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CHILDFORUM EARLY CHILDHOOD NETWORK, NEW ZEALAND

Bend Me, Shape Me, Anyway You Want Me: Constructing Teacher Identities Across Different

Learning Paradigms

Janet Moles and Ninetta Santoro

NZ Research in Early Childhood Education Journal Volume 16, 2013, pp. 29 - 44

This article discusses one key finding from a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of overseas-born, ethnic minority early childhood pre-service teachers in New Zealand. Data were collected through interviews with recently graduated Bachelor of Teaching (Early Childhood Education) teachers and early childhood lecturers. Until they were supported to incorporate their cultural knowledges into their new learning, most graduate participants found there was little to which they could relate in the pedagogies and content of their teacher education courses. This article makes recommendations for the planning, preparation and delivery of early childhood teacher education.

NZRECE Journal, Vol. 16, 2013 9

© ChildForum 2013 http://www.childforum.com

Original Research

Bend Me, Shape Me, Anyway You Want Me: Constructing Teacher Identities Across Different Learning Paradigms

Janet Moles1 and Ninetta Santoro2 1Deakin University, Australia

2Strathclyde University, Scotland

Abstract

This article discusses one key finding from a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of overseas-born, ethnic minority early childhood pre-service teachers in New Zealand. Data were collected through interviews with recently graduated Bachelor of Teaching (Early Childhood Education) teachers and early childhood lecturers. Until they were supported to incorporate their cultural knowledges into their new learning, most graduate participants found there was little to which they could relate in the pedagogies and content of their teacher education courses. This article makes recommendations for the planning, preparation and delivery of early childhood teacher education.

Key words: Teacher education; early childhood; ethnic minority teachers; critical reflection.

Introduction

This article reports on a qualitative study which investigated the experiences of eight ethnic minority, early childhood pre-service teachers and three teacher education lecturers in New Zealand. The purpose of the study was twofold: to identify the challenges faced by student teachers whose experiences of teaching and learning were different from those practised in New Zealand early childhood teacher education; to investigate the strategies adopted by students or lecturers that contributed to the success of these students. Findings from the study showed that the power of the hegemonic mainstream was such that some participants actively tried to block their existing cultural knowledges and understandings and learn new material without reference to prior learning or experiences.

In this article, we discuss the challenges faced by ethnic minority, overseas-born early childhood students in New Zealand teacher education and the practices that contributed to the successful completion of their courses. We contend that by increasing their understandings of culturally authentic practice, teacher education lecturers and practicum supervising teachers could significantly improve ethnic minority students’ learning and lead to pre-service teachers taking up professional teacher identities. We also make recommendations for

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teacher education practices and suggest that different perspectives about teaching and learning be made more prominent in course content and delivery.

Background to the study

As claimed by Ping (2002), teacher identity is shaped by many factors and the concept of what it means to be a teacher can vary according to culture. Zembylas (2003) however, claims that constructing teacher identities is often a challenge for students and beginning teachers because there are tensions between their socio-culturally derived values and beliefs and those that are taught as the ‘correct’ model. For example, Aitken (2006) found in her study of newly qualified early childhood teachers in Auckland, that the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture of New Zealand largely determines the values, practices, norms and organisational structure of early childhood settings. She suggests that because teachers’ professional identities are shaped in part by their cultural understandings of teaching and learning, New Zealand-born teachers are likely to construct their identities from an Anglo-Celtic perspective. However, teachers born overseas might work from different understandings of what it means to be a teacher.

Each student cohort is likely to include people whose understandings of teaching and learning differ significantly from the pedagogies and practices of the hegemonic mainstream. In recent years, the diversity of student cohorts in teacher education courses has increased to reflect the cultural complexities of Australian and New Zealand societies (Kersey & Masterton, 2011). This means that lecturers are expected to deliver courses to cohorts of students who bring to their learning, an increasingly diverse range of cultural and experiential backgrounds. As pointed out by Miller, Kostogriz and Gearon (2009), this may mean that increasing numbers of students will require guidance, support, or learning strategies in order to make new knowledge more accessible and meaningful.

