, 766 language teacher education, 638, 640–1 levels of reflective thinking, 517 and pedagogical content knowledge development, 570–1 realistic teacher education, 538–9 situated cognition approaches, 862 and social justice, 1001–3 social studies education, 654 reflective critical space, 355, 362 reflective nostalgia, 306 reflexivity, 1002 reform-minded teacher identity, 171, 196 reframing, 520 Reggio-inspired schools, 287–8 regimes of truth, 322–3, 325–6 Reid, Jo-Anne, 610–22 Reid, M.J., 839 Reiman, A.J., 901
Book 2.indb 1206
relational agency, 281–2, 308 relational expertise, 281 relativism, 516, 517 epistemic, 719, 720, 721 moral, 410–13, 414 Relay Graduate School of Education, US, 1102, 1113 religious education, 713–24 religious identities, 481–2 religious literacy, 714, 720, 721 Remillard, J.T., 674–5 Rennert-Ariev, P., 76, 957, 958, 958 representationalism, 32 research and knowledge-sharing systems, 117–18 research learning orientation, 147 resilience, 186 resistance, in teacher identity formation, 183, 184 resistant alteration, 445 responsibility, and agency, 271, 272 Results-Based Financing (RBF), 1125 Revell, L., 346 Rice, S., 1124 Rich, A., 601 Richardson, F., 790 Richardson, V., 345, 546, 547 Richert, A., 1075–6 Richter, D., 108, 428 Riegel, U., 716 Rikers, R.M.J.P., 825 Rimm-Kaufmann, S.E., 901 Riquarts, K., 876 Risko, V., 638 Rivera Maulucci, M.S., 307 Roberts-Mahoney, H., 1174 Roberts, R.C., 422 Robertson, S., 970 Robinson, K., 602 Robinson, M., 1028 Robinson, Wendy, 49–64 Rockoff, J.E., 895, 951–2 Rodgers, C.R., 180–1 Rogers, G., 199 Rogoff, B., 404 Rohstock, Anne, 60 Rokeach, M., 340, 341 role modeling, 495 Rolheiser, C., 636 Romania, 873 Romero, D.E., 1120–1 Rorrison, D., 972 Rose, M., 999 Rosiek, Jerry, 10, 11, 23–7, 29–42, 308, 438, 496, 501, 1171–2 Ross, J.A., 186 Ross, V., 627–8 Rossi, T., 685 Rota, A., 716
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
Roth, M., 271 rough ground concept, 276 Rouse, M., 763 routine experts, 827 Rovegno, I.C., 569 Rowett, Emma, 893–906 Rowland, T., 792 Rowlands, M., 854 Rowley, J., 202, 203 Ruohotie-Lyhty, M., 199–200, 642 Russia, 1119, 1123 Rust, C., 983, 984 Rusznyak, L., 843 Ruthven, K., 792 Ryan, C., 931 Ryan, F., 881 Ryan, James, 235–6, 494 Ryle, G., 806 Ryoo, J.J., 998 S-STEP research, 1066, 1070, 1075–6 Saari, S., 73 Saathoff, S.D., 478 Sabah, Malaysia, 132 Sachs, Judyth, 233–4, 242 Sadovnik, Alan, 50 Safari, P., 639 safe spaces, 377 Sahlberg, Pasi, 108, 118, 870, 872, 879, 899 Said, Edward, 327 Saigal, A., 171 Salamanca Statement, 465, 762–3 same-sex marriage, 373, 600 Sammons, P., 822, 823 Sancho, J.M., 212 Sandberg, J., 823 Sandholtz, J., 586 Sang, G., 751 Sanger, Matthew N., 9, 339–50, 356, 426 Sannino, A., 273–4 Santagata, R., 792–3, 793 Santoro, N., 234 Sarasa, M.C., 305 Sarawak, Malaysia, 132 Sarbin, T.R., 303 Sargent, T.C., 878 Sarris, G., 302 Sarroub, L.K., 875 Sarup, M., 320, 321 Sato, Mistilina, 887–91, 916, 944–60, 1176 Saudi Arabia, 932, 1145n2 Saussure, F.D., 323 Sawyer, R., 707 scaffolding tools, 564–5, 568, 572 Scardamalia, M., 259 Scarino, A., 967
Book 2.indb 1207
1207
Schaefer, Lee, 681–91 Scheerens, J., 785 Scheib, J., 203–4, 205 schema level of teacher learning, 533, 534–5, 860 schematization, 538, 539 Schempp, P.G., 446, 452 Schieble, M., 481 Schmidt, W.H., 205–6 Schneider, M.C., 933 scholarship of disruption, 11 scholarship of integration, 1–2, 7, 8, 9, 10–11 Schommer, M., 518 Schön, Donald A., 40, 520, 640 school-based practicum, 61, 1022–3, 1024–5 constructivist perspectives, 549–52 culturally relevant, 616–18 formative assessment, 932–3 and pedagogical content knowledge development, 566–71 physical education, 684–6 service learning, 375, 462–4, 466–7, 616–18, 1110, 1137 situated cognition approaches, 862–3 social studies and civic education, 653 summative assessment, 915, 919, 921 see also community interaction school-based teacher education, 55, 168–9, 216, 238, 549–52, 604, 666, 667–72, 898, 1023, 1024–5, 1102, 1105, 1119–20, 1124, 1142, 1143 School Direct, England, 1120 School Drama programme, Australia, 705–6 school-lessness, 1084, 1085–97 schoolification, of early years, 750, 753, 754–5, 756–7 Schraw, G., 522 Schuck, S., 111 Schugurensky, D., 656 Schuitema, J., 394–6 Schuls, J.V., 1120 Schwab, Joseph J., 627, 634–5, 637, 638–9, 644, 649, 650, 699–700, 728, 730, 734, 739, 1068 Schweisfurth, M., 1139, 1140 science-based kinesiology, 682–3 science education formative assessment, 930, 931, 933, 935 teacher educators, 1041 see also STEM teacher education scientific concepts, 408 Scotland career advancement, 955 history of teacher education, 56 mentoring, 1025 summative assessment, 921 teacher educators, 1037, 1041 university-based teacher education, 1023, 1025 Scott, K.H., 180–1
