Learning to teach: making sense of learning to teach

Introduction

Making the decision to become a teacher can be a life-changing moment for many people. For some, they will have known for a long time that this was the career they wished to follow. For others, it may be a rather more dramatic change of direction. What may not be apparent at that early stage, is the challenge of choosing a route into teaching from the plethora of courses and qualifications available or differences in opinion that surround how we develop student teachers.

These differences are demonstrated in the way that the development of teachers is described. For some ‘teacher training’ best describes what the provider feels they are doing, while for others the term ‘teacher education’ better represents their view of what they are striving for. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but it reveals fundamental differences of opinion, underpinned by different perspectives on what is expected of teachers and indeed of what teaching is. For ease, the term ‘Initial Teacher Education (ITE)’ will be used throughout this course but this course will provide an introduction to these differences, both at a theoretical and practical level.

Many of the ideas in the course have been developed through our experience of running a PGCE course at The Open University. This course no longer runs, but the ideas discussed in this course remain current and will help you to understand the different routes into teaching.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• know the differences in opinion about what Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is trying to achieve

• understand the differences in perception of the student teachers’ role in ITE

• recognise some of the ways in which these differences manifest themselves in the UK

• understand effective student teacher learning and how students themselves perceive the process of learning to teach.

1 Views of learning to teach

Activity 1: Reasons to become a teacher

Listen to the clip of Jonny Saunders explaining why he decided to become a teacher.

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My name is Jonny Saunders and I am a teacher. Before I was a teacher – which I’ve been for 18 months – one academic year-and-a-half – I was a sports reporter for the BBC for 12 years. And I knew that at some stage in my career that I would go and become a teacher, it just so happened that I’d worked on the radio and, I suppose, reasonably successfully (I’d worked with Chris Evans for six years)... but I felt towards the end of it – and I'm sure that getting up at 3:45 every morning wasn’t helping my mental state at all – I felt that towards the end of it that I was getting tired and that the challenges of broadcasting were not quite as great as they had been, and I felt that in a sense I’d achieved everything I wanted to achieve in radio, and I’m of a volition that you only live your life once and you try and experience as many things as possible. And because I wanted to be a teacher and because I had those beliefs I felt that I wanted to perhaps try something different, and it made a bit of a news story at the time because it was this idea of somebody giving up a perceived glitzy and glamorous lifestyle to go and do a job that is not perceived as glitzy and glamorous. I suppose another way that I’d look at it: it was that for 12 years I had in a sense fuelled my own ego by being on the radio and talking on the radio and being listened to by nine million people every day; to go and do something not fuelling my own ego in a sense. And it’s kind of a pious way of looking at it… but being selfless rather than selfish is another way of looking at it.

I was sort of two thirds of the way through my Open University degree in English literature. So, I already had a degree before that from Durham University, but I felt that if I was going to be a credible candidate as an English teacher I needed to prove that I was really in love with English. And then it was a question of applying for jobs and I managed to get a job here at St. Edward’s School in Oxford. And immediately this year now I’m getting my PGCE, so on the job whilst I’m teaching.

Teaching is wonderful. It is fantastic because there’s just so much sheer variety. You have to be mega organised, however much you want to instill a love of your subject into people – and I think that is hugely, hugely important – the idea that exam results are very important is without question. So I took over, in my first year, a group of 12 pupils who were predicted C grades, most of them, for their GCSE English and when their results came out, five of them got A grades, five of them got B grades and two of them got C grades. And that day of those results... And I did a lot during my broadcasting career, I had some incredible highs. I remember broadcasting on the first day when we took over from Terry Wogan on the breakfast show and we had an estimated… well, I don't know how many people were listening to that show, but obviously it was big news when Chris Evans took over for that. But that moment of these 12 students achieving something... Now, it was down to them, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t me who took the exam! But I had hopefully helped them along the way: that was a comparable, if not a better, feeling – the results they got that day – than perhaps it was being on the radio show January 11th 2010.

I think as well, at the end, anecdotal things... At the end of a lesson when you see children get up and they’re still discussing something that they’ve been discussing during the lesson, and being really engaged in the subject that you’ve been talking about. I get a real buzz from that as well. And you can see them improving in terms of the way that they’re writing and the way they’re engaging with a particular text that they’ve been taught.

