Education The demands, challenges & expectations of Teacher Education: Myth busting John Loughran

Myth 1: Teaching looks easy  Despite all that we know about teaching and learning, ‘teaching as telling’ and ‘learning as listening’ still pervades public perceptions of practice.  It is far too easy to assume that a teaching routine is all that is needed to do teaching. A routine may be founded on a skill base, but expertise is much more than skills alone and it is expertise in teaching that is crucial to enhancing student learning.  Expertise requires an ability to frame practice it is not just having a range of ‘activities that work’ on hand. 2

Becoming a teacher educator  Being a teacher educator involves much more than applying the skills of school teaching in a new (and different) context: My professional uneasiness continued. Clearly it became evident that I was required to be more than a classroom teacher, although at that point, I was not quite sure what the more meant. (Brandenburg, 2008, p. 5)  Coming to see what teaching about teaching really involves is challenging and not always straightforward: Teacher educators are criticised for, and often critical of, being left on their own, but they almost have to be left on their own to construct their own professional knowledge of practice. At the same time, this does not mean that every teacher educator needs to ‘start from scratch’, but it does require them to transform their perspectives. (Berry, 2013, p. 19) 3

Myth 2: Teacher education is just teaching in a different context  When teaching is understood as problematic, the complex nature of practice is uncovered.  If teaching is complex business, teaching teaching must be at least as complex.  Understanding teaching as a discipline reinforces the importance of moving beyond simplistic views of teaching and superficial views of teacher education. 4

Teacher educator identity  What influences the development of an identity? –What do we expect to do? –How do we do it? –How are knowledge and practice of teaching understood and portrayed?  How is the transition to being a teacher educator experienced? –Murray & Male (2005) suggest it takes (at least) 3 years –There is a sense of loss in moving from a leader in one field to a novice in another: experiences of a change in nature of the teaching role  Why does teacher education appear to suffer from low status? –How teaching is valued impacts how teacher education is viewed 5

Myth 3: Theory is only in the ivory tower, practice is only in the swampy lowlands  Donald Schön illustrated the place of reflection (in and on practice), the importance of knowledge of practice and how framing and reframing influence the development of knowledge, understanding and expertise.  Just as there is a crucial symbiotic relationship in teaching and learning so too there is with theory and practice.  Practice informs theory informs practice 6

The nature of teacher education  Teacher education is complex work involving curriculum, pedagogy and research, yet most teacher educators are provided with little professional development support or mentoring in most teacher education programs … we are expected to attend to, and experiment with, clinical aspects of practice as teacher educators in order to develop into skilled practitioners … At the same time, the academy expects teacher educators to pursue rigorous programs of research … While most teacher educators begin with a deep commitment to effective teaching and pedagogical reform, the culture of education colleges and the promotion criteria and other reward systems within universities privileges scholarship over clinical practice. (Gallagher, et al., 2011, p. 880) 7

Negotiating the curriculum & change  Is there/should there be, a teacher education curriculum?  Although teacher educators may well be experienced practitioners, their lack of academic experience (or perhaps more pointedly, their perceived standing) can make it difficult for them to have a ‘voice’ in the academy; especially when it comes to challenging existing curricular conventions.  The need to be able to negotiate the interplay between the many conflicting, and sometimes contradictory, positions in academia means that educational change can be very difficult indeed. 8

Myth 4: The ‘practicum’ is the only place where you learn to teach  Professional experience matters but requires: –Genuine partnerships that build on the opportunities available through the different educational environments –Challenging the status quo –Support in learning about teaching through risk-taking –Formative assessment should be well in advance of summative judgment –Creating conditions for learning 9

Building up from principles  Learning about teaching: –involves continuously conflicting and competing demands; –requires a view of knowledge as a subject to be created rather than as a created subject; –requires a shift in focus from the curriculum to the learner; –is enhanced through (student) teacher research; –requires an emphasis on those learning to teach working closely with their peers; –requires meaningful relationships between schools, universities and student teachers; and, –is enhanced when the teaching and learning approaches advocated in the program are modelled by the teacher educators in their own practice. (Korthagen, et al., 2006) 10

Pedagogy of teacher education  Teaching teaching is about thoughtfully engaging with practice beyond the technical; it is about using the cauldron of practice to expose pedagogy (especially one’s own) to scrutiny. In so doing, collaborative inquiry into the shared teaching and learning experiences of teacher education practices can begin to bring to the surface the sophisticated thinking, decision making and pedagogical reasoning that underpins pedagogical expertise so that it might not only be recognized, but also be purposefully developed. The result being the creation of conditions for the development of informed professionals who better understand, and are able to articulate, the complex and sophisticated business of teaching. 11

 Teacher educators need to: reposition the attention of students of teaching from the visible performance of teachers’ work to the invisible work that supports it; resist the temptation to give students all the answers so that they learn to think and act in the face of uncertainty; and, create shared spaces for the exploration and resolution of difficult emotions without judgement (Forgasz, 2013).  Learning to teach is demanding and complex work and that view needs to be upfront and explicit in the ways in which teacher educators conceptualize and enact their practice.  Learning about the learning of teaching clearly requires thoughtful, focused and meaningful professional development opportunities for teacher educators. 12

Research informed teacher educators:  Knowing how to read, evaluate, critique, and use … research in their own work … to be able to interpret new research studies by locating them within a larger discourse that is informed by multiple historical, empirical, and epistemological perspectives …  Expertise in conducting research about their own practices and programs … self examination and interrogation of the biographical bases of behaviour and beliefs... conducting empirical research on practice in order to determine what the outcomes of teacher preparation courses and field experiences are for prospective teachers’ own learning, for their professional performances in schools and classrooms, and for their pupils’ learning.  Expertise in sorting out which questions about teacher education are empirical and which are questions of values and beliefs. Questions of value cannot be settled simply by assembling good evidence … these questions can be shaped, reformulated, or understood more profoundly on the basis of evidence, but evidence must always be interpreted (Cochran-Smith, 2005, pp. 224 – 225). 13

Myth 5: The job of teacher Education is to produce ‘classroom ready’ teachers  Principals/schools naturally want teaching ready graduates, how that might be achieved is not as simple as many would like  Learning to teach is more than just being familiar with the requirements of a given curriculum  Learning to teach does not stop at the end of the course (such things as mentoring, support, collaboration & researching practice shape and inform the nature of the beginning teaching experience)  Professional development serves a purpose, professional learning creates a vision for growth 14

Personal learning/public understanding  Why do we struggle to be able to answer the questions politicians tend to want answers to?  What might we reasonably expect teacher education to do for pre-service teachers?  How capable are we of effecting educational change? 15

Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices  Inquiring into one’s own practice creates opportunities to develop deeper understandings of, and actions in, teaching and learning about teaching  Teacher educators’ knowledge and practice should model a ‘vision’ for how growth and development in teaching can progress throughout a career  Working collaboratively through self-study can offer the learning challenges that catalyse growth as a professional. 16

Conclusion: A path to becoming 17

Tackling the myths Myth 1: Teaching is easy Myth 2: Teacher education is about picking up the tips and tricks of teaching Myth 3: Theory and practice do not meet in teacher education Myth 4: You can only learn to teach in school Myth 5: Teacher education is all about being ‘classroom ready’ 18