Pre-service teachers’ discourses about the mission of Physical Education teachers: a study based in images depicting the practicum training experience.

Author(s):

Mariana De Sena Amaral Da Cunha(presenting / submitting)Paula Batista Amândio Graça

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 09 A, Teacher Education: Future, Potential, Image

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

11:00-12:30

Room:

B217 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Peter Gray

Contribution

Recent literature on teacher education highlights the importance of using identity development as an analytic framework to better address aspects of teaching, and, most specifically, the challenges of becoming a teacher (Luehmann, 2007; Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009; Jarvis-Selinger, Pratt & Collins, 2010; Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Concerning identity development, over the last twenty years, the focus has been gradually replacing more traditional views of how teachers develop, which were predominantly based on the acquisition of assets, such as knowledge, competences and beliefs (Korthagen, 2004; Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Similarly, the prevalent idea that there might be one (self), predetermined, fixed or given, sustained and unchanged identity is, nowadays, fading away (Bendle, 2002; Watson, 2006; Mcdougall, 2010). Alternatively, a social constructivist paradigm is gaining ground while arguing that identity can never be something that is just internal as it is necessarily relational, and has to do with the recognition of sameness and difference between ourselves and others (Watson, 2006). Within this general framework, professional identity has been defined through a number of diverse lenses. Gee (2001) defines teacher professional identity in terms of the processes of recognition occurring in the interpretations of common everyday experiences. Most specifically, this author uses the term identity to mean “being recognized by self or others as a certain kind of person in a given time and context” (p. 99). In this sense, all teachers have “multiple identities” (Gee, 2001), or “sub-identities” (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004), which are connected more significantly to their performances in society than to their “internal states”. This is not to deny that each individual has what one might call a “core identity” that holds more uniformly, for oneself and others, across contexts. In addition, Gee (2001) sketches out ways of recognizing a person as “a certain kind of person [teacher]” in four perspectives: nature (stemming from one’s natural state), institutional (derived from a position recognized by authority in society), discursive (reflecting how a person is ascribed by self and others) and affinity (determined by experiences shared in alliance to other people).

At the same time the research literature has been specially emphasizing the role that talk and discourse play in teacher identity construction (Gee, 2001; Miller Marsh, 2003; Alsup, 2006; Clarke, 2008; Danielewicz, 2008) drawing, predominantly, on interpretative small-scale and in-depth methods of research, such as individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups (Brown, Reveles, & Kelly, 2005; Cohen, 2010; McDougall, 2010; Trent, 2010). For example, Brown et al. (2005), Cohen (2010), and Day, Stobart, Sammons, and Kington (2006) stress the intricate connection between identity, language and teaching/classroom learning, while arguing that teachers’ talk of their experiences both in school and in student teaching practicum settings are essential to our understanding on how they construct and re-construct their professional identities. Therefore, ”language in this context entails more than understanding the thematic patterns, semantic relationships, and syntactic forms of [teachers’] discourses” (p. 781) ( Brown, et al. 2005); rather, employing a particular discourse allows an individual to become recognized as a certain kind of person within a certain context (Gee, 2001). Thereby, the literature keeps reiterating the need for further elaboration of the concept of identity in distinct empirical fields, using a varied range of methods to enhance new understandings on teacher professional identity Akkermann & Meijer (2011).This paper takes Gee’s (2001) discursive notion of identity to examine the discourses that pre-service physical education teachers used about themselves and others in discussing their mission as physical education teachers in the context of their practicum training in school.

Method

A photo elicitation qualitative methodological approach was adopted. This research method is an approach to visual methods and consists, in particular, of introducing photographs and films into the interview context (Harper, 2002; Clark-Ibáñez, 2004; Phoenix, 2010; Pink, 2010). According to these authors visual methods can offer a distinct way of exploring the pre-service PE teachers’ discourses about their sense of mission, as well as modes in which they (re)configured their professional identity in the process. Nine pre-service teachers were selected from a cohort of students attending the final year of the Master of Teaching Program of the Faculty of Sport, University of Porto to participate in this study. Data were gathered using photo elicitation interview technique: photographs and videos, produced by the participants, were used as prompts for discussion in two focus group sessions (Harper, 2002; Clark-Ibáñez, 2004). Specifically, the participants were asked in advance to take their own photographs and videos during a period of one to two weeks. The pre-service teachers used their own digital cameras, selected the photographs and videos, and organized them into Power Point presentations to be used later on at the focus group sessions as discussion stimuli. Specifically, the set of images (photographs and videos) were exhibited and described by each participant and jointly discussed by the group of 9 pre-service teachers in the focus groups. The two focus groups lasted from 77 to 100 minutes, were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. In the process of analysis, we adopted an inductive approach to thematic analysis based on the Grounded Theory’s open, axial and selective coding principles (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Glaser & Strauss, 1999 [1967]), supplemented by a situational analysis (Clarke, 2003) to map visual discourses and construct photo-essays (Pink, 2010) upon them. Four main identity discursive themes emerged from data. This paper will account for one of the identified themes – a teacher’s sense of mission -, which was broken down in the following subthemes: being an educator; connecting people to sport and physical activity, and transmission of values.

Expected Outcomes

The participants’ discourses upon their photographs and videos accounted for a type of PE teacher who has a sense of mission, which involves assuming more elevated and comprehensive roles, such as: connecting people to sport and physical activity and the transmission of values. The extract presented bellow encompasses the notion of a teacher as an educator, a guide, a model to his or her students. Nowadays, the children and young spend most of their time at school rather than at home with their parents. As such, the PE teacher assumes the role of sharing and passing over values to their students through their subject matter of specialization. For instance, a PE teacher can directly intercede in the hygiene and nutrition habits of the students as well as transmit ideals of sharing and acceptance of differences among people. And, more specifically, provide extra class sport activities to both foster the sport practice in the students and to promote in them awareness for its benefits. Being a teacher is, thus, a profession of values. (Inês) Specifically, the participants talked about events which offered them the opportunity to go beyond what is institutionally expected (i.e. teaching and participating in school). They co-constructed the person of a PE teacher as someone who has the power to project and exercise higher roles, such as promoting the sport practice and physical activity in and out the school walls, and assisting the general education of their students through the transmission of values. For them, the PE teacher has this projective and transformative capacity. Furthermore, a collective perspective was also present in the pre-service teachers’ accounts about this sense of a teacher’s mission. They shared the viewpoint that this higher duty should be considered as a situation of concern to all teachers as a professional group.

References

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Author Information

Mariana De Sena Amaral Da Cunha (presenting / submitting)

University of Porto

Faculty of Sport

Porto

Paula Batista

University of Porto, Faculty of Sport, Research Centre in Education, Innovation and Intervention in Sport (CIFI2D), Portugal

Amândio Graça