Década de los 60’s

Clandinin and Connelly (2004) state that knowledge is experiential, is learned in context and is expressed in practice. Therefore, in order for learning to be effective, practice should be situated in a particular time and place that is relevant for the learners (Schwartz, Bransford, & Sears, 2005). For example, it is untenable for students to learn to swim prior to entering the water (Light, 2008). In the same way, I argue, it is untenable for PSTs to learn to teach by sitting passively in lectures.

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If learning is always situated in a social context (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and makes use of the tools within that context (Borko & Putnam, 1996), then what is the role of teacher education institutions in preparing PSTs for teaching? The situated nature of authentic learning means that learning within an ITE institute college will have limited relevance beyond that particular institutional context. Indeed the fact that teacher preparation takes place in colleges of education and not within schools is likely to amplify the divide between what PSTs learn in their ITE and what they will do in school settings (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009b). The implications for ITE are considerable, potentially detrimental and have resulted in calls for a schools-based ITE.

we are convinced that student-teachers need to spend substantial amounts of time in schools learning by observing and doing and that they need far more coaching and mentoring than they currently get. Such an approach is strongly indicated by contemporary community of practice theory and, broadly, by theories of situated cognition and socio-cultural theories of learning. (Hogan & Gopinathan, 2008, p. 377) At the extreme of such calls for schools-based ITE, are those who would dispense with ITE institutions altogether. Such programmes are often thinly disguised political attempts to discredit the benefits of ITE and create efficiency by rapidly transitioning PSTs to “classroom ready” teachers (Zeichner, 2006) and have been largely discredited (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005). Nonetheless, the authentic learning approach demands that ITE respond in some meaningful way.

One approach is to design more authentic learning experiences within ITE because although most professional education includes direct clinical experience in field settings, practice must be taught at the university as well (Grossman et al., 2009b). I discuss this in the next section.

Authenticity defined

‘‘We call something authentic when it is ‘worthy of acceptance or belief by reason of conformity to fact and reality’’’ (Petraglia, 1998, p. 15). Newmann, Marks and Gamoran (1996) argue that education is authentic when it is closely connected to ‘real world’ activities or, according to Barab, Squire, and Dueber (2000), approximates the eventual practice communities. Many experiences in life can be characterised as the opposite of authentic; artificial and fake. For example, the work of students in schools is predominantly the production of things which end up in the wastebasket (Quay &

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Seaman, 2013). A worthy goal for learning is to be authentic (genuine, bonafide or trustworthy) whereby the products of learning are aligned and are useful for the students. The New Zealand National Curriculum states it is important to provide “opportunities for students to be involved in the community, and have authentic learning experiences” (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 41). Furthermore, within EOTC “The links that students are able to make, between the classroom and real-world experiences can be critical to their long-term learning” (Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 4). This literature and the curriculum documents demand that teachers create authentic learning opportunities for their students, and indeed that teacher educators do the same. Authenticity maintains a focus on ‘real life’ and context and, I argue, is crucial for PST learning about teaching.

In order to be authentic, learning experiences must be based on ‘real life’ professional practice as much as possible and confront students with situations that require them to demonstrate the competencies professionals would use in the same situation in their daily practice (Grossman et al., 2009b; Gulikers, Sluijsmans, Baartman, & Bartolo, 2009). Within teacher education, schools based experiences are a common way to introduce authentic experiences into ITE. Teaching practicums provide opportunities for exploring what it is to be a teacher, including developing theoretical commitments, technical skills, practical wisdom and common-sense, and critical perspectives on the improvement of students, society and schooling (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). There are many benefits to accessing the authentic experiences of the practicum. The practicum is also problematic within ITE because it props up the

assumption that the university-based components of teacher preparation offer the theoretical under-pinnings of teaching and that school teaching experience (practicum) offers a situation in which those previously learned principles of teaching are practiced. This view creates many difficulties, including the fact that the ‘‘expertise’’ of teaching practice is often assumed to reside largely in schools with teachers. This view diminishes the rich possibilities that can be made available at the university site. (Korthagen et al., 2006, p. 1029)

While the practicum has its place in ITE, I note the point by Korthagen et al., that teacher education has a responsibility to provide some of the rich possibilities for learning within ITE courses. It is not enough for ITE to provide the theories and hand over the complex task of applying theories in practice to the PSTs. Indeed isolated ideas, pre-specified sequences, and contrived boundaries on experience are harmful to

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effective learning. Such over-simplified experiences are similar to a deprivation of sensory engagement and “lead to underdeveloped abilities to note relationships, to predict, to act” (Davis et al., 2000, p. 26).

Another potential problem in a schools-based practicum is that PSTs may not get the opportunity to participate in rigorous and critical debate within the school’s discourse community. “It is difficult for teachers to break out of routine ways of teaching, especially as schools do not always value or support critical and reflective practice” (Wallace & Loughran, 2012, p. 302). PSTs need authentic experiences, but schools may not provide the best opportunity for some important types of learning about being a teacher. Therefore there is a role for ITE in creating authentic learning experiences for PSTs.

