FE VTE

Cochran Smith (2003 and 2021); Dinkelman et al., (2006); Korthagen et.al (2006) and Korthagen (2011) argue that strategies focussing around the creation, maintenance and development of learning communities of teachers as individuals and groups are helpful for teacher learning. Korthagen et al. (2006) found that ‘meaningful collaboration’ (ibid: 1027) could help students to learn about the complexities of teaching through experience.

A possible positive reason not to clearly define how learning theory is situated within teacher education is provided by Korthagen et al. (2006) when they suggest that teacher educators ‘should actively create situations that elicit the wish for self-directed theory building in their students’ (ibid: 1028). The teacher educator then becomes the link between possible theories and practice in order to assist the teacher to build their own theory.

This is a topic which has been the focus of a number of pieces of research in the English FES. Teacher educators have been found to have some autonomy in identifying and selecting appropriate learning theory in research by Clow and Harkin (2009), Harkin (2005), Harkin et al. (2008), Harkin et al (2003), Lucas (2007), Lucas et al. (2012) and Perry et al. (2019).

Addressing learning theory features regularly in research in this field, and can be seen to underpin teacher education, but there is no overall dominant discourse regarding which learning theories should be addressed and endorsed. Finlay’s (2002) review of Further Education teacher education found that many programmes embrace the experiential learning theory of Kolb (1984), reflective practice theory of Schön (1983,) and also utilise the way those theories have been interpreted for teacher education by, for example, Boud et al. (1985), Gibbs (1988) and Radovic et al. (2021).

Willemse et al. (2008) carried out a mixed methods study ‘of the actual … education practices of 54 teacher educators within one institution’ (ibid: 445)

On considering the results of a previous exploratory study, and a scoping of literature, they were led to ‘assume that preparing student teachers … apparently depends more on the efforts of individual teacher educators than it does on any collectively designed curriculum and that the process appears to be largely implicit and unplanned’ (ibid: 446).

Studies including Cochran-Smith (2003), Crawley (2014), Korthagen et al. (2005), Kane (2007), Kosnik (2007), Koster et al. (2005), Lunenberg (2002), Lunenberg et al. (2007), Smith (2005) and Swennen et al., (2007) find that teacher educators often operate as role models. This has also been described as a ‘model pedagogue’ (Ben-Peretz et al, 2010; Crowe and Berry, 2007).

Crawley’s (2014) research gathered discussion points and responses on TEds’ professional situation, activity and values from over 250 FES teacher educators through focus groups and an online questionnaire, itself completed by 161 respondents. A theoretical framework was constructed from reviews of research to analyse the responses.

Mevorach and Ezer (2010) carried out a study of TEds’ perceptions of Teacher Education practices. This included eight different teacher education colleges in Israel, and an analysis of 75 questionnaires. A set of four models was constructed from literature, one of which was the ‘moral agent professional model’. This involved:

Belief among teacher educators that teacher education plays a pivotal moral role in the preparation of teachers including the development of reflexivity, inclusivity, equality and social justice is present in research from Apple (2009), Bentley (2009), Freedman et al. (2004), Mevorach and Ezer (2010), Roofe (2021), Thurston (2010) and Zeichner (2009).

The focus of the research was English teacher educators within the English Further Education and Skills sector. Despite particular contextual factors associated with that provision and the TEds concerned, the key pedagogical themes which emerged are likely to be transferrable to other teacher education situations.