Discourse and pedagogy: two pillars of teacher education

This editorial was written during a structured, facilitated writing retreat, organised by my colleagues at Bath Spa University, UK. The emphasis was on the structured nature of the experience, involving as it did goal and sub-goal setting, strict adherence to writing times, no distractions, and collaborative working. People aimed to work on chapters, papers, theses, as well as policy documents and research proposals. Unsurprisingly, I was the only one whose goal was to write this editorial. This is something I do five times each year, unless there is a guest editor for a special edition. I have a set way of working, but I have never aimed to do it all in one day. The first task was to define our main goal and four sub-goals, which would correspond to the work we aimed to do in the four one-hour writing periods. We then broke into small group discussions to share and refine these. In sharing my main goal, I mentioned that I have never received any feedback on the JET editorials that I have written. The collaborative nature of the retreat was immediately manifested as one helpful colleague recommended that I take to social media, using well-chosen keywords to promote the editorial. This is something we have been trying to do with JET for the past few years, but this was a timely reminder of the power and impact of the instant global communication possible with a few clicks. In this spirit, please may I encourage the JET faithful to ‘follow’ the Twitter feeds @JournalJET and @lindalavelle.

This issue of JET contains ten full papers, the foci of which fall into two main themes within the field of teacher education: discourse and pedagogy. Both are broad, and the papers falling within them reflect the range of opportunities for research within our academic field. Discourse in school and university classrooms, including those devoted to teacher education, is usually understood to be the spoken and written language used by educators and learners for communication. Each of the actions involved in pedagogy – planning, teaching, evaluating learning and reflection – are driven by discourse, so there exists an entwined relationship between these educational pillars. A critical pedagogy of teacher education through theoretical discourse, long argued for (Kirk 1986) has been discussed through the pages of this and other notable teacher education journals, via such themes as ideology (Grundy and Hatton 1995); phase (Djerasimovic 2014); professionalism (Hökkä, Eteläpelto, and Rasku-Puttonen 2012; Springbett 2018); policy (Farrell 2016); ethnicity (Dunne et al. 2018); and curriculum discipline (Farrell 2016) to name but a few.

Our opening paper, from Israel, by Yulia Muchnik-Rozanov and Dina Tsybulsky spans both themes by exploring the discourse of student teachers’ reflective narratives to elicit evidence from these writings of enhancement of the development of their professional identities. This future-orientated discourse is shown to be a vital link to their on-going professional development.

Mohammad Nabi Karimi and Mostafa Nazari from Iran demonstrate the strong link between discourse and the pedagogy of differentiation in the next paper. Using video recordings of teachers’ classroom practice, these researchers showed that scaffolded instruction in differentiation was reflected in the teachers’ developing understanding of the basic concepts of inclusion, contributing not only to their awareness of their pupils’ individual learning differences but also to their class management skills.

Discourse in the mathematics classroom is the focus of the next paper by Oi-Lam Ng and colleagues from Hong Kong. This article reports on the development of a coding scheme for discourse analysis of lessons taught following an intervention programme for teachers aimed at the development of conceptual and practical strategies for dialogic discourse in mathematics. The coding scheme is offered beyond this immediate context to act as a roadmap for the development of professional efficacy through effective teacher-pupil communication.

The next paper is about engagement with the written word. The context is the Finnish educational system and the place of student teachers within it. Education in Finland is traditionally textbook-based and this article, by Josephine Moate, examines this culture from a critical standpoint. Giving a fascinating glimpse into one of the world’s most successful educational systems, this author argues for a more clearly articulated rationale for this culture better to understand its success and underpinning theory.

Not surprisingly, JET receives a large number of papers based on the education of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). The next paper in this issue comes from Turkey and through the discourse of the semi-structured interview, authors Sibel Korkmazgil and Gölge Seferoğlu reveal Turkish EFL teachers’ thoughts about the nature of professionalism. The results are applicable beyond the confines of country and discipline, concluding that teaching is indeed a profession and not merely a means of livelihood. Furthermore, founding characteristics can be categorised as personal traits and values, subject knowledge, pedagogic knowledge and professional development.

These elements also underpin a teacher’s professional identity and this is the focus of the next paper, by Sonja Lutovac and Maria Assunção Flores, from Finland and Portugal, respectively, who peer into that rarely opened Pandora’s Box: student teachers’ failure. Arguing that the relationship between learner and teacher failure is inextricable, failure is shown to be a non-dismissable consideration of a student-teacher’s future work. A strong case is made for discussion and exemplification of failure to form an integral part of any initial teacher education programme. I am delighted to welcome Maria, whose work has made a major contribution to the field of teacher education research through the last several decades, to our International Editorial Board.

Claire Dickerson and colleagues from the UK explore the relationship between teacher leadership and teacher education in the next article. The role of senior teachers in school sometimes involves an often unrecognised teacher educator dimension and these authors provide an illustration of how acknowledgement of this can enable teacher leaders both to contribute to and gain from the professional knowledge of the teacher education community. Through the discourse of interviews, questionnaires and focus groups, in the context of professional development of leaders in primary science education, the pedagogy of teacher education is shown to be intertwined with that of curriculum leadership.

Learning to plan lessons is a major element of any initial teacher education programme and the next paper in this issue, from Ahhyun Lee and Carol Griffin (S. Korea and USA) uses the Universal Design for Learning framework (the why, what and how of learning, see CAST 2021) with student teachers to improve their lesson planning skills. An important element of the successful evaluation of the programme was thee student teachers’ discussion forums, where the focused discourse on the pedagogy of planning were shown to be the most useful aspect of the provision.

In the next contribution to this issue of JET, Jason Giersch from the USA explores the motivation to enter the teaching profession of undergraduate students studying a range of subjects, including the academic discipline of Education. Categorising motivations as either intrinsic, extrinsic or altruistic, this author demonstrated that altruistic motivation tended to increase the interest of non-Education students and those classed as ‘high achieving’; in terms of gender differences, female students were shown to respond more positively to intrinsic motivation values, whilst male students responded more strongly to extrinsic values.

The role of senior teacher educators in terms of their engagement with the teaching-research nexus (TRN) is the focus of our final paper in this issue. Mary Gutman, from Israel, uses interviews with teacher educators in Israeli Colleges of Education and in other types of higher education institution to probe the patterns of implementation of the TRN. Significantly, both similarities and differences in these academics’ perceptions are illustrated in terms of the agency a) of their educational research insights, b) of their reflective practice and c) of their cross-cultural approach. This contribution to the on-going debate about the TRN in this journal (e.g. la Velle 2019) is both timely and welcome.

Three short pieces conclude this issue. In our ‘Research-in-Progress’ category, we have two papers: a report from Zhong Lin and Bin Wu from China, who offer a model for non-school based practicum and a paper from Iran by Nahid Soltanian and Zargham Ghapanchi, about student teachers’ ‘imaginings’ of learning and eventually teaching English as a foreign language. In the Research-in-Practice section, our final paper, again from China, by Qin Xie also reports on an aspect of teaching EFL, that of assessment literacy, and offers a design-based approach for its enhancement.

This editorial has been written within the time of our day-long writing retreat and has been greatly helped by comments from my colleagues, to whom I would like to dedicate it. The engagement and enthusiasm for their academic writing has been palpable and encouraging. The range of ideas offered from different academic disciplines has shed light on each other’s thinking and writing. Particular thanks is due to Professor Charlotte Chadderton and Dr Sarah Morton for their facilitation. When similar opportunities arise in their various institutions, I do encourage our authors to participate in writing workshops: you can get a lot done!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).