Facing the Storm?

1
Facing the Storm?

• Teacher Educators, Higher Education and
  Government Policy for Teacher Education in the
  Twenty First Century
• Professor Jean Murray, The Cass School of
  Education, University of East London.
• Presentation for the University and College
  Union, London, 2nd November 2010

2
The Battleground

• The part of the field which we are to examine has
  long been a battleground for the expert, and many
  questions call for discussion. What, for example,
  should be the purpose of professional training?
  its character and duration? Where should it be
  given and by whom? .... At what age should it
  commence? and is a system of apprenticeship
  desirable?
• Lance Jones - The Training of Teachers in England
  and Wales
• 1923
•  

3
A Future Vision a model of training for twenty
first century teachers?

• Teaching is a craft and it is best learnt as an
  apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman.
  Watching others, and being rigorously observed
  yourself as you develop, is the best route to
  acquiring mastery in the classroom. (Gove,
  20106)
• We will reform teacher training to shift trainee
  teachers out of college (sic) and into the
  classroom and to shift resources so that more
  heads can train teachers in their own schools
  (Gove, 20106).
•  

4
Out of the Pedagogical Museum the teacher
training college
5
Apprenticeship learning and teaching in the
nineteenth century
6
Back to the Future? Re-visiting old ideas... (1)

• Attacks on HEIs as remote, limited in the
  training provided and overly theoretical
• 1890s, 1960s, 1980s 1990s ( 2010)
• Dangers of school-based apprenticeship model
• 1880s, 1920s, 1970s, mid 1980s mid 1990s (
  2010)

7
Back to the Future? Re-visiting old ideas... (2)

• teacher trainees (should) spend their first
  year in schools apprenticed to a master
  teacher.
• Coz, C B Boyson, R (Eds) (1977) Black Paper.
  London Temple Smith
•  
• We believe that there is no such thing as a
  qualified expert in education, and no coherent
  discipline of education theory. Teaching, like
  business, is a form of practical knowledge.
•  
• The Hillgate Group (1989) Whose Schools? A
  Radical Manifesto.
• London The Hillgate Group
•  

8
Discourses of Derision 1980 / 1990s

• The majority of teacher training courses are
  intellectually feeble and biased
• They are overly concerned with topics such as
  race, sex, class and even anti-imperialist
  education
• Their preoccupations appear designed to stir up
  disaffection, to preach a spurious gospel of
  equality and to subvert the entire traditional
  curriculum
• Hillgate Group (19895) Whose Schools? A Radical
  Manifesto.
• London The Hillgate Group

9
A teacher educator?
10
A teacher educator?
11
Discourses of Derision modern takes

• ....the system has been brought low by poorly
  qualified, trained and motivated teachers,
  supported by their unions.
• No single thing is more urgent, or more
  neglected, in education policy today than to put
  a bomb under teacher training and the outdated,
  lazy orthodoxy that has almost wrecked English
  teaching traditions. Thats what is most needed.
  Teacher training, teacher training, teacher
  training.
• Minette Marrin in the Sunday Times, October 18,
  2009
• Accessed at http//www.minettemarrin.com/minettema
  rrin/the_sunday_times/ 23rd November 2010.

12
Fitness for Purpose? Apprenticeship Learning in
Teaching in the Nineteenth Century (but not the
twentieth...)
13
Fitness for purpose in twenty first century
schools
14
....and for twenty first century teachers and
student teachers
15
Global and national challenges for the teaching
profession

• Being a teacher is a complex and demanding
  profession ...
• Teacher education is the key to better qualified
  teachers who are able to educate pupils and
  teachers for the demands of the 21st century
• OECD (2005) Teachers Matter.

16
Joining up Professional Learning over the Life
Course key questions

• What is involved in teaching well and effectively
  over a career? Pupil learning, teacher well-being
  and learning, sustaining of teacher
  professionalism.
• So what is involved in ITE as the process during
  which the foundations of professionalism are
  forged?

