Session Information
10 SES 01 C, Research on Teacher Educators
Paper Session
Contribution
As part of neoliberal policies for the reform and expansion of the Higher Education sector globally (Morley, 2003), many universities now place increasing significance on research excellence and productivity as areas of collective and individual academic labour (Stromquist, 2002). In this paper we analyse how these emphases affect teacher education as a professional field, located in universities in England. In particular, we look at how institutional quests for increased research excellence and productivity impacted on the working lives of teacher educators from seven universities, through their participation in a research-capacity building project funded by a national research council.
Using a framework drawn from the work of Bourdieu (1987), the paper analyses Schools of Education as spaces where the discourses / practices of the field of teacher education are instantiated, and as sites of struggle between the varying internal and external imperatives of that field and those of the host institution. The framework is also used to consider academic work in teacher education, individual habitus and the issues of participation, strategic compliance and resistance to institutional imperatives. We also draw on the concept of individual agency.
The project in question aimed to build research-capacity for the participating universities and to develop the research knowledge of all the participants. Drawing on extensive evaluation data we argue that some participating institutions demonstrated contradictions in their patterns of engagement in the project which limited its success, notably by diverting some of their key resources, including the time and energies of the participating teacher educators, away from it. To begin to unpick these paradoxes of individual benefit / dissonance and institutional participation / limitation, we draw on the theoretical frameworks and literature cited above.
We argue that current incarnations of the field of teacher education have resulted in divisive and intensive manifestations of existing discourses / practices around academic work for teacher educators, in particular around the meaning and significance of research engagement. Drawing on the case study of the project, the paper analyses the results of this convergence of competing discourses on the lives of teacher educators and their Schools of Education.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bourdieu, P. (1987). What makes a Social Class? Berkeley Journal of Sociology. 32. 32-45. Campbell, A. (2000) Fictionalising research data in Research in Education No. 63, pp. 81-88. Available online at http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/uploads/docs/630081.pdf (Accessed 04 May 2010) Gardner, J. (2009) External Evaluation of the Teacher Education Research Network (TERN) 2008-09. ESRC Project Report. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre (Accessed 18.11.09) Research capacity building in teacher education: a case study from England Kansanen, P. (2008). Distinctive highlights of Finnish teacher education. In J. Loima (Ed.), Facing the future – Developing teacher education (pp. 48–68). Helsinki: Gaudeamus Helsinki University Press/Palmenia. Morley, L. (2003) Quality and Power in Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press Murray, J., Jones, M., McNamara, O. & Stanley, G. (2009a) Evaluation of the Teacher Education Research Network (TERN) 2008-09. ESRC Project Report. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre (Accessed 18.11.09). Smith, K. (in press, 2011) The Multi-faceted Teacher Educator. Journal of Education for Teachers 35.3. pp. not yet known Stromquist, N. (2002) Education in a Globalized World: the connectivity of economic power, technology and knowledge. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield.
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