Section archive - Theories & Approaches

In this study, coteaching between pre-service and in-service teachers is used to lessen the gap between theory and practice, to develop reflective practice and to develop pedagogical content knowledge. Explanatory frameworks have been proposed for coteaching. The authors also suggest that Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development helps to propose a more nuanced developmental and learning explanatory framework which provides pedagogical structures for implementation and highlights the importance of the social environment for learning.

The authors consider possibilities for further exploration of the research of practice and the practice of research in both initial and continuing teacher education. As both a theoretical and methodological challenge, this is tied recursively with research and practice in teacher education, for teacher educators, about teacher education. The authors draw on the theoretical resources of practice theories, to argue that teacher education practice must be informed by the study of the practice of teaching as well as research addressing the teaching of practice.

This study utilises three dimensions of identity construction (multiplicity vs. unity; social vs. individual; discontinuity vs. continuity) to examine how teachers describe their different roles, how they develop dialogical relations among multiplicity. The findings showed that all participants’ initial identity positions, except one female, have changed, either slightly or radically, during the course of this study. They experienced disequilibrium among different identity positions during the change, which confirms existing research that disequilibrium is considered essential for changes to occur. This study also showed that these teachers’ multiple Identity positions and the conflicts among them are not bounded within the classroom teaching domain or instructional and pedagogical issues.

In this case study, two teacher educators in urban teacher education programs identify and analyze the components of teacher education practice in relation to a vision of compassionate, critical, justice-oriented teacher education. Drawing on the data, the authors offer a pedagogical framework that identifies key features of compassionate, critical, justice-oriented teacher education to inform research and practice. They highlight the contributions of this framework for justice-oriented teacher education and the inherent complexity of attempts to parse such fundamentally messy relational practice.