James C. Conroy

Developing a ‘clinical’ model for teacher education

This paper reports on the introduction of a ‘clinical model’ of teacher education at the University of Glasgow in 2011. The account is set against the backdrop of a review of major contemporary developments in teacher education. The common focus in this work is on such themes as the key function of the practicum, on ‘teaching schools’ and on the roles and responsibilities of the various players in teacher professional learning. The context for reform of teacher education in Scotland is described, showing how the opportunity for a radical intervention arose. The distinctive features of the Glasgow model are set out and a summary of the findings of the internal evaluation carried out at the University is offered. Issues identified include challenges of communication, the nature of professional learning and the cultural embeddedness of existing practices. In the light of this initiative, the paper then reviews insights gained concerning the relationship between policy, practice and research in teacher education, before concluding with comments on the future of research in teacher education.

Failures of meaning in religious education

The educational aims of religious education (RE) in the UK as evinced, for example, by Ofsted have been couched in the language of meaning making. Based on an ESRC funded three-year ethnographic study of 24 schools across the UK, this essay represents one attempt to interrogate how such meanings are shaped, or indeed fail to be shaped, in the day-to-day transactions of the school. We do this by locating RE in current discussions of efficacy, as manifest in inspectoral reports and allied scholarship, illustrate how complex the entailments and purposes of RE are, explore some of the ethnographic and related data to understand how meaning is shaped inside and outside the classroom, and, finally, attempt to locate that material in more general observations about the nature of meaning in RE – observations that are informed by contemporary readings of meaning making in the work of, among others, Baudrillard. We observe that RE, so dependent upon meaning for educational justification, is too frequently a site which witnesses failures of meaning.

The Delphi method: gathering expert opinion in religious education

The ‘Does Religious Education work?’ project is part of the Religion and Society programme funded by two major research councils in the UK. It sets out to track the trajectory of Religious Education (RE) in secondary schools in the UK from the aims and intentions represented in policy through its enactment in classroom practice to the estimations of its impact by students. Using a combination of approaches, we are in the process of investigating the practices which determine and shape the teaching of RE in secondary schools through linked case studies, semi-structured interviews and a practitioner enquiry strand. In this article we focus on the first stage of the project where we used the Delphi method to elicit expert opinion on the aims and intentions of RE in secondary schools in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. We outline the place of the Delphi process within the rationale of the project, discuss emerging themes and some of the issues arising from the use of this approach.

Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: the Trickster as poet and teacher

In contemporary Britain the curriculum is certainly no laughing matter! Its construction is a matter of intense seriousness; its design expressly intended to deliver an ‘educated’ workforce capable of competing in global markets (Ferguson, 200 1). It is certainly true that there is nothing new in the desire of governments to see education as primarily at the service of the economy (Lawrence, 1992, pp. 77ff.). What is new in our present educational politics, however, is the palpable sense of urgency with which many governments now address perceived economic and industrial needs and the manner in which they publicly declare the subservience of locally determined educational and social goals to international economic forces (Conroy, 1999b, pp. 491-494). Much has already been written on these matters and it is not the purpose of this essay to critique the pre-eminence of an economic discourse in educational policy-making and reflection (McNally, 1993). Indeed, such questions are only of marginal interest here and affect the discussion only to the extent that they relate to wider epistemic and cultural issues. Rather, what is critiqued in this essay is the seriousness with which we confront education. This seriousness is bound up, we argue, in the modern obsession with numerical descriptions of who we are and what constitutes human purpose. Statistical profiles of economic achievement, school league-table performance indices, body size indicators, popular attitude profiles and so on have come to dominate our lives, arrogating to themselves both explanatory and moral force. Perceived as the instrument of this ‘economic’ education, the teacher is defined as a moral agent only to the extent that she delivers children into this serious, numerical world as fully formed economic and social functionaries. Teachers and their students come to be held by this mentality in the grip of a performativity which measures educational attainment in terms of classical input-output ratios (Blake et al., 1998). This essay is an attempt to redress the balance. We wish to suggest, however cautiously, that there is another, different and more ancient way of looking at the

Teaching as a clinical profession: translational practices in initial teacher education – an international perspective

In response to evidence that teacher quality has the greatest in-school impact on student learning, and the consequent need for reform of intial teacher education, clinical approaches to the preparation of pre-service teachers have gained international prominence since the turn of the twenty-first century. This adaptation of medical discourse for the preparation of teachers has presented a new paradigm for teacher preparation and professional learning: a key tenet of this approach is the ‘translation’ and application of theory and research in the sites of practice. This paper will explore the ways in which two clinical pre-service teacher preparation programme, The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne and the Partnership Model at the University of Glasgow, utilise clinical approaches to develop the research-informed practice of pre-service teachers working at designated clinical sites (schools). A central aspect of this paper is a discussion of the ways in which the medical metaphor and its consequent models can be effectively translated into different national contexts, and the affordances and appropriations required when undertaking this cross-disciplinary work.

