Session Information
10 SES 09 A, Research in Teacher Education: Cultures and Methodologies
Paper Session
Contribution
The heading of this proposal points to how student teachers experienced the R&D project “Understanding concepts on two levels”. The two levels refer to how student teachers should understand theoretical concepts and at the same time understand and name pupils’ understanding. The objectives of the project were twofold. We acknowledge Hawkins’s (2000) claim that teaching with the aim of covering the curriculum is easy but to actually teach so that pupils learn is an art. Moreover, he connects this art to observing and listening to the children. This is difficult for student teachers (Nilssen et al.,1996; Wolf, 2003). We wanted the student teachers to listen to and interact with children as learners themselves (Ball, 2000). They should experience the importance of understanding the child’s understanding (Dewey 1933; Duckworth 1987). Additionally, as teacher educators we wanted to explore activities, tasks and tools to enhance student teachers’ ability to bridge theoretical knowledge and practical work. In Norway student teachers repeatedly express the lack of connection between theory and practice in teacher education (Harnæs, 2002; NOKUT 2006), and new curriculums for teacher education always aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice. This is an endeavour not only in Norway, but throughout the world (Korthagen, 2001). However, most often student teachers refer to this as a model of transmission of theory into practice (Clandinin, 1995). In our project we took another stance. The idea was that a long time pendulum movement between the two arenas of teacher education, field experiences and theoretical studies, would help student teachers into an integration process. The student teachers carried out individual studies on how one selected pupil aged 6 or 7 performed in reading, writing and mathematics. (In this presentation we focus on the student teachers’ experiences with the pupil’s reading.) As proposed by Wolf (2003), the student teachers should listen, notice and be surprised. Throughout the same period they studied children’s development in these three areas at the university college.
Writing has a crucial role in our project. We wanted to examine whether exploratory writing (Elbow 1973) could function as a tool that could assist the student teachers in their integration of practical and theoretical knowledge. Hoel (2008) describes structuring of experiences through writing as a clarifying process, where thoughts are visualized and made available for constant revision. In this vein, writing is not a linear, but a cyclical process (Allal et. al 2004). The student teachers’ wrote essays on their selected pupil’s acquisition of reading. The essays were assessed by the cooperating teachers as well as the teachers at the university college.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Allal, L., Chanquoy, L. & Largy, P. (2004). Revision. Cognitive and Instructional Processes. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Ball, D. L. (2000). Bridging Practices. Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 241-247. Clandinin, D. J. (1995). Still learning to teach. In T. Russell & F. Korthagen (eds.), teachers who teach teachers (pp. 25-31). London: Falmer Press. Cohen, L., L. Manion & K. Morrison (2007). Research Methods in Education. London and New York: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company. Duckworth, E. (1987). “The having of wonderful ideas” & other essays on teaching & learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers. New York: Oxford University Press Fairclough, N. (1992): Discourse and social change, Cambridge: Polity Press. Harnæs, H.(2002). Evaluation of the teacher education for primary and lower secondary schools at five Norwegians institutions. Report from the external committee (in Norwegian). Oslo: Norgesnettrådet. Hawkins, D. (2000). The Roots of Literacy. Colorado: The University Press Hoel, T. L. (2008). Writing at universities and university colleges – for teachers and students (in Norwegian). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Korthagen (2001). Linking practice and theory. The pedagogy of realistic teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nilssen, V., Wangsmo-Cappelen, V., & Gudmundsdottir, S. (1996). “They thought in a quite different way than I did” A case study of a student teachers’ mathematics teaching in second grade (in Norwegian). Trondheim: Tapir Forlag. NOKUT (2006). Evaluation of teacher education in Norway. Main report. Oslo: The author Vygotskij, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Wolf, N. (2003). Learning to Teach Mathematics for Understanding in the Company of Mentors. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and practice, 9(2), 87-106.
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