PLAN DE FORMACIÓN CIUDADANA

An important element of both the realistic approach, and the strategies employed by the TE, consisted of helping STs, as part of a ‘gently-does-it’ philosophy, to appreciate how their biographic pasts could lead to implicit and powerful assumptions about their teaching present.

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By its very nature, the gestalt/schematisation process is structured to bring to the surface the STs’ underlying ‘paradigmatic assumptions’ (Brookfield, 2017) about teaching, and set in train the process of disrupting the apprenticeship-of-observation. But as noted in 2.8-2.8.2, ‘it requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs’ (Dewey, 1933, p.30). Therefore, what is the nature of the work that can challenge the ‘avalanche’ (Britzman, 2007) or ‘authority’ of experience (Munby and Russell, 1994) and unpack the STs’ ‘long-haul baggage’ (McLean, 1999) containing ‘personal history-based beliefs’ (Holt-Reynolds, 1992)? Connelly and Clandinin’s (1995) ‘conduit’ or ‘funnel’ metaphor (2.4.1) would not appear to provide the answer since the STs are not, in the ways just outlined, an ‘empty disk space’ or ‘tabula rasa’ (Sugrue, 1997, p.222) into which pedagogical wisdom can be transferred ─ although that is how the weak end of the modelling continuum appears to operate (2.9.1), by providing a compendium of atheoretical teaching activities delivered through mock teaching demonstrations that provide ‘trustworthy recipes’ (Buchmann, 1987, p.157) for teaching founded solely on common sense (2.5.5).

By contrast, the strong end of the continuum does not salve STs with the soothing balm of commonsense solutions; instead, it poses a set of challenges arising from ‘the curse of complexity’ (2.5.6) and the ‘contestability of knowledge’ (Furlong, 2013). From what could be characterised as the ‘complex, nuanced and contingent’ (Cochran-Smith, 2005, p.184), there arises the tension of helping STs to feel confident, whilst simultaneously revealing the complexities of practice. According to Berry (2007), this process requires managing the tensions between ‘confidence and uncertainty’. For the TE, ‘uncertainty [represented] the space in which one learns the most’ (p.79). The TE’s handling of this particular tension provides some useful insights into how modelling can be refined to intensify the insights gleaned from experience, and thus increase the likelihood of eschewing ‘mis-educative experiences’ (2.7.1). The TE not only recognised and respected the STs’ biographic pasts, ‘their way of being, their way of seeing the world’ (p.87); she also valued each individual ST ‘as a knower’ (Cheng et al., 2009, p.326) by ‘honouring where they come from’ (pp.83-84), which entailed working with the grain of a ST’s beliefs, rather than against it. For her, this meant that the STs needed to feel comfortable in their own skin before they ‘can become somebody else’ (p.87) by entertaining the thought of change. Key in this respect was being non-judgemental and respecting the ‘ipsative’ (p.73) dimension of development. The STs deeply appreciated the TE’s non-judgemental stance encapsulated by what they described as her ‘openness’, which meant that they felt they could ‘talk to her about anything’ without the sense of being judged (p.87). Fundamental here was the TE being able to view the world through others’ eyes,

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especially in relation to their assumptions and beliefs (2.7.4), whilst gently encouraging them to experiment with new ideas. As noted in 2.7.4, such processes have variously been labelled as ‘relational expertise’ (Edwards, 2011), ‘relational pedagogy’ (Cheng et al., 2009), ‘intellectual attentiveness’ (Hansen, 1999), or ‘epistemic empathy’ (Jaber, Southerland and Dake, 2018). Preserving the integrity of the individual, whilst opening up the possibility for change, was characterised by the TE as requiring a ‘happy amalgam between solidity and transformation’ (p.87), an observation that suggested the positive exploitation of complementary properties that featured both strength and flexibility. This is similar to Berry’s (2007) tension between ‘valuing and reconstructing experiences’; that is, simultaneously honouring and challenging STs’ biographic pasts.

Part of achieving such an ‘amalgam’ involved avoiding the willy-nilly imposition ─ as on the weak end of the modelling continuum ─ of an externally-imposed, a priori curriculum. As the TE herself recognised, citing Dewey (1963, p.17), professional development is a delicate dance between ‘development from within [and] formation from without’ (p.85). In such circumstances, there exists a tension between ‘telling and growth’ (Berry, 2007) involving whether a TE should provide ‘answers’ or encourage STs to reflect. The TE described this process as striking a ‘balance between freedom and prescriptivism’ (p.86 and p.96). Balance is the operative notion if one is to avoid falling into the trap of the ‘tyranny of teaching as telling’ (Loughran, 2006, p.94). Tensions in ITE such as those between ‘freedom and prescriptivism’ are not readily resolvable because, as Berry (2007) proposes, they need to be lived and managed through a TE’s phronesis.

The above approach stands in contrast to certain aspects of the current policy environment where pedagogical prescription and proscription can be the order of the day (2.7.3). The idea of playing the long game, and possessing the space and time to ‘experiment and play’ with ideas (p.85), constituted important elements of this balance. This was facilitated by the safe and ‘nurturing environment’ of the university that was acknowledge both by the STs and the TE as a place where the usual layers of judgement did not exist, meaning the STs could hold and ‘express … views in a safe environment’ (p.92). This is reminiscent of Groundwater‐Smith’s (2016, p.xviii) observation that universities are ‘safe places for unsafe ideas’, a ‘place of respite and reassurance’ (Hodson, Smith and Brown, 2012, p.188). Equally significant perhaps was the TE’s ‘non-judgemental evangelism’ (p.87), as expressed in her ‘invitational vision’ (4.5) that relied not on being ‘dogmatic’, but ‘pedagogic’ (p.86) ─ a process involving painting exciting pedagogical possibilities. As discussed in 2.8.1, such an approach opens up new vistas by creating ‘images of the possible’ (Hammerness, 2006, p.82) and engendering a ‘language of

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possibility’ (Rosaen and Schram, 1998). Notwithstanding the usefulness of painting a pedagogical vision, the TE was also aware that, because of the overarching issue of STs’ biographic pasts in the form of the apprenticeship-of-observation, they might not be ‘quite ready to notice yet’ (p.82). To this end, a more powerful intervention was required that might reduce the ‘illusion’ (p.80) of understanding by causing the STs to struggle, and even sometimes initially fail, but, as a result, thereby possibly notice more.