Building Bridges

Building Bridges
Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era

Foreword by Neil Selwyn

Edited by
Clare Kosnik
University of Toronto, Canada
Simone White
Monash University, Australia
Clive Beck
University of Toronto, Canada
Bethan Marshall
King’s College London, UK
A. Lin Goodwin
Teachers College, Columbia University, USA
and
Jean Murray
University of East London, UK
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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 PRAISE FOR
BUILDING BRIDGES

What does it mean to communicate? to know? to be literate? to learn? in a world

crowded with multimodalities offered by the myriad of digital platforms, text
messages, social networks, blogs, virtual friends, tweets, emoticons, and SMS
codes…more importantly, What does it mean to teach in this complex communicative
environment? These pressing questions are taken up in this collection of thoughtful
and provocative essays that cross physical, national, and disciplinary boundaries
to examine current practices, offer compelling illustrations, and propose novel
solutions. Educators, researchers and policy makers wrestling with emerging
dilemmas of curriculum and teaching given a rapidly digitizing 21st century will find
this volume to be an accessible, refreshing, and substantive read.
– Associate Professor Ee-Ling Low, Head, Strategic Planning & Academic
Quality, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore

We live in an exhilarating time when global citizens, including teachers and teacher
educators, send and receive messages via social media, across vast distances within
seconds. Yet integrating digital technologies into the foundations of teacher education
continues to be a daunting task. The data and insights herein are timely, challenging,
and vitally necessary. Readers will come away with broadened understandings of
literacies, defined by everything from electronic communications to indispensable
face-to-face human relationships. In short, the authors provide a must-read volume
for all in teacher education, literacy education, and digital technology, who seek to
rethink and reform their multidisciplinary fields.
– Celia Genishi, Professor Emerita, Teachers College, Columbia University

Taking a multi-disciplinary perspective (literacy, teacher education and digital

technology) and informed by a range of empirical studies, policy analyses and
scholarly reflection, this book makes a unique contribution to the literature on one of
education’s most pressing challenges: how we prepare teachers of literacy at a time
when understandings of literacy are expanding. Chapters by leading researchers
are complemented by those offering illuminating vignettes of practice that, in
turn, provide opportunities for interrogation by the rich theoretical toolkit that
characterizes the field. The book is thoughtfully structured and manages a coherence
that is rare in edited collections. An impressive and heartening read.
– Viv Ellis, Professor of Education at Brunel University, England and Bergen
University College in Norway
To teacher educators and teachers around the world whose
creative, skillful, and dedicated work is helping us meet the
challenges of the digital era.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forewordxi
Neil Selwyn

Acknowledgementsxiii

Introductionxv
Clare Kosnik, Simone White and Clive Beck

Section 1: Digital Technology, Literacy, and Teacher Education

1. Digital Technologies in Teacher Education: From Mythologies

to Making 3
Shawn Bullock

2. “Times Are Changing and You’ve Got to Keep up”: Negotiating

Multiple Literacies within the Context of Teacher Education 17
Lydia Menna

3. The Impact of Policy on Teacher Education and Literacy Education

in England: Some Notes from a Corner of a Small Island 31
John Yandell

4. Preparing to Teach 21st Century Literacies 43

Judit García-Martín, Guy Merchant and
Jesús-Nicasio García-Sánchez

Section 2: Teacher Education

5. Integrating Poetry-Focused Digital Technology within a Literacy

Teacher Education Course 59
Sue Dymoke

6. Lessons for Teacher Educators about Learning to Teach with

Technology77
Rajeev Virmani and Peter Williamson

7. Different Approaches to Teacher Education: Maximising Expertise

and Re-Examining the Role of Universities and Schools 91
Sam Twiselton

8. Multi-Modalities in Literacy/English Education Courses 105

Bethan Marshall

ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Section 3: Teacher Educators

9. Literacy Teacher Education and New Technologies:

Standards-Based Reforms and the Technologizing Imperative 119
Scott Bulfin, Graham Parr and Natalie Bellis

10. Fostering Professional Learning Partnerships in Literacy

Teacher Education 135
Simone White and Jean Murray

11. New Knowledges for Teacher Educating? Perspectives from

Practicing Teacher Educators 149
A. Lin Goodwin and Crystal Chen

12. Intertwining Digital Technology and Literacy Methods Courses:

Exemplary Practices of Six Literacy/English Teacher Educators 163
Clare Kosnik and Pooja Dharamshi

Section 4: Moving Forward

13. Literacy/English Teacher Educators Moving Forward: A Cross

Case Analysis 181
Clare Kosnik, Simone White and Clive Beck

14. Rethinking Teacher Education Programs 193

Clive Beck

About the Contributors 207

Index211

x
 FOREWORD

Anyone interested in technology and education will know that there is already a
wealth of writing on the subject. Increasingly the most compelling commentaries
are those circulated through tweets, blog posts and other forms of ‘fast scholarship’
that new media scholars are understandably attracted toward. A platform such as
Twitter offers a fascinating stream of rapid responses and immediate reactions to
what is a fast-changing area of debate. In contrast, then, a book such as Building
Bridges marks a decidedly ‘old school’ approach. Yet in many ways this should
be seen as a strength rather than weakness. A 200 page edited collection certainly
provides a welcome break from the online chatter and churn that passes for informed
discussion in this area. Perhaps, then, this book’s virtues lie in what might appear to
be its outdated approach.
Firstly, this is a book that is admirably old-fashioned in terms of how it was
produced. Rather than constituting a quick cut-and-pasting together of fourteen
disconnected essays, Building Bridges is the culmination of collective conversations
that developed over time. Despite being scattered around the world, the authors and
editors made the effort to meet and talk through these topics in person. They then
worked over a prolonged period to produce this long-form book. In terms of ‘digital
scholarship’ and the ‘accelerated academy’ these might all be deemed inefficient
ways of going about things. Yet I am sure that the contributors consider their end-
product to be much richer as a result. This project should remind the Twitterati what
can be achieved through a sustained project of face-to-face discussion and long-form
writing.
Secondly, Building Bridges is pleasingly old-fashioned in terms of what its
authors are discussing. It might even be reasoned that the book contains a set of
timely contributions – not because they are particularly new or ‘of the moment’
but because they tackle topics that have fallen somewhat out of sight. While the
1990s and 2000s was a period of ongoing deliberation of ‘new literacies’ and ‘multi-
modalities’ these are no longer the hot topics that they once were. Imperatives of
‘critical digital literacy’ and ‘twenty-first century skills’ have also begun to disappear
from policy priorities, funding streams and call for papers. Instead recent discussions
of technology and education have taken a distinctly computational turn – addressing
the challenges posed by big data, analytics, algorithms and coding. As such, Building
Bridges might serve to remind people working in the area of education technology of
the contribution that literacy educators can still make. It might even be that the book
leads to the rebuilding of some old bridges.
Thirdly, this book is old-fashioned in terms of who is being talked about. Few
writers currently working in the area of technology and education seem to care
much for classroom teachers … and even fewer seem to care for teacher education.

xi
FOREWORD

If anything, many commentators appear distracted by questions of how digital

technology might do away with the need for teachers altogether (as evident in
discussions of teacherbots, virtual assistants and self-organized learning). In this
sense, Bridges marks a commendable attempt to restate the importance of ‘the
teacher’ in the digital age. Teachers and teacher education are unlikely to fade away
as quickly as some technologists would like us to believe. As such, this book serves
as a valuable corrective to such (mis)assumptions.
In many ways, then, these fourteen chapters remind us how educationalists
working in the literacy tradition have long been attuned to the broader contexts of
technology use, especially in comparison to disciplines with more technical and
scientific pretentions. Indeed, some of the most rounded accounts of education and
technology have been those produced by literary scholars working along sociocultural
and sociopolitical lines. Here one thinks of Michelle Knobel, Colin Lankshear, Bill
Green, James Gee, Gunter Kress and others. Of course, the momentum of these
authors’ work has faded during the 2010s, yet perhaps new titles such as Building
Bridges herald a revival of this tradition. Certainly, the chapters in this book provide
a decent account of technology use as embedded social practice – highlighting the
history, philosophy, ethics and poetry of technology use in education.
Whether or not we are on the cusp of a full-scale renaissance, I have always
appreciated how literacy scholars bring a subtly critical dimension to discussions of
technology and education. This quality is certainly evident in many of the chapters
in Building Bridges. These are accounts that do more than restate the exaggerated
promises that often pervade discussions of digital education. Instead these accounts
are suspicious of the reductive ‘technology imperative’, and question the cultural
conservatism of official discourses of ‘ICT’ and ‘technology enhanced learning’.
Many of these chapters point to the complicated and constrained realities of teacher
education in universities and schools. While no one is denying that teacher education
and literary education are in the midst of significant change, the key questions
running throughout the book relate to if/how teacher educators are able to influence
this change.
Of course, few commentators want to be seen as out-of-touch ‘dinosaurs’ railing
against ‘innovation’ and ‘progress’. Yet as Building Bridges illustrates, being critical
need not involve opposing the existence of digital technology altogether. One can
speak against current forms of technology use in education without engaging in
relentless doom-mongering. Instead the best chapters in this book also suggest ways
of pushing back against current forms of technology use in schools and teacher
education, and point hopefully to realistic alternatives. In this respect I would hope
the book has something to offer all readers, from the most digitally immersed to the
most digitally disinclined. These are conversations that everyone in education needs
to be part of, and this book marks some very useful starting points.
Neil Selwyn
Melbourne, January 2016

xii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank Pooja Dharamshi, Lydia Menna, and Cathy Miyata for their
assistance with the Symposium in London. Their help organizing the Symposium
made the event very successful which led to this edited text.
Thank you to Elizabeth Rosales for her assistance with the formatting and editing.
Without the support of Nick Beck at Tug Agency http://www.tugagency.com
the Symposium in London may not have happened. Thank you for making space
available at Tug Agency and for your team’s technical support.
Thank you to Michel Lokhorst from Sense Publishers for his support from the
initial steps of this project through all the stages of production. Thank you for helping
us share the work of teacher educators from around the world.
Thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for
their ongoing support. We are also grateful for matching funds for the Symposium
from Monash University, Teachers College, Columbia, and OISE, University of
Toronto.

xiii
 CLARE KOSNIK, SIMONE WHITE AND CLIVE BECK

INTRODUCTION

What does it mean to be literate in the twenty first century and how can teachers
and teacher educators contribute to building a literate society? Our understanding of
“literacy” is undergoing dramatic changes as an array of communication channels
(e.g., text messaging, social networking, blogging) has extended and blurred the
boundaries of communication and forms of knowledge construction (Kress, 2010).
The fact that literacy now encompasses a broad set of practices necessitates a
revision of traditional reading and writing programs in schools (Gee & Hayes, 2011),
which in turn requires changes to teacher education. This constant change in how
we communicate means that we need teacher educators who can incorporate digital
technology into their courses and facilitate discussion on being literate in the 21st
century. As the field of literacy evolves, teacher educators must rethink what literacy
encompasses and revise their courses accordingly. As Williamson (2013) advises:
Our courses must invite students to take stock of how their literacy instruction
provides kids with access to learning opportunities to understand the resources
and the practices that are available – and then to envision how these can be
adapted and enhanced to achieve the rich, rigorous literacy goals that we set
for our youth. (p. 2)
According to Boling (2005), however, “research has revealed that teacher
educators do not always have the knowledge, skills, or dispositions necessary for
meaningfully integrating technology into their classes” (p. 3). Often use of digital
technology is an afterthought, something tacked onto a course (Bullock, 2011). In
order to address the complexity of literacy in our 21st century we need to move
beyond the traditional boundaries of the disciplines. As teacher educators struggle to
address the increasing complexity of education, many have embarked on initiatives
but with mixed success (Kirkwood, 2009; Selwyn, 2011). We believe part of the
problem in moving forward is that most initiatives focus on a single issue (e.g.,
digital technology) whereas a multi-disciplinary approach is needed.
Building Bridges: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era builds
on a symposium we held in London, England in June 2014, bringing together a team
of experts from different disciplines namely teacher education, literacy education,
and digital technology. As Gee and Hayes (2011) argue for a multi-disciplinary
approach to research: “Understanding complex systems requires the work of more
than a single lone expert. It requires a team of experts” (p. 73). The consensus among

xv
C. KOSNIK ET AL.

this international group of researchers was that we need to rethink our practices
in teacher education and inservice education in relation to digital technology and
literacy education if we are to prepare student teachers more fully and support
teachers more adequately. All felt we must be “in conversation” with experts in a
variety of disciplines and with practicing teachers. Further, all agreed we need many
more examples of exemplary practice of integrating digital technology into literacy
courses. Building Bridges: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era
addresses this gap in the literature. It is a powerful set of chapters focusing on a
curriculum area – literacy – while making links to digital technology with special
attention to teacher educators. This will be one of the few texts rooted in a specific
discipline (literacy) that makes multiple connections with other aspects of education.
The goal is ambitious; however, our contributors have the skills and knowledge to
make significant progress with this mandate.
The contributors to the text are all recognized researchers with strong connections
to both teacher education and schools. They have a deep understanding of the
context of higher education and are fully aware of current issues in schooling, thus
making their work relevant to many. They do not write for just one audience or
have a narrow focus – they can do what Gee and Hayes (2011) suggest: implement
a multidisciplinary approach. And given their extensive experience in teaching and
research, all have many examples of exemplary practice to present in their writing.
The matters with which this book is concerned have been taken up by many
literacy teacher educators in their everyday practice, keen to bridge current and
progressive literacy education and address what Dooley, Exley, and Comber (2013,
p. 67) describe as “the perennial issue of how do we attend to both the technical and
the critical dimensions of literacy education.” For many literacy teacher educators,
their endeavour to address this question has led them to adopt new models and
approaches, for example collaborative work between student teachers and school-
based teachers focused on inquiry into the serious intellectual work of literacy
teaching (Cochran-Smith, 1991). Creating spaces where student teachers can see
and hear inclusive and critical approaches to complex literacy teaching with diverse
student communities remains a key priority and an ongoing challenge (Dooley,
Exley, & Comber, 2013).
The text has four sections. Section 1 contains anchor chapters concerned with key
issues of digital technology, literacy, and teacher education. Presenting historical
roots and then moving to current research, they provide a thorough grounding in
their respective areas. Shawn Bullock addresses issues regarding digital technology
in education; Lydia Menna outlines the changing nature of literacy; John Yandell
looks at the impact of policy on teacher education and literacy education in England;
and Judit García-Martín, Guy Merchant and Jesús-Nicasio García-Sánchez discuss
preparing to teach 21st century literacies.
Section 2 includes conceptual papers and case studies of exemplary practices
related to the use of digital technology in literacy courses in teacher education.
Both kinds of chapter offer suggestions for ways to rethink teacher education. Sam

xvi
 INTRODUCTION

Twiselton draws on her review of different approaches to teacher education in

England; Sue Dymoke provides an in-depth example of integrating poetry-focused
digital technology within a literacy teacher education course; Bethan Marshall
discusses her work of integrating multi-modalities in literacy/English education
courses; and Rajeev Virmani and Peter Williamson present two case studies of
classroom teachers who thoughtfully integrated digital technology into chemistry
and English courses.
Section 3 considers teacher educators, who are of course key to the effectiveness of
teacher education programming. Simone White and Jean Murray advocate fostering
professional learning partnerships in literacy teacher education; Clare Kosnik and
Pooja Dharamshi describe the goals and practices of seven literacy teacher educators
who have integrated digital technology into their literacy teacher education courses;
Scott Bulfin, Graham Parr, and Natalie Bellis analyze standards-based reforms and
the technologizing imperative. Lin Goodwin and Crystal Chen present the findings
of a large-scale suvey of 258 practicing teacher educators and in-depth interviews of
a purposive sample on ways their doctoral program could have better prepared them
for their role as teacher educators.
Finally, Section 4 begins with an analysis of the preceding 12 chapters in terms
of several key themes that emerged: intertwining digital technology with our
conception of literacy; the impact of the standards movement and current political
pressures; determining overall goals for education; and professional development
for teacher educators. It concludes with a chapter by Clive Beck, again based largely
on the earlier chapters, on future directions for teacher education.

REFERENCES
Boling, E. (2005). A time for new literacies: Who’s educating the teacher educators? Teachers College
Record. Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org (ID Number: 11742)
Bullock, S. (2011). Teaching 2.0: (Re)learning to teach online. Interactive Technology and Smart
Education, 8(2), 94–105.
Dooley, K., Exley, B., & Comber, B. (2013). Leading literacies: Literacy teacher education for includion
and social justice. In C. Kosnik, J. Rowsell, P. Williamson, R. Simon, & C. Beck (Eds.), Literacy
teacher educators: Preparing student teachers for a changing world (pp. 65–78). Rotterdam, The
Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. R. (2011). Language and learning in the digital age. New York, NY: Routledge.
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London:
Routledge.
Williamson, P. (2013). Engaging literacy practices through inquiry and enactment in teacher education.
In C. Kosnik, J. Rowsell, P. Williamson, R. Simon, & C. Beck (Eds.), Literacy teacher educators:
Preparing student teachers for a changing world (pp. 135–148). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense
Publishers.

xvii
 SECTION 1
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, LITERACY, AND
TEACHER EDUCATION
 SHAWN BULLOCK

1. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER

EDUCATION
From Mythologies to Making

Noted historian of technology Melvin Kranzberg (1986) once remarked that while
technology is neither good nor bad, it is also not neutral. Unfortunately, the use of
educational technologies in teacher education has often been framed in an inherently
positive way (Selwyn, 2011), with little attention paid to how future teachers might
develop a sense of technology beyond a specific device. In this chapter I will make
the argument that these sorts of approaches to the use of technologies in teacher
education are ubiquitous both historically (e.g., the use of Educational Television)
and recently (e.g., the use of Interactive Whiteboards). The troubling history of
educational reform using digital technologies will be briefly reviewed. We will
then see that one of the reasons for the failure of technology to make a significant
impact on teacher education is that it fails to attend to the major challenges of
learning to teach. Another reason for the problematic use of technology in teacher
education is the prevalence of two particular myths about the relationship between
technology, learning, teaching, and learning to teach. Two models will be introduced
as useful heuristics for thinking about the pieces that are typically missing when
teacher candidates are engaged in learning about digital technologies. I will argue
that teacher educators need to engage candidates in thinking about the history and
philosophy of digital technologies so that candidates may learn about technology
instead of solely focusing on mastering a particular device. A concept known as
maker pedagogy, which I am currently exploring in my work, is then presented as
a way of encouraging teacher candidates to understand the nature of technology.
I argue that making technological things may enable teacher candidates to learn
about technology.

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY: THE MYTHOLOGY

OF BETTER TEACHING, FASTER

Nowadays the words educational technologies bring to mind images of tablets,

interactive whiteboards, and computers. Indeed educational technology is tacitly
understood by most to be synonymous with both the digital world and novel devices.
It is easy to forget that the education system itself is a technology, designed in part

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 3–16.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
S. BULLOCK

to produce a literate population and to pass on particular social norms. The popular
press frequently tells us about the latest “must-have” gadgets and software to enable
new approaches to teaching and learning, which are ostensibly more efficient,
more productive, and more engaging. A plethora of apps available through Apple
and Google compete for the attention of students, parents, and teachers. Whereas
computers were once framed as critical tools for the modern educator of the late 20th
century, the notion of taking students to a computer lab seems out-dated nowadays
with the realities of carts full of iPads that can be moved from classroom to classroom.
Interactive whiteboard companies seek to be as ubiquitous in classrooms as their
slate predecessors.
It is always worth remembering that the concept of utopia – technological or
otherwise – requires us to consider its often-overlooked definition of “no place.”
The history of educational reform is grim; the history of educational reform due
to technology is even less heartening. Cuban’s (1986) excellent discussion of the
use of technology in education provides much-needed sobering reminders about the
ubiquitous cycle of technological adoption: enthusiasm, small-scale implementation,
and status quo. He reminds us that Edison once predicted that motion pictures would
render teachers obsolete. Reiser’s (2001) discussion of the widespread adoption of
motion pictures by the US military during the World War II for training purposes
reminds us that there have been large scale uses of “training films” in educational
contexts, although the trend never did catch on in schools in the ways envisioned by
Edison and other technological enthusiasts.
Over the past few years, 21st century techno-enthusiasts have proudly proclaimed
that Massive Open Online Courses – commonly called “MOOCs” – will “succeed”
where motion pictures “failed” and take a primary role in classroom instruction,
particularly at the post-secondary level. This kind of rhetoric seems to have reached
its most fevered pitch between 2012 and 2014, when the death of the traditional
university was proclaimed on an almost weekly basis as MOOCs created by “the
best” professors would be available to all. One hears considerably less about MOOCs
nowadays, perhaps in no small part due to their dismal completion rates (see Jordan,
2015, for an interesting data visualization tool). The university, and the education
system at large, seems to have survived the latest unstoppable technological reform –
at least for now.
Cuban’s (1986) work again demonstrates that we should not be surprised by the
failure of MOOCs to encourage sweeping educational reform. In many ways, the
concepts underlying MOOCs have been tried before with different media dubbed
educational radio and educational television. In both cases, the idea was to tune
into expertly crafted curriculum content at a particular time of day. Teachers were
reduced to the ones operating the technology – literally turning the dial – and
assessing how well the students understood content from distant experts. It is hard to
imagine a clearer metaphor for framing teachers as delivers of curriculum, expected
to implement what they were told with little creativity or respect for craft knowledge.
Neither educational radio nor educational television displaced the role of teacher in

4
 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

children’s learning; the former reached its zenith in the 1940s and the latter found a
home as an on-demand supplement to a teacher’s enacted curriculum, rather than the
basis of curriculum. The ways in which educational television and films have been
used historically closely resembles the ways in which teachers in this century use
internet video sites such as YouTube to supplement their lessons – as an on-demand
media supplement to instruction, a source of ideas for teaching, and a professional
development resource for content knowledge (Szeto & Cheng, 2014). Despite a
recent proclamation that Sesame Street was the first MOOC (Kearney & Levine,
2015), educational media has never accomplished what its enthusiasts continually
suggest despite the historical precedents: Teachers have not been replaced, or even
marginalized, by educational technologies.

The Mythology of Better Teaching, Faster

It is worth taking a few moments to examine why educational technologies have

such a dismal record of educational reform. I believe there are two sets of reasons
for why this is the case, and that both are grounded in problematic mythologies.
The first and most obvious set of reasons is that the case for using technology in
education at any level is often made in economic terms. I refer to this mythology
as “better teaching, faster.” If one adopts the view that quality teaching is simply a
matter of delivering the correct content to the correct group of students in the most
efficient way possible, then it is difficult to quibble with the idea that on-demand
media offers a lucrative solution. In the age of internet video, many of us turn to
YouTube for our first stop in, say, learning how to perform a household repair or
learning what others think of a particular product we are considering purchasing.
Distance education – which for most of its existence has relied on the literal delivery
of curricular materials in the form of coursepacks, cassette tapes, or CDs – has long
made use of the human capacity to learn from media. So it is absurd to claim that
we cannot learn from educational technologies (including books, cassettes, CDs,
and internet videos), and those who argue for the widespread adoption of media in
education seem to have at least a warrant for their reasoning.
The problem is that, in my view, most of the reasons for adopting educational
technologies in widespread ways have been grounded in economic reasoning that
has little to do with enhancing the quality of students’ learning. So, technology
enthusiasts often make their case in terms of efficiency models – having the best
lessons at the ready will save both time and money in the long run, they say.
Curricular theorists have long argued that teaching is, or at least should be, far more
than transmissions of content. So although the author of a MOOC or an educational
radio program may indeed be an expert in her or his field, we have not in my view
yet reached a point where educational technologies can supplant a teacher who is
playing an active role in a classroom, reflecting a transactional or transformational
orientation to curriculum. To be clear, I am not at all suggesting that the use of
digital technologies in education is always purely for transmission purposes, nor

5
S. BULLOCK

am I saying that fostering pedagogical relationships that are necessary for learning
and using digital technologies are mutually exclusive concepts. The mythology of
“better teaching, faster” has little basis in reality. There might be inherent efficiencies
in having pre-designed courses ready for consumption, but basing the argument for
the integration of digital technologies into education, particularly teacher education,
on an efficiency model seems doomed to failure according to the lessons provided
in history.

The Mythology of Theory into Practice

The second mythology that explains in part the dismal record of educational reform
from digital technologies is specific to teacher education. The mythology might be
summarized as: “learning to teach requires learning theories to put into practice” – a
mythology that Schön (1983) argued was the basis of technical rationalism. In the
context of technology and teacher education, this mythology would hold that teacher
candidates need to learn the theory to use technology effectively at the academy
before having a chance to “practice” in the field. Darling-Hammond (2006) did an
excellent job of summarizing the three problems of learning to teach: the problem
of the apprenticeship of observation, the problem of enactment, and the problem of
complexity. Although the problems had appeared in the literature before, Darling-
Hammond’s work was instrumental in bringing these ideas back into mainstream
teacher education research. It is not difficult to extrapolate the consequences of
these three problems of learning to teach to shed light on the notion of learning to
teach with digital technologies. The problem of the apprenticeship of observation
recognizes that future teachers have witnessed a lifetime of teacher behaviour
before they enter a teacher education program. Chances are, most teacher candidates
have not had an opportunity to even witness very many deep integrations of digital
technologies for learning purposes in the their careers as K-12 students. We live in
an era where many future teachers have not yet had the opportunity to witness, much
less consider, the affordances of technologies such as mobile devices and Web 2.0
for learning – regardless of how they might use these technologies in their personal
lives.
The problem of enactment is familiar to anyone who has ever taught in a teacher
education program. Darling-Hammond (2006) noted that the “problem often
surfaces in complaints that teacher education is too theoretical, by which teachers
often mean that they have not learned about concrete tools and practices that let
them put into action the ideas they have encountered” (p. 37). Teacher education
programs, and those who teach within them, are often soundly criticised for failing
to “prepare” teachers in ways that please their associate teachers and their future
employers. Again, Darling-Hammond (2006) notes: “Learning how to think and
act in ways that achieve one’s intentions is difficult, particularly if knowledge is
embedded in the practice itself” (p. 37). Not only does teaching about teaching using
digital technologies offer the same challenges to teaching about teaching using any

6
 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

other approach or context, it also problematically relies on the availability of devices

for candidates to use in the field. While blackboards are ubiquitous, tablets are not.
The problem of complexity is intuitively obvious to anyone who has ever taught.
As Loughran and Russell (2007) noted in their discussion of teaching as a discipline:
“Teaching just looks easy, and good teaching looks even easier” (p. 218). Darling-
Hammond (2006) summarized the complexity of teaching in the following way:
[Teachers] must be guided by curriculum goals that prepare students to think
critically and perform at high levels, but they cannot achieve these goals by
teaching a standardized curriculum. Teaching for deep understanding requires
open-ended tasks and student-initiated inquiries whose course cannot be
fully scripted; teachers must elicit and follow students’ thinking and manage
an active learning process that goes beyond direct transmission of facts and
information to the development of analytic skills and performance abilities.
(p. 40)
The problem of complexity is a good way of framing why digital technologies
have failed to reform education in a significant way, much less replace or minimize
the need for teachers. I am unaware of any digital technologies that are able to deal
with the four elements of complexity defined by Darling-Hammond (p. 39):
1. Teaching is never routine.
2. Teaching has multiple goals that must be addressed simultaneously.
3. Teaching is done in relationship to diverse groups of students.
4. Teaching requires multiple kinds of knowledge to be integrated.
Taken together, these elements go a long way to revealing why teacher candidates
find it difficult to use digital technologies in their developing practice. Teaching with
digital technologies can add further complications to an already complex endeavour.

MOVING FORWARD WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

IN TEACHER EDUCATION

In the previous section we have explored both the failure of educational technologies
to yield significant educational reform and two relevant mythologies that contribute
to that failure. In particular, we examined the problems associated with the mythology
of efficiency of digital technology in education and the problems associated with the
mythology of equating learning to teach with technical rationalism. In both cases,
the result is often that digital technologies are framed as deus ex machina solutions
to all the challenges faced by education. The slogans one often hears associated with
digital technologies underscore this point: Teach all kids to code! One computer for
every child! Gamify your classroom (i.e. make your teaching more closely resemble
a video game). Slogans like this play into both mythologies rather handily.
All is not lost, however, despite the rather bleak tone of this chapter to this
point. I actually believe that the most productive way to move forward with

7
S. BULLOCK

digital technologies is to reframe how they are theorized within teacher education
programs. One productive line of thinking is offered by the work of Desjardins,
Lacasse, and Bélair (2001), who offered a competency model for thinking about
digital technologies and teacher education.
Although their model was originally developed with practising teachers and
later extended in Desjardins (2005), the lessons from the work of Desjardin et al.
(2001) are useful heuristics for considering the way forward in the use of digital
technologies in teacher education. Desjardins et al. defined four competencies that
teachers require to use digital technologies:
1. A technical competency that enables a new teacher to use the technology (e.g.,
loading apps, updating software, turning it off and on, basic troubleshooting).
2. An informational competency that enables a new teacher to use the technology
to retrieve information (e.g., web searches, twitter searches, displaying particular
data in a spreadsheet program).
3. A social competency that enables a new teacher to use the technology to interact
with other people (e.g., instant messaging, voice-over-internet protocol, discussion
board posting, electronic mail).
4. An epistemological competency that enables a new teacher to assign tasks to
digital technology to generate new knowledge or artefacts (e.g., creating formulae
in a spreadsheet program, putting together a digital video, programming).
It should also be noted that the technical competency is the pre-requisite for
the other competencies. I have listed the competencies in the order that they are
typically pursued – it is fair to say that more teacher candidates are comfortable
using technology for information retrieval than for epistemological functions.
I believe that part of the challenge of meaningfully incorporating digital
technologies in teacher education is at least partially explained by the tendency of
teacher education coursework – and perhaps even education more generally – to
focus on the first two competencies at best. Typically, it seems as though teacher
candidates are taught how to operate software and hardware within technology
courses, perhaps with the end goal of creating a lesson plan that uses, say, a set
of iPads with a particular app or a lesson that uses an interactive whiteboard in a
particular way. Of course, there can be value in these sorts of assignments but I
would argue that it is important to provide teacher candidates with experiences that
help them develop their social and epistemological competencies for using digital
technologies. Doing so would enable them to answer, or at least frame, foundational
questions about the purposes of using digital technologies in their teaching. A
consideration of social competencies would likely enable teacher candidates to think
about the ways in which technology might be used to augment existing classroom
discourse. Perhaps a class discussion board enables students who do not speak up in
class to contribute in different ways. Perhaps individual student blogs gives teachers
a unique way to tune into how their students are thinking about a particular unit
of study, or classroom moment. A consideration of epistemological competencies

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 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

would likely enable teacher candidates to think about the ways in which digital
technologies can be used to create new knowledge or new digital artefacts. Perhaps
creating a stop-motion animation, or slowmation (Hoban, 2007) enables students
to represent their knowledge of a scientific concept in a more robust way than a
traditional test. Perhaps programming in a language like Scratch (MIT, 2015) would
allow students to develop both knowledge of programming and an appreciation for
what it takes to create a game or simulation.
The recent, pervasive enthusiasm for developing so-called “21st century skills”
argues, at least tacitly, that someone who is technologically literate knows how to use
a number of devices and programs expertly. Hodson’s (2008) concept of scientific
literacy provides a more useful orientation for thinking about what it means to be
technologically literate, particularly how to move forward with digital technologies
in teacher education. After acknowledging the often problematic nature of rhetoric
around scientific literacy, which has led to a concept that is quite challenging to pin
down, he makes the crucial point that scientific literacy needs to include learning
about science. Learning about science, for Hodson, means learning about the
history, sociology, and philosophy of science so that students leave school with
an understanding of the nature of science. Although he is quick to state that he is
not at all advocating a move away from learning science content, he does argue
that a notion of scientific literacy that solely requires all students to have some sort
of content knowledge misses the point – particularly given the dynamic nature of
science content knowledge. It is far more important, argues Hodson, for students to
learn about science so that they can judge “what counts as good science” (p. 19). He
elaborates in the following way:
While we [science educators] cannot provide all the science knowledge that
our students will need in the future (indeed, we do not know what knowledge
they will need) and while much of the science they will need to know has
yet to be discovered, we do know what knowledge, skills, and attitudes will
be essential to appraising and forming a personal opinion about the science
and technology dimensions of real world issues … Learning about science
is rather different. Gaining robust familiarity with key issues in the history,
philosophy, and sociology of science requires length and close contact with
someone already familiar with them – that is, a teacher or scientist who can
provide appropriate guidance, support, experience, and criticism. (p. 20)
For me, Hodson’s work on scientific literacy has long stood out as a beacon
in a very foggy literature that, like much of the rhetoric surrounding educational
technology, often links the pursuit of “scientific literacy” with nationalistic and
economic goals. In fact, the term was first coined by Hurd (1958), who called on
the U.S.A. to improve its citizens’ knowledge of science in the name of Cold War
superiority (and, it must be noted, in the long shadow of the U.S.S.R.’s successful
Sputnik launch a year earlier). To my knowledge, there is no literature that advocates
a similar position – the need to learn about technology – for technology education.

