Culture and Teacher Training (original) (raw)
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Questioning the Problematic Nature of School Culture in Elementary Teacher Education
Journal of Culture and Values in Education , 2019
This paper explores the role of school culture as embodied by elementary teacher preparation in relationship to humanizing pedagogies. Further, it explores how the school culture of elementary teacher preparation can be experienced as an oppressive force towards identity formation and humanization for students who position themselves outside of the conventional norms of the field and traditionally accepted membership criteria. A brief play in three acts shares anecdotes from students who consider themselves in the margins of elementary teacher preparation with recommendations for teacher educators seeking to humanize the elementary teacher preparation curriculum and experience to be inclusive of all students.
The Cultural Work of Teacher Education
Theory Into Practice, 2017
Engaging teacher education as cultural work positions teacher educators and pre-service teachers as cultural workers. Cultural workers foreground the cultural complexities of their situated experiences while aiming to produce cultures that transform prevailing inequalities and injustices in public education. Doctoral students are also cultural workers translating the world of academia and their role in it as they learn to educate teacher candidates. How doctoral candidates engage in this cultural work depends greatly on the degree to which their faculty mentors are able to reveal the contradictions and opportunities for expansive learning that co-exist within schools of education and individual departments such as curriculum and learning. This paper looks at this conundrum from the perspectives of a doctoral student and a senior faculty member.
Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, 2011
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the meanings and implications of communities of practice; to discuss how socio‐cultural theories and social learning improve pre‐service teachers' understanding of their profession; and to begin a dialogue on how teachers in training can benefit from having a community of practitioners guiding them. The aim here is also to provide a critical re‐evaluation of the state of teacher training in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by looking particularly at social and experiential learning.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the author reports on a one‐year study case study designed to inform how communities of practice can shape the professional formation of pre‐service teachers enrolled in a teacher training program in the UAE.FindingsResults indicated that the process of establishing communities of practice around the teachers improves their professional development, however, the danger of emulating poor pedagogical practices modeled...
European Journal of Social Science Education and Research
This research has been done in the field of Education, Sociology and Social and Organizational Psychology and forms part of a larger complementary research program. We cite: 1) Studies carried out with secondary level and university educators seeking to contrast psychosocial and other factors related to teacher training that influence teaching practice and teaching identity, versus feelings of failure, burnout and fatalism. 2) Research with teachers from different countries (Argentina, Spain, France and Paraguay) seeking to observe the weight that the macro-context has on issues that both teachers and their institutions face at the micro-level. 3) Currently, we are continuing this research, though this time analyzing the shared representations that university students have of the most urgent problems their professors face. The methodology utilized was quantitative-qualitative: questionnaires, semi-structured surveys including open phrases which allowed actors to speak freely and, in...
2017
As our sociopolitical context evolves, student populations and teaching expectations become more complex. Teachers who entered the profession under one pretense are finding themselves faced with an entirely different set of circumstances: demographic shifts, increasingly diverse learners, curricular mandates, high-stakes accountability, technological advancements, globalization—the list continues. As the educational environment evolves, so must teacher identities. Contemporary teachers are tasked with creating an entirely new lens from which to develop new techniques and design more complex lessons to reach the diversity of students in their classrooms. This chapter traces one teacher’s evolving identity and practice amidst the changing sociopolitical context of education. The author’s autobiographical narrative depicts the impact of influential mentors, transformative moments in international teacher travel experiences, vignettes from 28 years as a classroom teacher, and specific i...
Pedagogies of Developing Teacher Identity
Research on student teacher learning has identified development of a professional identity as an inevitable focus in teacher education. Accordingly, many teacher education programs have come to include attention for the development of student teachers' professional identities, but not much research has been done on the (effects of) pedagogies that have such development as their goal. Pedagogies that aim at developing teacher identity share common elements, such as the view that developing a professional identity is an ongoing process and the view that developing a professional identity as a teacher unmistakably includes a combination of personal and professional (including contextual) aspects. This chapter describes pedagogies that focus particularly on the development of student teachers' and beginning teachers' professional identity, from different angles, but sharing the views as described above. First, we describe two pedagogies that have "key incidents" in student teachers' development as focus point. Second, we report on the "subject-autobiography," in which student teachers describe and develop how their identity is
SpringerBriefs in Education, 2020
Graduate qualities, also known as graduate attributes, are a universalising and common feature in universities (Universities Australia, 2011). The intention is for graduate qualities to be addressed throughout an institution's curricula across all disciplines. Arguably, cultural competence is one of the most value-laden of all graduate qualities, having its origins in the fields of health, human services and education where various frameworks have been developed. The terms 'culture' and 'competence', which are derived from the concept, are complex ideas with no consensus on either term. This paper will focus specifically on the challenges of developing curricular that seeks to embed the graduate quality of 'cultural competence' into a first-year, mandatory Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Unit of Study with a large student cohort. The paper illustrates how the term 'cultural competence' was deconstructed using concept mapping and analysis by a team of diverse teacher educators. While an agreed-upon singular definition of cultural competence was not reached, all team members agreed that cultural competence is a social justice imperative in education. The intent of this paper is not to provide a formulaic, one-size-fits-all approach but rather reflect upon the multi-layered and complex nature of the task of building a future teacher workforce that is engaging in the continuous process of becoming culturally competent in an ever-increasing diverse world.
An exploration of the impact of school culture on professional forming of beginning teacher 2016.pdf
Doctorate Studies Essay, 2016
New teachers have joined a profession burdened under the weight of state pressure of external accountability and a lack of autonomy consistent with a culture of bureaucratic professionalism (Berkel & Knies, 2013) where many argue the balance is tipped in favour of de- professionalisation (Wits 2005 pp. 33). The beginning teacher today must grapple with two discourses (Sach, 2001) as they seek to discover and assert their own professional identity. The first discourse; is one of accountability and conformity that leaves little room for a traditional personal concept of being a professional. The other discourse is an emerging one of a democratic professional where teachers are community facilitators and leaders of learning and where their professionalism is defined by how effectively they can deploy their specialised knowledge in a collaborative setting. In the absence of personal professional autonomy and with a deficit of national collective autonomy, the challenge for Headteachers is to build a school with a collaborative culture. In the absence of this sort of culture a school runs the risk of preventing their trainees from fully professionalising as it has been shown that teachers training in schools with a managerialism dominant culture are more likely to less reflective and accept top down policy uncritically. When a beginning teacher trains in a school with a highly collaborative culture they are more likely to show characteristics of the progressive democratic professional. This is the sort of teacher that will be able to use discretionary judgement confidently and engage in the type of professionalism Freidson (2001) said was essential for the protection of public work.