Teacher Education

The Body in Teaching and Teacher Education: a (Re)turn to Practice? Jo-Anne ReidFaculty of Education, CSUjoreid@csu.edu.auThe Battle for Teacher Education, Bergen 2014

. What might Teacher Education look like if it were to challenge the mind-body dualism that prevails in the preparation of new teachers?

Teacher Education “A practice producing subjects” (Green & Reid 2008) Initial –> Transitional –> Continuing It is the rupture of this continuum – the lack of connection between teacher education and research in universities and teacher education and research in schools – that sits at the heart of the battles we face ‘with’, ‘in’ and ‘for’ teacher education.

Preparing the teaching body Teacher education as the ‘study of teaching’ The centrality of the body in (teaching) practice Practice theory for teacher education Taking a position in the battle for teacher education

1.1 Teacher Education as the Study of Teaching? Teaching as ‘unnatural’ activity Teaching is one of the most common – and also one of the most complicated - human activities. […] Teaching is ‘unnatural’ work […] in three fundamental ways: Teaching is unnatural in that it demands not only skill in a given domain, but also the ability to take that skill apart so that others can learn it. (Specialized Expertise) The greater the differences between learners and their teachers – in culture, language and experience – the less precisely attuned the teaching is likely to be. (Capacity to meet the challenge of multiple perspectives) Teachers must design and manage a productive environment in which all are able to learn. (Capacity to work with many learners) (Ball & Forzani 2011: 40-45)

1.2 Study of Teaching: pedagogies of enactment (Grossman et al. 2008; Grossman et al. 2009, Green 2009)

1.3 Teacher Education as Study of Teaching (Reid & Wood 2015)

2.1 Embodied practice “It is important to bear in mind … that representation – as commentary – is often at the expense of the lived experience of practice and the body … “Knowing how to go on, what to do next … is a matter of practical reason as much as anything else, and this reasoning is always embodied … it is tacit, experiential (‘body’) knowledge or knowing, realized and expressed in what is done, in and through practice.” (Green & Hopwood 2015)

2.2 Rethinking practice in teacher education ‘bringing the body back in’ ‘apprenticeship’ (the ‘pupil-teacher’ system) ‘training’ (the ‘teachers college’) ‘theory/discipline’ (‘educational theory’) (Aldrich 2006) ( Reid, Mayer & Green 2014)

2.3 Embodied practice as intimate knowledge Phenomenological studies of human learning indicate that for adults there is a qualitative leap in the learning process from the rule governed use of analytic rationality in beginners to the fluid performance of tacit skills in what Pierre Bourdieu (1977) calls virtuosos and Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus (1986) true human experts. [...] Common to all experts … is that they operate on the basis of intimate knowledge of several thousand concrete cases in their areas of expertise. Context-dependent knowledge and experience are at the very heart of expert activity. (Flyvbjerg 2006: 391)

2.4 Embodiment • “By way of the body, mind is present in experience.” • (Schatzki 1996: 41) • “That we have a body is made evident in situations of breakdown, malfunction, discomfort and incompetence. Here the fact that one is a body manifests itself, forcing a distinction between self and body.” • (Green & Hopwood 2015)

3.1 Practice theory as conceptual frame for teacher education “What is needed is an integrated theory: one that acknowledges all of the sources of knowledge that contribute to practice and then examines how these interact to create particular teaching practices.” (Kennedy 2002: 369) “… practice theory is a body of work about the work of the body.” (Postill 2008)

3.2 Practice theory for teacher education • From ‘first generation’ theorists and philosophers (Wittgenstein, Foucault, Bourdieu, Giddens); • from ‘second generation’ theorists and philosophers of practice (Schatzki 2001, Dreyfus & Dreyfus 2005), taken up in cultural studies (Reckwitz 2002, Warde 2004) • and from a ‘third generation’ in education (Green 2009, Kemmis 2009); • useful for teacher education in conceptualising human behaviour as structured and produced in and by the social time-space (Schatzki, 2006) in which it occurs; • allows us to reconsider teacher education with the understanding that “practices precede individuals, historically and logically” (Warde 2004: 4).

3.3 The teaching body • For teacher educators, the practice theories outlined above underscore how mind and body (body-mind) are implicated and co-produced in practice, so that teacher education is: “… quintessentially a ‘practice producing subjects’. It is crucially concerned with the initial and continuing formation of ‘teaching subjects’, or of teachers as knowledgeable and capable educational agents.” • (Green & Reid 2008: 20)

4.1 Claiming a position “Perhaps what we really need to do is to stop talking about professional development and begin talking about professional study. Those who insist on professional development [...] put us on a conveyor belt to a mechanical job of implementing other people’s directives. Professional study, on the other hand, and the conditions that make it possible [...] accepts the inherent impossibility of education […] and it turns that impossibility into an invitation to study. It is this study that gives us our authority.” (Taubman 2014:16)

4.2 • What might teacher education look like if it used the potential of challenging the mind-body dualism in the preparation of new teachers? • Initial -> Transitional -> Continuing • In the battle for teacher education, this means understanding the teaching of teaching as aporia – a stuck place, one in which we must move forward …

4.3 Rethinking teacher education – re-turn to practice (Reid, Mayer & Green 2014)

References Aldrich, R (2006) The evolution of teacher education, in D Hartley & M Whitehead (Eds), Teacher Education – Major Themes in Education, London: Routledge, 414-426. Ball, DL & Forzani, FM (2009) The Work of Teaching and the Challenge for Teacher Education, Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497-511 Ball, DL & Forzani FM (2011) Teaching Skillful Teaching, The Effective Educator, 69 (4), 40-45. Dreyfus, HL, & Dreyfus, SE (2005) Expertise in real world contexts, Organization Studies, 26 (5), 779–792. Green, B [Ed.] 2009 Understanding and Researching Professional Practice, Rotterdam: Sense. Green, B. & Hopwood, N. (2015) The Body in Professional Practice, Learning and Education: Body/Practice, Amsterdam: Springer. Green, B & Reid, J (2008). Methods in our Madness? Poststructuralism, Pedagogy and Teacher Education. In A.M. Phelan & J.S. Sumsion (Eds.), Critical Readings in Teacher Education: Provoking Absences, (17-32). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Grossman, P & McDonald, M (2008) Back to the Future: Directions for Research in Teaching and Teacher Education, American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 184-205 Grossman, P, Hammerness, K & McDonald, M (2009) Redefining Teaching, Re-Imagining Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching, 15(2), 273-289 Grossman, P, Compton, C, Ingra, D, Ronfeldt, M, Shahan, Williamson, PW (2009) Teaching Practice: A Cross-Professional Perspective, Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100. Kennedy, M. M. (2002). Knowledge and teaching. Teachers and teaching: Theory and practice, 8(3), 355-370. Lewis, CC , Perry, RR, & Hurd, J. (2004) A deeper look at lesson study, Educational Leadership, 61(5) 6-11. Postill, J. (2008) What is practice theory. http://johnpostill.com/2008/10/30/what-is-practice-theory/ Reid, J (2011) A Practice Turn for Teacher Education?, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 39 (3), 293-310. Taubman, P. (2014). The Art of the Impossible: Professional Study and the Making of Teachers, English Journal, 103 (6), 14-19. Watkins, M (2012) Discipline and learn: Bodies, pedagogy and writing. Rotterdam: Sense/Springer.

Teacher Education