9
S. BULLOCK

Perhaps this is because technology is often seem as a whimsical accompanist to

science education, a spectre that shows up when necessary (Bullock, 2013).
I believe that we could take a cue from Hodson’s (2008) work as an inoculation
against the two mythologies of digital technologies in teacher education (it should be
noted that Hodson makes part of his case by outlining three myths about science that
are present in science education). If we frame the intersection of digital technologies
and teacher education as a task of learning about technology, then we might further
argue that our point in teacher education is to provide candidates with experiences
in which they develop an understanding of the nature of technology. In so doing,
teacher candidates might be able to articulate “what counts as good technology”; the
focus is less on a particular piece of software or hardware, but more on developing
a set of tools to critically evaluate the potential value of a piece of technology for
use in the classroom. Learning about technology requires a knowledgeable person to
introduce ideas from the history, philosophy, and sociology of technology. Cuban’s
(1986) work would be a good start for any exploration of the use of technology with
future teachers.
Learning about technology matters in teacher education because we face the
same problem as those concerned with scientific literacy. Neither teacher educators,
nor teacher candidates, can hope to anticipate the technology knowledge (technical
competencies) that will be required in the future. One might make a strong case
that it is even more difficult to do this kind of forecasting in technology than it is in
science – who would have imagined that the concept of an “app” would be in such
common use 10 years ago, or that so many of us would interact with a touch screen on
a daily basis. What we can do, in teacher education, is teach teacher candidates about
technology so that they have some tools to navigate the technological affordances
that become available over their careers.

MAKER PEDAGOGY AND TEACHER EDUCATION

The maker movement is both a new and an old phenomenon. Simply put, the
maker movement is a loose collection of people with shared interests in making
things. Typically, self-identified members of the maker movement focus on making
things that use electrical technologies – typical projects include repurposing
old computers, building small robots, and designing custom parts for large-scale
electrical projects. In its most recent iteration, the maker movement has developed
a bit of a business venture in addition to the looser collective interpretation in the
zeitgeist. Initiatives such as Maker Fairs, Make Magazine, and the proliferation of
pre-fabricated maker kits for things like drone aircraft, robotics, and circuit projects
reflect both the desire to obtain certain kinds of electrical and technological parts
and circuits and the ability of entrepreneurs to cater to increasing interest. Noted,
self-identified maker Chris Anderson (2012) argues that one of the big shifts toward
the recent trend in maker culture was the ability to manufacture prototype designs
of technological artefacts in one’s own home due to relatively inexpensive new

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 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

tools such as laser cutters and 3D printers – previously unavailable outside the
manufacturing sector.
Of course, humans have made things since as long as we have been human.
Some characterize the current maker movement as an extension of the Arts and
Crafts movement of the late Victorian Era. The arts and crafts movement sought to
connect art with labour in ways that valued individual creations and reacted against
the rampant consequences of the industrial revolution (Triggs, 2009). Crawford
(1997) emphasized the importance of finding “joy in labour” to the Arts and Crafts
movement, stating:
This joy in work, this creative freedom, was equated with handwork by the
Arts and Crafts movement, and we can see the impact of this idea on Arts
and Crafts objects whose appearance declares that they are handmade – the
hammer marks on metalwork, the fluid, irregular contours of some pottery and
glass, and the marks of the adze or chisel on wood or stone. (p. 18)
Krugh (2014) builds on Crawford’s ideas to argue that craft has been politicized
since the Arts and Craft movement. In particular, Krugh believes that “The social
concerns over exploitative labour practices, international competition, and poor
design quality influenced the Arts and Crafts movement reformers to link labour
and art” (p. 285). These concerns led some members of the movement to form
guilds modelled on the medieval craft guild. One can certainly link the interest in
reclaiming craft through the value of individual labour and local expertise in the
Arts and Crafts movement and the current fascination with making electronic and
“technological” things. Just as the Arts and Crafts movement sought to reclaim
individual craftwork from industry, so too does the maker movement seek to
encourage others to make items that seem to be only within the purview of large
technological companies. The Arts and Crafts movement encouraged its members
to meet in guilds to share knowledge and develop a shared identity. The maker
movement encourages its members to meet in maker spaces for similar reasons.
Despite the increasing visible presence of the maker movement in popular culture
(Thompson, 2013), there is still little academic literature on the topic. One exception
is Honey and Kanter’s (2013) edited book-length discussion of links between
the conception of what they call the maker sensibility, and “deep engagement
with content, experimentation, exploration, problem-solving, collaboration, and
learning to learn” (p. 4). They capture some elements of the maker movement in
an approach to learning science which they characterize as design, make, and play.
Crawford (2006) provides a far more philosophically rigorous argument against the
tendency to separate thinking from doing and thus privilege universal propositional
knowledge over contextual, embodied knowledge “in the making.” He reminds us
that: “creativity is the by-product of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through
long practice” (p. 51) before concluding that accepting thinking as doing requires
educationists to reposition knowledge, often tacit, developed through tangible
experiences. There is a clear reallocation here of the privileges of supposed universal

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S. BULLOCK

knowledge in teaching (so-called best practices) and the situated, contextual kinds of
knowledge encountered in everyday practice.
Mindful of the arguments put forth in Desjardins et al. (2001) and Hodson (2008),
I have drawn from ideas prevalent in the maker movement to posit that a productive
way forward in digital technologies and teacher education is something that I refer
to as maker pedagogy. Simply put, I define maker pedagogy as an approach to
teacher education that engages candidates in making technological things – circuits,
simple robots, video games and simulations, and re-cycled artefacts according to the
following four principles:
1. Ethical hacking: Deconstructing existing technology for the purpose of creating
knowledge (e.g., taking an old computer apart to learn about hardware, and
applying that knowledge to work with small hobby computer kits such as
Raspberry Pi).
2. Adapting: Using technology for purposes other than what was originally intended
(e.g., using an old smartphone to learn elements of computer programming).
3. Designing: Selecting and using technological artefacts and ideas to solve problems
(e.g., using conductive tape, batteries, and LEDs to design decorative circuits that
can be integrated into clothing).
4. Creating: Archiving contextual knowledge obtained through engaging in the
process of making (e.g., creating a wiki that documents how particular projects
were accomplished) and, of course, enjoying the actual tangible products that
come from making (e.g., playing a video game that was designed within a maker
space).
In my current project, I have invited participants to have the opportunity to
construct and extend professional knowledge about teaching science by building
technological artifacts in a lab called a Maker Space created in their teacher education
program. Among other things, I hope participants are learning more about fields
such as robotics, engineering, applied physics, and computer programming and
considering the ways in which these fields might play a role in their pedagogy. Our
Maker Space is an ad hoc place where participants come together, at pre-arranged
times, in a classroom to work through technological projects designed to introduce
them to maker pedagogy. Our projects thus far include making electric circuits out of
paper (adapting, creating, designing), programming simple video games (designing,
creating), making stop-motion animations to explain scientific concepts (designing,
creating), and repurposing old t-shirts to make shopping bags with electronic lights
for decorative purposes (adapting, designing, creating). Future projects will address
the ethical hacking principle by providing teacher candidates with the space to
deconstruct common technological devices such as old computers and smart phones.
The maker pedagogy project is still in its early stages, so I have no data to report
at the time of writing this chapter. What I have tried to do in this section, however,
is make a case for the value of maker pedagogy in addressing my previously stated
beliefs that learning about technology is important for teacher education, and that

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 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

the Desjardins et al. (2001) competency model provides an heuristic for thinking
about the kinds of things teacher candidates should know and be able to do with
technology. Engaging in making technological things may well enable teacher
candidates to learn about the nature of technology, and develop what Munby
and Russell (1994) referred to as authority of experience over their work with
technology. In addition to developing technical competency through these projects,
it is my hope that experiences with maker pedagogy will enable teacher candidates
to develop informational, social, and epistemological competencies around the use
of technology in their teaching. Maker projects rarely unfold exactly according to
instructions, so an informational competency is required to search for ideas that
can help a maker teacher work through a problematic project. Our maker space
is social and relies heavily on communication between participants – a social
competency is required to keep these conversations going outside the maker space
through technology. Finally, projects such as video games and simulation design
encourage teacher candidates to develop epistemic competencies. I am optimistic
about the potential of maker pedagogy to make a contribution to research on digital
technologies and teacher education.

CONCLUSIONS AND CAUTIONS

In this chapter I have argued that further repetition of the grim history of technology
and teacher education can potentially be avoided through a robust consideration of
the implications of the Desjardins et al. (2001) competency model and, drawing
from Hodson’s (2008) work on scientific literacy, through a conceptualization of
technology teacher education that involves learning about technology. I argued that
learning about technology requires teacher candidates not only to consider the history
and philosophy of technology, but also to have actual experiences of considering
technologies in ways that go beyond developing technical and informational
competencies. I believe that teacher educators are not well prepared to forecast the
kinds of technical competencies that will be most useful for new teachers throughout
their careers. It is more important for new teachers to – again to paraphrase Hodson
(2008) – develop skills of recognizing useful technology for pedagogical purposes.
The development of social and epistemological competencies with respect to
technology in teacher education seems like a worthy goal for teacher educators, one
that will hopefully help future teachers problematize the idea that using technology
for teaching is automatically justified from efficiency perspectives.
The maker movement is receiving increasing attention in popular culture and
bears some resemblance to the Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian Era.
There are at least two unifying features to both movements: Both rejected mass
production in favour of emphasizing individual skill and an orientation toward “do-
it-yourself”, and both encourage people to make things (craft) in small groups to
share skills and build identity. Significantly, the maker movement of the 21st century
is encouraging people to experiment with electronics, computers, and robotics in

13
S. BULLOCK

ways that were previously unimaginable or inaccessible. I believe that the maker
movement, with its emphasis on creating technological artefacts and producing
electronic prototypes on demand has several features that could be valuable to future
teachers. I define maker pedagogy as an orientation to learning about teaching with
technology that emphasizes making technological things in small groups. The ability
to design and create new technological items stems from a willingness to learn about
how existing technologies work and adapt them for atypical purposes.
My work with maker pedagogy is in development and I am particularly aware
of cautions made by Neil Selwyn regarding research in educational technology. In
particular, Selwyn (2011) leads me to wonder whether my investigation of maker
pedagogy might fall under his concern that educational technology is “an essentially
positive project” (p. 713). I shall try to avoid falling prey to the kind of uncritical
positivity about maker pedagogy by focusing on the interplay between education,
technology, and society (Selwyn, 2011). I think that drawing from the culture of
making beyond schools and, critically, taking a historical view of how these ideas
have developed in the last century from the Arts and Crafts movement, is a step in the
right direction. Similarly, Selwyn’s (2012) ten suggestions for improving academic
research in the field serve as useful guideposts in the somewhat tumultuous waters
of maker pedagogy. Like most research in education and technology, the maker
movement has its share of evangelists who seek to convert others to the belief that
making will solve the problems of K-12 schooling. I make no such claim. However,
I do believe that making might encourage teachers to learn about technology in a
way that gives insight into the nature of technology, in ways that device-focused
technological education does not. I have tried to be mindful of certain suggestions
made in Selwyn (2012), namely: “maintains a sense of history” (the Arts and Crafts
movement), “has nothing to sell” (I pick maker projects that are not linked to certain
companies, are device agnostic, and, are ideally, open-sourced), and “makes good
use of theory when and where it is helpful” (p. 214).
Going forward, I believe that my work in maker pedagogy will need to pay
particular attention to Selwyn’s (2012) encouragement to engage “with the politics
of education and technology” (p. 214) and be “rigorous and appropriate when it
comes to methods” (p. 214). Currently, I am using ethnography and collaborative
self-study to investigate maker pedagogy with my participants. I think about the
politics of making; indeed many of my participants have said they were drawn
to the idea of making out of weariness with the consumerism that is rampant in
today’s culture, particularly around acquiring the latest technological wonder. Maker
pedagogy seems as though it has potential to help people learn about technology,
particularly if they are asked to take apart existing devices with the intent of adapting
them for new, unanticipated purposes.
Technology is a quintessentially human invention that occurred long before
tablets, computers, and smartphones. Indeed, our use of technology is part of what
makes us human and so it is strange to minimize the role that technology might play
in learning to teach, or in the development of future teachers’ pedagogies. But we

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 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

need to move beyond learning how to use particular devices that come pre-packaged
with defined uses and programs. Technological literacy requires us to know about
the nature of our devices, not just how to use them. It requires us to be able to dream
of unanticipated possibilities. We in teacher education need to find a way to move
beyond the mythology to learn about the nature of technology. Maker pedagogy is a
potentially productive way forward.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of my doctoral student, Andrea

J. Sator, to how I think about maker pedagogy. I also acknowledge the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support of my maker
pedagogy project.

REFERENCES
Anderson, C. (2012). Makers: The new industrial revolution. Toronto, ON: Signal.
Crawford, A. (1997). Ideas and objects: The arts and crafts movement in Britain. Design Issues, 13(1),
15–26.
Crawford, M. B. (2010). Shop class as soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work. New York, NY:
Penguin Books.
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. New York, NY:
Teachers College Press.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Desjardins, F. (2005). La représentation par les enseignants, quant à leurs profils de compétences relatives
à l’ordinateur: vers une théorie des TIC en éducation. La Revue Canadienne de L’apprentissage et de
La Technologie, 31(1), 27–49.
Desjardins, F., Lacasse, R., & Bélair, L. (2001). Toward a definition of four orders of competency for the
use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education. In Proceedings of the IASTED
International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (pp. 213–217).
Banff, Alberta: ACTA Press.
Hoban, G. F. (2007). Using slowmation to engage preservice elementary teachers in understanding
science content knowledge. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 7(2), 75–91.
Hodson, D. (2008). Towards scientific literacy: A teacher’s guide to the history, philosophy and sociology
of science. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Honey, M., & Kanter, D. (2013). Design, make, play: Growing the next generation of STEM innovators.
New York, NY: Routledge.
Hurd, P. D. (1958). Science literacy: Its meaning for American schools. Educational Leadership, 16(1),
13–52.
Jordan, K. (2015, June 12). MOOC completion rates: The data. Retrieved from
http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html
Kearney, M. S., & Levine, P. B. (2015). Early childhood education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame
Street (NBER Working Paper 21229). National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21229
Kranzberg, M. (1986). Technology and history: “Kranzberg’s Laws.” Technology and Culture, 27(3),
544–560.
Krugh, M. (2014). Joy in labour: The politicization of craft from the arts and crafts movement to Etsy.
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Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2007). Beginning to understand teaching as a discipline. Studying Teacher
Education, 3(2), 217–227.

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Munby, H., & Russell, T. (1994). The authority of experience in learning to teach: Messages from a
physics methods class. Journal of Teacher Education, 4(2), 86–95.
Reiser, R. A. (2001). A history of instructional design and technology, Part I: A history of instructional
media. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(1), 53–64.
Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Selwyn, N. (2011). Editorial: In praise of pessimism–the need for negativity in educational technology.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(5), 713–718.
Selwyn, N. (2012). Ten suggestions for improving academic research in education and technology.
Learning, Media and Technology, 37(3), 213–219.
Szeto, E., & Cheng, A. (2014). Exploring the usage of ICT and YouTube for teaching: A study of
pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 23(1), 53–59.
Thompson, C. (2013). We need a fixer (not just a maker) movement. Wired Magazine. Retrieved from
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Triggs, O. L. (2009). Arts & crafts movement. New York, NY: Parkstone International.

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 LYDIA MENNA

2. “TIMES ARE CHANGING AND YOU’VE

GOT TO KEEP UP”
Negotiating Multiple Literacies within the Context of
Teacher Education

Given the changing demographic of the teaching and teacher education

workforce, the changing populations of young people, and the changing nature
of literacy, what counts as essential pedagogical knowledge is increasingly
open to question.
 (Comber, 2006, p. 59)
In recent years, literacy scholars have suggested contemporary literacy pedagogy
must engage with the complexities of our globalized society, wherein knowledge
and social relationships are constructed amidst collaborative platforms and
digitally mediated technologies (Kress, 2010; Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). The
contemporary landscape of communication offers novel spaces for facilitating
the instant transmitting and tracking of information (e.g., Twitter) enabling
collaborative content generation on a wide scale (e.g., Wikipedia). The proliferation
of such technological tools and the shifts in communication practices has, in turn,
necessitated a reconfiguring of literacy pedagogy and literacy teacher education
(Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kosnik et al., 2013; Pahl & Rowsell, 2005; Vasquez et al.,
2013). Further research is needed, however, to fully understand how the concept of
literacy comes to be defined and engaged within teacher education.
This chapter first highlights aspects of the “social turn” in literacy studies, which
positions literacy as a situated social practice and recognizes multiple literacies. The
chapter then discusses findings from a qualitative research study examining middle
school (grades 4–10) student teachers’ experiences with literacy education during a
two-year teacher education program. In general, the research findings suggest that
over the course of their teacher education studies the student teachers’ conceptions
of literacy broadened. They also developed a more nuanced understanding of the
literacy needs of children/youth and the influence of contemporary communications
practices on literacy teaching.

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 17–29.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
L. MENNA

LITERACY STUDIES AND THE SOCIAL TURN

An influential body of research produced over the last few decades contributed to
a “social turn” in literacy studies (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Cazden, 1988; Heath,
1983; Scriber & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984). This paradigm engages with literacy as
a situated social practice inextricably embedded within time, place, and culture. To
understand literacy “from a sociocultural perspective means that reading and writing
can only be understood in the contexts of social, cultural, political, economic,
and historical practices to which they are integral, of which they are a part”
(Lankshear & Knobel, 2007, p. 1). This sociocultural approach to literacy forms the
basis of what Gee (1996) called New Literacy Studies.
According to Street (2005), New Literacy Studies “represents a shift in
perspective on the study of and acquisition of literacy, from the dominant cognitive
model, with an emphasis on reading, to a broader understanding of literacy practices
in their social and cultural contexts” (p. 417). In particular, New Literacy Studies
considers how people use reading and writing practices in different domains of life
for different purposes. Literacy in this sense is understood as a dynamic process that
is continuously shaped by the specific demands of context, use, and social function
(Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gee, 2012).
This situated sociocultural approach to literacy marks a shift away from an
“autonomous model” of literacy, which advanced a decontextualized notion of
literacy as a neutral set of skills that one acquires incrementally (Street, 1984). This
restricted view of literacy can be somewhat problematic, as it neglects to consider
how literacy practices are intricately embedded within culturally constructed
systems of knowledge and structures of power, which often set the parameters for
what counts as legitimate and influential literacies (Gee, 2012; Street, 1984). In
contrast, New Literacy Studies recognizes that “literacy practices are patterned by
social institutions and power relationships,” and as a consequence “some literacies
become more dominant, visible, and influential than others” (Barton & Hamilton,
1998/2012, p. 11).
Accordingly, New Literacy Studies acknowledges a plurality of literacies and
recognizes diverse ways of being literate. These scholars actively consider how
people engage with culturally recognized literacy practices to communicate, to
negotiate, and to construct meaning in different social contexts (Barton & Hamilton,
1998/2012; Lankshear & Knobel, 2007; Street, 1993). Indeed, an integral part of
literacy learning is the capacity to effectively apply and adapt language to a particular
communicative circumstance.
In recent years, literacy scholars have directed attention to the ways in which
digitally mediated reading and writing practices are mobilized to construct
knowledge, social relationships, and identities (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 2010;
Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). Luke (2003) suggests “the texts of new technologies
have mutated into complex, hybrid semiotic systems that have made new demands
on reading, writing, viewing, social exchange and communication” (p. 401). The

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abundance of information technologies and the proliferation of communication

networks calls into question how the concept of literacy is now defined, and how
literacy education is to be engaged within contemporary culture.
The literacy practices youth participate in outside of school have instructional
relevance as they are intimately connected to issues of belonging, cultural
participation, and knowledge production. Youth routinely use digitally mediated
tools to express ideas, to collaboratively generate information, to maintain social
relationships, and to enact identities (Alvermann, 2010; Davis, 2012; Lewis &
Fabos, 2005; Vasudevan et al., 2010). A literacy pedagogy that endeavors to create
opportunities for meaningful learning must invite the interests and diverse linguistic
repertoires of children/youth into the classroom.
The New London Group calls upon educators to “rethink what we are teaching,
and in particular, what new learning needs literacy pedagogy might now address”
(1996, p. 61). Literacy education has traditionally privileged textual modes, taught
through a singular standard grammar and literary canon, while largely neglecting how
the inherently different logics of various representational modes operate to convey
meaning (e.g., the grammar of the visual) (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). However,
“when technologies of meaning are changing so rapidly, there cannot be one set
of standards or skills that constitute the ends of literacy learning” (New London
Group, 1996, p. 64). The navigation of contemporary communication channels is
increasingly mediated by the integration of mixed modes of representation (e.g.,
textual, visual, audio, spatial, gestural) (Jewitt, 2008; Kress, 2010).
Contemporary literacy teaching must assist students to strategically navigate
the diverse text structures, terminologies, and modes of representation they will
encounter as they participate in different domains of knowledge. In response to
the changing landscape of literacy the New London Group (1996) advanced the
concept of multiliteracies to address two related trends: namely, the increasing
cultural and linguistic diversity of learners, and the multiplicity of new technologies.
In contrast to conventional competence-based models of literacy instruction, the
New London Group conceptualizes literacy as an active process of design, whereby
people continuously construct, remake, and transform representational resources
to achieve a variety of meaning-making purposes (Kalantzis & Cope, 2010; New
London Group, 1996). Multiliteracies pedagogy recognizes students and teachers as
dynamic participants in learning, who bring rich cultural experiences and linguistic
repertoires into the classroom. Literacy pedagogy should encourage learners to draw
meaningful connections between their out-of-school literacy practices and school-
based learning.
A multiliteracies approach was meant to supplement, rather than replace,
traditional literacy instruction (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Indeed, the teaching of
literacy conventions and skills is still critical, as “students must be taught the codes
needed to participate fully in the mainstream of [life], not by being forced to attend to
hollow, inane, decontextualized subskills, but rather within the context of meaningful
communicative endeavors” (Delpit, 2006, p. 45). A comprehensive approach to

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L. MENNA

literacy instruction should recognize how literacy practices continually evolve and
endeavor to respond to these changes, in an effort to prepare children/youth for their
social future at work, in their communities, and as participants in fluid public spaces
of communication (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). However, the implementation of such
a multifaceted approach will likely require teachers to conceptualize and enact
literacy in ways they did not experience during their prior schooling.
In the case of literacy pedagogy, a dissonance is likely to exist between
teachers’ prior schooling experiences, their on-going literacy practices, and what
they recognize as relevant literacies; this issue should be addressed in teacher
education. Increasingly, there have been calls to integrate a multiple literacies
approach in teacher education (Ajayi, 2011; Cervatti et al., 2006; Luke, 2000;
Rowsell, Kosnik, & Beck, 2008). It has been suggested that “teacher education
should be reconceived in response to the demands of multiple literacies and the
new information age”; however, “little has been written about the program that
might prepare future teachers for multiple literacies” (Cervatti et al., 2006, p. 379).
Further research is needed to fully understand student teachers’ experiences with
multiple literacies during their teacher education studies, and their sense of
preparedness to teach from a multiple literacies perspective. The research study
described herein seeks to contribute to the understanding of how student teachers
might construct conceptions of literacy and literacy pedagogy throughout their
teacher education experience.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA SOURCES

This chapter will discuss findings from a qualitative research study that examined
how eight middle-school student teachers’ understanding of literacy changed when
they entered into conversation with the broader field of literacy. For the purposes of
this research middle school student teachers refers to individuals who are learning to
become teachers of students in grades 4–10. The student teachers were enrolled in a
two-year post- baccalaureate teacher education program in a large, urban faculty of
education located in Canada.
This longitudinal study utilized a qualitative approach; more specifically, a
modest sample of student teachers was studied in depth, the interviews were semi-
structured, and the themes emerged as the study progressed (Merriam, 2009; Punch,
2009). Qualitative inquiry is appropriate in this instance as it facilitates an intensive
and detailed study of participants’ experiences in relation to particular points in time
and specific contexts (Creswell, 2003).
This research involved three phases of data collection to capture both the breath
and depth of the student teacher experience. Qualitative data collection methods
included: questionnaires administered to the entire middle-school student teacher
cohort (n = 22); semi-structured interviews conducted with a purposive sample of
student teachers (n = 8: 6-females, 2-males); and a document analysis of relevant
materials (e.g., syllabi, literacy autobiography assignment). Four stages of

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semi-structured interviews were conducted with the eight student teachers

(32 interviews) over the course the two-year teacher education program.
The purposive sample was representative of the middle-school student teacher
cohort (e.g., gender, age, subject specialities). Each interview was conducted
shortly after the student teachers had completed each of their four practice teaching
placements. Each interview was approximately 60–90 minutes in length. The
interview questions were open-ended with probe questions added when needed. The
four interviews explored the student teachers’ initial and evolving conceptions of
literacy, their personal literacy practices, their experiences in the literacy courses and
practice teaching placements, their awareness of their students’ literacy practices,
and their understanding of their role as teachers of literacy.
The data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach whereby open and
focused analytic coding strategies and constant comparison analysis were applied to
identify categories and themes until theoretical saturation occurred (Strauss & Corbin,
1990). Identified commonalities and marked differences were used to generate,
modify, and establish themes that emerged as the study progressed. This multi-
method qualitative approach to data collection produced a comprehensive picture
of the opportunities, challenges, and supports that informed participating student
teachers’ conceptions of literacy and their construction of a literacy teaching practice.

FINDINGS

The findings discussed in this chapter will focus on the student teachers’ experiences
in the literacy courses and not on their practice teaching experience. In their first year
of the teacher education program the student teachers completed a full-year 36-hour
literacy course. In the second year of their studies they completed a half-year 18-
hour literacy course. The literacy courses invited student teachers to actively consider
the pedagogical implications of two key elements of the multiliteracies framework,
namely, the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of learners, and the changing
landscape of literacy, including the growth of new technologies (New London Group,
1996). The literacy courses also encouraged student teachers to consider how their
participation in multiple literacies might inform their literacy teaching practice.
A variety of pedagogical strategies and resources were utilized in the literacy
courses to explore these issues: class discussions on relevant topics (e.g., critical
literacy, out-of-school literacies); related course readings (e.g., adolescent literacies;
content area literacies); collaborative learning activities (e.g., student teachers shared
how they used digital technologies as pedagogical tools during practice teaching);
examining videos of middle-school classrooms to identify the various spaces of
literacy; and reading a variety of children’s/adolescent literature. Student teachers
completed various core assignments as part of the literacy courses: writing a literacy
autobiography; constructing and sharing a multimodal All About Me text; examining
and presenting on current issues in literacy pedagogy (e.g. the use of graphic novels
to teach reading/writing); and responding to a professional text on reading/writing.

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L. MENNA

Shifting Conceptions of Literacy

Student teachers bring a diverse range of personal interests and experiences with
literacy to their teacher education studies, which can deepen and enrich their
teaching practice. Interestingly, however, many of these “multiliterate” student
teachers did not initially recognize the extent to which their rich linguistic repertories
and diverse cultural commitments inform their approach to literacy teaching.
As the student teachers engaged with literacy through a multiliteracies lens they
developed a broader and more nuanced understanding of literacy pedagogy. The
student teachers identified points of intersection between their literacy histories,
their personal literacy practices, and their evolving approach to literacy teaching.
The multiliteracies perspective served as a springboard of sorts propelling them to
reimagine the possibilities for literacy teaching and learning.
The analysis of survey data collected from the student teacher cohort (n = 22)
provided the opportunity to examine the extent to which student teachers felt their
conceptions of literacy had changed during their teacher education studies. Table 1
reports the mean scores and standard deviations for the cohort’s self-reported extent
of change in their view of literacy and their understanding of literacy teaching and
learning. Student teachers were asked to score each item on a five-point Likert scale
ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a great deal). Survey data were collected at two
points during the cohort’s first year in the teacher education program. The time-
one (T1) survey data were collected 12 weeks into fall term, after the first practice
teaching placement. The time-two data (T2) survey data were collected at the end of
the second semester.
On average, student teachers indicated their view of literacy had changed a
fair amount during their first year in the teacher education program (T1 M = 4.63,
SD = 0.48; T2 M = 4.55, SD = 0.69). The student teachers also reported that their
understanding of literacy teaching and learning had changed a fair amount during the
first year of teacher education studies (T1 M = 4.58, SD = 0.49; T2 M = 4.85, SD =
0.37). In this instance there was a statistically significant increase in the mean ratings
from T1 to T2 (t = −2.77, p = .012).

Table 1. Extent of change in student teachers’ view of literacy and understanding of

literacy teaching and learning for Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) survey data

N Min scale Max scale Mean SD

T1 View of literacy 20 2.00 5.00 4.63 0.48

T1 Understanding of literacy teaching 20 2.00 5.00 4.58 0.49
T2 View of literacy 20 3.00 5.00 4.55 0.69
T2 Understanding of literacy teaching 20 3.00 5.00 4.85 0.37

The qualitative survey data also support and elaborate upon the findings
reported in the table above. More specifically, many of the student teachers noted

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that their experience in the literacy courses complicated, in productive ways, their
understanding of literacy teaching and learning. For example, one of the open-ended
survey questions asked student teachers to comment on how their conception of
literacy and literacy teaching had changed during their time in the teacher education
program. Student teacher John1 suggested he became more attuned to the complexity
of literacy teaching:
My understanding of literacy teaching has changed a great deal. It’s extremely
difficult to teach as I learned during my practicum. Students are at different
levels when it comes to literacy, finding ways to accommodate all learners is
a challenge. The [teacher education] program helped me tackle that challenge.
Similarly, in her survey response Jennifer noted, “the program opened my eyes
to literacy. I didn’t know how complex literacy was before the program. I also
didn’t see it as an important part of education, now I do.” The survey data provided
a useful, but preliminary, understanding of how student teachers’ conceptions of
literacy shifted during their teacher education studies. These findings were explored
in greater depth through the collection and analysis of interview data from the
purposive sample of student teachers (n = 8).
Although the interview data came only from those student teachers who comprised
the purposive sample (n = 8), their experiences offer productive insights into the
complex process of constructing an approach to literacy teaching. The sections that
follow will present a select number of student teacher interview responses; however,
these findings are representative of key themes and recurrent patterns identified in
the data as a whole.

