Paper ECER Conference

1

Paper ECER Conference

Hamburg 17 – 20 Sept. 2003

Network 10: Teacher Education Research.

By

Marit Honerød Hoveid and Halvor Hoveid

Assistant Professors in Pedagogy

Finnmark University College

Alta, Norway.

Ph: +47 78 45 01 74 or +47 78 45 01 78

E-mail: &

ON THE POSSIBILITIES OF EDUCATING ACTIVE AND REFLECTIVE TEACHERS

CONTENTS:

Introduction......

SECTION 1: Teacher-Identity and Teacher-Knowledge......

1.1 The Affirmation of a Teacher-Identity......

1.1.1 Background......

1.1.2 Becoming a Teacher is Work on Identity......

1.2 Teacher-Knowledge: Conceptions about Teaching and Learning......

1.3 The Practical Nature of Language–use......

SECTION 2: Case-work – Games with Language and Self Identity......

2.1 So what is Case-work?......

2.1.1 Case-work is Peer-interaction......

2.1.2 Case-work as Language-games......

2.2 How are “Cases” Made?......

2.3 How to do Case-work.......

SECTION 3: A Sketch to a Framing of Student-Learning-Processes in (Teacher) Education......

3.1 Learning and Teacher-Socialization.......

3.2 Two Primitive Concepts for Understanding Individual Learning Processes......

3.2.1 Concept 1: Changing Self - Corresponding to what you, as a Learner, Consider to be Good......

3.2.2 Concept 2: Changing Self - Corresponding to that which Imposes Itself as Obligatory......

3.3 A Concept of Individual Action......

3.4 Individual Action as a Model for understanding the Process of Learning......

3.5 From Individual Meaning to Mediated Meaning and Social Action.......

Conclusion:

Learning as a Social Action in Teacher Practice and (Teacher) Education......

REFERENCES:......

Introduction

Education is working with language. This is our main theory as teacher educators. In this paper we will present one way of working with language through language-games. This represent a way of working with pre-service teachers that we have found rewarding.

Let’s start with a short description of a teachers practice. What do you do all day as a teacher?

– You talk, sometimes far too much, but still you talk and maybe you also write some. As a teacher you use language in order to talk with students, to explain or instruct them or sometimes to correct them. Then you also need language in order to reflect upon your own doing as a teacher and you need language in order to communicate with your colleagues. Language is your main “working tool” on many different levels, as a teacher.

The work of Lev Vygotsky has shown us what links there are between social and psychological processes in human development. This has some specific consequences in education, whether you are working with small children or adults in higher education. According to Maya Hickmann Vygotsky is stressing the three following points in his investigation of developmental processes: “(1) the relationship between social interactive and higher mental processes, (2) the linguistic mediation of both kind of processes, (3) the multifunctionality of language.”(Hickmann, 1995 :236) This is a vast and to some extent overwhelming field to enter as an educator and researcher. What we have specially chosen to focus on in our work are the possibilities in the use of language. This means we are especially interested in the organizing functions of speech. (ibid).

Our idea is that students through their way of using language about what they do as teachers reveal some of their conceptions or belief systems about teaching and learning. (Andersen, 2001) They expose their “personal knowledge” as we will name it and their identity. Our hope is that conceptual change (Ibid) and changes in identity may take place through processes were students are “forced” to express their own beliefs and concepts and through an activity where they are engaged in the use of language. We have called these processes language-games (with ref. to Wittgenstein, 1988), which we understand as one way of promoting the language-use of pre-service teachers. Language-games are herby understood both as a mediator and as an activity. We will get back to this.

We have constructed this paper in three sections. In this first part of our paper we will present our method, stating what concepts are essential in order to understand both this way of working with teachers-ed. students and the structure of this paper. Then two concepts come to the foreground, that is; teacher-identity and teacher-knowledge. In the second section of the paper we will introduce our way of working with cases. This is meant to give a more practical insight into what we are doing. We will briefly present what we mean by case-work[1], how they are constructed and how we work with them. We will also give a short outline of what functions we believe are essential in order to make case-work into dynamic processes. In the third and last section of the paper we will theorize about some key aspects of this kind of work in (teacher) education. It mainly deals with our understanding of learning as a social action.

