Showing papers in "Teaching Education in 2004"
TL;DR: Teachers Investigate Unequal Literacy Outcomes: Cross-Generational Perspectives as mentioned in this paper, which made teacher researchers central in examining this long-standing dilemma, outlines the research design and rationale, and analyses how two early career teachers worked their ways out of deficit analyses of two children they were most worried about.
Abstract: The fact that children growing up in poverty are likely to be in the lower ranges of achievement on standardised literacy tests is not a new phenomenon. Internationally there are a myriad of intervention and remedial programmes designed to address this problem with a range of effects. Frequently, sustainable reforms are curtailed by deficit views of families and children growing up in poverty. This article describes an ongoing research study entitled “Teachers Investigate Unequal Literacy Outcomes: Cross‐Generational Perspectives”, which made teacher researchers central in examining this long‐standing dilemma. It outlines the research design and rationale, and analyses how two early career teachers worked their ways out of deficit analyses of two children they were most worried about. It argues that disrupting deficit discourses and re‐designing new pedagogical repertoires to reconnect with children's lifeworlds is a long‐term project that can best be achieved in reciprocal research relationships with tea...
242 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report on findings from research currently in progress that examines anti-homophobia education in teacher education courses across New South Wales, Australia, focusing on one aspect of the broader study, the discussion explores why teacher educators generally considered the incorporation of antihomophobia perspectives as important to teacher education as well as the various discourses in which these issues were located.
Abstract: This paper reports on findings from research currently in progress that examines anti‐ homophobia education in teacher education courses across New South Wales, Australia. Focusing on one aspect of the broader study, the discussion explores why teacher educators generally considered the incorporation of anti‐homophobia perspectives as important to teacher education as well as the various discourses in which these issues were located. It also highlights the changing discursive locations that frame the incorporation of anti‐ homophobia education across the early childhood, primary and secondary sectors as well as demonstrating how broader sociocultural discourses influence teacher educators' perceptions of the relevance and importance of these issues to teacher training.
77 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply neocolonial theory to describe the experiences of elementary grade teachers in one California school district who are required to follow a scripted basal reading program, and use the terms as embedded in the theory for describing the situation of mandates and colonization tactics used by the district.
Abstract: During a time of reform and accountability, school districts are closely monitoring teachers' instructional decisions, practices, and classroom environments. In this paper, we apply neocolonial theory to describe the experiences of elementary grade teachers in one California school district who are required to follow a scripted basal reading program. This framework allows us to view teachers' interactions with program mandates through a critical lens. Focusing upon district surveillance of teachers, we suggest that through the implementation of a standard curriculum the district is exercising overt control. We introduce the following three characteristics as they connect to the teachers' situation: redefined, restricted, and subsumed. These terms are then related to the theory of neocolonialism. After a brief description of teachers' reactions to the curriculum, we use the terms as embedded in the theory to describe the situation of mandates and colonization tactics used by the district.
70 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply principles from training classes for improvisational actors to provide practical suggestions for teachers, and conclude that teachers could become more effective discussion leaders by becoming aware of improvisational acting techniques and make a case for instructing teachers in improvisational exercises.
Abstract: Effective classroom discussion is improvisational, because its effectiveness derives from the fact that it is not scripted. Instead, the flow of the class is unpredictable, and emerges from the actions of both teachers and students. In this article, I apply principles from training classes for improvisational actors to provide practical suggestions for teachers. To identify the improvisation community's own views on creative collaboration, I draw on recent observations of rehearsals, performances, and improvisation training classes, and interviews with actors and directors. I conclude that teachers could become more effective discussion leaders by becoming aware of improvisational acting techniques, and I make a case for instructing teachers in improvisational exercises.
61 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored a theory of narrative that can account for its underlying structures and can critique a paradox of consciousness raising: that the more that narratives are privileged in teacher education, the less we know about how this narrative affects what will come to be said about teacher education's reliance upon stories of experience and identity.
