Reimaging Pre-Service Teachers' Practical Knowledge

Designing Learning for Future

Ge Wei

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000614350
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Éducation
• Sous-sujet: Recherche dans l'éducation

Drawing from the discourse of practice-oriented teacher education, this book investigates the state of pre-service teachers' practical knowledge in mainland China, providing insights into the reform of initial teacher education programmes for teacher educators.

Conducting empirical studies at a university in Beijing, involving 400 pre-service teachers, the author investigates factors influencing pre-service teachers' practical knowledge. Five innovative methodologies, namely concept mapping, visual metaphors, video analysis, epistemic network analysis, and formative interventions are employed to make pre-service teachers' practical knowledge visible, helping to increase our theoretical understanding of practical knowledge and proposing practical guidelines for the reorganisation of initial teacher education.

While the study is grounded in mainland China, the methodological thinking and theoretical discussions can inspire international scholars and teacher educators, and therefore contribute to the global reform of teacher education.

1 Understanding pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge

DOI: 10.4324/9781003304111-2

1 Introduction

This monograph emerged from my profound belief that teachers contribute significantly to the quality of education and human well-being. More than a decade and a half ago, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2005) issued the same proposal based on the report of a study of the teacher workforce in 25 countries. However, the primer critically failed to address prospective teachers.

An experienced teacher with sufficient practical knowledge acts effectively in a constantly changing classroom environment. The epistemology of practice is a teacher’s private, integrated, but ever-changing system of knowledge, experience, and values that are relevant to teaching practice at any particular time. The development of pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge involves them learning how to become professionals in a real educational context that consists of social relations, cultural understanding, and institutional norms. By participating in field experiences, pre-service teachers not only build a bridge between theory and practice in the learning of teaching but also develop practical knowledge in the schooling context.

In this first chapter, I will visit the backdrop of initial teacher education and its challenges in the 21st century. This will illustrate that the increasing demand for higher teacher quality facilitates the development of pre-service teachers’ practical capability (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). Practical knowledge – a substantive epistemic ability for teacher learning and development – has evolved from a term into an academic field. Scrutinising the academic discourse regarding teachers’ practical knowledge will elucidate the essential role played by practical knowledge in the reform of initial teacher education.

2 Conundrum of initial teacher education

2.1 Global challenges of initial teacher education

Since the late 1980s, initial teacher education has faced serious challenges related to adequately preparing pre-service teachers to work in schools as future teachers. In addition, educational systems worldwide are struggling with a shortage of teachers. This shortage may be because an increasing number of qualified teachers have been leaving the profession within their first few years of teaching, which has resulted in an ageing teacher population (OECD, 2018). This trend may result from the discrepancy between the curricula of teacher education institutes and everyday teaching practices, which could induce a sense of unpreparedness among teachers regarding their professional activity (Grossman et al., 2009; Meijer, 2010). As Feiman-Nemser (2001) argued, after decades of school reform, there is a growing consensus that the quality of schools depends on the quality of its teachers:

What students learn is directly related to what and how teachers teach, and what and how teachers teach depends on the knowledge, skills, and commitments they bring to their teaching and the opportunities they have to continue learning in and from their practice.

(p. 1013)

The relative contributions of initial teacher education programmes and schools to pre-service teachers’ professional learning have been an issue of concern in the field of teacher education (Athanases, Sanchez, & Martin, 2020; Brooks, 2021). The issue primarily pertains to the roles of the practical and theoretical aspects of initial teacher education in pre-service teachers’ professional learning. Faced with the global reform of teacher education, the most confounding and debated topic is the integration of ‘theoretically based knowledge that has traditionally been taught in university classrooms with the experience-based knowledge that has traditionally been located in the practice of teachers and the realities of classrooms and schools’ (Darling-Hammond, 2006, p. 307). Also as Craig (2020) stated,

Teachers’ practices, reflecting their personal practical knowledge, will always be fluid and shape-shifting. Necessarily contoured by their own changing selves, teachers’ practices are contingent on the learners they teach, knowledge advances in the disciplines, innovations in the teaching field, unfurling social issues and crises (i.e. global pandemic), and the educational policies influencing the context in which their practices unfold.

