10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Teacher Diversity and Teacher Development Programs in Gülen Inspired Schools
Mehmet Evrim Altin
International University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Presenting Author: Altin, Mehmet Evrim
In the early nineteenth century, several scholars and intellectuals like Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, John Dewey etc ... created innovative educational school concepts which were later called progressive education movement, and today Barz shows Fethullah Gülen (b. 1938), a Turkish Islamic scholar, as a new player in Progressive Education(1). This is mainly because, education is the core activity of the Gülen Movement and primarily Gülen, and all other followers, place a great importance on the schools and educational activities. According to Barz, in addition to religious and scientific components, the emphasis on the teacher as a role model plays a decisive role(2). As an example, Gülen presented teaching as a holy duty (kutsi vazife) and highlighted that only people with a strong moral can adequately perform it(3).
Gülen’s educational movement, the so-called Gülen movement or Hizmet (Service) movement, founded private education institutions, like tutorial centers, universities and schools, which are named as Gülen Inspired Schools later(4) and they have achieved remarkable success in the private education sector of Turkey(5). Throughout the disintegration of Soviet Union in 1990-91 and the independence of Central Asian Republics, the movement founded its first schools outside of Turkey in these newborn Central Asian Republics. Later roughly 2000 different Gülen inspired educational institutions were expanded to the whole world. However, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, Fethullah Gülen and his movement were labelled as a Terror organization by the Erdogan regime and, only in Turkey, 2,213 private schools and private (tutorial) courses, 1,005 dormitories and boarding houses and 22 universities and affiliated hospitals were appropriated because of their affiliation with the movement(6). Despite this situation, according to unofficial statistics today, there are more than a thousand GISs running in different parts of the world(7).
In this study, we will examine the diversity of teachers in Gülen Inspired Schools and how, despite this diversity, Gülen's understanding of education is realized in Gülen Inspired schools. Therefore, initially in this study, we will first examine the criteria that Gülen schools pay attention when recruiting new teachers and questioned what kind of teachers these schools recruit to their schools. Besides, how different Gülen inspired schools in Europe, Africa and the USA realized Gülen’s educational concept with local teachers and the relationship between teachers who are inspired by Gülen and other local teachers are also analyzed in this paper.
This topic is a crucial and much-debated issue, since Gülen is a retired charismatic imam. One of the main criticisms of Gülen Inspired Schools is that they are missionary schools(8) and the main motivation of the teachers is to invite students to Islam and spread Islam in their local environment(9). On the other hand, It was observed in different studies that none of these schools teaches Gülen’s philosophy or any subject related to the movement and according to the same studies there is no direct official connection between Gülen İnspired Schools and Fethullah Gülen(10). Similarly, religion classes, in this case “Islam”, are taught depending on the local conditions and vary from one country to another(11). Therefore several other scholars debated against these critiques and they are reluctant to consider the Gülen inspired schools educational engagement as being solely missionary in intent and impact(12).
Of course, in this context the profile of the teachers and the role they play in the schools is very important. Therefore, Gülen’s approach to education, how he influenced these teachers, how diverse the profile of the teachers, how the teachers are recruited and how do they realize Gülen’s philosophy are questioned under the shadow of the mentioned critiques in this study.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this study, in addition to content analysis, a qualitative research method was selected in the field study to understand this controversial subject(13). One of the main reasons in this choice is the research questions which are based on a "how" question. Besides, the unique structure of the Gülen Movement and the lack of research about the Gülen inspired schools also plays an important role in this choice.
In the data collection part, only the "expert interview" method is available because of the several reasons depending on the controversial structure of the subject. However, expert interview fits very well to this research. Participants of this study could be categorized into four groups. In the first group, nine school managers (3 in the U.S., 3 in Europe and 3 in Africa) in six different countries of the world were visited and interviewed. The reason behind the selection of these regions are the sustainable conditions of the GISs which helps the researcher to get reliable data. The second group (3 Experts) is members of the Gülen Movement as an insider who participated in different projects of the movement for many years. The third group (3 Experts) is the scholars or journalists outside of the movement who have a neutral-positive approach to the movement. The last group (3 Experts) consists of the experts who have a skeptical approach and criticize the movement from different aspects. In total, there were 18 structured expert interviews, which enables the comparison of different thoughts and understandings. Besides, the researcher conducted a countless number of talks and discussions with teachers, parents and students of these schools.
