Bridging the university-school divide - Horizontal expertise and the two-worlds pitfall

Research on teacher learning consistently documents the disjuncture between the practices beginning teachers encounter in university teacher preparation courses and those they reencounter in the K-12 classrooms in which they learn to teach. As preservice teachers enter teaching, they gravitate toward conventional K-12 practices, dismissing those endorsed by the university as impractical. In this article, the authors delineate the concept of horizontal expertise and document how its production and use can address this “two-worlds pitfall.” Drawing on the authors\u27 work creating a cross-institutional collaborative, they identify three processes central to the production of horizontal expertise in teacher education: the exchange of tools, the negotiation of social languages, and argumentation. They then trace its use across the university and school settings to show how horizontal expertise can rescript mentoring and expand dialogic practices in the university. The authors conclude by identifying the challenges of developing horizontal expertise in teacher educatio

Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Literature-Based Discussions in a Cross-Institutional Network

This article examines how secondary English teachers who served as mentors\u27 for preservice English teachers developed their pedagogical content knowledge (PCR) of literature discussions through participating in a cross-institutional teacher educator network. In particular, we document how the joint creation of dialogic space in the English Educators\u27 Network provided a context within which the mentor teachers expanded their understandings of discussions from disparate kinds of classroom talk to a dialogic view of literature-based discussion involving the interaction of reader, text, and multiple worldviews. We explore two central dimensions of this work: (1) how shifts in university and school participants\u27 discourse, affiliation, and participation supported and expanded mentors\u27 thinking about discussions; and (2) the central role of boundary objects, shared texts, and conversational brokers in facilitating these shifts. We begin with a brief review of literature on PCR to highlight the need for more research on cross-institutional contexts as sites for mentor teacher learning

Exploring the Nature, Facilitators, and Challenges of Program Coherence in a Case of Teacher Education Program Redesign Using Core Practices

Scholars have called for promoting coherence in teacher education programs. Such coherence is often depicted as a state to be achieved. This article reconceptualizes coherence as a dynamic process affected by the simultaneous organizational realities of unity, conflict, and fragmentation; it also aims to clarify factors that can facilitate or challenge the work of enhancing teacher education program coherence. Drawing on a case study of program-wide redesign, we show that promoting coherence requires more than just maximizing unity (instructors’ agreement on means and ends). It also requires addressing conflict and recognizing fragmentation in ways that support what we term “pathway flexibility.” By highlighting the interplay of unity, conflict, and fragmentation, we offer a set of conceptual tools to understand and support the development of program coherence in teacher education

Discretion from a psychological perspective

Street-level bureaucrats – such as teachers, social workers and police officers – have to implement public policies. However, they are not simple machines implementing rules, but have opportunities to make their own decisions. In other words, they have autonomy, or discretion in their work. This chapter shows how a psychological perspective can be beneficial when investigating discretion. This is firstly illustrated using the concept of policy alienation. Many street-level bureaucrats feel alienated from public policies. When they perceive they do not have enough discretion to implement the policy or feel that a policy is meaningless for society and clients, they experience policy alienation. This attitude can furthermore lead to different types of behaviours. These behaviours can be classified using the notion of coping during public service delivery. Coping can be grouped in three types, namely: moving towards clients (for instance breaking rules for a client), moving away from clients (for instance by not answering emails for clients) and moving against clients (for instance by becoming aggressive to clients). We introduce the concepts of policy alienation and coping during public service delivery and end with future research directions for scholars interested in studying discretion from a psychological perspective