The enstranged self: recovering some grounds for pluralism in education

For something approaching 50 years, multicultural education has been accepted as an educational, social and moral good by liberal educators. Its instantiation in the practices of education has, in various ways, largely depended on a series of strategies for making the other (the stranger) familiar within the majority culture. This essay suggests that such a cultural and pedagogical focus on the other may be a mistake. Drawing on literary cultures that span both time and space it demonstrates how a more original, radical and effective pedagogy of pluralism and multiculturalism might be grounded on a very different set of ideas about the self than those that have come to dominate education over the last 50 years. The first section argues for the re‐habilitation of the notion of enstrangement, which has, since the early part of the nineteenth century, been displaced by the much more aggressive and alienating (Marxian and post‐Marxian) notion of estrangement. This forms the ground for re‐thinking our relationship to the self and the other and thus to the other and the world. The second section looks specifically at how we are enstranged onto‐psychologically, epistemically and culturally and the implications of these forms of enstrangement for education. The third part concentrates on how a pedagogy of enstrangement can constructively open up new possibilities in, and for, multicultural education as a moral endeavour.

Poetry and Human Growth

Relying on some of the insights of Jungian psychology, this paper analyses the confusion in the language of political economy in Britain which generates and sustains moral infantilism in the civil polity. It goes on to suggest that both politicians and educators are, or perceive themselves to be, powerless to arrest the progress of the transnational juggernaut which has displaced government as the sustainer of individual and collective aspiration. As an antidote to these movements, the paper offers a rehabilitated understanding of the power of the poetic imagination in equipping the individual with control over her or his own decision-making. The power on offer is rooted in the development of Verstehen as a method of engagement which embraces emotionality, ambiguity and provisionality. Finally, it explores some of the pedagogical implications of this thinking.

The Continued Existence of State-Funded Catholics Schools in Scotland.

Catholic schools in Scotland have been fully state-funded since the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act. Under this Act, 369 contemporary Catholic schools are able to retain their distinctive identity and religious education and the teachers have to be approved by the Catholic hierarchy. Similar to the position of other forms of state-funded and partially state-funded faith schools in Europe, the position of state-funded Catholic schools in Scotland has been contested. This paper initially locates the debate and discussion about Catholic schools in Scotland in the history and development of the wider faith schools debate in the UK, particularly England and Wales. The paper outlines the key themes in the debate on faith schooling in England and Wales identifying the similarities between the debate in Scotland and England and Wales and the distinctive features of the debate in Scotland. The paper will then focus on a critical examination and analysis of two key themes concerning state-funded Catholic schools in the Scottish context. The first theme is the debate over the continuation of government funding of Catholic schooling as it is effectively government funding of religious beliefs and practices for a particular Christian denomination. The second theme is more unique to Scotland and has some tenuous links to the debate on faith schools in Northern Ireland: the claims that Catholic schools are the root cause of sectarianism or contribute to sectarianism.

Seeing and Seeing through: Forum Theatre Approaches to Ethnographic Evidence.

Ethnographic findings from a large qualitative research project on Religious Education in UK secondary schools uncovered contested meanings for the subject as a social practice. In order to bring to the fore some of the ways these contested meanings manifest themselves as confusions in the classroom, a performance ethnography was conducted, making use of Augusto Boal’s forum theatre approach. This involved distilling ethnographic evidence into dramatic vignettes, performing these in front of an audience of pupils, and asking the pupils for feedback on the experience. The feedback enabled the research team to triangulate their findings, by inverting the ethnographers’ gaze, allowing pupils to co-construct the meanings which the ethnographers had elicited from the data. The method is discussed in detail, as are the ways in which resource and examination pressures in the Religious Education classroom can obscure opportunities for authentic exploration of religious meanings in pupils’ lives and the contribution of the forum theatre and pupils’ reflections on how to remedy these distortions.

From Heaven to Earth: A Comparison of Ideals of ITE Students

This article describes and discusses the outcomes of an open‐ended questionnaire completed by Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students about their personal and professional ideals, that is, ideals they would like to pass on to their pupils, their ideal teacher and ideal school. We compared five groups of students that were formed on the basis of their personal ideals: a religious ideals group, a moral ideals group, a vocational ideals group, a materialistic ideals group and a remainder group. We found that those in the materialistic ideals group were more focused on their own ideal situations, like being married or being happy, than the others and that those in the vocational and moral ideals groups were less focused on these ideals. We also found that the moral and religious ideals groups had comparable personal and professional ideals, whereas the materialistic ideals group was clearly inconsistent. No clear picture emerged as to whether or not the vocational ideals group had distinctive professional ideals.