Heather Hodkinson

Improving schoolteachers' workplace learning

This paper is set in the context where there is a policy emphasis on teacher learning and development in a number of countries as a means towards school improvement. It reports on a longitudinal research project about the workplace learning of English secondary school teachers, carried out between 2000 and 2003. This was part of a Teaching and Learning Research Programme network of projects looking at learning in a variety of workplaces. The paper contrasts some key features in the teacher development and workplace learning literatures, which highlight different understandings of learning—as acquisition, participation and/or construction. We argue that insights from the literature and the research, including insights from other projects in the network, enhance our understanding of teacher learning. The paper describes some of the main ways in which experienced teachers learn, and then identifies three dimensions which interact in influencing the nature of that learning. The dimensions are: the dispositions of the individual teacher; the practices and cultures of the subject departments; and the management and regulatory frameworks, at school and national policy levels. Based upon the findings, we argue that current policy approaches to teacher development in the UK are over‐focused on the acquisition of measurable learning outcomes, short‐term gains, and priorities that are external to the teachers. They also assume and strive for impossible and counterproductive universality of approach. Instead, our findings suggest that teacher learning is best improved through a strategy that increases learning opportunities, and enhances the likelihood that teaches will want to take up those opportunities. This can be done through the construction of more expansive learning environments for teachers. We examine briefly some barriers to this approach, and give some suggestions of what could be done.

The significance of individuals' dispositions in workplace learning: a case study of two teachers

This article about workplace learning examines the relationship between, firstly, individual learners positions and dispositions, and secondly, their working and learning within the workplace community and practices. Drawing on research with secondary school teachers, it presents case study accounts of two teachers from the same school to illustrate the significance of these relationships. In order to understand these relationships from a broadly participatory perspective, the article then presents a theoretical discussion, extending Lave and Wengers work on communities of practice, through the use of Bourdieus concepts of habitus, capital and field. It concludes that such a combination offers a valuable means of understanding these relationships, in a wider social, economic and political context. It is necessary to offer an account of learning for work which acknowledges the independence of individuals acting within the interdependence of the social practice of work. (Billett, 2001, p. 22)

The significance of individual biography in workplace learning

Abstract In this paper we address a perceived gap in the workplace learning literature, for there is very little writing which successfully integrates the issues of individual learners into predominantly social theories of learning. The paper draws upon data from four linked research projects to address this problem. Following an analysis of the theoretical problems and a possible solution, the paper identifies and discussed four overlapping individual dimensions to workplace learning. They are: workers bring prior knowledge, understanding and skills which contribute to their learning; the habitus of workers influences the ways they co-construct and take advantage of opportunities for learning at work; the dispositions of individual workers contribute to the co-production and reproduction of the workplace culture; and belonging to a workplace community contributes to the developing identity of the workers themselves.

Teaching to learn, learning to teach? School-based non teaching activity in an initial teacher education and training partnership scheme

Abstract This paper is based on the findings of a small longitudinal study of secondary school experience as part of Initial Teacher Education and Training in England. It focuses on set aside study time during school experience, where tensions appeared between the student teachers’ roles as student and as teacher. In contrast to scheme intentions, much of the study time was used in activities directly related to practical teaching, reflecting the needs of the student teachers to concentrate on doing what ‘real’ teachers do, and to become socialised into the culture of the school.

Retirement as a Learning Process

This article draws upon a major qualitative empirical research investigation in Great Britain to explore the relationships between retirement and learning. Though retirement is frequently viewed as an event leading to a life stage, our data show that it can perhaps be best understood as a lengthy process. This process begins well before actual retirement in most cases, and it continues well after any symbolic retirement event. Through this process of change, it is common for persons to be retired by one definition but not by another. The article shows that if we adopt recent understandings of learning as a process of becoming—incorporating informal as well as formal learning—then retirement is a process and learning is an inevitable, integral part of that process. We conclude by suggesting some implications that follow from understanding retirement in this way.

Markets, Outcomes and the Quality of Vocational Education and Training: Some Lessons from a Youth Credits Pilot Scheme.

This paper outlines the key characteristics of a new paradigm for the management of British Vocational Education and Training. This paradigm is based on measurement of outcomes and payment by resul...

Micro-Politics in Initial Teacher Education: Luke's Story.

Abstract A case study of one secondary Initial Teacher Education students first school experience on one of the newly developed university-school partnership schemes in England is presented. The final report on this experience was controversial and resulted in very high feelings. The paper analyses three possible explanations for this finding and concludes that it can be understood as an example of micro-politics. The paper points to the virtual absence of a micro-political dimension in current teacher education literature and argues that such a dimension is much needed in research on the topic in teacher education. Student teachers themselves should be made aware of the micro-political dimensions of the schools in which they learn to teach.