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Scriven, M., 986 SDGs see Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) second-wave feminism, 596 secondary knowledge, 261 secondary values, 411–12 secular moral education, 714 Sedlak, Michal, 58 Seidel, S., 698 Seidel, T., 792 Seidl, B., 239 Seiki, S., 463, 464 selection into teacher education, 893–906, 897, 904, 905, 945–6, 956–8 self and constructivist pedagogies, 553–4 cultural-historical accounts of, 270–1 moral, 405 poststructuralism, 323 and teacher identity, 164–6 self-assessment, 186, 966 self-care, ethical, 380–1 self-conceptualization, 183 self-determination theory, 393, 901 self-directed learning (SDL), 552 self-efficacy, 256–8, 261–2, 347, 790, 900–1 self-guided professional learning, teacher educators, 1052–4 self-regulation of learning, 928–9 self-understanding, 303 and learning about others, 457–70 Selleck, Richard, 60 Semel, Susan, 50 Sen, A., 308, 1127 Senger, E., 673 sense-making, 278 in teacher identity formation, 182–3, 184 Serbia, 873 service learning, 375, 462–4, 466–7, 616–18, 1110, 1137 Sesame Street, 503–4 Sexton, S.S., 618–19 sexual identities, 215–16, 219–20, 230–1 and critical teacher education, 370, 372, 373, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379–80, 481, 600–2 sexual inequality and cultural moral relativism, 411 education of girls, 129–30, 131 marginalization of women, 217 Shagrir, L., 1037, 1038 Shapira-Lishchinsky, O., 427–8 Sharma, U., 465 Shavelson, R.J., 805, 806, 839 Shields, D.L., 394 shifan system, China, 23 Shim, J.M., 479 Shimura, T., 653
Book 2.indb 1208
Shin, E.K., 655 Shin’ichi, S., 56 Shirley, V., 1157 Shor, I., 477, 875 Shteiman, Y., 1043 Shulman, Lee, 394, 500, 562, 580–1, 686, 789, 811–13, 1044 Shultz, M.M., 903 Shuttleworth, James Kay, 54 Siedentop, D., 686 Siegel, M.A., 932, 937 Sikes, P., 716 Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative (SVMI), 935 Sim, J.B-Y., 656–7 Sime, D., 839 Simon, Brian, 60 Simon, H.A., 519 Simon, M., 674 Singapore career advancement, 954–5 constructivist pedagogies, 550, 552 educational reforms, 555 evaluation of teacher education programs, 71, 72, 76, 80–1, 85, 87 history of teacher education, 60 learning about others, 465 pedagogical content knowledge development, 565 professional competencies, 876–7, 878 professional learning communities, 878 school-based teacher education, 1105 selection into teacher education, 945, 946, 957–8 social studies and civic education, 651, 654, 656–7 systems view, 90–1, 92, 94, 99, 103 teacher identity, 168, 212 teacher planning, 840 teaching credentials, 947, 948–9 Singer, Gusta, 62 Sinnema, C., 655 situated cognition approaches continuing professional development, 170–1, 857–66 professional competencies, 853–66 teacher identity formation, 160–74 situated curricula, 373–4 situated learning, 162–3, 171, 408–9, 477–8, 530–1, 540, 541 see also three-level (gestalt-schemata-theory) model of teacher learning situational autonomy, 260, 261 situational determinants of professional competencies, 783–98, 785 situational judgment tests, 902–6, 904, 905 Skeie, G., 716 Skott, J., 673 Sleeper, Ralph, 29 Sleeter, Christine, 233, 613, 616, 620, 621
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
small stories approach, 306, 308–9 Smit, Brigitte, 204, 212, 979–92 Smith, E.R., 550–1 Smith, K., 670, 930, 937, 1036–7, 1057, 1060 Smith, L.F., 931 Smith, L.T., 218 Smith, M., 450–1, 595 Smith, R., 154 Smyth, D.M., 445 Snow, J.L., 1075 Snow, N.E., 429 Snowden, Edward, 133 social activism, 228–43, 290, 475 social cognitive theory, 895 social constructivism, 404 and language teacher education, 637–8 and moral education, 403–15 social contract theory, 336 social determinants of professional competencies, 783–98, 785, 793, 795 social interaction and constructivist learning, 113 and moral development, 405–6 see also community interaction social justice and assessment, 994–1006 conservative orientations towards, 370, 371, 375, 376 critical orientations towards, 370, 371 