MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATION AND QUALITY

‘Quality’ in mathematics teaching does not relate solely to pupil achievement, to teaching approaches or to deeply held beliefs about the nature of mathematics and its teaching and learning, but to all of these. A model of a teacher's mathematics‐related belief‐system is presented, and the issue of the contrast between espoused and enacted beliefs is discussed. ‘Quality’ in mathematics teacher education raises all of these issues, as well as the aims, goals and means of the teacher preparation process itself. The paper concludes by arguing against the ‘apprenticeship’ model of mathematics teacher education, for depriving student teachers of theory and of practical research experience. A well known dictum paraphrased states that theory without practice is empty, but that practice without theory is blind. ‘Quality’ in mathematics teaching and teacher education depends on both theory and practice in systematic cooperation.     

Exploring the theory-practice gap in initial teacher education: moving beyond questions of relevance to issues of power and authority

The ‘theory-practice divide’ in teacher education can be viewed not simply as an acceptance of a body of knowledge but instead an acceptance of the teacher educator’s authority to determine what is relevant educational theory. This research aimed to explore student teachers’ views of ‘educational theory’ and how it was discursively positioned relative to their practice in an attempt to examine whether their acceptance or rejection of it was also related to accepting the authority of the teacher educator. Using one-to-one interviews with 23 student teachers and employing a discourse analysis, four categories of students emerged. The paper describes these four categories and discusses the implications of these findings for initial teacher education and our understanding of the ‘theory-practice’ gap.     

Growing scholarly teachers and educational researchers: a curriculum for a Research Pathway in pre‐service teacher education

This paper advocates the development of high‐level research capability in some students in their undergraduate Bachelor of Education course. The rationale for this viewpoint is presented in relation to three questions: ‘What is educational research?’ ‘Why should universities develop high‐level research capability in some pre‐service teacher education graduates?’ and ‘What type of curriculum can support the development of high‐level research capability in some pre‐service teacher education graduates?’ The first two questions are addressed broadly. The latter question is addressed with reference to an existing Research Pathway within a Bachelor of Education course. The paper concludes with the identification of a priority issue for subsequent iterations of the Pathway and a reflection on the shift in my role as a teacher in this Pathway from ‘teacher researcher’ to ‘scholarly teacher’.     

Marxist state theory and state autonomy theory: the case of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education

Abstract

In recent times, there have been a number of critiques of Marxist and neo‐Marxist analyses of the state and education policy. These have drawn on postmodernist, ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ and state autonomy perspectives. While the postmodernist and ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ approaches have attracted critical response, to date, the state autonomy perspective has, to our knowledge, gone unchallenged. To address this theoretical lacuna, this paper analyses one writer's attempt, via an historical case study, to uphold state autonomy theory by detailing the ongoing relationship between one quasi‐state agency and the practice of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education. We argue that there are serious conceptual weaknesses in this latest attempt to apply state autonomy theory to educational policy analysis. The arguments in the case study under consideration are seriously compromised by a basically flawed hypothesis, a misrepresentation of contemporary (neo‐) Marxist education policy analysis and by a failure to look at ‘the big picture’.     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

The Role of Teacher Education in the Improvement of Educational Practice: a linkage model

Drawing extensively upon innovation theory, and particularly upon models of the dissemination process in innovation, the author analyses ways in which teacher education can contribute to the improvement of educational practice. The importance of a strategy for innovation is stressed, and the concept of ‘linkage’ is identified as central to the contribution of the teacher education institution.     

Mindfulness In,As and Of Education: Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education

Following the exponential rise in publications on mindfulness in education and the emergence of some critical perspectives on this field, this paper articulates three roles of mindfulness practice in education: Mindfulness in, as and of education. The three are developed based on an examination of the practice as it is shaped by two different socio‐historical narratives, which in turn manifest in different modalities of implementation and aims in the contemporary educational field. While much of the field is governed by ‘mindfulness in education’ within economic‐therapeutic interventions, equal attention is given to ‘mindfulness as education’ as reflected in a whole school approach and to ‘mindfulness of education’ in which the practice radicalises the ethos of critical pedagogy. Describing these three roles, the paper introduces readers to the practice itself, offers a framework for understanding its associations with a variety of educational aims, and critically discusses these associations as well as the diverse pedagogical possibilities that this practice brings to contemporary and future education.     

