Comparing teacher roles in Denmark and England

This article reports the findings of a comparative study of teaching in Denmark and England. Its broader aim is to help develop an approach for comparing pedagogy. Lesson observations and interviews identified the range of goals towards which teachers in each country worked and the actions these prompted. These were clustered using the lens of Bernstein’s pedagogic discourse to construct teacher roles, which provided a view of pedagogy. Through this approach we have begun to identify variations in pedagogy across two countries. All teachers in this study adopted a variety of roles. Of significance was the ease with which competent English teachers moved between roles. The English teachers observed adopted roles consistent with a wider techno-rationalist discourse. There was a greater subject emphasis by Danish teachers, whose work was set predominantly within a democratic humanist discourse, whilst the English teachers placed a greater emphasis on applied skills.     

Good teaching as a messy narrative of change within a policy ensemble of networks,superstructures and flows

This paper examines ‘good teaching’ within a policy ensemble where teachers’ subjectification and practices are underpinned by new modes of evaluation and enforcement. Although the paper is written with specific concern for teachers in the Republic of Ireland, the literature demonstrates that concerns raised resonate internationally. Theoretical frameworks are drawn from Bernstein’s pedagogic device and ‘rules of evaluation’ (2000, p. 34) and the tyranny of number, networks and superstructures found in policy research. The study includes a limited analysis of the policy ensemble in ‘Austerity Ireland’ and contextual understandings and perspectives of a purposive sample of experienced teachers (n = 54). Critical analysis generated three themes: multiple perspectives about ‘good teaching’, a strongly perceived pedagogy of oppression and low ethical trust in reported interactions at some schools and with the state inspectorate. Conclusions position ‘good teaching’ within the super-complexity of a messy narrative of change and flows enacted with a diversity of inquirers and institutions. The study questions the role of state inspectors as arbiters of ‘good teaching’ and challenges the academy of teacher education in assuring productive discursive gaps for education as a social responsibility for public-interest values.     

Contextual challenges of implementing learner‐centred pedagogy: the case of the problem‐solving approach in Uganda

This article explores teachers’ experiences of implementing the problem‐solving approach; a learner centred pedagogic innovation prescribed by a centrally mandated curriculum in Uganda. It presents teachers’ interpretations of the pedagogic principles suggested by the innovation as well as their accounts of challenges of implementing the pedagogic approach. The findings suggest that the teachers’ implementation of the problem‐solving approach was far more regulated by contextual affordances and constraints within schools and the broader education system and society than by their interpretations of the official curriculum. These findings highlight the influence of structural contextual factors in regulating pedagogic practice and teachers’ take‐up of learner‐centred pedagogies in Africa. The evidence from this paper suggests the need for education researchers in developing countries such as Uganda to focus on helping teachers develop strategies for teaching large classes as learner‐centred pedagogies have a bleak future in the region.     

HELOs and student centred learning – where's the link?

Learning outcomes are presented as a tool that can enhance teaching and learning in higher education, in particular by fostering student‐centred learning. However, the ways in which this change can and should take place and the specific kinds of enhancement involved are often unclear. This article analyses common claims about the advantages of learning outcomes for teaching and learning and their relationship to student‐centred learning. The potential links between these concepts are investigated, based on interviews with teachers and students from a range of degree programmes at Norwegian and English universities. The interviews with 29 teachers and students suggest that learning outcome approaches are influencing course planning and some aspects of teaching practice, supporting more transparency and clear communication with students and offering a way to address particularly weak or traditional teaching. However, there is limited evidence that learning outcome approaches promote student‐centred learning, and the analysis identifies several tensions between the challenges student‐centred learning ideals pose to traditional teaching practices, in terms of transferring power and choice to students, and perceived pressures to specify and assess learning outcomes. It also suggests that teachers’ and students’ beliefs about the conditions and practices that lead to the most satisfying and successful elements of learning in degree courses are unlikely to be addressed through either learning‐outcome or student‐centred reforms.     

Bernstein and the explanation of social disparities in education: a realist critique of the socio‐linguistic thesis

Can an explanation of the origins of social disparities in educational achievement be assisted by a critical examination of Bernstein’s sociology? This central question is approached by a consideration of the status of Bernstein’s socio‐linguistic thesis. The focus is on the nature of the explanations provided. The paper asks: What is the explanatory force of Bernstein’s structuralism? What is the relationship between Bernstein’s sociological explanations and Vygotskian psychological explanations? What are the effects for pedagogy of cognitive socialization mediated by language‐use consistent with Bernstein’s theory? The answers to these questions may pose a challenge for sociologists of education engaged with Bernstein’s sociology.     