All data was collected by face-to-face semi-structured interviews which are recorded and transcribed so that the detailed analyses can be easily carried out(14). Mainly because of the actual situation of the movement, the researcher of the study decided to anonymize all the participants’ names. In the data analysis part, Maxqda program was used because of its special features and availability and Gläser and Laudel’s procedures was followed(15). Besides, the researcher of the study practiced five general criteria for qualitative researchers which Mayring explained in his book, such as procedural documentation, rule structured construction, argumentative interpretation assurance, proximity to the object and communicative validity(16). Conducting the field study in the mentioned three continents and only having one data collection method available for the research are several important limitations of the study.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results show that unlike the other progressive education models, the education model of the Gülen Movement depends on reforming the management of a traditional education system, instead of reforming teaching or pedagogy. Therefore, unlike Montessori, teachers working in Gülen Inspired Schools do not need any special certification, nor do they need to know Gülen or accept the educational philosophy of the Gülen Movement. In this context, it was also observed that the recruitment criteria did not differ much from other schools. Likewise, it was seen in the field study that 75% of the teachers in the nine schools studied were selected from the local community and most of these teachers were not familiar with Gülen's educational philosophy.
At this point, with all teachers working in the same environment, more and more varied extracurricular activities than in other schools, and the extreme importance that Gülen Inspired Schools place on teacher development programs, it has been observed that there is a cohesion between Gülen-influenced teachers and other local teachers and a common school culture has emerged. In addition, the fact that only two of the nine schools examined had religion classes, whereas all of them had ethics-based programs, suggests that moral values, rather than religion, take precedence in Gülen schools. In the same context, it can be said that Gülen schools have an education and science-centered concept that emphasizes the academic success of students rather than a religious or ideological axis. It can be easily said that this understanding is also behind the importance given to teacher development programs in these schools. In the same manner, this understanding of academic success is the reason why these schools, which have opened to the world, have been able to hold on in the countries they have been in for so many years.
References1Barz, H. (2018). Einleitung zum Handbuch Reformpädagogik und Bildungsreform.
Handbuch Bildungsreform und Reformpädagogik, Wiesbaden, Deutschland: Springer, p.3.
2Vicini, F. (2007). Gülen’s Rethinking of Islamic Pattern and its Socio-Political Effects. Muslim
World in Transition, London: Leeds Metropolitan University Press, p. 436.
3 Gülen, M. F. (1979b). Maarifimizde Muallim. Çağ ve Nesil 1: Cag ve Nesil,
Istanbul: Nil Yayinlari, 121-126.
4 Dohrn, K. (2014). Translocal Ethics: Hizmet Teachers and the Formation of Gülen-inspired Schools in Urban Tanzania. Sociology of Islam, p. 233.
5 Hendrick, J. D. (2013). Gülen: the Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World, New York: New York University Press, p. 142.
6 Gümüş, I. (2019). The rise of the Palace State, Turkey under the State of Emergency, Frankfurt: Main Donau Verlag, p. 50.
7 Pahl, J. (2019). Fethullah Gülen, a Life of Hizmet, New Jersey: Blue Dome Press, p. 17.
8 Tittensor, D. (2014). The House of Services: The Gülen Movement and Islam’s Third Way, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 154.
9 Volm, F. (2018). Die Gülen-Bewegung im Spiegel von Selbstdarstellung und Fremdrezeption, Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag, p. 321.
10 Turam, B. (2007). Between Islam and the State, The Politics of Engagement, Standford California: Standford University Press, p. 69.
11 Solberg, A. (2005, April). The Gülen schools: A perfect compromise or compromising
perfectly? Retrieved from 06.06.2017-
www.Kotor-network.info: http://www.kotor-network.info/papers/2005/Gülen.Solberg.pdf.
12 Dohrn, K. (2014). Translocal Ethics: Hizmet Teachers and the Formation of Gülen-
inspired Schools in Urban Tanzania. Sociology of Islam, p. 233.13
13 Babbie, E. (2004). The Practice of Social Research. Belmont, CA, USA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, p. 370.
14 Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative Research, a guide to design and implementation, San Francisco: Josey Bass, p 105.
