DevelopmenRECONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE-IN-ACTION Learning from the authority of experience as a first-year teachert
- 1. RECONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE-IN-ACTION LEARNING FROM THE AUTHORITY OF EXPERIENCE AS A FIRST-YEAR TEACHER Chapter 7
- 2. the first year of teaching provides a frame for examining the degree to which teacher education programmes prepare student teachers for the role of Classroom teacher.
- 3. TEACHER EDUCATION AND FIRST YEAR OF TEACHING: Recent literature points out to the importance of “becoming a teacher rather Than learning how to teach” “Intellectual and experiential knowledge are important to the ongoing development of teaching skills, but preferring personal knowledge builds confidence in the power of self and self-study or beliefs. When personal knowledge is in the forefront, conscious epistemological changes are feasible(possible).” (Allender, 2001)
- 4. “WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE AS A TEACHER?” stressed the importance of student teachers taking time to “know thyself” and being clear on their philosophy as a teacher. Elspeth wrote: “Try to firm up what your philosophies as a teacher. If you are not sure what your beliefs are, it will be easier to be led astray(away from the right way) from them by outside forces.”
- 5. BUILDING RELATIONSHIP WITH STUDENTS: All the first-year teachers reported that establishing effective relationships with students was fundamental to their ongoing development as beginning teachers. They understood these relationships to be explicitly linked to student learning and their responsibility, as teachers, for promoting that learning. All new year teacher states that, “being loved by students has also given us a confidence and security which has transferred to other areas of my life”
- 6. In talking about the students and their relationships with them, these teachers position the students as belonging to them – “they’re my students.” This statement of ownership was always linked in the new year teachers.
- 7. SUPPORT NETWORKS: OVERCOMING ISOLATION The teachers reported that the internal support from their school mentors was significant in helping them negotiate the school culture, school politics, and the workload of a first-year teacher. Parents plays also very important role in supporting first year teacher. In the absence of formal structures, parents as a way of recruiting (new member of society ) some support for her role as teacher.
- 8. AUTHORS’ REFLECTIONS ON RELATIONSHIPS our reading of the data directs our attention not only to the personal dimensions of becoming a teacher that are inherent in the relationship between first-year teacher and her or his students but also to the issue of relationship between first-year teacher and teacher educator / old teachers.
- 9. CHAPTER 8 REVISITING TEACHING ARCHETYPES RE-CONCEPTUALISING STUDENT TEACHERS’ LAY THEORIES AND IDENTITIES
- 10. ARCHETYPES ” “cultural myths(traditions) in teaching which provide a set of ‘ideal’ images, definitions, justifications and measures for thought and activity in schools” “the traditions through which particular practices are transmitted and reshaped never exist in isolation from larger social traditions”
- 11. LAY THEORIES beliefs developed naturally over time without the influence of instruction. Pre-service teachers do not consciously learn them at an announced, recognised moment from a formal teaching. lay theories are based on untutored interpretations of personal, lived experiences./learning episode. Developed over long years of participation in and observation of classrooms
- 12. THE ‘MASTER’ AND ‘MISTRESS’ AS CULTURAL ARCHETYPES OF TEACHING The terms master and mistress share identical origins in the Latin word dominus: to be head of a household and servants, including slaves. Archetypal teachers are, therefore, likely to dominate classrooms and students and, their teaching styles, to dictate the learning process through a transmission mode of teaching.
- 13. CONT In the all boys school the macho culture dominated. the “Mistress” does not feature very prominently in literature. Nevertheless, within popular culture she shared many characteristics in common with her male colleagues. Being strict, presenting a stern face, being distant from learners, insisting on strict adherence to rules, sticking to the letter in relation to prescribed curriculum content and demanding accuracy without taking the learners’
- 14. IDENTITY: ITS MAKING AND RE-MAKING Identity is not like a finger print that is distinctly individual and Unalterable. Rather: “self-identity is ...the self as reflexively Understood by the person in terms of her or his biography(information about personality). Giddens suggests: “self-identity ... is not something that is Just given, as a result of the continuities of the individual’s action system, But something that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual”.
- 15. CONT Wenger states that identity in social terms is not denying individuality, but viewing the very definition of individuality as something that is part of the practices of specific communities.” Because “we cannot become human by ourselves,” it is through the interaction of the individual and the community that identity is continuously buffeted and reshaped.
- 16. CONT While creating identities takes time, it also involves taking risks , Positive risks. But risk alone, is not sufficient. Forgoing an identity more in tune The act of imagination necessitates a “process of expanding our self by transcending our time and space and creating new images of the world and ourselves”.
- 17. PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY: LEARNING IDENTITIES it is about serious and sustained commitment to the project of learning identity in community, where imaginative risk-taking breathes new life into archetypal images and understandings as part of the process of building continuity and change into future identities and practice. This is the challenge and opportunity that awaits collective action.