Every Teacher Matters: the relationship between context, role and identity in becoming a teacher
Dr Samantha Twiselton, St Martin’s College, Bowerham Road, Lancaster, LA1 3JD
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Abstract
This paper will draw on a study, which has at its centre the relationship between student teachers' behaviour and their underlying thoughts and beliefs as they learn to teach in the primary school. Strong pre-existing notions about teachers, classrooms and schools appear to influence how student teachers perceive the role of the teacher and schooling. They are driven by a need for ideas – tasks that will make them feel confident, purposeful and authoritative in the classroom. However, many have argued that effective teaching involves responsively scaffolding learners in a way that is tuned to their needs. In doing this teachers draw on a range of types of teacher knowledge (e.g. Shulman 1987) including an understanding of the subject, the child and the context. This appears to involve what Tochon and Munby, (1993) identify as a ‘synchronic time epistemology’, in which knowledge is combined and connected by teachers. This ‘bringing together’ of knowledge to meet the needs of the individual is in tune with the need for a broader understanding of how to support children expressed by current English Government Policy (e.g. the Green Paper, Every Child Matters, DFES, 2003) and clearly requires a concept of the teacher that goes beyond overseeing tasks or ‘delivering’ a curriculum.
Specifically this will address the following questions: What are the main roles student teachers identify as central in their teaching of primary school children? How might this relate to the challenges presented by ‘Every Child Matters’ and the developing role of the teacher?
The main data collection methods were observation and interview - the observations provided a basis for the interviews that followed them up and centred on the actions taken by the student teachers as a way of exploring the knowledge, understanding and sense of identity that underlay them but with some more general questions designed to probe the interviewees' understanding and approach within the broader context of their teaching. The basic analytic approach taken was one of content analysis, broadly following the guidelines recommended by Hycner (1985).
The findings suggest that student teachers are powerfully influenced by the way they view the role of the teacher and can be crudely identified with one of three categories. Task Managers, who have a restricted view of their role, concerned with organisation and management. Curriculum Deliverers, who relate to learning but this is defined and limited by the curriculum. Concept/Skill Builders, who link to an underpinning framework of concepts, which relate to learning beyond the curriculum and the classroom. An examination of the identity and knowledge held by each type of student teacher reveals the importance of viewing teacher knowledge as a synchronised process of making connections. This highlights the centrality of teacher identity and leads to conclusions about the complex nature of the support required to enhance student teachers' learning both in school and in Higher Education Institutions
Every Teacher Matters: the relationship between context, role and identity in becoming a teacher
Introduction
This paper will draw on a study that has at its centre the relationship between student teachers' behaviour and their underlying thoughts and beliefs as they learn to teach in the primary school. It will explore data collected throughout student teachers’ Initial Teacher Education programme that gives some insight into their developing teacher identity. It will examine this in relation to the developing role of the teacher in England as implied by the Government Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’ (DFES, 2003) and the 2004 Children’s Act that followed it.
Background
The factors that impact on student teachers as they progress through Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes are complex and wide ranging. In addition to the need to acquire extensive and varied knowledge, skills and understanding, the contexts in which their learning takes place are diverse and multi-layered. They include a number of different physical locations (schools, classrooms, seminar rooms, libraries, informal social settings, home etc), each of which (to varying degrees) is influenced by a number of different formal and informal policy contexts (government ITE, HE and school policies, LEA, school, class etc).
Student teachers thus find themselves bombarded by information and experiences emanating from many sources and with often competing priorities for their attention. It is clear that in this position they need to find ways of making sense of their experience, both as learners and as teachers. In order to find a way of realistically managing their learning and teaching they need to be able to select the important information from so much that is potentially relevant. As we shall see when the findings from the study in question are discussed, the professional identity held by student teachers – the way they see (and therefore seek to enact) the role of the teacher is a powerful, driving force for helping them to decide what to attend to both in their teaching and their learning.
