Approaches to ‘Modelling’ as a strategy for teacher educators Challenging current conceptions and practice Pete Boyd University of Cumbria

Teacher Education Seeking to integrate formal and workplace learning ‘Learning to teach’ and ‘teaching to learn’ (Loughran 2006) Student as teacher and learner (think critically, question practice and explore new principles) (Taylor 2008)Taylor 2008

Situated Learning ‘Transfer of Learning’: an inadequate metaphor ‘Becoming, within a transitional process of boundary-crossing’ (Hager & Hodkinson 2009) Student teachers need to learn to think like a teacher…to see teaching from the perspective of the learners

Complex knowledge and pedagogy Teacher knowledge as complex Learning to teach and teaching to learn Layers - overlapping purposes in formal sessions Need for a shared language within a programme

Modelling: ‘How I teach is the message’ Stage 1: Implicit modelling of strategies and values, congruent teaching Stage 2: Explicit modelling of reflective learning and change in practice Stage 3: Linking practical wisdom to abstract theory Stage 4: Reconstruction by student teachers (Wood & Geddis, 1999; Loughran & Berry 2005; Willemse et al. 2005; Russell 2007; Swennen et al. 2008)

Questioning Modelling Does modelling support the ‘learning to learn’ of student teachers? How would student teachers respond to a consistent approach to modelling across a programme? Do the workplace contexts of teacher educators make the vulnerability caused by modelling too risky?

Modelling: a boundary crossing tool Learning to teach: becoming a learner Modelling – develops learning to think like a teacher, including experientially understanding the learners’ perspective Teaching to learn: becoming a teacher

Taylor’s conceptions of learning to teach: student teachers / university teacher educators / school based mentors Cascading expertise (transmission – focuses on teaching students to know how to teach) Enabling students growth as a teacher (apprenticeship – student tutor interaction – nurturing student’s growth as a teacher) Developing student teaching (facilitating understandings – enabling students to become competent teachers by emulation of experts but adapted by the individual student) Student as teacher and learner (focuses in a holistic way on student learning – enabling student teachers to think critically and originally, question existing practices and explore new principles – this has resonance with Loughran’s learning to teach and teaching to learn) Back to show