Broadening Conceptions of Literacy

Overall, the student teachers’ conceptions of literacy steadily broadened as they engaged
with the literacy course component of their teacher education studies. This finding
is consistent with related literature in the area of literacy teacher education (Boche,
2014; O’Neill & Geoghegan, 2011; Rosaen & Terpstra, 2012; Sheridan-Thomas,
2007; Skerrett, 2011). In each of the four phases of interviews, student teachers were
asked to discuss their conceptions of literacy, and how, if at all, their conceptions had
changed during their teacher education studies. The student teachers reported that their
conceptions of literacy had expanded due in large part, to the ideas and strategies
modeled in the literacy courses. The literacy courses asked student teachers to consider
literacy as a dynamic process, rather than a static entity, that people use throughout
their lives as they navigate the daily demands of various socio-cultural contexts.
Student teacher Beth observed that her literacy course experience initiated a “big
change” in the way she thought about literacy. She recalled a key insight,
I’ve had a few ah ha moments this year in literacy. I still so clearly remember
the beginning of the year when we first talked about out-of-school literacies

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L. MENNA

and bringing those into the classroom. And the very concept that literacy is not
just reading novels. At the time that was just mind-blowing, that text messaging
is literacy and could have a place in the classroom. And also, I had no clue, I
really thought you know every grade seven teacher had to teach a specific set
of novels, and that’s just what you did, and you had to teach a certain type of
essay. So, the fact that really there’s teacher choice is amazing and scary.
Beth’s understanding of what counts as literacy began to broaden as she recognized
the multiple formats and tools people use to participate in literacy practices. The
literacy course invited her to consider the variety of reading and writing practices
children/youth participate in, both within and beyond the walls of the school. As
her consideration of what counts as literacy extended beyond the confines of the
“language arts” classroom she recognized the plurality of literacies. Her realization
that a multifaceted literacy program requires knowledge of both conventional texts
and emerging digitally-mediated technologies evoked feelings of excitement and
anxiety simultaneously.
Beth also developed greater insight into the responsibility of literacy teaching;
in particular, the autonomy a teacher can exercise when selecting reading materials
for his/her literacy program. She noted this turning point had been quite unexpected.
Upon entering the teacher education program she had expected the literacy course
to transmit a basic toolkit of strategies, which student teachers would unwaveringly
apply to the classroom. Beth was pleasantly surprised, but also overwhelmed, by the
prospect of selecting the relevant texts and instructional practices to be used in her
future literacy program.
The student teachers’ experiences provide insight into what changes when student
teachers view themselves as in conversation with a broader field of literacy. Many of
the student teachers noted that the framing of literacy through a multiliteracies lens
was a pivotal learning experience, which encouraged them to rethink the possibilities
for literacy pedagogy. For many of the student teachers the multiliteracies perspective
served as a means to disrupt the restrictive boundaries used to define literacy during
much of their prior schooling. Many of the student teachers’ reframed reading/
writing as an active process, whereby people use multiple forms of representation
within different domains of life to make meaning.
Accordingly, as the student teachers’ conceptions of literacy expanded they
questioned the markers conventionally used to define a “literate” person. Lankshear
and Knobel (2003) suggest that from a multiliteracies perspective “being literate
involves much more than simply knowing how to operate the language system,”
for the “cultural and critical facets of knowledge integral to being literate are
considerable” (p. 12). Student teacher Sue explained how her understanding of what
counts as literacy shifted:
Honestly I think it was one of the very first classes when we talked about
multiliteracies and including things like Facebook, blogging, texting, recipes,
manuals, or websites into literacy teaching, because again I had such a narrow

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knowledge of what I thought “English class” [sic] was supposed to look like.
Whereas now I feel like I’m much more empowered to use everything around
us because we are, we all need to be literate…It is about bringing a broad range
of different things for the students to read. And to give them choice on how
they go about it.
Sue foregrounded the various contexts in which literacy practices are embedded,
as she called into question the conventional parameters used to define what it means
to be “literate.” She recognized the varied ways in which people use literacies in
their daily lives to accomplish particular communicative goals. Interestingly, the
aspects of the literacy course that resonated with Sue were the dimensions of literacy
pedagogy fundamentally lacking throughout much of her prior schooling; namely,
engaging with literacy pedagogy as a space that acknowledges a range of texts and
creates opportunity for all students to exercise choice in the texts they read. These
insights had real pedagogical implications for her. To Sue the prospect of literacy
teaching had initially provoked a sense of anxiety because she had “struggled” with
literacy in school. As her conception of literacy broadened, she felt “empowered”
by the prospect of drawing on multiple literacy repertoires to construct a meaningful
literacy teaching practice with her future students.
The shift student teachers experienced in their conceptions of literacy was by no
means straightforward. As the literacy course invited student teachers to consciously
reflect upon their initial assumptions about literacy, various tensions inevitably
surfaced. Their participation in the literacy course unsettled some deeply entrenched
beliefs, as they consciously considered what counts as literacy. For instance, Lee
revealed she struggled at times to reconcile the structured approach to reading
instruction she experienced in school with her commitment to constructing a literacy
teaching practice that is responsive to students’ diverse reading preferences and
needs. She explained,
I keep realizing that just because it’s something I would like to read or be
interested in probably means half of the class or more won’t be. So, to really
think about that. And something else we discussed in class was boys and
literacy, and I kind of struggle with this; I think students should be able to read
what they want as long as they’re reading something that is good, so comics
or magazines or hockey cards and that idea. But, I still think that kids should
have to read a book in school. So, I’m still negotiating that balance between
the more traditional and the broader multiliteracies definition. I think for me
it is important to have a balance but maybe some kids will never get there and
maybe that’s okay. I don’t know.
Points of tension surfaced as Lee negotiated the approach to literacy she excelled at
throughout much of her prior schooling, with the “broader multiliteracies definition”
taken up in her teacher education studies. Lee acknowledged the importance of
providing children/youth with opportunities to exercise choice in their selection of

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reading materials. She also recognized the value of bringing a variety of texts and
accessible formats into the classroom. Yet, she simultaneously struggled to reconcile
these insights with the legacy of her prior schooling in which literacy was defined
as a student’s competent mastery of the selected texts and the reading/writing skills
privileged in school. When the dominant conception of literacy is constructed around
school-based literacy practices, students’ out-of-school literacy preferences and
achievements are often marginalized (Cummins, 2009; Moje, 2002; Simon, 2012).
As Lee’s narrative came to a close, remnants of a deficit discourse seemed to persist
and position literacy as an autonomous set of skills that some students competently
acquire,while others may not (Gee, 2012; Street, 1984, 2005).

Negotiating the Place of “New” Technologies in Literacy Teaching

The student teachers also exhibited a growing awareness of the implications

contemporary technologies might have for literacy teaching. This is indeed a timely
pedagogical consideration. Hull and Schultz (2002) emphasize the importance
of “preparing teachers to think differently about what counts as literacy,” and to
encourage the “integration of new media and Internet use into schools in ways
that allow youth culture and its varied literacies to flourish alongside, as well as
to influence, academic genres” (p. 48). The rethinking of what counts as literacy
provokes questions around how student teachers negotiate both their role as
participants in emerging technologies and their role as literacy teachers.
Many of the student teachers sought to move beyond restrictive conceptions of
authority which position expertise as a fixed and stable entity (Cope & Kalantzis,
2000). The student teachers recognized children/youth as active producers of
knowledge, and in so doing, advanced a more fluid, distributed, and inclusive
conception of learning. As student teacher Zoe discussed the role of a literacy teacher
she resisted positioning the teacher as the sole purveyor of knowledge. Rather, she
likened her role as a literacy teacher to that of a facilitator, who scaffolds students’
learning. Accordingly, she conceived of literacy pedagogy as a reciprocal process.
Zoe felt the widespread use of prevailing communication technologies has, to an
extent, shifted the very nature of literacy teaching. She explained,
Absolutely it has changed it and it will change. I don’t think it is an entire
change, but I can tell you that the change has started for sure. And with the new
generation of the teachers who are especially more expert on those technologies,
and the students who are already more advanced than the teachers, there would
be a change in the way literacy is approached. So, already the role of the
teacher as providing the knowledge has shifted and is shifting very fast into
facilitating the learning in the classroom. The body of knowledge is available
and it’s out there, right. What teachers of the next century, or even this century,
are going to do is find different techniques and strategies to help students use

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those knowledges, have access to that, and know how, when, and why to use
those knowledges.
Zoe spoke to how emerging technologies and collaborative platforms have
ostensibly extended the conventional boundaries used to define authority and
expertise (Alvermann, 2010; Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). Notably, she recognized
how access to such diverse spaces of interaction has enabled children/youth to enact
roles as both consumers and producers of knowledge. As a teacher of literacy, Zoe
endeavored to help students strategically navigate and critically engage with diverse
domains of knowledge.
Similarly, student teacher Lynne emphasized the importance of incorporating new
technologies into literacy teaching. She felt a literacy teaching practice that strives
to be accessible and meaningful to all students, must not restrict the definition of
literacy to conventional notions of text. She recognized how the shifting literacy
landscape holds both opportunities and challenges for literacy teaching. Indeed, as
Lynne situated her literacy theorizing within the practical realities of the classroom,
she helps deepen our understanding of the complexities of literacy teaching. A sense
of urgency is palpable as Lynne contemplated the place of new technologies in
literacy teaching:
Technology has to be used way more, and you can get to way more kids going
the route they know, rather than relying on how we were taught in I guess you
could call it the old school way, because it’s different. I’m going to sound so
old but times aren’t what they used to be. Times are changing and you’ve got
to keep up. It’s like survival of the fittest, if you don’t keep up, your kids aren’t
going to keep up, and you’re toast…There are things that exist now that didn’t
exist when I was in school, digital literacy it didn’t even exist. You didn’t have
the Internet to go on to research things, it was you go to the library, and that
was it, you knew how to be literate through texts. And now kids are responsible
for so much more. So that mile-wide, inch-deep curriculum, is now five miles
wide, and it’s crazy to think how much more they’re responsible for knowing.
Now kids have so may access points.
While Lynne acknowledged that children/youth have access to an abundance of
information networks and resources, she also gestured to the pressure inherent in
critically navigating these complex spaces. She recognized contemporary literacy
teaching must attend to the challenges children/youth face as they navigate the
varied resources available to them.

CONCLUSION

This chapter endeavors to contribute to our understanding of the role literacy

teacher education plays in the lives of beginning teachers; in particular, the points

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L. MENNA

of intersection between student teachers’ initial conceptions of literacy, their literacy

histories, and their experiences in teacher education. The research invites us to
consider what notions of literacy and literacy pedagogy are presented to student
teachers throughout their teacher education studies. The findings highlight the
importance of providing student teachers with access to a pedagogy of literacy
teacher education which offers them multiple opportunities to bring their diverse
experiences with literacy into conversation with the broader field of literacy. The
construction of a multifaceted approach to literacy teaching is a complex process
developed over time and in concert with the daily realties of the classroom. However,
the skills, dispositions, and knowledge beginning teachers develop during teacher
preparation are a vital part of the foundation upon which they can build a rich and
inclusive pedagogical practice.

NOTE
1
Pseudonyms used for all participants.

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teachers’ understandings and applications. Reading Research and Instruction, 46(2), 121–150.
Simon, R. (2012). “Without comic books, there would be no me”: Teachers as connoisseurs of adolescents’
literate lives. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(6), 516–526.
Skerrett, A. (2011). “Wide open rap, tagging, and real life”: Preparing teachers for multiliteracies
pedagogies. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 6(3), 185–199.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and
techniques. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Street, B. (2005). At last: Recent applications of new literacy studies in educational contexts. Research in
the Teaching of English, 39(4), 417–423.
Street, B. V. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Street, B. V. (1993). Cross-cultural approaches to literacy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Vasquez, V., Tate, S., & Harste, J. (2013). Negotiating critical literacies with teachers. New York, NY:
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Vasudevan, L., Schultz, K., & Bateman, J. (2010). Rethinking composing in a digital age: Authoring
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3. THE IMPACT OF POLICY ON TEACHER

EDUCATION AND LITERACY EDUCATION
IN ENGLAND
Some Notes from a Corner of a Small Island

I started teaching in 1985, in a boys’ comprehensive school in East London. With

a class of 14- and 15-year-olds, I decided to read John Steinbeck’s (1948) The
Pearl. The experience was, as far as I can recollect it, an unmitigated disaster, for a
multitude of reasons. I found it painfully difficult to establish myself as a teacher in
this environment. This was, I’m sure, because the “normal” challenges of classroom
management that confront most new teachers were intensified by the fractured and
fractious nature of the class. About half the students were from the long-established,
white, working-class community that had grown up around the London docklands;
the other half of the class were of Bangladeshi heritage, mainly fairly recent arrivals
in the UK. Most of the white students were openly hostile towards their Bangladeshi
peers: a current of racism, which frequently found violent expression on the streets
around the school, permeated the day-to-day exchanges in the classroom. “I’m not
sitting next to him – he smells of curry!” “Why are you working him, sir?” Entangled
in all of this was the way that gender was performed in the school at large. This was
a boys’ school, where almost all the established, senior teachers were (white) men,
where order was enforced through displays of masculine power. I wasn’t very clear
about the kind of teacher I wanted to be, but I was utterly sure about the kind of
teacher I didn’t want to be. I cannot fully reconstruct my reasons for choosing to read
The Pearl with this class. There were enough copies of it, it was sufficiently brief
to be manageable – and it wasn’t Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1937), which I had
vowed to avoid at all costs, on the grounds that it seemed to me to offer far too much
succour to the racist and misogynist attitudes that were already so firmly entrenched
in the class. So I settled on The Pearl. My students didn’t hate it; they found it too
stultifyingly dull, too meaningless an experience to warrant anything as lively as
hatred. Decades later, I came across Charles Sarland’s (1991) account of another
class’s struggles with The Pearl. Sarland’s categorisation of this reading experience,
“On not finding yourself in the text”, rang painfully true.
Things improved markedly when we moved onto Boys from the Blackstuff, Alan
Bleasdale’s elegiac and often bitterly funny sequence of five interlinked television
plays, with their representation of working-class life in Liverpool in a period of

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 31–42.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
J. YANDELL

savage economic decline. We read the scripts (Bleasdale, 1985) in class, watched
videotapes of the television performances (Saville, 1982), talked and wrote about the
characters, their relationships, dilemmas and difficulties, their choices and their lack
of choices. My students were interested, engaged, enjoying themselves in English
lessons – and my relationship with the class, though still often fraught, improved.
This was not all to do with the text. I have a particularly fond memory of a lesson
which had started with one of the students retrieving a pink fluffy toy animal from
the flat roof below the windows at the back of the room. He threw the toy at me, and
I conceived of the idea that the rest of the lesson would best be delivered in role,
through the persona of the toy in my hand. Somehow the pink fluffy thing enabled
us all to get along much more amicably than was usually the case. But the change of
text did make a difference.
I wanted to share Boys from the Blackstuff with the class because it was a text that
mattered to me. Watching the plays when they were first broadcast (1982), I had been
transfixed by the way that they represented working-class lives and social relations
in Britain under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government: here there was no
trace of condescension but plenty of anger and an enduring political commitment
to the importance of social solidarity. The plays spoke to me, and I hoped that they
would speak to my students, too. I think they did. It helped, of course, that my
students’ reading of the scripts was enhanced by their viewing of the plays – that
their experience of the text was of different instantiations of the text, in different
multimodal configurations. I would also want to suggest that their experience of the
text involved a kind of recognition, a sense that these were recognisable figures in
a recognisable landscape: a different docklands, and one fictively framed and re-
imagined, but recognisable nonetheless in its representation of a particular kind of
struggle with the material conditions of existence.
A recognition, but also, perhaps, a transformation. Earlier in 1985, while
completing my PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education, a preservice teacher
education course), I had first encountered the Bullock Report’s declaration:
No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home as
he crosses the school threshold, nor to live and act as though school and home
represent two totally separate and different cultures which have to be kept
firmly apart. (DES, 1975, p. 286)
I have written elsewhere (Yandell, 2010) about my shifting understanding of what
these words might mean, my gradual recognition that this was not simply an ethical
obligation on the part of teachers to respect the diverse backgrounds, cultures and
values of their students but also a pedagogic imperative, an assertion of the practical
futility of treating learners as blank slates, of the necessity of remaining attentive to
the funds of knowledge that learners bring with them to the classroom. From the start
with this class, there was no question of students casting off the values of their homes.
As I have indicated above, there was nothing cosy about this. The white students
were not about to leave their racist and xenophobic attitudes outside the classroom,

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however much I might have wanted them to. Here, though, in my students’ acts of
making meaning from Bleasdale’s plays, something was happening that enabled me
to work towards a different reading of Bullock. Above, I have suggested that Boys
from the Blackstuff might have functioned as a locus of recognition, a meeting-point
of different but familiar cultures, and hence a place where everyday and curricularised
perspectives might be brought into a more productive relationship (rather than the
hopeless separation of perspectives that we endured while reading The Pearl). The
text becomes something different, acquires new configurations of meaning, each
time it is read and re-read. My students’ reading was thus a remaking of Boys from
the Blackstuff; it seemed to me that it also offered the possibility of a remaking of
my students. The world that Bleasdale represents is very largely, as the title might
suggest, the social relations of working-class men. The versions of masculinity that
it offers, though, are complicated, problematic and in flux. They are, of necessity,
renegotiated in the new economic conditions of recession, unemployment and ever
more precarious casual employment; and the values that the plays uphold are very
far indeed from those of aggressive, individualist hypermasculinity. My students’
explorations of the text opened up a space in which it became possible for them to
explore and renegotiate their own identities: I would want to suggest that, because
the text offered different subjectivities, different possibilities of selfhood, they were
able to begin to find different versions of themselves in the text.

***
I have started with this attempt to reconstruct a moment in my own formation as an
English teacher, a moment from the long-gone, pre-digital days, in the hope that it
might enable me both to consider more clearly what is happening now, and also to
recognise the complexity and contingency of the impact that policy has on practice. I
would want to suggest that policy, in the form of the Bullock Report, had an influence
on me, alerting me to the issue of the relation between the culture(s) of schooling and
the culture(s) of the home and of the street. But this was no one-way street: policy,
at least in this incarnation, was no script to follow, no manual providing step-by-step
instructions for the classroom. Practice was in a dialectical relationship with policy,
so that what I understood by the words in the Bullock Report changed in the light of
experience and my reflection on experience.
It would be possible, too, to interpret my anecdote as an indictment of teacher
education in those days before we had competences and standards for teachers, before
we had statutorily enforced national curricula, before government ministers and
chief inspectors held forth on the vital importance of behavior management (Adams,
2014; DfE, 2010). It would be possible to do so, but very silly. It wasn’t because I
was inadequately prepared that I struggled with that class; it was because I was well
prepared that I was able to recognise, and perhaps even begin to address, some of
the complexities, contradictions and objective difficulties of the circumstances in
which I found myself. So my preparedness, I would argue, was not of a technical-
rationalist kind, to do with the implementation of routines and procedures devised

33
J. YANDELL

and approved by others; rather, it entailed the exercise of particular kinds of

professional judgement and reflexivity (Heilbronn, 2010; Moore, 2004). A crucial
part of the story is that change – developmental change in me as a teacher, in my
relationships with my students, in my students’ language and literacies – happened
gradually, uncertainly, over quite extensive periods of time, and not, as much of
currently fashionable policy might suggest, within the confines of a single lesson.
That was then; this is now. I want to move on to consider the new policy terrain,
first of literacy education and then of teacher education (though, of course, the two
are not entirely distinct). My focus will be on policy in England,1 some aspects of
which are replicated throughout much of the Anglophone world, other aspects of
which, particularly in relation to literacy education, are sui generis (and of a very
strange kind, too).
We have recently been presented with a new national curriculum in England, the
fifth version in the twenty-five years since one was first imposed in this country.
As its overarching statement indicates, this is a twenty-first-century curriculum that
takes us firmly back to the nineteenth century:
The national curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the essential
knowledge they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best
that has been thought and said, and helps engender an appreciation of human
creativity and achievement. (DfE, 2014, p. 6)
Culture here is not the plural, shifting entity of the Bullock Report, and it is
certainly not something that learners might bring with them to the classroom
from their lives and experiences beyond the school gates and from the practices
and values of their homes and communities. Culture here is the Arnoldian
bulwark against anarchy, the means whereby schooling might civilise, or at least
domesticate, the masses (Arnold, 1869/1993). For Michael Gove, the Conservative
education minister who was the architect of this version of the national curriculum,
as for Matthew Arnold, the question of value is straightforward and the task of
the school is equally unproblematic. The “best that has been thought and said”
has already been established: the canon is in place. All that remains is for it to be
introduced to those who might otherwise remain in ignorance of it. As the mention
of “essential knowledge” indicates, this is Matthew Arnold by way of E. D. Hirsch
(1987, 1996) – a curriculum predicated on a view of knowledge as fixed, already-
established, already-organised, and ready to be delivered. Questions of pedagogy
and of learning – the questions that are absolutely central to what goes on, or might
be accomplished, in the classroom – have been evacuated from this ex cathedra
curriculum. The sheer quality of the thoughts and words to which the pupils are
introduced will, presumably, be sufficient to “engender … appreciation”. And that,
equally clearly, is the role assigned to the learners in this process: they are to
bow down and worship before the shrine of high culture. They are to be taught
to know their place as passive recipients of others’ (unattainable) creativity and
achievement.

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 THE IMPACT OF POLICY ON TEACHER EDUCATION

The cultural conservatism that informs this statement of aims leaves its indelible
mark on the detail of the English curriculum. This, for example, is the content that is
specified for 14- to 16-year-olds’ work in literature:
Students should study a range of high quality, intellectually challenging, and
substantial whole texts in detail. These must include:
• at least one play by Shakespeare
• at least one 19th century novel
• a selection of poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry
• fiction or drama from the British Isles from 1914 onwards.
All works should have been originally written in English. (DfE, 2013a, p. 4)
I confess that I find it hard to read such a list without becoming paralysed by the
sheer arbitrariness of the criteria that are deployed. Why 1789? Why exclude Donne,
Herbert, Marvell, Jonson, Milton, Bradstreet, Cowper (and anyone else writing
before the French Revolution)? I suspect 1789 was lit upon simply because it’s the
year of publication of Blake’s Songs of Innocence, but this is not, of course, made
explicit. Why, in any case, should Romantic poetry be singled out for such special
treatment? Why does it matter where fiction or drama was produced? Why is Ireland
permitted, but not any of the other former colonies? And which fiction is “from”
the British Isles? Does this mean that Salman Rushdie is in, but Arundhati Roy,
Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are out? And why this blanket ban
on literature in translation? If you decide that it is important that all 14- 16-year-olds
read a nineteenth century novel, and I am slightly mystified as to why you would
make that decision, why is it better for them to read Trollope than Tolstoy?
What does “representative” mean? Who decides which texts are “high quality”,
or “intellectually challenging”, or even “substantial”? The answer, quite obviously,
is: not teachers. Every item in the stipulations of content quoted above reveals a fear
about what might happen if schools, teachers and their students were left to their
own devices to make locally appropriate choices about the content of a literature
curriculum. Presumably, in such impossible-to-imagine circumstances, we would
end up with students reading and experiencing:
• a range of drama, but not necessarily Shakespeare
• fiction that had been written in the last 100 years or so
• modern poems and lyrics
• literature from around the world.
The students might even become involved in debates, not only about their own
reading preferences but also about questions of value, about which texts they had
read that they considered significant, or that they would recommend to someone else
to read, and their reasons for making these judgements. In such circumstances, they
might even be in a position to explore the category of literature itself. Would such a
curriculum lack intellectual challenge?

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J. YANDELL

The Hirschian orientation of our latest national curriculum is equally apparent

in what is excluded or marginalised. What matters is what endures, the heritage of
language and literature that is “every child’s birthright” (Gove, 2010) and hence,
it would seem, the most bankable form of cultural capital that schooling has to
offer. The primacy of the written (or printed) word is announced in the repeated
misquoting of Arnold’s “the best that has been thought and said” as “the best that has
been thought and written” (DfE, 2013a, p. 3; see also Gove, 2013, 2014). Though
oracy has not been removed entirely, it now occupies a much diminished space. In all
four earlier incarnations of the English national curriculum, it appeared as “speaking
and listening” – a heading that, for all its ungainliness, nonetheless promised some
recognition of the essentially social, reciprocal nature of talk. In all these previous
versions, the assessment of oracy counted: it contributed to students’ overall English
GCSE grades, and hence, given the overweening importance of such high-stakes
tests, was given official acknowledgement as an important constituent of subject
English. Now “speaking and listening” has been replaced by “spoken English”, a
poor shrivelled thing that promises little more than a passing interest in the arts of
public speaking and the further fetishising of spoken Standard English (DfE, 2013b,
pp. 3, 5). And it – the use of talk – will contribute nothing to the students’ final
grades.
If little attention is to be paid to talk, even less is afforded to the semiotic
resources of new digital literacies. In the new national curriculum for English, there
is no mention of media, new or old, no mention of the screen as a site of semiotic
practice, no mention of new technologies that might have had an impact on literacy
practices. (There is, though, a requirement that “All schools must publish their
school curriculum by subject and academic year online” [DfE, 2014, p. 5].) There
is, in short, precious little in the English curriculum that would have been out of
place in a curriculum document written fifty or a hundred years ago. That, in the
world beyond the school gates, the landscape of symbolisation, representation and
communication has been profoundly changed, seems to have escaped the notice of
those responsible for the formulation of these instruments of policy. Except that this
is not an oversight, a failure to register that things have moved on: it is a deliberate
and conscious declaration that these changes are irrelevant to schooling. Since
education is recast as an induction into an unchanging, always-valorised collection
of cultural objects (“the best that has been thought and written”), there can be
no good reason to waste time on those artefacts, those means of communication
and cultural making, that are new-fangled and of merely transient appeal. So, for
example, the specifications for English Language GCSE include the declaration that
“Texts that are essentially transient, such as instant news feeds, must not be included”
(DfE, 2013b, p. 4).
In this respect, as in others, the counter-revolution in policy (Jones, 2013) has
been pushed further in England than in most other parts of the world. If the last
Conservative government in this country was wont to express a longing for a return
to Victorian values, this one seems determined to enforce a resumption of Victorian

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literacy practices. It will, I imagine, only be a matter of time before the instruction is
issued that school desks be refashioned to accommodate inkwells. Michael Gove was
insistent that his changes to school curricula and to the accompanying assessment
regimes were informed by a desire to (re-)introduce rigour into the system (Yandell,
2014). But it is a very odd notion of rigour that creates so absolute a separation
between school literacy and the practices in which learners participate in their daily
lives. Rigour here has become rigor mortis, turning policy into the sclerotic product
of nostalgic fantasy.
We have come a very long way indeed from the Bullock Report. School students
must now be expected to act as though home and school represented two entirely
separate cultures. This lesson is one to be learnt very early on in their experience
of schooling. The insistence on phonics as the one true path that all early readers
must follow is enshrined in the national curriculum (DfE, 2014, pp. 20–21), in the
“phonics screening check” that must be administered to all six year-olds (Standards
and Testing Agency, 2014) and in the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011, p. 11), where
it is stipulated that the way in which teachers of early reading must demonstrate
their “good curriculum and subject knowledge” is through showing their “clear
understanding of systematic synthetic phonics”. Thus all the complexity and
diversity of literacy practices in homes and communities, explored in any number
of carefully researched and endlessly illuminating ethnographic accounts (Brice
Heath, 1983; Gonzalez et al., 2005; Gregory, 1996; Gregory & Williams, 2000;
Minns, 1997; Street, 2001), are reduced to a very simple process: learning to make
the right noises when confronted with marks on a page. As the national curriculum
emphasises, this process is a strictly linear, sequential one: the squiggles on the
page, and the accompanying sounds, have to be taught (and hence learnt) in a
specified order. In this paradigm of what is involved in the acquisition of literacy,
a child’s other experiences of literate practice, whether on a screen or on a cereal
packet, are to be construed as nothing more than interference (Davis, 2012; Yandell,
2012).
How, then, do such modern policies construe the role of the teacher? Once
grapheme-phoneme correspondences have been internalised, what else must
teachers know and do if they and their students are to thrive? Throughout the term of
the current government, considerable emphasis has been placed on the importance
of behavior management. In this, as in the politics of the curriculum, there has
been a determination to cast aside the vestiges of progressive or liberal practice
and attitudes. The 2010 policy statement, The Importance of Teaching (DfE, 2010),
might almost have been re-titled “the importance of discipline”, with its promise
to speed up the processes whereby students could be excluded from schools and to
“increase the authority of teachers to discipline pupils by strengthening their powers
to search pupils, issue detentions and use force where necessary” (DfE, 2010: 32). As
Robert Scholes has observed, exploring the etymological roots of the word “canon”,
its history is just as closely implicated in the exercise of disciplinary power as is its
cognate, the cane (Scholes, 1998, pp. 104–105).

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J. YANDELL

The formation of teachers is to be policed through a single set of Teachers’

Standards (DfE, 2011), standards that themselves insist on teachers’ role in the
maintenance of (“high”) standards of linguistic propriety. Thus, a teacher must:
… demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting
high standards of literacy, articulacy and the correct use of standard English,
whatever the teacher’s specialist subject. (DfE, 2011, p. 11)
In policy documents from the Bullock Report onwards, the term “Standard
English” has been made to fulfil a bewildering multiplicity of functions. Tony
Crowley points to the slippage between Standard English as a particular written
form, with its origins in a single dialect of Middle English, and an always ill-defined
notion of a spoken standard:
“Standard English” refers to the universal written code of English, a specific
spoken form of the language, or both at the same time since they are largely the
same thing in any case. “Standard” in the sense of the written code presumably
means uniform or common. “Standard” in the second sense cannot mean
uniform or common. What then can it mean? (Crowley, 2003, p. 256)
There are two longstanding (and equally unsatisfactory, equally circular) definitions
of the spoken standard, both of which have appeared repeatedly in policy: one seeks
to identify the standard by the absence of non-standard features; the other, which is
traceable back to the emergence of the category in the nineteenth century, locates
it in the speech of an educated person (a role model, such as that of the teacher in
the current version of the Teachers’ Standards). As Crowley notes, policy displays
“a remarkable confidence that what the term means is ‘commonsensically’ clear to
everybody” (2003, p. 258; see also Yandell, 2013).
If the curriculum is a fixed canon of heritage texts and an insistence on the
primacy of a particular dialect of English, then that is where final authority lies (the
authority of the “best that has been thought and said”), while the teachers’ authority
is acquired from knowledge of this canon, this variety of language, and from their
institutional position. When I reflect on my experiences as a newly-qualified
teacher, I am not sure that any of this would have been very helpful, to me or to my
students. Should I have worried less about what my students were saying, and more
about the differences between their speech and some notion of a spoken standard?
Would I have been a better teacher if I had issued more detentions, or used force
(where necessary)? I don’t think so. I’d prefer to put my faith in small pink fluffy
animals.
The final section of the Teachers’ Standards, “Personal and professional conduct”,
states that teachers:
… uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics
and behavior, within and outside school, by …

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• not undermining fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule

of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with
different faiths and beliefs
• ensuring that personal beliefs are not expressed in ways which exploit
pupils’ vulnerability or might lead them to break the law. (DfE, 2011, p. 14)
To clarify what is meant by “fundamental British values”, the Preamble to the
Standards states that the phrase “is taken from the definition of extremism as
articulated in the new Prevent Strategy” (DfE, 2011, p. 9). According to the Prevent
Strategy, extremism is “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values”
(Home Department, 2011, p. 107). So we have a simple binary: extremism or British
values. And we have a policy document, regulating the work of teachers, that locates
such work, by implication, in the context of the government’s counterterrorist strategy
(Home Department, 2011, p. 23), and its declared assessment that the most serious
threat to the UK is that “from Al Qa’ida, its affiliates and like-minded organisations”
(Home Department, 2011, p. 13; see also Turvey et al., 2014). I continue to struggle
with the sheer oddness of an attempt by the state to prescribe appropriate attitudes
and behaviors for teachers primarily by reference to questions of terrorism and
national security. And I am not sure that this regulation is any more helpful to the
development of teacher professionalism in the twenty-first century than it would
have been to me in the 1980s (a time when Nelson Mandela’s ANC was described
as “a typical terrorist organization” by the then British Prime Minister, Margaret
Thatcher [Bevans & Streeter, 1996]).
Back in 1985, on my PGCE course, I wrestled with the Althusserian notion of
schooling as (merely) an arm of the ideological state apparatus (Althusser, 1971).
It seemed to me then to be too deterministic – and too simple – a model, taking
insufficient account of the contradictions in education. England’s new version of
Teachers’ Standards might encourage an Althusserian reading, given the way in
which it positions teachers as a kind of plain clothes police force, upholding the
rule of law and snuffing out the first flickers of extremist sentiment. It would be
foolish to imagine that this attempt to reconfigure teacher professionalism will have
no impact. It threatens to diminish the space for open and honest debate. But it would
be equally misguided to assume that the complicated, messy reality of classroom
interaction can be read off from the dictates of policy. Schools are still, sometimes
simultaneously, places of coercion and emancipation; they remain sites of struggle
(Giroux, 2002; Gramsci, 1971). The agency of teachers and students is not so easily
effaced by the imposition of curricula, by regimes of performativity (Ball, 2008) and
managerialist regulation.
Policy has its effects, but spaces remain for teachers and their students to
exploit. These spaces are ones in which more heterodox literacy practices can
thrive – practices which point up the shortcomings of policy. I want to conclude by
mentioning two such approaches to literacy education.

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J. YANDELL

The first is a recent, and utterly fascinating, study of the use of educational blogs
in three south London primary schools (Barrs & Horrocks, 2014). The researchers
were principally interested in the difference between the writing that the children
produced in their blogs in comparison with what they wrote in their schoolbooks.
The project’s starting-point was that digital technology is changing literacy, and
that therefore teachers have a responsibility to be interested in the possibilities and
affordances of the new forms of writing that are already a part of everyday practice.
As one of the teachers involved in the project put it: “Digital literacy gives writing
a whole new dimension which primary children must be exposed to; it is, after all,
their future” (Barrs & Horrocks, 2014, p. 3). And, as the researchers concluded,
“Both the interactive nature of blogging and the wider audience that it gave access to
were pivotal in transforming children’s relationship to writing” (Barrs & Horrocks,
2014, p. 38).
The second is a project in a single secondary school, also in south London. It
involved groups of school pupils in collaboration with students on our pre-service
teacher education course. Working together, they used tablet computers to make,
edit and present a series of short films. The films were the pupils’ responses to a
literary text, Poe’s “The Raven” (Bryer, Lindsay, & Wilson, 2014). The quality of the
pupils’ engagement in this project supports David Buckingham’s argument about the
potential gains of new, and newly accessible, digital technologies:
By offering greater democratic access to complex forms of media production,
digital technology truly does enable students to become writers as well as
readers of visual and audio-visual media – and indeed, begins to blur these
settled distinctions. And it may be that the ability to manipulate and edit
moving images in digital format offers a degree of flexibility and control that
particularly lends itself to the kind of self-conscious reflection that I have
argued is essential to media education and to “critical literacy” more broadly.
(Buckingham, 2003, p. 186)
Both of these projects reveal teachers and their students moving far beyond
the reductiveness of the curricular and pedagogic prescriptions of policy. Here we
see learners working with – and benefitting from – a much more expansive view
of literacy, one that recognises the value of new technologies of symbolisation,
representation and communication and enables the learners to draw on the full
multi-modal repertoire of cultural resources that they have at their disposal. Whether
the educational potential of such new technologies is realised is dependent, as David
Buckingham insisted, on what teachers do with them: it is a question of pedagogy.
Now, just as much as in 1985, teachers have choices about what is brought into the
classroom, on whose terms and for what purposes.

