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Becoming a Teacher

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Title: Becoming a Teacher


1
Becoming a Teacher
  • Becoming a Learner

2
(No Transcript)
3
Teachers as Learners
  • Well all teachers these days are having to
    learn all time. Whether it is the new diplomas or
    working with social services. They are having to
    learn new things..
  • (A senior teacher May 2008)

4
Outline of the Talk
  • The knowledge paradox in Initial Teacher
    Education (ITE) in England
  • A sociocultural approach to learning
  • Transfer or transitions
  • Implications for relationships between
    universities and schools
  • The development of teacher expertise
  • Relational agency
  • Implications for ITE

5
(No Transcript)
6
The Knowledge Paradox in Initial Teacher
Education (ITE)
  • Two models of learning to be found at the same
    time in ITE
  • Learning occurs through storing facts acquired in
    university and applying them in your work as a
    teacher
  • Learning occurs through participating in the
    practical actions of a community on school
    placement

7
Attempts to Overcome the Conceptual Muddle
  • Bridging the practice-theory gap though
    reflection
  • Drawing on critical pedagogy so that student
    teachers avoid being mindlessly acculturated into
    school practices
  • Asserting the value of Higher Education
  • Putting ITE into schools and train through an
    apprenticeship scheme

8
The English Case Study
  • Placing ITE in universities was a triumph for the
    teaching profession - and for the application of
    knowledge view of learning
  • But increasingly the ITE curriculum has been
    brought under government control and the
    independence of universities eroded therefore
    the warrant for a higher education base has been
    undermined

9
The Eroding of the Position of Universities in
ITE in the 1990s
  • Government saw universities as the problem rather
    than the solution to improving standards in
    school
  • ITE became increasingly bureaucratised and the
    curriculum controlled by government
  • Student teachers became adept at the delivery of
    the agreed curriculum
  • Compliance with government demands was essential
    or funding to ITE programmes was cut

10
The Outcome of the Erosion
  • The acquisition and application model did not
    provide universities with a rationale for their
    role that would withstand these attacks
  • The apprenticeship model of ITE gained ground

11
The Response to the Attacks
  • Professional autonomy was asserted in order to
    argue against the bureaucratisation of teaching
  • But . the myth of autonomy is dangerous

12
Autonomy or Isolation?
  • Teachers operate as isolated professionals or
    rugged individuals lion-taming in public
  • Student teachers avoid public failure and
    therefore avoid the complexity involved in
    responding to pupils as learners

13
Another Way of Looking at the Paradox the
sociocultural approach
  • Learning involves internalising the ideas that
    are culturally valued and externalising what is
    learnt in actions on our worlds
  • We are shaped by our social situations of
    development but also shape them by our actions
    in and on them
  • As we are shaped by and shape our worlds both we
    and they are changed

14
Vygotsky and tool mediated action
Mediational Means ideas, resources
Object
Subject
15
Learning as Recognition and Response
  • Mind is outward-looking and pattern seeking
  • Learning is evident in increasingly complex
    interpretations of phenomena e.g. recognising
    that a childs behaviour is part of a wider set
    of problems she is facing
  • Learning is also evident how we respond to those
    more complex interpretations

16
Transfer in the Three Views of Learning
  • Acquisition and application of knowledge
    transfer is crucial
  • Participation in practices transfer is not an
    issue as learning is heavily situated in
    practices which permit and support certain ways
    of thinking and acting
  • One sociocultural line (Greeno) transfer is
    helped by recognisable patterns in social
    practices as people move between settings the
    focus is the learner, her transition and her
    sense-making

17
Transitions as Changing Relationships between
Self and World
  • Transitions rather than transfer
  • A focus on the sense-making actor
  • As we navigate our way across settings we are
    actors in them seeking patterns and responding to
    them
  • Transitions need to be seen as a changing
    relationship between individuals and their social
    situations of development

18
From Transfer to Transitions
  • Any sociocultural reconceptualization of transfer
    should be true to the premise that underlies all
    sociocultural approaches to learning and
    development that learners and social
    organizations exist in a recursive and mutually
    constitutive relation to one another across time.
  • (Beach,
    1999, p111)

19
Consequential Transitions (Beach, 1999)
  • As we learn to see something differently we
    reposition ourselves in relation to it
  • As we navigate across settings we confront many
    differences and negotiate them in ways that are
    consequential for us
  • A student teacher in a school will negotiate the
    social practices of a school in order to fit in
    with those practices and not draw on what she has
    learnt in university

20
A Focus on the Student Teacher as Learner
  • Looking at transfer is a focus on what a student
    teacher knows and can apply
  • Looking at transitions is a focus on how the
    student teacher is making sense and contributing
    to the school as she navigates her way through it

21
Differences as Teaching Opportunities in ITE
  • We should recognise that universities and
    schools offer different experiences to students
    and when there are differences, they are useful
    learning opportunities which need to be supported
    by teachers in schools

22
The Question
  • How can teachers in schools be attuned to the
    need to help students to recognise differences,
    seek complexity and so learn?

