The Impact Of Employment-Based Teacher Training On Long-Term University Teacher Educators
Author(s):
Harriet Rowley (presenting / submitting) Tony Brown (presenting) Kim Smith
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 11 C, Perspectives on Competence Development in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:
2014-09-04
17:15-18:45
Room:
B226 Sala de Aulas
Chair:
Tony Brown

Contribution

Teacher education has become a key instrument of reform where the work of schools and universities has increasingly been subject to marketisation and associated audit (Ball, 2003; Furlong, 2005, 2013). In England, such trends are typified by the introduction of School Direct: a model of teacher training that enables schools to select their own trainees. This reflects a new emphasis on teaching being increasingly conceptualised in technicist or craft-based terms where the university elements of training have become more optional and increasingly shaped by the immediate demands practice in particular schools (Browne et al., 2013). This policy climate has substantially altered trainee experience in many European countries (Cartout et al., 2009; Cosenefroy et al., 2013; Hodson, et al., 2012; Luttenberg et al., 2013; Pillen et al., 2013; Smith et al., 2013).

This paper forms part of a wider study that has explored the affect of School Direct on university practice and how university teacher educators have experienced these policy adjustments. The long-term shift from academic- to school-based emphases has resulted in changes to university teacher educators' base of expertise, where older staff members are more aligned with the former, and younger with the latter. Various authors have spoken of how this uncertainty of job definition impacts on the emergent sense of self of new entrants to the profession of teacher education. For example, Boyd et al. (2010:10) have reported on how "the workplace context encourages the new lecturers to hold on to their identity and credibility as school teachers rather than to pro-actively seek new identities as academics within the professional field of teacher education". Less work however has been conducted in relation to longer serving members of university staff now obliged to adjust from earlier practices. The study aims to capture how members of this group have experienced recent professional demands as a result of schools increasingly setting the terms of teacher education. It questions how they have altered their own practice and how their attitudes to research as a dimension of the job have changed. More broadly, the study aims to articulate what can be defended as the distinctive university contribution to teacher training as school-based elements extend further.

The theoretical ambitions of this study are aimed at building an understanding of how ideological identifications work through teacher educator practice. Teacher educator motives are variously harnessed by identification with particular discourses (retention of university values, the need to support practice, the promotion of research, the need to comply with directives to retain "outstanding" status, etc). Some asserted the academic dimensions of teacher education or the development/retention of humanistically defined pedagogical processes. Others were motivated more by operational than by academic concerns. Policy documents meanwhile regulate practices more generally such that participation in both teaching and teacher education becomes a form of bureaucratic compliance. Lacan's schemata of the four discourses provides a way of understanding four key social phenomena: governing, educating, protesting and revolutionising (Lacan, 2007; Bracher, 2007). For Lacan there is always a gap between performance and awareness or articulation of that performance, where this gap results from moving between alternative identificatory modes (Zizek, 2006; Brown, 2008). Specifically, teacher educators are depicted as wavering between governmental regulation (master discourse) and professional imperatives (university discourse), where the latter comprise an uneasy alliance of expertise in school and academic rigour. Through depicting the unsettlement of practice and accounts of it (hysteric discourse) the study points to possible resolutions that might be achieved through more systematic resistance to external demands (analytic discourse). That is, the university teacher educator identity results from attempted resolution of these conflicting demands.

Method

The wider study is concerned with building an understanding of what teacher education is becoming as a result of anticipated or actual shifts in its location. This current research was commissioned by our university towards examining how its practices and priorities might be adjusted towards meeting the demands of changing circumstances and shaping future professional development. The particular focus is on how the adjustments to teacher education practice are being experienced by those with insider perspectives; university or school-based teacher educators, university managers or head teachers and trainees on courses that combine university study with school based training. The growing data set currently includes interviews with around fifty teacher educators or school mentors. The interviews focused on how School Direct's symbolic shift to schools leading the teacher education agenda impacted on university practices and on the experience of trainees. For example, how did the content of university sessions change and how did trainees variously identify with university and school? What effect did the changed arrangements have on "relationship maintenance" (Ellis et al., 2013) between mentor/tutor, tutor/trainee, mentor/trainee? In this presentation we concentrate on interviews that were conducted with longer term university tutors and managers on how they experienced working in partnership with schools and how this impacted on the composition of their work in the university setting. They were also asked about how they saw the distinctiveness of the role of universities in teacher education with special reference to the role of research, and about their views on what the future holds for universities in teacher education. Analyses of four case studies will be offered each depicting different identifications with the current professional environment and how they see their changing practice being referenced to research. The intention here is to assess how those who have experienced successive changes to their work composition variously identify with the distinctive elements of university teacher education. Specifically, the interviews explored how the increase in external definition of practice resulted in the interviewees expressing their professional development trajectory through their engagement with their own research activity, or the way in which they saw their research informing their own teaching. The case studies were each characterised by personal research or enquiry-based teaching being seen as a refuge from regulated teacher education practice. That is, the distinctive university contribution to teacher education was seen in terms of the maintenance and promotion of analytical capability.