It is probable that most teachers, particularly those teaching in Australia or New Zealand, will practice in multicultural communities. Ping (2002) claims that the understanding of what and who a teacher is can vary considerably within different cultures. Such understandings are integrated within the multiple identities of the ‘self’, a term which according to Pratt, Kelly and Wong (1998), does not exist as an entity outside of the social context. The self exists only as it relates to others; that is individuals, groups, and collectives. Moreover, there cannot be just one image of early childhood development and learning and as suggested by Kukari (2004), the existing beliefs of pre-service teachers are an important factor in the construction of a beginning teacher’s professional identity. Identities, behaviour, social order and social consistency, are therefore co-dependent, as none can exist in autonomous isolation. Hence, all identities are constructed within relational contexts (Pratt, et al.,1998). As pointed out by Kukari (2011), in the early childhood sector there can be

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significant differences between cultural understandings of teaching, what it is to be a teacher, and which pedagogies are valuable. However, with the impact of globalisation and the proliferation of multiculturalism in most communities, it is increasingly important that pedagogies and teaching practices reflect the worldviews and individual understandings of learners.

According to Kukari (2011), the construction of teacher identity involves the positioning of self within teacher discourses. Where there is little convergence between a teacher’s understanding of what it is to be a teacher and the dominant societal expectations of a teacher, it is likely that teacher identities will be fragmented (Kukari, 2004), multiple, and complex. Thus, critical reflection has been suggested as an appropriate professional tool for teachers and preservice teachers to engage and re-engage with personal and professional narratives of self. This can assist with the construction of clearer understandings about their positionalities and engagement with education discourses as well as with students. Similarly, Dray and Wisneski (2011) suggest that openness to critical self-reflection assists teachers to consider the individualities and different perspectives of students. Thus, as Radnor (2002) points out, critical self-reflection is a powerful tool for improving practice because it assists with the construction of factors that have influenced and shaped personal and professional understandings. This can be an effective way for pre-service teachers to confront the tensions and contradictions of different knowledges and perspectives about teaching and learning in the development of their professional identities.

The study

The qualitative study, from which this article is drawn, focussed on gaining an in-depth understanding of participants’ individual experiences of teacher education in New Zealand. Thus, data collection was limited to a small number of participants with whom effective working relationships could be developed and in-depth data gathered.

To recruit participants, letters of introduction were sent to 85 randomly selected preschool centres in the region of Wellington, New Zealand. Eight recently graduated early childhood teachers and three early childhood lecturers were randomly selected from the fifteen who responded to the invitations to participate in the study. The two selection criteria for the graduate participants in this study were to have been born and raised overseas in a culture significantly different from that of the mainstream Anglo-Celtic culture of New Zealand, and had graduated from a New Zealand Bachelor or Diploma of Teaching (Early Childhood Education) within three years of the interviews being conducted. As the context of the recently graduate participants narrative interviews related to their experience in teacher education courses, they are referred to as pre-service teachers when discussing their data



The graduate participants, whose interview data contributed to this study, were born and educated in a range of Asian and Pacific nations, including China, Japan, Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands and Niue. Three had been international students who had come to New Zealand specifically to study, whilst the others were already living in the country but had been raised and educated in their country of birth. One of the international participants was male. The graduate participants varied in age from early 20s to one woman in her late 50s. However, the majority were around mid to late 30s.

Semi-structured interviews were used to encourage the participants to tell their stories about their experiences as ethnic minority students, or as lecturers of ethnic minority students. Although interviews for each respective group of participants were conducted using the same question format, the use of narrative inquiry allowed each interviewee to talk about the topics most important to them and to tell stories that they felt were relevant and that contextualised their experiences. According to Letherby (2003), interviews presented in an open and reflexive form can allow the voice of each participant to be heard. Kohler-Riessman (2008) refers to narrative as primarily relating to lived experience and personal life stories. This highlights the significance of narrative in the education of teachers because it provides a method for close, in-depth interpretation of the process of learning and teaching, and learning through teaching (Watson, 2006). Narrative inquiry is therefore, consistent with a poststructuralist approach to research, which accepts different perspectives, knowledges and understandings with equal validity.

The graduate teachers were interviewed twice to enable further reflection to occur after the initial conversations. In the first interview, topics for discussion included reflection on course content, their lecturers’ teaching styles, the learning environment, and their practicum experiences. The second interviews, which were held approximately one month after the first, elicited information about their practicum placements and explored their perceptions of the challenges and highpoints during their courses. Within these topics, matters such as acknowledgement of prior learning, beliefs and values within the programme were discussed. In some interviews the nature and outcomes of any personal changes that participants felt they had experienced resulting from their teacher education programmes, were highlighted.

A grounded theory approach was used to analyse the data. Transcripts were read and re-read to identify the emerging patterns and themes and an “open coding” approach was developed (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 78) in order to categorise and name the patterns that emerged. Areas of commonality were identified by highlighting sections of text using colour to indicate themes and topics. This process helped to reveal patterns in the stories. Significant events, issues or perspectives were noted and the complexities and implications of the participants’ experiences were revealed. In this way, the impact of social relationships and the participants' beliefs and practices were revealed through



the telling of their stories. Of interest, were the commonalities that occurred in the emerging patterns and themes of the lecturers and graduates because both sets of participants identified several of the same issues, particularly communication and relationships. Other themes were practicum experiences (professional teaching experience) and developing teacher identities. Communication was a theme that recurred throughout the analysis because challenges with language, verbal interactions, and written material influenced the other aspects of the participants’ experiences. However, differences in cultural understandings about communication were the most significant factor in shaping the graduate participants’ experiences and their relationships with their peers in class and with associate (supervising) teachers during practicum.

Learning in different paradigms

In New Zealand, the majority of children start primary school around their fifth birthday, although the legal age for formal education is six years of age. Thus, most early childhood teacher education courses prepare students to teach children from birth to five years, with some courses covering birth to eight years. However, the majority of courses focus is on play-based pedagogies. Most participants in this study reported being introduced to pedagogies, teaching practices, and theories that were very different from those they had previously experienced because they were more familiar with teacher-directed practices. Moreover, the learning material they were given generally reflected White Anglo-Celtic perspectives, to which many found it difficult to relate.

The graduate participants in this study came to teacher education with a range of different understandings and experiences of teaching and learning as well as a range of views about teaching young children. All pre-service teachers are likely to bring their own preconceived ideas of what good teaching looks like, with most having been exposed to a variety of positive and negative teaching role models. Hence, interpretations and application of theory to practice can look very different according to individual knowledges, understandings and experiences. Naomi, a participant raised in the Cook Islands said:

The lecturers tell me to look at how the teachers are working with the children at the kindergarten. And I thought, ‘but they didn’t do anything for the children. They’re lazy’, I’m thinking. ‘They’re not working with the children or anything…they should be helping the children instead of just sitting around. They’re not teaching them anything.’

Naomi believes that the role of a teacher is to actively help children. However, when observing the teacher, she did not see the behaviour she was expecting to see. It is likely that the teacher, in keeping with common practice in New Zealand, was avoiding direct intervention in the children’s activities in order to promote independence. This may have been in conflict with the practices Naomi was used to in the Cook Islands and it could have seemed as though



there was no effective teaching taking place. Thus, it is likely that the lecturers who had told her to observe how the teachers worked with the children were unaware that this would not help her to understand the pedagogies and practices she was expected to learn. As Cannella (2004) claims, the practices and understandings of cultural minorities are frequently disregarded by the cultural majority

According to Zembylas (2003), frequent and on-going demands to adopt different practices can cause students to believe that their understandings are of less value than those of the dominant majority. This can result in reduced self-belief. Therefore, it appeared that some participants tried to disregard what they already knew about learning and education and to learn new material without reference to prior learning or experiences. Naomi articulated this when she said:

But it’s hard for me, because the things I knew are not here! So I try to put my past out of my head – I just can’t think about it.

Naomi’s statement indicates that she had no scaffold in place to support her to acquire new learning, whilst keeping her existing knowledge available to her as a foundation. Scaffolding is a concept developed from Vygotsky (1962) by Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976). In this theory, an experienced teacher guides the learner to achieve the next level of knowledge by constructing a cognitive scaffold to act as a support, whilst the new learning takes place. The scaffold is gradually removed as the learner gains competence. McWilliams (2008) states that learned patterns can interfere with the acquisition of new knowledge. This is particularly the case when the new learning contexts are unfamiliar and the learner is not supported to make connections between the new context and the knowledge they bring with them to their learning. For example, graduate participant Julie who was born in China, found group-work uncomfortable:

In small groups sometimes they might say, ‘Do you want to share [your thoughts]?’ No, I don’t really want to show others sometimes because it’s completely different.

Julie’s reluctance to share her perspectives and understandings suggests that she felt marginalised because she had different knowledges and understandings. It is also possible that she thought there was a risk that other students might dismiss or misunderstand her views. This suggests that she felt disempowered by her minority status in the group. Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) refer to the link between identity and agency and suggest that these concepts are inextricably linked. This was consistent with the reflection of teacher education lecturer, Natalie. She said:

And I have had some students … that won’t debate in class because they don’t see it as appropriate to share their skills and knowledge because they see that as being disrespectful to me. So I take the opportunity during group work to wander around and to say to



them, in this course, I really want to hear your views and it’s all right to share your views with the teacher.

Natalie’s interpretation of her students’ reluctance to share was shaped by her understandings about different cultural perspectives and the relationships between teachers and students. She managed this by offering the students opportunities to think about the skills and knowledge they bring to class.

Many of the graduate participants in this study perceived that the cultural knowledges and understandings they brought with them to their learning in New Zealand held less value than the perspectives of the hegemonic mainstream. The following excerpt of data from Holly illustrates this:

When you are little you are still learning numbers and writing … I suppose it’s different for me, but I can’t just go my way. I can’t put my Chinese way into here.

Pre-service teachers were expected to make sense of the course materials, regardless of their previous experience or existing understandings about teaching and learning. It appears that material is usually presented from White Anglo-Celtic perspectives and if written from different positions, it is generally plainly stated as an ‘alternative perspective’. There seemed to be little that would support the student teachers’ learning and help them to better understand the concepts and practices taught in their degree. This had the effect of marginalising some students because they were unfamiliar with the content as well as the delivery methods. For example, Naomi said:

I thought it would be easy, just like home – that’s what my thoughts were, until I came into the class and study and I see they’re a mile ahead of where I am. All things are way different, the system is way different from the Cook Islands where I came from, even though I’ve been teaching, it’s different all together…nothing is the same as where I came from…

Naomi’s statement suggests that she felt her prior knowledge had been devalued because she was unable to utilise it in the course. Lecturers often assumed that the pedagogies that were effective for New Zealand born pre-service teachers would also suit students from non-Western education systems. These assumptions however, were inaccurate and created significant challenges for ethnic minority student teachers for whom the practices were unfamiliar. This was illustrated by teacher education lecturer Glenda, when she discussed the challenges students face when viewing early childhood through a new lens.

I took them for some curriculum workshops, some visual arts and science workshops, and everything I did I was doing to model ideas of things they could be doing with children … And I thought I’d made it really clear to them. I’d go around the groups as they worked...modelling, telling them that I was modelling the way I



wanted them to work. But it took several workshops before they realised what I meant. …

Glenda had made the point several times that she was modelling for students, but it was clear that the students were unaware of what it was she specifically wanted them to learn in her workshops. She was frustrated that students did not understand what she was showing, or modelling for them. However, it is possible that her students were experiencing difficulty with the exploratory and interpretative teaching practice they were experiencing in New Zealand because they were more familiar with a transmission-based approach to teaching and learning.

Many participants in this study report that because the content of their teacher education courses contained little that was familiar to them, they often assumed that their New Zealand born classmates found the work easy. This carried through to practicum placements where some participants articulated feelings of isolation, confusion and low self-esteem. Holly, originally from China, explained that she believed her performance to be inferior to other pre-service teachers who were on practicum at the same early childhood centre:

Yeah, I normally would go home and think ‘oh why’, because there’s other students doing practicum with me and they’re doing well, better than I’m doing. And I think ‘oh dear what am I doing?’ But it’s really hard for me.

Korthagen (2001) suggests that pre-service teachers should be encouraged to reflect on both positive and negative learning experiences from their past because this can assist in building knowledge. Additionally, Korthagen, Loughran and Russell (2006) and Nolan (2008) claim that learning from teaching practice is most effective when students are encouraged to critically reflect and are prompted by questioning. This should then provide a scaffold for working through the process of deconstructing practical experiences and linking such experiences to theory. As Hedges and Lee (2010) point out, the way that Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996) is implemented in New Zealand means that academic learning is not immediately evident because much of the focus is on factors that create positive learning environments such as well-being, communication, belonging, contribution and exploration (Ministry of Education, 1996). Hedges and Lee (2010) suggest that teachers have become preoccupied with these environmental and emotional aspects of the curriculum, perhaps at the expense of making academic learning visible in programmes. Thus, pre-service teachers who are more familiar with an academic, subject-based system could find it difficult to understand how children learn subjects such as maths, literacy or science from the free-choice environment, as these subjects are not clearly explained from a teaching perspective. Hence, most participants in this study were unable to make sense of the practices they observed and were likely to revert to the familiar practices and understandings.



It appeared that Julie, who was born in China, did not understand the value of play-based pedagogy. She said, ‘The teachers are putting everything out and the children are making a big mess. I say,’ should I tidy up?’ This suggests that pre-service teachers whose knowledge and experience of teaching is different from that of the dominant cultural majority, may need those aspects of early childhood education that are assumed by New Zealand born teachers to be valuable, made explicit. Thus as Bates (2005) claims, it is likely that some teacher education programmes continue to reflect modernist views, possibly because of political discourses that continue to dominated by traditional Anglo-Celtic perspectives, rather than poststructuralist approaches that accept different worldviews and knowledges (Foucault, 1980). This can mean that ethnic minority students need additional information about theory and practice in order to experience success in professional experience placements. When students often need to request extra help with their studies, it can feel problematic for them. As Hilliard, Wong and Barrera (2004) state, persistent challenges and fear can create a sense of despair and an acceptance of being less able than others.

Implementing child-centred pedagogies during practicum appeared to be particularly challenging for the graduate participants. Most of them took almost their entire teacher education course to be able to make the shift to different paradigms of learning and teaching. As Levin and He (2008) state, it can take several years for changes to thinking to be internalised. However, those participants in this study who were able to incorporate aspects of their existing cultural understandings and knowledge into their learning found they could adapt more easily. For example, Naomi said:

Sometimes I think about the theories like Piaget and Vygotsky, and I think about my grandmother. If I come across Vygotsky I always think about my grandmother and how she looked after us, sitting down and talking to me, and she always showed me how to look after myself, and how to use fresh coconut juice to make my hair soft. I never thought about putting it [the sociocultural approach to teaching and learning] into my practice…so the life over here might be in a different way, but using that might be a model for me, to go ahead and participate and give to the others [parents at her early childhood centre] in a different way.

Naomi had isolated her own cultural knowledge from her new learning for much of her course because she had considered it to be of little relevance. However, she eventually recognised the significance of how she was taught the knowledge and skills considered important in the Cook Islands and began to contextualise her new skills and knowledge about teaching and learning. This gave her confidence and appeared to re-affirm her self-belief and emergent professional identities.



Developing connectedness between cultural knowledges and understandings, teacher identities and new learning

As Korthagen Loughran and Russell (2006) claim, in order to apply theory to teaching practice, students need to develop their understandings of theories in a meaningful way. Therefore, teacher education and teacher educators should be wary of promoting discourses that solely reflect dominant Anglo-Celtic values and understandings. Teaching experience should provide opportunities for students to build on existing knowledges and understandings and use these as a position from which to construct new knowledge. It is therefore, a responsibility of teacher educators to incorporate different perspectives in teacher education curriculum in order to reduce the power of dominant discourses and create opportunities for the generation of new knowledge by culturally diverse students teachers.

Persistent challenges and fear can create a sense of despair and an acceptance of being less able than others (Hilliard, et al., 2004). Karen, an early childhood lecturer supported this view:

…I’ve often felt that some of our ethnic minority students begin with a strong sense of self-belief but then become trampled by the constant demands for changes in their academic, practical and language performance, as well as by the confident, advantaged younger New Zealand European students so that they eventually get to a point where they either walk away or find the strength to fight back. I like to really try to create a sense of empowerment for them to achieve this…

As Karen noted, the different knowledge bases of pre-service teachers highlighted the advantaged position of her New Zealand European students. With her comment about the amount of change overseas-born students are expected to make, she suggests that the programme reflects Western European perspectives of education and appeared concerned at the equity issues this created. This led her to be critical of the way that the New Zealand educational system responded to differences in understandings or perspectives about teaching and learning. The inequity that she saw reflected the frustrations of several pre-service teacher participants in this study who believed there was disproportionate attention given to the performance of ethnic minority student teachers in comparison to Western students. Karen referred to constant demands for ethnic minority pre-service teachers to make changes to their understandings and practices.

Participants in this study appeared to feel that their knowledge, competencies and understandings had little or no place in New Zealand teacher education courses. As a result, they felt invisible. Naomi told a story about how she used her cultural knowledge from the Cook Islands to understand programme planning:



I went home [from practicum]. I remember something, how I was taught to make tīvaevae [traditional Cook Islands art form using fabrics to create designs]. That only came into my mind when my associate [supervising teacher] explained to me things, like just how I was taught to make tīvaevae and I went home and I looked through the bits and pieces my mother left for me, like how we do like turtle cutting, how we were taught, and I start doing this and that they go step by step, and I say ‘that’s what my lecturer was saying’…and then I do the whole thing right through, and this is why the plan is, and it comes out to a whole pattern.

Pre-service teachers often need prompting, maybe even to be given permission to use their past experience and knowledge that might seem unrelated to course content, when learning new material. When Naomi was prompted by a supervising teacher, she made connections to her cultural knowledge, and then made the connection to the course content delivered by her lecturer. This made concepts more meaningful to her, so that she could apply them to her teaching practice. As Nolan (2008) explains, a process of guided reflection can be helpful in supporting student teachers. She found that when students were given support to articulate what they knew already, they began to think at a more critical level and this strengthened the learning process. Mele, who was born and raised in Samoa said:

Sometimes I did have the chance when I was doing my writing, to bring in my own understandings, like relating my understanding to who I am so like relating to the theories and having that connection with that….

This excerpt of interview data indicates the importance of pre-service teachers being able to build on prior knowledge in order to acquire new knowledge. Furthermore, by providing student teachers with opportunities to construct their own meaning, learning is not influenced by hegemonic mainstream perspectives (Lee, 2002). By bringing her culture into her work, Mele appeared to make connections between her existing culturally constructed worldviews and new knowledge. This is consistent with the findings of Hilliard et al. (2004), who claim that when cultural identities are affirmed, confidence can be strengthened. Lee (2002) also suggests that when preservice teachers become aware of how their own cultural knowledges and beliefs shape their behaviour and attitudes, they can begin to understand the perspectives of others and are more likely to incorporate different worldviews into their teaching practice.

