Open Collections

The beliefs of teacher educators

University of British Columbia

This was an exploratory, descriptive study, focussed on the concepts used by certain teacher educators to describe their work. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 25 teacher educators who worked with undergraduate student teachers in one Canadian university. Their descriptions of the knowledge and the practice which they believed important to the successful completion of their work were classified. Themes were identified and compared to themes derived from a review of literature about teacher education. Three broad categories of belief about the nature of, and the relationship between, the theory and the practice of teacher education were identified. Sub-categories of two of the three broad categories were also identified. The categories which emphasized the primacy of theory were called naive deduction, classical rationalism and technical rationalism. The categories which emphasized the primacy of practice were naive induction, personal practical knowledge and inquiry. The third category emphasized the necessary interaction of theory and practice. Two other broad categories of belief were identified. They described teacher educators who believed student teachers acquire knowledge and skill best If teacher educators teach theory directly (reductionlsm) and those who believed student teachers learned best when helped to interpret experience (wholism). These beliefs were interpreted as being sustaining beliefs, that is, beliefs which serve as general guides to teacher educators' work. Some of these sustaining beliefs reflect the school context of teacher education, others the university context. As a result, teacher educators face dilemmas of choice. It was concluded that this research provided some avenues for further investigation which may help teacher educators to understand more clearly the difficulties experienced when programs are developed or changed.

Text

2011-02-08

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/31110

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

Graduate