Towards a complex framework of teacher learning-practice

ABSTRACT

Although many researchers agree that teaching is complex and contextually situated, dominant conceptions of teacher learning, and the enactment of such learning in practice, tend to be linear and reductionist. Because simplistic conceptualisations of teaching activity have far-reaching impact on teachers, students, and school systems, generating a complex theory of teacher learning-practice is nothing short of an ethical imperative. To tackle this task, we draw from an emerging body of teacher education scholarship that we consider the beginning of a ‘complex turn’. Drawing on this literature, we distill a set of conceptual shifts that, together, offer a set of theoretical tools to (re)think the processes of, and connections between, teacher learning-practice in ways that better account for the dynamic, multiplicitous, ever-shifting nature of these activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher learning
• teacher practice
• complexity theory
• rhizomatics
• cultural historical activity theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We hyphenate the term ‘learning-practice’ to emphasise the entangled nature of these processes, an idea that we discuss more fully later in the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition’s National Professional Development Award Program [Award Number #T365Z160351.