Teacher as a gardener, compass or walking encyclopaedia?

Author(s):

Katrin Poom-ValickisEve Eisenschmidt

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 08 B, Research on Professional Identity, Beliefs and Understanding of Teaching and Learning in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

08:30-10:00

Room:

NIG, HS 3F

Chair:

Graeme Hall

Contribution

Studies of preservice teachers have shown that candidates enter teacher education program with well-established beliefs about students and classroom. These beliefs have shaped by the thousands of hours spent in classroom as student, internalizing models of good and poor teaching (Kagan 1992, Pajares 1992, Joram & Gabriele 1998, Calderhead 1996). As prior knowledge about teaching serves as a filter through which the student responds to teacher education, it is important to know what our preservice teachers think about teaching and the teacher's role. It will help to devise strategies to assist student teachers in developing their reflective processes and in formulating their own personal theories of teaching and learning. Calderhead (1997) notes that becoming and staying a teacher involves complex changes and development not only in teaching behaviour but also in cognition and emotion, and these changes occur within powerful contexts. Metaphors are one possibility which can help to understand where preservice teachers are in the development of their teaching identities. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest that the metaphors through which people conceptualize abstract concepts influence the way in which they understand them. Metaphors play a central role in conceptualizing and reflecting upon the nature of teaching and learning, and have been used increasingly as ways to make connection between personal beliefs and educational theories (Hagstrom et al 2000; Martinez et al 2001; Leavy et al 2007; Saban et al 2007; Alger in press). Metaphors have a coherence and internal consistency, which provide insights into ideas that are not explicit or consciously held. Thus metaphors can serve to make implicit knowledge explicit through reflection on and representation of the concepts. Such awareness can support students in participating in reflective conversations about teaching and learning which is a useful skill also for their future role as teachers. The main task of the study presented here was to analyze preservice teachers’ beliefs about the teacher’s role using metaphors as the data gathering method. Metaphors reflect teachers’ beliefs about teaching and the teacher’s role, i.e. illustrate teachers’ professional identity (Bullough 1991). By understanding what preservice teachers believe about teaching, we can be more effective in our teacher education programs in getting preservice teachers to analyze their beliefs and to accept the challenges of diversity in the classroom. Possibilities of using metaphors in teacher education as not only a tool for data gathering but also as an instrument for teachers’ self-reflection will be discussed.

Method

The study had the following aims: (1) to identify the metaphors that preservice teachers use to describe the concept of “teacher” (2) to analyze the categories in which these metaphors are organized and the conception of “teaching and learning” they represent (3) to compare the findings with the results of the earlier study on inservice teachers. Metaphors were used as the data gathering method in the study. The future basic school and secondary school subject teachers participating in the study (N=59) about to complete their teacher education programme were asked to find a metaphor that characterizes the teacher’s role in teaching and to ground why they chose this specific metaphor. The deductive approach was used in the analysis of the metaphors. +continues in References

Expected Outcomes

It can be concluded from the findings that from the 59 preservice teachers in the study, only five of them chose a metaphor that reflected the image of a teacher as subject matter expert. Most metaphors reflected the importance of the teacher as either a pedagogical or didactical expert. It is surprising that in a study conducted nine years ago(Poom-Valickis 2003) inservice teachers preferred the metaphor of teacher as subject matter expert and conveyor whereas now beginning teachers emphasize the teacher’s didactical and pedagogical competence. This may be a reflection of the current student-centered foci of teacher preservice programs. Or will teachers' metaphors change as they start work in school? Will school reality, including school culture, and teaching practice make teachers change their current values? +++continues in References

References

+The categorization of metaphors was based on the model generated by the Dutch researchers Beijaard, Verloop, Vermunt (2000), stemming from the idea that teachers derive their professional identity from (mostly a combination of) the ways they see themselves as subject matter experts, pedagogical experts, and didactical experts. +++The findings of the study help teacher educators understand preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning and through exploring their metaphors preservice teachers may be assisted to reflect and monitor their own development and growth as teachers. References: ALGER,C.L. (in press). Secondary teachers’ conceptual metaphors of teaching and learning: Changes over the career span. - Teaching and Teacher Education BEIJAARD, D.; VERLOOP,N.; VERMUNT, J. D. 2000. Teachers’ perceptions of professional identity: an exploratory study from a personal knowledge perspective. –Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 749-764. BULLOUGH, R.V.Jr. 1991. Exploring Personal Teaching Metaphors in Preservice Teacher Education. - Journal of Teacher Education, 42 (1), 43-51. CALDERHEAD, J. 1996. Teachers: Beliefs and Knowledge. – D.C. Berliner, R.C. Calfee (eds.). Handbook of Educational Psychology. McMillan, NY, 709-725 CALDERHEAD, J. 1997. Towards a research base for the development of teacher education in Europe: The 1996 SERA lecture. Scottish Educational Review, 29 (1), 3-9. HAGSTROM, D.;HUBBARD, R.; HURTIG, C.;MORTOLA, P.; OSTROW, J.;WHITE, V. 2000. Teaching is like.....? – Educational Leadership, 57, 24-27. JORAM, E. ; GABRIELE, A.J. 1998. Preservice Teachers’ Prior Beliefs: Transforming Obstacles into Opportunities. - Teaching and Teacher Education, 14 (2) ,175-191. KAGAN, D.M. 1992 Professional Growth Among Preservice and Beginning Teachers. - Review of Educational Research, 62 (2), 129-169. LAKOFF, G. & JOHNSON, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago : University of Chicago Press LEAVY, A.M.; McSORLEY, F.A.; BOTE, L.A. 2007. An Examination of what metaphor construction reveals about the evolution of preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning. - Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 1217-1233. MARTINEZ,M:A.; SAULEDA, N.; HUBER,G.L. 2001. Metaphors as blueprints of thinking about teaching and learning. - Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(8), 965-977. PAJARES, F.M. 1992. Teachers’ Beliefs and Educational Research: Cleaning Up a Messy Construct. - Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307-332. POOM-VALICKIS, K. 2003. Õpetajate professionaalse arengu uurimine: kuidas muuta eelarvamuslikud tõekspidamised arengupotentsiaaliks. – E. Krull, K.Oras (toim.). Õpetajate professionaalne areng ja õppepraktika. Õpetajakoolitus IV. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 95–109. SABAN, A.; BEYHAN, N.K.; ASLIHAN, S. 2007. Prospective teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning revealed through metaphor analysis.- Learning and Instruction, 17, 123-139.

Author Information

Katrin Poom-Valickis

Tallinn University

Institute of Educational Sciences

Tallinn

Eve Eisenschmidt

Tallinn University, Estonia

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