Abstract: This article explores a theory of narrative that can account for its underlying structures and can critique a paradox of consciousness‐raising: that the more that narratives are privileged in teacher education, the less we know about how this narrative affects what will come to be said about teacher education's reliance upon stories of experience and identity. We bring this paradox to narratives of gayness in teacher education, suggesting three dominant orientations: narratives of difficulty, narratives of relationships and narratives of hospitality. Our resources for thinking about gayness are tied to archives of discrimination and freedom, themselves now affected by the pandemic known as AIDS. Each narrative, we argue, frames what can be said, what will have been said and what remains to be said. This way of analyzing the history of our present and what can count as a problem today, takes inspiration from an eighteenth‐century debate that focused on the question “What is enlightenment?” We argue that th...
60 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the ways in which these silences perpetuate existing gender regimes in schools to the detriment of female teachers, girls, and marginalise, and examine the ways that such silences perpetuates existing gender norms in schools.
Abstract: Placing issues of homophobia and anti‐lesbianism on the agenda of teacher education programmes often meets with resistance from some students, and others. Such resistance is indicative of broader attempts to maintain the straight face of schooling. However, one way in which it is possible to place such issues on the agenda in schooling and teacher education is to demonstrate how these discourses impact upon all students and teachers. A current opening for raising such matters within teacher education programmes is the problematisation of the calls for more male teachers, calls that are becoming pervasive in many Western education systems. Within the drives to attract more male teachers to the profession there is usually a silence relating to the ways in which homophobia and its counterpart, misogyny, work to construct normalised notions of teachers. This paper examines the ways in which these silences perpetuate existing gender regimes in schools to the detriment of female teachers, girls, and marginalise...
55 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of teacher educators in contexts of social and economic change, the "standards" agenda, teachers' work and the academic-teacher divide is discussed.
Abstract: This paper discusses the role of teacher educators in contexts of social and economic change, the “standards” agenda, teachers' work and the academic–teacher divide. It suggests that the kinds of relationships that preservice and inservice teacher educators must develop with teachers need to extend beyond the current narrow range of course provision and institution‐centred research to embrace an agenda that recognises the importance of sustained collaboration, teachers' roles as knowledge producers, their need to manage change and a mutuality of moral purpose.
44 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the potential of critical teacher inquiry groups to promote urban teacher retention, professional support, and development, and concludes with recommendations for on-going critical professional development models that support teachers as they confron...
Abstract: This article examines the potential of critical teacher inquiry groups to promote urban teacher retention, professional support and development. While much has been written in recent years about teacher inquiry, generally, little attention has been paid to professional development programs that highlight a critical analysis of urban schooling. Drawing on analysis of videos of group meetings, Email conversations with participants and informal interviews, this article concerns itself with a group of seven South Central Los Angeles elementary teachers that use critical inquiry to support each other in tackling multiple forms of inequality and oppression manifest in their classrooms, school and community. Brought together by a commitment to social justice, these teachers engage a set of shared readings in social and educational theory as the foundation for bi‐monthly meetings. The article concludes with recommendations for on‐going critical professional development models that support teachers as they confron...
38 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the translation of a performed ethnography into an anti-homophobia curriculum activity for teacher education students is described. But the authors focus on the translation from performed to performing ethnography.
Abstract: This paper documents the translation of a performed ethnography into an anti‐homophobia curriculum activity for teacher education students. The performed ethnography, called Wearing The Secret Out, is based on the life histories of eight physical education teachers who identified as “lesbian”, “gay” and “queer”. Pedagogically, Wearing The Secret Out contains a montage of stories that require the audience to make their own meanings about how to approach anti‐homophobia teaching. Teacher education students enrolled in an anti‐homophobia course (known as a “subject” or “unit” in Australia) called Inqueeries About Education viewed the performance. They then read a complete transcript of the life history interview with one of the teachers featured in the performance. Students then created and performed their own “mini‐ethnographies” based on the interview transcript as a way of constructing their own meanings. The paper discusses how moving from performed to performing ethnography contributes to anti‐homophobi...
35 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated student teachers' interpretations of the pedagogical process of a physical education teacher education course and found that there was considerable "slippage" between the teacher educator's critical pedagogy inspired intentions and what was understood by the student teachers.
