Voice of the students the Teacher Degree in Primary Education about the adequacy of their studies to the professional performance
Author(s):
Rocío Quijano López (submitting) Inmaculada García Martínez (presenting) Miguel Pérez Ferra María Teresa Ocaña Moral
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 01 B, Student Teachers Voices and Perceptions

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-23
13:15-14:45
Room:
NM-Theatre N
Chair:
ML White

Contribution

This work corresponds to one phase of the research project called “The professional identity in Teacher's Degree studies”, whose progress has been shown in various conferences as ECER-2012, held in Cádiz; ECER-3013, held in Istanbul, ECER-2014, held in Oporto and ECER-2015, held in Budapest, and which involves five Spanish universities: Almeria, Cadiz, Granada, Jaen and Malaga. This work studies the perception that the students of the fourth year of the Teacher Degree in Primary Education (henceforth, TDPE), in the University of Jaen have of the training received during their University studies. This is: their pedagogical beliefs; how what they learned during this stage will affect their future professional practice; and, how all of this affects in shaping their professional identity.

This paper analyses the results by the students of the fourth year of the TDPE, which confirm those obtained by the students of the fourth year of the teacher Degree in Early Childhood (Pérez Ferra et al., 2015). The evidence presented in the student’s life stories show that the beliefs that students have developed during their primary, secondary and university studies are very close to positions based on efficiency, and are very different to the demands considered by the teacher's educational action nowadays.

We refer to these beliefs that determine the development of a professional identity a little blurred, whose more significant appearance is the divergence in those professional indicators that have to organize the “professional teaching identity” (Rivas et al., 2013).

Studies carried out by Sachs (2010) identify the professional identity as a significant factor that supports the learning experiences. Two speeches emerge from the uneven development of “professional teaching identity”; One of them, is based in the conception of a large portion of the teacher staff that facilitates in their students the development of a perception based on efficiency, which is being reinforced by educational policies in countries like Spain; The other one, favors a more democratic conception of development of the professional teaching identity. The latter, develops the beliefs of future teachers in the direction and sense of a shared democratic professionalism, based on Habermas's "Communicative Ethics" (Habermas, 2003) and on Lévinas's "Ethics of the Other" (Lévinas, 1987), as a way out of the subject-object crossroads.

The truth is that the evidences collected show a worrying trend to the construction of the professional teaching identity, supported on efficiency-based beliefs.

We think that this work provides a substantial progress related to the one shown in ECER-2014, where graduates in their first five years of practice expressed their perception regarding their own admission to the professional activity (Rivas et al., 2014).

Method

The research is based in a narrative methodology developed through autobiographical narratives of the students about their university stage. Thus, forty-five students of the fourth year of the TDPE, in the University of Jaen have developed autobiographical narratives in which they express various personal scenes in where they question their being, knowing being, know how to behave and know how. These narratives also evidence that the students have a strong concern about how to link what they have learned with their future practice as teachers and with their personal and social reality: family, colleagues, friends, etc. This research model has been used in this work because, as indicated by Rusznyak (2009) and Rivas et al. (2010), implies to deepen both the in students´ vital reality and in the commitment that they acquire with society, since these facts allow them to define how they are building their sense of being in the world. The process followed in the analysis and interpretation of the data collected was determined by two moments: first, the narratives of those students who contributed most significant data to the study were selected (which meant the reduction of the initial seventy autobiographies to forty five); secondly, the categorization and analysis of the students contributions was made by developing a list of those topics present in the narratives. Later, a search of the different themes that appear in the narratives as exhaustive as possible was made; this allowed us to get a “map of contents” that was subsequently reduced (through a deliberative process) to a comprehensive system of categories that allow us to face the interpretative analysis. The results provided by the analysis of the autobiographies have been obtained based on the previously determined categories and have been done using, as qualitative analysis software, NVivo-10. The interpretation of these results was made and discussed in discussion groups; these groups were composed by both participating students and members of the research group involved in the project. The followed process consisted of relate the participants to the different categories found in the qualitative analysis, such as, learning, classroom climate, fellow classmate, experience acquired, motivation-vocation, professional guidance, prestige of the studies and teacher staff, among others. This provided us a series of relationships that could be represented in a networks graph to be analyzed.

