Teacher‐mentor to Teacher‐researcher

This paper focuses on the Primary PGCE at Keele University, which is now in its third year of a new course structure, fulfilling the requirements of the DFE circular 14/93. As the school‐based partnership has developed, teacher‐mentors have gained new understanding of both their role in teacher training and their relationship with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This paper seeks to outline how the process of mentoring has developed teachers’ skills in a way which has promoted their understanding of, and interest in, school‐based research. Four key issues are explored in probing the link between mentoring and school‐based research: the difference between theory and practice; links between teacher‐mentors and HEI tutors, the process of reflective practice; teachers as knowledge constructors. These are examined in relation to the process of mentoring and to the way in which each contributes to developing mentors’ participation and interest in school‐based research.     

Training the Physical Education Teacher: A Worried Re‐Think

Abstract

The increasing demand on nurses to adopt the roles and responsibilities of full professional status have been reflected in nurse training by the move into higher education. However, while there are undoubted benefits to this move, the authors believe that it has been at the expense of student involvement in their courses and a widening of the gap between theory and practice.

This paper presents three strategies for addressing those problems. Firstly, the authors argue for a student‐centred humanistic approach to education within the constraints of a curriculum for professional training. Secondly, they present a strategy for narrowing the theory practice gap through the use of reflective practice. Finally, they outline an approach to continuous and ongoing course evaluation in which findings are immediately applied to produce a flexible and responsive curriculum. The paper concludes by arguing that this broad approach could be successfully employed in any professional training within the further and higher education framework.     

Towards a Methodology for Teacher‐Based Classroom Research

Educational research and evaluation for the purpose of improving practice is becoming increasingly common. The teacher‐researcher movement, LEA sponsored self‐evaluation schemes, for example, both involve teachers in reviewing their own practice or the practices of the school as an organization, with the express purpose of utilizing the review data for professional or school improvement. Unfortunately, the methodology for research and evaluation in schools is problematic; one reason for this is the difficulty in deriving valid inferences from data that are often qualitative in kind and subjective in manner. Although there is a body of literature that describes ways of collecting data on the functioning of schools and classrooms, there is little guidance as to how to analyse it. This presents particular difficulties for the teacher or school staff who, for example, are trying to make sense out of a mass of data accumulated from a self‐evaluation exercise. The following paper is an attempt to provide support for teachers and schools in such a predicament: it suggests a method for analysing qualitative data emerging from school‐based research efforts that draws on the traditions of sociological and anthropological field work.     

Teacher self‐regulation: examining a multidimensional construct

This study aimed to develop and validate an instrument to assess the multidimensional nature of teacher self‐regulation. A nine‐factor structure was proposed: goal setting, intrinsic interest, performance goal orientation, mastery goal orientation, self‐instruction, emotional control, self‐evaluation, self‐reaction, and help‐seeking. Through a series of confirmatory factor analyses with different samples, this nine‐factor structure was supported. Reliability estimates were also satisfactory. Further validation evidence was provided through canonical correlation analysis between teacher self‐regulation and teachers’ sense of efficacy. Results indicated that the Teacher Self‐Regulation Scale can be utilised as a valid and reliable instrument to assess teachers’ self‐regulatory strategies.     

Partnerships in Teacher Education: a response to The Business Partnership in School‐based/‐centred Initial Teacher Training

Abstract

This paper is a response to a Joint publication from Enterprising Approaches to Teacher Education (EATE), the Teacher Placement Service (TPS) and the Banking Information Service (BiS) (June 1994) which examined the validity of business‐education partnerships in initial teacher training. While supporting the essential points made by EATE et al, this paper stresses the need for permeation and flexible learning strategies in introducing and addressing these aspects of the curriculum and cites experiences from the school‐based Post‐Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the University of Bath.     

Re‐presenting women and leadership: a methodological journey

Research on women's leadership has tended to focus upon detailed micro studies of individual women's identity formation or, alternatively, to conduct macro studies of its broader discursive constructions within society. Both approaches, although providing helpful understandings of the issues surrounding constructions of women's leadership, are inadequate. They fail to deal with the ongoing dilemma raised in both Cultural Studies and studies of discourse and identity, in relation to the negotiation of subjectivity and representation, that is, how broader societal discourses and media representations of women's leadership both inform, and are informed by, the lived experiences of individual women. In this article, a range of methodological approaches are outlined that were drawn upon in a study of a small group of senior women academics from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse origins. The authors examine how the women negotiated the frequent mismatch that arose between, on the one hand, societal discourses and media representations which often reproduced narrow and highly stereotypical accounts of women's leadership, and on the other hand, the individual women's subjective experiences of leadership which challenged such representations. It is contended that it is necessary to draw on a number of methodological perspectives in ways which trouble and unsettle homogenized versions of women's leadership in order to fully explicate more nuanced and complex ways of understanding how women's leadership identity is formed.     

Interactive Teacher Decision‐making—still a basic skill?

A general common sense model of interactive teacher decisions is presented. The model assumes that the teacher wishes to choose actions that are appropriate to the situation and to the goals of her teaching. The decision process is thought to include perception, judgement and choice of behaviour from the teacher's behavioural repertoire, but as a result of the immediacy of classroom situations and the teacher's limited information processing capacity, the process may be partly unconscious and the decisions seem spontaneous. The process is affected, consciously or unconsciously, by knowledge variables and emotional variables. Interactive teaching is viewed as consisting of a series of such situations. Research on teacher decision‐making in simulated classroom situations is recommended. It is suggested that teacher education should include discussion of classroom situations and training in interactive decision‐making and the value of such programmes should be studied.     