The most important thing when I came into teaching was that I had to have the attention of the pupils, and that I think you have to lay down the guidelines. So that was a challenge. I think just the day-to-day planning a lesson – education had changed hugely since I’d left school. So, I had a gap of 19 years between leaving school myself and coming back into education as a teacher. And the transformation in education and pedagogy and how people teach and the focus on what children learn as opposed to... when I was at school it was just a teacher, usually standing up at the front of a classroom: if you choose to engage, you engaged; if you didn’t, well you were kind lost for the rest of the lesson. It’s much more interactive now, the teaching; the focus is on what the pupils are learning during the course of the lesson, rather than how much the teacher actually knows.

A good teacher – I don’t even begin to assume that I would fall into this category, but I’ve seen a lot of other good teachers – I think it’s about striking the right relationship with your pupils. So that you can communicate with them, so that you can know what makes them tick, but at the same time they’ve got to have that mutual respect for you so that they will work and they will get down to it – you can’t be too chummy, you can't be too distant. You have to hit the right area in terms of the relationship, and I think that that is hugely important. The material you’re working with is also very important: I've taught some poems which some pupils don’t enjoy, if they don’t enjoy it they’re not going to engage in the lesson. Alternatively, I’ve taught some texts which the pupils really enjoy and when they’re enjoying it they learn more. So, the material is down to it. Your organisation – you’ve got to be completely organised so that you’re moving from one place to the next so that you’ve got a coherent narrative going through your lesson, so that you’re moving to an end point so that all the learning is taking place as well. So, organisation, striking the right relationship – really, really important factors.

Learning to teach, the most valuable thing you can do is reflect on the lessons you have taught, and that’s part of the process I’m going through at the moment in terms of getting my qualification. We are actively asked, quite rightly, to reflect on our teaching practice – what was good about that lesson? What could have been improved? And it’s quite hard, I suppose, being your own critic and saying ‘well, they didn’t quite learn what they should have done there. Why was that? Probably because I hadn’t made it clear enough.’ It’s generally the teacher’s lack of focus and preparation that will lead to that learning not occurring. Pupils generally are very willing to do it and they are very able to be led, but they’ve got to be led in the right direction.

My advice to other student teachers would be: be organised. Be prepared, so that you’ve got a lot of material. Also, be prepared not to use all of that material: be prepared to go off-piste if you have to go off-piste. Be prepared for the unexpected – you never know what’s going to happen in a classroom. Be prepared to laugh at yourself, take the Mickey out of yourself on occasions. Don’t be too rigid, but at the same time don’t let the children trample all over you. It’s a fine line. And I think a lot of it comes down to instinct. But I think organisation’s absolutely vital.

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Reflect on the reasons why you decided to become a teacher, and what you had to or will need to learn.

Key to understanding the different routes into ITE is to understand how different providers consider the role and nature of teacher education. Although this discussion draws on research to provide an introduction to thinking about this area, many of the ideas are contested and it is difficult to portray particular approaches as black and white, with many courses occupying a position somewhere in between. Therefore, the following discussion will provide an introduction to considering these perspectives.

1.1 Four paradigms

Zeichner, in his research into teacher education, identifies four paradigms (Zeichner, 1983). These are useful as a starting point to discuss the considerable differences in approach to ITE. They cannot be applied without critical reflection on their relationship to particular models or experiences of ITE however. It is highly likely that an ITE course will combine aspects of the four but may have a tendency towards one paradigm.

The four paradigms, with examples from behaviour management, are:

1. Behaviouristic

   This is about adopting particular behaviours as prescribed by the course which might be derived from statutory standards or competencies.

   For example, the student teacher will be given the set of school rules or expectations, which are likely to represent one view of classroom management.

2. Personalisitic

   This paradigm is concerned with psychological maturity and personal growth of the student into the role of teacher. This aligns with the idea of developing a teacher identity.

   For example, developing a classroom management approach that works will be seen as developing from the growth of the student teacher into the teacher identity. Therefore it may be very gradual and discussions of behaviour management may be dominated by discussion of how the student sees themselves in the classroom and their experience of dealing with behaviour.