NOTE
1
In what follows, I focus on policy within the state system in England (though to refer to a system at all
is to misrepresent a situation that is both highly stratified and increasingly incoherent). In each of the

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other countries of the United Kingdom, the relationship between government policy and curriculum
has been a somewhat different one. For an account of these differences, see Jones (2003).

REFERENCES
Adams, R. (2014, September 25). Headteachers too soft on unruly pupils, says Ofsted chief Sir Michael
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 JUDIT GARCÍA-MARTÍN, GUY MERCHANT AND
JESÚS-NICASIO GARCÍA-SÁNCHEZ

4. PREPARING TO TEACH 21ST CENTURY

LITERACIES

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the widespread availability of affordable desktop computers for domestic
use, digital technologies have been referred to in terms of their transformative
potential. Adoption of these new technologies has been rapid, as survey data show
(CRTC, 2013; IAB, 2015; OfCom, 2014; Pew Research Centre, 2014), and in some
sectors of the population they have quickly been absorbed into everyday life. In many
jurisdictions high-speed broadband provision and mobile connectivity have tapped
into a growing appetite for digitally mediated social interaction (García-Martín &
García-Sánchez, 2013; Merchant, 2012). Observing the ways in which mobile
technology is “subtly insinuating itself into the capilliaries of everyday life” (Gergen,
2003) draws attention to how different social groups have taken up the affordances
of these technologies and used them to fulfil their diverse needs and purposes
(p. 103). This now includes various forms of activism (McCaughey & Ayers, 2013),
social enterprise (Donner, 2006), and financial transaction (Morawczynski, 2009),
as well as everyday social interaction between partners and friends, parents and
siblings, and families or interest groups. These interactions are often to a greater or
lesser extent transacted through digital media such as Facebook, Instagram, Skype,
and WhatsApp. As a result of these changes, the ways in which literacy, technology,
and everyday social practice are interwoven is certainly of concern for educators.
Despite the proliferation of innovatory projects and initiatives, and the repeated
iteration of aspirational rhetoric, education systems have been slow to respond to
these new configurations of communication. Although the need for teachers and their
students to engage with digital literacies at all stages of education has been articulated
in numerous policy documents and directives, there has been little sustained impact
in the classroom. Such policies frequently underline the economic desirability of
21st Century skills, and some also make reference to the role of digital literacy in
citizenship and participatory culture (Jenkins et al., 2006; Mascheroni & Murru,
2014), but statutory curriculum requirements do not always reflect this (Burnett
et al., 2014). It is not surprising then that preparing teachers to operate effectively
with digital literacies in this changing environment is fraught with difficulty.

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 43–55.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
J. GARCÍA-MARTÍN ET AL.

Any identification of priorities for teacher education must acknowledge this

background alongside the more specific key challenges. First among these are that
teacher preparation takes place in a wide variety of situations and contexts. This
variation includes different models of training such as the traditional university
course-with-practicum provision, university-school training partnerships, and newer
programmes that are entirely school-based. As a result, trainee teachers, and for
that matter early career teachers, are likely to need access to training and support
materials at different stages in their professional training and development, and at a
variety of points during their academic study or professional preparation. Second,
the field of digital literacy is characterised by fluidity and rapid development, as
new devices become available and new programmes and applications are developed.
Initial teacher education cannot be expected to prepare the profession for continuing
waves of technological innovation and can therefore never be completely future-
proof (Davies & Merchant, 2014). In addition to these two challenges, rapid changes
in the curriculum structures of compulsory schooling, in an era of unprecedented
reform, add to this whole sense of fluidity. At school level, large-scale curriculum
reforms contribute to the difficulty of implementing digital practices, and as a result
trainee and newly qualified teachers often enter an unpredictable and uncertain
environment, characterised by shifting priorities and an uneven technological
infrastructure.
In this chapter we draw on two perspectives to illuminate the call for better
preparation of teachers to meet the challenges of integrating digital literacies in the
classroom. We begin by looking at the current state of play in developing these new
literacies in compulsory schooling. Given that this is an ambitious undertaking, we
have simplified the task by teasing out key themes before going on to illustrate these
as they play out in research and practice on three illustrative areas: “virtual play,”
“social networking,” and “the extended classroom.” We then turn our attention to
the adult population, focusing on students entering Higher Education, in order to
gain a picture of the sorts of attitudes and experiences that graduates will bring
to the classroom. This perspective is based on empirical work using the Digital
Technologies Survey undertaken by the authors at the Sheffield Institute of Education.
These two perspectives are then brought together in a set of recommendations for
future development in training teachers to face the challenges of teaching 21st
century literacies in school settings.

DIGITAL LITERACIES – CLASSROOM PRACTICE

For many teachers working in the compulsory sector, curriculum content and time
allocation are tightly constrained. As neo-liberal education policies move towards
tighter accountability structures, the pressure on schools to perform to standard,
quantifiable success measures often has a narrowing influence on the curriculum
(Ball, 2012). Those aspects of literacy, mathematics, and science that are amenable
to simple assessment measures have tended to be favoured (see Williams, 2007),

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leaving teachers with little time or scope for “non-core subjects” and even less
for developing innovatory approaches. As a direct result of this, the use of digital
technology and the development of appropriate pedagogy in classrooms are patchy,
with pockets of innovation often dependent on individual enthusiasm or local
initiative (Burnett et al., 2014).
In addition to this, the rapid dissemination of new technologies has led to
important, but unresolved, debates about the nature of learning and teaching in the
“digital age.” Whether or not new technologies themselves lead to, or determine,
transformations in learning and teaching is highly contentious (Crook, 2012;
Merchant, 2012), but it is nonetheless quite clear that working in digital environments
at least prompts us to raise questions about traditional practices and relationships, and
to explore new approaches in the classroom. Of course, introducing new practices
into educational settings always constitutes a challenge. Whether such practices
involve resources, materials, approaches to teaching and learning, or curriculum
content, the extensive literature on innovation in schools repeatedly reminds us that
change is never a simple process (Fullan, 2001; Hargreaves, 2005). Digital literacies,
and the wider social practices in which they are embedded, add to this complexity
and often seem to disturb the “fragile ecology of the classroom” (Merchant, 2009).
This effect can be accounted for in a number of ways, but some key issues seem to
surface in the literature:
• Digital practices have emerged alongside significant changes in social life. These
changes have precipitated a reconsideration of the relationship between learners
and teachers, an acknowledgement of the permeability of classroom space, and
new ideas about how knowledge is generated and distributed, some of which
are deeply embedded in non-formal learning, popular culture and out-of-school
contexts (Lankshear & Knobel, 2010).
• Digital practices, particularly those that take place in online spaces, foreground
issues of identity and self-presentation. Although these identities are not separate
from everyday life, managing an online identity or presence on social media
raises new issues. As a result of this, children and young people need to learn how
to manage their digital identities in all aspects of their lives in order to develop
safe, ethical, and advantageous practices (Greenhow & Robelia, 2010).
• Digital competence is not evenly distributed. Often, following Prensky (2001),
children and young people are positioned as an homogeneous group of “digital
natives” who know more than adults – but we now understand that differences
in confidence, competence, and use are patterned in more nuanced ways. The
naivety of the “digital natives” debate has been clearly exposed (Bennett &
Maton, 2011) and the utopian rhetoric about equal access has been challenged
(see Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010).
Despite the wide range of complex and constraining factors – the overall policy
and curriculum context, and the specific issues that new technologies raise – research
and practice, although often the result of small-scale work, continue to thrive. In

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what follows, we focus on three areas that illustrate how these issues play out in
classroom studies. We begin with an overview of the research and development on
educational uses of videogames and virtual worlds (referred to here as virtual play),
before moving on to look at the contentious area of social networking. We then turn
our attention to various strands of research and practice that constellate around ideas
about “the extended classroom.”

Virtual play.  Video games and virtual worlds occupy an important place in the
lives of many children and young people. In common with other imaginary realms
they are culturally significant in that they can both entertain and educate. They
provide a rich context for the development of new communities of play (Pearce &
Artemisia, 2010) – communities that may be co-present, dispersed, or a hybrid
of both. Research suggests that virtual play presents opportunities for the sorts of
active engagement, production, and interaction that constitute 21st century literacies
and are hallmarks of an emerging participatory culture (Jenkins et al., 2006). So at
their best these environments nurture communicative practices that are important
in contemporary life, and provide an arena for problem-solving and higher order
thinking skills (Squire, 2012). However, not all videogames and virtual worlds do
this; they may simply entertain their players, or at worst provide unhelpful models
of consumerism or gender (Carrington & Hodgetts, 2010).
Investigations of the meaning making practices associated with virtual play
constitute a distinct subset of the research on new literacies. For example,
Steinkuehler (2007) suggests that a “constellation of literacy practices” is involved
in gaming, whereas Marsh’s (2010) work on Club Penguin, Gillen’s (2009) study of
Teen Second Life, and research with Active Worlds (Merchant, 2009) all illustrate the
digital literacy practices that constitute and accompany virtual play. These studies
show that children and young people not only find virtual play compelling, but that
they engage in sophisticated multimedia practices that often spill out into different
aspects of their life including real world play, traditional forms of writing, and other
online activity (Burnett & Merchant, 2014). The implications of this work for formal
education are significant. Educators may need to take these new experiences of
literacy into account and acknowledge their role in learners’ lives, but they may also
want to incorporate some gaming and virtual world play into school life, and in this
respect claims made about the learning that takes place in gaming (Gee, 2003) and
around gaming (Stevens et al., 2008) are particularly significant.

Social networking.  Since its inception the Internet has worked as a channel
for communication and social connection, and yet one of the most noteworthy
developments of recent years is the growth of “social software,” and the spread
of the ‘read/write web’ (Richardson, 2006). Applications specifically designed
to support and develop friendship and social interaction have a relatively short
history. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are currently the most popular of these,
but importantly social networking has become a global phenomenon with sites like

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 PREPARING TO TEACH 21ST CENTURY LITERACIES

V Kontakte, Q Zone, and Tuente providing for different language groups. Social
networking is a prime site for identity performance and public displays of friendship,
but it also involves knowledge-sharing and dialogic exchange (Gillen & Merchant,
2013), the flow of news and current affairs (Vis, 2013), and the enactment of micro-
celebrity (Page, 2012).
Despite some of the moral panics that seem to attach to online social networking
(see, for example, Cassell & Cramer, 2008), this unparalleled explosion of everyday
digital communication has provoked a range of reactions amongst educators.
Social networking sites have been vilified by some – who suggest that they have a
corrosive influence on friendship, face-to-face interaction, and standards of written
communication (Palmer, 2006). Others have argued that they provide important
opportunities and challenges for classroom exploration. For example, Hull and
Stornaiuolo (2010) in describing an initiative to promote cosmopolitanism through
education-based social software assert that:
…the rewards could not be greater, or the risk of failure more grave for
educating a citizenry able and willing to communicate with digital tools across
differences in a radically interconnected yet divided world. (185)
In many ways the different orientations to using social software in education
rehearse familiar positions concerning the relationship between the popular culture
of children and young people and the more formal world of school. Nevertheless, we
argue that the mere fact that children and young people are becoming literate across
a range of social media has implications for educators.
Greenhow and Robelia (2009) in their investigation of high school students’
social networking suggest that: “…educators must help students enact legal, ethical,
responsible, safe and advantageous online community practices” (p. 136). They
note that alongside issues about Internet safety, educators should promote what they
describe as advantageous practices. For Burnett and Merchant (2011), advantageous
practices are those that contribute to: increasing individuals’ life chances; enhancing
civic engagement; empowerment through collaboration and participation; making
a positive contribution to the wider community; and recognising and responding to
diverse identities and viewpoints.

The extended classroom.  A growing number of studies, including those by teacher

researchers, report on ways in which a variety of different technologies can be
combined to connect classrooms with the wider world. In one study, Davies and
Merchant (2009) report on the work of a Canadian teacher whose philosophy is to
“invite the world” into her classroom in order to help her 6 year old students to
learn. She used a class blog, a YouTube channel, Skype, and other digital tools
to promote this work. The urge to harness connectivity to enrich, and sometimes to
drive learning suggests the idea of an extended classroom – an idea that has caught
the interest of many educators who are using social media for educational purposes.
For example, Waller (2013) describes his use of Twitter in the classroom, detailing

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J. GARCÍA-MARTÍN ET AL.

how safe and ethical practices are observed, but also how microblogging ties in with
learning that combines both new and traditional literacies. In his work with older
students, Parry (2011) argues that teachers need to show students:
…how to use these technologies effectively to ensure they end up on the right
side of the digital divide: the side that knows how to use social media. (p. 2)
In developing a rationale for what he calls “mobile literacy,” Parry identifies three
areas of focus. These are: (1) understanding information access, (2) understanding
hyperconnectivity, and (3) understanding the new sense of space. The first is about
encouraging students to use technology to access information; the second, relates
specifically to developing new types of learning relationships, and concerns the
use of social media to connect learners with those outside the immediate classroom
context in advantageous ways; and the third concerns the ways in which technology
mediates one’s experience of the material/physical world.
Work on virtual play, social networking and the extended classroom suggest some
ways in which new technologically mediated practices are being used to enrich
students’ educational experience. They do however, introduce new pedagogical
considerations and raise quite specific issues for teachers. Furthermore, it is
worth noting that the work described has mostly been undertaken by experienced
teachers, often in collaboration with researchers – those who are keen to explore
new developments in the classroom. If a new generation of teachers is to respond
to the challenge of integrating digital literacies in the classroom, we need a sense of
what understandings and experience they bring to the profession. In order to address
this we now turn attention to our own empirical work with students entering Higher
Education.

THE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE OF STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

As we have seen, digital technologies, and particularly social media, have

rapidly increased their importance in personal, social, and educational contexts
(Bennett et al., 2012; García-Martín & García-Sánchez, 2013; García-Martín &
García-Sánchez, 2015; Merchant, 2009; Weyant & Gardner, 2010). Students entering
higher education are now regularly expected to use these tools in the course of their
study (Bennett et al., 2012; Laru, Näykki, & Järvelä, 2012) and sometimes as part of
their assessment, and of course this is particularly relevant to student teachers in the
light of what has already been discussed. Despite this we know relatively little about
how students feel about this, or their prior experience.
In order to shed some light on this, in October 2014, we surveyed 919 new
undergraduate and postgraduate students at Sheffield Hallam University. Although
we would not claim that these students are necessary typical of a wider population,
the survey does provide a snapshot of students entering higher education, based on
a contemporary student cohort attending a large provincial university in the UK.
The students’ average age was 22, 35.3% being male and 64.7% female, and they

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were evenly distributed between six different faculties at the university. Most were
full-time students with a small percentage enrolled on part-time courses (5.1%).
Although only a small percentage of this student cohort would be likely to enter the
teaching force, the data enable us to think about the digital lives of those whose age
and level of education make them eligible for teacher education.
We designed the Digital Technologies Survey, which was made available online
to these students. The survey consisted of four clearly differentiated sections: the
first provided basic information about the characteristics of the survey, including
its purpose and estimated duration; the second addressed data protection and
confidentiality issues; the third contained the substantive survey questions; and the
final part acknowledged the importance of student participation and project funding.
To gain an impression of students’ digital lives the key survey questions addressed
three areas1:
i. Students’ general use of digital technologies – this included questions on use,
frequency, and device preference for twelve kinds of digital technologies:
blogging software; wiki software; applications for synchronous communication
(such as Skype and FaceTime); video sharing; presentation tools; microblogging;
social networking; business-oriented networking sites (such as LinkedIn);
screencasting tools, web-based response systems; interactive online stickies
(such as Pinterest and Picassa), and photo sharing tools.
ii. Students’ feelings about using digital technologies – this included two
questions about familiarity and confidence with the use of the above group of
technologies.
iii. Students’ perceptions of the use of digital technologies in their studies – this
included three questions about expectations about the use of these tools in the
university studies.
The results from our descriptive analysis of the eleven variables – (i) pattern of
use, (ii) frequency and duration of use, (iii) place of use, (iv) device used, (v) who
recommended the specific tool, (vi) reason or purpose for use, (vii) recipient of
the communication, (viii) familiarity and confidence in doing specific tasks,
(ix) expectations, (x) confidence and (xi) importance – are explained below.
Firstly, over 90% of the students reported using video-sharing and social
networking, and 85% used synchronous communication. This was followed by
photo sharing tools (70.5%), and microblogging (67.8%). About half of the sample
reported using presentation tools and wikis, whereas fewer used interactive online
sticky notes (37.1%), blogging (32.5%), or business-oriented social software
(28.6%). Web-based response systems (19.5%) and screencasting tools (10.9%)
were used the least. These findings are similar to the results obtained in previous
European and American studies and reports (García-Martín & García-Sánchez,
2013; IAB, 2015; Junco, 2013; Pew Research Center, 2014). On the one hand, they
seem to suggest a split between personal social use and educational use, and on the
other a clear preference for synchronous tools over asynchronous tools.

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Secondly, regarding frequency of use, many of these technologies (such as web-

based responses systems, screencasting, wikis, business-oriented social networking
tools, interactive stickies, blogging and presentation tools) were used for less than 1
hour per week, whereas photo sharing, synchronous communication, microblogging
and video were used more regularly – from between 1 to 3 hours a week. A higher
frequency of use was reported for social networking with estimates of between
3 and 6 hours a week. This is also consistent with the results of recent European and
American studies and again suggests that more time is devoted to personal social
uses of technology than educational software.
Thirdly, with regard to the place of use, digital technologies were mainly used in
the home (50%), less often on campus (16%), in the library (10%), or at a place of
work (4%). Nevertheless, there were some differences of use in function of the digital
technology. In this regard, the digital tool most used in the library and on campus was
blogging (37%). However, social networking sites, as one might expect, were used
across the domains, in the place of work, at home and on campus. Photo sharing,
microblogging, presentation and video were also mainly used on campus. Over 80%
of the students surveyed used social networking sites, video, and synchronous tools
at home. This suggests some distinctions between the domains of use, although the
responses do lend support to the popular belief in the ubiquity of social networking.
With respect to how students were introduced to these particular tools we can see
a strong pattern of peer recommendation and discovery with over 46% reporting
that they found out about them from their friends, or discovered them by themselves
(24%). Teachers (8%), family (7%), and others (2%) were less influential.
With respect to the purpose, in general students used the tools for social (29%),
entertainment (27%), and less for educational (21%) reasons. A third of the students
reported using digital tools for communication with friends, with smaller numbers
for family (18%) and classmates (12%). Only 5% used them to communicate
with teachers. This finding is consistent with the results of a recent Spanish study
(García-Martín & García-Sánchez, 2015) and highlights the importance of peer
recommendation in discovering new digital tools and the over-riding significance of
digital communication in social interaction and entertainment. Interestingly though,
there was some recognition of their role in education.
In general, most students expected to use these digital tools in their university
studies. Although they did not anticipate using photo sharing applications in their
studies, they saw that they might use some of the other tools listed for educational
purposes. Generally though, they anticipated using presentation and video tools for
their university studies, and this could well reflect their prior use of them in school
and other educational settings.
Many students reported a lack of confidence in using more unfamiliar tools in their
university studies (screencasting, web-based response systems, business-oriented
social networking, blogging and interactive online sticky notes in particular).
Confidence in the use of presentation tools, wikis, photo sharing, synchronous tools,
and microblogging was higher, and as might be expected they felt very confident

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in using video tools or social networking for their university studies. Finally, it
seemed that students thought that digital technologies were an important part of
their university studies. However, they were not convinced of the importance of
photo sharing, microblogging, synchronous communication, and interactive online
stickies. This could well reflect their lack of experience in using these technologies
in educational contexts.
These findings provide more evidence to support the claim that digital technologies
are omnipresent in the daily life of young people. The results also show that university
students would like to use the digital tools that they know in their studies, and in
the case of some tools they believe that they should use them for learning. At the
same time the results suggest that it is necessary to spend more time in training new
teachers in the use of these technologies for educational purposes. Although these
new entrants to higher education were familiar with a range of new technologies,
their experience of using them was mainly restricted to everyday social interaction.
What is encouraging about the findings is their recognition that technologies have
a role to play in their own learning. However, as Burnett’s (2009) work so clearly
illustrates, personal use, whether social or educational, does not necessarily translate
into professional use in the classroom.

THE WAY FORWARD

We began this chapter by observing that the wide reaching change in communicative
practices associated with new technologies has yet to make a significant impact on
compulsory schooling, and we suggested a number of reasons why this might be
the case. These include the disconnect between policy rhetoric, curriculum reform,
and school accountability in this area. We also noted that digital literacies challenge
how we think about teaching and learning – as well as how we think about teachers
and learners. This could be seen as part of what Lankshear and Knobel (2010)
describe as the “mind-set” of new literacies. Yet, despite all this, interesting and
innovative developments are taking place, and the literature on virtual play, social
networking, and extended classrooms gives promising examples that indicate useful
ways forward.
Our survey of students entering higher education adds to this picture by suggesting
that graduates joining the teaching profession are likely to have “insider knowledge”
of digital technology and at least some understanding of how it might be put to
use for educational purposes. But such an understanding on its own is unlikely to
be sufficient to drive the sort of changes that are required to develop 21st century
literacies in the classroom. Clearly work is needed at many levels, but in drawing
this discussion to a close we make 4 recommendations that we believe could have a
lasting impact.
i. Provide student teachers with first hand experiences of using digital literacies
in the classroom. Partly because digital practices raise quite specific issues for

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J. GARCÍA-MARTÍN ET AL.

practitioners, those who are preparing to join the profession need to know what
actually happens in practical situations. In order to achieve this, student teachers
need to work with confident, innovative, and reflective practitioners who have a
working knowledge of some of the challenges – including how to promote safe,
ethical, and advantageous practices and how to deal with resource issues and
technical gliches.
ii. Provide structured opportunities for student teachers to reflect on innovative
classroom practices that they have participated in or observed. Optimising
the learning of student teachers may well be dependent on the kinds of critical
reflection that they engage in, and structuring reflective discussion and activity
are an important part of this. Evaluating what works, and why, as well as what
might not be so successful can be instructive particularly when this is done in
the context of an understanding of the characteristics of 21st century literacy
practices (see Burnett & Merchant, 2014).
iii. Provide opportunities for student teachers to explore the affordances of a range
of applications that could be used in the classroom. Our Digital Technologies
Survey shows that students in Higher Education are very familiar with some
applications and not others. They may also be unaware of what digital tools are
being used in school settings. Given that our survey data show the significance of
peer recommendation, it might well be useful to think about how student teachers
could explore and trial applications that are new to them, before demonstrating
and recommending them to their peers. This replicates the sort of informal
professional development that already occurs within teacher groups on Twitter.
iv. Provide student teachers with opportunities to critically evaluate the literature
on digital literacies in education. Because innovation in digital technology is
fast moving, opportunities to look at current research and professional literature
are important for those in teaching. But along with this there is now a strong
literature base of theoretical and empirical work that informs current thinking
and innovation in classroom practice. Being familiar with this literature will
provide student teachers with critical purchase on their explorations of 21st
century literacies in practice.
Finally, to return to a point made at the beginning of this chapter, we need to
acknowledge the emergent nature of digital literacies. Initial teacher education
cannot be expected to offer a future-proof set of skills, understandings, and
classroom practices. Keeping pace with new technologies and evaluating their use
and usefulness in classroom contexts also has to be part of continuing professional
development.

NOTE
1
The questions in the first and second theme were adapted from the HEWE2.0 questionnaire
(García-Martín & García-Sánchez, 2013).

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 SECTION 2
TEACHER EDUCATION
 SUE DYMOKE

5. INTEGRATING POETRY-FOCUSED DIGITAL

TECHNOLOGY WITHIN A LITERACY TEACHER
EDUCATION COURSE

INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on how digital technology is integrated within a one-year

preservice Postgraduate Certificate of Education programme (PGCE) for teachers
of English for Secondary aged students (aged 11–19) at the University of Leicester
in the UK. It explores some of the affordances and challenges that technology offers
beginning teachers who are developing subject and pedagogic knowledge and their
critical digital engagement in their placement classrooms. The focus is primarily on
practical examples of poetry teaching and learning. It outlines case study material
from a research project which considered use of a wiki to support professional
learning about writing poetry and teaching poetry writing. In addition the chapter
draws on reflections from student teachers about their use of technology in their
Initial Teacher Education and points to professional concerns for English teachers
working in digital contexts.

CONTEXT

PGCE Student Teachers’ Prior Learning

The size of our PGCE English cohort has varied from 35 to 15 students in recent
years and is determined by annual government allocation of training places. Student
teachers are usually between 22 and 45 years old. The majority are females from
diverse ethnic backgrounds. All students have gained some experience of secondary
English teaching prior to course commencement. This often ranges far beyond our
minimum requirement of two weeks in a classroom: many have previously worked as
teaching assistants or English-as-second-language teachers. At their course interviews
candidates are asked to comment on their level of technological/media competency
and critique classroom use of ICT (Information Communications Technology) that
they have observed or participated in. Most candidates are confident, self-taught
users of Word, PowerPoint, social media, and Internet search engines. Some have
ICT qualifications. A small proportion – approximately 1 in 5 of the interviewees –
have prior experience of film editing or working with spread-sheets. Applicants’
responses to questions about classroom use of ICT are often much more variable.

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 59–75.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
S. DYMOKE

Some raise issues about opportunity of access to ICT equipment or cyber bullying.
Others have observed filmed versions of Shakespeare plays in examination-level
teaching or the Interactive White Board (IWB) being used as a digital projector. At
this stage in their teaching careers, few interviewees are able to explore the potential
that technology offers for collaborative working or for making and critiquing texts
in different ways. These are key “entry” points that inform the design of the PGCE
English programme.

Programme Structure

The PGCE English programme is typical of many other PGCE courses in English
universities. The taught element has to be delivered within a tight timeframe of 20
days within the 12 week university-based element of a 36 week training course. The
whole programme encompasses two school-based practicums in different contexts,
completion of two 30-credit master’s assignments, a reflective journal, and a range
of subject tasks and other activities that, if completed successfully, culminate in
the award of the PGCE and Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). The English modules
are designed to begin a critical conversation about subject teaching which should
be developed and sustained throughout a teacher’s career. During subject sessions
student teachers refine their skills as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. They
learn to work as members of professional communities, in their departments, schools
and subject associations, in the best interests of all young people.
One of the key strengths of the University of Leicester English PGCE, as
identified by successive External Examiners, is Poetry teaching. I will focus on how
digital technology is embedded within the PGCE English modules beginning with
an account of a particular piece of research on wikis and poetry which involved
PGCE student teachers. This section is followed by consideration of the rationale
which underpins our chosen approaches together with an exploration of how student
teachers themselves use and reflect on technology in their developing practice.

WIKI-ED POETRY RESEARCH

Writing dialogue and support with writing were key aspects of the Wiki-ed poetry
research project which Janette Hughes and I conducted in 2008–2009 with 56
Canadian and UK Language Arts and English student teachers (Dymoke & Hughes,
2009; Hughes & Dymoke, 2011). We wanted to investigate how digital poetry
texts could be made, the spaces their makers occupied, and the affordances that
digital communication could provide for construction, reflection, collaboration, and
support for professional learning about the teaching of poetry writing during initial
teacher education. Within a digital space, multimodal texts can be woven by many
makers, users, and readers of that text. They can be spliced or “remixed” (Knobel &
Lankshear, 2007, p. 8), rethreaded, redesigned, and changed by other makers.

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Drawing on Gee’s (2004) notion of “affinity spaces” (p. 83), we sought to

establish a community of learners who could share their knowledge and experiences
about poetry. We chose to use a wiki because of the collaborative and participatory
opportunities and the digitally afforded multimodality it appeared to offer within a
digital space that was only accessible to invited participants. Students would be able
to add images, sound, and video plug-ins, as well as experiment with collaborative
writing because a wiki allows users to edit each other’s posts.
We created a wiki space with a different ‘page’ for each topic, and divided the
students into eight groups ensuring that the two cohorts were mixed in together in
order to gain different perspectives. The students, the majority of whom had no
previous experience of using a wiki, were initially asked to introduce themselves
to each other on-line and examine seventeen contrasting definitions of the nature of
poetry written by scholars and poets over the decades. Throughout Autumn 2008,
the students wrote poems based on activities in poetry workshops conducted at each
university. They were also invited to respond to a secondary school student’s digital
poem. Students provided each other with support and constructive feedback via the
wiki when asked to do so. We soon noticed they were very polite in their feedback
and quite reluctant to suggest any significant changes.
Student teachers’ perceptions and draft poems were captured through insider
research using a variety of ethical and qualitative methods. The two university tutors
who set up the wiki were also participants. The nature of this insider research is not
without its problems (Davies & Merchant, 2007). In commenting on students’ drafts,
we were both very conscious of our roles as a tutors, assessors, researchers, and, in
one case, a published poet. We tried to set these aside but, inevitably, they informed
our responses and how other participants reacted to them.

Student Teachers as Writers

Barton (2005) and Wheeler and Wheeler (2009) suggest that wiki participation
might be unsuitable for those struggling to find their personal voice and identity
through writing due to the level of personal exposure and the perceived need to adapt
writing style to a new context that this might entail. Student teachers’ questionnaire
responses acknowledged their desire to impress a new audience and, conversely, the
vulnerability of their draft/their writing personas when these were exposed on screen.
A small number of participants were understandably wary of the blank “pages.” In
the early stages some preferred to post less obtrusively in comment boxes below
the main pages. Other student teachers did step tentatively on to the ice but were
apologetic about introducing themselves as writers. Instead they preferred to label
their work as a “little poem” or “very very rough draft.” One wrote:
Wow a blank page!…well here goes! These poems are extremely rough
extremely not thought out and were merely pushed upon a page or two a while
back, if pags [sic] were vengeful I think my time would be up.

61
S. DYMOKE

Some student teachers responded to poetry writing enthusiastically. A small

number became reasonably frequent contributors to different groups, seeking readers
for their poems, and sharing recommendations of poems they liked. They played to
the gallery and developed a relationship with a partially known, but predominantly
unknown audience. Some began to reflect on themselves as writers and to comment
on other people’s work. One commented on her developing creativity and observed
“I seem to struggle over word choices.” As the year wore on “the whole teacher thing
[took] over” and teaching placement priorities began to intervene. Nevertheless
some found this supportive medium gave them confidence to write and share their
own poetry for the very first time. For example:
I must confess that this is the first poem I have ever written… I will try and
contribute more to this page and to you, my fellow Haikus. I am in awe of We
Danced Through the Ashes [another poem posted on the site] and I think you
have a real talent.
Other participants began to experiment with the multi-modality offered by the
wiki: they pasted images which inspired their writing and hyperlinks to other poetry
pages. After writing a haiku sequence, one student created a very powerful film of
sounds and images We Danced Through the Ashes. He wrote:
I’ve added a video I made this evening to accompany my poem We Danced
Through the Ashes (Haiku page). The video isn’t me reading my poem. It’s
actually a visual montage that supports the imagery in the poem. The poem is
partly about mediated reality so I’ve used a free online text to voice synthesiser
to mediate for me. I just pasted my poem into it. The synthesis is slightly out in
terms of human cadence and I hope this gives the “reading” a creepy quality.
Comments welcome.
Fountain (2005) identifies non-interference as a notable feature of on-line
collaborative creative work. Direct intervention into other participants’ draft poems
(in a public arena) occurred rarely. The extent to which these interventions were
picked up on or acted upon was limited. For the most part, the wiki dialogue about
the writing lacks cohesion, appearing stilted and lacking significant development.
Some student teachers seldom contributed, choosing to remain silent visitors.
Sixty three different poems were posted in total. Some teachers wrote three or
more while others chose not to contribute at all to these pages. Many of the poems
were works in progress including sonnets, poems about paintings, haikus, limericks,
and poems in other forms such as a bullet-shaped poem. The bullet poem was
introduced by its author following seminar discussion of “The Convergence of the
Twain” by Thomas Hardy (1976) (a poem which describes the twin births and fateful
collision of iceberg and the Titanic). It charts the birth of bullet and soldier:
III
Now follow me sixteen years

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 A LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION COURSE

To our heroes’ first embrace:

Bullet kisses the centre
Of baby-boy’s slumbering face.
from: “A Bullet with a Name on It”,
(lines on a senseless killing)
Object poems, furniture poems, poems using one syllable words, and those
inspired by “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon (1999) were also posted. More
spontaneous pieces drew on teachers’ own learning situations such as teaching
placements, day-to-day travel, lecture topics, content, and even, in one case, a
lecturer’s use of PowerPoint.

