Reviewing literature to inform policy: some complexities and tensions

Drawing on the experience of carrying out a literature review commissioned to support the Review of Teacher Education in Scotland, this paper discusses the role of literature reviews within the movement for ‘evidence-based policy’ making. The first part of the paper discusses the purposes of such reviews and some of the misconceptions that may be associated with them. Several critical questions that shape the work of reviewing are identified. By examining the particular case in which the authors were involved, it is demonstrated how the establishment of terms of reference and definitions of scope are critical factors in determining the outcome of such a project. But so too are the relationships established between those undertaking the project and the commissioners of the work. The conclusion is that reviewing literature is much more of a deliberative process than is commonly understood.     

Making sense of teaching through metaphors: a review across three studies

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize findings from three studies that have addressed the conceptualization and application of the metaphor construct to the study of teachers and teaching. With respect to the perspectives of elementary and secondary preservice teachers, we specifically examined how the particular metaphors they used indicated conceptualizations of and orientations to classroom life, and how these metaphors influenced teachers' approaches to teaching, curriculum, and their work with pupils. We frame the discussion in light of the larger literature on the relationship of teachers' beliefs and practices as it relates to learning to teach and teacher education. The paper provides implications for linking the research reported with contemporary ideas for teaching and teacher preparation.     

An analysis of the rhetoric and practice of educational partnerships in the UK: an arena of complexities,tensions and power

The article presents a critique of the discourse of ‘systematic review’ in education, as developed and promoted by the EPPI‐Centre at the University of London. Based on a close reading of the exhortatory and instructional literature and 30 published reviews, it argues that the approach degrades the status of reading and writing as scholarly activities, tends to result in reviews with limited capacity to inform policy or practice, and constitutes a threat to quality and critique in scholarship and research. The claims that are made for the transparency, accountability and trustworthiness of systematic review do not therefore, it is argued, stand up to scrutiny. The article concludes that systematic review is animated, not just by dissatisfaction with the uncertainties of educational research (a dissatisfaction that it shares with the ‘evidence‐informed movement’ with which it is associated), but by a fear of language itself.     

Core competencies and high leverage practices of the beginning teacher: a synthesis of the literature

Teacher competency frameworks comprise a number of competencies that enable a teacher to develop effective teaching practices. However, their conception, value, use and recognition vary widely. Equally, assessment and measurement of such competencies differ across contexts. More recently, a body of research has emerged which focuses the lens of teacher preparation on the inclusion of high leverage practices. The focus of this study is to report a synthesis of the literature pertaining to the ‘core competencies’ and ‘high leverage practices’ selected for inclusion in teacher preparation. A systematic review of the literature was conducted in order to synthesis available evidence. Results are presented in two sections; competency-based approaches; and high leverage practice approaches in teacher preparation. Findings are discussed from the perspective of epistemological and methodological questions emerging from the research and the implications for teacher preparation.     

Embracing diversity in the history curriculum: a study of the challenges facing trainee teachers

This paper explores the issues that secondary history teachers on an initial teacher education (ITE) programme in England encounter in attempting to incorporate more cultural and ethnic diversity into the history curriculum. It also assesses the impact that changes in their training course had on their views and pedagogical practice. Using questionnaires and scenario based interviews with three cohorts of trainee teachers, key challenges were identified, which were related to the purposes of teaching history and diversity, appropriate pedagogy and content, dealing with pupils, and teachers’ personal concerns. A framework for analysing trainees’ stances towards cultural and ethnic diversity based upon a confident-uncertain-uncomfortable continuum was developed. The research revealed that the course had had an impact, although this was in subtle rather than marked ways, which raises further questions about what is possible within the confines of an ITE training programme and the need for additional support beyond the course.     

Impact of discipline-specific professional development: implementation of core instructional practices

A study of a discipline-specific teacher development project designed to prepare teachers to implement a series of core instructional practices for pre-collegiate history teaching is described as a model that can be applied to any content discipline. Teachers were surveyed concerning the success of the project in achieving the goals it set, implementation of and feelings about the new strategies learned for ‘doing history’ and the impact of the PD activities provided. A variation on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model was used to measure the levels of use and stages of concern of the teachers with regard to the strategies. Teachers reported a high level of adoption of and comfort with the strategies. Implications for structuring successful PD activities that are discipline-specific, collaborative, use active learning, have a coherent vision and sufficient duration are presented.     