23
A Science Department Team Room (Ann Childs and
Jane McNicholl)
24
Student Teacher as Expert
  • CL (NQT) is working on her laptop in the team
    room. DE and AD (student teachers) are planning
    lessons.
  • CL then asks AD about good ideas about how he
    would explain to students in Y10 that objects
    fall at the same rate despite their being
    different masses.
  • AD explains Fma and other equations on the team
    room whiteboard. DE joins in, CL then says she
    needs a simpler explanation.

25
  • BW (Head of Department and experienced physics
    teacher) enters the team room and says that this
    is difficult and gives CL an analogy where she
    uses Canderel and then biscuits. DE says she gets
    it.
  • CL says thats all very well but she is
    thinking about the students in her Y10 class and
    they wont get this analogy. BW gives another
    explanation.

26
Expertise is Distributed across Systems
  • Expertise is held in systems and is negotiated in
    order to accomplish tasks
  • Expert teaching is the negotiated accomplishment
    of pupil learning
  • Knowing what to teach, when to teach it and how
    to teach it but also who and what can augment
    your practice

27
Becoming a Resourceful Teacher
  • So much knowledge
  • Knowledge is off-loaded onto artefacts
  • Knowledge is distributed in systems of expertise
  • Resourceful teachers know how to access and use
    these resources to enhance their responses

28
The Resourceful Navigator
  • Teachers are professional decision-makers
  • They learn to recognise the resources available
    and how to use and contribute to them
  • They can move across terrains e.g. working with
    other professionals or in research or training
    partnerships with universities

29
The Detail Project an ITE research partnership
Viv Elliswww.education.ox.ac.uk/research/resgr
oup/osat/detail.php

30
The DETAIL study
  • A joint research study over three years
  • Eight English teachers in four schools
  • Four student teachers in each school each year
  • One (!) university English Education tutor
  • Exploring subject teaching, pedagogy and the
    structures and practices of the English
    departments in the schools using Developmental
    Work Research

31
Unpacking the Social Situation of Development
  • DETAIL shows what is gained by student teachers
    and by teachers from examining the social
    situation of development in which they find
    themselves
  • They become better at recognising and therefore
    opening up complexity
  • They also recognise that that teaching is more
    than safe performance instead it is a process
    of recognition and resourceful response

32
Moving on from Rugged Individualism in DETAIL
  • VE Is it part of this thing about being a rugged
    individual?
  • M1my interns (student teachers) are writing
    every week I survived
  • M2.Its still at that very superficial level of
    this is tough hard work and Im going to succeed
    by proving I can fight my way out of a corner

33
The Concept of Relational Agency an Alternative
to Autonomy (Edwards, 2005)
  • Aligning ones thoughts and action with others
    while interpreting and acting on the world (mind
    is outward-looking)
  • Expanding the object of activity by bringing to
    bear the sense-making of others and drawing on
    the resources they offer when responding
  • Need to question school practices which create
    rugged individuals (or headless chickens)
  • purposeful action with others

34
Connecting with Notions of Distributed
Intelligence
  • Hakkarainen et al - networked expertise
  • Billett - relational interdependence in the
    workplace
  • Bruner - extended intelligence
  • Engestrom and Middleton negotiated task
    accomplishment
  • Nardi NetWork
  • Childs and McNicholl the knowledge-rich school
    department

35
Relational Agency supporting professional action
  • A strong form of agency is necessary for practice
    in complex settings
  • Individual agency can be strengthened by working
    with others
  • Professionals can, and need to, draw on and
    contribute to systems of distributed expertise

36
Being Collaborative
  • Knowing how to know who - i.e. knowing how to
    access the expertise that is distributed across a
    system
  • Knowing how to align ones practices with those
    of others while working on a childs learning
    trajectory
  • It is only a matter of adjusting what you do to
    other peoples strengths and needs (practitioner)

37
Relational Agency as Resourceful Outward-looking
Practice
  • Contesting interpretations of the task or
    problem while working within sets of professional
    values
  • Recognising the fluidity of relationships
    different people, known and not yet known
  • Recognising what can support your practice and
    how you can support others

38
Implications of RA for Professional Learning and
Practice
  • Professional learning needs to include a capacity
    for interpreting and approaching problems,
    contesting interpretations, reading the
    environment, drawing on resources to be found
    there, being a resource
  • That takes us to an enhanced version of
    professionalism

39
Implications for ITE in Universities and Schools
  • Transition rather than transfer
  • A focus on the student teacher as learner
  • Emphasis on recognition and complexity
  • Downplaying autonomy and curriculum delivery as
    performance
  • Emphasis on the resources that are available to
    enhance responses
  • Demonstrating how to access and draw on those
    resources and how to be a resource
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