The subject and the setting: re-imagining opportunities for primary teachers’ subject knowledge development on school-based teacher education courses

Rupert Knight

doi:10.1080/13540602.2017.1334642

Abstract

The landscape of teacher education is undergoing significant change in many countries and this is often associated with a move towards greater school involvement in the preparation of teachers. One aspect of teaching expertise that is particularly challenging for primary student-teachers is the development of subject knowledge across a wide range of subject areas. Subject knowledge for teaching is multi-faceted and is itself linked to broader questions about curriculum and the content that should be taught. It is timely, therefore, to consider how subject knowledge development might be reconceived in a school setting and how university and school staff might work in new ways with student-teachers to this end. Communities of practice theory is employed as a framework for analysing the learning environment and evaluating these future possibilities. It is argued that collaboration with peers, with their mentoring teachers and with a wider professional community is an under-exploited way of integrating facets of subject knowledge: giving this time and status through structured activities might be a particularly fruitful form of hybrid working in situ. The paper concludes by proposing four principles to underpin this sort of practice.

Highlights

This paper is an attempt to reconcile two current developments with relevance for teacher preparation
At primary level, it is telling that the latest National Curriculum (DfE, 2013) emphasises discrete subjects and higher age-related expectations, in terms of arithmetic and grammar and that plans have been announced for a statutory times tables test (DfE, 2016b). In these different ways, subject knowledge is foregrounded, a simultaneous development is a move towards school-based teacher preparation in many countries (Ellis, 2010; Zeichner, 2010)
My intention in exploring these two strands is to come to some form of synthesis that offers a framework of principles for a new set of practices that might be explored and enacted by student teachers, university tutors and mentors in school

Summary

Introduction

This paper is an attempt to reconcile two current developments with relevance for teacher preparation. At primary level, it is telling that the latest National Curriculum (DfE, 2013) emphasises discrete subjects and higher age-related expectations, in terms of arithmetic and grammar and that plans have been announced for a statutory times tables test (DfE, 2016b) While, in these different ways, subject knowledge is foregrounded, a simultaneous development is a move towards school-based teacher preparation in many countries (Ellis, 2010; Zeichner, 2010). As with many aspects of teacher expertise, there is a distinct possibility that subject knowledge priorities may be understood differently by school-based teacher educators; Brown, Rowley and Smith (2016) warn of a school focus on immediate classroom practice and centralised guidance, for example Considering this issue Van Driel & Berry (2010) are among those calling for the examination, analysis and modelling of aspects of subject knowledge in school as well as at university and Ellis (2007a) puts forward some valuable principles to underpin future practices. Though the specific context is an English one, these ideas have wider significance, due in no small part to the ‘policy borrowing’ among English-speaking countries identified by Furlong (2013, p.6)

The nature of knowledge in schools

Subject knowledge for teaching

Looking afresh at subject knowledge in school

Findings

Communities of practice as an analytical tool