David Friesen

Together against all odds: towards understanding the identities of teachers of at risk students

Abstract This paper describes how a collaborative project engaged teachers and university researchers in an ongoing conversation about teaching students whose learning is considered to be at risk due to a complex of social and economic barriers. Action research was employed to develop understanding of unique teacher identities shaped in classroom settings with large numbers of these students. Teacher stories generated by this research revealed that, as key members of interagency teams, teachers play a strong advocacy role for students at risk.

The Action Research Game: re‐creating pedagogical relationships in the teaching internship

ABSTRACT This paper is an examination of the pedagogical relationships that developed within a student teaching triad that was engaged in an action research project during a sixteen‐week undergraduate teaching internship. It portrays action research through the game metaphor. The action research game appears to promote pedagogical relationships among the players which are more collaborative and inquiry oriented than hierarchical and student performance oriented. Hermeneutic inquiry was the research approach employed to interpret the experiences of the cooperating teacher. intern, and faculty advisor involved in the action research project. As an openness to new horizons, this kind of inquiry attempts to develop understanding. An interpretive approach alms at excavating taken‐for‐granted practices in order to stimulate new insights and new possibilities. In this study, a deeper understanding of both pedagogical relationships and action research in the internship was desired. The researcher, also the facult...

‘I Think That What's Happening in Aboriginal Education is That We're Taking Control’: Aboriginal teachers’ stories of self‐determination

Abstract This article reports findings from a study of four First Nations graduates of the Northern Teacher Education Programme (NORTEP) in Canada in order to examine Christine Sleeters’ (1993) contention that a more diverse teaching force will have significant implications for the structure of schooling. It shows some of the ways that these northern First Nations teachers, through their Aboriginal worldviews, are challenging the predominantly Eurocentric orientation of Canadian schools as part of the broader movement towards Aboriginal self‐determination in the context of the evolving nature of northern Aboriginal education in Saskatchewan. These Aboriginal teachers’ identities are shaping school practices and the broader development of their communities. Experiences at NORTEP, as well as through earlier life histories, have shaped these teachers’ Aboriginal identity. Their own alienation and frustration with the education and social system they experienced, and struggles that they had as Aboriginal peop...

Toward Global Horizons: Student Stories from an International Teacher Education Project

Abstract These authors present an international teacher education project as an approach to the development of global consciousness in student teachers. Following a brief overview of the five year Regina-Yaounde Inter-University Project, the stories of two of the student participants, one from Cameroon, Africa, the other from Canada, are presented. These stories speak to the impact that the student exchange component of the project has had on their professional development. Exposure to field experiences in a country on another continent has had a profound effect on their subsequent involvement in education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the development of global awareness in the two students as a case of what the continental philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer terms the “fusion of horizons”

Action Research in the Teaching Internship: exploring the interpretive pathway

ABSTRACT This paper explores action research involving the student teaching triad in an undergraduate teaching internship. It attempts to show how collaborative inquiry involving an intern, cooperating teacher, and faculty advisor enabled them to better understand and change their teaching practices. A collaborative action research account focuses on the triads struggle to improve student writing over the course of a sixteen‐week teaching internship at the high school level. Reflection on the experience takes place through three interpretive themes. The notions of collaboration, reflective practice, and professional development, as they relate to the internship, take on different meanings when examined from the action research perspective. These new understandings show the action research pathway to involve the interpretation of experience as opposed to the simple implementation of teaching techniques.