Understanding the Professional Learning of Beginning Teachers: Maximising Learning in a Context of Systemic Contraints

This article considers the processes involved in the professional learning of beginning teachers in England. In discussing the processes involved, this article considers the nature of professional knowledge needed to be learned by beginning teachers and the processes by which they may learn. Representing beginning teacher learning is framed in terms of a learning trajectory in contrast to the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) which describe a restrictive and technicist perspective. This draws from the novice / expert discourse but with the understanding that while there are a number of typical features in a beginning teacher’s development (Burn, Hagger, & Mutton, 2014) there is variation between individuals. Finally, implications are drawn for those involved in the training of beginning teachers

The evaluation of a university In-School Teacher Education Project in Science (INSTEP)

The university In-School Teacher Education Project in Science (INSTEP) used interactive video technologies to enhance initial teacher education programmes for science trainee teachers. With four Internet Protocol1 (IP) cameras and mounted microphones in school laboratories in six partner schools and the university teaching room, trainees and their tutors had access to live interaction with schools. This was a live feed of video and audio material, relayed from the school classrooms and reproduced on interactive whiteboards at the University. Image and sound processing software enabled users remotely to observe school classrooms and focus on particular features of pupil and teacher activity. Cameras and microphones placed at the University allowed links to function in both directions, enabling a variety of two-way interactions between teacher educators and student teachers at the University and teachers in schools. The INSTEP technology did not simply provide a single connection to a remote classroom: it created a number of opportunities for interaction within the teacher education classroom as the student teacher became part of a network of two-way connections enabling powerful and flexible learning experiences. In the course of university-based sessions structured around the contemporaneous observation of remote classrooms through the INSTEP video and audio links, student teachers were able to interact with classroom practitioners, tutors and with their peers. This thesis presents the findings of the internal evaluation of INSTEP aimed at identifying the benefits for trainee teachers. There has been an increase in the use of video material for teacher training purposes. However, trainee teachers are often intimidated by carefully selected extracts featuring experienced teachers. INSTEP activities are live and capitalise on all the opportunities associated with normal classroom practice. Literature points to INSTEP-type activities having the potential to enhance the development of trainees‘ observation skills, develop reflective thinking, to provide authentic illustrations of classroom practice, enable remote observation and facilitate the linking of theory with practice and the coaching of trainees by mentors. A fourth generation model of evaluation was undertaken with primary data generated by part-structured interviews with university tutors and mentors supported by a questionnaire and group interviews with the trainees. The main findings point to INSTEP 1. Facilitating the link between theory and practice; 2. Enhancing and accelerating the professional knowledge of the trainee teachers through enabling reflective practice, facilitating collaborative learning and supporting the development of the language of pedagogy. Additionally there appears to be a number of missed opportunities, e.g. the recording of lessons, the professional development and training of mentors and the use for continuing professional development in schools that may have enhanced the trainee experience further. There are also issues arising from being an insider-researcher that are considered in this work. The research was undertaken in the context of complex relationships including: 1. Being an internal evaluator working closely with an external evaluator; 2. Role and identity duality – particularly with respect to the university tutor team. 1 An Internet protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera that can send and receive data via a computer network and the Internet

BOOK REVIEW: Fear is the Mind Killer. Dr James Mannion & Kate McAllister

Reviewed by Brian Mars

BEGINNING TEACHER LEARNING IN SCHOOL - UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS: UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF DEVELOPING BEGINNING-TEACHER KNOWLEDGE IN A PARTNERSHIP SETTING

Developing beginning-teacher knowledge in a school-university partnership is both complex and messy. This arises from the debates about (1) what beginning teachers should know and relates to the balance between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge and (2) where that knowledge should be developed. In considering what type of knowledge beginning teachers should acquire and by reviewing partnership discourse particularly from a sociocultural perspective, suggestions are made for supporting effective beginning-teacher learning

Torsion and temulence in the work of Emmanual Lévinas: a critical examination of the staging and regulation of ethical space

This study engages the problem of ethical space in the work of Emmanuel Levinas by situating the 'production' of what Levinas will term the 'face' (/e visage) against the horizons of its institution. It is against these horizons, it will be maintained, horizons apt for phenomenological reconstitution, that the face is revealed qua face. Through a broadening of such Levinasian explicata as 'filiality,' 'fecundity,' 'fraternity,' 'teaching' and 'maternity,' the heritability of the face will be deduced and the face placed within the context of its imperative milieu - the ethical circumstances of its signification. This injunctive environment, the staging or mise-en-scene for the face-to-face relation Levinas assays, will, pace Levinas, be exhibited upon the ground of its constitution and its provenance scrutinized, in order that the legacy of the face might be complicated, and its putative non-historical status, challenged. It will be argued that Levinas limits, unnecessarily, the ambit of what he permits to signify as a face, and thus that tacitly deposited suppositions regulate the composition and configuration of the face within his work. These posita will be worked loose from their situs and critically examined with a view to assessing their influence upon the development of Levinas' thought. Through recourse to the phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas' presentation of ethical space (the espacement of ethics) will be appraised in the light of the phenomenologies it purportedly interrupts. The cogency of Levinas' proto-ethical insight will be evaluated in relation to the cultural and religious illustrations to which he appeals. The tension, or torsion, between Levinas' self-styled 'confessional' and 'philosophical' works will be laid bare, and their underlying confluence mooted. Effort has been made to delineate the overall trajectory of Levinas' thought and to treat the Levinasian project as a whole, such that the chosen problematic might be addressed more adequately

What can we say about substance use? Dominant discourses and narratives emergent from Australian media

Discourses are conceptualised as context-specific frameworks that constrain what can be presented as rational when considering psychoactive substances. Given the implications of this for Australian policy debate and development, research and health promotion, an integrative analysis explored the nature of the dominant discourses as they pertain to substance use. Newspaper articles spanning a 12-month period (April 2005 2006) were analysed with the analysis triangulated with visual media and newspapers from 5-years prior. We conclude that within Australia, psychoactive substance use is framed within the dominant discourses of medicine, morality, law, economics, politics and popular culture. The linguistic landscape circumscribed by each discourse is described and the power dynamics underpinning the maintenance of the discourses considered, with each discursive framework shown to delineate unique subject positions that define the numerous individuals concerned with substance use issues (e.g. substance users, politicians, medical experts, etc.)

Adaptive Management of an Imperiled Catostomid in Lake Mohave, Lower Colorado River, USA

Lake Mohave, a man-made reservoir in the lower Colorado River, USA, was once home to the largest wild population of the endemic and endangered razorback sucker Xyrauchen texanus, estimated at 60,000 individuals in the late 1980s. Individuals of this population were 25 years or older because recruitment was precluded by the removal of larval production by introduced centrarchid species. A repatriation program was initiated in the 1990s to replace the aging population with young fish by capturing larvae from the reservoir and raising them in hatcheries and protected lakeside backwaters until they were released back into the reservoir. Although more than 200,000 fish have been repatriated to Lake Mohave, the repatriate population has remained at a few thousand fish. The wild population is now functionally extinct. The program has adapted to new threats to the population, political realities, and technological advances. Management shifted in 2006 to the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program, which has politicized the process. The aim of this chapter is to describe the initial, informal adaptive management strategy for razorback sucker in Lake Mohave, the transition to a formal program, and the inherent pitfalls that formalization entails