Teacher education in practice: reconciling practices and theories in the United States context

This paper reports findings from an 18-month qualitative study that followed the experiences of nine teacher residents, their site professors, site coordinators, clinical teachers and principals in three professional learning schools. The study examined the tensions that emerged as teacher preparation theory intersected with the context-bound realities of daily life in schools and the political constraints that diminish possibilities for inclusive education. The paper addresses implications for teacher preparation programmes by reporting how teacher residents negotiated their understanding of and commitment for inclusive education through three themes: (a) critical reflection as an emergent practice, (b) whose learning, and (c) the trouble with behaviour. Interpreting these themes has implications for programmatic designs in teacher preparation.     

The Influence of the Core Practices Movement on the Teaching and Perspectives of Novice Teacher Educators

This collaborative self-study examines the influence of engagement in the core practices movement on the course designs, instruction, and perspectives of three novice teacher educators at a large mid-Atlantic research university. Through core practices work, we integrated repeated cycles of analysis, practice, and reflection into our courses, ultimately becoming more deliberate and responsive in our planning. We engaged in more in-depth inquiry into our teaching as we inquired into the core practices with our teacher candidates and also noticed an enhanced use of shared language. Core practices work influenced our perspectives on the work of teacher educators by reaffirming our belief in the complexity of teaching and teacher education, raising important questions about the relationship between commitments and core practices and underscoring the value of learner-centered practices in teacher education. The finding of this self-study suggest that core practices present an opportunity to engage novice teacher educators in reflection, collaboration, and inquiry central to teacher education.     

Preparing beginning teachers to elicit and interpret students' mathematical thinking

This study investigated how teacher education assignments can be designed to support beginning teachers in learning to do the work of teaching. We examined beginners' formative assessment practices—in particular, their eliciting and interpreting of students' mathematical thinking—in the context of an elementary mathematics methods assignment, and the ways in which the scaffolds provided shaped their practice. We found that the scaffolds differentially supported their practice and suggest strategic improvement of the focus and organization of different types of scaffolds. Findings from the study contribute to the conceptualization and design of scaffolds for practice-based learning opportunities in teacher education.     

Concepts,policies and practices of teacher education: an analysis of studies on teacher education in Portugal

Education policies, and in particular those related to teacher education, are central to the construction of Europe as a knowledge society and for facing the social and economic challenges that European countries must respond to in this millennium. This article presents an analysis of studies on the evaluation of in-service teacher education conducted in Portugal since 1992. Based on the results of this analysis, the study develops a reflection on the concepts, policies and practices of in-service teacher education, contextualising it within a wider equation related to teachers’ education in Europe. The study consisted of content analyses of scientific articles, research reports, studies of evaluation and legal documents that provide the guidelines for in-service teacher education in Portugal. At the end, a final reflection and some general recommendations for teacher education are presented. There is a focus on the importance of placing in-service teacher education at the centre of educational contexts and on the problems that this causes in teachers’ work, emphasising its importance for social justice in Europe.     

Stimulating tensions in special education teachers' figured world: an approach toward inclusive education

I examine special educators’ professional identity emergence and tensions within a researcher-facilitated teacher learning community. I introduced tools to evoke and challenge inequities in educational systems and via which participants examined and planned general education instruction for students with dis/abilities. Initially, professional identity, or figured world, emerged as performance of pathologising and relatedly, remediating students. Over time, participants expressed tensions as they engaged tools to examine structural limitations and design more universally accessible instruction; figured worlds shifted to critical sense-making about their positioning by general education colleagues and school structural barriers, and procedural identity performance tied to investigating student assets. Findings suggest potential for purposefully designed artefacts to mediate special educators’ development as (more) inclusive educators.     

Making sense of a teaching programme for university academics: Exploring the longer-term effects

To professionalise teaching in universities, certificated teaching programmes for academics are increasingly widespread and often mandatory for new lecturers. Evaluations of impact have escalated in the past decade. Existing studies show mixed results but few consider the differential effects on individuals over the longer term. This study examines narratives of course participants a number of years following completion to understand how lecturers made sense of formal teaching development. Powerful outcomes materialise for some individuals, highly focused by personal reference frames and career experiences. Findings are related to wider studies of teacher growth and individual orientations to teaching professional development.     

Field-based teacher education in literacy: preparing teachers in real classroom contexts

For the past two decades, scholars have advocated for reforms in teacher education that emphasize relevant connections between theory and practice in university coursework and focus on clinical experiences. This paper is based on our experiences in designing and implementing an integrated literacy methods course in a field-based teacher education program. We describe issues involved in helping preservice teachers learn to differentiate literacy instruction for diverse learners in urban schools and describe how we use Grossman’s framework of representation, decomposition, and approximation of practice to connect theory and practice. We offer insights about the importance of using recursive cycles of practice and carefully scaffolded learning through attention to different aspects of practice. Initial successes and challenges in implementing field-based literacy education are discussed.     