Abstract: The attempt to understand the relationship between messages intended and messages received has been an enduring issue in teacher education. For the past three decades researchers have made forays into understanding this enduring issue, and in the process have drawn on various explanatory frameworks, one of them being socialisation. In this paper we work with Giddens' structuration theory as well as his concept of knowledgeability as analytical frameworks for understanding the relationship between messages intended (by the teacher educator) and messages received (by the student‐teachers). Our discussion is informed by the findings of a study that investigated student‐teachers' interpretations of the pedagogical process of a physical education teacher education course. Data generated from conversations with, and observations of, the student‐teachers indicated that there was considerable “slippage” between the teacher educator's critical pedagogy inspired intentions and what was understood by the student‐tea...
27 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify the limitations inherent in the model of teacher preparation as training within the context of current educational reforms in Singapore and argue for the central role of theory in the education of teachers.
Abstract: This article attempts to identify the limitations inherent in the model of teacher preparation as training within the context of current educational reforms in Singapore. Through clarifying the distinction between training and education, this article argues that two largely overlooked aspects of teacher education—one concerning transforming the beliefs of pre‐service teachers, and the other concerning initiating teachers into a wider context of worthwhile perspectives and understanding—are highly desirable, if pre‐service teachers are to teach the new ways and to become well‐informed and morally‐sensitive professionals. The article, therefore, purports to underscore the need for a broader vision of teacher preparation, and argues for the central role of theory in the education of teachers.
TL;DR: This paper explored the role of mathematics student-teachers' pre-training dispositions (habitus) in reproducing classroom practice, and the effect of different training contexts (habitat) upon what Bourdieu called "dispositional harmonisation".
Abstract: What difference do teacher educators really make? This paper explores the role of mathematics student‐teachers' pre‐training dispositions (habitus) in reproducing classroom practice, and the effect of different training contexts (habitat) upon what Bourdieu called “dispositional harmonisation”. These Bourdieuan concepts are mobilised to examine aspects of pre‐service teacher education, students' emerging teaching dispositions and the sociogeographical distribution of new mathematics teachers in the United Kingdom. This small‐scale study suggests that it may be difficult for teacher‐educators to influence the long‐term practices of new teachers, by indicating how educational inequality is perpetuated through the positioning of new teachers in their “natural” teaching habitats. Finally, I examine the need for further research and the potential for disrupting these processes of social and pedagogical reproduction and consider the need to develop critical forms of mathematics teacher education.
TL;DR: In this article, teacher educators from Asia, Africa, North America and South America offer a sampling of initiatives in anti-oppressive teacher education; that is, initiatives to prepare teachers to teach various subject matters to various age groups, addressing various forms of oppression in various cultural and co...
Abstract: While theories and recommendations continue to proliferate in the educational research literature on what it means to teach towards social justice and to prepare teachers for such teaching, so do concerns that these theories and recommendations fail to account for the ways that the contexts of teaching—cultural contexts, national contexts, political contexts—always affect teaching in idiosyncratic, unpredictable and even contradictory ways. Given that much educational research fails to trouble the US‐centric nature of prevailing conceptions of social justice and teacher education, it is important to learn about the unique as well as shared challenges facing teacher educators around the globe. In this article, teacher educators from Asia, Africa, North America and South America offer a sampling of initiatives in anti‐oppressive teacher education; that is, initiatives to prepare teachers to teach various subject matters to various age groups, addressing various forms of oppression in various cultural and co...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how teacher educators in the Dutch teacher education context conceptualize their teaching and how they use these concepts to help their students learn to teach, and note several professional dilemmas these educators faced in their classroom teaching.
Abstract: Teacher educators are increasingly experiencing conflicts between external demands and their ideas about preparing students to teach. This paper reports on ways in which such educators promote learning in their students, and how their practical teaching methods relate to their professional views on teaching. This paper argues that the teaching realities of a teacher educator's teaching techniques can best be interpreted through the dilemmas they encounter. The construct of “dilemma” is advanced as a way to link conceptual reflection, deliberate choice and professional action.The study on which this paper is based investigated how teacher educators in the Dutch teacher education context conceptualize their teaching and how they use these concepts to help their students learn to teach. The paper notes several professional dilemmas these educators faced in their classroom teaching. It shows that while dilemmas can coherently describe how teacher educators actually think about teaching, teaching and action ar...
