Teacher Knowledge and Initial Teacher Education in the English Learning and Skills Sector
Source: Teaching Education, Volume 21, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 335 – 348.
The current reforms of initial teacher education (ITE) in the learning and skills sector (LSS) in England are standards based and emphasize subject specialism.
A qualitative study found that LSS in-service trainee teachers drew on three types of knowledge resources, or clusters of 'rules' for practice, in their teaching:
these were related to their subject/vocational area, generic teaching and learning processes and specific learners and groups.
Trainees generated knowledge resources through participation in their workplace, ITE course and other social contexts, and from embedded and encoded workplace knowledge. Trainees' beliefs, values and prior experiences were both a knowledge resource and influenced their engagement with knowledge generation activities.
It is argued that using a knowledge resources perspective, which recognizes how trainees generate knowledge and seeks to bridge gaps in their access to knowledge resources, would be more effective in supporting trainees' development than the recent reforms.