Cultural-Historical Approaches to Teacher Education: Examining Collaboration, Expertise, and Mentoring in Teacher Learning

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session employs elements of cultural-historical activity theory to expand and complicate notions of collaboration, expertise, and mentoring in teacher education and teacher learning across international contexts: the United States, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom. By situating teacher learning and teacher education in specific local and national contexts, these papers collectively contribute to our understandings of why and how knowledge and expertise across activity systems might be brought together to strengthen the quality of teacher candidate learning, particularly in this historical moment where increased accountability and government defunding of public universities work to constrain innovations in teacher education.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Section 9: Teacher Education Program Design and Innovations

Chair

• Kenneth Zeichner, University of Washington

Papers

• Learning to Teach in School-Based Courses - Kenneth Zeichner, University of Washington; Katherina Ann Payne, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Learning to Teach English in Urban Settings - Lauren Gatti, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Promoting Collaborative Approaches to Developing Effective Teachers: The Contribution of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory - Viv Ellis, Brunel University; Anne Edwards, University of Oxford

• Educating Teachers as Experts on Learning: A CHAT (Cultural Historical Activity Theory) Perspective on Transforming Initial Teacher Education - Charles Max, University of Luxembourg

Discussant

• Peter Smagorinsky, University of Georgia