Becoming a Teacher

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Becoming a Teacher

• Becoming a Learner

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Vygotsky and tool mediated action
Mediational Means ideas, resources
Object
Subject
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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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The Question

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

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A Science Department Team Room (Ann Childs and
Jane McNicholl)
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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.

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• 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.

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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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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