culturally relevant pedagogy, 216, 220–1, 610–22, 615, 997, 1136–7 culturally responsive teaching, 40, 198–9, 200–1, 205, 474–5, 477, 478, 690, 999 definitions, 296n4, 470n1 and dialogue, 997–8 inclusive education, 761–72 and learning about others, 457–70 multicultural teacher education, 473–83 social liberal orientations towards, 370, 371, 375, 376 and social theories, 286–96 and teacher activism, 228–9, 232, 234, 237–8, 241 see also critical teacher education social learning theory, 1003 social liberal orientations towards social justice, 370, 371, 375, 376 social media/networking, 223, 553, 1086, 1087, 1091, 1092, 1093–4 social nature of teacher identity, 144, 145, 146, 154, 155 social praxis, 380 social reproduction theories, 596 social situation of development (SSD), 274–5, 277, 278 social studies teacher education, 649–61 social theories, and teacher agency, 286–96
Book 2.indb 1209
1209
social transformation, 36 socialization see teacher socialization socially constructed identities, 220–1 socio-political contexts, 10 sociocultural health issues, 688 sociocultural perspectives, 603–5 assessment, 963–75 moral and ethical education, 403–15 Sockett, H., 422 Soini, T., 183–4, 304 solidarity approach, 1109–10 Solomon, R.P., 291 Soltis, J., 428 Sooter, T., 747 Sorensen, P., 673 South Africa, 132 creative arts education, 703 history of teacher education, 55, 1102 narrative and agency, 308–10 recruitment of underrepresented students, 501 social justice issues, 373 social studies and civic education, 652 student-centred assessment, 980–3, 986 teacher educators, 1028 teacher identity, 212 teacher migration, 1137 teacher professionalism, 133 South Korea bilingual teachers, 1145n3 Early Study Abroad, 1145n2 educational reforms, 555 English language teacher education, 643 evaluation of teacher education programs, 71, 77–9, 77 immigration, 1136 population in higher education, 1102 professional competencies, 876–7 social studies and civic education, 652–3, 655 teacher performance appraisal, 954 teacher planning, 844 space of reasons, 276–7 Spain formative assessment, 931 immigration, 1135 learning about others, 465 teacher identity, 212, 213 university-based teacher education, 669 Spear-Swerling, L., 569, 839 special needs, inclusive education, 761–72 specialist normal school model, 23, 55–7, 58 Spencer, L.M., 786 Spencer, S.M., 786 Spillane, J.P., 196, 918 Spivak, Gaytri C., 327–8, 329 spontaneous concepts, 408 Sports Education, 687
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Spours, Ken, 51 Spring, Joel, 503–4 Sri Lanka, 641 SSD see social situation of development (SSD) stage models of moral development, 389–90, 403, 407, 422 of teacher development, 820–3 Staiger, D.O., 895 standardization, 76, 81 standardized testing, 38–9, 115 early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 754, 756 selection into teacher education, 946 stereotype threat, 495 teaching credentials, 950, 956–7 see also high stakes testing standards-based teacher education, summative assessment, 912, 913–16, 913 Stanford University, US, 755, 871–2, 934–5 Stapleton, W., 854 Startin, R.J., 716 status quo discourse of professional competency, 870, 871–5, 877 Stears, M., 195 Steele, Claude, 495 STEM teacher education, 563–7, 568–9, 631, 665–77 Stenhouse, V.L., 476 stereotype threat, 495 Stern, J., 717 Sternberg, R.J., 903 Stetsenko, A., 270–1 Stevens, D., 875–6, 878 Steward, Lucy, 55 Stiggins, R.J., 967, 985, 988, 989 Stobart, G., 964, 966 Stodolsky, S.S., 193, 202 Stonewall, 601 storytelling, 40 in conscientization, 233–5 in language teacher education, 639 and social justice, 998 and teacher agency, 301–11 in teacher identity formation, 180–1, 182, 306 Stow, David, 56 strategic essentialism, 328 Strawhecker, J., 567 stretching environments, 275 Strike, K.A., 428 Stringer, E., 641–2 Strom, Kathryn, 41 Strong-Wilson, T., 234–5, 1157–8 structuralism, 323 structured professional learning programs, teacher educators, 1054–7 Stuart, C., 168, 198 student-centred approaches to assessment, 979–92
Book 2.indb 1210