15 Gläser, J., & Laudel, G. (2009). Experteninterviews und qualitative Inhaltanalyse, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, p. 203.
16 Mayring, P. (2002). Gütekriterien Qualitativer Forschung. Einführung in die Qualitative Sozialforschung, Weinheim und Basel: Beltz Verlag, p. 140-149.
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Unpacking Urban Teaching Residents’ Perezhivanie: Implications for Supporting Minority Teachers’ Professional Identity Development
Sharon Chang1, Sibel Akin-Sabuncu2,1, Laura Vernikoff3, Colleen Horn4, A. Lin Goodwin5
1Teachers College, Columbia University, United States of America; 2TED University, Turkey; 3Touro University Graduate School of Education, United States of America; 4Marino Institute of Education, Ireland; 5Boston College, United States of America
Presenting Author: Vernikoff, Laura;
Horn, Colleen
Supporting teachers’ professional identity development empowers teachers and helps them stay in the field longer. Although teachers’ professional identity has been studied in subject areas in the OECD countries (Suarez & McGrath, 2022), less is known regarding professional identity development of student teachers of color (Rodrigues & Mogarro, 2019). Student teachers of color’s professional identity development especially needs researchers’ attention, because both in the EU and US contexts, policymakers have been focusing on diversifying the teaching profession by recruiting teachers of migrant and/or minority background, through integrating university coursework with extended practice (Klein et al., 2016) as in the urban teacher residency program in this study, offering a “third space” in teacher education (Zeichner, 2010).
The model of teacher residencies is based on the postgraduate training in medical schools (Authors, 2017a). While the naming of the student teachers as teaching residents proclaims their teacher identity as a professional (Author, 2012); other aspects pertinent to urban teaching residents’ professional identity development are less studied. Therefore, to better support minority teachers’ professional identity development (Cong-Lem, 2022; Lantolf & Swain, 2019), this study aims to investigate how participants, who are teachers of color, construct themselves as residents of urban teaching through the lens of perezhivanie.
Grounded in the cultural-historical understanding of emotion and identity, the study draws on the Vygotskyian concept of perezhivanie to illustrate how residents’ personal histories and experiences in and expectations of the urban teacher residency program influence their reflective practices, since these are pertinent to urban teaching residents’ professional identity development. For Vygotsky (1993), perezhivanie is used to describe a subject’s development, “because between the world and a human being stands his(sic) social environment, which refracts and guides everything proceeding from man(sic) to the world and from the world to man(sic)” (p. 77). The residents develop their emotions and identities through the interplay of social relations. Thus, the awareness of knowing, being, and becoming a resident of urban teaching who are also teachers of color is articulated through residents’ reflections and refraction of their teacher residencies, because they have worked out their own conflicts of motives from resolving the (social)environmental-individual dialectical tensions (Dang, 2013).
This study addresses the ECER 2023 conference theme and Network 10’s call to study the diversity of evidence-relations in teacher education. Although tensions and conflicts coexist with diversity, “the richness of who we are and who we are becoming becomes a source and resource for what we do and why we do it across the educational continuum”. European researchers have been using perezhivanie to examine the ways in which experiences such as discrimination, marginalization, and cultural identity shape individuals’ understanding and engagement with education (Christodoulakis et al., 2021; Léopoldoff-Martin & Gabathuler, 2021; Pompert & Dobber, 2018). Accordingly, the personal accounts from residents of color serve as evidence mobilized from marginalized communities to address the research-practice gap of teachers’ professional identity development.
We want to understand how residents in this study refract their (social)environmental-individual dialectical conflicts from working in the community through their perezhivanie. In the context of urban teaching residencies, we are looking at how residents of color refract themselves from their own resident identity development in their narratives. Moreover, this psychological refraction of the human mind is not to be projected in the same way as the refraction of the light. Rather, perezhivanie is a mental schema established through one’s consciousness of experience and experience of consciousness of the past, present, and future (Vygotsky, 1993). Drawing upon these, our research question is: How do preservice teachers who self-identify as teachers of color construct themselves as residents during the urban teaching residency program?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study used phenomenography as a qualitative research method to investigate and describe the meaning of the collective experiences of the participants in the particular urban teacher residency program. Phenomenography aims to describe the different ways a group of people experience and understand a phenomenon (Marton, 1981). Specifically, we were interested in how participants constructed their own developing professional identities as residents and teachers, and the experiences that participants identified as relevant to that process. Recognizing that, “‘teacher identities’...often are crafted as unitary…universal, complete and non-contradictory” (Miller, 2005, p. 51), phenomenography and perezhivanie provide a lens for understanding the particularities and variations of the residents’ reflections and refractions of their identities throughout the teacher residency.
