Shifting teacher educator identities: Re-signifying the roles of teacher educators as knowers

Author(s):

Jane Abbiss(presenting / submitting)Kathleen Quinlivan

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 07 C, Innovating and Re-Signifying in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-11

17:15-18:45

Room:

A-203

Chair:

Jane Abbiss

Discussant:

Tom Russell

Contribution

This paper explores the identity transformations and re-signification of roles experienced by a group of teacher educators as they engaged in a collaborative, multi-faceted research project. The project involved teachers in exploring different conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the integration and implementation of a new national curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand (Andreotti, Abbiss & Quinlivan, 2012). Teacher educators engaged with ideas about 21st century education and knowledge societies. These themes are prevalent in international educational and policy discourses and are the focus of academic and political interest in New Zealand as they are in Europe. Through involvement in the project, participating teacher educators explored the creative, innovative and critical potential of the national curriculum for New Zealand schools, and related these ideas to teaching and to their own work as teacher educators.

Participating teacher educators worked with theory and conceptual tools that contrasted absolutist (realist) ideas of knowledge as something that is provided by teachers and received by students with generative (relativist) ideas of knowledge as something that is co-constructed, reflects contexts and cultural boundaries and which shifts in time and context. They explored implications for their practice and roles as teacher educators of their shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and of what it means to “know” or “learn” in particular knowledge domains (within different curriculum areas and in initial teacher education [ITE] and teacher professional learning [TPL] contexts). The participating teacher educators developed and undertook practitioner inquiries relating to their work with student teachers and teachers and leaders in schools.

Method

The project had relativist and post-structural philosophical foundations. These were reflected in the explicit framing of the project around notions that understandings in the social world are socially constructed, subjective and multiple (Grbich, 2007; Lather, 2006; Preissle, 2006) and that learners are active rather than passive agents in learning processes (Philips, 2000; Scott & Palincsar, 2009). Through their participation in the project, teacher educators were positioned as both teachers and learners who were exploring their own practice and their personal understandings about knowledge, teaching and learning. The data that was collected included interviews with participating teacher educators and the written reports of their practitioner inquiries. Dual interpretive and post-structural analyses of this data were conducted in a meta-ethnography (Abbiss & Quinlivan, 2012). Meta-ethnography offers a way of synthesising ideas across a range of practitioner inquiry contexts and where different inquiries might utilise different methodologies (Doyle, 2010; Weed, 2008).

Expected Outcomes

The dual analyses revealed that teacher educators’ shifting understandings about knowledge, curriculum, teaching and learning were characterised by a move from realist towards contextual-relativist understandings. As teacher educators engaged with epistemological ideas they were confronted by challenges to their identities as teacher educators. For some, the theoretical explorations relating to knowledge acted to validate their ways of knowing and being as teacher educators, as ideas explored resonated with their interests, philosophies and notions of who they are and who they want to be. Others spoke of feelings of discomfort and destabilization in their growing awareness of conflicts between their beliefs about knowledge, teaching and learning and their practice in the education of teachers. In particular, participants came to question the roles of teacher educators as expert knowers and to re-signify what it means to be a teacher educator. There is a small but expanding body of international research that explores the diversity of teacher educator experiences, codifies professional teacher educator identities, and theorises the construction and reconstruction of individual and collective teacher educator identities (see, for example, Davey, 2010; Lunenberg, Korthagen & Zwart, 2011). The inquiry reported in this paper contributes to this emergent body of international research.

References

Andreotti, V., Abbiss, J., & Quinlivan, K. (2012). Shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the integration of the New Zealand Curriculum in teacher education: Project Summary. Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/tlri-research/research-completed/post-school-sector/shifting-conceptualisation-knowledge-and. Abbiss, J., & Quinlivan, K. (2012). Shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the integration of the New Zealand Curriculum in teacher education: A meta-ethnography. Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/tlri-research/research-completed/post-school-sector/shifting-conceptualisation-knowledge-and. Davey, R. (2010). Career on the Cusp: The Professional Identity of Teacher Educators. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Doyle, L. (2010). Synthesis through meta-ethnography: Paradoxes, enhancements, and possibilities. In H. Torrance (Ed.) Qualitative Research Methods in Education. (pp. 361-384). London: Sage. Grbich, C. (2007). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Introduction. London: Sage Publications. Lather, P. (2006). Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: Teaching research in education as a wild profusion. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(1), 35-57. Lunenberg, M., Korthagen, R., & Zwart, R. (2011). Self-study research and the development of teacher educators’ professional identities. European Educational Research Journal, 10(3), 407-420. Phillips, C. (2000). An opinionated account of the constructivist landscape. In C. Phillips (Ed.), Constructivism in Education: Opinions and Second Opinions on Controversial Issues (pp. 1-16). Chicago, IL: The National Society for the Study of Education. Preissle, J. (2006). Envisioning qualitative inquiry: A view across four decades. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(6), 685-695. Scott, S., & Palincsar, A. (2009). The influence of constructivism on teaching and learning in classrooms. In H. Daniels, H. Lauder & J. Porter (Eds.), Knowledge, Values and Educational Policy: A Critical Perspective (pp. 30-43). London: Routledge. Weed, M. (2008). A potential method for the interpretive synthesis of qualitative research: Issues in the development of ‘meta-interpretation’. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 11(1), 13-28.

Author Information

Jane Abbiss (presenting / submitting)

University of Canterbury

School of Teacher Education

Christchurch

Kathleen Quinlivan

University of Canterbury, New Zealand

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