A Sociocultural Framework for the Analysis of Teacher Education Policy in England and the United States

• In Event: Social Contexts of Teacher Education Policy in England and the United States

Abstract

1. Objectives

This paper presents the sociocultural framework used by the study in order to conduct a systematic comparative analysis of Initial Teacher Education in England and the US. Our primary objective was to explore the social, cultural, and historical factors that have shaped the patterns of initial teacher education (ITE) in each country and which mediate the experience and understandings of prospective teachers as they negotiate both the national contexts of teacher preparation and the particular experiences of their school contexts.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

Sociocultural theory views the mechanisms of individual psychological development (behaviour and consciousness) as being rooted in the society and culture that a person lives in. The analysis of beginning teachers' social situations of development presented in this paper explores the complex relationship between individual learning and the social situations in which that learning occurs. In order to develop this complex language of analysis we have developed a sociocultural framework that draws on the work of the sociologist Bernstein (1990) on knowledge structures and Hedegaard's (2004) work on the contending motives of individual learners and societal demands from the perspective of cultural historical activity theory.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

The sociocultural framework is used in this paper to analyse contradictions and alignments in beginning teachers' teaching practices and reflections on subject pedagogy and learning.
4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

The data sets comprise video recordings of beginning teachers' lessons, their lesson plans, and pre and post semi-structured interviews.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

The data analysis revealed that beginning teachers face at least two social situations of development as they begin to teach: their position as learners, within the academic environment of a university; and within the specific professional contexts of their placement schools. Their engagement with these social situations may be influenced by factors such as their previous education, their existing and possibly naïve understanding of social and cultural norms, plus their cultural capital from family and community. These social situations intersect in a complex and dialectical interplay between theory and practice. Trainee teachers need to acquire the psychological tools for effective pedagogy and engage with the cultural assumptions that govern what is deemed to be appropriate ways of being a teacher in a particular school and in society as a whole.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

Beginning teachers are in a process of complex transition from learner to practioner as they attempt to translate their own domain expertise to the subject pedagogy required to teach young people. The focus on the complexity of development in this paper develops 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.

Authors

• Ian Thompson, University of Oxford

• Maria Teresa Tatto, Michigan State University