Session Information
10 SES 11 C, Research on Values, Beliefs and Understandings in Teacher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
This study is located within the context of the English education system but seeks to examine parallels with international perspectives on teacher attitudes towards pupil behaviour. More specifically, this paper aims to analyse a perceived dissonance between policy directives in England and the findings of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) (OECD, 2009), in order to explore how teacher education might influence teacher attitudes towards behaviour. It is worth noting that the UK was not one of the 23 countries included in the TALIS survey
The recent White Paper in England (DfE, 2010), entitled “The Importance of Teaching,” articulates the government’s aim of reforming teacher education to improve, amongst other things, the behaviour management skills of teachers new to the profession. The White Paper also proposes extending greater powers to teachers, and to schools, to discipline pupils and to exclude where this is deemed necessary. In contrast, whilst the TALIS (OECD, 2009) results examine pupil behaviour, they also highlight the impact of teacher behaviour on teaching and learning environments, on educational engagement and, by extension, on pupil behaviour, citing teacher absenteeism and lack of pedagogical preparation as key influences. The “first results from TALIS” report (OECD, 2009) emphasises the importance of school culture and teacher professional development on educational outcomes, including behaviour.
As a response to the White Paper (DfE, 2010) and the TALIS report (OECD, 2009), this paper sets out to examine the perspectives of teacher educators in two Universities in the North West of England, both of which offer large, and comprehensive, teacher education programmes. The first stage of this research involved exploratory interviews that sought to ascertain current practice in enabling aspiring teachers to understand, and manage, classroom behaviour. The second stage of research involved focus group analyses of the White Paper (DfE, 2010) and the TALIS (OECD, 2009) results in order to ascertain perceived ideological affiliations.
As a result, this research was able to elicit, albeit across small samples, ideological responses to the White Paper (DfE, 2010) and TALIS (OECD, 2009) results and compare these to the professional responses to pupil behaviour expressed by Teacher Educators when describing how they prepare new teachers for the classroom. We would suggest that, in this instance, the political zeitgeist in England, reflected by the practice of the Teacher Educators under study in failing to fully recognise the TALIS results on the impact of teacher behaviour as being relevant to the English context, is more aligned to the position expressed in the White Paper, preferring to locate problematic behaviours as being within pupils, rather than as being a response to pedagogical variables. Furthermore we would argue that this worrying over-individualisation of pupil behaviour fails to take account of social context or of pupils’ individual agency (Norwich, in press) or recognise the influence of professional attitudes on learner engagement. In presenting this research to a European audience we are interested to explore how far this particular study reflects attitudes amongst Teacher Educators across Europe.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
DfE (2010) The Importance of Teaching: The schools White Paper 2010. TSO: Norwich Erixon-Arreman, (2005) Research as power and knowledge: struggles over research in teacher education. Journal of Education for teaching 31 (3) Kvale, S & Brinkman, S (2009) Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing: Second Edition. London: Sage Norwich, B. (In press). Anti-social behaviour British Journal of Educational Psychology Monograph Series OECD (2009) Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First Results from TALIS. OECD: Paris Vaughan, S; Schumm, J.S. and Sinagub, J (1996) Focus group interviews in education and psychology. London: Sage
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