Expected Outcomes

Based on the proposed goals, we intend to get indicators that allow us to know the biographical and pedagogical profiles of the students of the TDPE, related to their opinions about the convergence between what they have learnt in their university stage and the evolution of their beliefs and perceptions about their studies, given that both of them configure their professional identity. The networks graph results show that the relationship among the professional indicators which constitute the foundation of the professional identity is weak, being able to mention on the one hand, the weak relationship among learning and classroom climate, fellow classmates, experience acquired and motivation-vocation and on the other hand, the weak relationship among learning and teaching staff, professional guidance and experience acquired. It is therefore found, a worrying disintegration between those professional indicators which have always coincided on the configuration of the professional teaching identity. Students demand: an increase in the commitment from a very important sector of the teacher staff and call them to be involved not only in their instruction but in their holistic training as future teachers; responsibility and ethical sense to their classmates to be able to improve their professional training and their capacity to work in groups; professional guidance associated with their professional training, because they consider that both of them are necessaries to become a good teacher. From this point of view, they consider the “practicum” as a good way to validate and implement their learning. Finally, we also intend to continue the open debate among university, educational administration and students at an earlier stage of this research, in order to establish the necessary changes in the academic curriculum of the TDPE and facilitate that the students can be observers of the changes in the methodology used by their teachers.

References

Rivas, I.; Pérez Ferra, M.; Quijano, R. and Leite, A. (2012). The Professional Identity in Teacher Education. European Conference on Educational Research (ECER 2012). Retrieved from: http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/print/conference/6/contribution/16306/ Farnsworth, V. and Higham, J. (2012). Teachers who teach their practice: the modulation of hybridised professional teacher identities in work-related educational programmes in Canada. Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 25 (4), 473 -505 Farnsworth, V. and Higham, J. (2010). Teachers who teach their practice: the modulation of hybridised professional teacher identities in work-related educational programmes in Canada. Journal of education and Work. Vol. 25 (4), 473-505 Habermas, J. (2003). La ética del discurso y la cuestión de la verdad. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Arcis. Edición electrónica: www philosophia.cl; Retrieved from: www.iade.org.ar/modules/descargas/visit.php?cid=7&lid=9 Lévinas, E. (1987). De otro modo que ser, o más allá de la esencia. Salamanca: Sígueme SAU. Pérez Ferra, M.; Quijano López, R.; Ocaña Moral, M. T. and Ortega Martos, J. M. (2015). Pedagogical beliefs of students of the teacher Degree in Early Childhood education training for professional practice. European Conference on Educational Research (ECER 2015). Retrieved from: http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/print/conference/20/contribution/35610/ Rivas Flores, I.; Pérez Ferra, M.; Léite Méndez, A.; Quijano López, R. and Núñez, C. (2013). Previous Pedagogical Beliefs of Freshmen of Teacher Education. European Conference on Educational Research (ECER 2013). Retrieved from: http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/8/contribution/22502/ Rusznyak, L. (2009): Confronting the ‘pedagogical immunity’ of student teachers, Education as Change, 13:2, 263-276. Sachs, J. (2010). Teacher professional identity: competing discourses, competing outcomes. Journal of Education Policy. Vol. 16 (2), 149-161.

Author Information

Rocío Quijano López (submitting)
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
JAÉN
Inmaculada García Martínez (presenting)
Universidad de Granada
Didáctica y Organización Escolar
Andújar
Miguel Pérez Ferra
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
PEDAGOGÍA
JAÉN
María Teresa Ocaña Moral
University of Jaen
Didactic of Science
Jaén

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