The study took place within the context of a graduate-level urban teaching residency in the northeastern United States. Unlike traditional semester-long student teaching models, residents in this program spend a full year working with mentor teachers in secondary classrooms, beginning on the first day of in-service professional development at the start of the school year and ending on the last day of classes in June. They participate in “integrating seminars” each semester with their cohort to help them mobilize knowledge (Authors, 2017b) across their university classes and 7-12 teaching placements. Residents are expected to work for an additional three years in the residency district, so the program also encourages residents to make connections and develop ties to the local community through, e.g., community resource walks.
We invited all 29 residents from across two cohorts of the residency to participate in the study; 21 consented and using criterion sampling (Patton, 1990), 6 met our criteria of having a complete data set (in program archives) and identifying as residents of color. Participants graduated from the program in 2017 and 2018, and obtained certification in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Science, or Special Education. Data included autobiographical analyses submitted early in the program; interactive journals submitted biweekly throughout the residency year; and transcripts from individual interviews conducted near the end of the residency program. We selected these data sources because they provided opportunities for residents to reflect on their personal and professional identities at various stages of the program through narratives. We coded these data inductively and deductively (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) according to our framework of perezhivanie, looking for examples of residents describing their personal and/or professional identities.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe found two themes regarding residents’ perezhivanie. First, participants are proactively enacting their professional identity. As Lana claimed, “When people are like, you’re a student teacher? I’m like, I’m a teaching resident. Dude, respect me.” Lana saw the distinction between being a student-teacher and a teaching resident; the word resident, for Lana, carries more weight in terms of perceived qualifications and professionalism. Second, participants are constantly refracting their (social)environmental-individual dialectical tensions from the urban teacher residency program. In the case of Lana, she was proactively cultivating her teacher-of-color self, because she understands her own very teacher presence makes a difference for her students. Lana disclosed, “When I was growing up, I didn’t have a teacher like me, and I want to be that teacher for others [...] Especially in [urban contexts], there’s such a huge population of [minoritized] students.”
Unpacking the residents of color’s perezhivanie helps teacher educators better understand how to support teachers-of-color. This way, the voices of residents of color and their lived experiences in urban contexts become sources of supporting and developing teacher professional identity. The residents of color and their own agentic stories also fill in the research-practice gap as they refracted their dialectical tensions. The findings of the study will contribute to an understanding of how preservice teachers of color develop their professional identities and how programs like teaching residencies are uniquely placed and structured to support this development. Understanding the experiences and perspectives of teaching residents of color can also shed light on the challenges and opportunities inherent in initial teacher preparation, thereby informing efforts to improve the quality of education. Learning how teachers of color construct themselves as residents can help us understand how they participate in and contribute to their teaching communities and help guide future research of teacher professional identity development.
ReferencesBogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (2007). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Pearson Education.
Chase, S. E. (2005). Handbook of qualitative research. Sage Publications.
Christodoulakis, N., Vidal Carulla, C., & Adbo, K. (2021). Perezhivanie and its application within early childhood science education research. Education Sciences, 11(12), 813.
Cong-Lem, N. (2022). The relation between environment and psychological development: Unpacking Vygotsky’s influential concept of Perezhivanie. Human Arenas (online first), https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-022-00314-6
Dang, T. (2013). Identity in activity: Examining teacher professional identity formation in the paired-placement of student teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education 30, 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2012.10.006
Klein, E. J., Taylor, M., Onore, C., Strom, K., & Abrams, L. (2016). Exploring inquiry in the third space: Case studies of a year in an urban teacher-residency program. The New Educator, 12(3), 243-268.
