images; it is a time when one's past, present, and future are set in dynamic tension. ... and research project. ⢠Method units â 3 semester-long units (Sem 1, 2 & 3).
The artistry of ‘becoming’: Inquiry and arts-based pedagogy in pre-service secondary English teacher education
Assoc Prof Jackie Manuel | Dr Janet Dutton
Focus • Conceptualising Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in the ‘post-Panopticon age’ (Goodwyn 2018)
• Innovative model of ITE o Assumptions, principles, theory o Integration of arts-based, inquiry-based and case-based pedagogy o Examples of PSTs’ artefacts
Assumptions “Learning to teach is not a mere matter of applying decontextualized skills or of mirroring predetermined images; it is a time when one's past, present, and future are set in dynamic tension. Learning to teach – like teaching itself – is always the process of becoming: a time of formation and transformation, of scrutiny into what one is doing, and who one can become (Britzman, 1991, p. 8).
• Teacher professional identity is “the core of the teaching profession” (Sachs, 2005, p. 15) • Professional identity shapes: • • • •
teachers’ expectations of themselves perceptions of expectations of others from inside and outside the school self-efficacy, agency and capacity for resilience the strength of their beliefs that they can, or cannot, succeed in their work with students.
• “To teach to one’s best will require an investment of the personal as well as the professional self” (Day, 2017, p. 49).
Model of influence on teacher professional identity formation Beliefs Values & attitudes
Goals & aspirations
Ways of knowing, being, reflecting and acting
Converge to influence all facets of professional identity development, practical decision-making, functional capacities and continued investment in teaching as a career
Dispositions & moral purpose
Motivations & expectations
Personal history Cultural context/s
Principles • PSTs – “active, thinking decision-makers who make instructional choices by drawing on complex, practically-oriented, personalised and context-sensitive networks of knowledge, thought and beliefs” (Borg, 2003, p. 81) • The emphases and goals of ITE programs necessarily shift • Shift from a predominant focus on the technical, skills-based components of learning to teach to a more person-centred, constructivist paradigm that recognises the “symbiotic relationship between professional and personal, cognitive and emotional influences on teachers’ identities” (Day, 2004; Kelchtermans, 2009)
• ITE characterised by attention to fostering the professional identity of PSTs through: o inquiry/case/problem and often arts-based principles and pedagogies that integrate continuous opportunities for critical reflection • Principles and pedagogies – to cultivate practice-focused and engaged inquiry by balancing the necessary outwardly-focused dimensions of becoming an educator with the equally essential development of the teacher’s interiority, or professional identity
Theoretical and conceptual base • Critical reflection (Shulman, 1986) • Social-constructivism (Bruner, 1990; Piaget, 1969; Vygotsky, 1978) • Experiential learning (Dewey; Green; Eisner) (lots of writing) • Inquiry-based, case-based, collaboration (Ewing, Smith & Horsley, 2003) • Empathic Intelligence (Arnold, 2005) • Interpretivist paradigm – central role of language/text in generating and interpreting meaning from experience (Creswell, 2013)
• Arts-informed inquiry and pedagogy: oNarrative inquiry (Bruner, 1991; Connelly & Clandinin, 1998; Craig, 2005; Ewing, 2011) oMetaphors (Bullough & Stokes, 1994) oEnactment/Mantle of the expert (Heathcote & Bolton, 1994) oLiminality (Cook-Sather, 2006; Nelson & Harper, 2006)
Master of Teaching (Secondary) • 4 semesters over 2 years • Final semester – Internship and research project • Method units – 3 semester-long units (Sem 1, 2 & 3) • Professional Experience
o Early semester 2 o Mid-semester 3 o Internship – semester 2 (school term 3)
Overview of arts- and inquiry-based pedagogy Stage in program
Pedagogy and student activity
Entry level (Semester 1)
Initial survey: • Motivations, beliefs, expectations, goals, assumptions about teaching/the teacher/learning, own school experience, mentors • Individual survey responses followed by group discussion. Identification and critique of responses. Beginning to theorise • Forms part of first narrative/philosophy of teaching • • • •
