The Role and Nature of Subjects as Discipline-Based Tools for Teaching

• In Event: 47.096 - MTCC Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: 47.096-1 - The Challenges and Possibilities of Market-Based Reforms on Teacher Education in England and the United States

Abstract

1. Objectives

This paper focuses on conceptions of what it means to teach and learn a specific subject as a means of exploring the kinds of tensions that beginning teachers may encounter, for example:

• the extent to which subject differences are regarded as important for teaching
• the relative importance assigned to what it is that learning within a subject entails
• the ways in which assessment practices reflect particular conceptions of learning within the subject.

These dimensions of difference will be explored within five specific subject areas: English, History/Social Studies, Mathematics, Modern Foreign Languages and Science.

2. Perspectives/framework

Socio-cultural theory views the mechanisms of individual psychological development (behavior and consciousness) as being rooted in the society and culture in which a person lives. The analysis of beginning teachers' learning presented in this paper explores the complex relationship between individual learning and the social situations in which that learning occurs. Drawing on both Bernstein’s (1990) work on knowledge structures and Hedegaard's (2004) work on the contending motives of individual learners and societal demands, we adopt a socio-cultural framework in order to analyze the way in which subject disciplinary knowledge is re-contextualized in the contexts in which beginning teachers are learning to teach.

3. Methods

This paper uses a socio-cultural framework to present an analysis of the social situation of development of beginning teachers in relation to the nature of their own subject discipline and its interaction with education knowledge. It analyses contradictions and alignments in their teaching practices and in their reflections on subject pedagogy and learning as they negotiate the often difficult transitions between school and university contexts.

4. Data sources

The study – a comparative exploration of learning to teach in England and the U.S. (2013-15) – included video-recordings, lesson-plans, interviews and questionnaires from prospective secondary teachers on different routes, along with program documentation and interviews with faculty and school personnel. The data were drawn from programs preparing secondary-school teachers in English, Mathematics, Science, Foreign Languages and History/Social Studies.

5. Results

Analysis reveals that beginning teachers face at least two social situations of development: first their position as learners within the academic environment of a university; and second their position within the professional contexts of their placement schools. It is within these contexts that subject specific knowledge and education knowledge is re-contextualised in different ways, and where the potential for knowledgeable and ethical approaches to teach find expression.

6. Scholarly significance

Beginning teachers are in a process of complex transition from learner to practitioner. The focus on the complexity of development in this paper reveals a view of teaching and learning as a process through which prospective teachers take on what is valued in a culture and in turn develop the agency that allows them to begin to contribute to that culture. We demonstrate that the contradictions and alignments which result from these transitions can, if recognized and effectively mediated, provide rich opportunities for learning to teach in increasingly challenging environments.

Authors

• Trevor Mutton, The University of Oxford

• Ian Thompson, University of Oxford

• Maria Teresa Tatto, Arizona State University