School-based Teacher Training

A Handbook for Tutors and Mentors

Elizabeth White, Joy Jarvis, Elizabeth White, Joy Jarvis, SAGE Publications Ltd

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781446254653
  9781446254646
• eBook ISBN:
  9781446290347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

Covering both Primary and Secondary teaching, this handbook offers support to those delivering school-based teacher training. By identifying best practice, the book shows you how to develop your professional knowledge and become an effective teacher educator and mentor.

Topics covered include:

- strategies for coaching and mentoring trainee teachers

- teacher training in schools

- links between teacher education and recent research

- how to develop your own identity as a teacher educator

Packed with case studies of good practice, models of successful teaching and activities to try, this practical book leads you through a professional development process that will enable you to be confident and secure in your practice.

An essential guide for tutors, mentors and all those involved in staff development in schools, the book is also useful for experienced teachers in schools who are taking on training roles and supporting and mentoring newly qualified teachers (NQTs).

Elizabeth White and Joy Jarvis both teach in the School of Education, at the University of Hertfordshire.

PART B

ASPECTS OF THE PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE OF TEACHER EDUCATORS

4

The pedagogy of teacher educators

Joy Jarvis and Elizabeth White

This chapter covers:

• what we know about the pedagogy of teacher educators;
• ways to model the professional knowledge and skills needed by teachers;
• how to develop your teacher educator pedagogy further.

Teacher educators instinctively believe that they should be modelling outstanding practice. Trainee teachers need to understand how experienced teachers think and the theoretical underpinning behind the choices that have been made in the classroom. This chapter looks at the challenging aspect of modelling how to teach when working with trainees, and how to make the modelling explicit. In order to understand your own practice better it is helpful to examine the personal impact of your learning experiences and to examine your professional knowledge in order to set it into the new context of meeting the needs of new teachers. Boyd and Harris (2010) suggest that teacher educators reconstruct their pedagogy during early stages of their professional development and that new teacher educators draw on their past experiences to inform their practice. In order to explore what has influenced the way you teach, the values, beliefs and theories that underpin your pedagogy, you may find it helpful to spend some time on Activity 4.1. This will enable you to consider ‘who you are as a teacher’ as this will have an impact on ‘who you are as a teacher educator’.

Activity 4.1

Reflect on your learning journey

1. Make a visual representation of the different times in your life where you have spent time in formal education, being taught and teaching others.
2. Identify any key experiences or people in this representation.
3. Now try to identify how these have shaped your beliefs about teaching.

Identifying the beliefs underpinning our own teaching is difficult. It is important for teacher educators to do this for two reasons: so that you can explain your own beliefs to your trainees, and so that you can help trainees to understand how their beliefs influence their practice. Your own beliefs will have been developed through experience and through discussing educational ideas and theories. One way of identifying how these relate to classroom practice is to try Activity 4.2.

Activity 4.2

Identify your beliefs about teaching

1. Take an A5 piece of paper and represent in any way you like an ideal teaching session.
2. Place this in the centre of an A4 piece of paper. Using two different coloured pens identify and label (a) what the learners are doing (b) what the teacher is doing.
3. Place the A4 paper in the centre of an A3 piece of paper. Write round the edges of this paper what beliefs are represented, e.g. ‘children learn best when sitting in rows’, or ‘children learn best when engaged in practical activities’, or ‘the teacher’s role is to challenge pupils’ ideas’.

The beliefs held about best practice may, or may not, result in action in the classroom. It is important for you as a teacher educator to consider the extent to which your practices match your beliefs as you will need to demonstrate this link to trainees when they observe you teaching. Try Activity 4.3 to help you to think about this.

Activity 4.3

Identify how your beliefs impact on your practice as a teacher and a teacher educator

1. Make a list of what might stop you acting in the way you think is best in your classroom. What can you do to lessen their effect?
2. Draw a series of steps – on the top step write an aspect of ‘ideal’ practice and on the bottom step what is ‘real’ practice.
   For example, ideal – children choose their own level of challenge in maths activities versus real – children are given their maths challenges by the teacher.
   Write on the intermediate steps how one could move gradually from the bottom to the top step.
3. Draw a pair of spectacles and write on these your beliefs about learning and teaching so that you appreciate that these are the lenses through which you will view your trainees’ practice.
4. How will your spectacles help or hinder your work as a teacher educator?

