Educational Sociology Commons^™

Anecdotes, Experience, And ‘Learning By Osmosis’: The Role Of Professional Cultures In Preparing Teachers For Parent-School Engagement, Sue Saltmarsh, Amy K. Mcpherson, Sayan Chakrabarty, Stephen Winn, David Saltmarsh

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Initial teacher education and experiences of the professional cultures of teaching contribute to teachers’ understandings about how to engage with parents. Drawing on qualitative research data, and informed by Michel de Certeau’s theory of culture and everyday life, this paper explores how everyday beliefs and professional practices that shape relationships between teachers and parents can remain relatively stable despite changing expectations of policy-makers and communities. The paper argues that equipping pre-service, beginning and experienced teachers and school leaders with research-based understandings about these cultural dynamics is crucial to informing professional practices that support meaningful and effective parent-school engagement.

Collaborative Teaching And Self-Study: Engaging Student Teachers In Sociological Theory In Teacher Education., Vivienne Hogan, Linda Daniell

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This article presents some of the findings of a three-year project researching the impact of changes made to teaching and learning in a first-year sociology paper for primary and early childhood education (ece) student teachers. The context of the research is an undergraduate Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme situated in the School of Education in a New Zealand University. Through self-study, teacher educators sought to gain a deeper understanding of how changes made to the paper influenced their teaching and student learning.

A collaborative teaching relationship was particularly important for the teacher educators to share concerns and present ideas for …

Teacher Professional Standards, Accountability, And Ideology: Alternative Discourses, Katarina Tuinamuana

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teacher professional standards and accountability are today writ large on the landscape of both schooling and teacher education practice around the world. This paper explores some of the related debates through a discussion of four discourses on teacher professional standards: namely, discourses of commonsense, professionalism and quality, managerialism/performativity, and strategic manoeuvring. It is argued that each of these discourses legitimises particular understandings of standards and quality, illustrating the competing set of lenses through which they are viewed, as well as the broader ideologies from which they emerge, including neoliberalism and technical rationality. These discourses also represent the interpretive practice that …

Building Teacher Capital In Pre-Service Teachers: Reflections On A New Teacher-Education Initiative., Tania Ferfolja

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This discussion considers a new pre-service teacher education initiative at the University of Western Sydney, called Classmates. Classmates aims to prepare pre-service teachers to work in diverse and challenging schools. The paper argues that the neo-liberal industrial model of mass teacher education may be limited in its capacity to adequately prepare pre-service teachers for the difficulties they may encounter in a society where socio-cultural inequality is growing. It points out that pre-service teacher-education needs to build teacher capital to better prepare graduates and to buffer the transition from tertiary student to beginning teacher. Classmates offers one way that this may …