Changing Partnerships in Teacher Education:

Researching school practice

Alaster Scott Douglas

Curriculum challenge: Being a curriculum thinker (HEA Education event)

7th April 2014

In a world of uncertainty they [universities]

do retain one vitally important principle

that marks them out from any other

institution in contemporary society and that

is their commitment to what we might call

‘the contestability of knowledge’.

(Furlong 2013)

My research in teacher education

A secondary school research study: How do secondary school subject departments contribute to the learning of student teachers?

I guess teaching isn’t the kind of thing where you tell somebody this is what you do and then they go and do it, and it works. It is much more imprecise. (School History mentor – 23 January)

I aspire to listen to them, and to listen quite hard to them … I aspire to ask questions rather than just give answers, and to try and make sense of what they are doing and why. (University History tutor – 14 August)

Everyone is so supportive, everyone is so nice and everyone always starts with positives and they are always really, really, really understanding. But each teacher does have a certain style and it is hard to know how to reconcile that. By doing something that one teacher has advised me to do in another teacher's class, she will be a bit kind of like – ‘oh I don't think you should do this so much’ – then it's hard to know how to develop your own style, so that it fits in with everyone else's styles.

(MFL student teacher – 22nd February)

A lack of opportunity to recognise the ‘contestability of knowledge’:

Such a process is likely to feel comfortable for the participants but does not fully explore the opportunities offered by dissonant perspectives (Hutchinson, 2011, p. 189) We now need to find ways to make these tensions the subject of discussion and debate within our partnerships

(Spendlove et al., 2010, p. 75)

A primary school research study:

Student teacher learning opportunities in the primary school setting

An interventionist research methodology:

Developmental Work Research (DWR)

I’ve only just thought about this because you [researcher] are making me think about it. (University tutor – 16 December)

I am not particularly thinking about their role [as a student teacher] carefully enough. (Teacher – 16 December)

You have to make an agreement between you if you are observing one another for example, what the purpose of the observation is and what is going to happen after the observation.

(Teacher – 16 December)

Current Research Activity

Developing expert learners of teaching and learning

Santander Scholarship University Award: Addressing Learner Variety in School Classrooms: Differentiated teaching in UK and USA classrooms

References Douglas, A.S. (2014) Student Teachers in School Practice:

An analysis of learning opportunities. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Furlong, J. (2013) The Discipline of Education: Rescuing the ‘university project’, Learning to Teach Part 1, HEA.

Hutchinson, S. (2011) Boundaries and Bricolage: Examining the Roles of Universities and Schools in Student Teacher Learning’, European Journal of Teacher Education, 34(2), 177-91.

Spendlove, D., Howes, A. and Wake, G. (2010) ‘Partnerships in Pedagogy: Refocusing of Classroom Lenses’, European Journal of Teacher Education, 33(1), 65-77.