TL;DR: The authors examined the way two different cohorts of prospective elementary teachers who learned to teach in two different contexts define their own social studies pedagogical content knowledge and raised questions that should be considered in constructing methods courses linked to field experiences and suggest Bronfenbrenner's model as a tool for looki...
Abstract: Teacher education programs are being encouraged to collaborate with K‐12 partners to develop and implement contextually rich field experiences that integrate methods course instruction with public school practices. As a result, we outline four models of integrating methods instruction and field experiences and raise the question “How does the classroom and school context of the field experience influence what prospective teachers learned in the methods courses?” This study examines the way two different cohorts of prospective elementary teachers who learned to teach in two different contexts define their own social studies pedagogical content knowledge. The students' espoused philosophies of education offer insight into how different models of integrated field experiences may impact on their beliefs about social studies teaching. Through this study we raise questions that should be considered in constructing methods courses linked to field experiences and suggest Bronfenbrenner's model as a tool for looki...
TL;DR: The authors describe how collaboration emerged in a school district-university partnership designed to foster teacher development in the context of elementary science education and describe strategies adopted to foster collaboration and teacher learning.
Abstract: This paper describes how collaboration emerged in a school district–university partnership designed to foster teacher development in the context of elementary science education. The Teachers Researching Inquiry‐Based Science project involved four elementary teachers, a school district science mentoring teacher, a school district science coordinator and a university researcher. In this qualitative action research project, a variety of research methods and sources were adopted including participant observation, interviews, documents and journals. Research outcomes describe strategies adopted to foster collaboration and teacher learning.
TL;DR: This paper analyzed a research project involving four novice teachers and an academic researcher who engaged in collaborative inquiry and identified factors within its structure, such as tensions involved in the process, knowledge generated within those tensions, fusing of teacher and researcher roles for the teacher participants, and use of outside resources (such as academic literature, findings from other teacher research, and guest speakers) as part of the theory-building process.
Abstract: There is growing strength in the argument that the primarily separate communities of educational researchers, academic researchers and teacher researchers, working together, have much to contribute to knowledge on teaching and learning. This article reviews literature on the intersection of these communities. Reflecting on this literature, the author analyzes a research project involving four novice teachers and an academic researcher who engaged in collaborative inquiry. The author employed qualitative analysis to examine the collaborative inquiry and identified factors within its structure. These included tensions involved in the process, knowledge generated within those tensions, fusing of teacher and researcher roles for the teacher participants, and use of outside resources (such as academic literature, findings from other teacher research, and guest speakers) as part of the theory‐building process. The discussion offers insight into how the participants created a research process that included the i...
TL;DR: For well over 12 years the Human Sexuality Program within Social Work Services of the Toronto District School Board has been serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) students, teachers, parents and their families as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: For well over 12 years the Human Sexuality Program within Social Work Services of the Toronto District School Board has been serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) students, teachers, parents and their families. Alongside individual, family and group support to the LGBT communities in the board, the program has also been delivering anti‐homophobia workshops to classrooms across the district from grades 1 to 12. At the classroom level, there has been a tremendous demand from teachers and schools seeking to fulfill their obligation under the school board's equity policy to create and maintain safe, welcoming and inclusive learning environments for LGBT students and students with LGBT parents. In the past two years much of the demand has come from teachers in the elementary panel, grades one to eight. This paper will discuss one aspect of the classroom work done in elementary schools, focusing on the students written responses to the anti‐homophobia presentations.
TL;DR: This article explored the potential for peer-based anti-oppression education groups to achieve social change, considered the conditions that make their work possible and introduced several critical questions and issues raised by such efforts.
