Pedagogy Of Teacher Education Research Articles

Music as Liberal Art: the Continuing Relevance of Medieval Music Pedagogy in Teacher Education

The concepts and ideas of the medieval liberal arts continue to have important relevance in modern training music teachers. The division between a theoretical knowledge about music and a practical experience of musical activities (divisions that might be described as musica speculativa and musica practica) is also being played out in the training of public school teachers in debates regarding the concept of ‘praxialism’ in music education as can be seen in four specific areas: (1) textbooks for courses on the history of music education, (2) resources used in teaching the philosophy of music education, (3) examples of medieval music in contemporary K-12 education, and (4) the scholarship on teaching and learning as applied to music of the Middle Ages. Extending the concept of ‘praxialism’ broadly to include how we teach early music at the college level to future public school teachers may further the discussion of the relevance of medieval music in a positive direction.

Rewriting Teacher Education: Food, Love, and Community

In this article, we present the intertwining stories of a teacher education learning community who are (re) writing the current dehumanizing narrative of standardization, crisis mongering, and survival of the fittest ethos that continue to harm our learners, teachers, and communities. We argue that when teacher education candidates are repositioned from consumers of theory and methods to inquirers of practice, their collectively constructed knowledge not only illuminates locally significant issues but also disrupts institutional hierarchies. Drawing from narrative inquiry theory and a collaborative methodical approach, we—a professor and students—share our personal stories of learning together in a required teacher education course and practicum placement at a local high school. Bringing together conceptions of voice, human capability, and “place”, we provide a layered framework to understand pedagogical practices that operate to unravel systems of standardization and hyper-individualism. Our inquiry approach, public narration, and our democratization of knowledge serve as an example of teacher education pedagogy with a disruptive agenda.

Exploring TESOL teacher educators as learners and reflective scholars: A shared narrative inquiry

Recent scholarship examining how teachers and teacher educators learn to teach has advocated for a more critically oriented and better developed pedagogy of teacher education, in which teacher educator as practitioner is both in evidence and examined. Yet we currently know little about teacher educators as learners and reflective scholars open to examining their practice and research, and such inquiry is particularly limited within the scholarship in English language teacher education. This article brings together the narratives of the five co‐authors, all TESOL teacher educators based in U.S. universities who examine questions about the intersections of their identities and pedagogies. They do so as a first step toward addressing the gap in the literature regarding the self‐reflexivity of teacher educators. Identifying themes related to the intertwining of their social and professional identities and their pedagogies, their perceived legitimacy as teacher educators, and the impact of multiple contexts on their identities and pedagogies, the five co‐authors consider how they are both domesticating and domesticated by teacher education (Morgan, 2016) and argue that when teacher educators engage in shared and transparent exploration of their identities and pedagogies they are better able to identify their pedagogical blind spots and opportunities to agentively leverage their identities to challenge dominant discourses.

Developing a pedagogy of teacher education using self-study: A rhizomatic examination of negotiating learning and practice

This self-study of teacher education practices examines the processes of developing a pedagogy of teacher education. Drawing on multiple data sources (video and audio, reflective diary, and focus groups), we used concepts from rhizomatics to explore the question, “How does a teacher educator negotiate his learning and practice as he develops a pedagogy of teacher education?” We explicate the complexity of teacher education learning by showing how a conflux of interactive elements co-produce a teacher educator’s practice. This encourages us to introduce the metaphor of “orchestration” as a way of conceptualizing teacher educator practice and pedagogy.

The composition of decomposition: unpacking reading in teacher education

ABSTRACT As teacher education aims to prepare thoughtfully adaptive teachers, programs have begun to examine a practice-focused approach. One movement focuses on the pedagogy of teacher education, including how practice is unpacked, decomposed, for teacher candidates. This paper examines the pedagogy of decomposition in a U.S. based practice-focused reading course. This paper presents the Framework for Decomposition in Teacher Education. Using this tool, findings indicate decomposition is much more nuanced and complex than previously reported. Implications of this expanded view include an analytic tool for researchers and supports for teacher educators in understanding the different types of complex practice to unpack in preparing teachers.

