Jean Murray

Constructions of Caring Professionalism: A Case Study of Teacher Educators.

This article investigates the professionalism of a group of women teacher educators working on initial teacher education (ITE) courses for intending primary school teachers in England. The article draws on data from an empirical study in the education departments of two universities. At the time of the research, these universities had just undergone major changes to the ways in which their ITE courses were organized and taught. The data show how the women teacher educators challenged these changes to their established ways of working and the implied threats to their constructions of caring professionalism. The article analyses how and why the changes affected the women’s senses of professionalism, drawing on Davies’ concept of gendered inclusion in professional life. It also discusses how and why these women’s form of professionalism developed within these institutional settings by identifying a cumulative convergence of discourses within the field of primary ITE.

Towards a new language of scholarship in teacher educators’ professional learning?

This article draws on an analysis of relevant research and an illustrative case study of one teacher educator’s learning to debate how well‐framed practitioner research might give some ways forward in devising appropriate professional learning provision for teacher educators entering Higher Education from work in schools. One of the starting premises for the writing is that supporting the development of teacher educators as scholars and researchers is an essential part of the professional development of this occupational group. In addition to contributing to the professional learning of individuals, such development is seen as vital for a number of other reasons. These include ensuring thriving teacher education communities, maintaining research‐informed teaching in pre‐ and in‐service courses for teachers and contributing to the building of capacity in the broad field of education research. The article raises a number of issues about the long‐term value and importance of the proposed type of research as part of teacher educators’ induction and professional development, with particular reference to the current situation for educational research in England.

Countering Insularity in Teacher Education: Academic Work on Pre-Service Courses in Nursing, Social Work and Teacher Education.

This article compares the practices of teacher educators with those of academics working as educators on pre‐service courses for nurses and social workers. It includes a framework for analysing professional education work, which conceptualises the educators as second order practitioners. The findings of the study show that similar missions, composed of four elements—teaching in higher education, research or scholarship, contribution to the original professional field, and service to the university—underpin professional practices. Other similarities across the three groups included: engagement in complex pedagogies; struggling to engage in ‘valid’ research; and perceptions that their departments had low status in higher education. The study shows the tensions created for professional educators when they attempt to meet the imperatives of both higher education and their original professional fields. The findings illuminate generic issues about what is termed second order practice, and indicate directions for countering insularity in teacher education.

Academic work and identities in teacher education

Across the world, ‘reforming’ teacher education has been seen as a powerful lever for bringing about change in school systems. Yet, in the plethora of evaluations and analyses of teacher education produced over recent years, the work of teacher educators in creating and implementing high-quality teaching programmes for intending teachers is often overlooked. Moreover, teacher educators in general remain an underresearched and poorly understood occupational group (Zeichner 2006; Bates et al. 2010). This seems an odd situation, not least because recent reports on the clear links between teacher quality, teaching and pupil learning in schools (e.g. Barber and Mourshed 2007; Hattie 2009) underline the centrality of all educators in the programmes they teach. That teacher education should be the subject of such sustained attention from policy makers and researchers without accompanying consideration of teacher educators, as the profession with direct responsibility for designing, teaching and evaluating the programmes, seems then not a little curious. Our stance, like that of Furlong et al. (2000, 36), accepts that ‘what student teachers learn during their initial training is as much influenced by who [our italics] is responsible for teaching them as it is by the content of the curriculum’. This understanding that teacher educators are a vital part of teacher education, and that research into their work and identities is central to understanding its full complexity, underpins this special issue. We would wish to acknowledge in full that many school teachers also work as teacher educators, working to support the learning of student teachers in the classroom by taking on roles as mentors or participating teachers in partnership schemes. In addition, the growth of employment-based teacher education routes in some countries means that there are now a significant number of ‘hybrid educators’ (Zeichner 2006) who take on extended teacher education roles while working within schools. Such individuals have brought further diversity to the occupational group of teacher educators. But, while acknowledging the importance of this growing diversity, in this special issue we focus only on exploring the identities of higher education-based educators, working within higher education institutions and on ‘traditional’ initial teacher education programmes. Our approach therefore underlines our firm commitment to the place of higher education in teacher education programmes, as well as to the centrality of teacher educators in the learning processes. With its clear focus on the area of teacher educators’ work and identities in higher education, this special issue aims to make a contribution to addressing gaps

Teacher Educators' Identities and Work in England at the Beginning of the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century.