SECTION 1: Teacher-Identity and Teacher-Knowledge

When students finish the teacher ed. program after 3 or 4[2] years we certify them as teachers, depending they have passed all their exams. During these years their education has mainly taken place in a classroom – with short visits out into the “real world”. During the time period these students attended the teacher ed. program we expect them to develop their teacher-identity and to have broadened their teacher-knowledge

1.1 The Affirmation of a Teacher-Identity

A student in the process of becoming a teacher is in the process where her identity (as a teacher) is formed. Our perspective as teacher educators is that teacher-identity is formed by and will be formed by language-use. This is why we have emphasized the use of language especially through speech in our work with language-games. Another reason for this choice is found in the cultural background of our students. To clarify this we will give you a little insight into the cultural context of our students, at least the majority of them.

1.1.1 Background

One year this young girl at 21 years from a small fishing village at the coast of Finnmark (Northernmost county in Norway) has decided to become a teacher. She might have very clear ideas for herself about what this entails. Then she usually has worked for a couple of years as an assistant in a kindergarten or in school. On the other hand at entering this program she may not have a clue to what sort of responsibility she has taken on herself and how this choice will affect her.

This region where she comes from in the north of Norway has been described as the meeting-place for the three tribes by the author Carl Schøyen in 1918.(Jensen, 1991 :36) The tribes are; the Sámi people, the Kvens (finish descendants) and the Norwegians. Because of intermarriage most people born in these regions are somehow related to people from each of these ethnic groups (Ibid). Although, because of the heavy degradation and oppression of especially the Sámi but also the Kven culture, still today many people do not acknowledge their ethnical heritage, - many will deny it. They are Norwegians. School played a key role in this process. But nonetheless, this young teacher ed. student comes from a multicultural region.

Northern Norway is far away from Central Europe and even far away from the south of Norway in many respects. Processes that took several hundred years in Europe like industrialization and development of institutions for higher education emerged in Finnmark in the second part of the 20th century. Over hundreds of years people in these regions have made their living of fishing, hunting, herding and some farming. In our days gathering and hunting is no longer necessary in order to survive, but it still represents an important activity for many people. Up till recent times a great deal of the population has lived of a barter economy. We often have students in our classes that are first or second generation from a family who have managed on subsistence living.

The transformation of society from a pre-modern to a post- (or late-, if you like) modern era did not take much more than around 50 years in these regions as a result important scenes of the modern era have not emerged. Does this have any impact on people, on their way of thinking and perceiving the world, - we should think so. From a Vygotskyan point of view, thinking that external social activity influences, transforms and creates internal psychological processes, it is legitimate to say that this is possible. (Wertsch, 1995a; Vygotsky, 1978)

Teacher education as the first possibility to get higher education in this region started 30 years ago, in 1973. This means higher education specifically and education overall has not had a strong hold in these regions. These are regions where making a living of the land or the see holds a higher value. Up till recently, learning to read and write was not necessary in order to make a living as a fisherman.

The number of students in higher education has increased with about 50% from 1986 to 1994 in Norway. (Braaten, 1999) As a result students that earlier did not enter higher education are enrolled today. The majority of students recruited to the teacher ed. programs at our University College come from the county of Finnmark and Troms in northern Norway. This fall somewhere around 150 students started as first year students in teacher education at our University College (both pre-school and school teachers). Today there is no grade limit required at entering teacher education or pre-tests that screen students, everyone with a high school diploma may enter. As a result many students that enter out program are not necessarily interested in becoming teachers. (In a class of 55 students that started year 2000 there are14 left today)

One aspect of the students learning process that has become apparent to us as teacher educators is that student’s competence to read and use written texts seems to be somehow limited. How this might be linked to the position education has had (Edvardsen, 1996) and literacy (Pyykko, 2002) in this region, we may only speculate. Little research has been done. We base our assumptions on interactions with student for a period of around ten years. What we have is our student’s words for it; they claim that they have a hard time understanding several of the written texts that is part of their curriculum. They evaluate a lot of the texts as difficult because of its academic language.

According to Bråten [3]and Olasussen (1999) good learning in many situations requires good competence as a reader. “In higher education a great deal of the learning process requires a study of theoretical texts, which means reading, understanding, structuring and memorizing the content that is presented in books and articles “ (ibid: 28, my transl.)[4]. It does not take a lot of creativity to imagine what consequences it may have on students learning processes if they struggle with reading and understanding written texts. Accordingly we conclude that, having a good reading comprehension is a crucial part of any educational process.