3. Traditional craft

   This can best be described as the apprenticeship model where students are expected to assimilate knowledge by working with expert teachers in the classroom.

   For example, this model will involve student teachers watching and copying their mentor’s approach to managing a class.

4. Enquiry orientation

   In this paradigm teachers act on ethical, political and pedagogical issues in a considered, skillful and reflective way to construct their own knowledge from a range of sources. The enquiry-orientation is concerned with problem solving.

   For example, each learning opportunity is used to try different approaches, to evaluate the success of different approaches and then the student can construct their own understanding of behaviour management. Different approaches might include trialling a behaviourist or traditional-craft approach, but includes the flexibility to question, critique and reject ideas in favour of their own researched and trialled solutions.

Zeichner’s ideas of different views of initial teacher education are supported by research done by Taylor (2008). Through her research into HEI and school partnerships, she found four ways of describing ITE learning:

1. Cascading expertise

   Information and expertise is transmitted from experts to novices.

2. Enabling students individual growth as teachers

   Where personalisation of approach and nurturing results in student’s individual growth. Intensive mentoring is associated with this type of learning as is initiation into a particular school context.

3. Developing student teaching

   Where skills are learned through emulation of experts.

4. Students as teachers and learners

   A more holistic, questioning approach, where students are encouraged to think critically about theory and practise in order to develop their own learning.

1.2 Differences between the paradigms

Fundamental to the distinction between the paradigms is the debate around what knowledge is and how it is created. In this case the difference is between knowledge being in the power of others and ‘given’ to student teachers, or knowledge being something that is co-created and able to be influenced by all participants (including student teachers and pupils).

Having considered Zeichner’s and Taylor’s rather abstract views of the differences in teacher education, it is possible to demonstrate how these differences might play out (in both positive and negative ways) in the expectations around a common classroom issue, behaviour management.

This discussion has only looked at the issue of classroom management in relation to Zeichner and Taylor’s research. There will be times during an ITE course where certain approaches are used highly effectively to help student teachers make progress. However, this discussion has raised two crucial questions:

• What type of teachers do we want to produce from ITE courses?
• How do we achieve this?

The next section will highlight that answering these questions requires us to consider what the role of student teachers is in their ITE course.

1.3 The role of student teachers in ITE

A student teacher’s role during ITE is to learn. This may sound rather obvious. However, looking at Zeichner's ideas and Taylor’s research, there is a clear distinction in the way student teachers are perceived and expected to behave as learners, in the paradigms and approaches.

1.4 Transmission approach

Some argue that the ‘transmission’ style of ITE is characterised by a ‘top tips’ approach, where experienced practitioners, either in schools or universities, consider their solution to be the correct one. It is here that there is a difficult balance for student teachers to understand. One the one hand they have expert tuition and guidance from professionals who have found solutions or their best practice ideas that work for them and their context. On the other hand, student teachers are individuals who exert different influences and bring ideas into the classroom. Their interactions and relationships are unique to themselves and therefore they need to develop their own versions of ‘best practice’. In this way the transmission view of learning can be critiqued in the following ways:

• Knowledge in teaching is not reliably transferable – It is very difficult to identify a solution to a problem that will work in every context and every time. Transmitting knowledge as ‘the way to do it’ can be counterproductive if the student teacher then experiences situations in which the suggested solution it isn’t successful.
• Teaching is highly complex and context specific – Schools have their own underlying principles, beliefs and values that manifest themselves in the way they teach pupils and in how they expect teachers to behave. Again, a teacher moving between contexts may find one approach is not effective in other contexts.
• Student teachers start ITE with different levels of knowledge and skills, and different understandings of pupil learning – The transmission approach can neglect the individualisation of the learning process of the student teacher.

The argument in favour of this type of approach is that it allows for the standardisation of knowledge and skills. It is relatively easy to sit every student teacher in a lecture hall and make sure they know facts about child protection, or to coach a student teacher to copy how a mentor delivers a particular lesson. For some topics, such as understanding a particular legal framework or how to use particular ICT software, this might be the most effective approach. However, you may lose some good teachers who don’t respond to learning in this way if it is used inappropriately.

