Poster as a teaching method for inclusion, recognition and professional competence in teacher education

• In Event: Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Education

Proposal

Like most higher education, teacher education emphasizes the written academic text as a means of acquiring knowledge, communicating knowledge, and as a basis for assessment. This tendency to prioritize the written academic texts within higher education happens despite students learning differently and through different means. This study examines how and to what extent visual forms of expression can facilitate the inclusion and recognition of diverse students. Based on an intervention in a social studies course in a teacher education program, the study examines how producing and presenting a poster to fellow students might facilitate inclusion, recognition, and professional competence in a Norwegian Teacher Education program.

The data consists of classroom observation, written student reflections, informal conversations, student surveys, and student posters, in which the latter are the products of the intervention. The data cover the learning process through a semester-long course in social studies and draws on data from two cohorts. The qualitative data enables nuances and rich descriptions of experiences and teacher professional competence.

By using Nancy Fraser's theory of recognition, redistribution, and representation (Fraser 2000; Fraser et al. 2004), the study shows how poster as a teaching method increases recognition of different identities, redistribute power and position to marginalized narratives and groups, and allow an increased number of students to be represented with their narratives in the larger narrative that constitutes teaching in higher education in particular and in schools in general. The students' work process builds a bridge between theory and practice. It promotes professional competence through the students' experience of a teaching method that provides room for different skills and facilitates deep learning. The findings show that using practical aesthetic forms of work through posters promotes inclusion in the class community and in the larger narrative that constitutes the teaching of subjects. Furthermore, the method increases teachers' professional competence and equips the teacher students with 21st century skills.

The findings of the study show that with the use of poster as a teaching method, students recognized and acknowledged each other with their competence and narratives. Furthermore, students became aware of the potential of aesthetic learning methods in their future practice as teachers. In that way, poster as a teaching method develop the students' professional competence and equip them for work in the digital and diverse school of the 21st century. Thus, the study shows that the combination of aesthetic learning methods and history didactics as part of social studies contribute to democratic citizenship education through learning about, through and for democracy (Council of Europe 2017).

Author

• Merethe Skaras, Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society