Troubled thoughts on critical pedagogy for PETE

ABSTRACT Recently, a colleague in the PETE field claimed that I was part of a ‘backlash against’ and ‘flight from’ critical pedagogy. Moreover, he claimed that I had recanted the enthusiasm for critical pedagogy that I advocated in the 1980s and 1990s. Although he later admitted that he had ‘misread’ my work and that I was not part of a backlash I have been left wondering if, indeed, I have recanted some of my early enthusiasm for critical pedagogy. That question was the prompt for me to revisit my intellectual journey in critical pedagogy. In essence what follows is my attempt to account for how my thinking towards critical pedagogy for PETE has changed over the years, the things that influenced such changes, and the nature of my current thinking. In particular, I discuss the worrying trends related to the backlash against Enlightenment thinking manifest in the privileging of intuition, emotion and ‘gut feeling’ over reason and rationality, and the implications of these trends for critical pedagogy in teacher education.

Sharing a Vision, Sharing Practices: How Communities of Educators Improve Teaching

In this article, we summarize more than a decade of work on high-leverage practices being used in the context of science teacher preparation. We describe the challenges and insights that ultimately resulted in more robust practices, a diversified suite of tools to support these practices, expanded knowledge of our own teacher education pedagogies, and stronger bonds between our preparation program and its local network of K-12 schools. The special education community has now formulated an ambitious practice-based vision for professional preparation, and advocates will find our narratives to be a mix of cautionary tales and cause for optimism.

Experts at Being Novices: What New Teachers Can Add to Practice-based Teacher Education Efforts

ABSTRACT Understood as one approach to enacting a practice-based pedagogy of teacher education, core practices (CPs) have in the last decade become part of the discussion in general teacher education, and within particular content areas. CPs are viewed as practices that are essential to student learning and critical to novice teachers’ (NTs’) early career success. However, while these pedagogies may serve as an important scaffold to NT learning, their impact on NT practice is still mostly unknown, and efforts to develop practice-based pedagogies have largely been led by researchers, with little direct involvement by PK-12 practitioners. In this paper, we argue that more intentional and purposeful involvement of NTs in the development, selection, and refinement of CPs generates greater potential to support NT practice. Drawing upon observations of NT practice, interviews, and transcripts from meetings of our collaborative team of NTs and teacher educators, we illustrate how engaging NTs as knower-learners can contribute to the development of more responsive pedagogies of teacher education.

Contrast, Commonality, and a Call for Clarity: A Review of the Use of Core Practices in Teacher Education

In recent years, substantial resources have been invested in researching and describing the enactment of “core practices” of teaching in teacher education. This review of the literature examined more than 40 articles published between 2008 and August 2018 in an effort to determine how teacher educators are supporting teacher candidates to learn about and enact core practices of teaching. The review of the literature presented here demonstrates two distinct approaches that teacher educators use to introduce and prepare teacher candidates to enact core practices: a predesigned enactment approach and an open-design enactment approach. Our goal in identifying these two approaches is to illuminate the role and actions of teacher educators in core-practice work and to demonstrate that the decisions teacher educators make in core-practice work are complex and nuanced, and require further description than heretofore available.

Can We Say the “r” Word?: Identifying and Disrupting Colorblind Epistemologies in a Teacher Education Methods Course

Several educational researchers have critiqued the increasing marginalization of foundations coursework in teacher education programs within the United States. Situated within a teacher certification program at a Predominately White Institution without foundations courses, this self-study examined an English methods course designed to address this curricular gap and prepare candidates to teach racially and culturally diverse students attending urban schools. Through a conceptual framework grounded in critical race theory, interpretive analysis of student work relative to course material evidenced a consistent pattern of omitting themes, discussions, and reflection about race and racism. This finding–consistent with the literature on colorblind epistemologies–led me to implications about pedagogy and curriculum in teacher education centered around opportunities for candidates to develop racial literacy in their methods courses and across their programs.

Developing L2 writing teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of genre through the unfamiliar genre project

Genre-informed approaches to writing pedagogy have grown in influence and prominence over the past 25 years. Because of the crucial importance of writing teachers’ in the implementation of genre-focused instruction, more research investigating the impact of teacher education practices on teachers' genre knowledge and awareness is needed. This study examines the effect of a project designed specifically to promote L2 writing teachers pedagogical content knowledge of genre. This “Unfamiliar Genre Project” (UGP), asked teachers to research an unfamiliar genre, write their own genre example, and design curriculum to teach the genre to a multilingual student population of their choice. Drawing on data from multiple drafts of each teacher’s project, feedback from their instructor and peers, written reflections, and audio-recorded follow up interviews, this study seeks to answer the following research question: How does participation in the UGP impact teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of genre, if at all? Results show that despite some significant challenges the teachers developed specialized knowledge of the rhetorical nature of genre along with knowledge of and empathy for L2 students’ writing challenges through completing the project. Implications for future research and teacher education pedagogy are considered.