(p. 14)

The theory–practice dichotomy has been identified as a perennial concern in initial teacher education (Korthagen, 2010). Great emphasis has been placed on bridging the gap between theory and practice when preparing pre-service teachers for their future work (Grossman et al., 2009). Researchers are constantly seeking the most relevant practices for facilitating the cultivation of well-balanced professional knowledge, reflective skills, and practical capabilities among teachers, which would enable them to manage the challenges of their profession (e.g. Athanases et al., 2020; Mulryan-Kyne, 2020). Therefore, more attention is being paid to the composition of and links between different types of knowledge, especially the practical knowledge that guides teachers’ professional practice and reveals how they re-conceptualise teaching (Wei, 2020).

Grossman et al.’s (2009) work informed the key features of the practical and conceptual aspects of initial teacher education. The practical aspects encompass multiple opportunities for practice in fieldwork and higher education settings, in addition to the practical tools introduced in teacher education coursework. The conceptual aspects – mainly delivered in higher education – include the conceptual tools that facilitate teachers’ framing and interpretations of practice, but they do not offer specific solutions for practice in classrooms and schools. Furlong (2013) framed one of the key issues as ‘how much time should be devoted to examining professional issues theoretically by drawing on theory and research and how much [should be] devoted through direct practical experience’ (p. 69). Initial teacher education in some places has transformed into more practice-oriented training in schools, and the role of the university role has been recast as one primarily concerned with the analytical dimensions of teacher education (Hodson, Smith, & Brown, 2012). However, a more balanced approach in conceptual and practical aspects characterises initial teacher education in other places.

Having enough competent teachers to impart values, knowledge, and skills to students has always been a central concern for policymakers worldwide. Consequently, teacher education has focused significantly on curricular and pedagogical matters, including the search for effective teaching for positive student learning outcomes (Darling-Hammond, 2017). Over time, teacher education has broadened its scope of interest to accommodate increasingly diverse structural, social, and professional issues. When it comes to teacher education, what happens in schools and classrooms is nested within each country’s educational policy environments, which are governed by their distinct political system. Nations attempt to provide quality teaching and learning to students via teachers who are mostly employed by government agencies. Since teachers are professionals and social beings with distinct worldviews, they are frequently unable to implement policies that flow down the conduit to them in replicable ways. They necessarily must bring themselves, their emotions and personalities, and their relationships with students into the mix. Teachers also recognise that learners are thinking and feeling beings, not automatons. Like themselves, students require the creative licence to contribute to curriculum-making in ways that fulfil their needs and desires as learners.

Developing practical knowledge when learning to become a teacher is a highly complex and multi-faceted process that places unique demands on the cognitive, affective, and performance nature of the novice (Sancar, Atal, & Deryakulu, 2021). Prospective teachers need to learn how to act and effectively make on-the-spot judgments (Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005). They need to use the appropriate skills to do the right thing in a timely manner (Doyle & Carter, 1987) through careful observation and interpretation of the situation at hand (Biesta, 2015).

2.2 Initial teacher education in China

Orland-Barak and Lavrenteva (2019) summarised the six global trends of teacher education reform. They proposed that the global move towards advanced strategic, constructivist, and socio-cultural orientations to pre-service teachers’ learning is strongly reflected in the stated vision, mission, and curricula of local teacher education contexts worldwide. The following six major themes that reflect this vision appear to have become integral to initial teacher education programmes worldwide:

1. the establishment of school–community–university partnerships;
2. incorporating more school practice focused on pupil learning in the preparation of future teachers;
3. a shift from a focus on teaching and curriculum to a focus on learning and learners;
4. the inclusion of activities that promote reflective practice and the development of the teacher-as-researcher;
5. academic and school spaces for fostering teacher learning that attends to social justice and inclusion; and
6. preparation of teacher educators and provision of mentoring frameworks to support student teacher learning.

These six initial teacher education trends imply that pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge is integral to their professionalism and future sustainable development. Moreover, pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge inherently contains their understanding of the subject matter, context, students, and themselves.

The global trends in teacher education have also been observed in China. Over the past two decades, teacher education in China has undergone unprecedented changes, including the rapid expansion of enrolment, innovation and structural system reorganisation, mergers between institutions of higher learning, and teaching quality improvement (Xue & Li, 2021). As an important element of the system of higher education, teacher education cannot escape the formidable challenges presented by change. Initial teacher education has been shown to develop significantly within this environment.

However, teacher education in China has struggled to keep pace with changes in the country’s education system for nearly four decades. Numerous state policies, which include government and the Chinese Communist Party policies, have shared the common goal of improving the teacher education system to support educational reform. The implemented reform measures were attempts to address issues such as system building, teacher preparation and training, the examination and certification of teachers, and recruitment and deployment of teachers for educational equality in the country.

In response to the state’s calls for continued reform and the innovative improvement of the existing approa...