ITE guideline for teacher educators in inquiry-based science teaching

This guideline for teacher educators and their students offers a set of arguments in favour of developing opportunities for more opene ended or investigative type work in science classrooms

Who can you count on? The relational dimension of new teacher learning

The social dimension of human development is nothing new. Even in a professional context, we accept that our relationships with other people matter. We know from experience that this is the case but the importance of the social in professional development is also well supported in the literature, often it seems from a need to strike a balance against models which are overly cognitive in emphasis. Even our small-scale initial explorations into the experience of beginners in teaching revealed the prominent place in that experience of relationships with others. Although no straightforward link to any specific kinds of learning were apparent, it was evident that interaction with others was nevertheless central and that this empirical position was represented more accurately as 'relational' rather than as social, a term often seen as rather amorphous and unconvincing to the more clinically inclined. The relational or social conveys, it seems, a more 'informal' sense of learning, something that is not reducible to the strictly rational and predictable, or indeed cognitive, connecting instead to the emotions as well as the processes and stages of identity formation. This chapter presents our extended exploration of the relational, its connection to the emotions, and what it means in the context of beginning teaching: the people, their roles, informal learning, and what ties it to identity and purpose

Confidence and loose opportunism in the science classroom : towards a pedagogy of investigative science for beginning teachers

This paper attempts to establish a conceptual basis on which beginning teachers may be introduced to investigative science teaching in a way that accommodates the teacher voice. It draws mainly on preliminary theory from the shared reflections of twenty science teachers, augmented by a more general interview-based study of the experience of early professional learning of eighteen new teachers. Internationally, it is situated in the wider concern in the literature with the nature of science, mainly in initial teacher education. Empirically located within the Scottish context, a grounded epistemological base of teacher knowledge is illustrated and presented as components of confidence in a cycle of professional learning that needs to be set in motion during ITE. It is proposed that, given protected experience in their early attempts to teach investigatively, new teachers can begin to develop a confident pedagogy of loose opportunism that comes close to authentic science for the children they teach

Miss, what's my name? New teacher identity as a question of reciprocal ontological security

This paper extends the dialogue of educational philosophy to the experience of beginners entering the teaching profession. Rather than impose the ideas of any specific philosopher or theorist, or indeed official standard, the exploration presented here owes its origins to phenomenology and the use of grounded theory. Working from a narrative data base and focussing on the knowing of name in the first instance, the authors develop their emergent ideas on self and identity in relation to children taught, through connection to a wider literature that includes reference to Giddens, Illeris, Deleuze and Heidegger, for example. The paper is thus also an exercise in suggesting that research on practice by academics working in professional education, who are non-philosophers, can lead to constructive and relevant engagement with philosophy in developing theory from and about about practice, even though the approach, in the initial stages, may well be serendipitous and eclectic in nature

Not choosing nursing: work experience and career choice of high academic achieving school leavers

Work experience has been a feature of the secondary school curriculum in the United Kingdom for a number of years. Usually requested by the pupil, it aims to provide opportunities for school pupils to enhance their knowledge and understanding of an occupation. The main benefits are claimed to be that it can help pupils develop an insight into the skills and attitudes required for an occupation and an awareness of career opportunities. However the quality and choice of placements are considered to be of great importance in this process and in influencing career choice [Department for Education and Skills (DfES), 2002a. Work Experience: A Guide for Employers. Department for Education and Skills, London]. As university departments of nursing experience a decline in the number of school pupils entering student nurse education programmes, and with the competition for school leavers becoming even greater, it is important to consider whether school pupils have access to appropriate work placements in nursing and what influence their experience has on pursuing nursing as a career choice. This paper is based on interview data from 20 high academic achieving fifth and sixth year school pupils in Scotland, paradigmatic cases from a larger survey sample (n=1062), who had considered nursing as a possible career choice within their career preference cluster, but then later disregarded nursing and decided to pursue medicine or another health care profession. This was partly reported by Neilson and Lauder [Neilson, G.R., Lauder, W., 2008. What do high academic achieving school pupils really think about a career in nursing: analysis of the narrative from paradigmatic case interviews. Nurse Education Today 28(6), 680-690] which examined what high academic achieving school pupils really thought about a career in nursing. However, the data was particularly striking in revealing the poor quality of nursing work experience for the pupils, and also their proposal that there was a need for work experience which was more representative of the reality of nursing. Participants reported that proper work experience in nursing could make it more attractive as a career choice but that there were difficulties and barriers in obtaining an appropriate work experience in nursing. These included unhelpful attitudes of teachers towards work experience in nursing in general and the placements themselves which were typically in a nursing home or a care home. They felt that departments of nursing within universities should have an input into organising more realistic work placements and that their involvement could foster greater interest amongst pupils in nursing as a career