Investigating Power and Agency in Singular Diversity-Requirement Education Courses: Moving Beyond Content Analysis to Engage with Critical Praxis Analysis

Given recent pushes toward homogenous teacher education, teacher educator pedagogy necessitates modeled critical practice. The research presented here provides an analysis to ground the call for a move beyond teacher education pedagogy focused on the dissemination of knowledge about critical issues in classrooms. Utilizing two methodological traditions – namely, critical discourse analysis and phenomenography – this paper reports on the discursive moments enacted in a graduate course that sought to foster critical understandings of issues in urban science education, intending to lead to critical practices employed by this population of teacher candidates and doctoral students. Findings support that not only was there a preponderance of the dissemination model of teaching and learning, but also that the students within this course, even when working in groups, were unable to generate critical unit plans for prospectus science lessons in K-12 classrooms. Implications for this study are discussed in relation to the literature on critical teacher education.

Implementing Narrative-Pedagogical Approaches in a Teacher Education Classroom

Preservice teachers can no longer be prepared using conventional teaching approaches as these are inadequate to equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills they require to perform the tasks of teaching effectively. Teacher educators need to use new pedagogies, and narrative pedagogy is seen as a teaching method which can better prepare preservice teachers for the challenging classrooms of today. My study explored nine preservice teachers’ experiences after the enactment of a narrative pedagogical approach in one of their courses within their teacher education program. I used Ricoeur’s framework of the prefigured and configured arena of education to analyse the rich interview and reflective data which emerged. Three themes for the prefigured arena emerged: (a) feeling the sense of responsibility, (b) feeling anxious, and (c) feeling the lack of experience and confidence. Similarly, three themes were found for the configured arena: (a) learning through emotions, (b) learning through insights, and (c) learning through discussion. The preservice teachers have interpreted and discussed “lived” stories and this has shifted the way they think about teaching. The results do offer teacher educators and educational stakeholders a stepping-stone to further pedagogical insight into using narrative pedagogy in teacher education.

A Signature Pedagogy for Initial Teacher Education in Singapore

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the application of Shulman’s signature pedagogies for initial teacher education through the example of a pre-service course that promotes multidimensional thinking skills in Singapore. Multidimensional thinking emphasizes the thought processes, attitudes and abilities needed to address complex issues and problems from multiple angles and approaches. The course objectives, content, assessment format and delivery mode are premised on and reflect Shulman’s three dimensions of structures – surface, deep and implicit – as well as three kinds of pedagogies – uncertainty, engagement and formation. This illustrative case study from Singapore demonstrates the usefulness of the notion of signature pedagogies to help teacher educators design and enact learner- and learning-centered courses for pre-service teachers. Such courses transcend a narrow skills-based approach to advance the essential values, competencies and knowledge for initial teacher education in the 21st century.

Dynamicity of Transformative L2 Materials Preparation Model in EFL Classroom: Place of Critical Language Pedagogy in Teacher Education

Over the past decades, education took a critical-oriented shift. This perspective changed the role of teachers, students, and classrooms. A teacher's role changes from an instructor to a reflective practitioner, a student is considered an active agent of his/her learning, and a classroom is a place for identity endeavor. The assumption underlying such an approach conceptualizes education as a means for social control, not separated from social and cultural influences. This study sought to examine the impediments overshadowing the practicality of critical language pedagogy (CLP) and to explore English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' attitudes toward the dynamicity of transformative L2 materials preparation (TLMP) model. To undertake the study, the model was used in an M.A. language teaching methodology course with 40 prospective teachers. They were asked to write reflective journals (RJs) on several topics, followed by two class-assessments and two self-assessments, all focusing on the course procedure as well as learners' progress in attaining the intended outcomes of the course. Notably, they were requested to report their personal beliefs towards the dynamicity and functional efficacy of the proposed model and the extent to which it contributed to promoting their critical thinking skills and intellectual development. Qualitative data analysis included an in-depth content analysis of written data derived from RJs. The results attested that the participants positively appraised the practicality of the model.

