Seeing through the eyes of the teacher? Investigating primary school teachers’ professional noticing through a video-based research methodology

ABSTRACT

Digital video technology has been increasingly employed to investigate teacher professional noticing. While extensive research has been undertaken to explore the specialised knowledge base underlying teacher professional noticing, there is a need to more closely examine the methodological consequences of video-based approaches for understanding the nature of professional noticing. This paper draws upon a recent study that investigated primary school teachers’ professional noticing of mathematics and science classrooms to discuss issues, challenges, and opportunities that emerge with a video-based research approach. In this study, the latest video technology was employed to allow primary school teachers to take active roles in capturing, selecting and reflecting on significant classroom events on their own and with colleagues. Drawing upon examples from this study, this paper highlights the methodological potential and challenges of video-based approaches to investigating teacher noticing in classrooms, and discusses how this noticing relates to reflection stimulated by classroom videos. It further reveals the tension between the dual priorities of empowering the teacher participants in research and enabling valid interpretations by the researchers in an attempt to gain insight into the complexity of teachers’ professional noticing.     

Conceptualizing teacher immediacy through the ‘companion’ metaphor

Situated within the critical pedagogic scholarship that deals with the issue of ‘teacher immediacy’, this study proposes an understanding of the practice of pedagogy through the metaphor of ‘companionship’. A friendly individual but not a friend, the instructor is seen here as someone who can connect to college-age students without any visible effort and someone who makes explicit use of the power dynamics in a classroom to foster academic excellence. The companion model is first compared to other pedagogical models that are conceptualized through metaphors (e.g. in loco parentis, ‘teacher-as-entertainer’) and is then evaluated in terms of its potential weaknesses.     

Conceptualising teacher education and research as ‘critical praxis’

A particular approach to epistemological action as ‘critical praxis’ is proposed where we bring together the ideas of ideology critique, self-reflective consciousness and emancipatory action. Critical praxis for educators seeks to move beyond the constraints of formal teaching, knowledge and curriculum and instead encourages communities, teachers and students to work together in producing new understandings and practices for the public good. As teacher educators, we are attempting to design a research methodology that will enable our field of practice to be theorised and to encourage a movement towards new critical understandings of teaching and learning for our students and for ourselves. This is a process of reflexive practice that endeavours to constantly and systematically interrogate our own views and to move beyond the status quo of conservative educational systems, procedures and rigidities so that knowledge is a legitimate investigation of possibility and transformation. In this article, we report a Critical Praxis Protocol to guide further development of teacher education and research. We trace our trajectory from a progressive emphasis on improving learning and professional educational practice to an emerging notion of criticality that seeks explanation with the theorising of Bourdieu. A draft habitus–field analysis is provided to indicate our current understanding of generative themes that suggest the emancipatory potential of teaching and schooling.     

Considering ‘best practice’: the social construction of teacher activity and pupil learning as performance

Since the 1997 election of the Labour Party to political power in the UK the foci for educational change have been widespread. One area that has received particularly intense scrutiny is that of teacher activity. In particular, the profession has seen a marked rise in the identification of ‘best practice’. As a term ‘best practice’ has entered the parlance of English educational policy to describe that which seemingly has ‘official’ approval. This paper uses a social constructionist perspective to consider how increases in pupil attainment on national tests are currently used to demonstrate better pupil learning. Specifically, it identifies that the use of such data to describe the plausibility, veracity and legitimacy of teaching before the test as ‘best practice’ is questionable. In so doing, the critique argues that ‘best practice’ confers and retains legitimacy due to its self‐perpetuation within the discourse of performance. The paper concludes by offering three areas for further research and debate.     

Invisible care? The role of librarians in caring for the ‘whole pupil’ in secondary schools

This paper draws on the ‘accidental’ results of a UK national survey of school libraries to explore how school librarians can contribute to student pastoral care. Although the survey did not ask specific questions about student social development, responding librarians identified three key aspects of their contribution: support for learning; maintaining a safe and secure environment; and providing individual support. The librarian’s role in these aspects of social development support are described and then elaborated into three approaches to the pastoral role: ‘play it down’; promote the social role of libraries within the school; or focus on the pastoral needs of individuals. Views are then offered on how school managers, teachers and school librarians themselves can build on the existing pastoral role in a context where there is no statutory requirement to provide school libraries and where library development is heavily dependent upon the vision of the school senior leadership team.     