Corporate federalism and the reform of teacher education in Australia

Current Australian commitments to competency‐based teacher reforms have wide acceptance. The key to this has been the affirmative stance adopted by the peak education unions and by ‘progressive’ educationalists, the nominal guarantors of recent professional advances in teaching. Since Australian approaches to ‘competencies’ are part of a more general agenda of industrialization of education, what is clearly indicated are radical changes in the way that nominally independent/critical language of education is currently being interpreted and applied: this is now being used to support an overall restructuring in which substantive (professional) forms of teacher authority are being uncompromisingly targeted. The transformations identified in this paper as having special strategic significance involve the themes of ‘school as community’ and ‘critical practice’. These have been detached from their traditional (robustly anti‐industrial) reference points and redeployed to authorize a more active (because supposedly conflict‐free) regulatory role by newly empowered managers and to advance the claim that ‘the practical’, on its own, can now be revalorized to allow real scope for creative and contextualized interventions by teachers. A strictly managerialist/technicist perspective upon schooling is thus represented as occupying the highest moral and cognitive ground. Correspondingly ruled out is the case for any real measure of educational pluralism or leamercentredness, no matter the sociocultural complexities, thereby licensing the extension to the school site itself of direct (educationally unmediated) political controls over education. As its counterpoint to the new agenda, this paper stresses the need for a robust decision‐making role by educators at all levels of policy formation, and for learner‐centred interventions which are much more than technical, whatever the processes of revalorization supposedly at work.     

基于卓越教师培养的职前教育实践模式构建

卓越教师培养是当代我国教师教育的新主题,实践取向是我国教师教育改革的核心理念。教育实践是培养未来卓越教师的重要环节。教育实践具有主体性、情景性、智慧性、反思性、本体性等品性。教育实践以教育理论为前提,教育理论指导教育实践,教育实践与教育理论深度融合。构建职前教师教育实践模式,需要创新教育实践机制,建设教师教育协同创新体;完善教育实践内容,构建实践导向的教师教育课程体系;统筹教育实践时间,使教育实践贯穿大学教育的始终;拓展教育实践空间,建立多种类型的教育实践基地;创新实践教学方法,提升实践教学质量。     

Special educational needs and inclusion,moving forward but standing still? A critical reframing of some key issues

This article draws together my thinking in relation to special educational needs and inclusion that have dominated my practice. The article, through the concept of embodiment, revisits, reviews and reframes the key issues of the construction of special educational needs, inclusion and the ideology that binds them together. Through this exploration, I argue we often seem to move forward with policy while in reality standing still in ensuring the ‘success’ of all of our pupils. By critiquing and reframing taken‐for‐granted assumptions and the sacred words ‘success’ and ‘achievement’, this article maps out the future directions of inclusive education. It concludes with a reflection on my first days as a ‘teacher of special educational needs’ and my work to support Kenny, a student with cerebral palsy. This personal reflection maps out a different form of educational success that perhaps could provide a forward momentum to develop more successful inclusive education policy and practice.     

Exemplarity and education: Retuning educational research

This article explores the idea of exemplarity in relation to educational research and teacher education. Exemplarity is introduced as an alternative to the paradigm of evidence and ‘what works’, which seems to be omnipresent in educational research at present. The idea of exemplarity relates to the particularity of educational practice. The claim of this article is that we need to skew the dominance of functionalistic studies of education, which focus on skills and solutions to problems, or on providing quick fixes and methods to be applied in practice. I will argue that this tactic shuts down interpretive spaces and gives the teacher an illusion of simplicity and efficacy that connects poorly with the complexities of pedagogical practice. Exemplarity provides a different way of answering the question of ‘what works’, since it does not claim generalisability, but instead offers a path to reflective engagement with the complexities of educational processes. The idea of exemplarity highlights how educators can be invited to lend an ear to practical experience and pedagogical theorising, and through these develop their tact and reflective abilities through exemplars that display pedagogical principles. This, in turn, offers the possibility of retuning one’s practice, and in the scope of this article, retuning educational research itself.     

职前英语教师专业成长的另类途径——一项基于重构职前英语教师信念的行动研究

信念的研究是判断教师教育成效的一项重要指标,是当前教师教育中最有价值的一部分。职前教师信念由于受到先前经验和信念本身特质等因素的影响,不易改变,教师教育应该对职前英语教师的信念进行检视与再建构。在自我反思教学模式下发展起来的教育行动研究是近年来国外教育界探究和实践的一种教学理论,是一种非常适合没有接受过教育研究训练的职前教师的研究方法。开展行动研究有助于职前教师将理论学习与教学实践相结合,在教学实践过程中,充分利用有限的直接经验进行教学反思,不断检视、并重构教师信念,提升教学行为。     

Inclusive practice within the lived cultures of school communities: research case studies in teaching,learning and inclusion

This paper provides an account of a teacher's use of theory as a tool to develop inclusive practice through a social studies programme in a new entrant class. The account illustrates the ways in which the teacher drew on research to assist in the facilitation of an inclusive educational environment. Presented are research case studies the teacher encountered in an in-service teacher education programme, and the ‘social constructionist’ and ‘personal tragedy’ models that were used as theoretical tools to assist the teacher's planning and teaching practice. Mounted cameras, broadcast microphones and pre- and post-unit interviews with the teacher and students were used to explore the lived culture of the classroom, and the nature and effectiveness of the strategies the teacher used. An ‘interrupted narrative’ methodology engages the reader in the interplay between research and theory in the research case studies. Four major strategies used by the teacher have been identified and these are presented as theoretical tools for other teachers and teacher educators to use, critique and develop to support inclusive practice in their own contexts.     