Lantolf, J., & Swain, M. (2019). Perezhivanie: The cognitive–emotional dialectic within the social situation of development. In A. Al-Hoorie & P. MacIntyre (Eds.), Contemporary language motivation theory: 60 years since Gardner and Lambert (1959) (pp. 80–106). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788925204-009
Léopoldoff-Martin, I., & Gabathuler, C. (2021). Vygotsky and the notion of perezhivanie: what does it contribute to the reading of literary texts?. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 28(4), 345–355.
Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography - Describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10, 177-200.
Miller, J. L. (2005). Autobiography and the necessary incompleteness of teachers’ stories. In J. L. Miller (Ed.), Sounds of silence breaking: Women, autobiography, curriculum (pp. 45–56). Peter Lang Publishing.
Patton, M. Q. 1990. Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Sage Publications, Inc.
Pompert, B., & Dobber, M. (2018). Developmental education for young children in the Netherlands: Basic development. In the International handbook of early childhood education (pp. 1113–1137). Springer, Dordrecht.
Rodrigues, F., & Mogarro, M. J. (2019). Student teachers’ professional identity: A review of research contributions. Educational Research Review, 28, 100286. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2019.100286
Suarez, V. & J. McGrath (2022). Teacher professional identity: How to develop and support it in times of change. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 267, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/b19f5af7-en.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1993). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol. 2. The fundamentals of defectology (abnormal psychology and learning disabilities). (R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton, Eds.; J. E. Knox & C. B. Stevens, Trans.). Plenum Press.
Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(2), 89–99.
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Building a Teacher: The Role of Narrative in Teacher Professionalism
Elsa Estrela
COFAC/ Lusofona University, Portugal
Presenting Author: Estrela, Elsa
The social changes we have witnessed in recent years have introduced changes in the education system that were not expected by teachers who suddenly found themselves alone, teaching at a distance, from their private space and before their students who, more than ever, were unequal. Considering that the professional identity of the teacher is constructed by the feeling of belonging to a community, by the social practices of the subjects and by the articulation of the spheres of knowledge, of professional norms and values and of pedagogical knowledge, one can easily glimpse an enormous restlessness and anxiety, as well as the progressive awareness that their profession was going to be different and teaching as they knew it would not return.
In modern society, teachers and educators are the largest group of intellectual workers. In Portugal, PORDATA (2019 data) records 146,992 teachers and educators in pre-school, primary and secondary education, public and private, who then represented 5.66% of the Portuguese active population. Still, beyond their numerical weight, the importance of teachers' action derives from the fact that they constitute, within the influential middle class, what Bernstein calls "reproducers" (Bernstein, 1996). By posing the challenge of rethinking education and knowledge as global common goods, UNESCO (2015) assigns teachers and educators an active role as political subjects (Freire, 1985), who carry their beliefs, experiences, life stories into daily action (Goodson, Loveless & Stephens 2012), despite strong trends in training and public policies towards limiting teachers' action to managerial rationality and a technical and didactic dimension (Lima, 2016). In this context, the European educational sphere requires a redefinition of the teacher's capacity for agency, and this must be achieved by rethinking the role of the teacher as public intellectual in action in a world of tremendous tensions, characterised by the dialectics of the global and the local.
According to Ball (2003), the new middle-class resorts to three class strategies which aim to perpetuate its social distinction, reproducing its advantages, mobility, and social progress, namely: the market, individualism and choice and competitiveness. It is indeed through its practices that the interests of this class are manifested, although the author points out that there are also divergences within it. Ball (2002) assumes performativity, a political technology of educational reform, to which the market and management capacity are added, as "a culture and a mode of regulation which uses criticism, comparisons and exhibitions as means of control, attrition and change" (p. 4).
This work relies, therefore, on conceptions that assume identity not as attributed but as constructed, insofar as the division of the I as a subjective expression of social duality (Dubar, 1997) or of tensions (Santos, 1999) appears through the mechanisms of identification, which use the socially available categories, such as the professional class of teachers, because "it is, in fact, through and in the activity with others, implying a meaning, an objective and/or a justification, a need (... ), that the individual is identified and is led to accept or refuse the identifications he receives from others and institutions" (Dubar, 1997: 106).
