Conference Agenda

This article reports from a case-study (Yin, 2018) in two fifth grade classrooms in the South-West of Norway. The case-study is a part of a Ph.D.-project and involves observations, audio-and video recordings of lessons, interviews, and focus-group interviews. The findings draw on six interviews with two lead-teachers and five focus-group interviews with 31 students. The research question is: How do teachers and students describe mutuality in teacher-student interactions, and how can these descriptions contribute to understanding qualities in teacher-student interactions? Teacher-student interactions are a central feature of what goes on in school and is in the research-field often related to students' educational achievements and effective teaching (Hattie, 2009; Marzano et al., 2003). Nevertheless, the purpose of education involves dimensions other than qualification (Biesta, 2009). Therefore, in investigating teacher-student interactions, this study aims to reach beyond the scope of effective teaching and educational achievement, focusing on exploring the qualities inherent in teacher-student interactions and how these may be understood, taking the perspectives of teachers and students.

Applying Buber's (2002) concept of meeting, interactions between the teacher and the students could be considered as meetings between I and Thou, "a relationship of openness, directness, mutuality, and presence" (Friedman, 2002, p. xii), where both partners meet like equal subjects capable of taking the view of the other. Rommetveit (Helgevold, 2016; Rommetveit, 1974) introduces the perspective, "attuning to the attunement of the other" as an expression of communication where both parties are on the same channel, or they are being in line with each other, as an ethical response to the Other. When the teacher and the students work well together and they communicate and gain mutual understanding, one could say that they are attuned to the attunement of the other. According to Rommetveit, we are in fact "dependent on a dialogical relationship with our fellow being to become human—to get to know who we are. Dialogue creates self-understanding and identity" (Hagtvet & Wold, 2003, p. 201). In Gillian's term, this 'ethics of care' … "refers to our mutual dependency on each other to become ourselves" (Hagtvet & Wold, 2003, p. 201). Drawing on Mead (2015), this mutuality may implicate that the qualities in the interactions between the teacher and the students involve identity-formation for both teachers and students. According to Honneth (1995) such development of a person’s identity “presupposes, in principle, certain types of recognition from other subjects” (Honneth, 1995, p. 37). And since the self is a social self, realized in the relationship to others “it must be recognized by others to have the very values which we want to have belong to it” (Honneth, 1995, p. 86). The theoretical perspectives will be discussed in regard to the empirical results from the analysis of the interviews with the teachers and the students. Constructing knowledge about mutuality in teacher-student interactions can be an important contribution to the field of teacher-practice as well as the further development of teacher professionalisation.

Considering a child's developmental characteristics during the preschool years supports teachers in effectively interacting with children and constructing effective educational and training programs (Trawick-Smith, 2017). Thus, when creating learning opportunities for children, it should be remembered that each child's developmental speed and learning method is unique. In other words, it is essential that teachers are aware of the developmental characteristics of the children in order to successfully instruct and educate preschoolers (Berk, 2016; Bredekamp, 2016). To support children's learning in the best possible way, preschool teachers should offer learning experiences using different teaching methods that put children at the center. It is crucial that the activities included in the education programs are carried out with very different methods for children to benefit from their environment at the highest level (Güven et al., 2013). Additionally, learning experiences must be presented to preschool children with planned and programmed activities by implementing different methods (Dinç et al., 2011).

When the studies are examined, the importance of preschool teachers knowing and applying methods suitable for children's characteristics in different activities comes to the fore (Güven et al., 2013). Since it is necessary to create activities where teachers will get to know more complex teaching methods closely, they should be used in ECE settings. Although there are a wide variety of complex teaching methods in the literature, studies have revealed that preschool teachers use a limited number of learning methods (Güven et al., 2013), which are mostly simple and subtle verbal teaching methods (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). Considering teachers' preferences for these subtle and simple teaching methods in the education process, these can form the foundations of the more complex ones: co-constructing, deconstructing, and community building as instances of specialist teaching methods.

Co-constructing is a way to highlight children’s voices and perspectives because it involves active participation in the learning process, where they establish meaning and build knowledge about the world together with the staff (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). Similarly, deconstructing serves as a way of thinking critically about social relationships, enabling children to comprehend their everyday interactions with others and the world (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). Finally, community building refers to the staff and children groups developing and improving together through learning that gives children a sense of belonging (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). All these three are considered specialist and child-centered teaching methods (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009). Including them in the early childhood education undergraduate programs would be beneficial for pre-service teachers to be familiar with these methods, which promote critical thinking, analytical research, interest (Hesson & Shad, 2007), and learning (Deci & Ryan, 2000) in the classroom. Within this purpose, this qualitative study aimed to explore the co-constructing, deconstructing, and community building as child-centered specialist teaching methods from the perspectives of early childhood pre-service teachers.