Teaching Poetry Writing and Using Wikis as a Pedagogical Tool

In their final reflections, many student teachers wished they had been more
involved in the wiki during the course. Many appeared to recognise its pedagogical
potential: one participant commented: “it gave me a great model to model classroom
discussions and peer editing online.” One of the more confident wiki contributors set
up a wiki in her second teaching placement, using it very successfully as a tool for
sharing story drafts between English lessons. A second contributor returned to the
wiki at the end of her ITE year. She shared three new draft poems and commented
on the potential of the wiki for collaborative creative writing:
I like the idea of drafting and sharing work. It also seems to provide
encouragement and facilitates a workshop environment. The digital space
is fantastic at allowing people to contribute their work in a way that simply
wasn’t possible pre-internet, wikis etc. … Sharing on wikis/blogs removes the
element of self-promotion and makes it become more collaborative – exactly
how poetry should be in my opinion.
Revisiting this research seven years on, it is surprising how many of the issues it
raised are still pertinent – especially within a wiki environment. The key challenge
remains: how to build confidence and independence in wiki users so they can
share draft work and constructively intervene in another (unfamiliar) person’s
writing within an unfamiliar digital space. O’Bannon, Lubke, and Britt’s (2013)
research with preservice technology teachers in the U.S. concludes that they wanted
greater autonomy in their wiki use, “more social presence and the opportunity to
communicate more efficiently or synchronously, such as can be done with Google
Docs” (p. 147). A vast number of blogs and wikis exist in cyber space.1 They
may have occasional visitors but the extent to which visitors are active readers/
contributors who move the discussions along is very hard to judge. In her recent
research Janette Hughes preferred to use a Ning as a classroom social networking
site to explore the on and offline identities of Canadian adolescents (aged 11–12)
through poetry and digital media (Hughes, 2015). The level of digital access that her

63
64
Specific What will be done Timeline Evidence (where kept? what impact has the work had?) & notes
Development Focus (success criteria)
S. DYMOKE

Develop a wider Research a range by 14/03/15 Chinese Storytelling project – a project to keep the tradition of Chinese
knowledge and of oral traditions storytelling alive in popular culture http://www.shuoshu.org/Chinese%
awareness of from cultures 20Storytelling%20-%20The%20Interplay%20of%20Oral%20and%20
oral traditions in my Phase Written%
and performance B school as a 20Traditions.shtml.
poetry. starting point.
The Pathways Project to bridge the gap between traditional and new
storytelling http://oraltradition.org/ http://www.pathwaysproject.org/.
Find performance 30/04/15 YouTube – Benjamin Zephaniah, Michael Rosen.
poetry on
YouTube and British Library Poetry and Performance Archive and The Poetry Archive.
try and see some Dreadlock Alien – 16/05/15 School English Conference CPD. Also seen at
live performance Phase A school.
poetry. Raymond Antrobus good example to use for pupils, they can achieve a
similar effect. Simple performance yet effective. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=UBfOxHuX5Y0
Kate Tempest. Very current, more like music pupils will listen to now. Very
engaging and relatable for them. Also has a wide variety of performances. Very
good source to get into poetry! http://katetempest.co.uk/video.

Show findings in 28/05/15 Unfortunately my Phase B classes are all doing exams or controlled
lessons if possible assessment. If I have the opportunity in my last week with my year 10s I will try
to enrich pupils’ and show them some performance poetry. I have showed Benjamin Zephaniah
learning. Talking Turkeys in Phase A to my year 8 pupils, which was a great success.

Figure 1. Sample extract from of a student teacher’s completed subject audit 42

 A LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION COURSE

young participants have enjoyed within their lessons (both in terms of equipment
and social networking opportunities) is one that many teacher educators will envy –
particularly those in England with its revised but increasingly retrograde National
Curriculum (DfE, 2013). Judith Kneen notes the “uncertainty about the role of ICT
in English is exacerbated by a revised national curriculum which makes no reference
to the use of ICT in English” (Kneen, 2015).

POETRY AND DIGITAL INTEGRATION WITHIN THE PGCE

ENGLISH PROGRAMME

Auditing Poetry Subject and Pedagogic Knowledge Needs

From the moment successful candidates are offered a place on the English course
they begin to work on aspects of their subject knowledge for teaching. They
achieve this through completion of a selection of tasks which encompass the
learning/skills needs that they identified at their course interview. Poetry is one
of the most acknowledged subject knowledge needs for many beginning teachers.
This can be due to a confessed fear of the genre, an avoidance of it in selection
of their undergraduate modules, or perhaps the impact of the “Dead Hand” of the
public examinations system (Dymoke, 2002, 2009). The student teachers’ subject
and pedagogic needs are subsequently reviewed. New targets are negotiated at key
points throughout the course via a digitally compiled audit. In 2014, one student
set herself the year long challenge that she would listen to a poem a day by using
http://feeds.poetryfoundation.org/PoetryFoundation/PoemOfTheDay. At a much
later stage in her course she aimed (successfully) to develop her experience of oral
poetry and storytelling (see Figure 1).
In setting initial preparatory tasks and through subsequent tutorial guidance, we
hope to encourage student teachers to experience the joys and rich variety of the
genre by searching for, listening to, making and sharing poetry. Unfortunately, but
unsurprisingly, the student teacher in Figure 1 was unable to share her enthusiasm for
the performance poets she had discovered due to the pressure of students’ controlled
assessments in the Summer term.

Poetry and Digital Technology within Subject Sessions

Early in the Autumn student teachers participate in a whole day session on poetry
teaching. This serves as their main introduction to poetry pedagogy. It is augmented
by their work in other sessions including those on reading, writing, drama strategies,
and pre/post-16 examination English teaching. One of the preparatory activities for
the poetry session requires browsing and listening to poems on the Poetry Archive at
http://www.poetryarchive.org and exploring the teaching resources on the site. They
are asked to follow the website’s instructions to begin creating their personal digital

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S. DYMOKE

‘My Archive’ of sound recordings to share with other group members. This archive
could also be developed into themed “collections” for classroom use.

Poetry Websites and Apps

During this taught session and thereafter, student teachers learn about and critique
examples from a range of poetry and other resources in relation to their own subject
and pedagogic development needs. Although there is a plethora of poetry websites,
and apps, sadly their quality remains very variable. Some endorse the myth that
poetry is a two-dimensional genre in which words might occasionally be supported
by visuals. Nevertheless, the very best sources fully exploit the affordances that
digital technology can offer in that they enable students to listen to, record, and
interact with a variety of voices, performances, perspectives, and manuscripts, to
become poetry “prod-users” (Bruns, 2006). Web-based resources include rich
archives of performances and background materials such as:
• The English and Media Centre’s Poetry Station: http://poetrystation.org.uk/ – the
performances and the links to examination poetry texts are very helpful here
• Poetry By Heart: http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/ – the poetry timeline is
especially useful
• New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/
A key purpose of the preparatory task, and the rest of the poetry day, is to
emphasise the multi-modal nature of poetry, to begin to lift it off the page and to
show that although poetry may have been created on paper, mobile or computer
screen “poetry doesn’t live there” (Adisa, 2002, p. 128). Digital resources bring
experienced performers and new poets’ voices in to the classroom and ensure young
people’s own voices can be recorded and heard on the global digital stage (Dymoke
et al., 2015). Our student teachers will listen to clips from slam showcases and Poetry
By Heart finals. They will be encouraged to search for performances on YouTube
and other sites with the clear understanding that they must consider important
safeguarding issues when using the resources themselves and when sharing these in
their classrooms.
Almost all student teachers have mobile phones. Many, but by no means all,
use kindles and i-pads. Apps like The Wasteland (2013) and Shakespeare’s Sonnets
(2012) offer rich opportunities for multi-layered explorations of texts by providing
access to original manuscripts, glossaries, and opportunities to annotate with
contrasting readings and critical interpretations (including their own). Although
student teachers are introduced to these fantastic resources, sadly – as they are
quick to point out – the cost still prohibits wide-ranging classroom use. However,
student teachers are keen to find free or inexpensive apps that will support their
own subject knowledge development. This year the Poem Foundation’s app
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/mobile/) was popular. It introduces new poems by
subject, poet, or mood. Alternatively poems can be randomly grouped by “spinning”

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the web archive to combine a mood and a subject and arrive at some surprising
combinations. Key questions in exploring any new resource (digital or paper-based)
are always:
• would they use the resource?
• why?
• with whom?
• how might it need mediating/differentiating to suit individual learners?

Critical Reading and Interpretation

Janks (2010) writes that “Critical Literacy requires that we engage with and
distance ourselves from texts” (p. 185). From the first week of the programme
onwards theoretical perspectives on critical, digital, multiple iteracies underpin
session discussions and activities on the changing nature of texts and their creation/
recreation. During the poetry and reading sessions we introduce and critique a range
of interpretative activities. These include digital programmes whose “affordances”
(Laurillard et al., 2000) offer readers ways of engaging in synchronous or
asynchronous discussion about the language of texts such as:
• http://wallwisher.com/ for tagging texts with virtual post-it notes or “padlets” and
emargin https://emargin.bcu.ac.uk/emargin/auth/index which is suitable for use
with examination level students for preparatory reading, sharing first responses,
and discussion-building in virtual groups.
Two other digital resources enable readers to delve more deeply into the language
soup of a poem. The first of these is wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) which generates
“word clouds” from pasted-in texts and indicates the frequency of individual words
by displaying them in larger font sizes. The user can choose to omit certain high
frequency words and also enjoy selecting colours and fonts. This simple tool is
invaluable. It can be used to focus attention on writers’ word choices, for prediction
activities, or to explore potential patterns or themes in a poet’s work before, during,
and after a poem has been read. I observed one student teacher using a poem wordle
highly effectively with a challenging group (aged 14–15) in order to initiate a
discussion about their developing personal interpretations prior to and after reading.
In a similar vein, student teachers also experiment with a “collapsed poem.”
The idea of collapsing a poem were first introduced by Trevor Millum and Chris
Warren3. Such a poem presents all the poem’s words in alphabetical order with the
punctuation stripped out. Essentially, the text becomes a data bank which students
can use to investigate a poet’s word choices, sounds, and frequency. Although this
technique has evident similarities with wordle, a raw “collapsed poem” word bank
presents a higher level of challenge to learners. For example, the students themselves
make all the initial judgements about word frequency, word classes, and, potentially,
superfluous words. The word bank can become source material for their writing

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S. DYMOKE

(with or without the aid of the poem’s title). Student teachers are quick to see the
potential of this activity. They are also keen to experiment with ways in which the
activities could be differentiated and scaffolded for use by students with specific
learning needs.

Writing and Composing Activities

It is a sad fact that many student teachers have limited prior experiences of writing
poetry and a fear of what this might entail – unless they have completed an English
and Creative Writing degree or had a rare, rich poetry education in their compulsory
schooling (Dymoke, 2009). Digital technology has an important role in building
confidence with poetry writing. It can offer potential written and visual source
materials as well as new ways of collaborating with other writers.
i. Found poetry. One of my favourite ways of alleviating poetry writing fears
is to have fun with writing found poetry. Prendergast (2006) describes found
poetry as “the imaginative appropriation and reconstruction of already existing
texts” (p. 369). In its most straightforward form, the composing process involves
selecting a piece of prose (such as junk mail, a web news article, a set of
instructions), and breaking that text down into new lines or extracting words and
phrases to create a poem. It could also involve collaging and combining language
from several texts or using verbatim texts. The language is already provided
for the writer or bricoleur who can concentrate on the creative use of cut and
paste to find “beauty in the unexpected” (Manhire, 2009, p. 8). In doing so, the
composer/writer can also engage critically with the language of the original text
and deepen their understanding of media positioning and social justice issues
such as personal identity construction (for example, Hughes, 2013). During any
PGCE poetry writing activity I always model the process myself first. As Stibbs
(1981) so memorably said, it would be “very bad manners” not to (p. 49). I draft
new poems during the session after sharing a digital gift: “How does a poem
mean?” The words of this found poem all arrived on screen while I was searching
an on-line library catalogue for research literature on poetry and meaning.
How does a poem mean?
How does a poem mean? found no matches.
You may change your search or you may select
a new search from the closest matches:
How does protein folding get started?
How does a bird fly?
How does it move?
How does society decide?
How does the Constitution secure rights?

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 A LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION COURSE

How does the distorted socio-economic structure impede the expansion of

accumulation?
How does the European Union relate to the world?
How does the Galaxy work?
How does your Birmingham grow?
How does a poem mean?
No matches found.
(Dymoke, 2008)
The subjects and sources for found poetry know no bounds. Digital technology
affords found poets the opportunity to cast their net widely for texts (including texts
that are still in the making), to cut, paste, and recreate with a sense of immediacy.
It also provides the chance to explore issues of ownership and acknowledgement
of original sources. For student teachers, and for those they teach, this activity is
a real boon which gives writers so many choices of subject, form, and language.
In 2015 the student teachers’ forays into found poetry included: a poem about pop
star Madonna’s fall from grace at a music awards ceremony (sourced from tweets);
a piece about the experience of dementia (using blog and website extracts); a
valedictory poem for a tutor (drawn from a tutor’s emails to a student); and a series
of haiku about the ups and downs of PGCE life (composed from Facebook status
updates). At the end of the course, one NQT identified found poetry as her best
teaching discovery of her year.
ii. Peer support with writing poetry. Finding potential subjects is but one element
of the writing process. The challenge of drafting and shaping a poem is another
aspect that beginning teachers need to experience if they are to feel confident
about supporting young people with writing their own poetry (Dymoke, 2003,
2009). Our year-long PGCE Writing Portfolio task requires students to comment
on each other’s work in progress. They are encouraged to use Word comment
boxes and, if appropriate, “track changes” to offer suggestions, and praise and
ask questions about a peer’s intentions for a particular piece. In Autumn 2014
I observed some students who were teaching each other how to use Word’s
“review” features. During the course of the year many began to use Google
Docs for group planning of schemes of work. For some of our student teachers,
who are much more familiar with posting comments by direct messaging or in
response to social media postings, these appeared to be new ways of sharing
formative feedback on drafts.

STUDENT TEACHERS’ DIGITAL PRACTICES AND REFLECTIONS

During 2014–15, our cohort of 15 student teachers became increasingly adept at

working digitally in their planning, resourcing, teaching, and tracking individual
learners’ progress in their secondary English classes. Additionally, they were

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S. DYMOKE

using technological skills to record evidence of their own progress in meeting and
surpassing the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2012). Figure 2 outlines the professional
activities they engaged in order to ensure classroom-readiness.

Teachers’ digital preparation for students’ learning

Learning how to use (and how to book) hardware including visualisers, i-pads, digital
projectors, IWBs and school’s ICT suite/facilities
Learning about digital safe-guarding issues including cyber-bulling, Prevent4 measures,
mobile phone use in school and e-safety
Learning how to use school intranet, Virtual Learning Environment, Moodles, and so on.
Joining and participating in on-line professional/subject teaching communities
(including Twitter)
Locating apps, websites, screen shots, sound clips and other software appropriate for
intended learning
Familiarisation with new apps, websites, and other software
Planning, designing and adapting digital templates, models, quizzes, web quests
and so on.
Devising Prezzi or PowerPoint presentations
Use of digital technology in the classroom to support students’ learning
Teaching with integrated use of digital tools (where appropriate)
Teaching students to use hardware (if necessary)
Teaching students to use specific apps, websites and other software
Supporting and monitoring students’ learning
Using digital timer for time prompts during lesson
Using internet for searching images, recordings, and information (where need arises)
Using randomiser (where appropriate) for selecting students to respond to questions
Viewing, listening, reading, and responding to students’ digital outcomes
Teachers’ uses of digital technology for assessment and administration
Learning how to use registration and data management systems
Logging student progress data and analyzing data to inform differentiated planning
Using external examination board systems to analyze break down of students’ grades
Using email to contact students, parents, and carers
Writing reports for different audiences
Sharing schemes of work, plans, and resources with colleagues

Figure 2. Digital technology and classroom readiness

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 A LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION COURSE

The group were asked to log, evaluate their developing use of ICT for professional
purposes, and identify three lessons which demonstrated ‘high level’ use of ICT by
their students. Figure 3 provides a summary of the types of activities identified.

Type of task Examples of students’ high level learning using digital

technology
Composition Taking, editing, and captioning photos for a photo
documentary
Using i-pads to photograph words found on packaging in
school. Devising found poetry from these images.
Designing fact sheets on characters in “The Kite Runner” by
Khaled Hosseini
Editing a script and adding stage directions
Recording persuasive speeches on i-pads
Writing and designing books and book covers for younger
children or peers using inklewriter or bookcreator
Planning group essays using Google Docs
Scripting and filming a wildlife programme on yellow spotted
lizards (from the novel ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar)
Creating a comic strip linked to using chogger.com/
Using easel.ly/ to create timelines and poster presentations
Creating Truman Burbank’s blog (from the film
“The Truman Show”)
Mind-mapping ideas for fantasy writing using popplet
Creating PowerPoint presentations on the poem “Rapture”
by Carol Ann Duffy
Devising, filming & editing a revision video on themes in
“Macbeth”
Using a visualiser to create a model GCSE poetry response
Using Airplay (wireless streaming) to present research on
conventions of travel writing

Figure 3. Examples of students’ high level learning using digital technology

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S. DYMOKE

Analysis & annotation Creating and analysing “wordles” to explore Conan Doyle’s
language use in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”: analysing
teacher-provided “wordles” of Carol Ann Duffy’s poems
before and after class reading & discussion
Using an IWB to highlight language/literary techniques in
Maya Angelou’s poetry
Annotating a past paper in small groups and presenting
findings linked to GCSE criteria using an IWB
Using brandongenerator.com to explore graphic novels and
interactive texts
Research Completing a structured web quest on homelessness
Using Google Maps to research the location of a set text
Internet searching for author/background information
Use of internet dictionary sites in group discussions
of poetry
Response to questions Answering interactive literacy tests and SPAG (Spelling,
or tasks Punctuation and Grammar) tests on-line
Using Lexia and edmodo for one-to-one literacy development
and class homework
Participating in a Kahoot quiz on “Romeo and Juliet”
Independent exam planning using sqa-my-study-plan app

Figure 3. (Continued)

As can be seen above, the “high level” activities selected by the student teachers
predominantly embraced creative compositional activities. Websites and apps
were used to scaffold individual or small group planning, writing, and presentation
activities in ways that were perhaps more expedient than using pen and paper.
Digital technology also afforded opportunities to engage with, create, or edit
multi-modal texts such as visual found poems, films, and comics which could have
been difficult to achieve successfully by other means. Analytical, research, and
testing uses of technology were evident in the student teachers’ records albeit to
a lesser extent. Nevertheless, here too technology was utilized to support learning
about poetry. Student teachers welcomed the interactive opportunities and chances
to personalize learning that the technology could provide for a full spectrum of
needs including technologically advanced students, those who were currently too
passive in their learning, and those who required one-to-one support to develop
basic literacy skills.

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Every year the English group sets up a Facebook page for (student teacher
only) social networking and mutual support. This exists beyond the confines of the
university’s limited Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment. The group is advised
to take care in its use – especially in their choice of usernames. This year, at an
early stage in the course, the PGCE group also independently established a Dropbox
folder for sharing schemes of work and resources they had produced. They intend to
continue this professional practice in their first posts as Newly Qualified Teachers
(NQTs). We were delighted that our advice about collaborative learning had struck
a chord.

Final Reflections on Student Teachers’ Digital Practices

In their final evaluations of the PGCE programme, the NQTs indicated extremely
high levels of satisfaction with the English course. However, two teachers suggested
that, with future cohorts, we should incorporate more guidance on how to use
Excel and spread sheets into our sessions. Their comments were well made and
arise from genuine professional concerns. Nevertheless, they encapsulate the
changing emphasis of teaching in England where the role of learning accountant
seems to be increasingly privileged over that of creative curriculum maker. Other
student teachers have invested in new equipment, recognising the potential impact
that tablets and a vast array of available apps can have on students’ learning. Many
have reflected on their increasing ease with selecting digital resources, integrating
technology into learning, and going well beyond “using PowerPoint presentations
and the occasional lesson in a computer room.” Several students comment that
“patience” and “behaviour management” are key factors when using technology,
especially with students who struggle to follow “task-based instructions.” The whole
English cohort undoubtedly developed their digital teaching skills during the year.
They have recognised their professional responsibilities to ensure that students can
use technology “competently and appropriately” and make progress in their learning.
It is to their great credit that they begin their careers with a strong shared sense of
purpose as teachers who want young people to enjoy, create, and engage critically
with English in all its dynamic modes and forms.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to all the newly qualified English teachers and other PGCE alumni who
have contributed to this chapter.

NOTES
1
By July 2015 there were 264.4 million blogs on Tumblr alone (source accessed 29/7/15:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/256235/total-cumulative-number-of-tumblr-blogs/).
2
Permission granted from Emily Tyrrell to use this table from the subject audit.

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S. DYMOKE

3
Their guidance on how to collapse a text can be found at http://www.englishandict.co.uk/resources/
wordlab/collapser.html
4
Prevent is a government intervention strategy. All UK school staff are required to undergo training
and have a duty to ‘identify children who may be vulnerable to radicalization, and know what to
do when they are identified’. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protecting-children-from-
radicalisation-the-prevent-duty (accessed 31/7/15).

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Adisa. (2002). What is poetry? In A. Hoyles & M. Hoyles (Eds.), Moving voices: Black performance
poetry (pp. 128–129). London: Hansib Publications.
Barton, M. (2005). The future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres. Computers and
Composition, 22(2), 177–190.
Bruns, A. (2006). Towards produsage: Futures for used-led content production. In F. Sudweeks,
H. Hrachovec, & C. Ess (Eds.), Proceedings: Cultural attitudes towards communication and
technology (pp. 275–285). Perth, Australia: Murdoch University.
Davies, J., & Merchant, G. (2007). Looking from the inside out: Academic blogging as new literacy. In
M. Knobel & C. Lankshear (Eds.), A new literacies sampler (pp. 168–197). New York, NY: Peter
Lang.
DfE. (2012). Teachers’ standards. Retrieved July 31, 2015, from https://www.gov.uk/government/
publications/teachers-standards
DfE. (2013). National curriculum. Retrieved July 31, 2015, from https://www.gov.uk/government/
collections/national-curriculum
Dymoke, S. (2002). The dead hand of the exam: The impact of the NEAB anthology on GCSE poetry
teaching’. Changing English, 9(1), 85–92.
Dymoke, S. (2003). Drafting and assessing poetry. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Dymoke, S. (2008). How does a poem mean? English in Education, 42(2), 117.
Dymoke, S. (2009). Teaching English texts. London: Continuum.
Dymoke, S., & Hughes, J. (2009). Using a poetry wiki: How can the medium support preservice teachers
of English in their professional learning about writing poetry and teaching poetry writing in a digital
age?’ English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8(3), 91–106.
Dymoke, S., Lambirth, A., & Wilson, A. (Eds.). (2013). Making poetry matter: International research on
poetry pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury.
Dymoke, S., Barrs, M., Lambirth, A., & Wilson, A. (Eds.). (2015). Making poetry happen: Transforming
the poetry classroom. London: Bloomsbury.
Fountain, R. (2005).Wiki pedagogy. Retrieved August 8, 2008, from www.profetic-org/dossiers/dossiers-
imprimer.php3
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge.
Hardy, T. (1976). The convergence of the twain. In The complete poems (pp. 306–307). London:
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Hughes, J. (2013). Digital power, poetry and social justice. In S. Dymoke, A. Lambirth, & A. Wilson
(Eds.), Making poetry matter: International research on poetry pedagogy (pp. 167–179). London:
Bloomsbury.
Hughes, J. (2015). Digital literacy. In S. Dymoke, M. Barrs, A. Lambirth, & A. Wilson (Eds.), Making
poetry happen: Transforming the poetry classroom (pp. 191–202). London: Bloomsbury.
Hughes, J., & Dymoke, S. (2011). “Wiki-Ed poetry”: Transforming preservice teachers’ preconceptions
about poetry and poetry teaching. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 46–56.
Kneen, J. (2015). Interactive whiteboards and English teaching: A consideration of typical practice.
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Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (Eds). (2007). A new literacies sampler. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. London: Routledge.

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Laurillard, D., Stratfold, M., Lucklin, R., Plowman, L., & Taylor, J. (2000). Affordances for learning in a
non-linear narrative medium. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2, 24.
Lyon, G. E. (1999). Where I’m from. In G. E. Lyon (Ed.), Where I’m from, where poems come from.
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Manhire, B. (2009, October). Unconsidered Trifles: the writer as thief. English in Aotearoa, 6–14.
O’Bannon, B. W, Lubke, J. K., & Britt, V. G. (2013). You still need that face-to-face communication:
Drawing implications from preservice teachers’ perceptions of wikis as a collaborative tool.
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Prendergast, M. (2006). Found poetry as literature review: Research poems on audience and performance.
Qualitative Inquiry, 369–388.
Stibbs, A. (1981). Teaching poetry. Children’s Literature in Education, 12(1), 39–50.
Wheeler, S., & Wheeler, D. (2009). Using wikis to promote quality learning in teacher training. Learning,
Media and Technology, 34(1), 1–10.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets. (2012). London: The Arden Shakespeare, Faber and Faber Ltd, Illuminations &
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6. LESSONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATORS ABOUT

LEARNING TO TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY

As educators at all levels call for schools to create 21st century learning environments
for their students, the need to strengthen preparation for novice teachers in digital
literacy is greater than ever (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Gronseth et al., 2014; Kozma,
2008; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012; Tondeur et al., 2012; Voogt, Erstad, Dede, &
Mishra, 2013). Our use and understanding of technology is ever evolving, and
teachers are being asked to enter the profession with evermore skills and knowledge
for effectively integrating technology, pedagogy, and content into their instruction.
Ertmer et al. (2012) describe two key barriers that have impacted teachers’ use of
technology: external barriers such as access to resources, support, and training; and
internal barriers such as teacher knowledge and skills, confidence, and perceptions
about the value of technology. Recent decades have seen a rapid increase in the
development of and access to educational technologies that some argue has resulted
in a decrease in external barriers (Hsu, 2013; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2010; Sadaf,
Newby, & Ertmer, 2012). The internal barriers have remained a constant challenge,
largely due to teacher beliefs about the relationship between pedagogy and
technology for instruction (Ertmer et al., 2012; Hsu, 2013). In particular, teachers
may not see how the use of technology adds much value to their instruction, or they
may resist learning about new tools that may not be a worthwhile use of their time
(Ertmer et al., 2012; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2010).
Today, the use of the term “digital divide” in schools is shifting from describing
inequalities in access to technology to referencing disparities in how teachers and
schools are using digital tools to support student learning. Some research reports that
educators lack awareness about how to use technology productively for classroom
instruction (Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2009). Further, experts are calling for the
field of teacher education to look at the current digital divide through a pedagogical
lens to better understand how technology fits with teaching and learning (Philip
& Garcia, 2013). Teachers are entering the profession with inadequate preparation
for integrating technology with pedagogy and content for developing digitally
literate students; they are also entering the field without knowledge of the actual
technologies used in school settings (Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2009).
As information becomes the national and international currency of our new
knowledge-based economy, preparing novice teachers to understand why and how
to use digital technologies in their instruction is critical. In today’s “flat world,” it is

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 77–90.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
R. Virmani & P. Williamson

especially important for teachers to be able to help students develop skills that can
prepare them for a global society. A large body of literature suggests that students
develop deep and meaningful understandings of concepts when teachers effectively
employ and integrate digital tools into their instruction (Dexter, Anderson, &
Becker, 1999; Ertmer, 2012; Philip & Garcia, 2013). Understanding and marshaling
digital technologies is now an expectation for teachers at every level, which means
that there is a need in teacher education programs to develop fully formed visions
for preparing educators to teach and learn with technology. This does not mean
that teachers must learn to implement all of the latest technologies as they roll off
the shelf, but rather that they must develop an understanding of how and why to
approach the use of technologies that can support student learning and fit with their
pedagogical and content goals. Teachers need to be consumers of new technologies
as they emerge, and they must be able to assess their utility as they relate to student
learning.
While some teacher educators are engaging in efforts to transform how they
prepare novice teachers to become digitally literate and to effectively integrate
technology into their own instruction, many preparation programs feature technology
courses that take a “one-size fits all” approach where teachers from all disciplines are
enrolled in a course to learn about the latest digital tools and to develop technology-
based lesson plans (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012). Novice teachers are offered
limited authentic experiences using and learning about technology in their content
areas and often feel underprepared for the classroom (Tondeur et al., 2012). There
is a lack of agreement in teacher education about the knowledge base for teaching
with technology, what should be taught, and how this knowledge translates into
practice in the classroom (Gronseth, 2010; Tondeur et al., 2012). Furthermore, as
the development of new technologies continues to accelerate, the tools and practices
experienced in a teacher education program are almost certain to be different when
novice teachers enter the field.
To study how to prepare novice teachers to approach technology integration,
some educators and researchers have called for a closer examination of how expert
K-12 teachers approach and use technology in their classrooms (Ottenbreit-Leftwich
et al., 2010). Learning from expert practitioners about their approach to technology
implementation and integration will help inform the field about how teachers
can be effectively prepared to teach in 21st century learning environments. The
decisions and actions that experienced teachers make to integrate technology into
their curriculum and how their instructional practices connect to the knowledge base
in teacher education is essential to learning about effective technology integration
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999).
In this chapter we argue that examining how practicing teachers are expertly using
technology can inform how teacher education programs prepare novice teachers to
become digitally literate. Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) Technology Pedagogy and
Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Figure 1) helps guide our understanding
of the knowledge needed to successfully integrate technology use into teaching.

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 Educators about Learning to Teach with Technology

The TPACK model extends Shulman’s (1986) pedagogical content knowledge

framework to integrate knowledge of technology with knowledge and content and
pedagogy. Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue that it is through the interaction of
these knowledge domains that a teacher develops the flexible knowledge to use and
integrate technology effectively in their instruction.

Figure 1. Graphic representation of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

(TPACK). From http://tpack.org website

TEACHER INTERVIEWS

To inform the positions that we take in this chapter, we interviewed two practicing
teachers who use innovative approaches to integrating technology in their classrooms.
Each teacher was interviewed twice using a semi-structured, open-ended interview
protocol. We chose the semi-structured interview protocol because it is a flexible
and fluid tool that could allow us to ask new questions based on the teachers’
responses (Creswell, 2003). The interview questions were developed by examining

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R. Virmani & P. Williamson

two bodies of literature: technology use in K-12 classrooms and teacher preparation
for technology integration (Ertmer et al., 2012; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012;
Tondeur et al., 2012). Through interviews with the teachers, we aimed to understand
how the teachers approached technology integration and how the digital tools used in
their instruction supported and aligned with their learning goals and pedagogy. The
first set of interviews consisted of nine questions. Below are three of the interview
questions from our protocol.
• How do you use technology in the classroom? Can you provide examples of
particular learning activities where you have used technology powerfully?
• How do you find technology to be helpful for certain aspects of teaching?
• How do your learning objectives and goals connect to your use of technology?
To analyze the responses to the first set of interview questions, we transcribed
each interview, took notes on their responses for each question, and organized their
responses into clusters based on themes that were consistent across the interviews
(Creswell, 2003). Through subsequent reviews of the transcripts, two major themes
emerged from the teachers’ responses regarding technology use in the classroom.
We then conducted the second interview to learn more specific details and examples
about how these themes translated to classroom practice. These interviews were also
transcribed and organized according to the themes that had already been identified
and used to formulate the second set of questions.

TEACHER PROFILES

The first teacher, Ramsey Musallam1, is a high school Chemistry teacher in his 16th
year of teaching. Currently, he teaches AP Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, and is the
school’s “robotics coach”. In addition to teaching, he runs the Inquiry and Innovation
Scholar program, which is designed to empower students who demonstrate a strong
interest in STEM fields. He holds a doctorate and masters in education and is a
member of multiple educational technology organizations including Google for
Education Certified Innovators, International Society for Technology in Education
(ISTE), and Computer Using Educators (CUE).
Ramsey initially became interested in using technology in the classroom when
his school received funds to purchase SmartBoards. With no formal professional
development funds allocated to learn how to use the SmartBoards for instruction,
Ramsey began experimenting with the new technology and sharing his ideas with
other teachers. Ever since these initial explorations, Ramsey’s use of educational
technology has continued to evolve. According to Ramsey, at the center of his
instruction is his mission: to use technology to support innovative inquiry-
based learning environments that promote student curiosity and engagement.
Along with teaching, Ramsey conducts workshops and speaks at conferences to
support teacher use of technology and has been featured on TED Talks Education
(https://www.ted.com/about/programs-initiatives/ted-talks-education).