In this regard and following the work that has been developed (Estrela, Ricardo & Duarte, 2021; Estrela & Duarte,2022), it is relevant to look to teachers’ life and work to understand their trajectory and to analyze their professional processes regarding three dimensions of their professionalism: identity, professional knowledge, and professional learning. The aim of the research is to identify processes of change in teacher professionalism and to identify the trends in teachers’ professionalism at different stages of the career in Portugal.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis context of fluid times (Bauman, 2007) and successive crises – pandemic, economic, social, political, and educational regarding the lack of teachers in several European countries - led to changes in the understanding of what it is to be a teacher, as an educational actor with a specific knowledge and historically assigned functions, which gives him/her a certain identity.
Based on the initial questions what are the processes of change in teachers’ professionalism and what trends can be identified?, an exploratory study was developed within the scope of a qualitative research, using narratives as a data collection technique and focus group.
Assuming that educational change must be understood considering patterns and forces of change that provide different paths according to the historical and cultural reality of each region, country or even professional, educational policies are refracted whenever there is a change in level or actors, accepting that this refraction occurs even at the level of the classroom with each of the professionals who work in it.
Teachers’ narratives are relevant in this context of individualized society, and a fundamental tool for understanding educational change, as they are assumed as a refraction of the educational history, as well as social, political and economic changes. This option seems consistent with the objectives indicated since it allows for the reconstruction of reality and a discursive practice that provides meaning to the experiences, facilitating the explicitness of what was lived, allowing the researcher to theorise what was lived and, also, the re-signification of the knowledge produced through what was experienced (Reis, 2008).
The narratives were collected at three different moments - one at the beginning of the pandemic period, another one after the second confinement and the third last December, now without any restrictions in Portuguese schools due to the pandemic. Thus, between April and May 2020, 16 teachers participated, between November and December 2021, 21 teachers participated, and between December 2022 and January 2023, 31 teachers participated.
The categories worked were emergent from the materials collected from the participants, having found regularities and singularities, whose dialogue around the theme allowed strengthening the interpretation and the meaning found in data collection (Rodrigues, N.C.& Prado, G.V.T., 2015).
Based on the emerged categories, the narratives were completed with a focus group with nine teachers in initial training. This focus group lasted more than one hour and half and was video recorded.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFindings show there are two patterns of change in teachers’ professionalism: digitalization and parentocracy. These two forces influence the three professional dimensions considered in the study as they allow to see the teachers seem to become more technical and less political, with no space and time for reflexivity. Professional knowledge and learning are taken by the digital as technologies have assumed the centre of the classes. Nevertheless, trends also show teachers integrating social knowledge and enriching professional one as they have more than one professional occupation. Many come from other professions and would like to keep both.
Although their lived trajectories point to a contradiction between the assumed professional objectives and the growing affirmation of the technical dimension, there is less ambivalence as teachers seem to be more convicted. Virtual identities reinforce the political technologies of educational reform such as performativity driven by technologies.
ReferencesBall, S. (2002). Reformar Escolas/reformar Professores e os terrores da Performatividade. Revista Portuguesa de Educação, 15(2), 3-23.
Ball, S. (2003). Class Strategies and the Education Market. The Middle Classes and the Social Advantage. RoutledgeFalmer.
Bauman, Z. (2007). Liquid Times. Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Polity Cambridge Press.
Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity.Taylor and Francis.
Dubar. C. (1997). A Socialização: Construção das Identidades Sociais e Profissionais. Porto Editora.
Estrela, E. & Duarte, R. S. (2022, 15-17 setembro). Desconstrução e reconstrução da(s) identidade(s) docente(s). [Apresentação Painel Temático]. XVI Congresso da Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências da Educação (SPCE). Lisboa.
Estrela, E., Ricardo, M. M. e Duarte, R. S. (2021, julho 7-9). A docência em Tempo de confinamento – o incerto desconhecido [Apresentação comunicação]. I Congresso Internacional sobre Metodologia (Qualis2021). Santiago de Compostela.
Freire, P. (1985). The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. Bergin & Garvey.
Goodson, Loveless, A. M. & Stephens, D. (2012). (Eds.). Explorations in Narrative Research. Springer.
Lima, L. C. (2016). Sobre a educação cultural e ético-política dos professores. Educar em Revista, (61), 143-156.