student voice, 597–8 Stump, S.L., 568–9 subaltern, 327–8 Subedi, B., 328 subject didactics, 561, 765 subject knowledge expertise, 59–60, 111–12, 144–5, 152, 627–31 creative arts education, 696–709 early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 744–57 English language teacher education, 633–45 inclusive education, 761–72 physical education teacher education, 681–91 and professional competencies, 788–9, 812–13 religious education, 713–24 social studies and civic education, 649–61 STEM teacher education, 665–77 and teacher identity formation, 193–206 technical vocational education and training, 728–42 subject matter commonplace, 627–8, 635–7, 649, 650, 699, 728 subjective identities, 220–1 subjectivity, and poststructuralism, 323, 324–5 successful intelligence theory, 903 Suciu, A.I., 873 ‘sudden’ approach to school improvement, 115 Suinn, R., 790 Sullivan, Florence R., 228–43, 1175, 1178 summative assessment, 910–23, 913, 966, 987, 992, 994–5 formative use of summative tests (FUST), 936 see also high stakes testing; standardized testing Sumsion, J., 330 Sun, Y., 747 supervision, 449, 570–1, 572, 1028 see also mentoring Supreme Court, US, 600 survival-oriented learning, 147 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 733, 737, 1125 Sutton, R., 533 Sutton Trust, 896 Svensson, J., 716 Sweden, 165, 565, 933, 936 Switzerland, 56 Syahril, Iwan, 1133–45, 1174 Sydney Theatre Company, Australia, 705–6 Sykes, G., 111 symbolic activities of school-lessness, 1093–4 Symeou, L., 990 synthetic phonics, 115 system-level formal in-service learning, 117 systems theory framework, 90–104 functions/structure lens, 96–9 process lens, 99–100 systems/environment lens, 93–6 Sztajn, P., 674
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Index
Taba, H., 839 Tabachnick, B.R., 549 Tabulawa, R., 1140, 1144 Taiwan educational reforms, 555 evaluation of teacher education programs, 71–2, 76, 77–9, 77, 85 immigration, 1145n2 micropolitical literacy, 446–7 professional competencies, 789, 794 situated cognition approaches, 861–2 social studies and civic education, 651, 658 teacher planning, 844 Takahashi, S., 164, 171 TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey), 841, 952–4, 953, 957, 959, 1135, 1141 Tan, B.T., 552 Tan, D., 279, 280 Tanzania, 1140 Tappan, Mark B., 335, 404–6, 410, 413 Taras, M., 911, 922 Tate, Tamara, 577–89 Tatto, Maria Teresa, 30, 68–87, 545 Taut, S., 747 Taylor, C., 270, 271, 272, 379–80 Taylor, M., 605, 1073–4 Taymans, J., 174 Teach Australia, 55 Teach First, 55, 1105 Teach for All, 216, 1102, 1105, 1120, 1124 Teach for America, 55, 216, 898, 1023, 1105, 1120 teacher activism, 228–43, 290, 475 teacher agency, 247–51 as autonomy, 260–1, 262 collective, 286–96, 358–9 community interaction, 280–2, 292–6, 309–10 cultural-historical accounts of, 269–83 definitions, 249, 253–4, 269–73, 319–20 and demands, 277–80 ecological approach, 271 as enacted behaviour, 254–5, 261 epistemic, 258–9, 262, 276 as implicit theorising, 255–6, 261 and learner achievement, 253–63 and mediation, 273–7, 278–80 and narrative, 301–11 and person–practice dynamic, 269–83 postcolonial theory, 317–19 postmodernism, 317–19, 320–3 poststructuralism, 317–19, 323–6 relational, 281–2, 308 self-efficacy, 256–8, 261–2, 347, 790, 900–1 and social theories, 286–96 and teacher identity formation, 154, 183–4, 229 teaching-learning environments for, 251
Book 2.indb 1211
1211
working with families and other professions, 280–2, 309–10 Teacher Appraisal for Professional Development program, South Korea, 954 teacher beliefs, 339–50, 529 assessment of, 900, 902, 904–6, 904 and critical teacher education, 373 effects of assessment on, 1000–1 epistemological thinking model, 515–16, 516, 518 and inclusive education, 767–8 and moral work of teaching, 344–50 and professional competencies, 789–90 role in teacher education, 342–4 and teacher identity, 164–6, 178–81, 183, 187–8 and technology use, 585–6 teacher calling, 425–6 Teacher Career Cycle Model, 821–2 teacher career models, 821–3 teacher commonplace, 627–8, 638–9, 649, 700, 728 teacher competencies see professional competencies teacher development stage models of, 820–3 see also continuing professional development (CPD) teacher dispositions assessment of, 901–2, 904–6, 904, 958–9 effects of assessment on, 1000–1 and professional competencies, 783–92 see also personal factors Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC), US, 74 Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), 82, 84–6, 85, 783, 784, 1135 teacher educators, 1011–14 continuing professional development, 1042–4, 1045, 1052–60 definitions, 1017–30, 1035, 1049–50 identity formation, 1036–7, 1040, 1042, 1044, 1087–8 intimate scholarship, 1072–6 knowledge, 1038–42, 1044–5 paths into profession, 1028, 1036, 1050–2 positions within teacher education, 1019–21 research by, 1027–8, 1051, 1052–4, 1065–76 work of, 1033–45 teacher effectiveness, 1120, 1126, 1127 and assessment, 896–7, 918, 959–60 Teacher Efficacy for Moral Education measure, 347 teacher expertise adaptive, 549, 827–31, 829 developmental learning approaches, 513–24, 516 didactical, 145, 152 nature of, 824–5 novice-to-expert model, 518–20 pedagogical, 145, 152 relational, 281