Curriculum on the move: the role of English in a Year 7 Cultural Studies programme

This paper describes a curriculum experiment to integrate the English and humanities teaching to a year 7 (age 11) cohort through a pedagogy based on Dorothy Heathcote's work on drama in education. An integrated Cultural Studies programme was devised in order to help students engage with meaningful issues in what Heathcote (1980) terms ‘real and felt’ contexts. As part of the national Creative Partnerships programme, Debbie Kidd, a drama specialist from an Arts organisation, worked with teachers to develop curriculum and pedagogy. The paper describes the project from the perspective of the two outsiders closely involved with the work. Debbie Kidd sets the context and discusses some of the outcomes to date. In an Afterword, Elaine Millard discusses some of the barriers to curriculum integration and argues for greater flexibility in English teaching and it s modes of assessment to make room for more creative engagements.     

Music on the move: methodological applications of Bernstein’s concepts in a secondary school music context

In 2002 Parlo Singh outlined Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device, elaborating the potential in Bernstein’s complex theoretical framework for empirical research. In particular, Singh suggests that Bernstein’s concepts provide the means of making explicit the macro and micro structuring of knowledge into pedagogic communication. More recently, Power has noted that use of Bernstein’s ideas remains relatively unrepresented in the literature. This paper makes a case for the use of Bernstein’s ideas as a particularly rich resource for educational researchers. It provides illustrations of a number of concepts as part of a methodological procedure in a research project examining the approaches to curriculum and pedagogy of six secondary school music teachers within the dialectic of western art music and popular music. Through utilisation of Bernstein’s concepts of knowledge discourses, recontextualisation, and regionalisation, the study is able to identify, describe, and shed light on a key problem for music education and education generally: developing the pedagogical means for the utilisation of informal knowledge as a pedagogic resource within the secondary school curriculum. In turn, the music context suggests a number of extensions to Bernstein’s concepts.     

论高职高专公共英语教师专业拓展与各专业人才培养模式的对接

高职教育的发展给公共英语教师提出了更高的要求,只有纯粹的英语语言教学的教师已经不能适应高职英语教学的要求,教师的专业拓展成为了值得关注的课题。本文通过对本校及其他部分高职院校公共英语教师专业拓展现状进行访谈,发现高职高专公共英语教师专业能力拓展缺失给各专业人才英语能力的培养带来了很多不利的影响,并探索公共英语教师专业拓展与各专业人才培养模式对接的有效途径。     

Personalisation: the nostalgic revival of child‐centred education?

Personalisation is an emerging ‘movement’ within education. Its roots reside in marketing theory, not in educational theory. As a concept it admits a good deal of confusion. It can refer either to a new mode of governance for the public services, or it qualifies the noun ‘learning’, as in ‘personalised learning’. The concern here is with its intellectual affinity to child‐centred education, one which the government in England has strongly denied. On balance, the government’s view of personalisation is not of a piece with what may commonly be regarded as child‐centred education. But the strong semantic accord between the terms ‘personalisation’ and ‘child‐centred education’ provokes a question: why does the government not provide a term which unequivocally distinguishes its current ‘vision’ for education from child‐centred education? By retaining the term personalisation, the government purports to do two things: first, because of its focus on personalised ‘tailored’ needs and co‐produced solutions, it adapts education even further to a consumerist society; and second, because the term personalisation strikes a chord with the discourse of child‐centred education, it blurs the fact that little to do with pedagogy or with curriculum has in fact been changed. The term personalisation generates a nostalgic appeal to better times long gone.     

‘I guess it scares us’ – Teachers discuss the teaching of poetry in senior secondary English

This article reports on a participant‐centred research project with English teachers in a senior secondary college in Melbourne, Australia. It builds on previous research (Weaven and Clark 2009, 2011), which showed a low take‐up of the opportunities to teach poetry in Victoria's senior secondary English curriculum. This study explores the reasons why teachers of English are unwilling to use poetry texts in their senior classes. The teachers who participated in this study discussed and documented their attitudes towards the teaching of poetry and explored with each other the pedagogical challenges associated with teaching poetry. Their discussions – an analysis of which forms the empirical core of this article – reveal a range of explanations for teachers' reservations about offering poetry to their students. Importantly, these teachers were able to use professional discussion as a means to consider what changes in teaching practice could be successfully developed to facilitate more time spent on the teaching of poetry in senior secondary classes.     

