Difficulties in promoting inquiry in teacher education partnerships: English and Canadian perspectives

This comparative study of two pre‐service teacher education programmes in England and in Canada focuses on the relationship between inquiry and the partnership structures within which the universities and schools work together. Despite the very different jurisdictions and cultures of the two systems, the two universities seem to experience similar difficulties in relation to their commitment to inquiry and to working in partnership with schools. At both the Canadian and the English sites, definitions of inquiry varied within institutions as well as between universities and schools, and inquiry was a university rather than a school priority. These differences between the schools' and the universities' views on inquiry are significant for the partnerships in which the programmes operate. It is these differences and difficulties—which often seem context‐related but which, through the authors' comparative work, have come to seem more systemic—that are explored in this article.     

Developing new teacher inquiry and criticality: The role of online discussions

This work concerns the professional development of UK teachers in their first year of teaching. It is interested in how the online discussions (ODs) these teachers undertook as part of the Master of Teaching contributed to this development process. The teachers worked in online tutor groups made up of teachers from different schools, phases (primary and secondary) and subjects. The data used were their accounts of participating in the ODs written towards the end of this first year of teaching and interviews with a selection of these teachers at a later stage in their career. It appeared that the learning gains of the ODs were enabled and fostered by writing for an audience of peers about their professional practice. These new teachers developed an inquiry‐centred collegiality, reflexivity and a critical engagement with wider and longer‐term educational perspectives. The research establishes that the gains from the ODs were the result of careful pedagogic design at many levels. By foregrounding the situated experiences and interests of the teachers, it allowed a “way in” for them to start to understand the complexities, dilemmas and strategies within their own and others' professional practice.     

Enhancing the role of the arts in primary pre-service teacher education

This research sought to explore the impact upon pre-service teachers' orientations towards the arts of a performing arts week within a one-year postgraduate teacher education programme. There is evidence from a range of data collected before, during and after the week that it had helped to strengthen participants' self-image as artistic individuals who recognise the value of the arts in children's education and have enhanced confidence in working with different professionals to teach the arts in a cross-disciplinary way. Within a climate of compliance, this study suggests that pre-service teachers require such experiences to overcome their fear of curriculum innovation.     

学习化社会成人教育教师的角色冲突探微

成人教育的教师由于扮演多重角色,经常面临角色冲突的困扰。恰当化解冲突,对成人教育教师自身发展、对终身教育体系和学习化社会的构建意义重大。     

Narrative inquiry in service learning contexts: Possibilities for learning about diversity in teacher education

This paper explores the experiences of pre- and in-service teachers through intentionally created narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) spaces within three different service-learning engagements in Canada, Kenya, and Turkey. Because the contexts where our studies were situated were culturally different from participants' backgrounds, narrative inquiry spaces shaped windows in which participants could restory their understandings of others different from themselves. We argue thinking narratively suits the purpose of learning within service learning, highlighting the potential this kind of work holds for pre- and in-service teachers' professional identities in school contexts shaped by diversity.     

Archival research as living inquiry: an alternate approach for research in the histories of teacher education

Exploring the role of archives in recovering the histories of teachers' lives and the potential of archival research as living inquiry, a non-traditional perspective is offered concerning life writing as a way into an epistemological storying of the past. Archival research as living inquiry is examined both as a methodological approach to theorizing practice, and as a method of gathering information in public collections that is rendered through life writing. The application of this emerging form of research has the potential to change structures of teaching and learning, and in the process, provide suitable methods to write accounts of educational histories. In this case, I document my archival quest into Bessie's story as an exemplar of how reflective practice can contribute to becoming a researcher of history through unorthodox approaches and methods. This inquiry is motivated by questions that include: Why should a teacher of the past matter to teachers today? What value do archives hold in teacher education? How might we rethink our methods of inquiry to give meaning to the lives of women teachers?     