Abstract: This paper explores the potential for peer‐based anti‐oppression education groups to achieve social change, considers the conditions that make their work possible and introduces several critical questions and issues raised by such efforts. I have drawn upon my involvement in my former high school's Rainbow Alliance, as well as in two Toronto peer‐based anti‐homophobia education groups. I connect my experiences in the Rainbow Alliance to an account by Sharp (2003) of his involvement as an educator within a similar Canadian high school group, which he detailed in a previous issue of Teaching Education.
TL;DR: The Schoolyard Lab Program as mentioned in this paper is a set of co-requisite, interdisciplinary methods courses for science and language arts courses at the University of Southern California (USC).
Abstract: The use of constructivism and its various manifestations in education has been a topic of much interest in recent years. Inquiry into this theoretical framework has resulted in teacher educators' attempts to help their teacher candidates apply constructivist pedagogy in university classrooms, field experiences and student teaching at two US universities. The instructors developed a set of co‐requisite, interdisciplinary methods courses entitled the Schoolyard Lab Program. Composed of two three‐credit courses (science methods and language arts methods) and a one‐credit field experience, the Schoolyard Lab program utilized the Cognitive Process of Instruction (CPOI) as its pedagogical basis. Joan Fulton designed CPOI as a seven‐step process that relies on the learner's ability to describe a concept based on its distinguishing attributes, investigate and compare examples of the concept and, finally, apply the concept in new and authentic contexts. The Schoolyard Lab Program is the result of a 6 year period o...
TL;DR: This article found that students at a university in the Northern Territory are already critiquing what they say and do in the classroom as they negotiate a position in relation to the lecturer as an authority, and that it is through this hidden practice of critique that indigenous students at this university speak and learn outside an assimilation to the power and knowledge of the non-indigenous teacher.
Abstract: Critical thinking is conceived in the theories as a skill that students consciously learn and practice while the teacher is positioned as the one who can teach students how to critique. However, one of the major insights gained through research conducted at a university in the Northern Territory is that students are already critiquing what they say and do in the classroom as they negotiate a position in relation to the lecturer as an authority. The research finds that critical thinking is not just a cognitive attribute, it is constituted through a practice that is always at work, albeit in hidden ways in the classroom. It is through this hidden practice of critique that indigenous students at this university speak and learn outside an assimilation to the power and knowledge of the non‐indigenous teacher.
TL;DR: The authors explored the problem of student refusals in a rural Australian teacher education program as a problem located in particular spatialised social relations, where student conservatism is read not as an ideological issue, but as an issue of repetitions.
Abstract: This paper explores the problem of student refusals in a rural Australian teacher education programme as a problem located in particular spatialised social relations. Drawing upon teacher educator reflections and student online discussions, the paper documents a situated approach to anti‐homophobia teacher education: one in which student conservatism is read not as an ideological issue, but as an issue of repetitions. Situated within a context of postcolonial rural Australia, the repetitions of student homophobia emerge as symptomatic of moral anxieties in relation to the crisis of white presence (Rowse, 1993), hierarchical social structures of differential privilege, the formation of new abject subjectivities (Kristeva, 1982), saviour fantasies (Robertson, 1997), fears of losing (or finding) children (Pierce, 1996), and deep ambivalence towards their own learning (Britzman, 1998). Developing cartographies of anti‐homophobia in teacher education is a movement away from analyses of homophobia as acts of di...
TL;DR: The authors describe a series of attempts by a novice teacher educator to foster reflective talk among interns in a weekly seminar, and advocate the importance of reflection by teacher educators, recommends that teacher educators be explicit about the content and process for discussions about teaching and raises questions about structures, sequencing and selection of content to promote reflection among pre-service teachers.
Abstract: This paper describes a series of attempts by a novice teacher educator to foster reflective talk among interns in a weekly seminar. Drawing on Dewey's dilemma of bridging the child's inclinations with the demands of the curriculum, the paper explores the challenge of connecting interns' needs with teacher educators' goals. The paper advocates the importance of reflection by teacher educators, recommends that teacher educators be explicit about the content and process for discussions about teaching and raises questions about structures, sequencing and selection of content to promote reflection among pre‐service teachers.