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The second teacher, Diana Neebe2, is a high school English teacher in her 9th
year of teaching. She earned a masters in education in curriculum design and is
currently working on her doctorate in education. Diana is the co-author of the
book Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning (2015). She is
a member of multiple educational technology organizations including Google for
Education Certified Innovators, Making Education Relevant and Interactive through
Technology (MERIT), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE),
and Computer Using Educators (CUE). Diana is passionate about investigating ways
in which technology can serve to increase student engagement and minimize the gap
in literacy levels between students. According to Diana, innovative technology use
could level the playing field for students, providing access to content that they may
not have had in more traditional classrooms. Furthermore, she argues that technology
in the English Language Arts curriculum has failed to move beyond serving as a
supplemental answer key. When asked about how she became interested in using
technology in the classroom, Diana said:
I became interested in instructional technology because of my belief that it can
help ignite students’ interest in reading, improve their critical reading skills
without simply providing summaries and pre-formed analysis, and enhance
their writing abilities. Technology also equips teachers with tools to rethink
class time, increase opportunities for authentic and meaningful student work,
spark creativity, amplify engagement, and facilitate differentiated instruction.
We consider both teachers as experts in how they integrate and approach the
use of technology in their classrooms based on how their practice is aligned with
the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE, 2007) standards for
teachers. In particular, Ramsey and Diana aim to use technology to facilitate and
inspire student learning, design learning environments, and they exhibit skills and
knowledge that are representative of our global and digital society (ISTE’s National
Educational Technology Standards for Teachers). Both teachers are leaders in the
field of educational technology and are known as practitioners who use technology
in innovative ways to support instruction and student learning. We will highlight
specific examples from their teaching to illustrate how they effectively use technology
in their instruction. In our synthesis of what we learned from these teachers, we seek
to demonstrate how their approach to technology integration can help inform how to
prepare novice teachers to use technology in schools.
Drawing upon our interviews with the expert teachers, we highlight two
consistent themes that are central to their practice of integrating technology into
their instruction and could help inform the preparation of novice teachers. First, we
examine the tension between the invisibility (or lack of invisibility) of technology in
the classroom; these expert teachers discussed the importance of keeping the content
as the major focus of instruction while technology remains in the background –
or “invisible”- as it supports the learning process. Second, we explore how expert
teachers use technology to redefine the role of the teacher with respect to authority

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and knowledge in the classroom. In these examples, educational technology allows

the expert teachers to restructure their learning environments and reconfigure the
traditional student-teacher power dynamics so that students have more agency and
can take on greater roles in guiding the learning process. These expert teachers use
technology to manipulate time and space as they design their lessons to help meet
their learning goals with their students. In the next sections, we explore these themes
in more detail by connecting them to the expert teachers’ instruction, highlighting
how it fits within the TPACK model.

INVISIBILITY OF TECHNOLOGY

In 2007, the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) released

the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) and
Students (NETS-S). In response to the standards and in light of the advancement
and availability of technologies that support instruction, there has been a major
shift in how we view technology integration in schools. In particular, technology-
proficient teachers have begun to shift from fitting the latest technologies into
their instruction – using technology for technology’s sake – to an approach where
teachers employ technology that supports their pedagogical needs and might help
them to achieve their learning goals. The TPACK framework has also contributed
to the field by helping researchers and educators develop a better understanding of
the knowledge domains needed to adeptly integrate technology with content and
pedagogy. Current research in educational technology continues to identify effective
practices and learning environments that are associated with the ISTE standards and
TPACK framework.
According to Mishra and Koehler (2006), the three interrelated knowledge
domains in TPACK (technology, pedagogy, and content) are critical to teachers
learning how to leverage the power of technology in their teaching. Within this
interrelated framework, teachers are aligning their content-based learning goals and
content-based learning activities with educational technologies (Koehler & Mishra,
2009). In our interviews, the expert teachers emphasized the benefits of technology
for both students and teachers, but stressed that the technology should be “invisible”
in the classroom. Invisible technology does not mean that the classroom is free of
technology, but that the technological tools are not driving the instruction.
Studies reveal cases around the nation where school districts have implemented
educational reform in schools where technology was provided, often by industry
partners, that the teachers were to fit into their instruction. For example, in
2013, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spent 1.3 billion dollars
to distribute iPads with Pearson curriculum software to every student (Blume,
2015). The teachers were to weave the iPads and the new curriculum into their
teaching. LAUSD implemented the technology before they had fully identified the
need for the tools or what particular instructional problems they hoped to solve
by distributing technology to each student (Lapowsky, 2015). We characterize

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this approach of trying to bring about pedagogical change by having the tools
drive reform as highly visible and emblematic of how many school districts
continue to approach the role of technological reform in teaching and learning.
Many districts have looked to technology as the quick solution to issues facing
the education system including equity and achievement (Philip & Garcia, 2013).
While technology may help support change around these major issues, it cannot
be seen as the solution itself.
The idea of invisible technology is essential in our understanding of the interaction
between the three knowledge domains in the TPACK model and how they manifest
in classroom settings. In particular, the knowledge domain of technology may help
the content domain become clearer while it supports the pedagogy domain. Further,
emphasizing in teacher education the supporting role that educational technology
plays may allow for teachers to develop the skills to critically analyze the affordances
of emerging technological tools and how they support pedagogical learning goals. In
this chapter, we don’t present a particular set of practices for which teachers should
be prepared; rather, we argue that teacher preparation programs can better train
novice teachers if they can emulate the approach that expert teachers take using
technology to enhance learning.

Ramsey’s Classroom

To better understand how invisible technology looks in practice, we highlight

Ramsey’s approach to integrating technology in his Chemistry class. A major goal
of Ramsey’s instruction is to “help students build complete and in-depth knowledge
of chemistry concepts while simultaneously building interest and motivation.” To
achieve this goal he uses a learning model that has three components – explore,
flip, and apply – where technology is integrated at each step, but is kept “invisible”
throughout. The first step in his lesson cycle often starts with a video to spark student
curiosity. The “video spark” in his inquiry-based approach is used to encourage
students to ask questions that they then record on a Google form. Each student has
a device (smart phone, computer, iPad, etc.) where they access the Google form
and submit their responses. Depending on his pedagogical and content goals for the
class, Ramsey displays their responses to begin a discussion. Often he will display
the students’ ideas using a data visualization tool (e.g. Wordle) that foregrounds
the major ideas and questions in word clouds where terms that appear more often
are displayed with more distinction. This data visualization graphic then begins the
conversation about the content. At this point, students have bought into the topic and
are motivated to learn more about the content. The next step in his learning process
is the “flip” stage, where outside of class students learn about the content through
a video or another representation of the material such as a graphic, an interactive
article, or an audio recording. The following day students “apply” their understanding
of the content in learning activities such as lab application tasks or individual/group
problem solving sessions. Throughout the different learning activities in Ramsey’s

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explore-flip-apply cycle, technology is an essential component in facilitating student

learning.
The cycle of learning that Ramsey uses in his class is consistent with both the
ISTE standards for teaching (NETS-T) and students (NETS-S). In particular, the
NETS-T standards demonstrated in this lesson include how to facilitate and inspire
student learning and creativity, design and develop digital age learning experiences,
model digital-age work and learning, and diverse ways of supporting the learning
of content. Throughout the lesson the students are engaged in learning the content
where they demonstrate creative thinking, communicate, and collaborate, and
use critical thinking skills, all while becoming fluent users of technological tools.
Ramsey’s students are engaged because the video sparks their curiosity, the Google
form allows for student voice, and the data visualization tool provides a way to begin
a class discussion about chemistry concepts. The technology is essential throughout
the learning cycle, but is not the central focus. Instead, it is used to support the goals
and learning of the content through the different technology-infused pedagogies.
Further, the students are focused on understanding the content and not on the features
of the technology itself.
Throughout Ramsey’s lesson, the technology supports the pedagogical and
content goals by motivating student learning and providing an efficient method for
students to communicate their ideas of chemistry concepts. We contend that even
though the technology in Ramsey’s class is instrumental to the learning cycle and
is ubiquitous throughout the lesson, the technology remains in the background. The
invisibility of the technology allows the content to become the central feature in the
inquiry process. By leveraging technology, teachers have an opportunity to consider
a wide range of technological tools and determine the types of technology that will
best serve the pedagogy and learning objectives. Powerful technology paired with
effective pedagogy can allow for students to engage with the content in meaningful
ways.

TECHNOLOGY REDEFINING CLASSROOM ROLES AND STRUCTURE

Educational technology is sometimes characterized as tools that teachers can

use to deliver information, communicate with students and parents, and provide
basic curricular tasks such as “drill and kill” activities and educational games
(Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012). Some have cast educational technology as the
solution for reducing the gap in educational opportunity with the problematic
assumption that the tools themselves will create equitable learning environments
(Philip & Garcia, 2013). Under these assumptions, providing technology to students
will automatically lessen the need for the teacher in the classroom – effectively
“teacher-proofing” the curriculum – and create student-centered classrooms
(Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2010; Scherer, 2012). We argue that while the role of the
teacher has begun to shift with advances in technology, teachers play an essential

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role in the development of 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity,
communication, or collaboration – key components of ISTE standards for students
(http://www.p21.org/).
Emerging research in technology integration reflects a new mindset for
instruction, where the role of teacher shifts from a knowledge-holder and broker to
that of a facilitator. With this shift, it is not sufficient that teachers are the only ones
who handle the technology or are considered the chief authority on information;
there is a new emphasis on the need for students to be the consumers and creators of
information. While the teacher is still considered to be central to teaching, technology
can help support opportunities for students to assume more prominent roles in the
classroom. In particular, technology can help create learning environments where
students gather, evaluate, apply, and communicate information where they can
contribute to the learning process.

Diana’s Classroom

This shift in teacher and student roles is apparent in the practice of each of the
teachers we interviewed. For example, in Diana’s class, she often assumes the role of
a facilitator, allowing students to explore content, share ideas, and develop agency in
their own learning. Diana’s pedagogical style is student-centered, discussion-based,
and technology-rich. She often relies on technology more when students leave the
classroom than when they are in it. During class time, she makes a consistent effort
to put students in face-to-face conversations, working collaboratively on projects or
activities that will lead them to understanding. At home, they participate in discussion
boards, give feedback to their writing groups in Google Docs, and connect with a
wider reading community on GoodReads. In her process of deciding when and how
to use technology, she first considers the goal for student learning, and then matches
up her lesson with the appropriate tools.
Diana describes a lesson that highlights the shift from traditional teacher role to
one of coach or facilitator. At the start of the school year, Diana developed a lesson
where her students construct a genre definition – writing blog posts. The first step
in her lesson invites students to write down everything they know or associate with
blogs. They then read a selection of blogs, including student blogs, professional
disciplinary blogs (about reading or writing), and professional non-disciplinary
blogs (travel, cooking, sports, etc.). Diana then facilitates a discussion about the main
characteristics of an effective blog post and ultimately the class constructs a shared
definition. Next, Diana gives her students a choice of using four different blogging
platforms. She gives her students the latitude to decide which blogging platform
suits their interests and purpose, and for homework students write their own blog
post given the class constructed blog genre definition. They then submit their work
through the school’s learning management system and provide feedback on their
peers’ blog posts. Throughout the process, students are given the responsibility for

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their own learning and the tools and support to help them succeed. Diana observes
that this helps them to feel empowered and excited to share their work with others.
She remarked,
Trusting students with technology tells them that they have a voice that matters
and they are part of the conversation. They have a say in their education and
that we want them to be creative. I cannot have all the knowledge of the tools
and applications out there, but my kids can teach me. They are put in a position
as equal members in a learning community.
Within this lesson, students take on an active role in defining important
characteristics of the blog genre, developing persuasive blog posts, and providing
feedback to peers. While technology is not essential for some parts of the lesson, it
allows for students to communicate information effectively with their peers as well
as to a wider audience and develop a strong understanding of digital tools that are
reshaping how we relate to each other and their work. Further, it helps students take
a more prominent role in the instructional process (ISTE Standards for Students). If
teachers are able to relinquish the “expert role” as the primary source of information,
technology can provide students with opportunities to become more essential
participants in the learning process. As in Ramsey’s case, technology can extend
learning outside of the class where students can share their ideas and communicate
with each other through digital media and other technology tools. Building from
sociocultural theories of learning, students are able to engage in complex thinking
with others using both cognitive and communicative processes to learn (Cole, 1996;
Vygotsky, 1978). The technology mediates student interactions with each other and
with the content as they construct new knowledge together.
With advances in cloud-based technology tools that allow for new forms of
communication and collaboration, teachers can now examine how they might alter
their use of class time and what they can expect students to do outside of class.
By moving specific learning activities outside of traditional class time, teachers are
able to preserve face-to-face instructional time for activities that need more one-on-
one attention. This approach, sometimes referred to a “flipped classroom” approach,
is changing how and when students learn. Outside of class, students are able to
consider content independently and communicate and collaborate with their peers
through digital media.
Both Ramsey and Diana use the flipped classroom approach in their instruction
and find that technology is especially useful for facilitating the expansion of student
opportunities for learning outside of class. As Diana develops her learning activities
for her English class, she is judicious in identifying the parts of the learning process
that students need face-to-face interaction with her and what can been done through
the use of technology outside of class. For example, Diana shares how she used
class time to conduct a workshop to train her students to give each other effective
feedback on writing blog posts,

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During our Transcendentalism and Nature Writing unit, I brought in the Sierra
Club blog and asked student-writing groups to give feedback to the post as a
team. From these exercises, we defined our expectations for what effective
feedback would look like. My students decided on three types of feedback
necessary for each post: something that really sparked interest or worked
really well, a “zoom out” constructive critique of a bigger picture element,
and a “zoom in” constructive critique of something specific, like a particular
sentence or example.
In this example, Diana discusses the importance of using class time for high
cognitive demand tasks where she can personally attend to students and where
students can collaboratively construct knowledge through activities that are
carefully designed to employ face-to-face interaction that may or may not involve
the integration of technology. The tasks students do outside of class are typically less
cognitively demanding, such as exploring reading materials, posting on discussion
boards, and watching videos. Furthermore, as online learning continues to develop
across education sectors, researchers have highlighted that teaching online requires
a different set of skills than teaching in a traditional classroom (Boling, Hough,
Krinsky, Saleem, & Stevens, 2012). In particular, online learning brings different
types of pedagogical challenges such as asynchronous communication, content
representation and delivery, authentic assessment, and the challenge of facilitating
meaningful interactions between participants (Boling et al., 2012). Given that
teachers in K-12 schools are beginning to incorporate some aspects of online learning
in their instruction, it is necessary to understand the pedagogical implications for
their instruction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

As new digital tools are creating learning opportunities that challenge or alter
traditional practices in schools, we argue that teacher education programs need to
transform how they prepare novice teachers for this “next generation” of teaching
and learning. In particular, novice teachers need to understand how to develop
learning environments where technology can help mediate student interactions
with content and each other. Educators have an opportunity to redefine classroom
roles where technology allows access to diverse sources of information, challenging
previous conceptions of who holds knowledge and how knowledge can be accessed.
We are not advocating that teacher education programs should focus on training
teachers how to design their lessons around technology, but rather on preparing
teachers to develop the knowledge for supporting students as they use technology
for meaningful learning. This will require teacher education programs to abandon
stand-alone technology courses as they move toward a more integrated approach to
marrying technology with content and pedagogy.

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In this chapter, we examined how expert teachers use technology in their

classrooms to inform the ways that teacher education programs prepare novice
teachers to become digitally literate. While we recognize that learning to teach in a
university setting is different than the complexities of teaching in a classroom, we urge
teacher education programs to consider developing pedagogies for novice teachers
to better understand the importance of invisible technology and how technology
can redefine roles and structures in the classroom (Grossman et al., 2009). We
used the TPACK model to guide how we conceptualize teacher knowledge and to
understand the teaching practices that effectively integrate technology with content
and pedagogy. Although the TPACK framework is helpful in considering the three
knowledge domains needed for successful technology integration, we contend that
novice teachers need authentic experiences in teacher education programs where
they can examine how the different knowledge domains interact with each other in
practice.
From our interviews we learned that the expert teachers aimed to make
technology invisible to support their pedagogy and help students develop a strong
understanding of the content. Focusing on invisibility combats the tendency to view
technology as a way to “teacher proof” the curriculum and allows for teachers to use
technology to support rather than drive instruction (Scherer, 2012). Through teacher
education, novice teachers will benefit from experiencing integrated lessons where
the technology is not isolated from content, but embedded and invisible throughout
the instruction. For example, a mathematics teacher educator working with novice
secondary mathematics teachers may design a technology-rich lesson about linear
and quadratic modeling. The teacher educator may have novice teachers use
smartphones as motion sensors to collect data on objects moving (student walking,
ball dropping, etc.), graph the data using graphing calculators or online graphing
tools, and collaborate with peers through cloud-based applications. Within this type
of an activity, novice teachers are given an opportunity to experience as a student an
authentic lesson that integrates the three knowledge domains – pedagogy, content,
and technology – in classroom instruction.
Teacher educators may want to extend novice teacher learning about TPACK
knowledge domains in practice by incorporating learning cycles that help novice
teachers decompose, represent, and approximate teaching practices for technology
integration (Grossman et al., 2009; Lampert et al., 2013). In particular, teacher
educators may design instructional activities that integrate content, pedagogy,
and technology where novice teachers rehearse or role-play actual classroom
interactions. The instructional activities can reflect learning environments where
novice teachers use digital tools that allow for a redistribution of authority and
power in the classroom. By approximating teaching practices in teacher education
programs, novice teachers will be able to engage deeply with and reflect upon how the
different knowledge domains contribute to successfully integrating technology into
instruction. Teacher education programs may want to redesign their methods courses
to include technology to provide novice teachers the opportunity to experience how

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technology can support content development and pedagogy and may further propel
them into finding ways to integrate technology in their instruction (Hughes, 2005).
For example, in a methods course, novice teachers could use social media to connect
and engage in discussions with other educators around the world, engage with digital
tools specific to their grade level and content areas, and collaborate with peers
through cloud-based applications.
While the focus of teacher preparation should not be on the tool itself, we do
advocate that novice teachers should have the knowledge of the various types of
tools that teachers use in the field. As teachers enter schools and are given technology
resources, they will be able to aptly determine whether the tool fits with their goals
and what purpose the technology serves. As mobile devices become ubiquitous and a
seemingly essential part of today’s society, teachers have an opportunity to adopt these
tools as a part of the learning process. Allowing students to use personal technology
tools in the classroom may help students learn to use technology productively and
can allow students to engage with content in more meaningful ways. For example,
teachers are beginning to incorporate mobile devices into instruction where they
can survey students through Poll Everywhere (https://www.polleverywhere.com/),
text students and parents through Remind 101 (https://www.remind.com/), or
have students have a backchannel conversation in their class through Todays Meet
(https://todaysmeet.com/). Each of these tools are examples of ways technology can
support various aspects of classroom instruction and student learning.
We are just beginning to understand how technology opens up multiple
possibilities for educators to restructure their learning environment and examine the
roles students and teachers have in the learning process. Teacher education plays
a critical role in preparing novice teachers to learn about how to design learning
environments that integrate technology with content and pedagogy to support a new
era of teaching and learning.

NOTES
1
More information about Ramsey Musallam can be found at www.cyclesoflearning.com
2
More information about Diana Neebe can be found at www.diananeebe.com

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7. DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO TEACHER

EDUCATION
Maximising Expertise and Re-Examining the Role of
Universities and Schools

I call it a craft because it is something you learn in a work-based environment…

Everyone knows there are bright people who can’t teach for toffee, and other
people who may not have been the most gifted at university who have the
emotional intelligence and the spark to really engage a classroom. (Michael
Gove – the then Secretary of State for Education in England, announcing
reforms to Teacher Training in 2010)
Teachers and students thrive in the kind of settings that we describe as
research-rich, and research-rich schools and colleges are those that are likely
to have the greatest capacity for self-evaluation and self-improvement. (John
Furlong – Chair of the British Educational Research Association and Royal
Society for the Arts Inquiry into the role of research in teacher education, on
the publication of the report Research and the Teaching Profession: Building
the Capacity for a Self-Improving Education System 2014)
The above quotes capture some of the tensions in recent debates particularly but
not exclusively in England about how and where teachers are best prepared for
their profession. In England this has been particularly intense during the period
since the Conservative and Liberal Democratic Coalition Government came into
power in 2010. As heralded above by Michael Gove, this administration presided
over unprecedented reforms to teacher education in the form of the drive towards
school-led initial teacher education in which schools have much more control and
ownership of how teachers are prepared and where the main context for learning is
the school. As a member of the expert panel that advised the recent review of initial
teacher training in England – the Carter Review of ITT (2015) – I have been able
to witness at close quarters some of the impact of this policy drive and to consider
potential strengths and weaknesses arising from this in relation to other models.
In this chapter I will share some of the thoughts and implications arising from this
experience. (Note that in England initial teacher education is often referred to as
initial teacher training ITT.)

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 91–104.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
S. Twiselton

BACKGROUND

In a report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) in 2010, Pauline Musset, analyst for the OECD Directorate for Education
project Overcoming School Failure helpfully outlines the importance of teacher
education for education systems and society:
In today’s context, with the undergoing economic and social changes, high-
quality schooling is more important than ever… The debate on teacher
education has gained special importance as teacher quality is more and more
being identified as decisive to student outcomes. It is now acknowledged that
teachers are the school variable that influences the most student achievement.
(Musset, 2010, p. 3)
It has become widely acknowledged that teacher education has a central role
in the improvement of educational systems around the world (Darling-Hammond,
2006). However, what the best models for teacher education look like, where they
should be delivered, and who should lead them is more open to debate. As Ellis and
McNicholl (2015) state:
Around the world, ITE continues to be in a state of almost continual reform,
even crisis… In some countries, traditional programs of professional
preparation in which universities are in leading roles are positioned as
ineffective, unresponsive and incapable of producing the human capital
required for economies to be globally competitive. In these countries and
others, “alternative” programs of professional preparation have arisen and
have become favourites of reform movements and governments alike … In
these new forms of teacher education, the role of higher education is different
and is differently positioned in the rhetoric. Higher education is more marginal
in the reformist alternatives than in the traditional programmes. (p. 7)
Even within the United Kingdom there is increasing divergence in policy
discourse. Whereas all initial teacher education in Scotland and Northern Ireland is
led by higher education institutions, and provision in Wales is primarily university-
led, the range of approaches in England is noticeably much greater and more
complex, with multiple providers and entry routes including university-led, school-
centred, and employment-based programs.
In contrast, in many other high performing education systems (e.g., Finland,
Singapore, and Scotland) there is a growing trend to offer initial teacher education
programs at a master’s level in research universities. This mode of professional
preparation requires student teachers to engage with research training and appropriate
research findings in order to conduct research projects linked to their pedagogy or
to aspects of their school-based experience. The intention is that this orientation
to and experience of educational research provides a foundation for an inquiry-
focussed approach in continuing professional development. It aims to facilitate

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the emergence of teachers as reflective practitioners, and nurtures and reinforces

the ideal of teachers as researchers of their own practice, committed to systematic
self-study.
The above mentioned BERA/RSA report Research and the Teaching Profession:
Building the Capacity for a Self-Improving Education System (2014) particularly
considers the role of research in four contrasting examples of education systems:
Chile, the USA, Singapore and Finland, representing fair, good, great, and excellent
school performance as classified by McKinsey (2010). For each country, Tatto,
(2013) examines the nature and organisation of teacher education and provides an
overview of entry and qualifying requirements and quality assurance, before drawing
out the contribution of research to each system. The comparative analysis claims that
education systems such as Singapore and Finland that consistently “come out on
top” develop capacity from the bottom up, and rely heavily on methodologically
rigorous research-based knowledge to inform their practice.
What is striking about provision in both Finland and Singapore, as compared to
the more diverse, fragmented, and market-oriented provision in the USA and Chile,
is the extent to which teachers’ engagement with research and inquiry-oriented
practice is embedded throughout the education system. The report recommends that
“During the course of qualifying and throughout their careers, teachers have multiple
opportunities to engage in research and enquiry, collaborating with colleagues in
other schools and colleges and with members of the wider research community,
based in universities and elsewhere” (BERA/RSA, 2014, page 7).
In the debates and comparisons that are made between models of teacher
education in some countries the central ideological question – should initial teacher
education be led by universities or by schools – has become a dominant theme. In the
remainder of this chapter I will examine this question in the light of the experiences
and insights gained from close participation in the Carter Review.

THE REVIEW PROCESS

The Carter Review of ITT was commissioned by the then Secretary of State for
Education in England, Michael Gove, in May 2014 and reported in January 2015.
The aims of the Review were:
• To define effective ITT practice
• To assess the extent to which the system currently delivers effective ITT
• To recommend where and how improvements could be made
• To recommend ways to improve choice in the ITT system by improving the
transparency of course content and method
The scope and constraints of the Review were outlined as follows:
Based on a comprehensive assessment of the content of ITT provision in
England, the Review will identify which types of delivery arrangements and

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which core elements of high-quality ITT across phases and subject disciplines
are key to equipping student teachers with the required skills and knowledge
to become outstanding teachers. It will consider how close the system is
to delivering high quality ITT across the board and recommend ways to
address any identified weaknesses. It will consider how best to improve the
transparency of what is on offer to support schools and student teachers in
making choices about ITT provision. It will also assess how well aligned
HEI research priorities are with the needs of schools. The Review will look
specifically at areas of particular importance such as provision on behaviour
management, subject-specific pedagogy and special educational needs.
Situated in the current context of deregulation, the Review will also consider
how to promote consistently high quality across the various routes and
partnership arrangements, and the role of ITT inspection and accountability
more generally. (Department for Education, 2014)

METHODOLOGY

The Review was not set up as a research project but it did gather a wide range of
evidence and views through a range of activities:
• 11 themed roundtable discussions with sector experts
• 24 meetings and discussions with experts and stakeholders
• 31 visits to ITT providers and schools involved in ITT, included meetings
with trainers, mentors, and head teachers as well as current and former student
teachers
• A call for evidence that received 148 responses from a range of individuals and
institutions, including universities, professional bodies, schools, teachers, and
student teachers
• A survey of student teacher and applicant opinions about ITT course information
(receiving 165 responses)
• A review of the existing evidence base including international evidence, Ofsted
evidence and findings from the Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) survey
• A review of course materials from 150 programs. These were reviewed by ITT
experts and helped us build a picture of ITT course content across the system,
including the areas of ITT content most and least commonly covered

PATTERNS AND THEMES THAT EMERGED FROM

THE REVIEW PROCESS

I will not replicate the findings of the Carter Review of ITT (2015) report which
mainly focus on the content of ITT programs but instead focus on questions of
context, structure, governance, and ownership that arose for me personally from my
close involvement with this process.

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Effective Practice – Models of Teacher Development – How Teachers

Learn to Teach

Whatever the route student teachers follow, it was clear that initial teacher education
(ITT) has to prepare teachers to be able to cope effectively in the classroom in
terms of both the knowledge and the practical skills that they will require. The
complexity of this process cannot be underestimated. The evidence gathered by
the Review suggests it is therefore very important that all programs of ITT are
underpinned by a clear understanding of how beginning teachers learn and how to
support their growing knowledge and understanding at every step throughout this
crucial period of their development. It can be argued that there is a need for a much
more widely understood and consistently articulated body of knowledge related to
teacher education pedagogy that is distinct from pupil pedagogy (Loughran, 2006).
To become effective teachers student teachers need to develop a wide range of
knowledge and skills and the ability (by the time they become a Newly Qualified
Teacher) to apply these effectively to a range of contexts. This is a highly specialised
endeavour.
The experience of the Review illustrated the ways the most programs deemed to
be the most effective gave careful consideration to how student teachers’ learning
experiences were structured over the course of their study. Where there was explicit
integration between the different types of knowledge student teachers need there
appeared to much more evidence of sustained development of their practice. Models
of learning to teach that privilege either “theory” or “practice” failed to take account
of the necessity of such integration. It could be argued that globally and locally
systems that do not attend to this integration are failing to maximise student teacher
development. What appeared to be needed most were models of “clinical” practice
as articulated by Burn and Mutton (2014), where student teachers had access to
the practical wisdom of experts and could engage in a process of inquiry, in an
environment where they were able to trial techniques and strategies and evaluate the
outcomes. Importantly, by making explicit the reasoning and underlying assumptions
of experienced teachers, student teachers were encouraged to develop and extend
their own decision-making capacities or professional judgments.
The Review also showed that at what appeared to be its most effective, ITT
provides a foundation for ongoing development by providing an appropriate
combination of access to the expertise of teachers and school contexts as well as
engagement with and experience of educational research. Where this appeared to
work well it supported student teachers to become teachers who could reflect on their
own teaching, nurturing, and reinforcing the idea that teachers should be researchers
of their own practice who continue to develop throughout their career.
Integrating theory and practice, in a way that helps student teachers to understand
and explore the links between research and classroom practice, was found to be a
crucial element of all ITT programs. Prominence needed to be given to the careful
structuring of school experiences that gave well-planned exposure to and engagement

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with a range of expertise and practice. In the course of this experience beginning
teachers were supported to observe and analyse their own and other people’s
teaching with a continuous and increasingly refined focus on pupil learning. In doing
this, they needed to undertake progressively more demanding teaching episodes
with learners. The Review found that the quality of this approach was strengthened
where schools saw themselves as centres of professional learning, where teachers
collaborated in curriculum development, pupil assessment, and school improvement,
where the principle of schools as self-evaluating institutions was taken seriously, and
where, as a consequence, the notion of the teacher as researcher is continuously
reinforced. I have to acknowledge here that, while there was certainly an important
potential role for the university here, it was the school setting and the extent to which
it was actively and explicitly demonstrating the above qualities that was the key
determinant to the apparent effectiveness of the ITT program. Where schools had
the commitment, vision, and capacity to show how to do this it appeared to create
extremely powerful contexts for student teacher learning.

Ongoing Development beyond ITT

The Review found that however effective initial teacher education may be, it was
crucial that structures were in place to ensure that newly qualified teachers were
well supported during their induction year and indeed throughout their careers. The
effectiveness of programs of initial teacher education appeared to be much more
limited if they were not built upon in ways that supported teachers’ professional
understanding and skill moving forward in a structured way, well beyond the point
of induction. ITT programs need to be structured in a way that takes careful account
of the complex learning needs of student teachers in a staged and progressive way
that then leads seamlessly into a well-planned, ongoing professional journey. Again,
the Review illustrated the potential of highly committed school partnerships to do
this extremely effectively in a way that a university could not achieve on its own, at
least in the English system.

Careful Structuring of the Student Teacher Journey and Innovative Use of Time

One of the very clear conclusions I feel able to draw from the evidence gathered
during the Review is that an ITT program can cover all of the essential areas of
ITT content, but without effective delivery and careful structuring the program
appeared less likely to produce outstanding teachers. In particular, our visits with
ITT providers and schools revealed some excellent examples of innovative use of
time over the program to provide student teachers with a range of structured school
experiences in contrasting settings. The importance of giving careful attention to
how the student teachers’ learning journey is structured through iterative practice,
input, and reflective experiences cannot be overstated. We were impressed by the

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creative approaches we found in this respect – many providers had developed

considerably beyond traditional placement models to offer carefully crafted school-
based learning experiences for student teachers. This fits well with international
evidence which shows that clinical practice models are a hallmark of successful
systems. Clinical practice is characterised by an emphasis on sustained periods
in school under the supervision of experienced and accomplished teachers who
provide effective mentoring and structured learning experiences. It is important
that school experiences are carefully scaffolded and planned. As highlighted in the
RSA-BERA Inquiry report – Research and the Teaching Profession: Building the
capacity for a self-improving education system (2014) – it is important that school
experiences be high quality, with great attention given to how student teachers are
able to access and understand the expertise available and the impact this has on
pupil learning.
The meetings and visits with providers and schools provided a range of excellent
examples of innovative school-based learning models. These included:
• Placements and other structured experiences in alternative settings – some
programs made effective use of alternative settings such as specialist provision,
for example, Pupil Referral Units or special schools to offer student teachers
contrasting experiences. These were often used as opportunities to gain
experience of specific areas where student teachers observe specialists dealing
with issues such as challenging behaviour or special educational students. In the
best examples these experiences were highly structured and focused with built-in
opportunities for student teachers to observe teaching and reflect on the learning
that arises from it. These experiences worked less well when they lacked focus and
student teachers were expected simply to absorb good practice without structured
analysis and the opportunity to make broader connections to other situations.
• Multiple placement models – some programs had developed school experiences
where larger numbers of student teachers were placed in a smaller number of
schools (this is a characteristic of some successful international systems too).
Providers delivering these models appeared to create a learning community
within the school where there were systematic opportunities for peer observation,
team teaching, and the adoption of a range of different roles.
• Short, sharp-themed experiences – some of the best programs complemented
longer placements by building in short but impactful experiences on a particular
theme. A good example of this is a two day school-based immersion in the
teaching of reading involving observation and discussion of a range of teaching
and participating in small episodes of micro-teaching with peer observation
and support. These short, intense experiences appeared to be able to achieve
high and lasting impact on student teachers’ understanding and development
and were often considered to be key developmental points in student teachers’
development.

