Session Information
10 SES 03 D, Inclusive Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Topic: Teacher Education
Research question: How can Universities and schools work together to provide an integrated and inclusive approach to pre-service, professional development and support for school improvement in an inner-city setting with significant challenges?
Objective: in particular, how can Universities develop an inclusive framework of teacher education which develops enagement, motivation and empowerment for both pupils and teachers at its heart.
Conceptual framework and literature: Zeichner et al. (2015) are clearly mistrustful of the move towards corporate/ entrepreneurial models of pre-service teacher education and suggest that this will worsen the quality and opportunities for high quality teacher education.
There were great ambitions to create learning communities which would indeed impact on the quality of learning. For instance, Aspinwall (1992) looked forward to a cadre of school leaders who would be able to create professional communities of learning. These she posited would provide opportunities for individual and collaborative development.
Richey and Nokes-Malach (2013) focus on the balance of support and challenge from the teacher and expectations of resilience from the learner. Wood and Anderson (2003) highlight the need for a more differentiated examination of the professional learner, recognizing that not all teachers have the same motivation, for instance in the early part of their career compared to later.
Differentiated learning is clearly as important for teacher education as it is for younger learners. This research will examine the motivation of teachers and the different approaches to professional learning. These will be linked to different models of professional development and leadership.
For teachers, ‘agency’ and ‘principle’ are just as important. Kostiainen et al. (2018) explained that effective teacher education has to be both professionally and theoretically meaningful. For instance, a Masters’ programme may be attractive at the level of theoretical and academic validity, but if it is not closely aligned to the work of the teacher, they are unlikely to see it as being meaningful. Teachers on such programmes may not see the relevance of such studies. Without relevance, why should they engage with the programme?
Meaningless teacher education programmes for pre-service as well as qualified teachers are unlikely to develop high quality teachers. They will not translate to the classroom. They are unlikely to translate into improved teacher practices and a good education for pupils. Kostiainen et al. (2018) explains that meaningful teacher education involves the interpretation of new information and connecting this with prior knowledge both at a cognitive level, but at a professional level.
The intentional, relational and authentic elements to Kostiainen et al. (2018) analysis is very important since it describes the best teacher education as being a social and professionally situated experience in an authentic school context. This is not particularly new. Professional development in authentic contexts is more meaningful to teachers, it is more engaging and therefore likely to have more chance of changing the underlying practices of the teacher and impacting on class learning. Whilst (Kostiainen et al., 2018) focuses on school and University partnerships for initial teacher education programmes, there is much to learn here for professional development of qualified and experienced teachers.
Emotional learning and emotional engagement with the learner seem to be important in teacher education, alongside knowledge of pedagogy and subject didactics. In fact, one could say that discourse with learners, enthusiasm for a subject and professionalism in dealing with students are integral to pedagogy. Teacher education programmes for pre-service and experienced teachers need to build in these elements to ensure a valid experience. Engaged teachers are more likely to engage learners in the classroom.
Method
The case study will examine a cohort of pre-service primary and secondary trainee teachers and a group of school-based MA students who are already qualified teachers. This will provide a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data to enable an analysis of their engagement, motivations and feelings of empowerment. This study will function as a pilot methodology, to test out the case study as an effective approach to analysing and evaluating school-based teacher education partnerships. It follows the guidance on case study research offered by Tight (2010) A mixed-methods evaluation will be used with pre-service and qualified teachers performance, with some date collected routinely as part of the teacher education programmes: Quantitative information about Teacher achievement and progress will be collected from 1/2 termly assessment points across the year 2017-18: A short semi-structured survey will be undertaken by all pre-service and MA dissertation students in the sample. This will afford an overall picture of engagement, motivation and empowerment in teachers, to be investigated in more depth by the individual and focus group interviews. In each school, there will individual interviews of a sample of pre-service teachers, qualified teachers on the MA programme, their PGCE and MA tutors, school-based tutors, senior managers, pupils and parents to identify qualitative feedback on the Teacher Education programmes linked to the school. This is effectively a 'vertical sample' of teacher education participants in the school. Sample sizes will be quite small given the focus on qualitative data collected by interview of teachers and focus groups for pupils. It is anticipated that four preservice and four MA dissertation student/ qualified teachers will be interviewed plus four other teacher from the school(s) involved. This will ensure depth in the perspectives shared by participants. Typicality rather strict generalisability will be a guiding light in judgments of the sample. Data analysis will follow the coding approaches recommended by Miles and Huberman (2014) Ethical approval will be support from the University of Warwick ethics approval committee with informed consent, the right to withdraw without any come-back at the centre of the approach. This will ensure that all data is collected ethically, objectively and reported consistently as per the established research approach.
Expected Outcomes
It is anticipated that the personalised nature of the pre-service and MA education programmes undertaken by students and teachers, will further reinforce the role of authenticity, relevance and meaning in teacher education programmes. The experience of physical settings will also be considered. Having space in the teaching week to reflect on practice is predicted to be important for pre-service teachers trying to make sense of an intense new experience in school. Likewise the involvement of a University in school-based teacher education is likely to provide perspective for qualified teachers in an MA programme. They value the objectivity, rigour and credibility offered by a school-facing research opportunity which enables them to investigate their own authentic settings. Coming away from the school, equally gives separation and enables experienced teachers to gain perspective on everyday challenges. In Deci's (2008) terms it is considered that this provides opportunities to make professional contact with others in schools, to make choices about teaching and learning which may be more restricted typically. These factors join to provide teachers with a chance to grow as professionals. The unique contribution of this research is to devise a case study methodology which takes a 360-degree analysis of the role of teacher education in a school. It provides a case study of inclusion in teacher education, alongside the values and motivations which facilitate inclusion for pupil education more broadly. This approach can be applied in any educational system in the world.
References
Aspinwall, K. ed., 1992. Managing evaluation in education: A developmental approach. Routledge. Kostiainen, E., Ukskoski, T., Ruohotie-Lyhty, M., Kauppinen, M., Kainulainen, J. and Mäkinen, T., 2018. Meaningful learning in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71, pp.66-77. Miles, Matthew B., A. Michael Huberman, and Johnny Saldana.(2014). "Qualitative data analysis: A method sourcebook." CA, US: Sage Publications Richey, J.E. and Nokes-Malach, T.J., 2013. How much is too much? Learning and motivation effects of adding instructional explanations to worked examples. Learning and Instruction, 25, pp.104-124. Tight, M., 2010. The curious case of case study: a viewpoint. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13(4), pp.329-339. Wood, D.E. and Anderson, J., 2003. Towards the learning profession: Identifying characteristics of successful continuing professional development in schools. Management in Education, 17(5), pp.21-24. Zeichner, K., Payne, K.A. and Brayko, K., 2015. Democratizing teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), pp.122-135.
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