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
10/06/17 3:47 PM
SAGE Publications Ltd
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Library of Congress Control Number:
2017943498
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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
10/06/17 3:47 PM
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
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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
Book 1.indb 8
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
Book 1.indb 9
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
Book 1.indb 10
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
Book 1.indb 11
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List of Figures
4.1Role 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
30.1The 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)
45.1Personal, situational and social determinants of the development
of teachers’ professional competencies
45.2Enriched model of teacher competence
45.3Conceptual model of the social context and the development of
professional competencies
46.1Dimensions of teacher competence in terms of teacher knowledge
and the work of teaching
47.1
Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG)
51.1Model of relationship between academic attributes, background
experience, and non-academic attributes in prediction of
performance in ITE (Initial Teacher Education) and
teaching behaviors
51.2Model of Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) as a tool to
assess implicit and explicit beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions
52.1
Conceptual framework
54.1Points along the teaching career continuum where assessments
serve as filters for advancing a person into and along a
teaching career
Book 1.indb 12
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
5.1Overview 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
29.1Epistemological 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
54.2Percentage of teachers receiving feedback from various personnel
and sources of feedback data
54.3Comparative dimensions of competency vs. professional
standards-based teacher education
Book 1.indb 13
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,
Book 1.indb 14
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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
Book 1.indb 15
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xvi
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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Notes on the Editors and Contributors
xvii
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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Notes on the Editors and Contributors
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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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xxxix
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Notes on the Editors and Contributors
xliii
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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.
Book 1.indb 44
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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
Book 1.indb 45
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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
Book 1.indb 46
Auli Toom and Katrien Stuyven
Elaine Munthe and D. Jean Clandinin
Auli Toom and David Gijbels
10/06/17 3:47 PM
Consulting Reviewers
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
xlvii
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
Book 1.indb 47
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
10/06/17 3:47 PM
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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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Mapping an International Handbook of Research
3
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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4
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Mapping an International Handbook of Research
5
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Mapping an International Handbook of Research
7
(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
Book 1.indb 7
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8
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Mapping the Landscape of Teacher Education
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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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Mapping the Landscape of Teacher Education
27
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
31
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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33
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
35
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
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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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
39
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
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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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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Philosophy in Research on Teacher Education: An Onto-ethical Turn
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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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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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Teacher Education: A Historical Overview
51
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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Teacher Education: A Historical Overview
53
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
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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:
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Gardner, P. and Cunningham, P. (2004) Teachers: Texts and Testimonies 1907–1950. London: Woburn
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Gilroy, P. (2014) ‘Policy interventions in teacher education: sharing the English experience’, Journal of
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Goodlad, J. (1990) Teachers for our Nation’s Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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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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69
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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71
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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The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems
73
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems
75
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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The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems
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
Book 1.indb 77
Israel









Taiwan
Germany

South Korea
Finland

Italy
China
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
Bulgaria
Report of survey results
Brazil
Table 4.1































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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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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The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems
79
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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The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems
81
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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83
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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The Quest for Quality and the Rise of Accountability Systems
85
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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87
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.
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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
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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:
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Tatto, M.T., Schwille, J., Senk, S.L., Ingvarson, L., Rowley, G., Peck, R., Bankov, K., Rodriguez, M. &
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(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
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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
Overview of teacher preparation programme provision in Ireland, Finland and Singapore
Country
Table 5.1
Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View
95
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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Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View
97
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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Teacher Education Programmes: A Systems View
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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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109
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.
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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.
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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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145
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
Regulaon
of learning
Movaons to learn
about teaching
Learning
acvies
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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149
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.
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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
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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
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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,
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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),
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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.
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Littleton, K. & Mercer N. (2013). Interthinking: Putting Talk to Work. New York: Routledge.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Eindhoven: Eindhoven University of Technology/ESoE.
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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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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
•
•
•
•
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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.
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Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ballantyne, J., Kerchner, J. & Aróstegui, J. (2012). Developing music teacher identities: An international
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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. & Verlopp, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity.
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Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State
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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,
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Clandinin, D.J., Downey, C.A. & Huber, J. (2009). Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven
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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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Developing an Activist Teacher Identity
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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
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Abolfazli, M., & Alemi, M. (2013). Promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings:
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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
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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
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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,
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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:
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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,
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Oyler, C. (2012). Actions speak louder than words: Community activism as curriculum. New York, NY:
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Philip, T.M., & Benin, S.Y. (2014). Programs of teacher education as mediators of White teacher identity.
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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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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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271
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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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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Narrative Theories and Methods
303
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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The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education
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 i