THE CLASSIFICATION OF ABILITIES

Sixth‐form students who had expressed varying degrees of commitment to entering teaching as a career reported on their knowledge of the teaching profession, their expectations for teacher training and on their own educational experiences. By the time they had entered the sixth form most had developed quite sophisticated views about the profession and about their own potential to become effective teachers.

A warm and approachable personality was seen as the most important characteristic of the good primary teacher, while for the secondary teacher, subject matter competence was emphasized. Students planning to enter teaching saw themselves, already, as warm and approachable, but felt that their training would have a great effect on their general level of competence, and indeed on their confidence. At their chosen college of education, they anticipated too much ‘educational theory’ and not enough on ‘methods of teaching’ or teaching practice.

Most students who planned to teach had had a reasonable amount of prior experience in one of a wide range of teaching settings. This appeared to have had a beneficial effect, especially for those enrolled in formal work experience programmes.     

On the Reconstruction of Educational Science

Ever since its formative years in the USA a century ago, the discipline of education has taken an uneasy stand on its own ‘scientific’ status, not least with regard to the basic issue of the relationships between theory and practice. When a science of education was introduced as a panacea for rational planning in the fields of schooling and teacher training, general solutions on a scientific basis were to underpin efficient steering at all levels. Presently, there are signs of similar approaches to science in federal policies concerned with evidence‐based educational practice in the USA. At the same time a new conception of educational science has been launched in Sweden as a means to promote more fruitful research. With the background of some striking similarities as well as differences among dominant conceptions of educational science in these varying contexts, this article aims to reconsider some basic aspects of the persistent issue of the relationships between pedagogic theory and practice.     

Teaching through assessment: reconsidering the transfer problem through a convergence of technology and assessment in early childhood teacher education

This article considers the impact of the ‘transfer problem’ from a personal perspective. Drawing on experiences in teacher educator as preservice teacher, a practicing educator and later a preservice educator the author examines how she has seen and experienced the transfer problem and the potential for teacher education to enact a separation between theory and practice. The convergence of technology and assessment is presented to argue a case for a pedagogical approach used by the author referred to as ‘teaching through assessment’. The approach is theorised drawing on concepts from cultural-historical theory including, leading activity, learning activity and reflection to describe the potential for technology to appropriate a range of forms and functions that make it suitable for reconsidering how the transfer problem might be approached in teacher education classrooms.     

Implementation eines wissenschaftlich erprobten,didaktischen Konzepts: Der Einfluss pädagogischer Autonomie auf die Wirksamkeit in der Praxis

There is growing interest in evidence-based interventions that can improve student teachers’ professional development. But how can these interventions be implemented into everyday teacher education practice by teacher educators themselves—without losing their initial, lab-tested effectiveness due to teacher educators’ practical educational autonomy? Through a quasi-experimental field study the following question is investigated: What is the impact of different degrees of educational autonomy (low/middle/high) that 19 teacher educa­tors are granted while implementing an experimentally proven concept into their teacher training courses on the development of the competence to diagnose classroom situations among 261 student teachers? ANCOVAs using planned contrasts indicate that the effectiveness of the concept can be sustained in ‘the real world’ of teacher education practice, even if practitioners—no longer researchers—are responsible for the concept realization; thereby, the highest increase in student teachers’ competence occurred when low educational autonomy was granted, i.e., the concept was implemented closely to the original.     

Theory and Practice in Teacher Education

The rationales pf recent and current approaches to teacher education courses are analysed, taking as the essential element the relationship between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ that they exemplify. Overall, each of these course approaches is unsatisfactory, as they, in various ways, divorce the theory and practice of teaching and lead to one‐sided courses for the preparation of teachers.

Rather, an analysis of ‘theory’ and ‘practice'as a dialectical unity ofopposites is proposed and outlined in its application to the acquisition of the conscious skilled practice of teaching. Thus, theory is a guide to practice and practice is a test of theory and should be built into the course process as such.

This perspective is developed in the context of teacher education and the notions of knowledge and learning implied by it are amplified. The course process that is proposed builds on the strengths of the best elements of recent and current teacher education courses, whilst attempting to build theory and practice in a coherent interrelationship.     

Left Alone: end time for Marxist educational theory?

This paper provides an external account of the demise of the ‘old’ Marxist educational theory flowing from social reproductionism/ resistance theory. Five developments are explored in terms of how they have undercut the ‘old’ educational Marxism: hyper‐academicism; dislocations/disjunctions between theory and practice; the postmodern challenge; the new liberal ‘Left’ challenge; and, the ‘death of Marxism’ syndrome. The first two elements form the basis of some important ‘lessons’ for the revitalisation of Marxist perspectives on education. It is also argued that, although the five trends and developments have posed a serious challenge for the ‘old’ Marxist educational theory, nevertheless, it will probably circulate for some time‐‐given revivals, revisits, and as a source of easy criticism for anti‐Marxists. Finally, there has been a recent flowering of new approaches to theorising education from a Marxist perspective, which this paper maps out.