Peer Learning Cluster ‘Teachers and Trainers’Peer Learning Activity
Reykjavik 21 – 24 June 2010
THE PROFESSION OF THE TEACHER EDUCATOR
The theme of the session Systemic issues:
on coherence, leadership, responsibility and ownership
Fragmentation versus unity within in teacher education and relations with stakeholders
Jón Torfi Jó[email protected] http://www.hi.is/~jtj/
School of Education, University of Iceland
Some personal concerns
• The channels for research on education to the field of education are very narrow
• The discussion on educational issues is confined to special groups and disseminates much too slowly
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010 2
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
A personal statement – a point of departure
On the whole we are best served by building up a body of skilled professional teachers but also other professionals who work as strong teams in harmonised but diverse institutional settings (normally schools).
The paper is on several issues related to this, but this presentation is preoccupied with the problem of fragmentation.
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
The question about the education of teachers
How are these professionals educated, by whom and in what context? And who are they who care?
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Issues
Fragmentation versus unityFragmentation versus coherenceDepth versus coverage
But where do we see the fragmentation?
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Categories at issue with reference to fragmentation
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Stake-holders Institutions
Groups of teacher educators
School level
Level of education (pre-, in, CPD) Values Skills Setting Knowledge
Agents Categories Output and setting
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Categories at issue with reference to fragmentation
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Stake-holders
MinistriesTeacher unionsUnions of school principalsParent association
Institutions
Universities
Schools of Ed
Departments
Schools
Groups of teacher educators
Subject specialistsSchool teachers
Pedagogues
School level
Pre-school
Primary
Secondary
VETTertiaryAdult
Level of education (pre-, in, CPD)
Pre-service
In-service
Continuing education
CPD
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Categories at issue with reference to fragmentation
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Values
Educational valuesOperational values
……
Skills
Educational skillsProfessional development
……
Setting
Academia
The field
Knowledge
Content knowledgeProfessional knowledge
…….
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Stake-holders Institutions
Groups of teacher educators
School level
Level of education (pre-, in, CPD) Values Skills Setting Knowledge
Ministries UniversitiesSubject specialists Pre-school Pre-service
Educational values
Educational skills Academia
Content knowledge
Teacher unions Schools of Ed
School teachers Primary In-service
Operational values
Professional development The field
Professional knowledge
Unions of school principals Departments Pedagogues Secondary
Continuing education …… …… …….
Parent associations Schools VET CPD
TertiaryAdult
Agents Categories Output and setting
Categories at issue with reference to fragmentation
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Categories at issue with reference to fragmentation
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Interested and relevant parties Output: The professional
A unifying agent is a sensible option?!
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
This unifying agent has two main roles
• To ensure that everything is tied together, forms a holistic frame, produces a reasonably harmonised professional who has a strong professional identity.
• To ensure that all the relevant bits are there; to make sure that crucial parts of the formation of a professional are not missing.
• Let us return to the question of fragmentation from these two perspectives.
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
With these perspectives in mind we return to the questions of
• what is the corpus of attitudes, knowledge and skills that is relevant for teachers?
• what is the corpus of attitudes, knowledge and skills that is relevant for teacher educators?
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
The common prototypical frame of reference for the curriculum of teachers (and thus the corpus is easy to define)
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Content knowledge
(the subject)Pedagogy
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
A suggested different framework for talking about teacher education
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School based
education
Educational studies
Schools as institutions
Professionalism
The discipline
The discipline as a school
subject
The discipline didactics
General didactics
New skills
General knowledge
Some questions
• Who decides what should have prominence?• Who takes responsibility for including all the relevant bits and
pieces?
• Three examples, of areas which are unfortunately normally only paid lip-service in the current discussion:
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Example 1
• The new skills issue (new competencies) – Disregarded by the subject groups (and perhaps everybody)– Relate to new subjects, new disciplines
– A changing environment– Replacing traditional skills with new skills, and perhaps traditional
subjects with new subjects, a tall order– A long list, e.g. problem solving, critical thinking, learning to learn,
creative performance, being entrepreneurial, – And perhaps new subjects such as multiculturalism, literacy,
citizenship, democracy, the arts, personal development and self-sustainability ...
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Example 2
• Professionalism– How do you educate and train a professional?– Ideas such as those related to CHAT
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Example 3
• The question of lifelong learning, of professional development, of institutional development
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Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
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The time problem
2-5 years of initial edcuation
Time from leaving compulsory education
Disc
iplin
esor
com
pete
ncie
s
5 year 10 years 20 years 20 years 40 years
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
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The two faces of LLL – a very bad case of fragmentation
Time line, beginning of school to the end of working life (and on )
The rhetoric of lifelong learning
Initial, pre-service and in-service education and professional development
The system as it operates
The educational system The loose arrangement of continuous education and CPD
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What about these examples?
• Very clear demonstrations of the destructive effects of fragmentation for the task of strengthening education; it will also keep the professions of teachers and teacher educators weak
• Which are reinforced by a tug of war between interest groups and also by status problems
• The worst example is the relative low status and scant attention given to LLL and CPD in many educational systems
• Present a strong case for a powerful unifying agency
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We could continue with
• The relationship between academia and the field; e.g. school based development; often operated on the basis of serious misconceptions; should be rethought from scratch.
• The institutions, and the individual teacher educators and also the schools, and the individual teachers; the difference between individual and institutional responsibility.
• The school as an institution; how it acts and develops and changes; the parallel between continuous professional development (CPD) and continuous school development (CSD).
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Forums for debate – policies
• The problem with the level of debate on educational issues, such as those mentioned in the previous figure; within the ministries, the universities and the schools of education, and ...
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Forums for debate – policies
– The policies should specify the division of labour and responsibilities between agencies (ministry, etc. )
– The policies should aim for unification of tasks (which does certainly not imply that these are only performed by one party); this is to me an overriding concern
– The policies should demand both breadth and depth but beware of how both breadth and depth are defined
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Forums for debate
– The should be a frame of reference for ingredients in a teacher education programme and consequently the competencies of teacher educators could be deduced.
– The main common criterion for all teacher educators is a profound understanding of what education is about and a good grasp of the intense curricular debates of the past hundred years.
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010
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Thank you
Kærar þakkir