Teacher Educators' Professional
Learning: "You're more or less
on your own."
Associate Professor Mandi Berry (ICLON)
[ISATT, Ghent, Belgium]
[2-7 July, 2013]
ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Conclusions (1)
• Professional learning (PL) of Teacher
Educators (TEs) matters.
• It’s too important to be left to chance.
• Distinctive nature of TE knowledge.
• TE learning needs to occur within some kind of
framework.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Conclusions (2)
• PL of TE’s should be ‘more or less on your
own’, but PL should not be a lonely enterprise.
• Shift from alone as ‘isolated and
disempowered’ to ‘autonomous with agency’.
• Reframe ‘alone’ from a lonely (self) journey
that does not pay attention to what we learn
through and with others.
• Involves perspective transformation.
• PL of TE’s is an autonomous journey of
interdependence: An apparent paradox.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Teacher Educators & their work
• Who? “an ill-defined & heteregenous
occupational group” (Murray, 2012) of low
academic status (Ducharme, 1993).
• How? “thrown in at the deep end” (Wilson,
2006) without appropriate support or formal
preparation (Zeichner, 2005).
• What? A relative lack of consensus about
nature and worth of what teacher educators do
(Korthagen, 2001; Davey, 2013).
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Distinctive nature of TE’s work
• Teaching as main task
• Teaching about teaching (content and manner)
• Need to simultaneously serve many, often
contradictory demands
• Inherently both practical & theoretical
• Working in a complex, ill-structured domain
with “few clear right or wrong courses of
action” (McRobbie & Shulman, 1991, p. 1).
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Consequences for TEs work &
learning
• TE’s draw from existing knowledge sources and can
remain loyal to communities of practice of entry that
shapes (and limits) their thinking & approach (Berry
& van Driel, 2012; Hadar & Brody, 2010).
• A culture of isolation (Kagen, 1990; Korthagen,
2001)
• TE knowledge and expertise development largely
individualised and remains tacit (Loughran, 2006).
• TE learning & development is largely ignored,
mostly a matter of chance & inefficient (Smith,
2010).
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Calls to change
• “…if teacher education is to be taken more
seriously…then the preparation of …teacher
educators needs to be taken more seriously as well”
(Zeichner, 2005, p.123)
• “In order to meet the demands placed on the
profession, all teacher educators – including mentors
at schools – should be given the opportunity to
undertake proper lifelong learning of their own.”
(ETUCE, 2008).
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Calls to change
• Specific requirements for TE’s; e.g.,
classroom experience, academic qualifications
(PhD), research active.
• More and better formalised induction
procedures.
• Development of a curriculum for educating
teacher educators.
• Development of knowledge base of TE.
• Pedagogy of Teacher Education.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Some Responses
Systemic
•Standards for Teacher Educators (e.g., ATE – USA)
•Professional accreditation (e.g., VELON- NL)
•National centre (e.g., MOFET – Israel)
•Academic Requirements (e.g. PhD - many)
Local
•Programs of study within institutions (e.g. doctoral)
•Professional Learning Communities
•Co-teaching, mentoring
•Self-study SIG – local became systemic
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Some Risks
• Systemic approaches can reinforce ‘top-down’
culture and accountability pressures.
• Approaches may seek to reduce (the
necessary) complexity and ambiguity of TEs
work; (unintentionally) reinforce assumptions.
• Risk losing emphasis on teaching (e.g,
through academisation).
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Limited research knowledge
• Few systematic routes for TE’s ongoing
learning and little research documentation of
these routes (Smith, 2012)
• No research that tells us that specific kinds of
backgrounds/experiences are predictors of
success as TEs, or that that preservice teachers
learn better with or without TE’s in organised
programs.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
TE learning: “a field where we let a
thousand flowers bloom” ? (Shulman, 2006)
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Reframing Teacher Educator
Learning
• Professional Development carries assumptions
of upskilling/training; ‘spray on’ or ‘done-to’
approaches for short term change;
accumulating knowledge.
• Professional Learning introduces a notion of
ongoing change that values teacher educators
as learners; responsive to their particular
concerns, issues, needs and contexts;
transforming knowledge.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Finding my own PL trajectory as
a Teacher Educator
• Have come to recognise aspects of my own
PL and what has supported it.
• Can be organised according to framework of
Experiences, Processes, Conditions.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Experiences
A mixture of individual and collaborative, formal and
informal, planned and unplanned experiences
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Being in a new context
Feeling deskilled/disoriented
Becoming a learner again
Finding and working with colleague/s to discuss, coteach, stimulate thinking, write, publish
Formal academic study (e.g., PhD)
Participation in a professional community, with a
collective goal
Involvement in a range of projects
Ongoing analysis of experience through self-study
ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Processes
Becoming conscious of practice, developing a coherent
pedagogy of teacher education, leading to professional selfunderstanding.
• Learning to articulate tacit knowledge
• Identifying & questioning embedded assumptions
• Recognising the broader (theoretical) framework in which
practice sits
• Reviewing ‘problems’ from different perspectives (e.g.
problems became tensions)
• Participating in particular discourse communities
• Communicating personally developed knowledge.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Conditions
A set of personal dispositions and structural conditions,
including formal requirements and open opportunities for
learning
• Support and encouragement of others
• Guidance but not directing
• Opportunities and expectations for my learning &
development in different ways (not about ‘just doing
the job’)
• Own willingness and openness to learn and change.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Mapping my learning onto PL of
other TE’s
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Disorienting experience
Re-learning/learning how to teach
Becoming conscious of practice
Recognising the frames that locate practice
Being able to explicate these practices and frames
Challenging assumptions/frames
Reframing understandings of TE
Taking changed thinking into practice
Communicating new understandings of practice
Brandenburg, 2008; Kane, 2007; Nicol, 1997; Ritter, 2007; Russell, 1995; Williams, 2013...
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Transformation not accumulation
• Transformative learning as a process of
“perspective transformation” (Mezirow, 2000)
• 3 dimensions: Psychological (selfunderstanding); convictional (revision of
belief systems) & behavioural (actions)
• Goes beyond acquiring knowledge and skills
• Involves both individual efforts and social
interaction.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Returning to conclusions
• TEs criticised for being left on their own, but
almost have to be left on own to construct own
professional knowledge of practice.
• Does not mean that every TE needs to ‘start from
scratch’ but it does need them to transform their
perspective.
• Aspects of a shared knowledge base important to
develop but needs to be fluid and flexible enough
to respond to change, embrace complexity, and
TE’s different contexts and tasks.
• A professional learning perspective matters.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
PL of TE’s: An apparent paradox
• An individual task that cannot be accomplished alone.
• It is both an individual sense making process and a
relational participatory process.
• Sense making by the individual is invoked and
developed as one goes through the process of
reconciling oneself to particular social contexts.
• Involves a perspective shift.
• A continuous process of re-forming autonomy
through social exchange.
• That is, autonomy as interdependence rather than
independence.
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
PL of TE’s: An orderly blooming
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching
Thank you
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ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching