Professional Knowledge and Practice: Some Conclusions

Abstract

This chapter provides a conclusion, pulling together the conceptual strands, theoretical perspectives, the reflexive narrative as well as the policy and professional themes. It summarises the discussions throughout the book and makes some recommendations for teacher educators, mainly in relation to the reclamation of professional knowledge within a broad-based teacher education curriculum. Suggestions are given that refer to the conceptual and contextual themes of teacher confidence , teacher excellence (encompassing the movement towards evidence-informed practice) and routinised practices (derived from evidence-based practice). Perhaps more assertively the conclusion invokes the phrase ‘politics of hope’ (Avis and Bathmaker , Research in Post-compulsory Education 9 (2): 301–313, 2004) to argue for a moral imperative upon teacher educators to resist managerialist forms of control through alternative, active professional forms of controls (Randle and Brady, Journal of Vocational Education and Training 49 (1): 121–139, 1997; Ball, Journal of Educational Policy 18 (2): 215–228, 2003, Education Policy and Social Class: The Selected Works of Stephen J. Ball, Oxon, 2006, The Education Debate Bristol, 2008).

Specific conclusions are that

• The development of professional knowledge and practice for student teachers requires time and space, that funnelled and routinised practices restrict the development of professional knowledge and practice, and that both the ITE in the LLS curriculum and the workplace are integral to the development of an expansive educational experience for developing teachers .

• The adoption of routinised and safe practices restricts and constrains teachers. A trainee teacher developing their practice solely in one organisation, which itself operates under a bound regulatory system, will experience practice that is both funnelled and mediated by norms and ‘practice traditions ’ (Kemmis , British Educational Research Journal 38 (6): 885–905, 2012). They may fall within the double bind of, on the one hand, not being able to use sense experience and, on the other hand, performing without access to resources, either because they were never inherited, not available or sadly lost in performance management practices. This may leave their capacity for the embodiment of personal values limited and impoverished.

• Doubt and uncertainty , time and space are central to the development of confidence , rather than something to be resisted. Educational institutions function to limit participation and development to sets of factory-modelled routines (Dewey 1938). Imitation and observation of mature members of a community are subverted into technical skills and defined competences that are capable of being measured against standardised criteria (Hoel, Students Cooperating in Writing: Teaching, Learning, and Research Based on Theories from Vygotsky and Bakhtin. Paper presented to the European Conference on Educational Research, Lahti, Finland 1999. [online] Available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001347.htm, 1999).

• The pursuit of excellence is a reflexive endeavour, requiring a wide-ranging repertoire and a critically aware workforce. To step outside and view the organisation dispassionately requires a reflexivity that is often denied to those both working and learning in the same educational institution. While knowledge, expertise and skills are bound to the will of the employer, sense experience is unlikely to extend beyond the general principles and routinised practices acceptable to the organisation.

• The conflicting agents, discourses and vested interests that mediate ITE in the LLS need to work together to develop an expansive vision for the development of teachers in the sector.

when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over. (Carroll 1996: 12)