Session Information
10 SES 04 C, Research on Programmes and Pedagogical Approaches in Teacher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Several studies stress the need to consider the specificity of teaching as a profession in order to organize and develop teacher education (cf. Lopes, 2009; Korthagen, 2010). This paper arises from a research project concerning initial training of teachers as professionals, and addresses teacher educators’ professional identity as a main variable regarding initial training quality.
One of the biggest challenges of teacher education today concerns the need to close the gap between theory and practice. Teaching calls now for different skills for a multidimensional professional reality: technical and cognitive, individual and organizational; relational and self knowledge (Meijer, Korthagen, & Vasalos, 2009)
Simultaneously, the social importance gradually assumed by teaching has positioned it within a movement of professionalisation (cf. Buchberger, Campos, Kallos, & Stephenson, 2000), with an impact on initial training, which has become more demanding, longer and of a higher level. The scientific and professional communities have produced studies that call for a professional model of training: training must be based on practice, institutional and training partnerships and personal development (Ramalho, Nuñez, & Gauthier, 2004).
However, trainers have encountered serious difficulties in deploying this model. Integration in higher education had a positive impact on objective dimensions of professionalisation, but also intensified the academic training (Lopes et al., 2007a) increasing the gap between training knowledge and professional knowledge.
Research results (Lopes, et al. 2007b; Korthagen, Loughram, & Lunenberg, 2005) indicate that this academisation might be due simultaneously to the curricular organization of the courses, to the students and educators subjectivities and to the relationships between them and the institutions to which they belong (such as Universities and Schools).
Nevertheless, the self representation of trainers as being teachers in higher education, or rather, the identities of trainers as trainers appear to be an important issue to understand what is going on (Koster, Dengerink, Lunenberg, & Korthagen, 2008), especially if those identities are conceptualised as emerging from the interaction among individual biographies and the characteristics of its contexts.
The study reviewed here has been developed as an exploratory one, aiming to identify some relevant dimensions of primary teacher trainers’ identities by examining how identities of different types of trainers are similar and dissimilar.
Following Claude Dubar (1997) we look at professional identities as provisional results of a process that conforms to a double transaction - the biographical one, of the subject with him/herself, between who he/she has been and wants to be; and the relational one, between the subject and what is offered in the training and work contexts, 'offers' that can challenge or inhibit the way he/she wants to be. If the biographical transaction emphasises the individual identity, the relational transaction draws attention to the relationship between individual identity and the collective identities possible in the field of action. When there is a mismatch between them, individual identities develop assimilation or accommodation strategies, aiming to reduce the divergence, transforming themselves in order to adapt to the contexts, or changing the contexts to adapt them to themselves.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bolívar, A., Domingo, J. e Fernández, M. (2001) La Investigación Biográfico-Narrativa en Educación, Enfoque y Metodología. Madrid: La Muralla. Buchberger, F., Campos, B. P., Kallos, D., & Stephenson, J., High Quality Teacher Education for High Quality Education and Training, Green Paper on Teacher Education in Europe, Thematic Network on Teacher Education in Europe, Umea, 2000. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly M. F. (2000). Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative ResearchSan Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers. Dubar, C. (1997). A Socialização – a Construção de Identidades Sociais e Profissionais. Porto: Porto Editora. Korthagen, F., Loughran, J., & Lunenberg, M. (2005). Teaching teachers – studies into the expertise of teacher educators: an introduction to this theme issue. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21, 107-115. Korthagen, F.A.J. (2010). Going to the core: Deepening reflection by connecting the person to the profession. In N. Lyons (Ed.), Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry: Mapping a Way of Knowing for Professional Reflective Inquiry (pp. 529-552). New York: Springer. Koster, B., Dengerink, J., Lunenberg, M. & Korthagen, F. (2008). Teacher educators working on their own professional development: goals, activities and outcomes of a project on the professional development of teacher educators. Teachers & Teaching: Theory and Practice, 14(5/6), 567-587. Lopes A. et al.(2007a). Currículos de formación inicial, identidades profesionales de base y trayectoria profesional. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 236, 139-156. Lopes A. et al.(2007b). Fazer da formação um projecto – formação inicial e identidades profissionais docentes. Legis Editora /CIIE. Lopes, A. (2009). Teachers as Professionals and Teachers’ Identity Construction as an Ecological Construct – an agenda for research and training drawing upon a biographical research process. European Educational Research Journal, 8(3), 461-475. Meijer, P.C., Korthagen, F.A.J. & Vasalos, A. (2009). Supporting presence in teacher education: The connection between the personal and professional aspects of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), 297-308. Ramalho B., Nuñez, I.B., & Gauthier, C. (2004). Formar o professor profissionalizar o ensino. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina.
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