Teachers' environmental education as creating cracks and ruptures in school education: a narrative inquiry and an analysis of teacher rhetoric

This article discusses a narrative inquiry as a methodology for understanding and examining teachers' interpretations of their environment‐related teaching experiences. Focusing on the value of teacher stories for interrogating the discursive practices of schools as institutional contexts, four main rhetorical themes are identified to illustrate how teachers' engagements in practice and thinking with environmental education display ongoing identity work. Five Korean secondary science teachers' stories illustrate the dynamic processes and interplay between multiple discourses, such as the ‘proper’, ‘good’, ‘science’ teacher, and the cultural norms, resources and subject positions available to them, as they take up and explain their own and others' meanings and subject positions in science education and environmental education. The paper discusses the value of narrative inquiry to conceptualising teacher agency in ways that offer alternatives to conventional research perspectives in this field, and in taking account of the possible meanings of environmental education, the possibility of creating cracks and ruptures in the ‘sense‐making’ discourses and ‘sense that is made’ of experiences of environmental education and school education more widely.     

Narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: Focus on English as a foreign language in China

Teacher education and development takes place within an encompassing local system of education and ongoing forms of school improvement. Critical to successful teacher development when Western ideas are being adopted in other cultures is narratively linking development programmes to this local education system, such as in China, and to its culturally established ways of knowing and being. This paper presents a narrative inquiry approach to teacher development that builds on the existing educational system, ongoing school reforms, and culturally established ways of knowing and being. The paper concludes with the potential of teacher development to shape global values that may be shared among cultures.     

Science discipline knowledge in primary teacher education: Responses to the discipline review of teacher education in mathematics and science

This paper describes a study of primary teacher educators reaction to those aspects of theDiscipline Review of Teacher Education in Mathematics and Science dealing with early childhood and primary pre-service teacher education. Interviews with two of the authors of the Review are also reported.     

Tracing the effects of teacher inquiry on classroom practice

Videotape and participant observation were used to document an American high school teacher workgroup's experience with collaborative teacher inquiry and to monitor changes in practice through two cycles of instructional planning, classroom implementation, and reflective analysis. Detectable changes in practice were observed, including a substantial improvement for two of the four teachers in fidelity of implementation of an instructional innovation. Results support claim that meaningful instructional changes are more likely when teachers work in job-alike teams, are led by trained leaders, use inquiry-focused protocols, and have stable settings in which to engage in the continuous improvement of instruction.     

地方高师高层次教师教育人才培养的机遇与对策

教师教育的变革给地方师范大学发展带来了前所未有的挑战;《国家中长期教育改革和发展规划纲要》颁布及全国教育工作会议的召开,对教师教育提出了新的要求;我国研究生教育结构性调整,为地方师范大学发展提供了新的视角。笔者认为,地方师范大学将挑战与要求转化为发展动力,抓住难得发展机遇,提升教师教育人才培养层次,扩大教育硕士规模,坚持培养原则,创新培养保障措施,确保培养质量,是其充分发挥自身优势与突出办学特色,在激烈市场竞争中谋求长远发展的较佳选择。     

高师院校教师教育存在的问题与对策

教学计划是学校教育教学过程中的指导性文件,如何制定和实施教学计划直接影响人才培养的质量。针对高师院校教师教育存在的问题,应通过改革师范生的教学计划来解决。     

Community and inquiry: journey of a science teacher

In this case study, we examine a teacher’s journey, including reflections on teaching science, everyday classroom interaction, and their intertwined relationship. The teacher’s reflections include an awareness of being “a White middle-class born and raised teacher teaching other peoples’ children.” This awareness was enacted in the science classroom and emerges through approaches to inquiry. Our interest in Ms. Cook’s journey grew out of discussions, including both informal and semi-structured interviews, in two research projects over a three-year period. Our interest was further piqued as we analyzed videotaped classroom interaction during science lessons and discovered connections between Ms. Cook’s reflections and classroom interaction. In this article, we illustrate ways that her journey emerges as a conscientization. This, at least in part, shapes classroom interaction, which then again shapes her conscientization in a recursive, dynamic relationship. We examine her reflections on her “hegemonic (cultural and socio–economic) practices” and consider how these reflections help her reconsider such practices through analysis of classroom interaction. Analyses lead us to considering the importance of inquiry within this classroom community.