1.5 Student teacher-centred approach

The ‘student teacher-centred approach’ asks students, mentors and tutors to critically engage with issues that arise and find solutions through a process of exploration and critical reflection. In this way student teachers don’t just emulate existing practice but will take more personal responsibility to adapt, question, challenge and experiment with a range of different solutions and techniques. In this way the learning cannot be controlled in the same way as in a transmission model as it is difficult to predict learning outcomes too specifically, or that each student teacher (or young person) will experience exactly the same, or make the same meanings and connections as others in the same context.

Therefore the challenging aspects of this approach include:

• Time – A questioning, critical approach takes a lot of discussion, research and time for experimenting. It requires a high level of skill from teacher-educators to accommodate the level of individualisation that results.
• Amount of information – In order to adopt a critical approach, student teachers need to draw on a range of opinions from mentors, tutors, their own practice and the literature. This can be overwhelming, although developing critical reflection can help student teachers learn from their experiences (see Learning to teach: Becoming a reflective practitioner).
• Proactive learners – Student teachers have to be proactive in taking charge of their own learning. This involves the student teacher being aware of their own learning process (metacognitive awareness) including their assumptions, values and beliefs, which may impact on their reactions to situations. It involves them recognising the individualistic nature of learning and how their active approach to researching, meaning making and exploration are fundamental to their development.

The arguments for this approach are that they take full account of individual needs. It supports student teachers to be co-creators of their own knowledge, finding solutions that work for them and developing the skills to be flexible and adaptable to different contexts and approaches.

Having explored the different paradigms that can be argued underpin ITE courses, the different way knowledge is perceived and the different expectations of how student teachers should learn, it is not surprising that this has resulted in a plethora of different routes into teaching in the UK. The next section will consider these differences in relation to the previous discussion.

2 Different routes into teaching in the UK

When people talk of different routes into teaching in the UK, they are often referring to differences in how courses are structured and run. The following section will explore these differences including:

• the design and delivery of ITE courses
• qualifications they will lead to
• nature of school experience
• other learning opportunities.

2.1 Who designs, delivers and monitors the course

In the UK you may come across the terms Higher Education Institute (HEI) led or school-based ITE. These are not routes in themselves as each contains a number of different models of ITE, but they do recognise fundamental differences in how courses are organised.

All ITE courses are subject to national regulations and inspection frameworks. The nature of the delivery will depend on the underpinning philosophy of the course but also the qualifications that are to be achieved (e.g. a masters level course will differ from an undergraduate route in the nature and level of critical engagement in assessment).

Even though the design of ITE courses may be quite individual, how courses operate and who is there to support you can be discussed more generally. It is possible to identify four types or groups of people who might be involved in an ITE course:

1. The course tutor may also be known as the subject leader, university tutor or specialist tutor. This person’s role is to facilitate a holistic, joined up and well-supported programme for the student. They may be based outside the schools in which student teachers are working, will have a broad experience of the subject or phase they are teaching and extensive experience of working with student teachers.
2. The school-based mentor is the student teachers daily contact and support system when working in schools. They provide the expertise of the particular school context and will help students to apply what they have learned about educational issues with particular classes. They will also provide regular feedback to the student and opportunities to discuss their developing teaching.
3. School-based ITE coordinators are often senior members of staff within a school who coordinate ITE provision across the different departments or phases. They may organise seminars, workshops or specific experiences for all student teachers working in the school and they will also observe student teachers to ensure standards are being applied consistently. They will also ensure that the mentor is supported in their role and will moderate assessment judgements.
4. Other student teachers may feel an unlikely addition to this list but the influence of working with other student teachers, sharing issues, finding solutions together, discussing educational practice and theory and supporting each other emotionally is a very important aspect of learning to teach. Whether you are on an HEI led course but are on school experience placements away from your peers, or are based within a school for all of your course, there are times where face to face contact with other student teachers is more challenging. However, there are many online platforms (both general educational forums and subject specific) which support ongoing conversation between student teachers which are highly valuable in providing opportunity to broaden your outlook, debate key issues and share ideas.

The roles of the mentor and tutor will be discussed in more detail in Learning to teach: Mentoring and tutoring student teachers.

3 Qualifications

Underpinning all ITE courses is the requirement for teachers to achieve Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). This status signifies that the person has met the standards necessary to become a teacher and it is a prerequisite for the vast majority of teaching positions in the UK.