Before examining these findings, it is worth pausing to consider the role of the teacher as implied by recent English government legislation (DFES, 04). There are a number of indications that this is seeking to broaden the teacher role in a number of ways:
A combination of high expectations, innovative thinking and a broad view of supporting children and young people … personalisation – so that the system fits to the individual rather than the individual having to fit to the system… It is about having a system which will genuinely give high standards for all – the most effective teaching at school, which builds a detailed picture of what each child already knows, and how they learn, to help them go further… opportunities are built in for staff from different backgrounds to get to know each other, cooperate, discuss and make joint decisions. (my italics)
(Department for Education and Skills: Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners, 2004)
The need for teachers to develop a broad and rich curriculum is strongly promoted. This is set alongside a notion of a very individualized, highly child-centered approach to supporting learning and a strong emphasis on multi-agency working and the sharing of expertise and information. All of this implies a notion of the teacher that goes well beyond the technician who delivers a prescribed curriculum – a model, it could be argued that has dominated in the recent past.
This broad, more flexible and child-centered view of the teacher is to be welcomed but is not without its challenges, particularly for those who are involved in supporting the development of student teachers. In this article I will argue that there may be a tension arising between the way student teachers view themselves and their role (and are often encouraged by external influences in doing so) and the demands placed upon them by Every Child Matters.
This article draws on a study that attempts to explore the relationship between student teachers’ actions in the classroom and the event schemas (Bruner, 1966, Cole, 1996) they draw on in order to direct this. It examines the choices student teachers make in the selection and retention of information as they decide how to behave in the classroom. It explores this in relation to the teacher identity revealed by this process and the challenges this may present for student teachers once they are qualified and are expected to take on the teacher role as implied by recent government legislation.
Design and Methodology
The paper centres on data collected from 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th year student teachers on a 4 year primary degree with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). It was gathered over a five year period and each year data set included student teachers from all stages of the programme. The size and nature of the samples were determined by the need to be large enough to demonstrate patterns and regularities which might be reproduced amongst several students, while still being small enough to facilitate detailed analysis of each one.
The methodology employed involved, for each student teacher, the systematic observation of a teaching session (usually an English/literacy lesson) followed by a semi-structured interview of approximately 45 minutes. This used the observational data as a main focus, but included more general questions designed to probe the interviewee's understanding and approach within the broader context of their teaching. The questions centring on the observational data were attempting to explore the motivation and thinking behind the actions taken by the student teacher during the lesson – e.g. ‘what were you trying to do? Tell me about your thinking when you said/did x?’ The more general questions were designed to elicit the student teacher’s views about what they felt their own learning needs were, what they needed in order to become a more effective teacher and how/where/when they considered it most likely they would meet these needs.
The interview data was analysed using 'streams of discussion' as rough units of analysis. This roughly followed the procedures outlined by Hycner (1985). The transcriptions were delineated into ‘chunks’ of conversation that were judged long enough to indicate a strong tendency or stream of meaning. These were then clustered together according to common themes. These were used to help decide a 'best fit' categorisation for each interviewee. The delineation of the units of meaning and the way in which they were categorised were tested by scrutiny from independent external judges.
Findings
Previously published findings (Twiselton, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005) showed that throughout the study the data collected suggested that each of the student teachers interviewed could be roughly classified into onethree distinct categories. These are:
Task Managers
This category of students’ view of their main roles was very product orientated, i.e. concerned with completing the task rather than developing the learning it is supposed to promote. The children apparently being on task during the lesson and there being some concrete product at the end was judged as success. Examples of comments made by student teachers in this category include:
I didn’t want them to start being silly, that was really the main thing I was thinking about
And
Really I was just concentrating on getting it done
And
My role was organisation - make sure they went in turns - went clockwise.
Curriculum Deliverers
These student teachers, unlike the previous category, did view the purpose of the task beyond simply wanting to get it done. They made more explicit reference to learning, but this was conceived within the restrictions of an externally 'given' curriculum. They talked about learning objectives as ends within themselves rather than as contributing to a broader framework of concepts and skills associated with the subject. When probed about a rationale for the objectives that was other than that they were in the given curriculum they struggled to find an answer. Typical examples include:
I needed to get some word-level in because that was next.
And
We needed to cover the comprehension bit before going on to the next one.
And
The school wanted me to do story writing so that’s why I was looking at that really.
