TITULOS DE PROPIEDAD

4.1 Introduction

In this chapter, the data arising from each of the four case studies are presented and discussed under the headings identified in Section 3.6, which represent the conceptual framework. Data sets from both interviews and the observation are compared and contrasted as a way of exploring how the teacher educators’ beliefs and understandings were translated into meta-pedagogical practice. The stimulated recall interview, linked as it is to the observation of the video, allowed for particularly illuminating insights – both for the researcher and the participants. Often the latter were unaware of aspects of their practice which were revealed by the video recorder, and these ruminations are captured in the subsequent interview. The quantity of data allowed for rich and thick descriptions for each of them, which are then summarised as cross-case findings in Section 4.6, and presented as a collection of continua in Section 4.7. Whilst this helped to illuminate similarities, as well as differences, in approach, it highlighted what appeared to be different drivers for their respective meta-pedagogical practices.

In line with the previous discussion regarding a theoretical lens (Section 2.3.9), Bourdieusian concepts are applied in analysing the data and evidence, in order to uncover practices. This enables an exploration of the extent to which the habitus of teacher educators ‘fits’ the new field, their recognition of this, and whether and how this expands and leads to increased cultural capital. These principles are used as a lens to analyse data within this conceptual framework.

4.2 Case 1: Rachel

Rachel had had eight years’ experience in ITE, following a successful career teaching in schools in London, latterly as part of the senior management team in an international school. She was working at a post-1992 university located in the southeast of England.

The session observed was with a group of PGCE Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) secondary and 7- 14 (key stage 2-3) students on the theme of key stage 2-3 transfer & transition in MFL. Taking place towards the end of the first term of three, it followed the first block practicum. The teacher educator input at the start of the session was interspersed with question and answer interaction. This was followed by carefully structured group work and feedback regarding developing a school policy for transfer and transition. Visuals on the PowerPoint were used to stimulate discussion, and students were encouraged to explore their own previous experience in order to build new understandings.

The main driver for Rachel’s pedagogical practice in ITE appeared to be a sense of teacher professional identity. This was demonstrated throughout both interviews and in the observation, as her practice and beliefs focused at all times on membership of the teaching profession – as first, as well as second, order practitioner. Indeed, she viewed this professional responsibility as being heightened through her role as ‘gatekeeper’ to the teaching profession. It was important for her to model what she saw as professional behaviours, both as a teacher practitioner and in her teaching practice. As a consequence, her meta-pedagogy and habitus were rooted very firmly in teacher identity.

4.2.1 The teacher educator role

4.2.1.1 Training for and development in the role

From the interviews as well as the observed session, it appeared that Rachel’s former identity and habitus had continued to impact significantly upon pedagogy, as her new identity as ‘second order practitioner’ (Murray & Male 2005) had been developed and established. Whilst professional identity can be seen as being central to the quality of teacher educators’ pedagogical practice (Davey 2013), the distinctions between teacher and teacher educator might appear to be somewhat blurred, which demonstrates the complexity of ‘field’:

One difficulty associated with framing professional identity through the lens of “ex- schoolteacher” is that the teacher educator may be viewed as simply being a teacher teaching in teacher preparation rather than as a teacher educator with an expertise in teaching and learning about teaching. The distinction being that knowledge, skill and ability in teaching needs to be able to be taught not just demonstrated. (Loughran 2006:13)

Rachel said that she had needed to ‘reflect upon my own practice’, although she acknowledged that skills and knowledge transferred from the school setting had served as a ‘basis’ for the ongoing development of her practice as teacher educator. This reflects Bullock’s (2009) observation that he used his prior identity as a successful teacher for his developing pedagogy of teacher education, and Brookfield’s (1995, quoted in Loughran 2006:61) suggestion that, as well as more immediate concerns about objectives and knowledge about the students, teacher educators’ “choices and injunctions spring from [their] past experiences as teachers”. From the semi-structured interview, it would appear that Rachel had to some extent driven her own professional development, through reflection and finding ‘thinking space’, reading, and working alongside colleagues. She reported using Socratic questioning techniques with student teachers to encourage reflection, which appeared to be a pedagogical insight gained from her experience as a teacher educator, and evidence of her expanding habitus in the second order field: ‘I think this is how my pedagogy has developed over the years [in

ITE],…I think I try to get them to think more. Rather than giving them information, I try now to use

4.2.1.2 Relationships with student teachers

Rachel identified both herself and the students as ‘participants’ in the teaching and learning process, not wishing to perceive herself as the ‘expert’. She was thereby rejecting the notion of ‘expert to novice’ (Colucci-Gray & Fraser 2008), or a ‘cascading expertise’ approach, in favour of a more holistic view of ‘student as teacher and learner’ (Taylor 2008). When referring to her transition from school teacher to teacher educator, and her consideration of the needs of adult learners as compared to children, she commented: ‘I’d hope that I don’t patronise my students. I wouldn’t want to, and I hope

I haven’t done that’. However, she also observed that ‘sometimes making the transition from working

with pupils, even if you’re working with A-Level pupils a lot, to working with graduates, is perhaps a

harder transition…than sometimes it appears’. Whilst this suggests she had recognised that her

existing habitus did not ‘fit’ the new field, these statements reflect an acknowledgement of the differences between adult and young learners, rather than subject matter; that is, context, rather than content.

4.2.1.3 Constraints

Rather than talking about constraints, Rachel referred to having more opportunities to reflect upon her own and other people’s practice than she had had as a school teacher. She commented that she had more opportunity for ‘thinking space’ at university, but that, although it was encouraged, it was becoming more scarce in the current climate. She did, however, suggest that, in order to gauge the success of the student teachers’ experience on the PGCE programme, she would need to be ‘able to

revisit them over several years’.

