Moral Thought in Educational Practice

This research examines the influences on geography teachers’ enactment of the curriculum. Geography education has a tradition of teacher-led curriculum planning and development. However, curriculum is also linked to society and economy. Accountability in schools has intensified and there is pressure on teachers to turn their attention away from geography and toward ‘learning’. This research helps to understand how geography teachers’ make the curriculum in current times. Data from teacher interviews, lesson observations, department meetings and curriculum plans are analysed by applying the curriculum making model (Lambert and Morgan, 2010). Four case studies are presented as ‘portraits’ of curriculum enactment in contrasting geography departments. Common themes are identified inductively across the four case studies and interpreted through the theories of curriculum making (ibid) and schooling in late-capitalist society (Hartley, 1997) to draw conclusions about how curriculum making can be influenced by the changing times. The research presents an original analysis of curriculum enactment which leads to two substantive findings. The first is that curriculum making is ‘hyper-socialised’ whereby teachers respond to the expectations of students and school managers by drawing from others in a collaborative process. The second finding is that, in order to sustain themselves, teachers can turn to their identity as geography teacher to resist pressure toward managerial and technical aspects of teaching. The findings contribute to the fields of geography education and curriculum studies by providing a social-economic explanation of curriculum enactment and a model of how geography teachers’ curriculum making can thrive in the future.

Geography Curriculum Making in Changing Times

Initiated in 2014, A level curriculum reform in England was driven by the government’s desire to restore academic rigour, help bridge the school-academy divide and better prepare school leavers for the world of work, university and life in society. Reform provided the opportunity to revise A level textbooks and revive their position in the resource ecology of the classroom. Previous research on geography textbooks focuses on textbook perception and use, curriculum coverage and the representation of place. Yet, there is remarkably little research with the author, rather than textbook, as the central concern. My research fills this gap. Textbook authors are an important source of data. Drawing on communities of practice and their own accumulated knowledge and expertise, authors select, organise and transform knowledge created in the parent discipline (its methods, prevailing paradigm and knowledge) and society into a format that is appropriate for use at A level. As the discipline of geography is broad and multi-paradigmatic and the process of recontextualisation is complex, my research focuses on understanding the decisions authors make about place selection and knowledge. Place was selected as it is the most central of geographical concepts and a new core unit for the revised A level subject content. This idiographic case study research elicits the views of nine authors, with data generated using questionnaires, semistructured interviews and Q-sort. The latter is currently an under-used methodology in geography education research. By exploring themes developed through reflexive thematic analysis, findings suggest that authors draw on human, social and decisional capital developed through immersion in teaching, assessment and pedagogy. Furthermore, reflective practice is seen to play a key role in the recontextualisation of knowledge, helping authors to utilise opportunities and deal with constraints experienced during the writing process.

An exploration of the professional capital of authors who recontextualise knowledge about place in English A level geography textbooks

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Teaching as a research-engaged profession: Uncovering a blind spot and revealing new possibilities

The narrative approach used in this study is a complement to larger scale quantitative studies into teacher recruitment and suggests that chemistry teachers’ relationship with the subject and prior teaching experience can have a large part to play in them entering the profession, whilst the influence of their own teachers is more nuanced than the wider literature suggests. There have been recent international concerns over teacher recruitment and attrition rates, especially in mathematics and the physical sciences. Much has been written about the recruitment of student teachers and the reasons people give for going into teaching, but little on the broader context of these people’s lives and the complex influences on their career decisions. This study concerns eight current UK chemistry teachers and their stories of becoming teachers. These are told through interviews and examine twin research areas: namely, the key influences on becoming a teacher, and what can be learned about teacher recruitment from considering the narratives of teachers at different points in their careers. Two analytic lenses were used for these eight narratives: a broadly inductive thematic analysis and a broadly deductive analysis, using the psychoanalytical idea of the defended participant and attempting to ‘read between the lines’. These lenses were used to both exemplify and challenge each other, providing triangulation of interpretation. Results align with that of the broader literature that family background and interest in, and utility of, studying chemistry influence career life decisions, but that some people experience moments where their career trajectory changes towards teaching whereas others followed a smooth path towards this end. Particularly influential appears to be prior teaching experience which led to changes of trajectory for some of the participants in this study. The narrative approach used complements current perspectives on teaching recruitment as it seeks to consider the wider picture of a person’s life and, through a defended participant perspective, exposes influences that may not have been obvious to the participants themselves.

Why chemistry teaching? A narrative approach

Teacher Subject Identity in Professional Practice focuses on a key, but neglected, element of a teacher’s identity: that of their subject expertise. Studies of teachers’ professional practice have shown the importance of a teacher’s identity and the extent to which it can affect their resilience, commitment and ultimately their effectiveness. 

Drawing upon narrative research undertaken with a range of teachers over a period of 14 years, the book explores how subject expertise can play a significant role in teacher identity, acting as a professional compass guiding teachers at all levels of their professional practice. It reveals powerful individual stories of meaning-making which highlight the dynamic importance of teachers’ subject expertise

The book’s metaphor of a professional compass goes to the heart of teacher professionalism, and provides a valuable mechanism to enable teachers to respond to challenges they face in their daily practice. It enables teachers to consider the moral dimensions of their practice, and can constitute a significant component in professional formation and identity. Throughout the book the importance of subject expertise for teachers’ professional practice is explored at a range of scales: from the classroom to broad education policy, and at different stages of a teacher’s career which offers readers a deeper understanding of the importance of subject expertise for teachers.

Teacher Subject Identity in Professional Practice makes a significant contribution to an under-researched area. It identifies the role and significance of teachers’ subject expertise as a dimension of their teacher identity. The book is key reading for teacher educators, policy makers and researchers with an interest in teachers’ professional development and practice.

Clare Brooks

Papers

Teacher Subject Identity in Professional Practice: Teaching with a professional compass