There are opportunities to complete a QTS only route into teaching although many providers offer an academic qualification, which indicates a student teacher’s high level engagement with theory and practice. The nature of these qualifications is diversifying at a quick rate to adapt to recent government policy decisions and therefore care needs to be taken to check the actual qualification on offer.

Traditionally, HEI’s have offered two different levels of academic ITE qualifications: undergraduate and postgraduate. Undergraduate courses involve completing a degree as well as ITE over a three or four year period (e.g. BEd courses), or completing a degree in a subject followed by a one year ITE course at professional level (level 6), (e.g. Professional Graduate Certificate in Education or PGCE) in addition to an existing degree.

Postgraduate qualifications are taken by people who already have a first degree and want to complete ITE at a postgraduate level. This is usually in the form of a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), and often involves opportunity to gain masters level credits.

The qualifications on offer from a particular provider often indicate the types of professional skills and understanding they feel teachers need to be effective and their view of the student teacher’s role as a learner. Accessing key educational ideas from researchers, and learning within school placements will be evident in both routes, although the nature of the qualification will indicate the relative importance and emphasis given to each.

4 School experience

For all ITE courses there are national requirements that have to be met. For example, there are rules about the minimum amount of weeks that student teachers are required to be in school.

The nature of the school experience and the expectations about how students learn from the experience are indicative of the underpinning philosophy of the ITE course. We can consider this through a case study of The Open University PGCE approach to school experience (please note that The Open University’s PGCE course has now been discontinued but is typical of many university run PGCE courses):

Activity 5: School experience

Timing: Time: 30 minutes

Re-read the PGCE case study, above, and listen to Sarah and Dave talking about learning to teach. (Please note that The Open University’s PGCE course mentioned in this audio has now been discontinued but is typical of many university run PGCE courses.)

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Transcript: Audio 2

Diegetic

Simon Bland:

Those of you that don’t need to be logging on, have a look at the starter on the board, think about what you did last lesson. So, today you’re actually going to be composing your own bass-lines…

Non-diegetic

Sarah Vaughn:

We call this initial teacher education, and I think that’s significant – it’s not just about training, we’re educating people to become teachers and it’s a career-long continuous development and I think the day you think you know it all is the time to give it up. I’m Sarah Vaughn. I’m a PGCE tutor for the Open University. As soon as you qualify as a teacher you also need to recognise that you are going to continue to learn and to learn that profession the more you do it, and it’s very useful to be able to make these connections between being a learner and being a teacher and recognising that that relationship is symbiotic: it goes ‘round together. There are plenty of pupils in our classrooms who are struggling and having difficulties with acquiring the knowledge or the skills that you’re asking them to use, and I think if you’ve got this ability to reflect on what it’s like to learn you can give them a lot more guidance and support in their struggle to gain that knowledge.

I think the key to learning about how to teach is understanding about learning yourself and the type of learner that you are. I’m very definitely a kinesthetic learner – I learn by doing things and once I've done it then it’s hardwired into my brain and I won’t forget it. So, you have to identify that in yourself and then you also have to realise that in front of you as a teacher there are a variety of different learners and you have to take all of those into consideration while you’re presenting your materials. I think you also need to think about different theories about how the brain develops and how, therefore, pupils’ and children’s brains develop and the sort of things they’re capable of at certain ages. So we are talking about sort of Piaget and stages, but we’re also talking about the types of activities that make learning possible, so we’ll be drawing on theorists like Bronfenbrenner and Vygotsky who will talk about the social context in which learning is taking place. As learners, we need to think about how other people learn and the types of activities that promote learning for us and for the pupils in our classrooms.

Diegetic

Simon Bland:

So, we’ll just have a look then... What you should have is something that looks like this – now, we’re going to open a screen now where you can input your notes. So, what I want you to do is actually just watch what I’m doing and then copy it.

