Sliding subject positions: knowledge and teacher educators

Brown, Tony; Rowley, Harriet; Smith, Kim

doi:10.1002/berj.3203

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(30 reference statements)

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“…Recent research (Herold and Waring, 2017) which considers the importance of content knowledge for training PE teachers, suggest that the move to school-led teacher training has reconfigured training teachers' experiences of pedagogical knowledge, simplifying and minimizing it. This is consistent with the theoretically opinion of Brown, Rowley and Smith (2015). Teacher educators thus face the challenge of ensuring trainees have a 'well-rounded subject knowledge profile' (Herold and Waring, 2017, p. 243), whilst also facilitating pedagogical experiences which promote an understanding of the integration of theory and practice, within varied school contexts.…”

Section: Towards An Acceptance Of Uncertainty and Contingencysupporting

confidence: 65%

Risk-Taking and Professional Development: Physical Education Teachers’ Narratives of Experience

Whitehouse¹

2018

EDULEARN Proceedings

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This study adopted an interpretive qualitative approach, using narrative inquiry to understand the experiences of early career physical education (PE) teachers who took 'risks' during their training year, and who had been teaching in schools. Narrative interviews were conducted with nine PE teachers who had engaged with a Risk-Taking Professional Development Programme (PDP) during their training year and who had been teaching for between two months and five years. Interviews explored the meanings, definitions and influences that participants ascribed to risk taking from their memories of the training year and once they began teaching in schools.The focus of the study emerged because in my role as a PE teacher trainer, I designed the Risk-Taking PDP to challenge trainee PE teachers to reflect critically upon their teaching and pupil learning and, move beyond their comfortable practices. Inspiration was taken from the Office for Standards in Education outstanding descriptor at that time, to 'Take risks when trying to make teaching interesting, be able to deal with the unexpected and grab the moment' (Ofsted, 2008, p. 1). The Risk-Taking PDP became a core component of the PE Teacher Training course in one UK Higher Education Institution (HEI) and was delivered to over 100 PE trainee teachers.An interpretive analysis located overlapping and interlocking themes which closely represented illuminative epiphanies (Denzin, 2001). Findings revealed that risk-taking became a central component of teachers' practice during the training year. It encouraged critical reflection and developed trainee confidence. Epiphanic moments experienced by participants highlighted that adaptation, negotiation and resilience formed over time as crucial aspects of risk-taking. Once qualified and teaching in schools, key influences affected PE teachers' willingness to take risks. These included; performativity measures, time, pupil behaviour and the influence of the subject community. Risk-taking was found to support personal and professional growth and, when influences in schools were positive, engagement with innovation and creativity continued. This led to further growth and learning for both teachers and pupils.ii This study provides new knowledge to inform the continuation of the Risk-Taking PDP and offers new insights for PE Initial Teacher Education and Training (ITET) practices.Furthermore, this study reaffirms the views of Clandinin and Connelly (2000) who argue for narrative being a three-dimensional space where temporality, sociality and place (context) influence thinking and learning and also, those of Dewey (1938) where experience and learning is transactional and always in relation to others and the social context. This study proposes a fourth dimension to risk-taking, a visional dimension where teachers visualise an 'ideal' situation and, is represented through the abstract conceptualisation of risk-taking holding a four-dimensional metaphorical space. This is represented through a geometrical shape, the Tesseract. This ...

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Section: Towards An Acceptance Of Uncertainty and Contingencysupporting

confidence: 65%

Risk-Taking and Professional Development: Physical Education Teachers’ Narratives of Experience

Whitehouse¹

2018

EDULEARN Proceedings

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“…A range of terms have been used to describe subject knowledge, including: pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman 1987); subject content knowledge (Childs et al 2013); subject specific pedagogical knowledge ;. I use the term subject knowledge in the current paper, which is similar to the ways in which, for example, Brown, Rowley and Smith (2016), and Ellis (2007) use 'subject knowledge' to refer to knowledge that others might separate into pedagogical content knowledge and subject content knowledge. Social realist analyses of teachers' knowledge have also used the term subject knowledge to refer to recontextualised forms of disciplinary knowledge (Firth 2011).…”

Section: Subject Knowledge and Types Of Knowers In School Departmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student teachers’ positionalities as knowers in school subject departments

Puttick

2017

British Educational Res J

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Student teachers in England, mainly on one-year courses, spend the majority of their time in schools. Secondary schools are primarily organised around subject departments, and these subgroups within schools have been shown to be significant for student outcomes and teachers' experiences. However, research on school subject departments themselves is relatively limited, and developing better understandings of school subject departments is important for Initial Teacher Education and educational research more broadly. This paper draws on an ethnographic study of three secondary school geography departments to analyse student teachers' positionalities as knowers within departments. Opportunities for professional discussions within departments are limited, and are often dominated by immediate practical concerns. A social realist concept of knower-knowledge structures is used to explore the kinds of knowers accepted as legitimate in these departments. A dichotomous view of teachers as knowers was found, being positioned as knowing or notknowing particular areas of subject knowledge. This binary view is argued to be related to the language of the Teachers' Standards in England. Suggestions are made for improving student teachers' positions as knowers within departments by planning opportunities to contribute their expertise, and for developing more expansive discourses around subject knowledge to enable all to maximise opportunities to learn from the rich mines of expertise held across ITE partnerships.

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“…Teacher development in England has been characterized by a shift away from universities to a vocational route located primarily in schools (Brown et al, 2014(Brown et al, , 2015Hodgson, 2014). This is in contrast to models followed in continental Europe subject to the Bologna Process, where many student teachers follow a university course of some four to five years (European Commission/EaCEa/Eurydice, 2013).…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%