Peer Learning Cluster ‘Teachers and Trainers’ Peer Learning Activity Reykjavik 21 – 24 June...

Peer Learning Cluster ‘Teachers and Trainers’Peer Learning Activity

Reykjavik 21 – 24 June 2010

THE PROFESSION OF THE TEACHER EDUCATOR

The theme of the session Systemic issues:

on coherence, leadership, responsibility and ownership

Fragmentation versus unity within in teacher education and relations with stakeholders

Jón Torfi Jó[email protected] http://www.hi.is/~jtj/

School of Education, University of Iceland

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.hi.is/~jtj/

Some personal concerns

• The channels for research on education to the field of education are very narrow

• The discussion on educational issues is confined to special groups and disseminates much too slowly

Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010 2

Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010

A personal statement – a point of departure

On the whole we are best served by building up a body of skilled professional teachers but also other professionals who work as strong teams in harmonised but diverse institutional settings (normally schools).

The paper is on several issues related to this, but this presentation is preoccupied with the problem of fragmentation.

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The question about the education of teachers

How are these professionals educated, by whom and in what context? And who are they who care?

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Issues

Fragmentation versus unityFragmentation versus coherenceDepth versus coverage

But where do we see the fragmentation?

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Categories at issue with reference to fragmentation

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Stake-holders Institutions

Groups of teacher educators

School level

Level of education (pre-, in, CPD) Values Skills Setting Knowledge

Agents Categories Output and setting



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Stake-holders

MinistriesTeacher unionsUnions of school principalsParent association

Institutions

Universities

Schools of Ed

Departments

Schools


Subject specialistsSchool teachers

Pedagogues

School level

Pre-school

Primary

Secondary

VET

Tertiary

Adult

Level of education (pre-, in, CPD)

Pre-service

In-service

Continuing education

CPD



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Values

Educational valuesOperational values

……

Skills

Educational skillsProfessional development

……

Setting

Academia

The field

Knowledge

Content knowledgeProfessional knowledge

…….


Stake-holders Institutions


School level

Level of education (pre-, in, CPD) Values Skills Setting Knowledge

Ministries UniversitiesSubject specialists Pre-school Pre-service

Educational values

Educational skills Academia

Content knowledge

Teacher unions Schools of Ed

School teachers Primary In-service

Operational values

Professional development The field

Professional knowledge

Unions of school principals Departments Pedagogues Secondary

Continuing education …… …… …….

Parent associations Schools VET CPD

Tertiary

Adult

Agents Categories Output and setting


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Interested and relevant parties Output: The professional

A unifying agent is a sensible option?!


This unifying agent has two main roles

• To ensure that everything is tied together, forms a holistic frame, produces a reasonably harmonised professional who has a strong professional identity.

• To ensure that all the relevant bits are there; to make sure that crucial parts of the formation of a professional are not missing.

• Let us return to the question of fragmentation from these two perspectives.

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With these perspectives in mind we return to the questions of

• what is the corpus of attitudes, knowledge and skills that is relevant for teachers?

• what is the corpus of attitudes, knowledge and skills that is relevant for teacher educators?

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The common prototypical frame of reference for the curriculum of teachers (and thus the corpus is easy to define)

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Content knowledge

(the subject)Pedagogy


A suggested different framework for talking about teacher education

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School based

education

Educational studies

Schools as institutions

Professionalism

The discipline

The discipline as a school

subject

The discipline didactics

General didactics

New skills

General knowledge

Some questions

• Who decides what should have prominence?• Who takes responsibility for including all the relevant bits and

pieces?

• Three examples, of areas which are unfortunately normally only paid lip-service in the current discussion:

Jón Torfi Jónasson - The profession of the teacher educators June 2010 15


Example 1

• The new skills issue (new competencies) – Disregarded by the subject groups (and perhaps everybody)– Relate to new subjects, new disciplines

– A changing environment– Replacing traditional skills with new skills, and perhaps traditional

subjects with new subjects, a tall order– A long list, e.g. problem solving, critical thinking, learning to learn,

creative performance, being entrepreneurial, – And perhaps new subjects such as multiculturalism, literacy,

citizenship, democracy, the arts, personal development and self-sustainability ...

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Example 2

• Professionalism– How do you educate and train a professional?– Ideas such as those related to CHAT

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Example 3

• The question of lifelong learning, of professional development, of institutional development

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The time problem

2-5 years of initial edcuation

Time from leaving compulsory education

Dis

cipl

ines

or c

ompe

tenc

ies

5 year 10 years 20 years 20 years 40 years


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The two faces of LLL – a very bad case of fragmentation

Time line, beginning of school to the end of working life (and on )

The rhetoric of lifelong learning

Initial, pre-service and in-service education and professional development

The system as it operates

The educational system The loose arrangement of continuous education and CPD


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What about these examples?

• Very clear demonstrations of the destructive effects of fragmentation for the task of strengthening education; it will also keep the professions of teachers and teacher educators weak

• Which are reinforced by a tug of war between interest groups and also by status problems

• The worst example is the relative low status and scant attention given to LLL and CPD in many educational systems

• Present a strong case for a powerful unifying agency


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We could continue with

• The relationship between academia and the field; e.g. school based development; often operated on the basis of serious misconceptions; should be rethought from scratch.

• The institutions, and the individual teacher educators and also the schools, and the individual teachers; the difference between individual and institutional responsibility.

• The school as an institution; how it acts and develops and changes; the parallel between continuous professional development (CPD) and continuous school development (CSD).

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Forums for debate – policies

• The problem with the level of debate on educational issues, such as those mentioned in the previous figure; within the ministries, the universities and the schools of education, and ...


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Forums for debate – policies

– The policies should specify the division of labour and responsibilities between agencies (ministry, etc. )

– The policies should aim for unification of tasks (which does certainly not imply that these are only performed by one party); this is to me an overriding concern

– The policies should demand both breadth and depth but beware of how both breadth and depth are defined


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Forums for debate

– The should be a frame of reference for ingredients in a teacher education programme and consequently the competencies of teacher educators could be deduced.

– The main common criterion for all teacher educators is a profound understanding of what education is about and a good grasp of the intense curricular debates of the past hundred years.



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Thank you

Kærar þakkir

Peer Learning Cluster ‘Teachers and Trainers’ Peer Learning Activity Reykjavik 21 – 24 June...

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