4.2.1.4 Compliance

Although Rachel repeatedly referred to encouraging the students to draw conclusions, in terms of critical thinking, this was perhaps tempered by the following comment: ‘I’m trying to lead them – rightly or wrongly,…successfully or not, but I’m trying to lead them to draw conclusions. I know what I want them to draw, but I’m not trying to tell them’. Whilst this pragmatism might be entirely understandable, it raises questions about the student and teacher educator roles, and could be seen to run counter to Rachels’ claim of not being the ‘expert’. It could also be perceived that the pedagogy is (perhaps inevitably) confined by the constraints of the central requirements of ITE and the national teachers’ standards, which are an immanent part of the field.

4.2.2 Elements and models of meta-pedagogical practice 4.2.2.1 Modelling

In the semi-structured interview, Rachel talked of the constant aspiration to be a role model to the students. For her, this meant demonstrating best teaching practice, although she accepted that this might not always be the case. Many of the strategies employed by Rachel in the observed session

appeared to reflect her habitus and subject background as an MFL teacher, and, as such, the choice of these for this ITE session may have been made on two levels: adherence to these as – personally and professionally – tried and tested methods of teaching and learning (albeit in a different field), as well as modelling what might be good practice for the future teachers of MFL. Although Loughran (2006) points that “simply modelling practice through the use of a range of teaching procedures…, or teaching about teaching by using engaging strategies, is in itself not sufficient in teacher education” (p83), as identified in Section 2.4.2, this implicit form of modelling is one which appears to be common practice amongst teacher educators (Grossman et al 2009, Lunenberg & Korthagen 2003). The observed session also revealed professionalism modelled in teacher (as well as teaching) behaviours, many of them presumably transferred from the school context and habitus; these included punctuality, timings, interactions (including with latecomers), encouragement and tone of voice. Rachel revealed the underlying professional belief or value with this comment:

I...always try to be as well-prepared as I can, because that’s what I expect of them, and...I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to...have expectations of them that I’m not prepared to try and fulfil myself.

This links to the ethical dimensions of role modelling identified by Hau-Fai Law et al (2007), who also found that teacher educators modelled sensitivity towards student needs.

When Rachel was asked if she ever made this modelling explicit, she replied ‘sometimes I do, and

sometimes I make it implicit’. However, although she acknowledged that this may involve ‘stepping

out’, she does not relate this to theory:

rather than making it explicit, I might say to them, ‘are there things that we’ve done today’ – because there are things I do as workshop activities…‘how might you tweak

that, …how might you use that – or would you not use it?’... I do do that sometimes, but I

don’t do it that often.

This would not therefore qualify as ‘congruent teaching’ (Swennen et al 2008) within ITE, as student teachers would not be made aware of any theoretical perspectives.

4.2.2.2 Transmission

There was little evidence of a transmissive approach in the observed session, or in the interviews. Rachel commented that ‘activities that are underpinned by theory, but...which are actually quite practical in nature, ...I think are much more effective than...students listening to a lecture’, and spoke of finding alternatives to ‘giv[ing] them loads of information’. Her responses to suggestions that she seemed to be avoiding a transmissive approach seemed to confirm this: ‘Yes, because they’re not

4.2.2.3 Constructivist teaching approaches

Rachel stated that her ITE pedagogy was heavily influenced by a piece of research on developing pupil (sic) autonomy, which found that these remember 10% of what they hear, but 90% of what they do. Whilst this indicates a blurring of lines between teaching and meta-teaching, there appeared to be a focus on experiential and active learning in her practice. This comment in the stimulated recall interview related to what Rachel perceived as the effectiveness of active learning strategies: ‘I just try

to make things as ‘workshoppy’ as I can, because I think that’s how they remember. And how they

learn’. Whilst this might be seen to link to theories of learning, that was not made explicit.

She provided an indication of how her meta-pedagogy may have been informed by her own tacit understanding of the process of learning to teach; that by ‘giving them something to think about and to reflect upon, ...that’s helping them learn to teach’. There was evidence of reflection, critical thinking, and experiential learning in the wide range of teaching strategies in the observed session. Rachel explained that, at one point in the session, the student teachers ‘have to question themselves. You

know, just to unpick what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, and where it’s leading them’.

It was clear during the observed session that the group dynamic was one of a learning community

(‘because they learn from each other’), with students being encouraged (and feeling comfortable) to

partake in debate and discussion: at one point in the stimulated recall interview, she was pleased to report that ‘then they were really debating things’. Rachel recognised that ‘they come in with a variety of experience, …a lot of them very successful in the field already, in a different field’, and commented that she took account of the students’ starting points, referring to ‘trying to drill in to their expertise’, and then building step-by-step upon that. In the stimulated recall interview, she explained that she had intended ‘for each activity to kind of set them up for the next one’. All of this could be viewed as a constructivist approach, even though she needed to be prompted in the stimulated recall interview before recognising it as such. She also talked of using ‘questioning to draw out…knowledge, draw inference, to draw information out of students, and perhaps…help them to make links that they might

not have made’.

4.2.2.4 Focus on subject knowledge/PCK

Rachel cited subject knowledge as one of the important qualities for a teacher educator, but referred to the difference between subject knowledge and subject application – or how you teach your subject to others. This is defined by Shulman (1987, cited in Cochran-Smith & Lytle 1999:255) as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK):

that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding.. . it represents the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues

are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction.