Session Information
02 SES 07 B, Teachers & Trainers III: Self-Reflection
Paper Session
Contribution
Being close to the frontline of a changing FET educational landscape in Ireland offers teachers opportunities to construct avenues that fully utilize their whole worldview while capitalising on teacher education qualification (TEQ) programmes. As FET teachers experience an evolving professional identity, additional research is needed to understand the experience and impact of these changes from the perspective of practitioners, i.e. the extent to which these needs are met and the experiences of learning during TEQ programme. This study highlighted the evolving nature of FE teacher identity and the transformative learning spaces required to support their professional development. By exploring the nature of the pedagogical entry point provided for such experiences within TEQ programmes, a contribution is made to knowledge about creating opportunities for transformative learning to occur within FET teacher professional education.
Three theoretical frameworks underpinned this study:
The ‘inner’ teaching-learning environment (TLE) draws on constructivist research on enhancing TLEs and suggests that students’ perceptions are strongly determined by the ‘a set of overlapping contexts that comprise of four elements: course contexts; teaching and assessing content; staff-student relationships; and aspects of the students and student culture within a particular programme (Entwistle 2003; Entwistle & McCune, 2009). The ‘inner’ TLE map is an organising framework when considering how to achieve a higher quality of learning through the creation of transformative learning spaces (Graham Cagney, 2011).
Transformative learning adopts a cognitive/rational approach emphasising the critical role that experience and reflection play on existing assumptions about the world in order to arrive at a new worldview (Mezirow, 1991, 2012). Described as ‘a shift of consciousness that dramatically and permanently alters our way of being in the world’ (O’Sullivan, Morrell & O’Connor, 2002, p.xviii)); it changes how we know (Kegan, 2009) and it leads to a more ‘inclusive, discriminating, permeable, and integrative perspective’ (Mezirow, 1991, p.14). This different kind of thinking and being enables the individual to become open to revisiting their interpretations of the meaning of their experience: in turn guiding future action (Cranton, 2006; Tennant, 2012).
Identity self-statesdraws on a ‘motivational self systems’ framework that incorporates ‘possible’ and ‘ideal’ selves theory (Markus & Nurius, 1986) and self-discrepancy theory. Three seminal reviews of the literature on teacher identity in the last decade (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Beijard et al 2004; Rodgers & Scott, 2008) highlight the importance of and interrelation of notions of identity, context, emotion and agency. Beijard et al (204) and Hamman, Gosselin, Romano and Bunuan (2010) identify a strong preoccupation with investigating characteristics or content, namely what roles and values, constitute teacher identity and less attention on the situational and contextual factors within the broader framework of teacher professional development.
The frameworks yielded some understanding of the variables influencing FET teachers’ perceptions of themselves, their work, professional development programs and the relation between all three. Understandings were general: they existed at some distance from the processes of people experiencing and behaving within particular work and study contexts. None went to the core of what it means to be psychologically present in particular moments and situations that determine the driving force, for the type of learning underpinning an evolving professional identity. Doing so requires deeply probing experiences and situations during discrete moments that make up a person’s professional work life. Such probing relies on studying both people’s emotional reactions to conscious and unconscious phenomena, and the objective properties of jobs, roles, work and professional development contexts. The research questions were as follows:
(1) What characterises student learning experiences of TEQ programmes?
(2) How can TEQ programmes support FET teachers’ readiness for change as they envisage future possible selves personally and professionally?
Method
This qualitative mixed-methods study emerged in an organic way, incepted during the programme(s) evaluation when students reported significant learning experiences that had in some cases led to a change in their sense of self and identity as FET teachers. It was a timely exploration of the phenomenon to determine the nature of these learning experiences and how they may have supported changes in students’ identity self-states. The identification of conceptual commonalities across both programs would, it was hoped, generate understandings about FET teacher identity and perspective transformation. The research questions suggested: (i) Qualitative methodology: ‘learning experiences’, ‘perspective transformation’ and ‘identity’ are not predetermined but constructed by student teachers’ personal, professional and situational roles and experienced by individual teachers; (ii) Small-scale study: the focus was on individual experience, therefore document analysis, a questionnaire and interviews were employed. Following ethical approval, sixteen of the possible nineteen students in the research cohort participated in the study. Data were collected on fourteen women and two men; ranging in age from 30-57 years; from working and middle-class backgrounds. Most had previous private and public sector (for some both) work experience, and prior education, training and professional experience in a disciplinary or vocational area. Each individual was free to choose the extent of their participation in the study: questionnaire only (5), interview only (4), both (7) resulting in twelve completed questionnaires and eleven interviews. Data analysis occurred in three separate stages: (i) Immediately following ethical approval - document analysis of all program documentation, student personal statements and reflective journals, and researcher notes. (ii) Following administration of the online questionnaire and completion of the follow-up interviews, both sets of data were analysed including (i) responses from the structured questions; and (ii) the transcription of the open questions in both methods. (iii) Resorting and re-analysing of the artifacts (program and student document data), into more complex categories and concepts. Experiences were identified and analysed according to whether they clearly related to the TLE, a perspective transformation or a change in an identity self-state. Examples that did not clearly fit into any of the three categories were excluded. The collection finally included over 180 personal learning experiences. An independent coder similarly sorted a randomly selected sample of 30 experiences; there was a 95% inter-rater agreement on the sortings. These examples helped describe a model of personal transformative learning within a TLE that supported an evolving FET teacher professional identity.
