A “filmic anthropology” of classroom practice: student teachers enacting pedagogy

ABSTRACT

The focus of this paper is twofold: (1) the paper describes and analyses the enacted pedagogy of three beginning student teachers. It looks at their actions in the classroom and considers how their bodily semiotic communication gives some indication of their thinking and feeling states and the meanings they hold for teaching and learning at this time in their identity-making; (2) the research is used as generative grounds for developing my own pedagogy as a teacher educator. I draw on Grasseni´s concept of “filmic anthropology” where three video recordings, identity artefacts, become the data set giving access to the physical and symbolic enactment of learning to teach. I present my data under the headings: pedagogical openings, indicative pedagogical moments and pedagogical closings. The paper concludes by focusing on developing pedagogies of enactment with student teachers and on using video, not only as as a research tool, but also as pedagogical resource in learning..

KEYWORDS:

• Student teachers
• enacted pedagogy
• identity- making
• filmic anthropology

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Kathy Hall, University College Cork, for her support of my research, and Professor Paul Conway for introducing me to the work of Professor Pamela Grossman. I am ever grateful to the young student teachers represented in this article for access to their classroom practice and their conversations with me. Finally, I would like to thank the two reviewers and editors of this journal for their helpful feedback in revision of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carmel Hinchion

Carmel Hinchion is a Lecturer in Teaching, Learning and Assessment, and English Pedagogics, in the School of Education, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland. Her research interests lie in student teachers’ experiences of becoming teachers and their identity-making processes, English Pedagogics, and, qualitative methods in educational research.