Another aspect that has struck us in our meetings with students is the lack of confidence students (mainly women) have in that they know anything. Especially in student guiding /counseling settings we have experienced that many students convey very little self-confidence in that their conceptions have any value. That their thoughts and beliefs should represent any kind of knowledge is something they have a hard time believing. Knowledge to them is very often something that they believe they do not command – it is something outside of them-selves, out-side of their reach. As long as they stick to this belief they don’t seem to work with their own effort to acquire knowledge. It is obvious that this will also have consequences for their learning process in higher education. (Anderson, 2001) With reference to Garner, Bråten and Olaussen write: “Imagine that comprehension failure has just occurred and has been noted. What a child makes of failure is critical. Nicholls (1983) suggested that a learner who tends to attribute failure to effort might ask; ”What might I do differently to succeed?” On the other hand, a learner who tends to attribute failure to ability might ask a very different question, something along the lines of “Am I stupid?” Only the first question is likely to induce strategy use and improved comprehension. Children asking the ability question are likely to assume that comprehension success is not in their control (s.289)” (Garner et al. 1991 cited from(Braaten, 1999 :36) We believe this statement also applies for students in higher education.

So if this young girl entering a teacher ed. program both lack confidence about her own conceptions, thinks that she lacks some abilities and have difficulties when reading written texts, her way through the program will be a difficult one. This scenario is based on the assumptions we have made after the response students have given us through evaluations, discussions in the classroom and counseling/guiding sessions and through numerous assessments of student texts. Since we have been confronted with these aspects of the student learning process, case-work as one way of working with student learning processes has gradually developed.

1.1.2 Becoming a Teacher is Work on Identity

However much you would like to systemize and make education more effective, putting students through the same “machine” – hoping that you get the same result out on the other side, you must never forget that they are individuals, they are individuals with a personal history, a cultural background and an individual motivation and that each and one of them have to create their own teacher-identity. We can’t serve it to them, nor can the University College or the school system – it is something they themselves have to create.

This must not conceive us into believing that identity comes from within the individual, it does not come from within them selves. As a starting point we may say that the individual teacher through interaction within the culture is creating it. What then constitutes your identity? As we already implied, we cannot tell our students what will make them good teachers – no such recipe exists. On the other hand, the process of becoming one is dependent on interactions between individuals in social processes.

With reference to Derrida, Egéa-Kuehne writes that we may say that identity is constituted by the other. “There is no culture or cultural identity without this difference with itself. This can be said, inversely or reciprocally, of all identity or all identification: There is no self-relation, no relation to oneself, no identification with oneself, without culture, but a culture of oneself as a culture of the other, a culture of the double genitive and of the difference to oneself”. (Derrida cited by(Egéa-Kuehne, 2001 :36) A teacher-identity is constituted within all the different contexts she enters.

In the process of becoming teachers, students are gradually acquiring and developing their teacher identity. In order to make this process part of a conscious pursuit our claim are that this is possible by being active and reflective. This activity represents an activity towards the other, towards the outer world and towards the self. Reflectivity is directed toward ones own self among others. Both this activity and reflectivity may be interpreted with an expressive side to it, through outer speech and an intrapsycological side through inner thought.

Through your activity towards the other, the other perceives your expressions as a text for interpretation. This activity expressed in outer speech, in different situations, in different times is the material from which the other has to sort out what she can identify through repeating identifications, as the same you as you. This is how you are recognized as a person, as an identity. On an intrapsychological level when you generate your own thoughts (and feelings) about others, you also engage in a sort of activity. It is the activity of activating the re-presentation of the other in you through your inner thoughts.

On the other hand if you come from the coast of Finnmark you may have reflected on why you wants to become a teacher. Your reflective self may expose itself through your inner thoughts, your thoughts about yourself; “this is who I think I am” and “this is the sort of teacher I think I want to become”. In public, through outer speech, your reflective self will be exposed through the different ways in which you expose your self. In public you present your self: This is me” either consciously or unconsciously. You often hear students refer to their reflective self by saying: “it’s just the way I am” or “it’s who I am”. In social interaction you may play with different ways of expressing your self and have different strategies on how to present your teacher-identity. With students that have little self-confidence – we think it is especially important to create opportunities where they may gain enough confidence to present them selves.

The complexity of what influences the formation of a teacher identity is large. What we are trying to bring forth when working with students is primarily opportunities for students where they may express their selves and encounter the expressions of the other, the others evaluations and hopes.