Future Teachers’ Readings: A Comparative Study in Three Latin American Countries

• In Event: Higher Education and Institutional Improvement Initiatives

Proposal

The teacher education curriculum is a scarcely studied topic in Latin America. Recent studies have mapped the organizational models and representations of teacher educators (UNESCO, 2021), the influences of global discourses on teacher education (Voisin and Ávalos, (2022), and the challenges of teacher education after recent reforms (Vaillant, 2017). Marcelo's (2016) comparative survey work has mapped different curricular and organizational models with examples from Latin America. Other studies have analyzed teacher education in the context of teachers' professional careers in the region (Bruns, & Luque, 2014, Elaqua et al, 2018).

Our study advances by taking a novel empirical step: the study of curricula and readings of teacher education in three countries in Latin America (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay). This project is an alliance of three research teams specialized in teacher education in the three countries studied.

Our research questions have two levels. The first is more empirical and is based on objective data collected during the research: What do future primary teachers read in their initial training in Latin America? What pedagogical traditions and theoretical currents predominate? What differences are there in each country and among them? Are the readings national, regional, international? What years are the texts from? What predominates in each discipline or subject? What type of texts are they (textbooks, primary sources, complete books, scientific articles, etc.)?

The second level is more interpretative and analytical: What type of teachers are being trained in Latin America? What type of teaching habitus is constructed from the readings in training? A critical, scientific, practical, ideological teacher? How much does this change according to subjects and disciplinary areas? Are there different fields of knowledge in teacher training that are unified by disciplinary traditions or are they organized by the traditions of each country or institution?

The research focused on the search and systematization of all the curricula of all the subjects of a typical course of a teacher education trajectory at the primary level in each country. A total of 12 teacher training institutions were studied in Argentina, 10 in Chile and 6 in Uruguay. In Argentina, three provinces were analyzed (4 institutions per province); since it is a federal country.

In each institution, all subject syllabi were requested and all texts that teachers ask their students to read during the typical teacher education trajectory were systematized. Some variables were defined to differentiate the readings: compulsory/optional, text length, year of the texts, nationality of the authors and the disciplinary field to which they belong. This made it possible to build a database of teacher training readings in the three countries.

At this stage of the project, the team is analyzing the data to reach the conclusions of the study. The final work will present a comparative analysis of teacher education at the institutional level, by disciplinary fields and by countries in three Latin American countries.

We will analyze how the shift towards practice, which has predominated in Latin America, has been made effective, as in other recent international studies (Grossman et al, 2018, Jansen et al, 2014, Zeichner, 2012).

The study follows antecedents of comparative curriculum analysis of teacher education in different countries (Rasmussen & Bayer, 2014, Salajan et al, 2017). The theoretical framework of the research proposes the analysis of curricular texts as an expression of the actual curriculum, analyzing how different pedagogical traditions operate in teacher education. The lines of research on the study of the intellectual fields of education as part of the process of curricular recontextualization (Bernstein, 1996). The analysis seeks to find the relationships between teaching practices and curricular policies of teacher education from a sociological and pedagogical perspective (Mayer, & Oancea, 2021, Reimer, 2019).

References

Afdal, H. W. (2012): Policy Making Processes with respect to Teacher Education in Finland and Norway. Higher Education.
Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. London: Taylor & Francis.
Bruns, B., & Luque, J. (2014). Great teachers: How to raise student learning in Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Bank.
Elacqua, G., Hincapié, D., Vegas, E. & Alfonso, M. (2018). Profesión: Profesor en América Latina. ¿Por Qué Se Perdió el Prestigio Docente y Cómo Recuperarlo. BID.
Grossman, P. L., Schneider Kavanagh, S., & Pupik Dean, C. G. (2018). The turn towards practice in teacher education: An introduction to the work of the core practice consortium. In P.L. Grossman (Ed.), Teaching core practices in teacher education. Harvard University Press.
Janssen, F., Westbroek, H., & Doyle, W. (2014). The practical turn in teacher education: Designing a preparation sequence for core practice frames. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(3), 195-206.
Marcelo, C. (2016). Estado del arte internacional de los modelos de formación inicial docente: FID. Universidad de Playa Ancha.
Mayer, D., & Oancea, A. (2021). Teacher education research, policy and practice: Finding future research directions. Oxford Review of Education, 47(1), 1-7.
Rasmussen, J. & Bayer, M. (2014) Comparative study of teaching content in teacher education programmes in Canada, Denmark, Finland and Singapore, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46:6, 798-818,
Reimer, D. (2019) Teachers and teacher education: a call for a renewed sociological research agenda, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 28:2, 90-109,
Salajan, F. D., Duffield, S. K., Glava, A. E., & Glava, C. C. (2017). A comparative study of two pre-service teacher preparation programmes in the USA and Romania. Compare, 47(4), 483-498.
Tatto, M. T., & Menter, I. (2019). Knowledge, policy and practice in teacher education: A cross-national study. Bloomsbury.
UNESCO OREALC. (2021). Formadores de docentes en seis países de América Latina. Instituciones, prácticas y visiones. UNESCO OREALC.
Vaillant, D. (2017). Formación Docente en América Latina, Contexto de Actuación, Dilemas y Desafíos. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321713450
Voisin, A., Ávalos-Bevan, B. (2022). Global Discourses, Teacher Education Quality, and Teacher Education Policies in the Latin American Region. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382.

Author

• Axel Rivas, Universidad de San Andres