Non-diegetic

Simon Bland:

Having done some teaching, you then need to think about what you’ve done in terms of when learning has been successful and when it’s been less than successful. So you need to make some sort of evaluation of what you’ve done in terms of teaching and assess what your pupils have learnt and then you can make a conclusion from that about the types of strategies that are effective, the things that work and the things that don’t work. But the things that work are not necessarily going to be the same in every context and I think that’s what makes teaching really interesting – the things that work in one school or the things that work with one class are not necessarily the things that work with another class. So you can have two year seven classes in the same school, but the way you actually approach the teaching and the learning that comes out of that may be structured in completely different ways. And that’s what makes the job fun, because you can think about different ways of putting your material across each time and I think that also reflects on this whole process of us as teachers growing and continuing to develop – we’re always finding better ways or new ways of teaching that we think might be an improvement on what we’ve done before.

Neville Ashcroft:

My name’s Neville Ashcroft. I’m a student teacher. This is my third placement, and I will finish in the next month or so. At the moment I’m deliberately not trying to have a (x) teaching style because I want to practice those different styles and see which ones suit me best. At the moment, I’m trying to be a chameleon and just copy other people’s styles and see what suits me. Being in school is the most critical part of the course – all very well sitting in your study or your bedroom at home looking at the literature, it really comes down to when you’re actually in front of those pupils practicing what you’ve learned that’s when you can really test yourself. You can practice different things.

Dave Smith:

I’m Dave Smith, Open University tutor on the PGCE course. It’s really important that trainees work in more than one school simply because schools vary so much and that as soon as you work in one school exclusively it becomes a training that means that you will find it very difficult to adapt if at any point in your career you need to move. And if someone starts in one school and becomes effective in that school it should be a taking-off point for an ability to work effectively in other situations, but if they remain in that school and remain there too long then those habits become exactly that: they become habits rather than practices that they’re aware of and thinking about and considering the applicability of.

Simon Bland:

I’m Simon Bland, I’m a PGCE student. The first placement school that I had in a city school – at the moment, the mix of that school is something along the lines of 60% Indian, 30% Somali, with the majority of the rest being Eastern-European. And so there’s a mix, you have language-issues, the class sizes are high... It’s a fascinating place, but also there’s a variety of behavioural issues and so I found that very, very hard. And then this school’s very different; it’s in a much more affluent area and overall the students are a lot more well-behaved. The issues are different here. I’m glad I did it that way ‘round; being there and knowing that there are times when you have to really seize down on a class and then coming here.

Dave Smith:

Many students find the move to a second school quite difficult, because they’ve often reached a point where they feel they’re competent, they feel they’re effective and suddenly the rug’s taken from underneath them because they’ve got to adapt to different people, to different pupils, to a different school ethos and that is probably the most crucial point in the whole of a PGCE or any other teacher-training course – that point at which they’ve accepted their competence, but find that that competence is limited and then they can really move on to a position which enables them to work in a range of situations.

Sarah Vaughn:

I think when you start as a teacher, you’re so terrified about every new class that you made and you’re terrified that you’re not going to be able to control them that the majority of your waking moments are planning your classroom management strategies and how you're going to deal with behaviour and challenges that the pupils present to you and that seems to take up an awful lot of what you think about when you’re planning lessons, is making sure that the management side of things runs smoothly. And I think one of the advantages of getting a bit older is that those things are more secure and you’re happier with yourself that you know you can control situations and that things are not going to go wrong, and it allows you then to think a little bit more in detail about the quality of the teaching and the quality of the learning that’s taking place for the students, and being able to draw on other aspects of your own knowledge in order to help students make progress. For example, I’ve started to work on visual learners and using works of art to illustrate and support an understanding of some of the modern music styles which I wouldn’t have thought about in early days when I was still worrying about whether somebody was going to be off-task talking.

We’re all individual and as a teacher you need to develop your teaching personality, and I think in order to do that you need to see how other people do it. You need to see how other people work with children, how other people manage classrooms, how other people structure curriculums. And the more variety that you can see, the more variety that you’ve experienced, will give you a basis to work out how you want to be in the classroom – the sort of teacher you want to be while you’re working. If you’re worried about management and if you’re worried about losing control, then you often put a barrier up, you put a sort of defence up and you don’t let yourself come through and I think, actually, you need to be able to do that because you’re a person working with people; you’re not a computer, you’re not a robot. They’ve got feelings, and particularly teenagers are so wound up in their hormones and all their feelings and their emotions – and I think if they realise that you are a person, and actually you’re a person who can be relied upon because you’re not a friend, you’re not a peer... it’s a bit like parenting, I suppose, where you can’t be your children’s best friend cause actually sometimes you have to assert your authority and you have to lay down the law and say ‘these things have got to be done, or these are my expectations’ and I think you can do that, but still show your human side and still become a person that they can have a relationship with and that they can develop some trust with and I think if you have that really good sense of trust and understanding of each other then actually they will do pretty much what you want them to do.