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routine, 827 see also professional competencies; subject knowledge expertise teacher identity formation, 139–42 activist identity, 228–43, 290, 475 and assessment, 965–8 conscientization, 223–4, 229, 230, 231, 233–42, 476, 477, 596, 599, 603, 605, 620 and constructivist pedagogies, 553–4 contextual factors, 160, 166–8 and critical teacher education, 376–7, 479–83 and cultural heritage, 200–1 definitions, 143–5 designing pedagogies of, 184–8 and emotion, 160 entrepreneurial identity, 242 and learning about others, 457–70 micropolitical perspective, 441–54 and narrative, 180–1, 182, 306 neoliberal effects on, 482–3 ownership in, 182, 184 and patterns in teacher learning, 145–56, 146, 150 and personal beliefs, 164–6, 178–81, 183, 187–8 postmodern perspectives, 210–11, 213–25, 214 and praxis, 223 and prior experiences, 164–6, 194–7 and professional cultures, 201–3 reconciling personal and professional dimensions, 177–89 role of dialogue, 153–4, 155–6, 187 and self, 164–6 sense-making in, 182–3, 184 situated cognition approaches, 160–74 and subject knowledge expertise, 193–206 and teacher agency, 154, 183–4, 229 teacher educators, 1036–7, 1040, 1042, 1044, 1087–8 and technology, 1085–6, 1087–8, 1090–1, 1093, 1094–6 tensions in, 181–2, 186–8, 194–206 traditional conceptions of identity, 210–13, 214 teacher induction see internship and induction teacher inquiry, 117–18 collective, 358–9, 360, 361, 363 teacher judgement, 970 teacher knowledge practical, 36, 305, 536, 539, 739, 811, 824, 1105 professional competencies, 788–9, 792, 796–7, 803–15, 811 and teacher planning, 839, 845, 846 see also pedagogical content knowledge; subject knowledge expertise Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs), 936 teacher learning patterns, 145–56, 146, 150 teacher migration, 1137–8 teacher motivation, 425–6, 789–90
Book 2.indb 1212
assessment of, 900–1, 902, 904–6, 904 through career, 821–2 Teacher Perceiver Interview, 898 teacher performance appraisal, 952–4, 953, 959–60 teacher performance assessments (TPAs), 914–16, 918 teacher planning, 836–49, 890–1 teacher practical knowledge research, 35–6, 37 teacher professionalism, 133, 272–3, 356, 421, 425, 716, 768 see also professional competencies teacher salaries Finland, 92 Ireland, 91–2 Singapore, 92 teacher shortages, 205, 496, 736, 899, 1123 teacher socialization, 61–2 micropolitics in, 444–7, 452–3 physical education teacher education, 683, 685–6 teacher tenure process, 954 ‘Teachers’ Day’, China, 133 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), 841, 952–4, 953, 957, 959, 1135, 1141 Teaching and Learning Together (TLT) project, 360–2, 363 Teaching Council, Ireland, 95, 98 teaching credentials, assessment, 946–50, 948–9, 954, 956–9, 958 Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), 687 teaching-learning environments, 251 Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR), 687 teaching portfolios, 640–1 team teaching, 274 technical vocational education and training, 728–42 technological pedagogical content knowledge, 580–4, 581 technological pedagogy, 577–89, 581 technology, 132–3 digital games, 1004 situated cognition approaches, 859, 861 in social studies education, 653–4 and teacher identity formation, 1085–6, 1087–8, 1090–1, 1093, 1094–6 technocentrist approaches to, 578–9, 582 technology-rich environments, 579–80 virtual campus, 1083, 1085–97 see also STEM teacher education TEDS-M see Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) Teece, G., 717–18 Teitel, L., 1106 ten Dam, G.T.M., 168–9 tenure process, 954 tenure track systems, 1028 terminology, 8–9 Teviotdale, W., 988
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Index