TL;DR: This article examined the efforts of one university instructor to assist the performance of her graduate students as they learned to teach, scaffold, and support struggling readers, finding that the instructor successfully assisted her students by providing supportive feedback, extending their learning and providing appropriate resources through ongoing Email correspondence and face-to-face meetings and tutoring sessions.
Abstract: Although Vygotskian principles involving the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) are hailed as tenets undergirding teaching and learning within a constructivist setting, these principals have not been implemented widely within school classrooms. Tharp and Gallimore, building on the notion that learning can be maximized when a teacher has a heightened awareness of a student's ZPD and stimulates new learning based upon this understanding, argue that true teaching is a matter of “assisting performance”. This study examines the efforts of one university instructor to assist the performance of her graduate students as they learned to teach, scaffold and support struggling readers. The findings suggest that the university instructor successfully assisted her students by providing supportive feedback, extending their learning and providing appropriate resources through ongoing Email correspondence and face‐to‐face meetings and tutoring sessions. Success was attributed to the instructor's extensive knowledge of su...
TL;DR: The authors highlights three strands of study in the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) program in the School of Education and Early Childhood Studies: Diversity and difference 1: Languages, families and cultures, Diversity and Difference 2: Understanding the self in socio-cultural contexts and Collaborative relationships.
Abstract: Early childhood education does not exist in isolation from the broader world. The political, social and economic reality that shapes Australian life has a powerful influence on the ways in which curriculum, pedagogy and policy are constructed. At the University of Western Sydney, in accordance with the university's goals and commitments to equity and social justice, there has been long‐standing provision of undergraduate study that attempts to acknowledge Australia's diversity found in the rich reservoir of cultural, social and economic capital produced in many of the communities residing in Greater Western Sydney. This paper highlights three strands of study in the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) programme in the School of Education and Early Childhood Studies: Diversity and difference 1: Languages, families and cultures, Diversity and difference 2: Understanding the “self” in socio‐cultural contexts and Collaborative relationships. Incorporating various poststructural theoretical perspectives as...
TL;DR: The authors found that new teacher expectations for involvement in school decision-making are not being actualized, and that new teachers are naive to the realities of school governance, emphasizing the need to better equip new teachers for the realities and the challenges of the school governance.
Abstract: Findings from the current study show that new teacher expectations for involvement in school decision‐making are not being actualized. Based on feedback from elementary and secondary teachers (n=504) in 87 schools, the results show significant differences between actual and preferred levels of participation in 16 areas of school decision‐making. Although their motivation to participate is interpreted as a positive finding, the very high expectations for involvement suggest that new teachers are naive to the realities of school governance. These findings emphasize the need to better equip new teachers for the realities and the challenges of school governance.
TL;DR: In this article, the inclusion of narrative and performance theory and practice in a communication studies classroom has been explored, where students apply theoretical narratives in exploring a complex Middle East story, deconstruct, reconstruct, and apply theoretical principles to practice using a singular sociocultural context.
Abstract: This article explores the inclusion of narrative and performance theory and practice in a communication studies classroom. In using their own classroom discourse as a running narrative, students apply theoretical narratives in exploring a complex Middle East story. They deconstruct, reconstruct, and apply theoretical principles to practice using a singular sociocultural context. Stressing the importance of performing stories helps students appreciate new possibilities for thought and action. By emphasizing the performance of narratives, students experience and develop an appreciation for multiple, even contradictory, meanings within narratives and are better able to recognize moments of shifting positionality within a story.
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TL;DR: The Skool's Out initiative as mentioned in this paper was aimed at encouraging effective responses to homophobic harassment and violence in and around schools, both public and private, in New South Wales, Australia, focusing on safety and security in the school environment for all students, teachers, parents and community members.
Abstract: The Skool's Out initiative was aimed at encouraging effective responses to homophobic harassment and violence in and around schools, both public and private, in New South Wales, Australia. The focus was on safety and security in the school environment for all students, teachers, parents and community members. It was held as part of the 2002 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and comprised three events: a public Forum, an entry in the Parade and a stall for the Mardi Gras Fair Day. A report and an information card were also produced. The project was an effective way of raising community awareness of the issues of homophobic discrimination and violence in school environments.