Concept/Skill Builders
These student teachers were far more focused on the child, the subject and the concepts and skills needed to become proficient within it. The concepts and skills defined the task and the task was seen as important only in so much as it was a vehicle for this. Examples include:
They need to consolidate and apply it to their own writing and see how the process works, backwards and forwards. I wanted them to get the information and then convey the information, because so much work they do depends on being able to do that.
And
I wanted them to think about story structures – that would help them with their prediction.
And
It was the adjectives that brought the text to life.. they needed to see that.
And
I wanted to show them in different ways - help them see what it was all about.
These student teachers were able to give broader and deeper rationales for what they were trying to achieve for the pupils, even if they did not feel particularly successful on that occasion (though it is worth noting that previously published work (Twiselton and Webb, 98) shows that these student teachers were much more likely to be successful in supporting pupil learning).
Discussion
As discussed in the introduction, event schema theory is a useful way of trying to examine how the student teachers were thinking and acting. The notion of cognitive schemas is used by Cole (1996) in his attempt to describe the role of culture in the construction of knowledge. Cole argues that schemas channel individual thinking by structuring the selection, retention and use of information. He describes schemas as selection mechanisms employed by individuals as they engage with their worlds. The schemas specify which elements of information are essential and how they relate to each other. Schemas serve as guides to action and their use is context specific. So a student teacher processes her perceptions of the physical actions that take place in the classroom according to schemas that will help her both to perceive what has already taken place in a particular way and to regulate her actions in the future.
Cole makes particular mention of a kind of schema often referred to as a script. A script is an event schema that specifies the people who appropriately participate in an event, the roles they play, the objects they use and the sequence of causal relations that applies. As such it is generalised from a range of experiences and may develop continuously. Schemas provide a bridge between the physical world and the mental processes that are derived from it. They determine how information originating from the physical, objective world is processed into a subjective construction which may also have what Bruner (1966) terms cultural ‘inter-subjectivity’ - i.e. a subjective identity shared between members of the same culture. Once a person has a crude script he or she can enter the flow of a particular event with partial knowledge, which gets enriched in the course of the event itself, facilitating later co-ordination.
Student teachers are expected to begin performing as teachers in the classroom very early in their ITE programmes. This means that being able to enter the flow of classroom activity as a teacher and become a genuine participant in an event is likely to be high priority. A key element of their successful progress through ITE is predicated on their classroom performance. In order to perform well it is understandable that, from the beginning, student teachers need to feel the part and ‘look like’ a real teacher. However what counts as ‘looking like a teacher’ is potentially quite problematic as it can draw on so many possible models and perceptions. Not least of these is the extensive knowledge all student teachers have about teachers developed from their experience as a pupil. In order to participate in a context in which they need almost immediately to perform (Ball, 1994) and prove themselves to both children and adults, student teachers require a framework for understanding the processes and functions they were involved in. The obvious one to hand involves their interpretation of classrooms from being pupils themselves. This crude and simplistic script allows them to participate in the practices of teaching very early in their ITE.
The findings suggest that some student teachers near the beginning of their programme appeared to cling to a version of what should happen in educational contexts that was seemingly strongly influenced by images of teaching from their own experience as pupils. As they begin their ITE, student teachers have what are often superficial models of what it is to be a teacher, involving authority, order and 'busyness'. It could be argued that at the beginning of ITE for many student teachers this strong mental image of a teacher is a life-line they cling to in order to make sense of their experience and (probably more important to them) to give them confidence and purpose in the classroom. This has parallels with the work on the nature of classroom tasks by Doyle (1986) and Clayden et al. (1994). Doyle found that there was a tendency for pupils to ‘bid down’ the demands of tasks and for teachers to accede to this in the interest of sustaining an orderly and smoothly running environment. Clayden et al. (1994) found that there was a danger that pupils and teachers focus on the culture of classrooms (keeping the work neat, finishing on time, staying between the lines when colouring) instead of the culture of the subject being learned. It could be argued that the Task Managers were also focusing on a similar classroom culture, and that this attention to this very narrow view of educational contexts was the main factor driving their self-identity as teachers. The hope is that as they participate in more and varied teaching situations and learnt to interpret educational contexts in increasingly informed ways, deepening understanding will constantly enrich the crude scripts they started with.