Texas Tech University, US, 464 Thailand, 658 Thayer-Bacon, B., 412–13, 414 theorisation, teachers’, 255–6, 261 theory level of teacher learning, 533, 535–6, 860 third spaces, 232–3, 603–5, 919, 1025, 1112 Thomas, Elwyn, 55 Thomas, L., 160, 164, 166 Thompson, A., 1003 Thompson, S.A., 375 Thornberg, Robert, 403–15 Thorpe, R., 878 three-level (gestalt-schemata-theory) model of teacher learning, 528–41, 860 Tillema, H.H., 972 Timoštšuk, I., 166 Timperley, H., 831 TIMSS see Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Tinning, R., 600, 682 Tinoca, L., 934 Tirosh, D., 563–4 Tirri, Kirsi, 60, 761–72 Tjeerdsma, B., 684 TLCs see Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs) toleration, in teacher identity formation, 183 Tondeur, J., 673 Toom, Auli, 777–81, 803–15, 1175, 1176 Torrance, H., 968 Tournebise, C., 473 TPAs see teacher performance assessments (TPAs) Trade Union of Education, Finland, 768 traditional conceptions of teacher identity, 210–13, 214 Trahar, S., 305 Training and Development Agency, England, 1039 training college model, 55–7, 58 transactional discourse of professional competency, 879–83 transfer teacher education program model, 736–7 transformative action, 445 transformative orientation, in language teacher education, 638–9 transformative vision for teacher education, 1101–14 transmission orientation, in language teacher education, 635–7 transnational agreements, 465, 1083, 1122–3 Trauth-Nare, A.E., 936 traveling policy, 1138–40 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 665, 670, 675 Trent, J., 642 TribalCrit, 1157 Trinh T. Minh-ha, 224 Trivit, J., 1120 Trohler, Daniel, 60
Book 2.indb 1213
1213
Trumbull, E., 933 Truscott, D.M., 477 truth, regimes of, 322–3, 325–6 Tubbs, E.V., 895 Tuck, E., 329 Turiel, E., 411 Turkey English language teacher education, 639 pedagogical content knowledge development, 564, 568 religious education, 714 social justice issues, 373 social studies and civic education, 653 teacher beliefs, 347 technology, 578, 587 Turner-Bisset, R., 859 Turney, C., 1022, 1028 TVET see technical vocational education and training Tyler, L., 498 Tyler, R.W., 321, 837 Tze, V.M.C., 901 Tzur, R., 674 UAE, 1137 Ubani, M., 716 Ubuntu education, 619 Ugaste, A., 166 Uitto, M., 306–7, 447 uncertainty, 847–8 uncertainty avoidance, 125, 126 underrepresented students, recruitment and retention of, 491–505 UNESCO, 23–4, 465, 659, 730, 732, 733–4, 735, 745, 762–3, 1125, 1127, 1138, 1139 UNESCO Bangkok, 660 UNICEF, 23–4, 747, 1139 United Kingdom career advancement, 955 competency-based teacher education, 872 continuum of teacher education, 118 creative arts education, 701–2, 703, 704–5 diversity, 599 educational reforms, 555, 672–5, 1123 evaluation of teacher education programs, 85 formative assessment, 931, 932, 934, 935–6 history of teacher education, 54–5, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61–2, 1102 immigration, 1135 learning about others, 461 mentoring, 1025 micropolitics, 448–9 neoliberalism, 1119 pedagogical approaches, 124, 130 pedagogical content knowledge development, 570–1 policy convergence and divergence, 1123–4
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population in higher education, 1102 positivist programs, 33 professional competencies, 875–6 recruitment of underrepresented students, 498 religious education, 713, 714–15, 718–24 school-based teacher education, 604, 666, 667–8, 670, 1023, 1024, 1102, 1105, 1119–20 selection into teacher education, 895, 898, 905 sexual identities, 600, 601 situated cognition approaches, 859 situational judgment tests, 903 skills development, 983 social reproduction, 596 social studies and civic education, 652, 653 stages of teacher development, 822 summative assessment, 913, 921 teacher agency, 274, 279, 280 teacher beliefs, 346 teacher educators, 1020, 1027–8, 1029, 1035, 1039, 1041, 1042, 1043 teacher learning patterns, 148 teacher migration, 1137 teacher planning, 843 teaching effectiveness, 896 university-based teacher education, 1023, 1025 United Nations, 483, 503–4 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 1139 United Nations General Assembly, 733, 737 United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, 131 United Nations Human Development Index, 132 United States adaptive expertise, 827 career advancement, 955 civic education, 493 community interaction, 236–7, 292–3, 294, 295–6, 1110 competency-based teacher education, 871–2, 873–4, 957, 958, 958 constructivist pedagogies, 550 continuum of teacher education, 118 creative arts education, 703, 704, 705 critical pedagogy, 876 culturally relevant pedagogy, 1136 decolonial teacher education, 484–5 desegregation of education, 221 early childhood and lower primary teacher education, 745, 754–6, 757 educational reforms, 115, 555, 666, 673–4 English language teacher education, 636, 642 ethical codes, 768 evaluation of teacher education programs, 74–5, 76, 85, 1121 formative assessment, 930, 931–2, 933, 934–5, 936, 937 hiring decisions, 951–2