So I guess after 26 years of teaching experience, the idea of developing your relationship with the children you teach is probably the best bit of advice I’d give to student teachers.

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Think about these questions:

• What are the benefits of learning to teach in two different schools?
• Does the way in which the course organises its school experience reflect particular paradigms or approaches to ITE, as defined by Zeichner and Taylor?
• If yes, then what is the evidence?

Sarah reflects on what she was apprehensive about and on the importance of building relationships.

• If you are thinking of becoming a teacher, what do you think you will be most apprehensive about? What experience do you bring to the profession that will help you in developing good relationships with your classes and your colleagues?
• If you are a teacher, do you agree with Sarah? How do you think you can support student teachers in developing good relationships with their classes and with their colleagues? What is the key piece of advice you would give to student teachers?

Discussion

Sarah makes a number of points, but one of the most significant is that learning to be a teacher is about developing your own ‘teaching personality’. Learning to be a teacher involves drawing on your previous experiences, and the opportunities that you have as a student teacher, in order to develop that personality. And it will change as your career progresses and you gather more experience.

In reality, choosing an ITE course may come down to very practical considerations such as availability of places or personal experiences of a provider, rather than the philosophy which underpins a course. However, as with any learning, it is how individuals take control of their own learning that will influence the type of teacher they become.

To that end, it is worth examining the views student teachers themselves about what helped them to learn effectively.

5 What students say about learning to teach?

Hagger et al. (2008), in their longitudinal study of student teacher’s reflections on their learning, found that responses could be categorised into five dimensions:

Maximise

What is particularly interesting about their research findings, is that student teachers themselves recognise the significance of their own responsibility as learners.

These ideas are reflected in a number of studies that examine student teachers own perceptions of themselves as learners.

Conclusion

This course has highlighted differences in perception about the nature of ITE by exploring different paradigms and approaches that underpin different beliefs about the role of ITE and the role of student teachers as active participants within it.

It then considered how this has manifest itself in the plethora of different routes into teaching in the UK. It concluded by examining research into how student teachers perceive they best learn during ITE courses.

Central to this course is the question ‘What type of teachers do we want in our schools?’. It is clear that there is not a single shared vision within the field, the profession or at government level that can answer this question. Maybe the question ought to be addressed to those who can influence the outcome, the student teachers, by asking: ‘What sort of teacher do you want and what experiences will best support you to achieve this?’

Activity 6: Characteristics of a good teacher

Listen to the clip of Tom, Mark and Sid talking about their school days.

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Transcript: Audio 3

Narrator:

Author and broadcaster Tom Holland, the actor Mark Williams and children’s television presenter Sid Sloane recall their school days and the teachers that inspired them.

Tom Holland:

I remember all sort of teachers that got me through exams, who gave me the information that I needed to do well in lessons and then to get qualifications; but the ones that really live in my memory are those who lit the touch-paper of enthusiasm and excitement, that transcend the objective requirements of the curriculum. The fact that they demonstrated that what you were studying in a classroom wasn’t just something to be got through, wasn’t just something to be slogged through, wasn’t even something to be learned so you could get a qualification: it was something that had fascination in its own right.

Mark Williams:

The better the character the better the teacher, I think; because the more complex and interesting you are, the more intriguing you are to children who haven’t met anybody like you. And if you’re yourself it’s much more proof against people playing you up than if you’re not, because in the end they’ve got to give in ‘cause they want to know and if they don’t want to know then you’re on a losing battle aren’t you – there’s no point. But the ones that want to know are going like ‘why did you say that?’

