Theodore Michael Christou

Exploring the Radical Middle between Theory and Practice: A collaborative self-study of beginning teacher educators

This article is a collaborative self-study of our development as beginning teacher educators over the course of an academic year. A focus of our self-study was our shared interest in the role of theory and of practice in teacher education programs. Theodore taught a philosophy of education course and Shawn taught a practicum supervision course. Both authors share autobiographical excerpts of their teaching contexts and the problems of practice that they encountered. Our analysis suggests that the dichotomy between theory and practice is unhelpful and unproductive for both teacher candidates and teacher educators. Theory and practice are densely interwoven aspects of teaching that can be tacitly separated by coursework in teacher education. We advocate a pedagogy of teacher education that explores the radical middle between theory and practice.

Collaborative inquiry as a professional learning structure for educators: a scoping review

Collaborative inquiry (CI) has emerged as a dominant structure for educator professional learning in the twenty-first century. CI engages educators in collaboratively investigating focused aspects of their professional practice by exploring student responses to instruction, leading to new understandings and changes in classroom teaching. However, despite the increased presence of CI, research on CI frameworks has yet to be consolidated and synthesized. The purpose of this systematic, scoping review was to examine literature on the structure, challenges, and benefits of CI as a professional learning structure for educators (i.e. teachers, principals, school district leaders). In total, 42 sources were identified and analysed in relation to characteristics of CI, supports and resources for CI, empirically supported benefits of CI, and enactment challenges. The review found that the majority of texts and research in this field are highly practical, describing CI steps or case-study examples. Accordingly, the current literature reviewed in this paper largely serves a how to function for engaging in CI projects with empirical data collected from primarily case-study work. The literature also provides preliminary theoretical articulations for CI as a professional learning structure for educators. The paper concludes with identified areas for future CI research related to: clarifying the focus of CI initiatives, articulating what ‘inquiry’ means in CI, and sustaining CI within the profession of teaching.

The complexity of intellectual currents: Duncan McArthur and Ontario’s progressivist curriculum reforms

This paper concentrates on a seminal figure in the history of Canadian education who has never previously been the subject of historical examination: Duncan McArthur. As Deputy Minister, then Minister of Education, in Ontario between 1934 and 1942, he guided the province’s public schools during a period of dramatic reorganisation within a context transformed throughout the interwar years by modernity, economic instability, urbanisation and industrialisation. Under McArthur’s leadership, revised programmes of study formally introduced the rhetoric of progressive education into Canada’s most populous public school system. This rhetoric wove together three distinct themes – meliorism, efficiency and child study – articulating a progressivist educational vision for Ontario’s teachers and students.

Gone but Not Forgotten: The Decline of History as an Educational Foundation.

This paper contends that history of education should be a required part of teacher preparation. The discipline’s languishing status in schools of education is widespread, and should be seen in relation to the general decline of humanities and social science subjects as foundations of teacher training. This paper examines the reasons for the disappearance of mandatory history of education courses in teacher preparation, and argues that a misrepresentation of the relationship between theory and practice permits a view of history as not immediately applicable to classroom concerns, and thus expendable in a curriculum driven largely by utilitarian concerns of accountability. Ii recommends strategies for reintroducing history of education courses into teacher education programmes in such a way as to develop habits of mind that promote critical and reflective inquiry.

Learning and Teaching about Social Studies and Science: A Collaborative Self-Study

This collaborative self-study article explores experiences teaching a cross-curricular undergraduate course that aimed to integrate social studies and science. The course differs from other compulsory components of the teacher candidates’ program of study in that it concentrates on disciplinary structure, as opposed to methods, and it treats two subjects—social studies and science—as opposed to one. For teacher educators charged with instructing curriculum methods courses, particularly elementary social studies and science classes, as well as for administrators planning creative responses to challenges posed by congested teacher education programs, the following study offers reflections on the benefits and pitfalls of cross-curricular courses. Furthermore, it comments on the relative merits of investigating social studies and science as disciplines to be explored rather than as sets of skills or content to be mastered.

Self-Study as Professional Development for a Novice Social Studies Teacher Educator

This chapter demonstrates the value of collaborative self-study and critical friendship for the professional development of a teacher educator who is new to teaching future social studies teacher. The authors, who have a history of working together to understand their pedagogies of teacher education, used journaling and asynchronous responses to journaling as a way of tracing the development of their understandings about social studies teacher education. The result is an extended conversation that reveals our commitments to teacher education, to each other as critical friends, and to the lengthy process of developing pedagogies of teacher education. Self-study methodology provided both a way to Shawn name his experiences and a forum for learning about the wider research conversations in social studies teacher education through his critical friend, Theodore.

Character Education as a Theme of Progressivist Schooling in Interwar Ontario

The progressivist education reforms that swept across Canadas Ontario province during the interwar periods of the late 1930s included a focus on character education, social justice, and social reconstruction. This article offers a glimpse at the evolution of school curriculum and values associated with school education, with increasing emphasis on promoting engaged and active citizenship in order to build a democratic and socially just society. It explores the emergence of democratic teaching, the teachers role as a guide and director, increased student participation in the learning process, the importance of social science for teaching civics, and issues of social justice as a way of experiential training for citizenship. The discussion points to the relevance of character education not only as a part of Ontarios educational scenario over the years, but also as important within education frameworks worldwide. The influence of social needs on which character education (or the dimension of moral building in education) is based is understood as a universal phenomenon.

‘Schools are no longer merely educational institutions’: the rhetoric of social efficiency in Ontario education, 1931–1935

This article examines educational rhetoric in Ontario, Canada, during the Great Depression. It notes how the government, through the Annual Reports of the Minister of Education, and the College of Education, through its journal, The School, espoused themes of social efficiency regarding educational ideas and policies. The Depression struck schools hardest between 1932 and 1935 in Ontario, providing cause and context for reflection and reform in pedagogy. While social efficiency remained within the educational discourse of the province, the notion was problematised in Ontario as the province began to shake off the worst of the economic Depression.