Teachers’ Aspirations to Improve their Classroom Interaction

This article explores teachers’ aspirations to improve their classroom interactions with students. The classroom interaction framework of Pianta and colleagues (2012) and the motivational factors approach were combined to investigate 76 in-service lower-secondary school teachers’ perceptions of their motivations towards emotional support, classroom organization and instructional support improvement. The results showed that the teachers’ aspirations were explained by a desire to improve for students' sake. Self-growth as a professional and the desire for increased knowledge in different domains of classroom interaction were among the factors influencing teachers’ possible educational processes. Recognizing teachers’ professional values, expectations and emotions may inform teacher education pedagogies and contexts for teacher learning. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.6.9

Beyond Damage-Centered Teacher Education: Humanizing Pedagogy for Teacher Educators and Preservice Teachers

Background/Context In our best efforts to increase preservice teachers’ critical consciousness regarding the historical and contemporary inequities in the P–12 educational system and equip them to embody pedagogies and practices that counter those inequities, teacher educators often provide curricular and field experiences that reinforce the deficit mindsets that students bring to the teacher education classroom. For many social justice-oriented teacher educators, our best intentions to create humanizing experiences for future teachers can have harmful results that negatively impact preservice teachers’ ability to successfully teach culturally diverse students in a multitude of learning contexts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In this article, we propose a humanizing pedagogy for teacher education that is informed by our experiences as K–12 teachers and teacher educators in a university-based teacher preparation program. We focus on the general questions, How can university-based teacher preparation programs embody and enact a humanizing pedagogy? and What role can curriculum play in advancing a humanizing pedagogy in university-based teacher preparation programs? Research Design In this conceptual article, we theorize a humanizing pedagogy for teacher education and propose a process of becoming asset-, equity-, and social justice-oriented teachers. This humanizing pedagogy represents a strengths-based approach to teaching and learning in the teacher preparation classroom. Conclusions/Recommendations We propose core tenets of a humanizing pedagogy for teacher education that represent an individual and collective effort toward critical consciousness for preservice teachers and also for teacher educators. If university-based teacher education programs are committed to cultivating the development of asset-, equity-, and social justice-oriented preservice teachers, the commitments to critical self-reflection, resisting binaries, and enacting ontological and epistemological plurality need to be foundational to program structure, curricula alignment, and instructional practice.

Supporting Clinical Practice Through Rehearsals

Rehearsing is a form of pedagogy in teacher education to prepare pre-service teachers with instructional practices before live enactments in a classroom. This qualitative study used grounded theory to explore how rehearsals impacted five elementary literacy courses in a university teacher education program. Data comprised of prolonged observations, video recordings of rehearsals, and surveys. The process of coding and re-coding resulted in findings that reflect rehearsing provided Teacher Candidates with confidence with lesson presentation, improved understanding of literacy content, and understand how to make in-the-moment instructional decisions.

The role of reflexivity in the emergence and expression of teachers’ identities in teaching primary school mathematics

The advent of a democratically-elected government in South Africa in 1994 disrupted the erstwhile synchrony between the schooling system, teacher education system, curriculum and pedagogy. Yet many South African teachers continue to express their teacher identities much like they did prior to 1994. The explanations posited for why this is the case tend to focus on systemic arguments. Notwithstanding their importance, these arguments render teachers as products of the social system. In this paper, it is argued that reflexivity is central to the emergence and expression of teachers’ identities. Reflexivity refers to the mental capacity to consider oneself in relation to one’s social contexts and visa versa. The modes of reflexivity of a grade 3 teacher are examined to demonstrate how she mediates the social structures that condition the emergence and expression of her primary mathematics teacher identity. Drawing on a social realist analysis of narrative data and classroom observations, the paper traces her identity historically into the present. The paper suggests that over the years her concerns in the world, and modes of reflexivity, have changed. These are key to understanding the decisions she makes in the classroom and how she deals with the social structures that condition the manner in which she expresses her role as teacher, that is, her primary mathematics teacher identity. The shift in her primary mathematics teacher identity has led to her reproducing the old roles of the teacher as exemplified in the pre-1994 curriculum. While the paper is located in the South African context, the implications for teacher education have international significance.

Negotiating a common language and shared understanding about core practices: The case of discussion

This paper illustrates how creating shared specifications of core practices and making the practice of teacher education public allowed members of the Core Practice Consortium to work through tensions created by institutional, subject-matter, and grade level differences. This supported the negotiation of shared understandings around core practice and teacher education pedagogies. Building shared understanding and common language did not mean standardizing practice or language. Rather, it involved constructing processes that allowed teacher educators to understand the practice of others and grow from that understanding by adopting and modifying tools and concepts so they fit the demands of their own context.