Peter Cope

The student teacher in school: Conditions for development

Abstract This paper is based on an analysis of interviews with student teachers, which focused on the nature of the support they received in school in making the transition from student to teacher. The success of this transition in interactional terms, appears to depend on experiencing a number of relational conditions, which are largely determined by others, but which serve as a crucial context for individual development. These conditions are represented idiomatically and non-prescriptively; yet between the identifiable extremes of practice, they may be capable of defining the socio-professional environment of experiential learning on teaching practice.

Current realities in the student teaching experience: A preliminary inquiry

Abstract The experiences of 22 student teachers completing a final 10-week teaching practice in secondary schools were obtained by ethnographic interviewing. Their developing sense of “belonging” to the teaching community in their schools was the dominant theme. Recognition by teachers as a colleague and confirmation of teacher status by pupils were major dimensions of this feeling. On the basis of the student narratives, the teaching practice acts most powerfully as an initiation into “teacherhood”, focused particularly on the classroom and the subject department. The sympathetic and supportive environment of colleagues was especially important in meeting the mentoring needs of the student teachers. It was concluded that initial professional education needs to take more account of the dominant emotional needs of students.

Informal Learning of Musical Instruments: The importance of social context

The study reported here is based on telephone interviews carried out with six session musicians who played at the Hebridean Celtic Festival in the summer of 2000. (Sessions are musical gatherings which take place in pubs and which are open to anyone who wishes to play.) The musicians, who were all amateurs, were asked to give brief musical life histories with an emphasis on how they had learned to play. The musical histories of the group were diverse, with two being entirely self-taught, three having had a significant input of lessons and one having started with conventional lessons but moving to self-tuition from the age of 11. All of the players regarded sessions as important to their participation in music, providing them with a context in which to enjoy music and with motivation to improve. It is argued that an appropriate social context is a powerful mediator of learning and one that may reduce dependence on formal tuition.

A role for practising teachers in initial teacher education

Abstract This paper discusses the problems which can arise from the location of initial teacher education in two contexts, namely higher education and schools. An attempt to reduce the resulting dissonance by deploying practising teachers on an initial teacher education programme within higher education is described and the views of those teachers are presented. It is suggested that the use of practising teachers in higher education has a number of advantages, such as the presentation to students of situated and practical knowledge of teaching and the opportunity for more consistent quality assurance of professional inputs to the programme. But questions are raised about access to the craft knowledge of the teachers and the relationship between theoretical and practical components of the course. It is concluded that bringing practising teachers into the higher education contexts could act as a basis for the development of a more effective initial teacher education and for professional development of both teachers and lecturers working on initial teacher education programmes.

Adult Learning in Traditional Music.

This study is based on interviews carried out with 13 adult learners of traditional fiddle playing. The average age of the learners was 56 and they had been learning to play for between 2 and 20 years. All of the interviewees had taken music at school but none of them had been stimulated to participate further in any significant sense. The aspiration to learn to play the fiddle had various sources. Learning usually took place through traditional workshops and through the medium of the tune rather than through scales and exercises. Only one of the participants took regular conventional individualised lessons. They tended to take a pragmatic stance with regard to technique, looking for technical advice when they came up against barriers to progress. The music they played was within an aural culture and most of them learned by ear although they tended to regard notation as a useful supplement. All of them played in some sort of social context and all of them described an immense sense of pleasure and achievement from their playing. It is suggested that this kind of informal learning may have implications for learning to play instruments at school.

Fragile Knowledge of Angle in Turtle Geometry.

This paper describes an investigation into how the use of Logo affects childrens basic knowledge of angle. It shows that teachers should not assume that unstructured use of Logo with a minimum of teacher intervention will have a beneficial effect on childrens knowledge of angle and how it is measured. It appears to be the case that children make erroneous adjustments to their conceptual knowledge of angle in order to accommodate the results of an acquired procedural interaction with the computer.

Cultural context in musical instrument learning

The importance of a cultural context for musical instrument teaching and learning is analysed in terms of situated cognition and cultural validity. It is suggested that the current cultural location of instrument teaching is often associated with a view that confines success to a minority of children, partly by retaining the notion of the concert player as the goal. The nature of this goal and its implications are discussed and compared with traditional instrument learning and playing. Given that recent research suggests that virtuoso players are the product of practice rather than innate talent, the authors argue that a more relevant cultural framework for instrument teaching would result in competent players whose facility with an instrument would be appropriate to their social context.

Angle and Rotation: Effects of Different Types of Feedback on the Quality of Response.

The study compares the levels of response to angle/rotation problems presented on screen with a Logo microworld with the levels of response to similar problems presented on paper. Pairs of children aged from 9 to 11 who had little or no experience of Logo completed the problems in about 40 minutes. Pairs of children completed the problems over a period of eight weeks. The responses, classified using the SOLO taxonomy (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes), suggested that the effect of the immediate feedback of the screen turtle heading was to inhibit moves to a higher level of response compared to those levels of response reached when responding to paper tests.

Community‐based Traditional Fiddling as a Basis for Increasing Participation in Instrument Playing

Abstract An action research project was set up in a small town in central Scotland in which children were encouraged to join a traditional fiddling group. Barriers to participation were minimized by providing instruments for all who could not afford to buy them and by avoiding any selection process. The local community was involved in setting up the project and in fundraising for it. There was no formal tuition and learners were guided by more experienced players who had been through the pilot project. Parental participation was encouraged in as many aspects as possible, particularly in running small practice groups. There were a number of indicators of the success of the project, including the participation rate, which at 40‐50% was higher than that for conventional instrument tuition. Practice rates were maintained and a significant number of children performed successfully at local competitions. There is evidence that the culture of the community has been influenced in the direction of active musical p...

Children's exploration of rotation and angle in limited Logo microworlds

Abstract This study examines the way in which children explore the concepts of rotation and angle in two Logo microworlds designed to minimize control requirements and to enhance feedback. The results showed that problem-solving strategies were dominated by the visual feedback obtained from the turtle heading. Additional feedback was largely ignored since it required a deeper analysis of the problem parameters. It is suggested that the immediate feedback provided by the turtle may inhibit analytical deliberation. Childrens knowledge of the relationship between rotation and angle was shown to be incomplete.