The Relation between Early Childhood Teachers’ Conceptualization of “Play” and Their Practice: Implication for the Process of Learning to Teach

For centuries, educators and psychologists have advocated “play” as the ideal activity for the development of young children. Actually, play has been found currently to be the central pedagogy in the learning of young children in 21 countries in the world. However, the quality of play-based pedagogy is becoming a key concern across countries. Scholars found that play is either too loosely framed to result in children’s optimal development; or it is too “teacherly” and looses the essence of play. The recent report released by OECD highlighted its concern about play in early childhood education and, urged international researchers and educators to make efforts to bridge the gap. Hong Kong is not an exception on the issue of play enactment. Though resources have been put in for the professional upgrading of early education teachers in the last two decades, the learning and teaching style is still didactic and there appears to be a misinterpretation of play-based pedagogy. The present paper attempts to explore the issue through early childhood teachers’ conceptualization of “learning and teaching through play” with the aim of understanding the problem and shedding light for better ways to prepare teachers in this sector.     

Critical Pedagogy’s Problem with Changing Teachers’ Dispositions Towards Critical Teaching

Increasing teachers’ dispositions towards critical teaching is a fundamental goal for critical pedagogy. Because critical educational change cannot occur without teachers’ “buy-in,” developing teachers’ inclination to implement critical teaching into their classrooms is a prerequisite for any successful critical pedagogy focused on change in K-12 schools. However, critical educators too often approach K-12 teachers’ dispositions in ways that are at best unproductive and at worst harmful to critical change efforts. Some critical pedagogy exists that approaches teachers’ knowledge and beliefs in “teacher friendly” ways, but most critical pedagogy suffers from the problem of totality and speaks merely to educators who already hold critical dispositions. In response to this problem, this paper identifies and examines three areas in which critical education scholars can work to better connect with a crucial, yet essentially unaddressed constituency: teachers in neighborhood schools. These three areas are critical pedagogy’s audience, teachers’ professional knowledge, and teachers’ beliefs about what constitutes ‘real schools’ and ‘real teachers.’ The paper ends by suggesting approaches to teachers’ dispositions that do not sacrifice the possible to the ideal, that value practical and eclectic change efforts, and that appreciate teachers’ already existing knowledge and beliefs as a foundational medium for developing critical education.     

Early childhood mathematics teaching: challenges,difficulties and priorities of teachers of young children in primary schools in Ireland

Issues of pedagogy are critical in all aspects of early childhood education. Early childhood mathematics is no exception. There is now a great deal of guidance available to teachers in terms of high‐quality early childhood mathematics teaching. Consequently, the characteristics of high‐quality early childhood mathematics education are clearly identifiable. Issues such as building on young children’s prior‐to‐school knowledge; engaging children in general mathematical processes; and assessing and documenting children’s learning are some of the key aspects of high‐quality early childhood mathematics education. The extent to which teachers of four‐ and five‐year‐old children in primary schools in Ireland incorporate current pedagogical guidance in early childhood mathematics education was explored in 2007 in a nationally representative questionnaire survey of teachers of four‐ and five‐year‐old children attending primary schools. This paper presents some of the findings of the study in relation to teachers’ self‐reported challenges, difficulties and priorities in teaching early childhood mathematics. Implications are drawn for professional development, curriculum guidance and educational policy.     

Improving pre‐service teacher learning through peer teaching: process,people and product1

This research investigates the perceptions of first‐year Bachelor of Teaching students (primary and secondary) and Diploma of Education students (secondary) about their peer teaching experience in a postgraduate subject called Curriculum and Assessment. Peer teaching is a learner‐centred approach to teaching and learning that is intended to provide significant benefits for learners' knowledge, skills and metacognition. However, concerns have been raised over the quality of the learning and teaching and the risks associated with such a pedagogy. In the present study, student responses to questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews were analysed, using a mixed methods approach, with respect to three broad and somewhat interconnected categories: process, people and product. These responses suggested a wide range of reactions to peer teaching, but overall students feel they benefited from the experience. The findings of this study should be of interest to lecturers and students in pre‐service teacher education courses, especially. Knowledge about peer teaching, learning and assessment would be especially valuable for both education lecturers and beginning teachers seeking to design and manage learner‐centred pedagogy in their own primary, secondary and tertiary classrooms. However, the results of this research would have far‐reaching appeal for all teaching and learning contexts.     

