Welcome to this issue of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, in which authors from around the world report their inquiries into various aspects of our profession and our relationship with, and between, theory and practice. Each paper gives readers reason to consider teachers work anew – whether novice or experienced teachers, teacher educators or researchers.
The first paper, by Hardy and Edward-Groves, explores the drivers of a successful in-school collaboration in a rural setting in Australia. All of the members of staff in the primary school, including the principal, deputy principal, full-time and part-time teachers were interviewed, as well as other key personnel in the District. The value of teachers’ learning from one another is made transparent in this paper. Teachers were encouraged to observe in one another’s classrooms and to share and discuss their practices. As one of the teachers commented, professional development felt driven from within their professional community rather than being directed from above. Teachers were not simply participants in professional learning activities, but ‘emerged as significant resources for the transformation of one another’s learning practices’. Their learning did not develop ‘on command’, but ‘… through the specific relationships and in contexts where the holder and user of that knowledge considered it fitting’. A facilitator of professional development ensured conversations between staff were informed by research. The importance of ‘a sea of talk’ was also important in unlocking their students’ potential in the classroom – many of whom spoke languages other than English – a context which the next two papers in this issue explore in depth.
In Schenke, Driel, Geijsel, Sligte and Volman’s paper, ‘Characterising cross-professional collaboration in research and development projects in secondary education’, 12 Dutch projects were analysed. Three different dimensions emerged: the reasons for collaborating, the division of roles and tasks between the collaborators, and the communication structure between each project’s participants. Eight of the projects were practice based and not primarily aimed at creating academic knowledge. In six of these eight, teachers and school leaders had the opportunity to actively participate in the goals and planning of the research. Expertise from outside was brought in to complement the knowledge and experience of the school in all projects but the roles and responsibilities varied between them. Projects concerned with legitimising an innovation (5) or teachers’ professionalisation (3) involved collaborating with researchers or other external parties. The authors highlight the different types of research, purpose and value of cross-professional collaborations. One finding was that the relationship between external educational experts and practitioners changed as both learned to adapt to new roles and cross-pollination between participants occurred.
In the next paper, the second from Australia in this issue, Turner provides a comprehensive review of literature outlining tensions arising due to the differing positioning of content and EAL teachers in English-speaking countries. She applies a framework developed from the theoretical perspectives of ‘dilemmatic spaces’ and emergent identity to the analysis of interviews and journal entries of three preservice secondary teachers who were undertaking an EAL methodology course in addition to traditional content majors. The classroom was a dilemmatic space socially negotiated differently for students and teachers but also between teachers. As part of their assessment, students were given the opportunity to collaborate with EAL teachers on their practicum as well as preservice EAL student teachers to enhance their pedagogical practices. These provided different spaces to reflect on their emerging identity as teachers of language in their content areas. Turner concludes that interpersonal conflict in collaborations can be the impetus to examine beliefs and grow professionally, but it can also be negative.
Another perspective on teaching English in secondary schools follows. Han’s paper considers the professional identity of 20 experienced English language teachers’ in secondary schools in Korea. The main concern of current educational policies in Korea, as in other Confucian countries, is to enable people’s participation in a global economy. Through analysis of interview transcripts, questionnaires, lesson plans and classroom observations, Hans describes the teachers’ diverse and multidimensional meanings of good pedagogy. The principles of communicative language teaching were supported by Han’s participants but not teaching English in English. The experienced teachers downplayed the importance of oral proficiency and competency in teaching English and favoured learner-centred education of the whole student. There was a further mismatch found between teachers’ pedagogic meaning systems and their students who wanted to be prepared for the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test. The author draws on both Western constructivist learner-centred approaches and Confucian teaching and learning culture founded on the teacher-led, hierarchical social structure and concludes that systemic changes are needed to ensure teachers are acknowledged as professionals and partners in policy and curriculum design.
The penultimate paper in this issue focuses upon teachers’ career orientations in their first three years across three dimensions – towards promotion, staying in the profession and work-life balance. Even in the relatively short time span of the study, the author finds that their career orientations changed from the first to third year in teaching. Most intended to stay in the profession for the long term, with many seeking and gaining promotion. By the third year, a group of teachers had started to consider a career break to have children. Being cognisant of these career orientations, Coldwell suggests that schools can develop ‘career cultures’ to support early-career teachers and plan for their changing orientations. Coldwell suggests that schools can be considered to have a predominantly ‘action orientated’ career culture when they encourage beginning teachers to take responsibilities and seek promotion opportunities within and beyond the school. Alternatively schools can be considered to have a ‘stability orientated’ career culture when they encourage teachers to develop mastery and remain in the school in relatively stable roles. As the teachers’ career orientation changes so too does the perceived fit of the orientation with the career culture of the school. Coldwell suggests that if school leaders are aware of changing career orientations, then they may be in the position to create a school culture that supports the aspirations of all their staff.
There has been considerable research into factors that influence teaching as a career choice and this is comprehensively reported in the first half of the final paper by Friedman from Israel, Being a teacher: Altruistic and narcissistic expectations of preservice teachers. Here expectations of teachers’ future teaching careers is explored from a different perspective. Intrinsic, extrinsic, altruistic and service-centred goals are detailed – for example, time for family, enhancing social equity, job security and making a contribution to society. The author proposes a model based on four basic psychological foundations: genuine altruism; paternalistic altruism; benevolent narcissism; and genuine narcissism as a means to view preservice teachers’ perception of their future relationships with students.
As with all of the papers in this issue of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, the paper provides much stimulus for further thought, introspection, conversation and action.
Executive Editor