Introduced to Enactment/Mantle of the Expert: Act as if (from now) (not treated as ‘student’) Staff member – collaboration – professional learning groups Case study class
Stage in program
Pedagogy and student activity
Semester 1
Development of metaphor for self-as-teacher: Ø Draw/Paint/Photograph Ø Create 3D artefact Ø Select objective correlative (representative object/s) Describe in writing • Development of narrative of beliefs, expectations, aspirations, guided by metaphor. Shaped into a narrative philosophy of teaching submitted as part of assessment
Examples of metaphors
Metaphors • Relational and interpersonal (family, home, team, dolls, light) • Growth-oriented (tree, book, navigator, path, sun) • Facilitation-oriented (conductor, midwife, compass, ocean, archer, light) • Creating-oriented (artist, sculptor, musician, gardener)
To me, this is home. The colours, sights, and sounds of my rural landscape. I want to know about your home too. You need to fill it with important things. You wouldn’t fill your home with rubbish for it rot. So let’s fill your mind as you would your home. I want to help you do this in your own style and taste. I can help because this is my craft. You will help me too. Just as our own tastes will change with time and experience, we will update our furniture and keep our favourite items that are made well. Nature – Brett W hiteley Image Source: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/brett-whiteley-nature/
No metaphor will sufficiently capture the sentiments that I have mentioned, yet this is the best I can come up with: I am path that leads through a green forest. Many students travel along me and venture glances at the trees which grow beside me. Some even walk through them and over them and climb them to get a better look. Some trees are older, some younger: Shakespearian, Dickensian; Potter trees and Tolkien trees; but all are connected by the same canopy of time, that sticky glue that binds us together and drives us forward in a journey through hard days and good days, smart days and dull days. As we travel together towards the horizon, I guide them, joining them with other paths to form a web of diverse adventures that cover the landscape. Some will plant new trees; some will pick the fruit of others and some will just stand and with practiced eyes, behold the beauty of the canopy. (Pre-service teacher)
The English teacher I’d like to be … “Am I a lighthouse guiding ships to shore, Standing strong and firm through sunsets and sunrises,
What if I were a young tree with roots reaching down, leaves appearing, Refracting the golden light of the morning sun?
Though buffeted by winds and waves yet unwavering,
Then at sunset I would stand in silhouette to survey the light
A constant source of strength in a sea of uncertainty?
Which, giving me life, had caused others to grow.
Or am I like the reflective surface of an Alpine lake?
Yet I was what I have been,
Calmly and quietly capturing the beauty of mountain peaks?
I am what I am,
Perhaps the lake surges downwards into a valley of green trees, Watering the way westward into the setting sun?
And I will be what I am about to be …” (Pre-service teacher)
Yet I was what I have been, I am what I am, And I will be what I am about to be … The last stanza[of my poem] exemplifies my ‘now-but-not-yet-ness’ as a pre service teacher about to enter into practical experience. I am caught between the desire to achieve this vision of a creative classroom community yet have very little experience with which to achieve it. If education had a currency it would be experience and I would be poor. Hopefully after Prac I will know more about who I am as a teacher and not just who I want to be, or who I should be.
Transition to teacher ?… WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
Secondary Student
Secondary Student
Tertiary Student
Tertiary Student
Teacher
Pre-service Teacher
Graduate Teacher
Liminality and the transition to teaching
Rites of Separation
Rites of Limen or Margin
Liminality Transitional period experienced by individuals (in some cultures) participating in rites-of-passage rituals (Turner, 1985).
Rites of Reaggregation
Transformation
Period of Liminality or Transition. ‘Betwixt and Between’ (Turner,)
How does this apply to your transition to teaching?