Exploring the Popperian Framework in a Pre‐service Teacher Education Program

The study reported in this article is derived from a critical analysis of the work of 28 pre‐service teachers enrolled in the course “Teaching elementary language arts” in a Bachelor of Education concurrent program in a southern State university. The pre‐service teachers were taught how to use an innovative knowledge‐building framework based on the ideas of the philosopher of science, Karl Popper. Two samples of pre‐service teachers’ writing were analyzed to provide evidence of whether they support the occurrence of growth and development of professional knowledge. This study provides some indication of Popper’s framework potential as an effective critical analysis framework for achieving this goal.     

Transforming Teacher Education in South Africa: a space‐time perspective

South Africa's most urgent and difficult project is to reconstruct all spheres of public life so as to establish enabling conditions for a flourishing and peaceful democracy. A viable education system with committed, competent and confident teachers is a primary condition for accomplishing these ends. This article offers a critical account of current attempts to transform teacher education and development. Against a sketch of inherited ways of using time and space in teacher education in South Africa, the article assesses change in three ‘spaces‘‐‐public space, evaluative space and pedagogical space‐‐and related changes in time. A fourth space of change‐‐institutional space‐‐is mentioned in so far as it affects the other three. I argue that the main direction of change is from insulated space and interrupted time to porous space and continuous time. While this direction has promising possibilities, it is not without pitfalls.     

Rethinking Initial Teacher Education for Further Education Teachers: From a standards‐led to a knowledge‐based approach

This paper is a critique of the initial teacher education (ITE) of further and adult education teachers in the UK. It argues that the employer‐led, national standards model in the UK is not the basis for ITE and professional development because it takes no account of learning in the workplace, disregards the multi‐specialist and professional dimensions of professional practice and marginalizes the importance of knowledge. In the critique of the “standards‐led model” the paper draws upon research and ideas on work‐based learning, seeing the learning of teachers in the workplace as a complex relationship with many “experts” in multiple, often conflicting learning contexts. The paper stresses the importance of seeing work‐based learning as more than just “learning by doing” to one that sees it as an intentional structuring of participatory activity. In other words, a “pedagogy of the workplace”. Finally the paper suggests that learning is not just a process of “participation”, but a learning zone where different types of knowledge and pedagogy are learnt and transformed. In highlighting the importance of knowledge the paper draws upon theories of professional knowledge that suggests that certain types of knowledge cannot be gained in the workplace alone, therefore focusing on the issues of the different types of knowledge, their acquisition and their transformation or recontextualisation.     

A Study of Parent‐Teacher Groups

In some respects this article is redundant. Af ter all, a growing number of Jewish schools, both day schools and supplementary schools, have included Israel in their curricula in a prominent way. We mention Israel in our prayers. We teach the history of the Land of Israel. We recruit teenagers for Israel summer programs. Why then should the Gulf War have any impact on how we portray Israel in our schools? Has this war opened an educa tional window of opportunity? My question is rhetorical and the answer affirmative. Seeing Scud missiles fall live on Tel Aviv via CNN has temporarily transformed the perception of and the relation to the Jewish State. Maybe at long last we have the chance to make a very illusive Jewish symbol into a concrete reality for Jewish students around the world. Let me explain why this is so necessary and how I propose to make it happen.     

Industry‐related Work in Initial Teacher Education: a decade of development

Abstract

In the last decade, against a background of growing links between industry and schools, industry‐related work in teacher education has undergone a considerable expansion, in terms of numbers of courses, of time devoted and of numbers of students involved. Influences on this expansion have included the initiatives of individuals, the work of link organisations, course criteria in OES circulars, a spreading conviction of the relevance of industry‐related work to the personal and professional development of teachers, the stimulus of networks and partnerships of institutions and industries and the work of specific externally‐funded projects, including Industrial and Commercial Perspectives in Initial Teacher Education (ICP) and Enterprise Awareness in Teacher Education (EATE). During this period there has been a ‘conceptual shift’ in the idea of industry‐related work to include enterprise capability, as well as economic and industrial understanding; in tune with this shift, the accent in courses has been increasingly placed on practical experience and negotiated investigational activities.     

“Re‐placing” Scholarship

A reconceptualization of the role of “academic scholar” is put forward in an effort to define a more balanced and comprehensive perspective for recognizing and rewarding the multiple roles currently undertaken by academics in the late Twentieth Century. The scientific paradigm has dominated universities for decades. However, the pendulum is beginning to swing, albeit slowly, to a more balanced view that recognizes that scientific research is but one aspect of many tasks undertaken by academics. This article proposes a new conception of the interrelatedness of academic endeavours and suggests a “re‐placing” of scholarship on the higher education agenda.     

Teacher Contracts and Staff Development on Pupil‐Free‐Days

Sex bias in the curriculum is a relatively recent concern of the educational establishment. In 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act established the principle of equal access to educational facilities and equality of treatment for girls and boys. In the same year the HMI catalogued the sexually differentiated curriculum of girls and boys in Education Survey 21 and this surprisingly enlightened pamphlet thrust the issue onto the mainstream educational agenda. Up to that point sexual inequity in education had tended to be perceived as the prerogative of the teaching profession (overwhelmingly female but with few women in senior posts) and the particular promotion prospects of women teachers. The passing of the Sex Discrimination Act has done little to remedy the promotion prospects of women teachers, and in education generally the issue has moved beyond the realm of curricular access and into the less clearly charted territory of sexual differentiation: attention needs to be directed less to the examined curriculum patterns accessible to anyone willing to plough their way through the yearly statistics issued by the Department of Education and Science and focused more on the subtle processes through which girls' and boys' aspirations and expectations are shaped. Examination outcomes are convenient proof that ‘equal access’ has merely ensured that the educational experience of boys and girls continues to differ. This article, then, attempts to address some of the schooling processes as well as the curricular patterns.