Embracing change

It may be necessary to move on in your own beliefs and practices. A good place to start is to try something different in your practice. This different behaviour can change your experiences and as a result your beliefs may change because they are shaped by experience rather than the other way around (Guskey, 2005; Russell, 2007). For example, if a new practice produces improved engagement in class and a deeper understanding of the subject, this is a positive reward, which can influence your future behaviour as well as help to mould your beliefs.

Part of your role as a teacher educator will include enabling trainees to embrace new ideas, as you introduce trainees to new practices that have been found to be effective for today’s young people. This may require a change in the trainee’s beliefs about how to teach. It is important to provide trainees with opportunities to understand how and why they teach in the way that they do. It is essential that trainees carry out Activities 4.1–4.3 themselves and then discuss them with each other and with you. If during this discussion you share your own results for the activities with them, this will help them to see that understanding and developing learning and teaching is an ongoing process. You will then have a better appreciation of the lenses the trainees are using to look at classroom practice.

When trainees have an appreciation of their preferred ways of teaching it may be necessary to encourage them to try out different practices, to experiment and take risks with their classes, as when they see that pupils’ learning improves they will have growing confidence and belief in the new practices they are using. Modelling a willingness to experiment and take risks in your teaching will help trainees to use practices that they might not have initially believed would work. It will also help you to understand some of the challenges that your trainees are experiencing, and will help you to share the learning journey with them. Sometimes trainees will challenge your own practices and deeply held beliefs. It is important to see one of your roles as modelling ways of thinking about practice.

The most significant element in introducing new ideas into practice is not the initial training but the follow-up. When trainees start using new ideas with their classes they may have more challenging questions than when they first heard the idea. They need a continuing dialogue to help them address those issues (see Chapter 5).

Revealing how to think like a teacher

Being a teacher educator involves some distinctive pedagogical skills that differ from being a teacher and this is a crucial area for the professional development of new teacher educators. A key aim of teacher educators is facilitating learning through modelling good practice, as the teacher educator is in a position to have a strong impact on the trainees’ views of teaching. Modelling is ‘intentionally displaying certain behaviour with the aim of promoting trainees’ professional learning’ (Lunenberg et al., 2007: 589). This should not be restricted to being a good role model for trainees to observe our professional practices, but includes articulating our professional knowledge by explaining how teachers think. This is explicit modelling and could be described as ‘revealing our thought bubble’.

In our experience the metacognitive process of explicit modelling contributes to the professional development of the trainees and improves our own teaching as it reduces ‘unthinking practice’. Making hidden professional knowledge explicit to trainees is vital to linking practice with theory. This can be lacking when trainees are observing experienced teachers who may not articulate their professional knowledge or link their practice to educational theories.

Figure 4.1 New teacher educators share their experiences of teaching trainees

New teacher educators share their experiences of teaching trainees in Figure 4.1. They illustrate by their comments that they have a growing realisation that explicit modelling is needed for trainees to learn. The following activities are practical ways to develop explicit modelling as a pedagogical tool.

Activity 4.4

Exploring what and how to model

1. Make a list of the different aspects of your practice as a teacher which you will be modelling to your trainees.
   Example: how to organise group work.
2. Go through your list and consider how you could model each aspect to your trainees. For example, you may be able to model a way of organising group work by (1) using group work during a session with your trainees, or (2) providing the trainees with an opportunity to observe group work during a lesson.
3. Now look through the professional standards used in your context (in England this is the Teachers’ Standards, DfE, 2011) to see if there are mo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• About the editors and contributors
• Abbreviations
• Part A How teacher educators develop their own professional knowledge and understanding
• Part B Aspects of the professional knowledge and practice of teacher educators
• References
• Index