Teacher Educators' Professional Learning: "You're more or less on your own."

ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching

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 Teaching2

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.


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.3



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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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TE learning: “a field where we let a thousand flowers bloom” ? (Shulman, 2006)

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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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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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ExperiencesA mixture of individual and collaborative, formal and informal, planned and unplanned experiences

• Being in a new context• Feeling deskilled/disoriented • Becoming a learner again• Finding and working with colleague/s to discuss, co-

teach, 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

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ProcessesBecoming conscious of practice, developing a coherent pedagogy of teacher education, leading to professional self-understanding.

• 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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ConditionsA 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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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

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Brandenburg, 2008; Kane, 2007; Nicol, 1997; Ritter, 2007; Russell, 1995; Williams, 2013...


Transformation not accumulation

• Transformative learning as a process of “perspective transformation” (Mezirow, 2000)

• 3 dimensions: Psychological (self-understanding); convictional (revision of belief systems) & behavioural (actions)

• Goes beyond acquiring knowledge and skills

• Involves both individual efforts and social interaction.

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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.24


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.25


PL of TE’s: An orderly blooming

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Thank you

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Documents

Teacher Educators' Professional Learning: "You're more or less on your own."