Book 2.indb 1214
history of teacher education, 23, 24, 56, 58, 61, 1102 immigration, 1135 Indigenous student drop-out rates, 483–4 lack of teacher diversity, 494 learning about others, 461, 463–5 micropolitics, 448 moral and ethical responsibilities, 360–2, 388 multicultural education courses, 372 narrative and agency, 308 neoliberalism, 1119 pedagogical approaches, 124, 130 pedagogical content knowledge development, 566–7, 569, 571 physical education teacher education, 682 positivist programs, 33 practical teaching experiences, 1023 professional competencies, 789, 878, 879 recruitment of underrepresented students, 495, 497, 501 religious education, 714 school-based teacher education, 666, 1105, 1119–20 selection into teacher education, 898, 946, 956–7 sexual identities, 600, 602 situated cognition approaches, 860–1 situational judgment tests, 903 social justice, 995 social reproduction, 596 social studies and civic education, 652, 655 summative assessment, 913, 914, 915, 916, 917 teacher activism, 234, 236–40 teacher agency, 280–1 teacher beliefs, 347 teacher educators, 1018, 1020, 1021–2, 1025, 1028, 1035, 1037, 1039, 1041, 1042, 1054, 1056 teacher identity, 180, 205, 212, 213, 219–20 teacher migration, 1137 teacher motivation, 425 teacher performance assessments, 914, 915 teacher planning, 844, 848 teacher residency programs, 1107 teacher tenure process, 954 teaching credentials, 947, 948–9, 950, 956, 957, 958, 958, 959 technology, 578, 586, 587 third spaces, 604–5 university-based teacher education, 1104 Universal Basic Education program, Nigeria, 747 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 412 Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina, 305 university-based teacher education, 57–8, 666, 669–70, 1023, 1024, 1025, 1102, 1103–4, 1119, 1120–1, 1141–2 see also Bologna Process
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
university-initiated social action projects, 237–40 University of Alberta, Canada, 1109–10 University of Arizona, US, 478, 1108 University of Auckland, New Zealand, 40 University of British Columbia, Canada, 294–5, 296 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), US, 237 University of Cambridge, England, 601 University of Canterbury, New Zealand, 753–4 University of Chicago Laboratory School, US, 61, 287 University of Chicago, US, 1104 University of Glasgow, Scotland, 921 University of Hawaii, 934–5 University of Helsinki, Finland, 79, 765, 876 University of Hong Kong, 548 University of Luxembourg, 604, 1103–4 University of Maryland College Park, US, 1056 University of Melbourne, Australia, 914, 917 University of Nevada-Las Vegas, US, 464 University of Pretoria, South Africa, 980 University of South Carolina, US, 463 University of Sydney, Australia, 705–6 University of Warwick, England, 703, 717 University of Washington-Seattle, US, 292–3, 295, 1110–11 University of Washington, US, 280–1 University of Winnipeg, Canada, 501–2 University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, 292, 293, 295, 463, 597 University Teacher Education Program (UTEP), University of Chicago, 1104 unknowable identities, 215–17 unpredictability in schooling, 131–4 unrooted nostalgia, 306 Upadhyay, B., 201 Upitis, R., 704 Urban Aboriginal Education Pilot Project (UAEPP), Toronto, 1158–9 Urban Diversity Teacher Education Initiative, York University, Canada, 291–2 Urban Teacher Residencies (UTRs), 605 USAID, 1139–40 Utrecht University, Netherlands, 537–40, 538, 860 VAKAVA exam, Finland, 946 Valenzuela, A., 218 Valli, L., 642, 957, 958, 958 value-added models (VAMs) of assessment, 917 Van der Valk, A.E., 397 van Driel, Jan H., 561–73, 1041 Van Hiele, P.M., 532, 535 van Hover, S., 654 van Huizen, P., 273, 554 Van Oers, B., 270 Van Petegem, P., 147 van Rijswijk, M., 182 van Staden, Surette, 979–92
Book 2.indb 1215
1215