It is significant to start these implementations with a quality undergraduate education since they allow learners to build their own learning and understanding by putting them in the position of constructors (Darling-Hammond, 2009). It is thought that when specialist child-centered teaching methods: co-constructing, deconstructing, and community building (Mac Naughton & Williams, 2009) are presented, it can contribute to the professional development of pre-service teachers. Within this context, the research questions were determined as follows:

RQ.1.: What are pre-service EC teachers' views regarding specialist child-centered teaching methods: co-constructing, deconstructing, and community building?

RQ.2.: To what extent does the theoretical information given and discussed in the course contribute to pre-service teachers transferring their knowledge from theory to practicality in using specialist child-centered teaching methods: co-constructing, deconstructing, and community building?

For teachers in England, the expectations and purpose of research activity has evolved over the last decade in response to structural changes borne of the academisation agenda and the rollback of Local Authorities (LAs) (DfE, 2010; HMSO, 2010). Since 2010, the English education system has undergone several cycles of fragmentation and reformation, and has been described as “messy, patchy and diverse” (Ball, 2012), standing accused of policy borrowing from the charter schools of USA and Sweden (Heilbronn, 2016) which have been critiqued as pushing the neo-liberal agenda by encouraging the privatisation and marketisation of the education system (Au & Ferrare, 2015).

As academisation has forged ahead, teachers have found themselves in a confusing landscape of ‘self-improving school systems’ and ‘evidence-based improvement’ (DfE, 2011; Goldacre, 2013) where the goalposts constantly change, and guidance is perceived as inconsistent (Greany & Higham, 2018). At one stage of system reformation, it was mandatory for teachers in Teaching School Alliances (now disbanded) to conduct research that informs school and system improvement (Walker, 2017), but this was soon reduced to a suggestion (Walker, 2017; DfE, 2015; Warren, 2017). The ‘self-improving school’ was expected to produce evidence and to share it with other schools as a means of understanding ‘best practice’ (Goldacre, 2013). However, this led to a culture of ‘gatekeeping’, with the fragmented nature of the system creating multiple, increasingly marketised models for knowledge exchange whereby some schools sought to protect or sell knowledge (Greany & Higham, 2018). This paper reports on findings from a PhD study of how research is undertaken and managed within school alliances and multi-academy trusts in the context of a ‘schools-led education system’, with a focus on how accountability structures and performativity culture impact on teacher agency and professionalism when engaging in research or evidence gathering activities.

As the education system has continued to evolve, ‘evidence-based’ education has become dominated by the ‘what-works’ model of medical research, advocating for the use of strategic and rigorous methods, such as randomised control trials, that assess the efficacy of interventions in schools (Hargreaves, 1996; Hillage et al, 1998; Hargreaves, 2010; Taylor & Spence-Thomas, 2015; DfE, 2016j; Lortie-Forgues & Inglis, 2019; Dawson et al, 2018). Biesta argues that ‘what-works’ does not work due to education being non-causal in nature (Biesta, 2007, 2010, 2009), and proposes that the ‘culture of measurement’ present within the education system removes opportunities for educators to make value judgements about practice (Biesta, 2015, 2017). Concerns have been raised that policymakers’ enthusiasm for 14 evidence-based education and the use of RCTs serves to control teachers, keeping them in a place of ontological insecurity whereby they are forced to produce numerical data to report on system progress (McKnight & Morgan, 2020).

The push for an evidence base has persevered, with institutions such as the Chartered College of Teaching have attempted to bridge the gap between teaching and research by offering evidence-based practice courses to schools and by making research available to members (CCT, 2020). Meanwhile the EEF, through the vehicle of research schools and implementation guidance, continues to promote a ‘what works’ approach to the generation of evidence in schools (EEF, 2021), and the Government continues to pursue academisation, with the aim of all schools being in a ‘strong MAT’ by 2030 (DfE, 2022). Drawing on evidence from 26 interviews, this paper demonstrate how the culture of performativity affects agency and professionalism when teachers are engaging in research or evidence gathering activities.