Peter Tomlinson

Having it Both Ways: hierarchical focusing as research interview method

The increased use of interviewing in social and educational research has been accompanied and influenced by wide acceptance of a constructivist view of persons in recent social science. The present paper notes major sources of this viewpoint and highlights, amongst its implications for research interviewing, a validity dilemma concerning the relative roles of interviewer and interviewee. Aspects of this issue are illustrated by reference to two contrasting approaches in the recent study of social values. The strategy of hierarchical focusing is proposed as a systematic approach to the resolution of the dilemma. This approach to the design, conduct and analysis of interviews is illustrated in some detail by reference to a recent research application.

Student teachers’ experiences of initial teacher preparation in England: core themes and variation

Drawing on data generated via large‐scale survey and in‐depth interview methods, this article reports findings which show that being a student teacher in early‐twenty‐first‐century England is a demanding personal experience which requires considerable engagement and commitment in the face of built‐in challenges and risks, and which engenders, for many, highly charged affective responses. Student teachers are centrally concerned during this time with their (changing) identities, their relationships with others and the relevance of course provision. Findings also indicate that, in some respects, student teachers’ accounts of their experiences are systematically differentiated according to a number of factors, notably the initial teacher preparation route being followed, their age, and their prior conceptions and expectations of teaching and of learning to teach. These findings are situated in the broader literature on teacher development and some implications for teacher educators are discussed.

Prospective Mentors’ Views on Partnership in Secondary Teacher Training

In the context of a wholesale shift to a school‐based partnership arrangement for the initial training of teachers in the UK, 32 prospective teacher mentors were interviewed using the technique of hierarchical focusing. Twenty‐nine taped transcripts were codified and analysed to reveal aspects of espoused theory in relation to school teacher involvement in the professional training of student teachers. Four general themes are identified from qualitative analysis: enthusiasm for the change; an assumption of learning by immersion in schools; a concern with the constraint of time; and a tendency to general rather than specific thinking. Cluster analysis of 29 transcript profiles on 27 categories of mentoring functions suggested a loose typology of four potential orientations: the hands‐off facilitator, the progressively collaborative mentor, the professional friend and the classical mentor. Respondents’ recognition of these orientations in their own thinking and implications for further research and training...

Mentoring in Teacher Education

This article begins by tracing the modern roots of mentoring in teacher education, major themes supported by recent perspectives on professional learning, and the evolving relationships between these two strands. It then outlines, under three different headings, what growing research in this area is beginning to yield: effectiveness and benefits of mentoring, conditions for effective mentoring, and potential negatives in mentoring. While this demonstrates that research has begun to offer useful findings, the authors express the hope that while respecting the complexities involved, future research should help progress investigation of the effectiveness of mentoring and mentoring strategies.

Psychological theory and pedagogical effectiveness: The learning promotion potential framework

BACKGROUND After a century of educational psychology, eminent commentators are still lamenting problems besetting the appropriate relating of psychological insights to teaching design, a situation not helped by the persistence of crude assumptions concerning the nature of pedagogical effectiveness. AIMS To propose an analytical or meta-theoretical framework based on the concept of learning promotion potential (LPP) as a basis for understanding the basic relationship between psychological insights and teaching strategies, and to draw out implications for psychology-based pedagogical design, development and research. METHOD This is a theoretical and meta-theoretical paper relying mainly on conceptual analysis, though also calling on psychological theory and research. CONTENT Since teaching consists essentially in activity designed to promote learning, it follows that a teaching strategy has the potential in principle to achieve particular kinds of learning gains (LPP) to the extent that it embodies or stimulates the relevant learning processes on the part of learners and enables the teachers functions of on-line monitoring and assistance for such learning processes. Whether a teaching strategy actually does realize its LPP by way of achieving its intended learning goals depends also on the quality of its implementation, in conjunction with other factors in the situated interaction that teaching always involves. The core role of psychology is to provide well-grounded indication of the nature of such learning processes and the teaching functions that support them, rather than to directly generate particular ways of teaching. A critically eclectic stance towards potential sources of psychological insight is argued for. Applying this framework, the paper proposes five kinds of issue to be attended to in the design and evaluation of psychology-based pedagogy. Other work proposing comparable ideas is briefly reviewed, with particular attention to similarities and a key difference with the ideas of Oser and Baeriswyl (2001).

RAP: Radio-Assisted Practice. Preliminary Investigations of a New Technique in Teacher Education.

This article reports preliminary investigations using a technique we term radio‐assisted practice (RAP), which allows unobtrusive communication from tutor to trainee teacher during actual teaching activity. This innovation is introduced in the context of traditional theory‐practice integration concerns and its feasibility is assessed in terms of the psychology of skill. The findings of studies of the use of RAP with the authors and a small number of B.Ed, and PGCE students on school practice confirm the considerable power of the technique and the need for tutor and student preparation for effective RAP use. Further research, broader implications and applications to the enhancement of intelligent teaching skills are discussed.