Suchergebnisse

Education is a values-based and complex field in which research evidence is multidisciplinary and multi-paradigmatic, and therefore highly contested. In this paper I argue that within such a field we must value and depend on teachers' research-informed professional judgements, on what and how to teach in their school and classroom. However, there are increasing signs of professional development materials aimed at teachers which are part of the 'post-truth' world. By post-truth we mean where objective facts are less influential than appeals to emotion and personal belief. Some of these professional development materials are based on weak scholarship, but more insidiously some are part of ideological agendas, so that they should be viewed as part of post-truth politics. In considering the research literacy of teachers, the paper aims to provoke discussion and response, from teachers, teacher educators and policymakers, to the possible influence of post-truth on teachers' beliefs and professional judgements.

This chapter argues that teacher education in England, and more widely, should adopt an explicit pedagogy for initial teacher education programmes. A modified version of the clinical practice model is proposed and entitled 'realistic clinical practice'. This is an enquiry-based approach that builds the programme around the core practices of teachers. The approach insists that students teachers seek explanations of their impact on learning and on learners through enquiry informed by critical engagement with public published theory and research. By adopting a more explicit pedagogy it is argued that teacher education will be less vulnerable to the influence of erratic policy makers and government ministers who since 2010 have caused so much damage to teacher education in England.

Authentic assessment in higher education motivates students and integrates employability into academic programmes. Authentic assessment arguably requires three elements: real-world practicality; cognitive challenge; and development of evaluative judgment. There is tension around the value of different kinds of knowledge and between academic and professional standards within authentic assessment. This tension is often most explicit for students completing a programme to gain accreditation against formal professional standards, for example to be a schoolteacher or nurse. Employability is one of the overlapping purposes of higher education but arguably so is global citizenship. In assessment in higher education we distinguish between 'assessment criteria' and 'academic standards'. We also distinguish between 'analytical' and 'holistic' grading of student work. However, professional standards frameworks produced by national associations or government departments do not often adopt these concepts and may blur the distinction between criteria and standards. A case study of an undergraduate teacher education programme in England, using critical discourse analysis of documents and thematic analysis of interview and focus group data, reveals three strategies for programme teams in developing authentic assessment. First, a critical perspective on professional standards. Second, a shared discourse with employers. Third, positioning professional standards as a boundary-crossing artefact in university-employer partnerships.

There is currently a tension around the professional status of teachers that centres on the place of knowledge within their expertise. This tension is most apparent in nations, including the USA and England, where Neoliberalism has strongly influenced educational systems so that they are driven by parent choice, measurement of success by test and examination results, school league tables, high stakes inspection systems and performativity of individual teachers. This tension around professional knowledge and the status of professionals is found across a wide range of professionals and is a feature of social and historical change related perhaps as much to technology and the knowledge-based economy as it is to the rise of Neoliberalism. In this period of challenge professionalism is positioned by Freidson (2004) as an ideal type that is involved in a power struggle with the other two logics of rational-legal bureaucracy, and a free market model. Across most nations of the world there is strong political desire to improve education systems and an acknowledgement that high quality teachers are central to that project. There is also a broad assumption that, despite the vagaries of individual ministers for education, the development of the education system should be based on research evidence. The tension around research evidence arises as to the role of individual teachers and teaching teams within this grand project of improving educational systems. It may be expressed by considering a choice between 'teachers as technicians who must deliver evidence-based practice' and 'teachers as professionals who must lead the development of research-informed practice through practitioner inquiry'.