Recommendations: Creating visibility

This study found that by consciously and purposefully using strategies that validate different cultural perspectives of teaching and learning, lecturers could model teaching practice that is culturally inclusive. This requires open and reflexive thinking and critique about practice and approaches to delivery of



content (Bell, Mladenovic, & Segara, 2010). This is referred to as “mindful reflection and communication” by Dray and Wisneski (2011 p. 29), who challenge teachers to ‘take the "emotional risk" to examine their deeply held beliefs that can affect how they treat students (p. 29). They suggest that teachers who are open to hearing students’ voices are therefore, responsive to individual perspectives. Valli (1997, p. 75) suggests that for effective reflection to occur, what is needed is a balanced approach encompassing “personal, action-based, technical, deliberative and critical” perspectives of teaching practice. She claims that by taking a range of aspects into consideration, teachers might reduce the likelihood of simply justifying their practices and may be more open to critical self-review. Similarly, Zwozdiak-Myers (2012) takes the view that in order to be effective practitioners, critical reflection needs to occur systematically. We therefore present a model for critical reflection that is designed to scaffold the thinking of teacher educators about the cultural inclusivity of their delivery and content. Thus, the model suggested below provides an approach to the critique of practice that may lead to culturally inclusive course content and delivery.

The following diagram is not intended to be prescriptive but aims to offer open-ended, conceptual spheres of thought through which lecturers can consider an integrated approach to developing teaching practice and content. It presents a set of questions that are intended to prompt critically reflective thinking. As Kane, Sandretto and Heath (2004) found in a study of tertiary teaching excellence in New Zealand, critical self-reflection is strongly linked to lecturers developing key knowledge about what constitutes effective strategies and being able to guide student learning. The authors also found that a framework for reflection can lead to more focussed and purposeful thinking.

Figure 1: Reflective Cycle Model



Our discussions in this paper have shown the importance of lecturers’ awareness about student understandings and adapting their teaching practices to incorporate different perspectives about teaching and learning. We have also shown the critical role of positive identity construction in pre-service teachers’ learning. The questions we provide in our model are designed to facilitate self-critique so that lecturers might challenge their assumptions about their delivery of course content in relation to student understandings. By reflecting on how they have clarified concepts, provided examples, incorporated student teachers’ experiences and different cultural perspectives into curriculum, specific aspects of content and practice can be made explicit. The questions we suggest also ask lecturers to focus on how practical aspects of course delivery could enable students to put new learning into context so that they can make sense of the material in ways that incorporate their existing understandings. In this way, students can develop their own bridge between their existing knowledge and new learning. Finally, the reflective questions ask how lecturers can see evidence of student learning. Critiquing practice with a focus on improving student learning outcomes requires evidence to guide thinking and focus attention on specific aspects of teaching and student learning. It is therefore useful to have a reflective process that guides attention towards incorporating cultural differences. As Kane et al. (2004) point out, understanding how students are learning means that a response can be generated by either amending the strategies currently employed, or inaugurating a different approach to teaching the topic. Thus, by utilising the reflective cycle, the focus is on actions that can be taken to improve outcomes for students from formal teaching sessions.

Conclusions

This study showed that when ethnic minority pre-service teachers were able to make connections between existing knowledges and their new learning about teaching, they processed new concepts more confidently and easily. However, they frequently found that their knowledges and understandings were not reflected in course material so they felt ‘othered’ and that their existing knowledges were of little consequence. We therefore recommend that teacher education lecturers consider the theoretical perspectives reflected in their practices and be wary of promoting discourses that solely reflect dominant Anglo-Celtic values and understandings. To achieve this, teaching and course delivery practices used by lecturers should provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to incorporate their existing knowledges and understandings and use these as a position from which to construct new learning. By using focussed, action-based critical reflection, lecturers can assist this process and reduce the power of dominant discourses to create equitable opportunities for pre-service teachers to construct new knowledge.



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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr Janet Moles is a lecturer in early childhood teaching at Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria. Janet’s teaching areas include professional experience, curriculum studies and developing partnerships for learning. Her current research includes investigating how young children who are living and learning in different cultural paradigms construct their learner identities, and using interactive video conferencing to deliver teacher education courses.

Professor Ninetta Santoro has recently taken up a Chair in Education at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, having previously been a Professor of Education and Head of the School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University. Her research is situated within multi-ethnic education contexts and examines how learner and teacher identities are constructed and taken up within such milieus. She has published in the areas of race and ethnicity, teacher education, and qualitative research methodologies.

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