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Teaching Teachers to Observe

Many reported to the Review that effective observation is often challenging and
not as impactful as it might be. In order for school experiences to be as effective
as possible, we found that student teachers needed built-in opportunities to observe
good and outstanding practice – they also needed to be helped to understand
the importance of observation and be taught how to observe effectively. Paired
observation, or observation in partnership with a mentor, appeared be one way to
facilitate this effectively. Some programs used video particularly effectively to teach
student teachers how to observe and analyse learning and teaching. Many of the most
useful observation experiences were those that were planned later in the program, at
a point where student teachers were able to understand and analyse what they were
seeing. It can be argued that if observation is confined to the early stages of ITT the
learning is limited as student teachers are liable to miss or underestimate aspects of
practice that they are later able to much more fully appreciate as significant.

Communities of Practice

The most effective programs we reviewed upheld the importance of building

communities of practice for student teachers, building in opportunities for them to
come together and learn in peer groups. This often included opportunities to come
together in subject groups and support the development of subject knowledge
and subject pedagogy through peer interaction. The Review found that this was
particularly important in circumstances where student teachers were more likely to
be isolated, where there were fewer student teachers in the school or centre, or where
the partnership was small. This is an aspect of smaller scale school-led programs of
ITT that need careful attention. There is a clear danger that student teachers can have
a somewhat fragmented experience and become isolated from the structures and
support needed to aid their development. It is important to note that it can also be a
problem for smaller enrolment subjects in HEI-led provision, for example Business
Studies or Psychology.

Innovative Use of Time

Discussions with providers, teacher educators, and student teachers suggested that
the best programs made innovative use of the many opportunities afforded by the
school context – often the most powerful place for learning. Student teachers and
schools alike have highlighted the benefits of student teachers experiencing school
as early as possible. This provided opportunities to observe and be part of the process
of establishing routines and ways of working that may well have become much less
visible and explicit within a short time. Student teachers and schools also reported
that being in school early in the term meant student teachers were more likely to
“feel part of the school” – which they felt helped them to progress more quickly and

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made it more likely they would experience some of the wider professional duties of
being a teacher.
There were interesting examples that enabled student teachers to have a small
amount of training at the end of the previous academic year, before continuing their
course (i.e., program) at the beginning of the next year. This helped them integrate
into school and the program more easily and reduced anxiety about the start of the
academic year. It also helped student teachers build more quickly relationships with
their peers, teacher educators, and teachers and pupils with whom they would be
working. This early engagement with the program also gave teacher educators the
opportunity to informally assess student teachers early and support them with directed
learning tasks before the start of the next academic year – this was particularly useful
for subject knowledge development.
Equally, careful consideration of how best to use time away from the school
setting was important. We found good practice in making full use of all the time
available: for example, using time outside school terms to bring together student
teachers in residential programs or conferences. A carefully constructed balance
of immersion in both practical learning experiences in school contexts and intense
opportunities for reflection and analysis appeared to provide the optimum conditions
for accelerating student teacher development.

Mentoring

There is much evidence to support the critical importance of high quality mentoring
in ITT (Hobson et al., 2009). Current student teachers and newly and recently
qualified teachers were unanimous in claiming that the quality of their mentors was
a key factor in determining the effectiveness of their ITT. The Review identified the
following characteristics of effective mentoring – effective mentors are:
• outstanding teachers who are also skilled in deconstructing and articulating their
practice (however, outstanding practitioners are not automatically outstanding
mentors).
• subject experts, aware of the latest developments in their subject. Subject mentors
should be members of subject mentor networks and frequently access resources
from subject associations.
• strong role models. For example, they are skilled in managing student behaviour;
and good role models in relation to engagement with research, critical reflection,
and analysis.

DISCUSSION: SCHOOL OR UNIVERSITY LED?

Across the English system, all the conversations we had and the evidence we
examined emphasised the importance of genuine partnerships. This often included
schools playing a key role in many aspects of the provision including recruitment

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and selection of student teachers, course design and delivery, assessment of student
teachers, and the annual review of the programs. However this does not mean that
schools should do all of these things on their own. We saw several examples of long-
standing partnerships between university providers and schools where it worked
well to divide up responsibilities in a range of ways – with different partnerships
putting school or university emphasis in different places according to the strengths
of both partners. The common feature with all of these effective partners was the
deep commitment to the sharing of a common ethos and vision and recognition
that both sides of the partnership had something to contribute that would have been
weaker or lacking without this collaboration.
In the Review it appeared that partnerships where either schools explicitly play
a leading role or were a strong part of the leadership team alongside universities
were particularly effective. Where schools were at the very heart of ITT and played
a key role in all aspects of course design and delivery, the factors described above
that appeared to create an effective ITT program were most likely to be present.
This is because schools have so much more potential to influence and shape what
appeared to be the most impactful learning context for student teachers – the
school setting. However, some caution does need to be stated here as this potential
to be so impactful can play out in both positive and detrimental ways. While the
findings from my own much earlier study (Twiselton, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007)
clearly demonstrated the importance of context in learning and showed that de-
contextualised experience can have limited value in helping student teachers to fully
understand the complex processes involved in scaffolding children’s learning, it also
demonstrated that careful attention needs to be given to avoid a domination of the
more superficial, easily observable features of classroom practice at the expense of
deeper understanding of pupil learning that is less readily available without careful
structuring and analysis. Both my study and the Review showed that it is not enough
to place student teachers in school and expect the learning to happen without the right
kind of support in place and without carefully constructed student teacher learning
opportunities underpinning all aspects of the program. While mentors who know
the school context were best placed to help student teachers make the necessary
connections, sole reliance on traditional methods of supervision (e.g., observation
and feedback) were not adequate to ensure this occurred effectively. Ways needed to
be found to help student teachers to get on the “inside” of teachable moments that
could not be fully captured in plans or evaluations or even through “uninvolved”
observation. It is very difficult to understand why and how a range of different types
of knowledge are accessed, synchronised, and utilised unless one is directly involved
in the context surrounding it. This is much more demanding on mentors than simply
observing student teachers. It is also important to note that the relationship among
contexts, learners ,and learning is not as straightforward as might be imagined.
The findings from Twiselton (2003) suggested that there is a tendency for school-
based mentors to focus on management aspects of teaching in their support and
assessment of student teachers. The findings showed a clear tension for mentors

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between the roles of assessment and supporting learning – something also confirmed
by Hobson (2009). Many student teachers felt the mentors’ main role was to pass/
fail, whereas the mentors themselves saw their main role as supporting learning.
The student teachers’ perception highlighted their need to focus on the performance
element of their role in the classroom. This is a complicating factor in a context
where they also need to see themselves as learners. This focus on performance has
the potential to lead both student teachers and mentors to focus on the more obvious,
superficial aspects of teacher behaviour – the maintenance of order and so on. This
reinforces notions that limit the identity of the teacher to the management of learners
rather than the management of learning.

Tensions in Goals and Outcomes

There is an inevitable disparity between the major aims of ITT – to develop the
expertise of student teachers – and the major aims of schools – to develop the
learning of children. The translation of these aims into goals has the potential to lead
to more conflict, when this is mediated through the different parties’ perceptions of
the nature of the expertise needed by student teachers and differing notions of what is
involved in developing children’s learning. Where pupil learning is the priority there
will be times when student teachers’ learning cannot be maximised. When this is
added to other school goals concerning accountability to a range of stakeholders, it is
unsurprising that student teachers are often judged more on their ability to fit in than
on the breadth and depth of their understanding. These conflicts have the potential
to leave student teachers with discordant roles to perform and with diverging goals,
demands, and expectations to meet. In the Review we found that the best school-
based ITT programs were those that could avoid or at least reduce this tension by
securing a strong and robust enough ITT infrastructure to allow some roles and
efforts to be more explicitly dedicated to the needs of student teachers. It should
be noted that this required a significant financial and professional commitment that
should not be underestimated. It was clear that small scale ITT is difficult for any
partnership to sustain, whether it was school or university led.

The Role of HEI

It is important to note that while school-based learning is central to student teacher

development it does not mean that there is no place for learning away from school
and for the potential importance of university expertise in supporting their learning.
The findings of the Review suggested that student teachers needed time and space to
be able to distance themselves from the practicalities of the school setting which can
be overwhelming because of the immediacy of the demands. Student teachers need
to be able to connect their learning with the subject beyond the curriculum, the world
beyond the classroom, and the broader knowledge base and research that underpins
our understanding of it all. There is a case to be made for doing this in intense,

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focused episodes away from school, before using these ideas and/or pedagogies back
in the school context. This needs to happen in a continuous, iterative process, so that
connections can be constantly made, strengthened, and reinforced in both places.
I would argue that there is still a very important potential role for universities in
bringing their expertise to bear on this model.
As we stated in the Review, though, it is important that schools that choose to
work with a university make this decision based upon the genuinely recognised
potential that pooling expertise and experience brings and not simply for the market
advantage and expediency of being able to offer an academic award as part of the
ITT offering. As School Centred Initial Teacher Training provision (SCITT) – a type
of initial teacher education provision in England where schools can be accredited to
train teachers and recommend Qualified Teacher Status – has grown, other things
have followed. Some schools have developed great expertise and experience in
Initial Teacher Education and it has become increasingly apparent that the English
university system has responded to this in a wide variety of ways. As much of the
evidence we surveyed in the Review indicated, there are great potential benefits
to schools and universities working together and sharing the distinctive types of
expertise they bring for the maximum benefit for student teachers, and ultimately for
pupils. In some cases, however, the involvement of the university in the delivery and
assessment of the PGCE was extremely minimal. While this may have been because
the university in question had robust evidence that the SCITT provider was very
capable of delivering all aspects of both the professional and academic elements
of the program, it seems anomalous if a SCITT feels compelled to work with a
university simply for the sake of being able to award a PGCE without feeling they
benefit from the partnership in any other way. As Ellis and Nicholl (2015) argue “if
we want to get the discipline of Education right, we need to get teacher education
right…if we want to ensure the best possible preparation for new teachers and also
ensure their retention and their continued professional development, HEIs have an
important contribution to make and we need to get that right too” (p. 124).
Ellis and Nicholl (2015) make the case for a key role for universities in “co-
configuration, defined by Engeström (2007b) as an emerging, historically new
type of work that relies on responsiveness to context; “continuous relationships of
mutual exchange” between stakeholders; continual evaluation and development
of key processes; the active involvement of stakeholder groups that might usually
be defined as “end-users”; the creation of boundary zones or “third-spaces” where
collaborators move beyond their own practice settings and mutual learning on the
part of all collaborating partners” (p. 24).
Ellis and Nicholl (2015) argue that knowledge created through such “hybrid”
practices of co-configuration are stronger and more likely to lead to innovation and
positive change in complex, changing, and societally significant practices such as
school teaching. This leads them to argue that co-configuration of teacher education
activity can produce strong forms of research and development that have systemic
impact as well as benefits for all collaborators, including HEI-based teacher

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educators. It seems that this kind of reconceptualization of roles and responsibilities

of all involved in supporting student teacher development, whether based in schools,
universities, or other organisations is absolutely right and would apply to systems
beyond England.

CONCLUSION

The highly political and ideological way in which the recent changes to ITT in
England have been presented has polarised the debate to a point where it has become
difficult to recognise both the strengths (which are potentially considerable) and
weaknesses (also potentially significant) associated with ITT that is more school-
led. The experience of being on the Review convinced me that it would be foolish
to deny the enormous potential that exists in the new and emerging models we
examined. Student teachers do need regular and ongoing access to practitioner
expertise in a way that is carefully structured, critically deconstructed, analysed,
and evaluated for its impact on pupil learning and well-being. They also need to do
this in a way that is situated in the literature, most up to date research, and within
an evidence-based, inquiry-driven framework. This leads to a conclusion that the
best models of ITT do involve very deeply formed partnerships with much thought
going into the kinds of experiences and expertise that is needed at every step of the
student teachers’ journey. In my view, one of the most essential features (that any
system would be foolish to underestimate) is the deep integration of practitioner
and research/inquiry expertise in a way that goes well beyond models that keep
placement and “input” learning as separate experiences that are not strongly and
iteratively interrelated. The two polarised extremes of entirely school-led or entirely
university-led ITT provision both present risks to the possibility of achieving this
goal.

REFERENCES
Beauchamp, G., Clarke, L., Hulme, M., & Murray, J. (2014). Research and teacher education: Policy
and practice within the United Kingdom. Retrieved from https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2013/12/BERA-Paper-1-UK-Policy-and-Practice.pdf
Burn, K., & Mutton, T. (2014). A review of research-informed clinical practice in initial teacher education.
Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 217–233.
Carter, A. (2015). Carter review of initial teacher training. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/
government/publications/carter-Review-of-initial-teacher-training
Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ellis, V., & McNicholl, J. (2015). Transforming teacher education: Reconfiguring the academic work.
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Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamäki, R. L. (Eds.). (1999). Perspectives on activity theory.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gove. M. (2013). Michael Gove speaks about the importance of teaching. Speech presented at the
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Hobson, A. J., Malderez, A., & Tracey, L. (2009). Navigating initial teacher training: Becoming a
teacher. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Retrieved from http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/11168/1/
DCSF-RR115.pdf
Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding teaching and learning
about teaching. London, UK: Routledge.
McKinsey. (2010). How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better. Retrieved from
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schools.aspx
Musset, P. (2010). Initial teacher education and continuing training policies in comparative perspective:
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Tatto, M. T. (2013). The role of research in international policy and practice in teacher education.
London, UK: British Educational Research Association.
Twiselton, S. (2003). Beyond the curriculum: Learning to teach primary literacy. In E. Bearne,
H. Dombey, & T. Grainger (Eds.), Classroom interactions in literacy (pp. 63–74). Maidenhead, UK:
Open University Press.
Twiselton, S. (2004). The role of teacher identities in learning to teach primary literacy. Education
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Twiselton, S. (2006). The problem with English: the exploration and development of student teachers’
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8. MULTI-MODALITIES IN LITERACY/ENGLISH
EDUCATION COURSES

INTRODUCTION

In England, in the autumn of 2015, a new national curriculum will be introduced

in English. It is devoid of all mention of anything digital. There is no talk of film,
television, computers, iPads, or phones. There is nothing that might link us to the
twenty-first century technology at all. It is true that the majority of secondary schools
do not have to do the national curriculum but all have to do the exams at sixteen – the
General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE) – and these echo the national
curriculum. Those of us teaching on the Post Graduate Certificate of Education
(PGCE) have to prepare students to teach the printed word, be it a Shakespeare
play, a Dickens’ novel, or poetry by Wordsworth. The scope for multi-modality
seems limited which seems curious given that we are teaching a so-called digital
generation (Buckingham, 2006). We have essentially 40 days to teach them how to
teach English, and undeterred by the curriculum we use all the technology available.
In particular we use what might best be described as a multi-modal approach.
In one of our very early sessions, a week into the course, we attend a school and
do a goldfish bowl on a lesson. A teacher takes a regular class but all our PGCE
students sit around the edge observing. They have an observation sheet, which asks
them what modes the teacher and the pupils are using at any given moment, thus
highlighting for the students that multiple modes are used during a lesson. Pupils
might be looking at pictures on the interactive whiteboard, reading a text, writing,
talking, and listening. Much is made, too, of the posture, gestures, gaze, and so on,
of the teacher as she seeks to encourage and manage the class to be interested in
whatever she is teaching. We examine it in great detail afterwards both with the
teacher and again in a session in college. We also have a number of drama sessions –
with Shakespeare’s Globe, the National Theatre and The Old Vic – where we, in
effect “transform meaning across modes” (Franks, 2003) as we explore the printed
text through speech and kinesthetically.

Defining Multi-Modality

So how do we define what we mean when we talk of multimodality? The term

has a number of definitions. It can be used in research methodology, and indeed
if someone were to research the way we teach taking a multi-modal approach to

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 105–116.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
B. Marshall

how we teach would be a good starting point. Yet it is not so much how we teach as
what we teach that we will focus on because, “A multi-modal approach to learning
requires us to take seriously and to attend to the whole range of modes involved in
representation and communication” (Jewitt, 2003, p. 1).
Jewitt (2009) defines multi-modality as:
approaches that understand communication and representation to be more than
about language, and which attend to the full range of communication all forms
people use – image, gesture, gaze, posture, and so on – and the relationship
between them. (p. 4)
Indeed, Jewitt (2009) adds: “The interaction between modes is itself a part of the
production of meaning” (p. 5).

The Moving Image as Multi-Modal

But it is the moving image that I want to concentrate on in this chapter not least
because this is the main area where our English teaching meets the digital in that we
teach the film of the book. Burn (2010) said, “In the context of formal education,
there is a theme which considers moving image literacy as multimodal” (p. 361).
He expands this observation to look at media literacy in general and says that this
includes considering the cultural, critical and creative. He states that, “Children’s
understanding of narrative elements such as character, point of view, first and third
person, narrative action, are distributed across these three media versions of the
same story” (p. 364).
Much of our work and understanding on teaching the film of the book at King’s
College, London comes from research that was carried out nearly twenty years ago
in a research project conducted with the British Film Institute (BFI) as described
in A Report on Literacy and Media Research Projects (MacCabe et al., 2000). The
second study was completed ten years ago –Animated English (Jensen et al., 2005).
Although the first study may seem somewhat dated it was one of the first to be
carried out on literary adaptation in the classroom that did not take the view that
the adaptation would not be as good as its literary progenitor. Both studies included
looking at filmic language, and significantly a writerly element to the adaptation.
Pupils were asked to create their own adaptations. We will return to these two
elements, the readerly and the writerly, later.
In part based on this research, the BFI has also long argued that media literacy
is extremely important, and has produced a number of documents on the subject
including Reframing Literacy (2013) which states that literacy “is not just about
the written word” (p. 4). This, too, as with Burn (2010) takes as its markers culture,
critical and creative, saying that each aspect must be intermingled when taught; it
goes on to look at what it calls the Cs and Ss of media literacy – the Cs being
media terms and the Ss literacy/narrative terms. The Ss are setting, story, symbol,
and sequence and the Cs are colour, composition, and cutting and the two that don’t

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quite fit pattern are sound and chronology. Many of them can be intertwined as
both media and print literacy, such as symbol, sequence, or setting. Indeed the BFI
advocates the use of short films as a means of teaching both.
We have a session on teaching short film on our PGCE course as well as a morning
at the BFI, which also concentrates on using short film as a means to literacy, both
print and visual. Both sessions use a media approach, analyzing, for example camera
angles, reaction shots, and editing as well as considering the more literary elements
such as setting and description. We also use prediction, which can include the skills
of inference because in predicting what will happen one has to infer what is going on
at present. Again the BFI document Reframing Literacy (2013) quotes a teacher who
says: “Their descriptive, inferential and predictive skills were extended and they
found that they were better at this than they thought because this form of media was
familiar to them” (p. 3). According to the BFI, their “aim is to ‘reframe literacy’: to
persuade teachers and education policy-makers that film should be an integral part
of the literacy curriculum in primary and secondary schools throughout the land”
(Reframing Literacy, 2013, p. 3).
Typically our PGCE students embrace the study of short films within English
and use them partly to teach the media but also frequently to teach creative writing.
I have seen students teach the films Dangle, Father and Daughter, and The Bread
and the Alley most effectively and in a variety of ways. What is interesting about the
teaching of these films is the way student teachers integrate the technical language
of media studies with a more English/literacy approach. In a way they are using
what once would have been a picture to stimulate writing, but because they are using
a short film there is far more scope to teach narrative skills as well. As part of the
PGCE, our students have to write one of two 8000 word assignments on an aspect
of their teaching practice (the second is a research piece on an aspect of the school
they are in); and although none of them has chosen to write about their use of short
films in the classroom in this assignment, nevertheless they have taught it effectively
using a multi-modal approach.

Film Adaptations

Nor specifically have the students chosen to write for their work on the film of the
book even though teaching the film of the book has always been common practice
in English lessons. Again, students have looked at film adaptations of novels. One
teacher, for example, taught Lord of the Flies in an all boys’ school and included two
screen versions – the black and white Peter Brook version of 1963 and the colour
1990 one directed by Harry Hook. He chose to explore the efficacy of studying
these two film versions independently of the written text. In fact showing the film
version, for example of Of Mice and Men has become virtually mandatory in English
lessons. As Burn (2010) writes, “The English curriculum can pursue this kind of
trans-media phenomenon not only across the cultural and semiotic landscape of the
contemporary moment, but through a historical process of textual transformation”

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(p. 364). Now, with the changes coming to the English curriculum and the prevalence
of the nineteenth century novel, showing A Muppets Christmas Carol or the BBC’s
Joe Wright’s version of Pride and Prejudice will become ubiquitous in order to help
pupils grapple with the text.
Academic study of literary adaptation has burgeoned, particularly in the past
two decades and books on the film of the book increasingly abound. Literature on
Screen (Cartmell & Whelehan, 2010) and Now a Major Motion Picture (Geraghty,
2008) are such examples as are ones which ask questions of film adaption such
as True to the Spirit: Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity (MacCabe
et al., 2011) and Film Adaptation and its Discontents (Leitch, 2009). In the latter
book, Leitch looks at the curriculum of E. D. Hirsch, who advocates a curriculum
design in his book Cultural Literacy (1987) which has in part been imitated by the
latest one written for England. Hirsch in effect promotes a canon of literature which
all should study with the assumption that the commonality of this study will give
pupils “shared cultural markers” (Leitch, 2009, p. 7). This in turn should lend them
the ability “to grasp the meaning of what they read more precisely and effortlessly
and to write with a surer sense of what their readers already know and believe”
(Leitch, 2009, p. 7).
What Leitch (2009) makes clear is that for Hirsch, literary adaptations only have
currency because they point to the original and better literary text, so that under
Hirsch, “adaption study seems condemned to a bleak and servile future” (p. 9).
Adaption is never as good as the book. “This assumption,” write Cartmell and
Whelehan (2010), “that the literary text must [their italics] be supreme because
literature must be better than film has undoubtedly blighted much work in the field”
(p. 6). Leitch (2009) looks to Roland Barthes and his definitions of a readerly and
writerly text. He writes “Barthes complains that, ‘What the (secondary) School
prides itself in is teaching to read well and no longer to write’” (Barthes in Leitch,
2009, p. 13). So, according to Leitch, a “pedagogical orthodoxy of literacy that
exists [resulting in] defining literature of the readerly in a way that guarantees that
adaptation study will remain as trivial as the adaptation it prescribes” (p. 13). Leitch,
however, wants to rediscover the writerly. So he asserts that,
texts remain alive only to the extent that they can be rewritten and that to
experience a text in all its power requires each reader to rewrite it. The whole
process of film adaptation offers an obvious practical demonstration of the
necessity of rewriting that many commentators have ignored because of their
devotion to literature. (pp. 2–13)

Shakespeare on Screen

The main area where our PGCE students commit pen to paper, for their 8000 word
subject assignment on their teaching practice, is the use of films of a text they are
studying in teaching Shakespeare. The study of Shakespeare is somewhat different

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to teaching a novel in that he is a playwright and the words that he produces are
intended to be performed. And yet in English classrooms the arguments about how
to study him are often very similar as it is the language he uses that examiners are
interested in. So for example in the current GCSE, an exam taken at 16, one of the
four assessment objectives is to “Analyse the language, form and structure used by
a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where
appropriate” (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, AQA, consulted 08.04.15).
This can lead to a concentration on the text rather than its dramatic performance.
To counteract this tendency to concentrate on the text in our PGCE we have two
sessions on teaching Shakespeare. One is done with Shakespeare’s Globe theatre
and the other concentrates on film adaptations. The Globe shares with the other
institution which focuses on Shakespeare – the Royal Shakespeare Company
(RSC) – dramatic interpretations of text. While these performances may be viewed
digitally, in that there are many recordings of productions, when both the Globe
and the RSC teach a session on Shakespeare it is multi-modal but not digital. In
2008, the RSC ran a campaign called Stand Up for Shakespeare through which it
wanted to encourage the teaching of Shakespeare to be less text bound and place
more emphasis on teaching him actively and dramatically. In doing so they were
echoing Rex Gibson, who wrote extensively on the subject (see for example,
Gibson, 1990, 1998) and was the editor of the Cambridge Shakespeare. He was very
much in favour of teaching Shakespeare by approaching his plays more as working
scripts rather than completed play texts, plays that ought to be seen as well as read.
And the Globe session in which we are involved teaches in this way also in that it
teaches kinaesthetically: as well as basing the session on the play it is multi-modal
and, citing Jewitt once more, “The interaction between modes is itself a part of the
production of meaning” (2009, p. 15).
So, for example, our students while at the Globe rehearse several extracts from his
plays exploring meaning through a number of different modes. One such exercise
in the past has been reading Ophelia’s speech, “Oh what a noble mind in here
o’erthrown.” The reader is walking while reading, and at each punctuation mark
they have to change the direction. This can have quite a disorientating effect on the
reader and when the students come together at the end they discuss their sense of
confusion and the probability that Ophelia is similarly distraught. It is the fact that
they are having to perform the speech in a very different mode from that of simply
reading it aloud or even watching the play, which can bring about this type of debate
about the mind of Ophelia. They almost share her confusion in a real as well as an
empathetic manner.
Teaching Shakespeare on film is different, however. Again there is now a
substantial literature on film versions of Shakespeare plays, for example The
Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (Jackson, 2007). The discussion
that takes place of a film version of a play tends to involve “a persistent opposition
between the verbal and the visual” (Tribble, 2012, p. 297), which in some ways is
the same as discussing the written text and its enactment mentioned above, or “the

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contrary dynamics of theatrical and cinematic space” (Davies, 1988, p. 16, cited in
Tribble, 2012).
When we teach filmic versions of Shakespeare plays, however, we do not really
address either of these questions. We teach it multi-modally, in that we address film
language as a means of getting at interpretation. In their chapter on multi-modal literacy,
Burn and Parker (2005) explain how film grammar, according to Metz (1974), contains
many modes including a “whole assemblage of codes of language, gesture, music,
filming editing” (Metz, in Burn & Parker, p. 59) and it is these which we address.
We have shown, for example, two versions of Richard III – the Ian McKellan
version and the Al Pacino Looking for Richard version, but in so doing we emphasize
media techniques such as camera angles, lighting, and diachronic and non-diachronic
sound to differentiate the films. We also look at acting techniques, such as facial
expression and spatial positioning of the characters. We have examined, too, the
Olivier version of Henry V, one made by Kenneth Brannagh, and finally the film
version that the BBC made at the time of the 2012 Olympics as part of the cultural
Olympiad, The Hollow Crown. Again we look at the film grammar but also consider
when the films were made. The Olivier version was made just after Dunkirk, during
the Second World War. the Brannagh version was made around the time that many
films on Vietnam had come out; and The Hollow Crown was in some ways done
to celebrate “our Bard” at the time of the Olympics. Thus we are looking at the
cultural context of the productions (Burn & Parker, 2003), and so attempting to build
a richer, more multi-modal approach to watching a film. We encourage our students
to present to pupils how Shakespearean texts can be interpreted very differently in
the belief that as a result pupils will begin to ask more questions of the printed text.

Student Assignments: Mustafa Ibrahim and Donal Hale’s1 Grapplings with

Shakespeare and Film

As has already been noted, our students write an assignment on an aspect of their
practice teaching of English, and typically a third to a half write on teaching
Shakespeare. Almost all the students combine the approach taken by the Globe
and Rex Gibson with teaching Shakespeare through film. What is interesting about
these assignments is that they have to read the literature on the subject they are
teaching, and that often means they do not teach in a way we have recommended.
If we look at two examples of student lessons we begin to see how they negotiate,
through their writing, the nature of multi-modality and how it helps pupils learn
about Shakespeare.
In Mustafa Ibrahim’s subject assignment, for instance, we find that although he
uses film to teach Much Ado About Nothing, he only shows a film version once they
have read the play, in keeping with his personal understanding that this is the right
way to teach Shakespeare (O’Briend, 1982). Having said this, however, Mustafa
showed two versions of the scene, one being Brannagh’s version (1993) and the
other that of Joss Wheden (2012) (the scene where Beatrice asks Benedict to “Kill

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Claudio,” (Act IV, sc i). Significantly, he introduced the session by acknowledging

that Shakespeare on film is not only common, but that there are adaptations of
adaptation – films such as The Lion King and 10 Things I Hate About You – which
take Shakespeare’s plot, like Hamlet or The Taming of the Shrew and adapt them.
Although he did not capitalize extensively on this he still chose to show the ubiquity
of Shakespeare’s tales by looking at film adaptations.
Mustafa went on to divide the class into three groups before looking at the
two scenes. Interestingly he asked them to concentrate on more drama-orientated
points than film grammar – one group looked at the actor’s performance, another
at directorial choices, and the third at costume and make up. Although the class did
not discuss film grammar they still looked at the clips in a multi-modal way in that
he acknowledged that the scenes are comprised of different modes making up the
meaning; and again citing Jewitt (2009) “The interaction between modes is itself
a part of the production of meaning” (2009:15). Once they had watched the clips,
the whole class discussed them and finally were asked to complete a writerly task
in that they had to produce a storyboard themselves. “They were given six frames
and were asked to think about the camera angle, actor’s gestures, and key quotes
from the characters in each frame. Students were given the opportunity to share
their storyboards with the class” (Ibrahim, 2015). Here he looked slightly more at
film grammar, in that he looked for camera angles, but again he was predominantly
interested in a more theatrical, directorial decision.
What is good about Mustafa’s assignment is that he demonstrates his learning
about multi-modality. More particularly, he allows for both readerly and writerly
interpretations of Shakespeare. Significantly, this is picked up by the pupils; he writes:
The focus group interview also revealed a mixed response to the film approach:
Teacher: How was that lesson?
Imade: I think that was my favourite lesson so far.
Job: It was good.
Charlie: I didn’t like it.
Teacher: Why was it your favourite?
Imade: When you’re trying to just read it’s not always clear, but seeing it
makes you see how it’s supposed to sound.
Teacher: Why did you not like it?
Charlie: I didn’t like those films. They were boring.
Ruth: It felt like it was taking away, like the picture in my head of the play.
I was just watching it like no, no.
Charlie: That’s why I liked the storyboard cos we got to do it how we wanted it.