17
Teacher education the Janus-faced enterprise
18
Mis-leading dichotomies and simplistic judgements

• Practice good theory bad (or vice versa)
• School-based ITE good HE-based ITE bad (or
  vice versa)
• Workplace learning relevant out of workplace
  learning irrelevant
• Implicit learning grounded explicit learning
  out of the workplace difficult to apply /
  transfer
• Immediately relevant learning good learning
  with longer term relevance bad

19
Teacher Professionalism for the Current Century

• Teachers able to
• meet the learning needs of increasingly diverse
  bodies of pupils who are taught in increasingly
  diverse ways
• meet and anticipate the challenges which social
  and political changes bring to education
• promote innovation
• take personal and collective responsibility for
  continuous professional learning
• meet the learning needs of neophyte professionals
  and experienced colleagues
• Based on
• decisions about evidence-informed practice, local
  needs and the broad socio-cultural and political
  contexts within which the school operates

20
Traditional models of apprenticeship (1)
21
Traditional models of apprenticeship (2)
22
Traditional models of apprenticeship (2)

• Induction apprenticed to a master plumber 4
  days a week learning by watching and then doing
• Attendance and study at college 1 day a week to
  gain qualification reading set texts on how
  to, trade manuals, health and safety guidance
  etc etc
• CPL reading of new product publicity, new
  guidance on how to fit products. Plumbing Today.
• Occasional discussions with fellow plumbers /
  builders / customers on new developments.
• Teach yourself new techniques trial and error.
  

23
Workplace Learning a panacea for all ills?

• Emphasises value of experiential knowledge above
  other sources of knowledge generation
• In teaching adds to the over-valuation of
  classroom teaching as an activity
• Sees immediate learning in the workplace as most
  valuable
• But doesnt always acknowledge that not all
  workplaces can provide the necessary conditions
  for learners to be novices nor the variety of
  contexts required for full professional induction
• Emphasises the importance of the community
  inducting the newcomer and drawing her/him into
  established practice
• Strengthens immediate and local knowledge in
  teaching but does not always acknowledge the
  broader context or add to the overall development
  of the profession as a whole

24
The Cultures of ITE and Collegial CPL in Schools
as Workplaces

• Cultures strong in some schools but generally
  still weak across the system as a whole
• Not all schools participate in ITE or have
  sustained commitment to collegial CPL
• Schools priorities firmly focused on pupils
  first and foremost
• Pressures and pace of school life may make little
  space for workplace learning
• Mentoring and school-based teacher education
  roles still not fully recognised or accredited
• Risk of reproducing only local and experiential
  knowledge

25
Teacher Educators the hidden profession

• A generation of teacher educators closer to and
  more knowledgeable about the school sector than
  ever before -
• Overview knowledge of schooling, including but
  going well beyond experiential knowledge
• Scholarship and / or active research engagement
• 2nd order pedagogy and practice, including
  student support
• Development of practical theorising skills with
  student teachers
• Often caught between a rock and a hard place in
  terms of fitwith HE workplaces and traditional
  constructions of academic roles

26
Teacher education the Janus-faced enterprise
27
The Faces of Janus looking at, not looking away

• Neither schools nor HEIs - as the two faces of
  Janus in teacher education - currently bring
  their full power to ITE and collegial CPL
• Tacit divisions, judgemental stances, derision
  and lack of recognition based on old (and
  sometimes outdated) visions of teaching and ITE
  abound under the rhetoric of partnership
• ITE clearly needs the contributions of both
  schools and HEIs to create a coherent and viable
  national system of ITE fit for the 21st century
  teacher.
• Apprenticeship models alone cannot provide this
  nor can an ad hoc model of school-centred
  provision

28
Strengthening the HE Contribution (1)

• Re-clarification of what we mean by reflexivity,
  enquiry, scholarship research in ITE, CPL and
  Schools of Education
• Values base of ITE and CPL work in HE is
  clarified
• Use this understanding to re-think the place of
  academic activities in Schools of Education
  stakeholder / user engagement impact?
• Create communal structures and scaffolds across
  schools for the development of evidence-informed
  reflexivity from student teacher to experienced
  professional.
• Allow time to do this.
• Centre teacher development around a scholarly
  knowledge base about learning and teaching in
  educational institutions and communities (true
  generativity)

29
Strengthening the HE Contribution (2)

• Articulation of panoply of scholarship and
  research activities, their purposes and how they
  are manifested as processes and products
• Teacher educators standing at the forefront of
  their discipline (Furlong, 2009)
• Highlight and disseminate 2nd order practice
• Generate and disseminate products of teacher and
  teacher educator scholarship in conventional and
  new media
• Join forces with other professional education
  fields in HE (nurse education, social work
  education)

30
Strengthening the School Contribution

• Participation in ITE and collegial CPL becomes
  the required norm for schools and is seen as
  integral to teachers career development
• Values base of ITE and CPL work is clarified.
  Challenge the dominance of experiential knowledge
  in teaching.
• Role of mentors and of school-based teacher
  educators is fully recognised, accredited and
  linked to further study opportunities (generation
  of scholarship). Recognition of 2nd order
  practice androgogy as well as pedagogy. Award
  of clinical practitioner role?
• Teachers have opportunities throughout their
  career for further development through formal
  academic study and the generation of personal
  scholarship and research