Pedagogy in Further Education and Vocational Teacher Education

General Pedagogical principles

Mussett (2010: 1) argues there is no consensus in ‘the way pedagogy should be integrated in teacher education’.

Korthagen et al. (2006) have led the production of perhaps the most authoritative, comprehensive and still authoritative statement of general pedagogical principles for teacher education. They undertook a meta-analysis of three ITE programmes across three countries, and ‘many studies’ undertaken and published on those programmes, and derived ‘Seven Fundamental Principles’ from this analysis. They are described as an 'empirically based and practically oriented' pedagogy based on 7 Key principles in 'programs and practices’ (ibid: 1022). They also assert that ‘in almost every teacher education program in the world, one or more of the seven principles can be recognized’ (ibid: 1037). These pedagogy-based principles are:

1. Learning about teaching involves continuously conflicting and competing demands
2. Learning about teaching requires a view of knowledge as a subject to be created rather than as a created subject
3. Learning about teaching requires a shift in focus from the curriculum to the learner
4. Learning about teaching is enhanced through (student) teacher research
5. Learning about teaching requires an emphasis on those learning to teach working closely with their peers
6. Learning about teaching requires meaningful relationships between schools, universities and student teachers
7. Learning about teaching is enhanced when the teaching and learning approaches advocated in the program are modelled by the teacher educators in their own practice

Korthagen et al. (2006) argue these principles can help to create a common language for the development of pedagogy of teacher education, and Murray (2005) agrees that this could work in a number of ways, and also in the UK under certain circumstances.

Snow et al. (2023) Introduce three “shared functions” of teacher educators which connect to the pedagogical principles discussed in this guide. They are the “functions of Design, Leadership and Advocacy” which are “are all framed by the educative purpose of the work of teacher educators.” The authors argue that “these functions are overlapping and highlight the movement and energy among the functions and collective purpose for teacher educator work.”