Conference Agenda

In this paper we discuss our attempts to establish and organise an international teacher education research collective (ITERC). We outline the early steps we have taken and propose some resources in this paper to think through the work that we might do in the future as the collective expands and understands its purposes (which given the emergent character of the collective are still in the process unfolding) in more detail. We will speculate here on what it might mean to think ‘internationally’ about teacher education and then consider whether and how a collective has formed in relation to this work. We draw on the well-known proposals of Marcus (1995) on multi-sited ethnography that seeks to trouble the assumptions that are made in positivist versions of comparative research- “… in multi-sited ethnography, comparison emerges from putting questions to an emergent object of study whose contours, sites, and relationships are not known beforehand, but are themselves a contribution of making an account that has different, complexly connected real-world sites of investigation. The object of study is ultimately mobile and multiply situated, so any ethnography of such an object will have a comparative dimension that is integral to it, in the form of juxtapositions of phenomena that conventionally have appeared to be (or conceptually have been kept) "worlds apart."” (Marcus, 1995, p. 102). What we are attempting, perhaps, with ITERC is to begin projects that have an emergent character and do not take for granted the accepted categories of existence that teacher education relies on in each of our sites. Even though we have only been ITERC for approximately 12 months what appears to be emerging is a degree of similarity across our sites. We seem to be witnessing the power and success of the Global Education Reform Movement (Sahlberg, 2014), though how this set of ideas work out in practice seems to differ in different governance settings. It will be important to document the contours of convergence and divergence (Stengers, 2005) of the practices in teacher education in discrete spatio-temporal, though conceptually connected sites- this will we think reveal how powerful concepts travel and are taken up, disputed, inflected, and so on.

We add to this work with anthropologist Tim Ingold’s (2016) ideas that assist with spatio-temporal-epistemological-political problems, namely: 1. alongly knowledge building and 2. epistemological wayfaring. Ingold (2016) allows us to consider a processual approach to knowledge making that can bring in questions about ethics and politics and this links well with Stengers (2005) invocation to ‘slow down’ a rush to judgement about those entities we seek to understand and perhaps problematise. Both Ingold and Stengers invite us to connect knowledge making with ‘worlding’ and the associated ethical and political dimensions that this moves forces into the picture. How the ethics and politics of teacher education are in relation to what are named as knowledge making practices will be of ongoing interests. It is important to note that we already have three sub-groups that have emerged in ITERC with interests in 1. ethics and politics, 2. knowledge, 3. professionalism. We discuss the ways that these have emerged and what this might mean for the future of the group in the paper.

The recent development of new teacher-researchers training in various contexts of higher education is named "university pedagogy”. Like the case for other fields, its scope has progressively widened (...) especially at the conceptual level, (...) if, in the early days, the focus was on pedagogical activities within universities (teaching activities and, later, learning activities), it soon became apparent that these could hardly be studied in isolation" (De Ketele, 2010). This training borrows methodologies already developed in teacher training, such as analysis of practices, pedagogical advice, companionship, etc. This development shows the progressive importance given by the institution to the pedagogical aspects of the teacher-researcher's job. Nevertheless, in these different approaches, there is a little place for didactic approaches, unlike in the training of secondary school teachers. The underlying assumption seems to be a better mastery of knowledge, linked to the research career of teacher-researchers, "A century ago, the defining characteristic of pedagogical achievement was content knowledge" (Schulman, 2007). However, this postulate not really verified, especially the extent of the knowledge to be taught, which is sometimes far removed from the research objects of teacher-researchers. Thus, their practical epistemology can be questioned in the context of the development of this 'university pedagogy'.

A training experiment conducted in agricultural higher education based on a collective didactic analysis of teaching practices (Gardiès, 2019) led us to implement a didactic approach that guided the participants towards a reflection on their teaching practices in relation to the knowledge taught and the study practices of their students. Indeed, "transpositive phenomena are the result of teacher and student co-activity in relation to knowledge issues, unfolding against the background of implicit contractual phenomena that partly determine the evolution of the system" (Amade-Escot, 2014). However, this approach requires epistemological vigilance on the part of trainers who are not specialists in this knowledge, which guides the choice of descriptors used in these analyses. Consequently, several research questions are being examined. What forms the didactic analyses of practices take? How is knowledge taken into account in this ternary approach (teacher/knowledge/students)? What theoretical descriptors are mobilised in the didactic analyses of practices? How do teacher-researchers appropriate the didactic approach to analyse their practices?

This communication examin the didactic approach in university pedagogy training by a didactic and collective analysis of practices. In other words, by putting the question of knowledge at the heart of this pedagogical training, it allows us to question the practical epistemology of teacher-researchers in higher agricultural education. From a theoretical point of view, we rely on the notion of practical epistemology (Brousseau, 1986, Amade-Escot, 2014), on didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991) and on the descriptors of the theorization of joint action in didactics (Amade-Escot & Venturini, 2009, Sensevy & mercier, 2007). For the methodological approach we analyse the traces of activities produced by the teacher-researchers during a training module. These traces concern the results of the collective didactic analysis of practices and their remobilisation in a professional writing. Their analyses allow us to discuss the development of their practical epistemology.

This paper discusses an on-going study that investigates how it is possible to make sense of the evolution of goals that takes place in action research projects for improving educational practice. As a research methodology to improve real life practice, action research is destined to deal with the complexity of practice situations and numerous factors that emerge in the research process (Herr & Anderson, 2005; McNiff & Whitehead, 2009; Sager, 2005). This often demands action researchers to go beyond their initial assumptions on the practice improvement. There, action researchers are challenged to not only examine how to achieve initially stipulated goals, but also explore what goals they should actually pursue as they see new factors and dynamics affecting their practice improvement process in recursive cycles of actions and reflections. As they go through the research process, action researchers tend to shift and evolve their goals as they develop new scopes and understanding of the targeted practice and what they really need to pursue in the research process. This is considered to create rich opportunities for action researchers to grow and develop in the research process. The question is how we should make sense of this process.

In traditional positivist research, shifting goals in the middle of the research process is typically considered to be a weakness or flaw of the research. There, the goals of the researchers are fixed before the research process, and once the research process starts, researchers are not supposed to change or deviate from the set-goals. However, when it comes to action research, its research process goes through recursive cycles and phases that are expected to evolve as the research process proceeds. Even though the goal may be fixed within a phase, as the research process moves to the next phase, it is often the case that a new goal evolves out of one phase to another based on a new understanding and awareness developed in the prior phase of research.

What is unique about action research as a research methodology is that it takes place in an open system. Its research activities are embedded in a real-life practice that is open to a variety of human, social and institutional factors and dynamics. This requires action researchers to modify their assumptions on the targeted practice. In this sense, attempting educational improvement through action research could be quite a journey for action researchers. It urges them to develop a new understanding of the targeted practice as they go through the research process. According to Noffke (1997), action research is characterized by the personal, professional and political dimensions that dynamically interact with each other. This means that action researchers are destined to deal with numerous moving parts and targets in its research process.

The key question is how to make sense of this process—the ways goals are set and shifted in practice improvement efforts in action research. How do action researchers actually set and shift goals in the research process from one phase to another? Investigating this issue can help us better understand the complex dynamics and process of practice improvement and professional development that take place in action research.