Reflection and Liminality
An adapted model of ‘Hermeneutic Spiral of Liminality’ (Nelson & Harper, 2006) was used in ITE workshops. Dutton (2015) Adapted from Nelson & Harper (2015)
Prompts for initial narrative reflections: • Describe a well-remembered event from your secondary school experiences in subject English and explain its significance to you. • Which text studied at school was your favourite and why? • Describe the work of a well-remembered English teacher and explain why this teacher is significant to you. • Why did you decide to become an English teacher? • I’d like to be an English teacher who …? Include reference to metaphor
üDescriptive reflection üDialogic reflection üCritical reflection Reflection based on workshop experiences and professional reading
üDescriptive reflection üDialogic reflection üCritical reflection üApplication
Reflection based on workshop experiences and professional reading
Annotated reflection • Constructs an imagined ‘conversation’ with self and the voices of significant others from the broader educational context • Annotative method is familiar to English teachers • PST prior beliefs are hegemonic (Brookfield, 2016) in the way they reflect:
- entrenched views of teaching such as the vocation or service theme (Lortie, 1975) - traditional growth focused theories of learning, and - previously encountered models of teaching and subject English
• Annotative process facilitates interrogation of beliefs and invokes analysis of commonly held ideas and practices about teaching • Effective prompt for critical reflection, unsettling assumptions (Brookfield, 2016)
Well-remembered event (Carter, 1994) from professional experience and ‘Voices’ that informed the event.
Voices in annotated reflection • Identifying the ‘voices’ which shape an individual’s beliefs and assumptions about teaching furthers this process, making explicit voices that had previously been tacit and creating an entry point for consideration of dissonant and consensus viewpoints in pre-service teachers’ professional journeys • Scaffolded narrative annotations offered a curated and creative borderline space that is “conducive to processes of experiment and becoming rather than to projects of production and formation” (Batchelor, 2012, pp. 598-599)
• Affords a space in which PSTs can come more fully into their own voice (Dutton, 2017) • Act of annotation provides a qualitative space in which PSTs can make connections between who they are and what they know (Batchelor, 2012) • Offers a viable and effective alternative to more mundane and often formulaic approaches to narrative reflection in ITE
Well-remembered event on professional experience and ‘Voices’ that informed the event
Multiple ‘voices’ of self as English teacher
External and Internal voices
Self annotation of Teacher Reflective Narrative • Critical annotations – made immediately following the conclusion of the preservice teachers’ final professional experience • By this point in the journey the participants had completed all degree requirements Strategy 1. Re-read Pre-Professional Experience Reflective Narrative 2. Highlighted any instances where beliefs have changed and/or not changed 3. Wrote an explicatory annotation to identify the ‘voices’ that have influenced each continuity or shift • Scaffolded reflexive engagement with personal teaching beliefs • Enhanced participant agency and autonomy
Integration of professional readings
Explication/Justification of shifts and continuities in beliefs about self as English teacher
Liminality and ‘Now-but-not-yetness’ as English teacher (Dutton, 2017) • Pre-service teachers report the liminal phase of transitioning to teaching – aptly called ‘now-but-notyetness’ by Olivia – with minimal anxiety, stress or tension (see also Cook, 2009; Pillen, Beijjard & den Brok, 2013; Ward, Nolen & Horn, 2011; Zeichner, 2010) • Keats’ notion of negative capabilities or being “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Keats, n.d.)
Yet I was what I have been, I am what I am, And I will be what I am about to be … The last stanza exemplifies my ‘now-but-not-yet-ness’ as a pre service teacher about to enter into practical experience.
Annotated reflections & Liminality • By bringing to the fore the tacit ‘voices’, which impact on teachers’ professional identity and work, the annotative process can enact a metaphoric conversation with significant others in the pre-service teachers’ professional and personal lives (Dutton, 2017). • Annotations afford a literal dialogue with self or ‘interior community of conversation’ as per the Liminality spiral. • The annotations thus could be utilised in order to reveal the reflexive loops (Jay & Johnson, 2002) that help shape beliefs of self as teacher and lead to a complex contemplation of the ideas and experiences which frame the emerging sense of self.
ITE for Activist Professionalism • Teacher attrition, particularly amongst early career teachers, is an ongoing challenge for Australian schools (Buchannan, et al., 2013; Manuel, 2003; Manuel & Carter, 2016) • Arts, inquiry and case-based principles and pedagogies offer potential to build the activist professional through attention to professional identity development (Sachs, 2005) • Annotative process offers possibilities for nurturing pre-service teacher reflexivity, developing resilience and thereby sustaining the optimism and hope that characterises these pre-service teachers’ beliefs about secondary English teaching