This article reports on a recent study of teacher educators in England which aimed to explore teacher educators’ constructions of their own identities in the academic communities within two university schools of education. Findings show that teacher educators constructed repertoires of identities for themselves, deploying these to achieve credibility and recognition or to reflect personal change, depending on the particular context and ‘audience’. Many saw their foundational identity as once-a-school teacher, but entry into the university often triggered changes and the (re)construction of identity around practice as a teacher educator and research engagement. Findings also showed a diversity of identity constructions and resistances around the idea of research engagement and having an identity as an academic. These findings are discussed in relation to the rapidly changing and contested field of teacher education at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Capacity = expertise × motivation × opportunities: Factors in capacity building in teacher education in England

This article offers an initial account of the Teacher Education Research Network (TERN), a pilot education research capacity building project funded by the ESRC and designed to test a ‘social practices’ model for building an educational research infrastructure across England. The TERN project is still running at the time of writing, so it is not yet possible to offer a full evaluation or a theorised analysis of the project. Setting the initiative within the regional context of teacher education in the North West of England, the article describes elements of the project and begins to explore their significance, drawing on early evaluation data. The article adapts Charles Desforges’ equation of research capacity building as ‘Capacity = expertise × motivation × opportunities’ as a frame for this exploration.

Teacher education in the United Kingdom post devolution: convergences and divergences

This paper examines the roles of research in teacher education across the four nations of the United Kingdom. Both devolution and on-going reviews of teacher education are facilitating a greater degree of cross-national divergence. England is becoming a distinct outlier, in which the locus for teacher education is moving increasingly away from Higher Education Institutions and towards an ever-growing number of school-based providers. While the idea of teaching as a research-based profession is increasingly evident in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, it seems that England, at least in respect of the political rhetoric, recent reforms and explicit definitions, is fixed on a contrastingly divergent trajectory towards the idea of teaching as a craft-based occupation, with a concomitant emphasis on a (re)turn to the practical. It is recommended that research is urgently needed to plot these divergences and to examine their consequences for teacher education, educational research and professionalism.

Mapping the Field of Teacher Education Research: Methodology and Issues in a Research Capacity Building Initiative in Teacher Education in the United Kingdom

This article discusses the first stages of the work of the Teacher Education Group (TEG) in building research capacity in teacher education research and identifies the potential of the model adopted for future European initiatives in the field. The TEG work is part of the second phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), based on an embedded social practices model of research capacity building. The article opens by outlining the broad context of research capacity building initiatives and identifying general factors which create concerns about the sustainability of teacher education research in the United Kingdom. It then describes the initial impetus, within the TEG, for the creation of an up-to-date annotated mapping of current research in teacher education and outlines the practices used to generate the model used for the mapping. In conclusion, the article discusses some of the methodological, ethical and epistemological issues raised by the mapping exercise and the challenges ahead in disseminating and embedding the initiative.

Primary teacher education in England: 40 years on

This article examines the relationship between pre-service teacher education (ITE) for primary schooling and primary teaching in England between 1974 and 2014, and explores the ‘fitness of purpose’ of the current system of preparing teachers for the classrooms of the twenty-first century. Our historical analysis suggests that, despite 40 years of change in ITE, there are still a number of unresolved issues in ITE. These include: how to prepare for the multisubject, class teacher role which the majority of primary teachers still undertake; how to equip future teachers to deal with the social and emotional aspects of primary teaching; how to ensure that they are creative and flexible practitioners, able to cope with the demands of future curricula, pedagogical changes and the new roles and responsibilities which will inevitably occur during the course of their teaching careers in the next decades of this century; and how to structure ITE to provide adequate long-term foundations for the necessary professional development as a teacher.

Teacher educators’ constructions of professionalism: a case study

This article addresses an under-researched area of teacher education by analysing teacher educators’ constructions of their professionalism and the constituent professional resources and senses of identity on which that professionalism draws. The research is an embedded case study of 36 teacher educators in two Schools of Education in England, using questionnaires and interviews. The study is framed by a broadly sociological concern with the (re)production of social patterns and relations through teacher education. The findings show that three modes of professionalism were constructed by educators within the sample group, with each deploying professional resources and senses of identity in varying ways to position individuals as credible and legitimate practitioners within the field of teacher education. The paper argues that professionalism may well be influenced by the complex interrelationships among individual biography, institutional setting, and national imperatives for teacher education.