Questioning pedagogies: Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ dialogic reflections on a transnational school experience

There are increasing opportunities in many countries for pre-service teachers to engage in a transnational school-based experience as part of study abroad programmes. The transformative potential of such transnational teaching experiences is recorded in research studies, often supported by data from participant surveys. However, there has been a lack of evidence investigating shifts in professional understanding derived from such experiences. This qualitative study addresses this issue by exploring the perspectives of 16 pre-service teachers of English as a Second Language from Hong Kong, who engaged in transnational teaching activities with primary school pupils in Australia during their study abroad programme. Discourse analysis of participants’ dialogues traces how they encountered conflicting Discourses of ‘student-centredness’ in the Australian classroom. Reflecting dialogically on their experiences led participants to negotiate and reframe their understandings of language teaching pedagogy and themselves as language teachers. The findings demonstrate the importance of both peer and lecturer feedback into the process of dialogic reflection and the need for more longitudinal research into the impact of transnational school-based experience in pre-service teacher education.     

Transformations in learning and teaching through Initial Teacher Education

In England, little research has been carried out into how pre‐service secondary English teachers transform what they know as they learn to teach. They are seldom asked to reflect explicitly on the connections between the pedagogy of their undergraduate studies and their pedagogical experiences as student teachers. The initial teacher education committee of the National Association for the Teaching of English decided to explore these connections by asking student teachers on English Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in five different university departments of education to respond to a series of questions at the start and end of the academic year 2004–2005. The questions fall into four broad areas: student teachers' experiences as learners at undergraduate level and developing ideas about teaching; the nature of the subject English; tensions encountered during the PGCE course; new learning about teaching. The purpose of this article is to discuss some patterns emerging from the research. The most prominent of these is student teachers' realisation that good teaching comes from teachers seeing themselves as learners. We argue that ‘reflexivity’ ( Moore, 2004 ) is a valuable way to help student teachers begin to understand this transformation from learner into learning teacher.     

Paulo Freire and the pedagogical traditions of the subject English

I seek here to explain and elaborate on how and why Paulo Freire’s work has significance for educators in today’s ‘affluent’ west, not least in reminding us powerfully of core critical and celebratory values at a time when many teachers, and not only of English, feel under huge pressure – a pressure that in fact verges on the oppressive. My focus here is on native language teaching and learning – English, in effect – thus echoing Freire’s concern for critical literacy and pedagogy and how these may relate constructively to fundamentally Romantic traditions of English pedagogy.     

‘Control must be maintained’: exploring teachers’ pedagogical practice outside the classroom

Drawing on qualitative data, this article presents an analysis of six secondary science teachers’ expectations and practices related to teaching outdoors during a professional development programme. Using Foucault’s and Bernstein’s theories of ‘space’, routines and set practices, I argue that participant teachers’ fear of losing control of their students when in contexts outside the classroom was constructed as place specific in terms of boundaries (or lack of), familiarity and disturbance. Teachers’ ‘fearful’ expectations when outside triggered the initial use of regulatory technologies that were frequently more assertive and controlling than their usual classroom practice, resulting in increased authoritative teaching approaches. However, once technologies of power were developed for use outside, teachers were able to translate and apply their normal dialogic teaching approaches from the classroom. The article concludes with a discussion of student self-regulation through collaborative group work as a step towards resolving the tensions between dialogic pedagogy and teaching in new contexts.     

Academic optimism: an individual teacher belief

In this study, academic optimism as an individual teacher belief was investigated. Teachers’ self‐efficacy beliefs were measured using the short form of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale. One subtest from the Omnibus T‐Scale, the faculty trust in clients subtest, was used to measure teachers’ trust in students and parents. One subtest from the Organizational Climate Index was used to measure academic emphasis. Pupil Control Ideology was used to measure teachers’ beliefs about classroom management. Constructivist teaching subscale of the Teacher’s Belief Survey was used to measure teachers’ instructional beliefs and practices. Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Scale was used to measure teachers’ citizenship behaviour. Life Orientation Test was used to measure dispositional optimism. The findings indicated that teachers differed in the extent of their academic optimism. The findings also indicated that teacher’s sense of academic optimism is positively and significantly related to student‐centred teaching, citizenship behaviour and dispositional optimism. The findings further indicated that student‐centred teaching beliefs, dispositional optimism and citizenship behaviour emerged as significant predictors of individual teacher’s academic optimism. Lastly, the findings revealed that teaching phase is the only teachers’ biographical variable that is a significant predictor of academic optimism.