PORDATA (2019). Base Dados Portugal Contemporâneo. Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos. https://www.pordata.pt/Portugal/Docentes+em+exerc%C3%ADcio+nos+ensinos+pré+escolar++básico+e+secundário+total+e+por+n%C3%AD 240
Reis, P. (2008). As narrativas na formação de professores e na investigação em educação. Nuances: estudos sobre educação, 15(16), 17-34.
Rodrigues, N.C.& Prado, G.V.T. (2015). Investigação Narrativa: construindo novos sentidos na pesquisa qualitativa em Educação. Revista Lusófona de Educação, 29,89-103.
Santos, B. S. (1999). Reinventar a democracia: entre o pré-contratualismo e o pós-contratualismo. In F. de Oliveira & M. C. Paoli (Org.), Os sentidos da democracia — Políticas do dissenso e hegemonia global (83-129). Editora Vozes, FAPESP e NEDIC.
UNESCO (2015). Rethinking Education: Towards a global common good?. UNESCO.
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Engaging with Collaborative Research to Transform Teacher Education: Teachers’ Professional Agency in a School-University Partnership
Romina Madrid Miranda1, Katharina Glas2, Christopher Chapman3
1University of Stirling, United Kingdom; 2Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso; 3University of Glasgow
Presenting Author: Madrid Miranda, Romina;
Chapman, Christopher
The disconnection between university-based preservice teacher education and field experiences has been highlighted internationally in the literature as a main barrier to better preparing prospective teachers for the complexities of teaching (Adoniou, 2013; Zeinchner, 2010). Alternatives approaches emphasize less hierarchical relationships; integration of school and university expertise; and the importance and need to develop research capacity at the university and school levels (Tanner & Davies, 2009). The integration of the university and practicum contexts is particularly important as some educational systems are moving toward school-based approaches to teacher preparation.
Collaborative research models seem to propose new ways to connect both school and university knowledge and expertise and build a new set of relationships. They are particularly useful to explore ways of bringing a diverse set of “voices” and “expertise” disrupting more hierarchical structures and homogeneous systems, and therefore, can be used to enhance diversity in education practice and research in teacher education. When collaborative research models are used to design partnerships, they have the potential to foster reciprocity, a coalition of interests, innovation, and synergy and be ‘emancipatory in the formation of new relationships and systems of working’ (Baumfield & Butterworth 2007).
In the context of Teacher Education, collaborative engagement with research had impacted positively teacher-educators professional practice, improving the knowledge, skills, and critical awareness, benefiting the learning of students (Tanner and Davies, 2009). Likewise, the exploration of new roles in research partnerships (i.e., research champions) has demonstrated that these alliances can enhance the link and use of research findings that can inform local practices and create networks beyond schools and universities to become open to new ideas and to judge research that is relevant for local systems (Burn et al., 2021).
Despite its attractiveness, developing equitable and genuine collaboration between teachers and researchers is not exempt from difficulties. Authors have questioned whether this relationship can be called collaborative (Feldman, 1993), while others have identified resistance of school-based staff’ to take full ownership of the process (Oates and Bignell, 2019), and differences in the assumption of responsibility and power in the process (Hamsa et al., 2018).
In the enactment of school-university collaborations that promote engagement with research, the notion of agency is central. Teacher agency is understood from the framework of ecological agency (Priestley et al., 2015) due to its focus on the temporal frame and the idea that the achievement of people's agency is only within given structures and cultures. Furthermore, this study draws onto the notion of relational agency (Edwards, 2011, 2015; Edwards et al., 2009) as it centres on the agentic relationships that professionals involved in education establish and the professional learning that emerges from those relationships.
Unlike the most common understanding of partnerships between school and university as the arrangement to facilitate, support and assess student teachers in practical teaching experience, ‘The Research Teams’ is a programme of work developed in an international collaboration between a Chilean and Scottish university to engage initial university staff, pre-service teachers, and school teachers in collaborative research to address issues of practice identified by practitioners. The ‘The Research Teams’ were composed of teams of university tutors, schoolteachers, and pre-service teachers; the university coordinator and external advisor overseeing the programme. Each team identified a problem of practice and developed a 12-months research project. The expected outcomes were the implementation of the project and an academic article for submission. The initiative was designed before the pandemic, and it was implemented online during 2020-2021.
