Recalibrating the principles of teacher learning to focus on productive activity and quality pedagogy

Abstract

Recent policy developments in teacher education in the UK are seen as central to initial and continuing professional development for teachers. In the five years following the launch of several statutory frameworks, guidance and other initiatives by England's former Training and Development Agency for Schools, the debate continues about how teachers best learn in their lives (Pickering, Daly & Pachler 2007). Frameworks such as the recent Teachers' Standards (May 2012), Developing trainees' subject knowledge for teaching (2007) and guidance such as the Masters in Teaching and Learning (2008) and Being the best for our children: Releasing talent for teaching and learning (2008) are based on understandings of the effective teacher as being central to pupil learning (Darling-Hammond 2010; Opfer and Pedder 2011; Barber and Mourshed 2007; OECD 2009). The thinking behind these frameworks recognises the unique features of 21st Century classrooms and the increasingly complex and challenging characteristics of pupil learning. Consequently, the teaching profession requires teachers who can enact sensitive pedagogies that are less technical or prescriptive and more discerning, personalised and intuitive, drawing on a subject vernacular and description that is responsive yet productive in the sense that they personalise pupil learning and enable all pupils to connect with subjects (Lingard 2005). Whilst appearing innovative and moving with the times, recent interpretations of such policy for teacher education and professional development have reinforced routinized teacher learning, rather than encouraging originality to the application of knowledge. Constrained within the boundaries of conventional subject curricula and practices, effective teaching behaviours and best practice pedagogies are masqueraded as 'innovation'. Instances exist where student teachers are restricted to mimicking authoritative re-presentations of subject knowledge and portraying normalised understandings. Whilst, for others the boundaries and limits to existing forms of knowledge are dissolved. Ultimately, the outcomes of such an unequal learning process are, at a teacher level, variation in the quality of pedagogy in the classroom. Teachers' abilities to creatively adapt teaching methods and tailor subject knowledge to context specific needs (Reynolds 2008), are in question.