Sid Sloane:

My favourite teachers were Miss Earnham, my English teacher, and Mr. Wilson my Sports teacher; also, Mr. McKenna, my History teacher. And the reason why they were my favourite teachers was because they took the time to have a conversation with me on my level. I just felt like they had recognised a potential within me and wanted to help me to draw it out of myself. So they weren’t saying ‘you need to be this, you have to be that, you should be this,’ they were saying ‘you know what, you have a whole lot of potential and you can do more. And why don’t you ask that of yourself? And I believe in you.’ That's what made them my favourite teachers.

Tom Holland:

I didn’t greatly enjoy school, but I do have a debt of gratitude to certain teachers, of whom one in particular set me on the career that I now follow. And he was called Major Morris and his day job was to teach us History, that’s what he was meant to do; but his idea of teaching was basically to elaborate on shaggy dog stories – that was his lesson plan and he could always be persuaded to go off on a tangent. So, he was very interested in Greek Mythology and he told me the whole story of the Odyssey. He was just a man in love with his subject and that love was not going to be contained within the dykes of the conventional curriculum. And I don’t know now whether that would rank as a quality to be praised in a teacher, but I certainly felt that it was, but it gave me a passion for History that I have never lost since.

Mark Williams:

I remember school as getting better and better – was how I remember it. As a young child I didn’t really like school, I was often bored. The thing that I was most interested in was learning, and it depended on who was best at generating that enthusiasm. I remember we had a teacher who was a very conventional teacher, in the sense that he smoked a pipe and wore a sports jacket, but he was funny. And he used to do stuff that shook you a bit; like when Bob Beamon broke the 1968 long jump record; he chalked it out on the playground – which was quite radical then – and we went out and there was like 28' 6'' and it was just like unbelievable. He was good.

Sid Sloane:

Teachers are very integral to a child’s life. When I went home from school I went home with what happened during my day at school, and I talked to my mum. And my mum, who raised five children on her own, didn’t have much time to listen – if she was there at all –, because my mum was out at work all day. And there are lots of families like that, single parent families, they just haven’t got time because they’ve got to go to work or whatever. And I have to say I had a really good time at school: I was head prefect, I was made pupil of the year in my third year when I was about 13. But I left school without any qualifications. At the age of 15 something inside me snapped and I went: ‘I’m going to be a rebel.’ and I just decided overnight ‘I'm going to be a rebel and I'm going to go and hang with the rebel kids’ and that’s what I did. And then I started playing truant and I started not going to school and I started thinking about my exams and thinking ‘well, who cares? I don't need them.’ The whole school system lost value and I slipped through the net. And I think I missed out on that part, that final stage, of my education because I probably would have gone on to college and then maybe on to university, who knows?

Mark Williams:

I think that one of the essences of good teaching is the same as good acting – is you’ve got to have some politics with a small ‘p’. You’ve got to know where you’re going. You need to aim. You don’t have to tell everybody all the time, but it’s a good idea in your mind to know where you’re heading. Where you want them to be. What you want for them and, by association, for you. What are you saying? If you know, it will sing.

Sid Sloane:

The most effective type of teaching is when you actually speak to the individual in the group. And I think that was the great thing about the teaching that I was motivated by was I felt like I was being spoken to as an individual. And also, and this is the great thing, when I’m in a group and I feel like everybody else is being spoken to as individuals it adds extra value to what I’ve been told about me. It’s about positivity, it’s about inspiration and trying not to make kids feel like they’re going to achieve much, cause I believe kids are potentially able to achieve whatever they want and I truly believe that.

End transcript: Audio 3

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As you listen, make a list of what they consider to be the characteristics of a good teacher.

Are good teachers born or made? Reflect on this question in the light of the list that you have made.

What qualities do you bring to teaching, and which will you/did you need to learn? In the light of what you have read in this course, how best can these things be learnt?

Discussion

Clearly, the different skills might be learned in different ways and much will depend on the skills, experience and attributes that a student already has. There will be times when students learn by copying what experienced teachers do, there will be times when they want to try new and novel things, and there will be times when they feel as if nothing is working. One of the purposes of an ITE course is to provide students with the tools to get through those times so that they emerge as better and more effective teachers.

References

Acknowledgements

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Table 4: adapted from Hagger, H., Burn, K., Mutton, T. and Brindley, S. (2008) ‘Practice makes perfect? Learning to learn as a teacher’, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 34, no. 2, p. 167.

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