The use of questions within in-the-moment coaching in initial mathematics teacher education: enhancing participation,reflection, and co-construction in rehearsals of practice

Managing mathematical discussion is known to be challenging for novice teachers. Coaching within student teacher rehearsals of teaching has been shown to develop mathematics teaching practice, but can be time consuming. To examine how coaching using questions could assist novice teachers to promote mathematical thinking and discussions within time-constrained programmes, videos of rehearsals, reflective debriefs, and student teacher surveys were collected across a range of courses over 4 years. Findings included that student teacher roles in rehearsals were enhanced through coaching with questions and co-construction was enabled. Coaching questions exposed effective practice, particularly in relation to orchestrating mathematical discussion, enabling student teachers to reflect, discuss, make decisions, and immediately trial teaching strategies. Questions appeared to lengthen rehearsals but improved their effectiveness through enhancing participation and enabling co-construction of meaning. Findings indicate that questions used in coaching of rehearsals inform and empower novice teachers, essential factors within initial teacher education for equitable and ambitious mathematics teaching.     

Leading an international teaching practicum: negotiating tensions in a site of border pedagogy

Across the world, the work of teacher educators in universities is subject to contradictory discourses of, on the one hand, globalisation and standardisation and, on the other, innovation in both teaching and research. This article is a critical account of a particular experience of an Australian teacher educator leading an international teaching practicum in South Africa. The account shows how multifarious tensions play out in the practice of a teacher educator working in transcultural spaces utilising ‘border pedagogy’.     

Facilitating decomposition and recomposition in practice-based teacher education: The power of modularity

The turn towards practice-based teacher education has marked a growing consensus around the need to focus professional preparation more directly on the enactment of teaching practice. However, the shift towards practice has also revealed some unresolved tensions among complementary but competing components of learning to teach: the relationship between decomposition and recomposition in learning a practice; the relative importance of skill versus will in learning to teach; and the relation between developing routines of practice and developing adaptive expertise. This paper explores the promise of research on hierarchical modularity as one way of understanding and reconciling these tensions.     

Making sense of the development of inclusive practices

Schools in England are currently being asked to pay greater attention to the issue of educational inclusion. This paper reports some of the findings of a collaborative action research Network that was set up to address the implications of this trend. The Network involves teams of university researchers in working with practitioners in order to encourage the development of inclusive practices. As a result of this work, it is argued that the development of such practices is not about adopting ‘recipes’ of the sort described in much of the existing literature. Rather, it involves social learning processes that occur within a given workplace. The paper attempts to provide deeper understandings of what these processes involve. To assist in this analysis use is made of the idea of ‘communities of practice’, as developed by Etienne Wenger, focusing specifically on the way he sees learning as a characteristic of practice. It is argued that the development of inclusive practices involves collaborative working arrangements; that they can be encouraged by engagement with various forms of evidence that interrupt ways of thinking; and that the space that is created through such interruptions can enable those involved to recognize overlooked or, indeed, new possibilities for moving practice forward.     

Learning to Coach in Practice-Based Teacher Education: A Self-Study

In some forms of practice-based teacher education, one important task for the teacher educator is to undertake in-the-moment coaching during rehearsals of practice. However, being such a coach is a new role for many teacher educators and requires a different skill set to other forms of teacher educator practice. In addition, there is little literature to which teacher educators can turn when seeking to address the problem of enactment in this context. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It reports a self-study undertaken by one mathematics teacher educator as he learned to coach pre-service teachers on the fly, while in turn they learned to orchestrate whole-class mathematical discussions. It seeks to illustrate how the process of journaling can support the journey of discovery that is the development of new practice. Through consulting the literature and story-telling, a picture is painted of how the educator addressed early concerns such as “what is a coach supposed to do?” and “what should a coach pause a rehearsal to talk about?” and began to master coaching – work that was never routine, but rather situated, adaptive, and responsive. The stories draw from a personal journal of field notes and reflections from such events as student rehearsals, lesson conferences, team meetings, reading student work, and professional reading. Journal entries from 12 rehearsal cycles over four years were consulted.     

Making the Personal Professional: Pre-service teacher education and personal histories

Pre-service teachers tend to use their personal experiences as critical filters in accepting and integrating course content that is intended to develop professional decision-making frameworks. This may restrict their abilities to deal with pedagogical issues associated with the acceptance of diversity and individuality, and encourage an unthinking acceptance of the status quo in classrooms, schools and society. To address this problem and nurture the growth of 'reflective practitioners', we structured the content and experiences of one unit of the Graduate Diploma of Education (secondary) to allow for the integration of personal life histories with other views and perspectives. This paper reports on the use of this life-history approach, its potential and its limitations.