Horse Riding 101: The role of experience in reframing teacher education practices

Abstract

For this self-study of my teacher education practice, I positioned myself as a novice in the unfamiliar context of learning to ride a horse. This gave me an opportunity to re-experience being an authentic learner and thereby to deepen my understanding of how an individual learns to teach. I recorded my experiences in an electronic journal and analysed what happened over many months of weekly horse-riding lessons. Central to my learning process was feeding key ideas, insights and tentative analyses into discussions with my students and critical friends. As I analysed their responses further, two themes emerged through pattern analysis. First, being a neophyte in horse riding allowed me to empathise strongly with my students' novice status. Second, permitting them to see the development of my expertise through horse riding was helpful to my students. Re-positioning myself as a learner challenged my view of myself as a teacher educator and transformed my teacher education practice.

Keywords:

• learning to teach
• reframing
• learning from experience
• developing expertise

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the reviewers for their thought-provoking feedback. Thank you also to my colleagues Alan Ovens and Rena Heap, and my riding teachers Karren, Jessica, Brew and Edd.