Collaborative and Reflective Learning and Teaching in Teacher Education

Author(s):

Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 02 B, Programmes and Approaches: Cooperation and collaboration

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

15:15-16:45

Room:

K5.20

Chair:

Paul Cammack

Contribution

Being a teacher educator and teaching about teaching is a special challenge. The teacher educator needs not only to talk about teaching but also to ’walk the talk’, while the teacher educator inevitably is a role model for the teacher students. Thus the invisible and visible processes of teacher education is interesting to document and analyse, while these even might be more important than the actual knowledge that the courses are intended to provide. (Lunenberg, Korthagen & Swennen, 2007.)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential of collaborative and reflective learning and teaching in teacher education, with a special focus on experiences from a particular course in the teacher education programme at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. There is no detailed single curriculum of teacher education in Finland, rather some principles and general outlines (Malinen, Väisänen & Savolainen, 2012). The current process of renewing Finnish education in line with the new core curriculum for basic education is involving teacher educators, teacher students and teachers in schools to reflect on and reframe learning and teaching.

One of the characteristics of the Finnish teacher education is that all courses should be integrated with research. The so called ‘research-based teacher education’ has got deep roots in the Finnish education system (see for instance Uljens & Nyman 2015). The ideal is to educate reflective practitioners (Schön 1983) who have the competence to analyse and develop their teaching (Hansén, Eklund & Sjöberg, 2015; Kansanen, 2011; Korpinen, 2003; Tirri, 2014; Toom, Kynäslahti, Krokfors, Jyrhämä, Byman, Stenberg, Maaranen & Kansanen 2010; Westbury, Hansén, Kansanen & Björkqvist, 2005). In times of reform and renewal it is essential to recapture the ideals, values and visions of teacher education as well as of teaching and learning, by collective exploration of the constraints and enablers of active learning in different contexts, and especially in teacher education.

Method

In this study the teacher educator is serving as an action researcher with an aim of continuously reflecting on and developing her own work. The teacher educator invites the teacher students to take part in this learning process, parallel with their own learning processes in the course. The aim of this process of collaborative and reflective learning and teaching is to promote sustainable learning. As Reason and Bradbury (2008) describe it, action research does not start from an aim of changing others ‘out there’, but from an orientation of change with others. Action research is ‘a practice of participation, engaging those who might otherwise be subjects of research or recipients of interventions to a greater or less extent as inquiring co-researchers’ (Reason and Bradbury 2008, 1). The learning processes of the teacher students can be described as action learning processes (Furu, 2013), which aim at connecting theory and practice in teacher education (Karlberg-Granlund, Granstedt-Ketola & Axén 2016). The course in focus is involving teacher students to: 1) active exploration of their knowledge, presumptions and learning needs, 2) research about topics that are important to them, 3) teaching their student colleagues about these topics, and 4) filming and analysing their own teaching. The empirical material consists of students’ assignments and filmed teaching sessions, as well as teacher educator’s teaching material and research notes.

Expected Outcomes

This case study gives one example of how teacher students and teacher educators collaboratively explore their learning and teaching. Additionally it invites other teacher educators to analyse and reflect on the current processes of teacher education and the constraints and enablers of active learning.

References

Furu, E. M. (2013). Lærerstudenten som aksjonslærer i klasserommet. In M. Brekke & T. Tiller (eds.) Læreren som forsker. Innføring i forskningsarbeid i skolen? (pp. 45-61). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Hansén, S.-E., Eklund, G., & Sjöberg, J. (2015). General didactics in Finnish teacher education. Nordisk Tidskrift för Allmän Didaktik, 1(1), 7-20. Kansanen, P. (2011). Selected theses for a sustainable teacher education programme. Orbis Scholae, 5(2), 55-65. Karlberg-Granlund, G., Granstedt-Ketola, K. & Axén, A. (2016). Lärarutbildare och lärarstudenter lär tillsammans. In K. Rönnerman, A. Olin, E. M. Furu, A.-C. Wennergren (eds.) Fångad av praktiken: skolutveckling genom partnerskap. En rapport från det nordiska nätverket i aktionsforskning (pp. 241-264). Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet. Korpinen, E. (2003). Mikä ihmeen tutkiva opettaja? In E. Korpinen & J. Hyvärinen (eds.) OKL opettaa, tutkii ja kehittää. Jyväskylä: TUOPE. Tutkiva opettaja (Teacher researcher) 3, 4-6. Lunenberg, M., Korthagen, F., & Swennen, A. (2007). The teacher educator as a role model. Teaching and teacher education, 23 (2007), 586-601. Malinen, O.-P., Väisänen, P. & Savolainen, H. (2012). Teacher education in Finland: a review of a national effort for preparing teachers for the future. The Curriculum Journal, 23 (4), 567-584. Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (2008). Introduction. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Action Research. Participative Inquiry and Practice, 2nd ed. (pp. 1-10). London: Sage Publications. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner. How professionals think in action. New York: Basic books. Tirri, K. (2014). The last 40 years in Finnish teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40 (5), 600-609.  Toom, A., Kynäslahti, H., Krokfors, L., Jyrhämä, R., Byman, K., Stenberg, K., Maaranen, K., & Kansanen, P. (2010). Experiences of a research-based approach to teacher education: suggestions for future policies. European Journal of Education, 45 (2), 2010, Part II. Uljens, M., & Nyman, C. (2015). En historisk rekonstruktion av pedagogiska ledarskapsdiskurser i Finland. In Uljens, M. (ed.), Pedagogiskt ledarskap – teori, forskning, skolutveckling (pp. 13-40). Vasa: Åbo Akademi University. Westbury, I., Hansén, S.-E., Kansanen, P., & Björkqvist, O. (2005). Teacher education for research-based practice in expanded roles: Finland’s experience. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 49 (5), 475-485.

Author Information

Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund (presenting / submitting)

Åbo Akademi University

Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies

Vasa, Finland

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