Expected Outcomes
Teaching is an enactment of the self in a holistic mix of academic and personal perceptual knowledge, skills, experiences, understandings, beliefs and values. TEQ programmes must involve the whole person and cannot be separated out as a cognitive act or the application of skills or competences. Korthagen (2001) emphasises pedagogy of realistic teacher education that combines formal academic knowledge with perceptual knowledge that is personally relevant and supportive in enabling an individual to understand their own behaviors in the light of beliefs, identity and the values that underpin them. The development of a teacher’s identity is therefore strongly connected to a ‘self-actualization’ experience that ideally takes place within a transformative learning space that is personally safe, where one feels esteemed, experiences trusted relationships, combined with a sense of belonging socially (Maslow, 1943). This research study was conducted with an open mind, combining a concern with specific moments of change in professional identity with the ‘inner’ TLE. The following results identify a number of key dimensions that characterise the student learning experiences: • Strong relationships emerged between personal, professional and situational mediating factors in the formation of possible future teacher selves; teacher possible selves evolved from being “task based” to “quality based” with teachers feared selves remaining predominately task based; • Reflection on action having experienced an eventful personal and professional life change is critical in the formation of teacher’s evolving possible selves; • The importance of transformative learning spaces to support students in creating links between perspective transformation and a conceptual framework of personal, professional and situational teacher identity. Implications for future research: firstly, the interplay of the four elements of the ‘inner’ TLE in TEQ programmes; secondly, individual difference; and finally, the connections of future possible selves to concepts currently used to explore perspective transformation and habits of mind.
References
Beijaard, D., Meijer, P. C., & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 107- 128. Beauchamp, C., & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: an overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 175-189. Cranton, P. (2006). Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning: A Guide for Educators of Adults. (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Entwistle, N. (2003). Concepts and conceptual frameworks underpinning the ETL project. OCC. Report 3, Higher and Community Education, University of Edinburgh: School of Education. Entwistle, N. & McCune, V. (2009). The disposition to understand for oneself at university and beyond: learning processes, the will to learn and sensitivity to context. In Li-Fang, Z. & Sternberg, R.J. (Eds.), Perspectives on the Nature of Intellectual Styles. New York: Springer Publishing Ltd. Graham Cagney, A. (2011) ‘Finding the Red Thread’: The Role of the Learning Space in Transformative Learning in Executive Education. PhD Thesis, Trinity College: Dublin. Hamman, D., Gosselin, K., Romano, J. and Banuan, R. (2010) Using possible-selves theory to understand the identity development of new teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1349-1361. Kegan, R. (2009). What “form” transforms? A constructive-developmental approach to transformative learning. In Illeris, K. (Ed.), Contemporary Theories of Learning. London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Korthagen, F.A. (2001). Linking practice and theory: the pedagogy of realistic teacher education. London: Routledge. Markus, H. & Nurius, P., (1986), Possible selves. American Psychologist, Vol.41 (9) 954-969. Maslow,A.H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review. 50 (4), 370-396. Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass. Mezirow, J. (2012). Learning to Think Like an Adult: Core Concepts of Transformation Theory. In Taylor, E.W., Cranton, P and Associates (Eds). The Handbook of Transformative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. O’Sullivan, E., Morrell, A. & O’Connor, M.A. (2002). Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning: Essays on Theory and Praxis. New York: Palgrave and Macmillan. Rodgers, C. R., & Scott, K. H. (2008). The development of the personal self and professional identity in learning to teach. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D. J. McIntyre, & K. E. Demers (Eds.). Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group/Association of Teacher Educators. Tennant, M. (2012). The Learning Self: Understanding the potential for transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.