Abstract
What might a distinct university contribution to teacher education look like? This paper tracks a group of prospective teachers making the transition from undergraduate to teacher on a one-year school-based postgraduate course. The study employs a practitioner research methodological framework where teacher learning is understood as a process of developing and evaluating self-representations. Students persistently revised a story of ‘Who I am becoming’, referenced to evolving notions of pedagogic subject knowledge. University sessions provided a platform for students to share and discuss their experiences in schools and reflect upon the research process as it occurred. Our findings suggest this approach enables student teachers to account for their learning in more nuanced and sophisticated ways where time for university-based reflection is restricted. The theoretical perspective draws on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Subjectivity is conceptualized not as fixed but persistently re-produced in an increasingly analytical developmental perspective. Data comprise reflective and analytical material produced by students at successive stages of the course, where this material provides temporal reference points for them in tracking and asserting their own development. The paper provides a methodological framework for teacher education informed by critically reflective constructions of the process through which individuals become teachers.
Highlights
The practitioner research project to be reported here tracked a group of English language and literature graduates aspiring to be secondary school teachers of English
In this paper we are concerned with what a distinct university contribution to teacher education can become
Students involved in this study engaged in a process of practitioner research, working with specific theoretical commitments to make maximum use of limited time in university
Summary
Our project was carried out at a university in the North West of England, where the circumstances of teacher education were undergoing rapid change and time with students was compressed We present the findings of a three-year research study into how university time and university-based expertise are used to complement school experience whilst providing a distinct developmental opportunity for student teachers. Underpinning this opportunity is a theoretical focus informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, on the developing teacher as a ‘subject’ of her own learning practices (Brown, Rowley, & Smith, 2014, 2015). We represent a distinct university contribution as enabling a subject to demarcate where that process of higher learning occurs and the ways in which it can be significant
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