Reconceptualizing Their Teaching Over Time: Priorities and Pedagogies of Mid- and Senior-Career Literacy/English Teacher Educators

Author(s):

Clare Kosnik(presenting / submitting)Clive Beck(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 04 A, Second and Mid-Career Entrants to Teaching

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

09:00-10:30

Room:

B217 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Maeve O'Brien

Contribution

Current research reveals the complex (and often hidden) challenges new teacher educators encounter (Boyd & Harris, 2012; McKeon and Harrison, 2012; Murray and Male, 2005); however, there is little systematic research on teacher educators beyond their induction (or lack thereof). Our large-scale research project, Literacy Teacher Educators: Their Goals, Visions, and Practices, examined literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) from Canada, the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia. There are three phases to this study. This paper reports on the first two phases the goal of which is:

· to study in depth a group of literacy/English teacher educators, (LTEs) with special attention to their backgrounds, knowledge, research activities, identity, view of current government initiatives, pedagogy, and course goals.

Theoretical Framework

Re-Conceptualizing the Work of a Teacher Educator

The knowledge and skills teacher educators need is vast and complicated (Ball, 2000; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Kosnik & Beck, 2009). In regards to teaching, Loughran (2006) argues that one cannot simply replicate one’s practices as a classroom teacher in the university setting; there is no direct application of the skills used for teaching children to teaching adults. Teacher educators come to their new position with substantial knowledge about classroom teaching, but Murray and Male (2005) note that “in order to achieve the dual focus of teaching about teaching, new teacher educators needed to develop further pedagogical knowledge and understanding, appropriate for the second-order setting” (p.137). Novice teacher educators find that their knowledge is insufficient because it needs to be “repackaged” and broadened.

Although teacher educators usually have extensive experience of teaching in a school classroom, they need new skills for a new context – the university. Murray (2005) states, “In making the career transition to HE they encounter the practices, norms and expectations of academic work, as instantiated in the settings of the teacher education departments of their Universities or Colleges of Higher Education” (p. 22). Kosnik (2007) describes how, as a beginning teacher educator, she focused her teaching on providing student teachers with a steady diet of practical teaching strategies because that was what she was missing as a new teacher; however, through self-study of her practices she realized this was inadequate because it did not provide a coherent approach to teaching undergirded by research. She needed to deepen her knowledge of all aspects of literacy research and teaching in higher education. Novice teacher educators need to figure out what they are trying to accomplish in their teaching while also learning about the politics and norms of their new workplace (Skerrett, 2008).

Method

We understood the terms novice, mid-career, and senior in the following way: • novice: 0 - 4 years experience • mid-career: 5 - 10 years experience • senior: 10 + years experience For the purposes of this proposal we only included LTEs with five years or more experience, therefore we limited our sample from the original 28 to 21 participants. We interviewed participants once over the period April to August, 2012. Each interview was approximately 60 - 90 minutes and had five parts: background experiences; qualities (in their view) of an effective literacy educator; pedagogy; identity; turning points in your career (personal and professional); and research activities. Interviews were done either face to face or on Skype and were audio-recorded and transcribed. The interview was semi-structured. Much of our methodology was qualitative as defined by Merriam (2009) and Punch (2009). We believe qualitative inquiry is justified as it provides depth of understanding and enables exploration of questions that do not on the whole lend themselves to quantitative inquiry (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Guzzetti et al., 1999; Merriam, 2009). It opens the way to gaining entirely unexpected ideas and information from participants in addition to finding out their opinions on simple pre-set matters. We used a grounded theory approach which does not begin with a fixed theory but generates theory inductively from the data using a set of techniques and procedures for collection and analysis (Punch, 2009). As the analysis progressed, we identified key themes and refined them – adding some and deleting or merging others – through “constant comparison” with the interview transcripts. For data analysis we used NVivo9, going through a number of steps: (1) Our initial coding of the transcripts was fairly broad, leading to 42 nodes/themes. Some arose straightforwardly as answers to our interview questions while others emerged unexpectedly. (2) After two rounds of coding we collapsed our analysis into 24 nodes/themes; however, within the 24 (e.g., influence of being a classroom teacher) there were sub-nodes (e.g., gaps in knowledge had sub-nodes of knowledge of research, knowledge of schools). (3) As we analyzed the quotes, annotations, and memos we developed summary findings regarding changes in their approach to teaching. Given the sophistication of NVivo9, we were able to conduct queries to see relationships between the biographical data and other data. NVivo9 allowed us to draw upon and develop both qualitative and quantitative data.

Expected Outcomes

1. Confident with Their Teaching Teaching well was very important to the LTEs in our sample. High course evaluations and nominations for teaching awards solidified their identity as able instructors. Having a much clearer sense of the kind of HE instructors they wanted to be was apparent as they had resolved many of the conflicts novice teacher educators experience regarding the fine boundary between being flexible and firm with students. When asked to define the qualities of an effective LTE, 17 of the 21 included the “softer” qualities of caring and being supportive in addition to subject expertise. 2. Synergy and Synthesis Mid-career/senior LTEs appeared to have mastered a synergy among their work: their research informing their teaching and their teaching informing their research. Our participants tended to conceptualize their work as their life work, and so a natural flow was created between theory and practice. 3. Curricula Come and Gone By mid-career many have “lived through” a variety of national curricula, each one valuing certain aspects of literacy; our participants expressed a decided aversion to having to teach directly to these mandates. They understood the dynamic and ever-changing landscape of literacy education and viewed their role as preparing pre-service teachers for any and every national curriculum and policy they may encounter. 4. Stepping back: What do new teachers need? Over time, our study participants developed a clearer sense of what their student teachers needed to be effective teachers. As Sharon noted, too heavy an emphasis on the practical is as inappropriate as too much theory. Mid- and senior-career LTEs improved their teaching through trial and error and reflecting on their work. The findings from this study would be useful for new LTEs because they would provide direction on how to shape and organize teaching in HE.

References

Ball, D. (2000). Bridging practices: Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 241-247. Boyd, P. & Harris, K. (2010). Becoming a university lecturer in teacher education: Expert school teachers reconstructing their pedagogy and identity. Professional Development in Education, 36 (1-2), 9-24 Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Guyton, E. & McIntyre, J. (1990). Student teaching and school experiences. In W. R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 514-534). New York: Macmillan. Guzzetti, B., Anders, P., & Neuman, S. (1999). Thirty years of Journal of Reading Behaviour. Journal of Literacy Research, 31(1), 86-92. Kosnik, C. (2007). Still the same yet different: Enduring values and commitments in my work as a teacher and teacher educator. In T. Russell, & J. Loughran (Eds.), Enacting a pedagogy of teacher education: Values, relationships and practices (pp. 16-30). London: Routledge. Kosnik, C. & Beck, C. (2009). Priorities in teacher education: The 7 key elements of pre-service preparation. London: Routledge. Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding about teaching and learning about teaching. London. Routledge. McKeon, F. & Harrison, J. (2012). Developing pedagogical practice and professional identities of beginning teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36 (1-2), 25-44. Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Murray, J. & Male, T. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: Evidence from the field. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 125-142. Murray, J. (2005). Re-addressing the priorities: New teacher educators and induction into higher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 28(1), 67-85. Punch, K. (2009). Introduction to research methods in education. London: Sage. Skerrett, A. (2008). Biography, identity, and inquiry: The making of teacher, teacher educator, and researcher. Studying Teacher Education, 4(2), 143-156.

Author Information

Clare Kosnik (presenting / submitting)

University of Toronto

Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning

Toronto

Clive Beck (presenting)