Session Information
10 SES 05 C, Research in Teacher Education: Quality Discourses and Strategies
Paper Session
Contribution
Most definitions of professions connect professional learning to higher scientific knowledge and a higher education degree (Brante 2010). One example is Talcott Parsons' (1968:536) definition of "Formal technical training (for) mastery of a generalized cultural tradition... in a manner giving prominence to an intellectual component... as applied to a particular field." Another is the definition of Eliot Freidson (1986:59), which emphasizes exposure to higher education, for employment in particular positions and describes professions as links between relatively high levels of formal education and various rewards in the social division of labour (also Sarfatti Larsson 1990). These definitions are discussed also in Beach (2005), where teaching and teacher education in seven European countries is compared. Some common elements are suggested such as an officially recognized body of knowledge and skill which is believed to be based on abstract concepts and theories and abstract, theoretical knowledge (also Freidson 1999). Basil Bernstein (2000) discusses similar patterns in relation to specifically teacher education as knowledge-based and achieved following years of higher education training.
Using Hannes Siegrist, Thomas Brante brings these different definitions and expressions about professions and their professional knowledge needs together in the following way (Brante 2010). A profession is characterized by "capabilities and skills... justified scientifically or systematically" based on professional knowledge that is "exclusive" and "more profound" than everyday knowledge. It is "inaccessible to lay persons" and "not easily understandable or communicatable in everyday language". Profession learning requires, it is thus implied, a specific syntax and grammar for communicating the main ideas and values of the profession and this language and the holdings it implies are usually communicated in some form of higher education (Bernstein 1990, 2000, Beach, 2005) in special institutions such as universities.
The recurrent words in these definitions as identified by Brante (2010) are "formal", "higher", "scientific", "systematic", "university." However, as he says, the relation is often left here with no further attempts to specify what type of (scientific) knowledge is referred to or what qualities this knowledge must have. Basil Bernstein's discussion of horizontal and vertical discourse is one distinction.
Bernstein described the form of knowledge known as professional knowledge as the essential defining component of what he termed a Regional Mode of knowledge. This regional mode stands in a trilogy of knowledge modalities in education together with the generic (vocational) and academic (disciplinary) modes. In relation to teacher education Bernstein referred to this professional knowledge base as representing the Trivium of professional teacher education (Bernstein 1990, 1996) and he saw it as increasingly threatened.
In this paper we examine policy development in teacher education over the course of the past forty to sixty years in two European countries, UK and Sweden, in terms of the development of the relationship between the profession and scientific knowledge. The paper is based on previous research in a large European sixth framework project known by the acronym of Profknow (see e.g. Goodson 2008) and more recent research carried out by the authors in relation to new research projects.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ahlström, K-G. (2008). HUT! Något fattas, Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 13(4): 296-301. Apple, M.W. (2001). Markets, Standards, Teaching, and Teacher Education, Journal of Teacher Education, 52(3), 182-196. Beach, D. (1995). Making sense of the problem of change: an ethnographic study of a teacher education reform. (Göteborg Studies in Educational Sciences 100). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Beach, D. (2000). Continuing problems of teacher education reform, Scandinavian Journal of Education Research, 44(3): 275 – 291. Beach, D. (2008). The Changing the Relations between Education Professionals, the State and Citizen Consumers in Europe: Rethinking Restructuring as Capitalisation, European Educational Research Journal, 7, 195 207. Bernstein, B. (1990) Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 4: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1999). Vertical and horizontal discourse: An essay, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20, 157-173. Brule, E. (2004). Going to market: Neoliberalism and the social construction of the university student as an autonomous consumer. In M Reimer (ed.), Inside the corporate U: Women in the academy speak out, (pp 255-281). Toronto: Sumach Press. European Commission 2010. Improving Teacher Quality: the EU agenda. Brussels: Directorate-General for Education and Culture, Lifelong Learning: policies and programme, EAC.B.2 D(2010) PSH. Houtsonen, J., Czaplicka, M., Lindblad, S., Sohlberg, P. and Sugrue, C. (2010). Welfare State restructuring in education and its national refractions: Finnish, Irish and Swedish teachers’ perceptions of current changes. Current Sociology, 58(4), 597-622. Hopmann, S. (2001). Internasjonale perspektiv på norsk lærerutdanning [International perspectives on Norwegian teacher education]. Foredrag på nasjonal fagkonferanse “Dannelse og demokrati”. Nov. Trondheim: NTNU. Kallos, D. (2009). Varför är det så förtvivlat svårt att bygga upp forskning och forskarutbildning i anslutning till lärarutbildning och pedagogisk yrkesverksamhet: Om myndighets missbruk, svek och andra missförhållanden, Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, 14(3): 237-249.
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