‘I never heard the word methodology’: personal accounts of teacher training in Ireland 1943–1980

This article examines the experiences of 27 retired secondary school teachers (respondents) who completed initial teacher education (ITE) courses between 1943 and 1980. The eldest respondent completed ITE in 1943 and the youngest in 1980. The timespan 1943–1980 is not purposeful but dependent on the cohort that volunteered to take part in the study. Twenty-one of the cohort completed ITE prior to 1970 and four between 1970 and 1979, while only two did so in the 1980s. Consequently, much of the data and discussion relates to the period between the mid-1940s and late 1970s – one not characterised by pedagogic innovation in ITE, or education generally, in Ireland as successive governments struggled with economic challenges, the most prescient of which are discussed later in this study. All universities offering post-primary ITE in Ireland during this period were attended by at least one of the cohort and collectively they taught in 17 of Ireland’s 26 counties, while one respondent taught for a time in Northern Ireland. The majority of the cohort (63%) taught in rural towns, 28% in urban towns or cities while 9% taught in rural locations. The diversity of school-type is noted, as is the year in which the respondent began teaching. The respondents’ experiences of ITE demonstrate negligible differences depending on geographical location. Twenty were female and seven male. The age range was 96 (Sr. Boniface) to 65 (Mike). All of the respondents were accorded anonymity. Based on oral testimony the study suggests that ITE offerings in this period were conservative and consensualist in nature, that the social changes that characterised Irish society in the 1960s failed to impact upon teacher education programmes but that, according to respondents, the last decade has seen significant changes in ITE and in the dispositions of those entering secondary school teaching.     

Do trainee teachers harm pupil attainment? Isolating the effect of pre-service teachers on contemporaneous pupil performance in ‘high-stakes’ tests

The prevalence of ‘pre-service’ or ‘trainee’ teachers in schools is rising in England, driven by the expansion of school-led routes to qualified teacher status and increasing demand for newly qualified teachers. This may have important implications for schools, which have historically been concerned with the impact of trainee teachers on their pupils’ attainment. There are, however, confounding factors which affect both the decision to host a trainee teacher and pupil attainment. We empirically model the impact of trainee teachers on contemporaneous pupil attainment in ‘high-stakes’ exams, exploiting unique data combining national administrative data on pupil test scores with a survey of schools’ involvement with initial teacher training over multiple academic years. We use school fixed effects to account for time-invariant school factors which may determine both schools’ teacher training decisions and pupil attainment. Counter to schools’ concerns, we find that pupil attainment in high-stakes assessments, on average, is not significantly affected by the number of trainee teachers. This is an important empirical finding, as it suggests that the rapid expansion of school-led teacher training is not likely to have a detrimental effect on pupil attainment in England, conditional on the set of schools that choose to engage with initial teacher training remaining similar: trainee teachers may still affect pupil attainment in schools that do not currently participate in initial teacher training, as these schools are typically more constrained.     

What is the Meaning of the Physical Magnitude ‘Work’?

Usually, in physics textbooks, the physical magnitude ‘work’ is introduced as the product of a force multiplied by its displacement, in relation to the transfer of energy. In other words, ‘work’ is presented as an internal affair of physics theory, while its relation to the world of experience, that is its empirical meaning, is missing. On the other hand, in the history of its creation, ‘work’ was a concept that had empirical meaning from the start. It was constructed by engineers to measure the work (labor) of motor engines, men, and animals. Very soon however this initial meaning seems to vanish. In this article, it will be looked at how ‘work’ is presented in physics textbooks, what was its initial meaning in the history of its formulation, under what circumstances this initial meaning faded, and how elements from the history of its creation can be used in the classroom to teach it.     

From LSA to teacher: the value of classroom experience in shaping a ‘teacher’ identity

Routes into teacher training have expanded in recent years, accompanied by a growing interest in schools ‘growing their own’ teachers from amongst support staff. However, little attention has been paid to their transition to the role of teacher. This article investigates influences on identity development and the extent to which personal values are reconciled with professional demands and socially constructed facets of educational practice. Participants were nine staff in one secondary school for pupils with moderate learning difficulties who had undertaken the transition from LSA (learning support assistant) to teacher. Qualitative data were obtained through an online survey and focus group discussion. Findings show that extensive opportunities to experiment with provisional and possible selves, immersion in educational discourse, classroom agency and staff collaboration engender a ‘teacher’ self-concept and positive motivations for LSA career development, and that self-esteem and self-efficacy are strengthened by how an individual’s values align with those of the setting in which they work. Findings may inform school leaders as to the value of training teachers ‘in-house’ and support career development decisions of LSAs, a pathway of potential significance given the current pressures on teacher recruitment and retention.     

Internationalising practices and representations of the ‘other’ in second-level elite schools in Ireland

While Irish elite schools have adopted some internationalising practices, international students are often erased from their ‘public faces’. Based on interviews and analysis of schools' websites, this paper argues that Brooks and Waters' [2014. “The Hidden Internationalism of Elite English Schools.” Sociology, advance online publication April 2] argument that elite schools hide their internationalism to preserve an explicit national identity for strategic purposes largely applies to the Irish case. In addition, it explores how features characteristic of Irish elite educational settings can help understand ambiguous attitudes to the international ‘other’, who is not only hidden but also at times ‘Irish-ised’ as these schools cultivate cultural identities defined primarily along ethno-national lines.     

