Session Information
10 SES 01 A, Research on Teacher Educators
Paper Session
Contribution
Research on professional development within teacher education, and research on programmes in teacher education have been considered priorities in the agenda for educational research (cf. TERNews 1; Cochran-Smith et al., 2008). Self-understanding and professional development through practice focused enquiry are decisive to achieving improvement of pedagogical practices, while as deeper understanding of teacher education practices, processes or contexts has become a key to teacher education reform (Alarcão & Tavares, 2003; Cole & Knowles, 1996; Zeichner & Conklin, 2008). Some authors believe both purposes add to the production and advancement of knowledge in teacher education, and to the discussion of enduring questions.
Considering the research-based nature of teacher educators’ professional knowledge (Cochran-Smith, 2002), engagement in evidence-based practices is also deeply related to the need to become more insightful about the representations about teaching and learning that guide their action. Moreover, it is important to reflect upon and understand the role researchers/teacher educators can play in changing the teacher education practice arena (Cochran-Smith & Demers, 2008; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).
Following the ‘practitioner research’ genre (Borko et al., 2008), and self-study as one form of such inquiry (Zeichner, 2007), the purpose of this study is to research on own practice as language teacher educators in the context of a research project “Languages and Education: constructing and sharing professional knowledge” (PTDC/CED/68813/2007; FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-007106). This project comprised a credited continuous teacher education programme, which was collaborative and community-centred in nature, and ended in July 2009. The participants (teachers, teacher educators, and researchers involved in Language Education) were organised in thematic self-interest workgroups (about reading, writing, and plurilingual education). For each particular workgroup a specific education path was designed. Notwithstanding, all four education paths had as referential the overall organising ideology of the project. It states that research-based, collaborative-centred, theory and practice-focused and socially implicated practices would contribute to its members’ professional development, as well as to innovative teaching practices.
This context of professional practice is taken as a site for enquiry, and provides the foundation for the empirical work we develop here. Based on a description of how the events unfolded, the several education paths are taken as “niches of practice” and a basis to:
• Investigate into our practices as a way of identifying the paradigms of teacher education that circulated (Zeichner & Conklin, 2008; Wallace, 1998);
• Identify possible discrepancies regarding the principles we intended and committed to follow;
• Understand the reasons for possible mismatches between our representations and practices, and gain insight about how we constructed those representations (Feldman, 2003).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Alarcão, I. & Tavares, J. (2003). Supervisão da prática pedagógica. Uma perspectiva de desenvolvimento e aprendizagem. (2.ª edição revista e actualizada). Coimbra: Almedina. Borko, H., Whitcomb, J & Byrnes, K. (2008). Genres of research in teacher education. In M. Cochran-Smith, A. Feiman-Nemser, D. McIntyre & M. Demers (eds.). op cit., pp. 1017-1049. Bullough Jr, R. & Pinnegar, S. (2001). ‘Guidelines for Quality in Autobiographical Forms of Self-Study Research’, Educational Researcher, 30(3), pp. 13-21. Cochran-Smith, M. (2002). ‘The research base for teacher education. Metaphors we live (and die) by’, Journal of Teacher Education, 53(4), pp. 283- 285. Cochran-Smith, M & Demers, K. (2008). How do we know what we know? In M. Cochran-Smith, A. Feiman-Nemser, D. McIntyre & M. Demers (eds.). op cit., pp. 1009-1016. Cochran-Smith, M., Feiman-Nemser, A., McIntyre, D. & Demers M. (2008) (eds.). Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts. Third edition. New York/London: Routledge. Cole, A. & Knowles, G. (1996). ‘The Politics of Epistemology and Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices’, http://educ.queensu.ca/~ar/Ardra.htm (acessed: 13.01.2009). Feldman, A. (2003). ‘Validity and Quality in Self-Study’, Educational Researcher, 32(3), pp. 26-28. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. TERNews 1 – Newsletter of Network 10 – Teacher Education Research. Wallace, M. (1998). Action research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Zeichner, K. (2007). ‘Accumulating Knowledge across Self-Studies in Teacher Education’, Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), pp. 36.46. Zeichner, K. & Conklin, H. (2008). Teacher education programs as sites for teacher preparation. In M. Cochran-Smith, A. Feiman-Nemser, D. McIntyre & M. Demers (eds.). op cit., pp. 269-289.
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