van Tartwijk, Jan, 820–31 Van Veen, K., 149, 150 van Velzen, C., 864, 1024 Vanassche, Eline, 441–54, 1054 Vandeyar, S., 205 Varelas, M., 198, 202 Varghese, M., 200 variation theory of learning, 721–3 Vasalos, A., 180 Vavrus, F., 1140 Vavrus, Michael, 473–85 Vazalwar, C.S., 873 Veal, M.L., 571 VELON see Dutch Association of Teacher Educators (VELON) Verhaeghe, P., 185 Verleger, M., 1084 Vermeulen, D., 703 Vermunt, Jan D., 143–56 Vescio, V., 478–9 video case studies, in moral education, 396–7 video clubs, 171 Vietnam, 1036 Villegas, A.M., 30, 482, 495–6, 612, 613, 621, 959 Villegas-Reimers, Eleonora, 491 virtual campus, 1083, 1085–97 virtual internships, 1004 virtual teachers, 861 virtue ethics, 335–6, 403, 419–30 virtue of good character, 423 virtues, defined, 422 Viruru, R., 328 vision of teaching, 110, 115 visual arts education, 699 see also creative arts education vocational aspects of teacher education, 53, 58, 61–2 vocational education, 728–42 vocational pedagogy, 739–41 Volante, L., 937 Volkmann, M.J., 181, 195 Volman, M., 864 Vong, K.P., 750 Voogt, J., 673 Vrikki, Maria, 143–56 vulgar relativism, 412–13 vulnerable children, 280–2 Vygotsky, L.S., 113, 269–70, 273, 274–5, 277, 278, 280, 404, 406, 407, 408, 547, 551, 770, 964 Wagamese, R., 301 Wales career advancement, 955 creative arts education, 701–2 history of teacher education, 59 professional competencies, 875–6 religious education, 714–15, 718–24
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1216
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selection into teacher education, 898 teacher planning, 843 Wales, J., 746 Walker, E., 450 Wallace, M.J., 642 Walton, E., 843 Wang, D., 750 Ward, C.J., 972 Ward, D., 854 Warford, M.K., 408 Warner, Michael, 601 Warschauer, Mark, 577–89 Warwick, Paul, 143–56, 198, 204 Watson, Marilyn, 393, 396–7 Watt, Bonnie, 728–42 Webb, M., 196, 197, 934, 971, 974 Webster, D.H., 716 Webster-Wright, A., 530–1 Weedon, C., 323 Weiner, L., 757 Weinert, F.E., 824 Wenger, E., 161–2, 166, 168, 173, 404, 530, 531, 549, 854, 856, 860, 865, 920, 974 Wertsch, J.V., 404 Westbury, I., 876, 879 ‘What Works Clearing House’, 33 Wheatly, K., 533 White, B.C., 522 White, M.I., 125 Whitehead, C., 51 Whiting, E.F., 478 Wideen, M., 530 Wiest, L.R., 463, 464 Wiliam, D., 128, 936, 987, 989 Wilkins, C., 498 Willemse, T.M., 388, 655 William, D., 910–11 William J. Clinton Foundation, 494 Williams, J., 165, 1035, 1040–1, 1043, 1053 Williams, Lorna, 1153 Williams, Raymond, 594 Willis, J., 932–3, 935, 967 Willis, P., 596 Wilson, S.M., 674 Wininger, S.R., 931–2 Winner, E., 701, 702, 703 Winton, P.J., 756 Wisler, A., 4 Wissehr, C., 932 Wolhuter, Charles, 55 Wolsey, T.D., 934 women and cultural moral relativism, 411 marginalization of, 217 Wong, K.T., 873, 874 Wong, P.L., 238
Book 2.indb 1216
Wood, W.J., 422 Woodrow, C., 746 Wooldridge, Adrian, 60 Woolsey, I., 376 Wooten, Sara C., 491–505 work-based learning, 53–5, 58 World Bank, 23–4, 733, 1125–6 World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA), 1139 World Declaration on Education for All, 1139 World Health Organization, 763 World Report on Disability, 763 Worrell, F., 916–17 Worthman, C., 633 Wright, Andrew, 713–24 Wright, Elina, 713–24 Wright-Maley, C., 655 Wright, R., 1022, 1028 Wu, Y., 446–7 Wubbels, Theo, 808, 820–31, 873, 1178 Wyatt-Smith, C., 970 Wylie, E.C., 936 Wynter, Sylvia, 39, 40 Xu, Quan, 633–45 Xu, S.H., 463, 464 Yaghi, H., 204 Yang, K.W., 329 Yang, Y., 474 Yarosz, D.J., 754 Yazdiha, H., 462 Ye, L., 201 Yeh, C., 792–3, 793 Yendol-Hoppey, D., 451 Yeom, Ji-Sook, 301–11 Yinger, R.J., 838, 839 Ylimaki, R.M., 870, 872, 878 Yong, Y., 750, 752 York University, Canada, 291–2, 295 Yorke, M., 983 Yoshikawa, H., 745 Young, E., 620, 621 Young-Loveridge, J., 753 Young, Michael, 721, 999 Yousafzi, Malala, 129 Yuan, R., 1028 Yunkaporta, T., 1157 Zane, T.W., 991 Zavala, G., 935 Zedeck, S., 903 Zeichner, Ken, 280–1, 460, 461, 462, 483, 549, 554, 919, 920, 995, 1001, 1101–14, 1177 Zembylas, M., 213, 224, 304, 305–6, 308, 373, 452, 478, 618, 620 Zemelman, S., 637–8
10/06/17 4:23 PM
Index
zero point epistemology, 483 Zhang, W., 133 Zhao, Z.Z., 657–8 Zhou, Jun, 56, 751 Zibulsky, J., 839 Ziebertz, H.-G., 716 Zinger, Doron, 577–89
Book 2.indb 1217
1217
Zisk, R.C., 809 zone of collaborative development, 407 zone of proximal development, 406, 407, 551, 770 zone of proximal teacher development, 408–9 Zwart, Rosanne, 820–31 Zwier, E., 479 Zygmunt, E., 1110
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