Expected Outcomes

Our findings indicate that moves to new forms of professional training have significantly impacted on the practice and identities of teacher educators in universities. Yet the distribution of this impact has been uneven and the responses varied. For example, economies of scale may prevent extensive expansion in primary teacher education, or where subject knowledge requirements exceed those available in schools. For others, the values that they acquired in the academy and hold dear are being systematically eroded. Nevertheless, conceptions of subject pedagogy, of research-informed practice and of theory within a more school-based model have been understood differently and articulated by some with ambiguity. Engagement in research provides personal refuge for some and has become crucial in developing their identity within the academy. For others, the activity of research had not played a major part in the shaping their professional identity. Instead they have aligned their practice with present outside demands, recognition that the landscape has changed whilst ‘principles don’t pay the bills.’ In contrast, the demands of what teacher education has become is so far removed from their basis of expertise, the pull of retirement is the only attractive option. In this context we propose that the maintenance and promotion of analytical capability might be seen as the distinctive university contribution within teacher education. Such capability is crucial for teachers adapting to future changes. To achieve this university teacher identity might be seen in terms of providing a critical platform from which developing practices in schools might be examined. Although some larger school alliances will soon be able to qualify their trainees it is still far from clear that schools more generally have the capacity or willingness to expand their teacher education function towards maintaining or broadening their current level of participation.

References

Ball, S.J. (2003) The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity, Journal of Educational Policy, 18(2): 215-228 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 Bracher, M. (1994) On the psychological and social forms of language: Lacan’s theory of the four discourses. In M. Bracher (ed) Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure and Society. New York University Press, 107-128 Brown, T. (2008) Desire and drive in researcher subjectivity: The broken mirror of Lacan. Qualitative Inquiry, 14 (3): 402-423 Browne, L. Reid, J. (2013) Changing localities for teacher training: the potential impact on professional formation and the university sector response. Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy. 38(4): 497-508. Cartaut, S. Bertone, S. (2009) Co-analysis of work in the triadic supervision of preservice teachers based on neo-Vygotskian activity theory: Case study from a French university institute of teacher training. Teacher and Teacher Education. 25 (8): 1086-1094 Cosnefroy, L. Buhot, E. (2013) Workplace learning impact: an analysis of French-secondary trainee teachers’ perception of their professional development. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice. 19 (6): 679-694 Ellis, V. Glackin, M. Heighes, D. Norman, M. Norris, K. Spencer, I. McNicholl, J. (2013) A difficult realisation: the proletarianisation of higher education-based teacher educators. Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy. 39(3): 266-280 Furlong, J. (2005) New Labour and teacher education: the end of an era. Oxford Review of Education, 31(1): 119–134 Furlong, J. (2013) Globalisation, Neoliberalism, and the Reform of Teacher Education in England. The Educational Forum. 77 (1): 28-50 Hodson, E. Smith, K. & Brown, T. (2012) Reasserting theory in professionally-based initial teacher education. Teachers and Teaching, 18 (2): 181-195 Lacan, J. (2007) The other side of psychoanalysis: The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII. London: Norton. Luttenberg, J. Imants, L, Van Veen, K. (2013) Reform as ongoing positioning process: the positioning of a teacher in the context of reform. Teachers and Teaching: theory and Practice. 19 (3): 293-310 Pillen, M. Beijaard, D. Den Brok, P. (2013) Professional identity tensions of beginning teachers. Teachers and teaching: theory and practice. 19 (6): 660-678 Smith, K. Hodson, E. & Brown, T. (2013) Teacher educator changing perceptions of theory. Educational Action Research Journal. 21(2): 237-252 Žižek, S. (2006). The parallax view. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Author Information

Harriet Rowley (presenting / submitting)
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Tony Brown (presenting)
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Kim Smith
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

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