Having established the argument for authentic learning, I now look at how scaffolding contributes to quality learning environments.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is now a well-established requirement for quality learning (Hogan, 2011). Scaffolding is the interactive process by which a more knowledgeable person supports a less knowledgeable person to increase his or her competence. It was first used by Bruner (1966). Scaffolding is related to Vygotsky’s (1978) idea of the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’, whereby a student’s potential is realised through the guidance of a more experienced other. This allows students to do more than they could by simply choosing their own experiences. The first stage in the process of learning as conceived by Vygotsky is the stage of assistance (by more capable others) where the more capable person guides students forward in their thinking and action. In the second stage of assistance (by self) the more capable person has taught the students a series of questions and statements that they then use to guide their action and thinking when they work in isolation. The zone of proximal development requires that, in each stage the learning experiences are not too advanced or removed from the student’s current learning and therefore the learning is proximal. The implications of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development for teaching and learning have been labelled ‘scaffolding’ (Dewey, 1904/1977) or ‘decomposition of practice’ (Grossman et al., 2009a). Both scaffolding and decomposition of practice involve breaking down complex practice into

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its constituent parts for the purposes of teaching and learning. In this thesis I use the term ‘scaffolding’ because like Alton-Lee (2003), I find that scaffolding is supported by a more significant body of research than other alternatives. According to Dewey (1904/1977), scaffolding addresses one of the enduring problems of learning from experience; learners must know what to look for, and how to interpret what they observe (Dewey, 1904/1977; Grossman et al., 2009a). The provision of scaffolding should therefore enable students to see and enact specific aspects of practice more effectively. But Grossman et al. (2009a) warn that scaffolding must only be a temporary measure and, over time, the learning experience must get closer and closer to the demands of authentic practice.

Just as scaffolding around a building is temporary, freedom and responsibility must be gradually transferred from the teacher to the learner in order for the learner to progress (van de Pol, Volman, & Beishuizen, 2010). One such example from OE is learning to eskimo roll a kayak. In the eskimo roll, the learner is not immediately tipped upside down and required to roll back up, because of the complexity of the entire action. Instead, the learner needs to master a range of intermediary steps gradually increasing in complexity until they are able to complete the eskimo roll autonomously. For the first exercise the students do not even hold the paddle, but rather practice pushing themselves up using the side of the pool. Once the basic body movement is correct, students are given the paddle but still not tipped upside down until they can successfully combine both paddle movements and body movements. Even then, the teacher stands close by to monitor, support and critique the attempts at rolling. The end point of this progression is that students are able to perform an eskimo roll in white water rapids or in the surf. Thus an important part of the work of teachers’ lies in identifying components that are integral to practice and that can be improved through targeted learning experiences (Grossman et al., 2009a). Scaffolding is used extensively

within outdoor education to provide learning experiences which help prepare students for less constrained and increasingly complex situations.

Scaffolding is also relevant for learning to teach. Teacher education programmes generally provide progressions that effectively limit the exposure to the full complexity of the teaching experience (Timperley, 2013), helping novices focus in on aspects of practice that otherwise might get lost in the overwhelming demands of teaching. It also allows for PSTs to take risks in ‘safer’ settings where the consequences of a mistake are

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not so serious. Schön (1987) describes the teacher roles in constructing learning experiences as focusing on the level of risk, the freedom to learn, and the kinds of coaching students will need for professional learning.

Scaffolding experiences for student teachers presents some problems - in particular how to limit an experience without over-simplifying it. If PSTs are presented with learning experiences which are too constrained, they may master the particular practice easily but it potentially teaches student teachers that there are simple answers to the complex questions of teaching and learning. For example, developmental descriptions of student teachers follow a general pattern of a phase of survival and rule-following, then a stage characterised by experimentation and a final phase of mastery and fluency (Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2006). In the initial phase, tasks are simplified by providing the student teachers with a set of teacher behaviours which they learn to implement. By the final stage, the beginning teacher’s rule-following has solidified into mastery of a set of teacher behaviours in which problems are identified intuitively and teaching strategies are selected and implemented to solve these problems. In this description the emphasis is on efficiency (Hatano & Oura, 2003) and limits the future growth of teachers because they become established in a set of familiar routines (some of which may be unhelpful to student learning). It certainly does not prepare student teachers for the reality that teaching is never routine, and that multiple goals must be addressed simultaneously (Darling-Hammond, 2006). At the same time, habits and routines are important because “mindful practice often relies on well-developed abilities to let other worries slide to the background” (Davis et al., 2000, p. 11). Clearly there is a tension here between too little scaffolding which can result in students feeling overwhelmed, and too much scaffolding which reduces the opportunity for meaningful learning experiences.

Timperley (2013) provided “The development of learning to practice” model (Figure 2), which represents a form of scaffolding as a guide for teacher educators.

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Figure 2: The Development of Learning to Practice (Timperley, 2013, p.34)

Timperley’s model represents two axes of teaching experiences, from simple to complex and from single to multiple. In her model, single and simple (highly constrained) is viewed as the starting point and through a series of increasingly complex or repeated teaching practices, student teachers move into more and more complex (teaching-like) contexts. My reading of this model indicates that each successive opportunity to practice must move both towards the more complex and towards the multiple ends of the spectrum. This would certainly reduce the possibility of too many repetitions of a simple task, which, as mentioned above, might lead to overlearning an aspect of practice. For example when PSTs overlearn behaviour management routines, they may come to view compliance as the end rather than the means of teaching (Alton-Lee, 2003). Teacher education must therefore find a balance between providing sufficient opportunities for repetition so that PSTs can become familiar with practices, and too much focus on a particular practice to the point where it becomes the sole focus of the PSTs. PSTs must learn that teaching is not simply about routines.

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Section Summary- Authenticity and Scaffolding

I began this chapter by outlining some of the key challenges facing teacher education. In particular I identified that ITE was perceived as a weak intervention when it did not challenge the PSTs’ passive learning roles in becoming teachers. Using current learning theories, I then developed an alternative approach (quality learning) in contrast to teaching as telling. Quality learning approaches re-envision the importance of teachers as designers of learning experiences for their PSTs. I framed these learning experiences first through authenticity, in order to counter student perceptions of the irrelevance of ITE. Secondly, I used scaffolding to adapt the learning experiences so that PSTs were able to direct their attention to the relevant learning and not be overwhelmed by the complexity of highly authentic experiences.

I now turn to the implications of my understanding of authenticity and PST passivity on my framing of this research.