Right at the start : a research and development agenda for teacher induction

Recent developments in teacher induction in both England and Scotland are bringing long overdue improvements, but there is a range of issues in need of further exploration if policy is to be developed. Current evaluations have begun to reveal the absence of some important conceptual aspects of induction in the somewhat hasty implementation. Some of these have been well rehearsed in the literature over the years but have generally failed to make any impact hitherto in induction policy. This paper picks up and discusses some of the conceptual tensions and weaknesses that have, or are likely to, become practical issues of quality, in both Scottish and English induction policies. These include the use of competence-based descriptions, the non-formal dimension of learning to teach, open narrative and focused approaches to classroom observation and feedback, individualism and a pupil perspective. The array of concepts is organised into a constructive, topical agenda which, it is argued, bring a much needed formative dimension to research and development in this crucial area of professional learning

Finding an identity and meeting a standard : connecting the conflicting in teacher induction

This article has the apparently contradictory aims of describing a discourse of new teachers that is at odds with the policy-derived competence-based discourse of the professional standard for teachers, but of also seeking to find some points of connection that may help start a dialogue between policy and research. The experience of new teachers is conceptualized as personal stories of identity formation with a clear emotional-relational dimension and a sense of self and intrinsic purpose in which others, especially colleagues and children, are central - themes not visible in the standard. The empirical context is that of new teachers in Scotland but the argument is supported through a wider literature that extends beyond the traditional limits of teacher education, drawing on, for example, notions of self-identity, pure relationship and ontological security in the work of Giddens. Whether a more constructive dialogue can begin depends partly on the extent to which the formal standard can be expected to capture the complex, personal nature of the beginner's experience, and partly on the possibility of research identifying particular areas of competence, such as understanding difference, that connect in some way to the standard

'The Work of Teacher Education' : Final Research Report

Partnership teacher education – in which schools work with universities and colleges to train teachers – works and there is abundant existing evidence in support of this fact. But our small-scale study across England and Scotland shows that it is the higher education tutor who seems to make it work, often at the cost of research-informed teaching and research. The most time-intensive activity for the higher education tutors in our sample was maintaining relationships with schools and between schools and individual trainee teachers. The need to maintain relationships to such a degree is caused in part by the creation of a marketplace of ‘providers’ of teacher education who compete for funding on the basis of inspection and quality assurance data and also by the very early school placements that characterise the English model of initial teacher education in comparison to other European models such as that of Finland

The Role of Costs in Irish Pension Fund Performance

This paper highlights the lack of transparency in the reporting of overall cost levels incurred by Irish pension schemes and demonstrates the impact of costs on pension fund performance. The paper relies on primary and secondary data analysis of financial statements of Irish pension schemes over a six year period. The paper finds that a significant portion of costs incurred by Irish pension schemes are not disclosed separately in the schemes’ financial statements. This results in a significant lack of transparency as to overall costs incurred annually by pension schemes. The RIY impact of pension fund costs (administrative and all other charges) over the lifetime of a scheme highlights the need for greater focus to be placed on cost efficiencies and competitiveness in any proposals for pension reform in Irelan

Occupational Pension Schemes in ireland - A Review of Risk and Investment Strategies.

The pensions industry is a multi - billion euro industry world wide. As at December 2002, Irish pension fund assets under management (not including the Government Pension reserve Fund) were of the order of 50,618.5m. Euro. Recent stock market performances coupled with a number of high - profile corporate failures have focussed attention on the vulnerabilities of funded pension systems. This paper looks at the role of funded occupational pension schemes in Ireland and specifically at the risks inherent in both the investment strategies of these schemes and the institutional structure of pension fund provision. It questions whether pension funds by embracing these risks are serving the objectives of the individual beneficiaries of the schemes, the trustees and the sponsor companie