The research questions how the engagement with the Research Teams supports/influences professional learning; brings to the fore new professional identities; and offers new insights into teacher preparation.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedA qualitative research design guides the study. Qualitative data was gathered during and after the implementation of the Research Teams programme. The data analysis framework is grounded on Priestley’s and Edwards’s and colleagues' work on ecological and relational agency, expertise and common knowledge.
Data Sources and Analysis
Qualitative data was collected from the following sources: (a) field diaries of the participants (n=15), (b) semi-structured individual interviews with all participating teachers (2021 cohort) (n=10), (c) focus groups with different participant groups (university staff, pre-service teachers, and school teachers), and (d) documentary analysis of data from the seminars sessions.
The material was analysed using qualitative content analysis (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Researchers used an iterative and reflective open coding process that yielded categories and emergent themes. The codes became sub-categories and then generic categories. The research questions were used to organise the most abstract categories. Triangulation between researchers was implemented. Investigators coded a subsample of interviews and focus group transcriptions individually and then shared codes to identify similarities and discrepancies.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis paper explored the emergence of teachers’ professional agency in a collaborative research model with a specific focus on professional learning and identities as a result of engaging with collaborative research.
The analysis of the data illustrates themes in connection with professional learning and identities, participants highlighted learning about principles of collaborative research, distinction and similarities with traditional educational research, and pedagogic and disciplinary learning about the topic of the research projects. This learning seems to be less visible for those experienced researchers. The initiative impacted dimensions of identity showing complex interactions between possibilities and constraints for teachers’ professional agency. For example, university staff’s authority may be questioned with the change in notions of expertise and more horizontal relationships with student teachers and school teachers.
Findings show how the pandemic has accelerated new ways of working and facilitating but at the same time limiting interactions and more informal learning. The experience of the Research Teams also highlights the apparent dilemma of rhetoric versus reality experienced by pre-teacher students in their professional preparation offering an opportunity to move beyond foregrounding only the university’s values and discourse. The initiative highlights the reality of life in the classroom as messy, complex, and often contested social interactions with a range of potential outcomes. This moves beyond the university’s preparation for an “ideal situation/setting.”
Finally, the artificial dichotomy theory and practice in teacher preparation are in some ways addressed. The experience blends different types of knowledge, expertise, and experiences from the university’s world of theory building to the classroom’s world of enacting practice. This shifts the dynamic and the hierarchies as all involved are both learning from each other and teaching each other by offering insights into the complexity and nuance of each other’s professional worlds (university and school).
ReferencesBaumfield, V., & Butterworth, M. (2007). Creating and translating knowledge about teaching and learning in collaborative school–university research partnerships: An analysis of what is exchanged across the partnerships, by whom and how. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(4), 411-427.
Burn, K., Conway, R., Edwards, A., & Harries, E. (2021). The role of school‐based research champions in a school–university partnership. British Educational Research Journal, 47(3), 616-633.
Edwards, A. (2011). Building common knowledge at the boundaries between professional practices: Relational agency and relational expertise in systems of distributed expertise. International journal of educational research, 50(1), 33-39.
Edwards, A. (2015). Recognising and realising teachers’ professional agency. Teachers and Teaching, 21(6), 779-784.
Edwards, A., Daniels, H., Gallagher, T., Leadbetter, J., & Warmington, P. (2009). Improving inter-professional collaborations: Multi-agency working for children's wellbeing. Routledge.
Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of advanced nursing, 62(1), 107-115.
Feldman, A. (1993). Promoting equitable collaboration between university researchers and school teachers. Qualitative Studies in Education, 6(4), 341-357.
Hamza, K., Piqueras, J., Wickman, P. O., & Angelin, M. (2018). Who owns the content and who runs the risk? Dynamics of teacher change in teacher–researcher collaboration. Research in science education, 48, 963-987.
Oates, C., & Bignell, C. (2022). School and university in partnership: a shared enquiry into teachers’ collaborative practices. Professional Development in Education, 48(1), 105-119.
Priestley, M., Priestley, M. R., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Tanner, H., & Davies, S. M. (2009). How engagement with research changes the professional practice of teacher‐educators: a case study from the Welsh Education Research Network. Journal of Education for Teaching, 35(4), 373-389.
Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college-and university-based teacher education. Journal of teacher education, 61(1-2), 89-99.
|
