MESHGuides

Harkin (2005) reports on research funded by a national Further Education infrastructure organisation which surveyed 243 FE teachers about their perceptions of the usefulness of the FE ITE they had received. 50 of the survey respondents were subsequently interviewed. Research, including the above study by Moon (1998) had already identified theory as a problematic area in English ITE, and participants in this research reinforced that perspective.

Moon (1998) carried out a review of ‘international perspectives on the initial education and training of teachers’ which addressed teacher education across some 10 countries, including the USA, France, the Netherlands and Germany. This was not a systematic review, but did include a wide range of research and programmes internationally. With respect to learning theory, Moon indicated that ‘In England, and in the USA, the Deweyian reflective practitioner, pragmatic tradition has come to dominate teacher education programmes.

Crawley’s (2014) theoretical framework also included ‘modelling and golden moments’ (ibid: 278), and this also regularly featured in participants’ responses as an important pedagogical principle for TEds.

Modelling and the use of ‘golden moments’ is seen by TEds as an important contribution which enables the teachers they train to reflect on critical incidents and learn from them as reflective practitioners. Highlighting ‘golden moments’ in trainee’s own teaching can also contribute to a significant growth in confidence, and a step towards improved teaching.

The multiplicity of contexts, content, theories and practices across education systems, particularly in the English FES, is a significant challenge for the teaching professional. Research has recognised how working to mediate these challenges is one of the most important aspects of teacher education. Crowe and Berry (2007), Davey (2013), Guyton (2000), Kitchen (2005a), Korthagen et al. (2006), Korthagen (2001), Kosnik (2001), Laws et al.

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).