Does the gender of the teacher matter in the teaching of reading literacy? Teacher gender and pupil attainment in reading literacy in Hong Kong

A study of 148 primary school teachers and 4867 Grade 4 pupils in Hong Kong found no support for the proposal that boys learn to read better when taught by men teachers. In fact, it was found that both boys and girls learnt better when taught by women. Responses to a teacher questionnaire indicate significant differences in the preferred patterns of teaching favoured by male and female teachers. Responses from men teachers suggest they are more authoritarian, prefer to control pupils' learning, engage pupils in whole-class reading and like to read passages aloud while pupils follow the text. Responses from women teachers suggest they prefer to teach reading in groups, to group pupils according to reading ability, set tasks that suit pupils' stage of learning, allocate more time for pupils to read books and use the school library and encourage pupils to discover for themselves the meaning of new vocabulary encountered in text. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

From science teacher to ‘teacher scientist’: exploring the experiences of research-active science teachers in the UK

We explore the professional identities of UK-based secondary science teachers who actively participated in science research for at least six months. The study uses thematic analysis to analyse semi-structured interviews with 17 participants across England and Scotland, from a variety of educational/socio-economic contexts. We found that through participation in research projects, teachers develop a multi-faceted sense of professional identity that includes the roles of teacher, scientist/researcher, mentor and coach. Teachers who are research-active develop complex professional networks that have a positive impact upon their sense of professional worth and self-belief. Through participation in research, teachers identified as both science teachers and scientists and this has been encapsulated in this research as a transition in professional identity to ‘teacher scientist’. The key enabling factor in identification as a ‘teacher scientist’ is a teacher’s positive interaction with scientists/researchers. Teachers are motivated to participate in research projects in response to the enthusiasm of their students and a desire for students to contribute to research that could provide solutions to real-world challenges. This understanding of the capacity of science teachers to become ‘teacher scientists’, and recognising teachers' altruistic motivations, could contribute to teacher retention and recruitment strategies that are less focused on financial incentives.     

Datafying the teaching ‘profession’: remaking the professional teacher in the image of data

This paper explores how data-driven practices and logics have come to reshape the possibilities by which the teaching profession, and teaching professionals, can be known and valued. Informed by the literature and theorising around educational performativity, the constitutive power of numbers, and affective responses to data, it shows how different US educators experienced, and came to embody, new forms of numbers-based accountability. Drawing on interviews with teachers, and school- and district-level leaders, as well as relevant school-based documents, it is argued that such data are now both effective (i.e. they change ‘what counts’ within the profession) and affective (i.e. they produce new expectations for teachers to profess data-responsive dispositions over actual educative practices). This prevalence and use of data have combined not only to change teaching into a ‘data profession’, but also to change teachers into ‘professors’ of data.     

‘Chuck out the teacher’: radical pedagogy in the community

Theories of radical or critical pedagogy have emphasized the importance of relating educational work to broader social movements although this has not been developed in detail. The recent history of community publishing and worker writing workshops in Britain helps to illuminate how these ideas have been adapted in a number of informal settings. Using archive materials, interviews with activists and my personal experience I explore some dilemmas and tensions within the idea of radical pedagogy. In particular, attempts to reconfigure relations between writers/students and organizers/tutors, as well as the role of personal experience, are examined in relation to both organizational and wider societal relations. These interventions faced many challenges but were not completely undermined.     

Local enactment of the Swedish ‘advanced teacher reform’

This article focuses on a new form of governing that targets a selected group of teachers. Specifically, it analyses how the Swedish so-called advanced teacher reform is enacted at the local level and discusses its implications for teachers’ professionalism. The methodological approach enables a local analysis in a broader international policy context. Using characteristic elements from curriculum theory to analyse the relationship between different levels and elaborating on the linguistic turn of curriculum theory, three concepts are central in the analysis: enactment, linguistic criteria and professionalism. Empirically, the study draws on material from a two-year application process in a medium-sized municipality. The result demonstrates that the local enactment process is clearly influenced by transnational policy trends and that less allowance is made for teachers’ own experience-based knowledge in the second studied year. The linguistic analysis shows how the applicants using the ‘right concepts’ were selected to become ‘advanced teachers’. As complex and qualitative aspects disappeared from the agenda, this type of governing, with its standardized use of language, may reduce schools’ educational potential. Changes like this raise new questions about how schools can maintain and develop democratic and professional values whilst being exposed to new policy trends.     

Defining the ‘good mother’ and the ‘professional teacher’: parent–teacher relationships in an affluent school district

This article examines the challenges of parent–teacher relationships in an affluent school district, drawing on 30 in‐depth interviews of mothers and elementary school teachers in the USA. Professional women who have put their careers on hold to care for their children are apt to define being a good mother in terms of the academic achievement of their children. This results in extreme amounts of involvement and advocacy in their child's education, even when such actions have questionable effects on the larger school population. Enhancement of ‘good mothering’ was found to be done at the expense of teacher professionalism. A small number of entitled‐minded mothers were able to make a large impact not only on teacher job satisfaction but on the climate of the entire school due to their extensive networks, levels of advocacy, and critical examination of school processes.