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Two points emerge. First is that for some seeing the film enabled them “to see how
it’s supposed to sound.” This, in a way, is important because it encourages them to
understand the meaning of the text. In reading it alone, “it’s not always clear”; when
they actually encounter a performance they see what it means, which of course is
what you want when you teach something. For others however watching film was
an unsatisfactory experience because they had imagined the scene differently, “the
picture in my head of the play.” This is akin to the criticism of film versions that
“it is hard to suppress the yearning for a faithful one of one’s own version of the
literary text” (McFarlane, 2010, p. 5). Yet Mustafa allows for just this, as another
student comments: “That’s why I liked the storyboard cos we got to do it how we
wanted it.” He has allowed the pupils to engage in interpretations that are both
writerly as well as readerly, seeing how it is done and trying it out for themselves.
To cite Leitch (2009) once more, “texts remain alive only to the extent that they can
be rewritten” (p. 12) so that, Sophie Clarke, another PGCE student, writes aptly,
using film versions can “play a larger role in the creation of new meanings in text”
(Clarke, 2012).
Donal Hale a PGCE student looking at Romeo and Juliet, considers the notion
of performance in Shakespeare and looks less at the pupils’ own performance and
rather at the play’s performance because “a method of exclusively reading the
text means pupils do not fully appreciate the works of Shakespeare” (Hale, 2010).
Citing Coursen (1997) he writes: “The word on the page – the so called text of
Shakespeare – is incomplete. The word awaits incarnation: the voice of the actors,
the response of spectators” (Coursen, 1997, p. 14, cited in Hale, 2010). What Donal
goes on to discuss is the nature of adaptation and so interpretation of the text, in that
any film adaptation is to some extent an interpretation of the play and, therefore,
learning on the part of the pupils. So, “The technique of using film for interpretation
and critical thinking can promote learning objectives through the generation of
skills which can be adapted to understanding devices found directly in the text”
(Hale, 2010). Donal adds that we can see film “in a more pedagogical light, drawing
out ideas, themes, motifs, literary devices of the playwright and this can help in
scaffolding pupils learning with regard to Shakespeare” (Hale, 2010).
What is also beneficial – this time Donal cites Styan (1993) – is that, “By the
pedagogical device of performance another desirable end is achieved, nothing
comes between the play and the students, no second hand experience from some
stale instructor advising them what they should think and feel” (Styan, p. 13, cited
in Hale, 2010). The fact that they are looking at an adaptation of a Shakespeare play,
“Does not mean we lose meaning from the actual text but can, in fact, enhance the
experience of the texts further, drawing out ideas and meanings we want our pupils
to learn in a cinematic manner” (Hale, 2010).
In his lesson plans, Donal looked specifically at the nature of adaptation with
his class: “I want to show pupils how written material must be synthesised in a
manner of adaptation to produce a film or a theatrical version of a play through
performance.” One method he used was to show an interview with the co-writer on

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the Baz Lurhman production of Romeo and Juliet, “who discusses the idea of
adapting a play to the screen and what his version wanted to achieve for an audience.”
In other words he makes explicit the fact that all renditions of Shakespeare are
adaptations, thus hoping to achieve a further criticality from his class.
This, to an extent, he achieved: “Pupil B: ‘Yeah I found I was better at analysing
the play that way, by seeing bits of it and discussing and I thought about how I might
do it. It’s like my opinion matters more I guess’” (Hale). Again we see the writerly
as well as the readerly displayed as well, “I thought about how I might do it” (Hale).
The same was true when Donal compared versions of the play, in this case the
Baz Luhrmann version and the Zefirelli. Again, in this lesson he aimed to “embed
the idea of interpretation through adaptation of the play through analysis of two
contrasting visual representations of the story” (Hale). Unlike Mustafa he looked
at film grammar more – the elements of the clips “which create the style of each
adaptation in order that they may start to think about ‘the reasons for such directorial
choices’” (Hale). Again the pupils understood this and spoke of the differences in
the versions; strangely for Donal, who preferred the Zeffirelli to the Luhrmann.
Significantly, too, they spoke of the language as well. One pupil, again referring to
the Zeffirelli film, said, “‘It puts it in context more and it suits the language more,
the way everyone speaks fits this version better’” (Hale). Here, as Donal puts it, the
pupil is using “interpretative analysis [to] … contemplate the medium of the text and
the film simultaneously” (Hale) thus looking at a type of cultural context (Burn &
Parker, 2003). Moreover, and again as Donal writes, “The visual drama portrays the
meaning behind difficult language” (Hale, 2010). As one student put it, “Because it
means the words, or the text even, has more meaning. It makes it easier for me to
understand the language because it’s acted out, if you know what I mean” (Hale).
While another comments, “I think it does make the language easier because you get
the story of what’s happening, because it’s right in front of you eyes and then you
can make more sense of the language” (Hale).
The fact that film makes understanding the play easier was reinforced when
Donal chose to make contemplating adaptations a writerly as well as a readerly
task. In one of the lessons he asked the pupils, having watched two versions of
the film, to enact the way in which they would perform it themselves. Again we
find that watching the films enables them to perform their take on it. One student
said: “It makes looking at the text a lot easier too because you kind of know what’s
happening and so you could just work through the text easier and relate it back to
what you just watched” (Hale). While another commented: “It’s good having both
the film and the text because it puts the play into perspective … the performance in
context to the words.” The word perspective is interesting here because it adds to the
suggestion that watching the film allows for the pupils’ interpretations rather than,
for example, a “stale instructor” (Styan, 1993, p. 13 cited in Hale, 2010). It allows
them a writerly role when encountering the film. What is important for Donal is that
“using both in a complimentary fashion [the readerly and writerly aspects of film
watching] improves pupil learning” (Hale, 2010).

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CONCLUSION

For both Mustafa Ibrahim and Donal Hale, the assignment gives them a chance to
reflect on their own learning by analysing the learning that has taken place in their
lessons. For both, they have explored a multimodal way of teaching Shakespeare
and discovered that it benefits their students. We have in the past looked at teaching
nineteenth century literature through film. We had a session which, based on the
research carried out with the BFI (Oldham, 1999), looked at teaching Oliver Twist
using the David Lean version with Carol Reed’s Oliver, with a soundtrack by Lionel
Bart. We may return to this again given the new curriculum and examination system.
What we will never do is teach in a way that eschews the digital. We live in the
twenty- first century not the nineteenth, and the pupils we are getting our students to
teach are digital natives.

NOTE
1
These are their actual names.

REFERENCES
Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA). (2015). Exams administration. Retrieved from
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Barthes, R. (1977). From work to text. In R. Barthes (Eds.), Image-music-text (S. Heath, Trans.,
pp. 155–164). New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
British Film Institute (BFI). (2013). Reframing literacy. London: Author.
Buckingham, D. (2006). Is there a digital generation. In D. Buckingham & R. Willet Digital (Eds.),
Generations: Children, young people, and new media (pp. 1–13). London, UK: Routledge.
Burn, A. (2010). A very long engagement: English and the moving image. In D. Wyse, R. Andrews, &
J. Hoffman (Eds.), The handbook of English, language and literacy teaching (pp. 354–366). London,
UK: Routledge.
Burn, A., & Parker, D. (2003). Tiger’s big plan: Multimodality and the moving image. In C. Jewitt &
G. Kress (Eds.) Multimodal literacy (pp. 56–72). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Cartmell, D., & Whelehan, I. (2010). The Cambridge companion to literature on screen. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Clark, S. (2012). Teaching the tempest: Specialist subject assignment. London, UK: King’s College
London.
Coursen, H. R. (1997). Teaching English with film and television: A guide. London, UK: Greenwood.
Davies, A. (1988). Filming Shakespeare’s plays: The adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles,
Peter Brook and Akira Kurosowa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Franks, A. (2003). Palmers’ kiss: Shakespeare, school drama and semiotics. In C. Jewitt & G. Kress
(Eds.), Multimodal literacy (pp. 139–154). Oxford, UK: Peter Lang.
Geraghty, C. (2008). Now a major motion picture: Film adaptations of literature and drama. Plymouth,
UK: Rowman and Littlefield.
Gibson, R. (1990). Secondary school Shakespeare: A collection of papers by secondary teachers.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Institute of Education.
Gibson, R. (1998). Teaching Shakespeare. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Golding, W. (1997). Lord of the flies. London, UK: Faber and Faber.
Hale, D. (2010). Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Specialist subject assignment. London, UK: King’s College
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Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. Boston, MA: Houghton
Mifflin.
Ibrahim, M. (2015). Teaching much ado about nothing. Specialist subject assignment. London, UK:
London King’s College.
Jackson, R. (2007). The Cambridge companion to Shakespeare on film. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Jensen, H. (2005). Animated English: A report given to the Arts Council New Audiences Fund. London,
UK: King’s College London.
Jewitt, C. (2003). Introduction. In C. Jewitt & G. Kress (Eds.), Multimodal literacy (pp. 1–18). New York,
NY: Peter Lang.
Jewitt, C. (2009). An introduction to multimodality. In C. Jewitt (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of
multimodal analysis (pp. 14–27). London, UK: Routledge.
Leitch, T. (2009). Film adaptation and its discontents: From gone with the wind to the passion of Christ.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
MacCabe, C., Marshall, B., Oldham, J., Parker, D., & Street, B. (2001). Report on literacy and media
research projects: October 1997–November 2000. London, UK: King’s College London.
MacCabe, C., Murray, K., & Warner, R. (2011). True to the spirit: Film adaptation and the question of
fidelity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
McFarlane, B. (2010). Reading film and literature. In D. Cartmell & I. Whelehan (Eds.), The Cambridge
guide to literature on screen (pp. 15–28). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Metz, C. (1974). Film language: A semiotics of the cinema. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
O’Brien, V. (1982). Teaching matters. London, UK: Edward Arnold Publishers.
Oldham, J. (1999). The book of the film: Print literacy at KS3. English in Education, 33(1), 36–46.
Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). (2008). Stand up for Shakespeare. Retrieved from
http://www.rsc.org.uk/downloads/stand-up-for-shakespeare-manifesto.pdf
Steinbeck, J. (1937). Of mice and men. London, UK: William Heinemann.
Styan, J. L. (1993). Shakespeare off the page. In J. E. Davis & R. Salomone (Eds.), Teaching Shakespeare
today: Practical approaches and productive strategies. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of
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Tribble, E, (2012). ‘When every noise appalls me’: Sound and fear in Macbeth and Akira Kurosowa’s
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FILMOGRAPHY
Allen, L. (Producer), & Brooke, P. (Director). (1963). Lord of the flies [Motion picture]. United Kingdom:
British Lion.
Allen, L. (Producer), & Hook, H. (Director). (1990). Lord of the flies [Motion picture]. United States:
Columbia Pictures.
Baker, M. G. (Producer), & Henson, D. (Director). (1992). The Muppets christmas carol [Motion Picture].
United States: Buena Vista Pictures.
Bayly, S. (Producer), & Loncraine, R. (Director). (1995). Richard III [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom:
United Artists.
Bevan, T. (Producer), & Wright, J. (Director). (2005). Pride and prejudice [Motion Picture]. United
Kingdom: Universal.
Brabourne, J. (Producer), & Zeffirelli, F. (Director). (1968). Romeo and Juliet [Motion Picture]. United
Kingdom: Paramount Pictures.
Del Giudice, F. (Producer), & Olivier, L. (Director). (1944). Henry V [Motion picture]. United Kingdom:
Eagle-Lion Distributors.
Hadge, M. (Producer), & Pacino, A. (Director). (1996). Looking for Richard [Motion picture]. United
States: 20th Century Fox.
Hahn, D. (Producer), Allers, R. (Director), & Minkoff, R (Director). (1994). The Lion King [Motion
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Howarth, T. (Producer), & Traill, P. (Director). (2003). Dangle [Motion picture]. France: Trigger Happy
Productions
Jennings, C. (Producer), Thijssen, W. (Producer), & Dudok de Wit, M. (Director). (2000). Father and
daughter [Motion picture]. The Netherlands: CinéTé Filmproductie BV.
Kiarostami, A. (Director). (1970). Bread and alley [Motion picture]. Iran: Les Films du Paradoxe.
Langton, S. (Director). (1995). Pride and prejudice [TV Series]. United Kingdom: BBC edition.
Lazar, A. (Producer), & Junger, G. (Director). (1999). 10 things I hate about you [Motion picture]. United
States: Buena Vista Pictures.
Martinelli, G. (Producer), & Luhrmann, B. (Director). (1996). Romeo and Juliet [Motion Picture]. United
States: Paramount Pictures.
Neame, R. (Producer), & Lean, D. (Director). (1948). Oliver Twist [Motion picture]. United Kingdom:
Rank Organisation.
Ryle-Hodges, R. (Producer), & Sharrock, T. (Director). (2012). The hollow crown (Henry V) [TV Series].
United Kingdom: BBC edition.
Sharaman, B. (Producer), & Branagh, K. (Director). (1989). Henry V [Motion picture]. United Kingdom:
Curzon Film Distributors.
Woolf, J. (Producer), & Reed, C. (Director). (1968). Oliver! [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia
Pictures.

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 SECTION 3
TEACHER EDUCATORS
 SCOTT BULFIN, GRAHAM PARR AND NATALIE BELLIS

9. LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION AND

NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Standards-Based Reforms and the Technologizing Imperative

Systematization comes upon the scene during an age which feels itself in
command with a ready-made and handed down body of authoritative thought.
A creative age must first have passed; then and only then does the business of
formalistic systematizing begin – an undertaking typical of heirs and epigones
who feel themselves in possession of someone else’s now voiceless word.
 (Voloshinov, 1986, p. 78)

INTRODUCTION

Global technology companies, international bodies like UNESCO and the OECD,
national governments, and even educational researchers, continue to express great
enthusiasm for the “transforming impact [of ICT] on national education systems”
(UNESCO, 2011). Their enthusiasm proliferates internationally despite vigorous
critiques of claims about so called “ICT facilitated learning” (cf., Picciano & Spring,
2013; Selwyn, 2011, 2013). At the same time, governments across the world are
introducing wide-ranging policy reforms to improve the quality of education, hoping
to better prepare young people for an increasingly complex globalizing world
(Schleicher, 2012). Much of the focus has been on teachers and improving the quality
and capacity of the teaching workforce (e.g., Jensen et al., 2012; OECD, 2010).
Very often this increased quality and capacity are directly linked to educators’ ‘ICT
capabilities’ and the ability of teachers and schools to “prepare students for further
education and training and for living and working in a digital world” (DEEWR,
2008). In current educational policy discourse, improving the quality of education
is closely connected to both a teacher quality agenda and a new technology agenda.
This coupling of educational reform to a technologizing imperative also links to
a global standardizing imperative. While studies into the effects of globalization,
with its rapid flow of people, policies, and practices back and forward across global
borders, emphasise the paradox of increasing diversification as much as increasing
standardization (e.g. Appadurai, 1996; Bauman, 2000), the strategy for improving
the quality of teaching has unquestionably been on the side of standardizing teacher
knowledge and practices (e.g. Darling-Hammond et al., 2009; Doecke et al., 2008).

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 119–133.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
S. BULFIN et al.

Studies have already shown how standards-based reforms over the last ten years
are contributing to the de-professionalizing of teachers (e.g. Apple, 2006; Berliner,
2011; Darling-Hammond, 2004; Doecke et al., 2006; Smith, 2013; Smith & Kovacs,
2011). Particular concerns are being expressed about the dampening effect this is
having on creativity in teachers’ professional practice (Doecke, Parr, & Sawyer,
2014; Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Parr, Bulfin, Castaldi, Griffiths, & Manual, 2014;
Stanley & Stronach, 2013; Turvey, Yandell, & Ali, 2012).
Unsurprisingly, this research tends to be ignored and, in terms of new technologies,
governments across the world continue to respond with uncritical enthusiasm and
funding of large-scale ICT-based development programs, often in partnership with
global technology companies, to improve digital literacy in schools and teacher
education institutions. Any potential for critique, debate, and questioning of the
programs is typically constrained by requirements that the programs be implemented
alongside a set of globally derivative professional standards and/or a standards-based
conceptual framework. Funding recipients are obliged to report on their (invariably)
successful participation in the project using the same standards or standards-based
framework. Research continues to show how these efforts are largely ineffective (e.g.,
Cuban, 2001; Lankshear & Snyder, 2000; Pflaum, 2004; Selwyn, 2014). In fact, the
globalizing imperative for educational systems in nation states to play a key role in
creating competitive knowledge economies, and young people able to navigate these
economies, has had contradictory effects on national and local educational practices
and cultures. One instance of this is that it is now commonplace for governments and
regulatory bodies to demand of education “providers” comprehensive compliance
with generic standards while urging these same providers to produce ever-higher
levels of educational innovation.
These two contradictory moves—one to standardization and one to innovation—
tend to be resolved in favor of the former, with the latter typically blunted by carefully
contained boundaries, or offered as an innovation veneer thinly covering a reduced
vision of compliance-based professionalism and accountability. In a recent example
from Australia, the national educational standards body, the Australian Institute for
Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), appropriated telling commentary from
a key policy document, Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young
Australians on its 2012 website that signalled the coming together of these two
areas—standards and new technologies:
Rapid and continuing advances in information and communication technologies
(ICT) are changing the ways people share, use, develop and process information
and technology, and young people need to be highly skilled in ICT. While
schools already employ these technologies in learning, there is a need to
increase their effectiveness significantly over the next decade. (MCEETYA,
2008, p. 13)
The clear message is that standards, and the panoply of standards-based artefacts,
texts, regimes, and initiatives that have been developed and supported by groups

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like AITSL and other regulatory bodies around the globe, are merely facilitating
the radical transformations that new technologies invariably bring. The combination
of standards-based education rhetoric and deterministic views of new technologies
is, it seems to us, a concerning phenomenon (cf., Parr, Bellis, & Bulfin, 2013).
In this chapter, we want to take a close look at the phenomenon, exploring how
deeply intertwined standards-based reforms and new technologies have become in
education policy in Australia, and to consider what this might mean more broadly.
We do this by identifying the ways in which policy and curriculum environments
are both dominated by standards-based reforms, and then showing how these reforms
are linked to the imperative for educational institutions to technologise. First, we
offer a critique of the popular TPCK/TPACK1 framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006,
2008), a recent attempt to think through the relationship between teacher knowledge,
practice, and new technologies. We use the TPACK framework as an example of
linking a standardizing imperative to a technologizing imperative in the context of
discourses about teacher quality and teacher practice. We offer a critical commentary
on the way this framework has become an orthodoxy within teacher education
when considering new technologies, and we explore its limitations. One of our
particular interests in the TPACK framework is the tendency for new technologies
(and associated deterministic discourses) to function as proxies for standards-based
reforms. A related interest is the way frameworks like TPACK get taken up in large-
scale projects, such as the English/literacy teacher education project we describe
later in the chapter, and then become a standardizing imperative themselves.
Following this critique of TPACK, we provide a brief account of an English/
literacy teacher education project in which we explored alternative approaches
to thinking about literacy teacher education and new technologies. Our account
shows how it is possible to speak to and speak back to standards-based policy-
environments, and in doing so, to generate alternative perspectives on education,
schooling, and new technologies in teacher education. The project is an Australian
government funded standards-based initiative from 2011 called Teaching Teachers
for the Future (TTF). We investigate how professional standards, new technologies,
and teacher practice/s came together in complex ways in this innovative project.
Through presenting and reflecting on our own experiences in the project, we also
wonder about the extent to which standards-based reforms are shaping how other
teachers and teacher educators are coming to see, talk about, and imagine their work.

TPACK: A CRITIQUE

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge—or ‘TPACK’ for short—

has emerged over the past five years as a popular conceptual framework for
understanding the role of digital technology in educational settings. In particular,
it has been used to think about the ongoing question of how to understand teacher
knowledge and practice with regards to new technologies. Largely associated with
the work of Mishra and Koehler (2006, 2008), the general principle of TPACK is

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simple enough—that there is a “dynamic equilibrium” between (i) subject or content

knowledge (CK) (ii) pedagogical knowledge (PK) and (iii) knowledge of technology
(TK) (see Figure 1). While such a framework might be seen as usefully bringing a
focus to questions of how to ‘integrate’ new technologies into teaching, we argue
that developing a critical awareness of the tensions and contradictions implicit in
the TPACK framework is potentially more productive and generative than using
it to explain and understand practice. One aspect of TPACK we are particularly
concerned about is its compartmentalization and “packaging up” of professional
knowledge of teaching and ICT knowledge, as well as the framing of pedagogy as
distinct from “content knowledge”. These aspects of the framework seem to put it
firmly in the category of those approaches which attempt to reduce the complexity of
education phenomena, and which are often used to standardise practice.

Figure 1. TPACK model, Reproduced by permission of the publisher,

© 2012 by tpack.org

Mishra and Koehler (2006, 2008), in claiming authorship of TPACK,

acknowledge the clear genealogical connections with Shulman’s (1986, 1987)

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notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK emerged during the 1980s
as an influential discourse in US teacher education, where the initial focus was
on establishing a stable and universal knowledge base for teaching. From there, it
was a matter of exploring ways for teachers to ‘acquire’ that knowledge, and then
to devise teaching procedures for transferring the content knowledge to students.
Since then, PCK has come to influence many subject/discipline/curriculum areas
and many western educational systems across the world. Certainly in countries
such as Australia, PCK’s conception of teaching knowledge integrating its different
constituent elements (typically represented in Venn diagrams) has been important
for many practitioners and bureaucrats in recent years.
One of the conceptual concerns we have with PCK and therefore TPACK is the
assumption that knowledge exists in discrete packages that one can demarcate as
“content knowledge” and “pedagogical knowledge.” This suggests that expertise
for subject content and pedagogy lies in different communities. In 1986, Shulman’s
conceptualization of PCK portrayed content knowledge as created by authoritative
bodies outside of the teaching profession, and pedagogical knowledge as created
within the teaching profession. Following Shulman’s original formulation, further
work by Grossman, Wilson, and Shulman (1989) made a similar distinction:
“Scholars create new knowledge in the discipline. Teachers help students acquire
knowledge within a subject area” (p. 24). And so, having assumed that discipline
knowledge is something that is developed and exists as an entity outside of
schooling, PCK characterises teachers’ work as “representing and formulating the
subject that make it comprehensible to others” (Shulman, 1986, p. 9). Like PCK,
the TPACK framework seeks first to separate CK, PK, and TK, then to re-integrate
them.
The whole project of establishing discrete knowledge sets, before subsequently
re-integrating them, Shulman (1987) argued, was crucial in developing professional
standards for teachers. It allowed centralised bodies to categorise and codify teachers’
knowledge into unproblematic “chunks.” This apparently common sense approach
to identifying neatly bounded knowledge chunks is seductive to those wishing to
articulate discrete professional “standards” of what teachers need to know and be
able to do, which teachers in schools are then obliged to “tick off” in the process of
demonstrating their professional competence.
Such common sense would be compelling, were it not for fundamental flaws in
the logic. There are at least four of these flaws that we outline here and which are
common to how both PCK and TPACK are conceptualised:
• PCK and TPACK assume that any “content knowledge” drawn from outside
the profession is neatly bounded, relatively stable, and widely agreed upon by a
homogeneous academy for whom knowledge in their field is not open to serious
or ongoing challenge and change.
• PCK and TPACK assume there is a singular and unchanging version of this
“content knowledge” that exists outside the profession, and that such knowledge

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will be readily embraced by teachers who apparently have no previous knowledge

of other paradigms, or who have no previous experience that might prompt them
to challenge or critique the dominant paradigm of knowledge.
• PCK and TPACK fail to appreciate that in the richest processes of teaching and
learning, knowledge is engaged with, interpreted and reinterpreted, challenged
and built upon. (Critiques of PCK argue that new knowledge is often generated
dialogically through teaching and learning—cf., Mercer, 1995, 2000; Mercer &
Littleton, 2007; Wells, 1999—knowledge which could never be found in reified
bodies of thought that supposedly exist outside of schooling.)
• Perhaps most significantly, both PCK and TPACK fail to understand the
importance of language in all knowledge building and educative processes. In
particular, they fail to understand the complex mediating role of language in the
production, communication, interpretation of, and engagement with knowledge,
and the influence of culture and history in these interrelated processes.
These are all substantive criticisms that deserve further development beyond
the scope of this chapter. (For a more detailed critique, see Parr, Bellis, & Bulfin,
2013). Our critique of TPACK draws on a significant body of sociocultural research
literature, dating back to Dewey, who so powerfully challenged what he characterised
as a “static, cold-storage ideal of knowledge” (1916/1961, p. 158). And yet this
notion of an ideal knowledge—knowledge that is supposedly objective, acultural,
atemporal and decontextualized—lives on as strong as ever in so much education
policy across the world, policy which is sustained by a desire to compartmentalise
and finalise knowledge into stable and static “packages.” Such packages rely upon
an assumed consensus amongst and between academic and professional worlds
about disciplinary knowledge. This assumed consensus underpins calls in the US
and other countries for “common core” standards and for standardization of practice.
As we did at the beginning of this chapter, we note here again the coming together of
a clear agenda for standardizing teacher practices (and teacher education) and a long
running agenda for technologizing education.

The Value of Adding T to PCK?

There is a sense, we argue, that TPACK merely replicates the structural limitations
of frameworks such as the PCK model (see also Neiss, 2011; Phillips, 2013) yet
disguises the limitations with the allure of new digital technologies. At a time when
the world is rapidly changing, when knowledge is changing, and when developments
in ICT are proliferating, it is apparently reassuring to imagine a parallel universe
where there is evidence of relative stability and clear defined boundaries. In this
parallel universe, the knowledge that matters is knowledge of the past, knowledge that
denies the complexity and contested nature of the present. Many ICT developments
are valuable in this parallel world because they can provide access for teachers to
authoritative and static bodies of thought and knowledge. This content knowledge

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can then be effectively transferred, via various ICT and media devices and platforms,
“learning management systems” and applications, to all students irrespective of
context, culture, and language. Accountability regimes such as standardised tests
can easily check to see whether this knowledge has been transferred to students.
Teachers’ competence can be checked off in lists of professional standards that
are constructed in direct relation to reified bodies of content knowledge and pre-
determined “uses” of ICT that all teachers “should know and be able to use.” In this
parallel universe the logic of TPACK is reassuring.
However, we are not reassured by the logic of TPACK. Indeed, one can look
in vain for consistency in the theory of Mishra and Koehler’s TPACK framework.
At different moments they proclaim that theirs is a “new approach toward teacher
knowledge” (Mishra & Koehler, 2008, p. 11), and “a new way of thinking about
technology” (Mishra, Koehler, & Kereluik, 2009, p. 5), and yet elsewhere they
concede it is not so new after all: “We do not argue that this TPCK approach is
completely new” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1025). In one publication, they appear
to be very interested in the role of language in the development of technological
pedagogical content knowledge. They claim TPACK’s understanding of technology
represents a “new literacy,” “emphasis[ing] the role of the teacher as a producer (as
designer), away from traditional conceptualization of teachers as consumers (users)
of technology” (2008, p. 11). Yet there seems to be no other recognition (in this
paper or others they have published) of the role of language or discourse or discourse
communities in knowledge or knowledge production.
Mishra and Koehler’s descriptions of TPACK range from offering guidance
for looking at the “specificity of the[] relationships between content, pedagogy
and technology” (2006, p. 1026), to offering particular “pedagogical techniques
that apply technologies in constructive ways to teach content in differentiated
ways according to students’ learning needs” (2008, p. 3), to a critique of national
technology standards that “emphasise [only] current versions of hardware and
software” (2006, p. 1031), to suggestions for dealing with the changing nature of
knowledge and diverse student needs: teachers should just “experiment[] with newer
pedagogical techniques” (2008, p. 13). Interestingly, in a review of TPACK, Angeli
and Valanides (2009) criticise its lack of clarity in delineating knowledge fields. The
boundaries between some components of TPACK, they say, are “fuzzy, indicating a
weakness in accurate knowledge categorization or discrimination” (p. 157).
What Niess (2011) calls “the TPACK struggle” describes the efforts of so many
practitioners and researchers to clarify these boundaries, and thus enable them
to accurately measure the improvements they have achieved in a single, neat,
knowledge domain through a particular intervention. This is not a struggle that
we think is particularly worthwhile. In one sense we are critical of the conceptual
looseness of TPACK, but for us the solution is not to tighten up that looseness. In
our view, research time might be better spent seriously engaging with the flaws we
have identified above. While we are critical of TPACK and its value in providing
generative views of the work teachers might do with new technologies, we want to

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be clear that we are also arguing TPACK is but one example of the coming together
of both the technologizing and standardizing impulses we have already highlighted.
In the following section we present brief accounts from the teacher education
project, Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) briefly introduced above, where
we explored alternative approaches to thinking about English/literacy teacher
practice, new technologies, and literacy education. Our intent is to indicate how the
approaches enacted in the project take a stance towards teacher practice and identity,
and towards new technologies and their relationship to “content knowledge” that is
very different to those embodied in approaches such as TPACK.

INQUIRING INTO PRACTICE: THE TTF PROJECT

In this section we explore the TTF project with respect to the issues we have raised
thus far in the essay. The work done in this project offers an alternative to frameworks
such as TPACK. We provide detailed discussion of this project elsewhere (Parr,
Bellis, & Bulfin, 2013). Teaching Teachers for the Future, was an Australian
Government funded project for schools and teacher education institutions intended
to improve the ICT capabilities of preservice teacher graduates. We describe the
context of the project, before presenting some data to illustrate and investigate some
alternative perspectives on teacher education and new technologies.

Teaching Teachers for the Future? The “TTF” Inquiry Group,

Vodcasts and Twitter

The Teaching Teachers for the Future project (TTF) was part of a larger Australian
Government funded project (2011–12) which aimed to produce “systematic change
in the Information and Communication Technology in Education (ICTE) proficiency
of graduate teachers across Australia.” The project involved partnerships between
schools and 39 teacher education institutions across Australia and was explicitly
underpinned by the TPACK framework. The project’s strategy was to target teacher
educators in particular, aiming to build their “ICTE capacity” and to “develop[]
materials to provide rich professional learning and digital exemplar packages”
Equipped with this increased capacity and improved resources, the project guidelines
explained how teacher educators would then “enabl[e] pre-service teachers to
achieve and demonstrate … competence in the effective and innovative use of
ICT,” which would ultimately “improve student learning [in schools]” (ALTC &
ACDE, 2011, p. 4). The focus upon building the capacity of the teaching profession
through enabling pre-service teachers is consistent with other government funded
projects across the world, such as the US project Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers for
Technology (see Polly et al., 2010).
One positive aspect of the project was that it allowed local participants some
scope to shape the project at the institutional and program level. In our institution
the project involved an English teacher from a secondary school (Natalie) being

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seconded to work with a team of English teacher educators (Scott and Graham)
for two days per week over the course of one year (2011). As a team of English
educators, enacting collaborative, inquiry-based approaches to English teaching and
learning, our intent was to explore what it might mean to think about and “do”
English teaching and new technologies more critically than the project guidelines
recommended. While we found ways of complying with the guidelines of the TTF
project, in keeping with our praxis paradigm that combined teaching and research,
we also contested, debated, and questioned narrow notions of digital literacy,
standardised views of English teaching knowledge, and the TPACK framework on
which the project had been built. Ultimately, the local enactment of the TTF project
generated knowledge about English teaching well beyond the scope of the original
proposal, and the whole experience had a profound impact on the authors but in
significantly different ways from those proposed in the project guidelines. Natalie,
in one of a number of mandated project “outputs,” described the approach:
The English Education teaching team at Monash viewed the TTF project as
far more than simply an opportunity to assist pre-service teachers to consider
the role of ICTs in their classroom practice. In effect, this project provided
an opportunity to reflect on the process of becoming a teacher and the role
that universities play in this “professional learning continuum” (Feiman-
Nemser, 2001). Thus, the approach adopted by the English Education team
at Monash aimed to provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to engage
in collaborative inquiry into their own curriculum work and developing
professional identities, both as English teachers and as English teachers who
use new technologies. The hope was that such opportunities would enrich their
future experiences as teachers in schools, and the experiences of the students
in their future classrooms; as such, the emphasis on the “effective use of ICTs,”
as articulated in the aims of the TTF project, remained just one piece of the
mosaic. (Bellis, 2011)
One initiative the project team took was to establish an English education inquiry
group, which comprised 10–20 pre-service students who volunteered to participate
in an additional hour-long seminar (once a week, between scheduled classes) and
contribute to an online conversation that grew from these seminars. Sessions were
planned and led by Natalie and Scott, to provide students with an opportunity to
explore some contemporary digital texts that could be incorporated into English
classrooms and to critically reflect on a range of conceptual and philosophical issues
associated with English teaching and learning, new technologies, and professional
learning. In the excerpt below, Peter (all participant names are pseudonyms) is
responding in an online post to one of a collection of vodcasts published by his
peers in a unit called “English language and literacy education.” These 5–7 minute
videos, in the form of conversations between Natalie, Scott, and individual pre-
service teachers, were opportunities to reflect on aspects of a five-week teaching
placement, undertaken during the final year of their teacher education course. All

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75 pre-service teachers enrolled in “English language and literacy education” were

asked to respond to at least one vodcast. In this response, Peter notes:
There are a number of ways we can “encourage students to see writing as
a means of actively participating in their local community and the larger
society.” One way is to include more creative tasks that encourage students
to use formats that are prevalent in modern society. This can include creating
blogs, newspaper op-eds (and then possibly sending them to newspaper),
songs, advertisements, drama productions, etc. and then making their work
available to the public either on the internet (e.g., film their advertisements and
put the video on youtube) or through some sort of public performance (e.g.,
community drama night, or a talent show for the songs they wrote). This also
has the advantage of connecting their school work to their life outside school.
These ties can be strengthened further if these creative tasks can be intertwined
with social issues that the students are involved with like a song protesting
Australia’s treatment of refugees or a PowerPoint montage about the dangers
of climate change. These are merely a few suggestions. The possibilities with
modern technology are almost endless. (Peter, pre-service student, April 2011)
Peter’s posting represents one voice in an extensive online conversation that
engaged with the videos. The videos had prompted a lively range of responses
from the pre-service students, many of them demonstrating a level of professional
insight similar to what Peter shows here. In his comments, Peter is responding to a
particular vodcast by Rebecca, who had, in a recent practicum, observed secondary
English students composing rap songs about the injustices of the diamond mining
industry in Africa. While viewing the vodcasts, students were invited to consider
how they might encourage their own students to see writing as a means of
actively participating in their local community and the larger society. Peter shows
he is interested in a wide range of writing “products”—including digital, non-
digital, and hybrids of both. He is interested in their potential for generating and
communicating language and ideas in diverse and only sketchily defined “genres”
such as blogs, videos, songs, advertisements, and drama productions. And he
shows an interest in exploring and utilizing various social communities—offline
and online—that might be a basis for encouraging students to see writing as a
form of participation, rather than more conventional framings of writing as simply
encoding or a technical skill.
Other students who posted to these discussions used the space to discuss a range
of issues they had confronted during teaching placement. These issues included
assessing student writing, collaborating with colleagues, helping students to
engage with literary texts, and exploring the relationship between students’ out-of-
school lives and the English classroom. Although the discussions were open to all
students, it became apparent that the more searching postings tended to be from
those students who were attending the voluntary inquiry group workshops scheduled
outside formal classes. Significantly, the focus of these inquiry group meetings was

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not simply about developing the technical capabilities of these pre-service teachers
(their “technological content knowledge” as TPACK proponents might suggest)
but about providing opportunities to explore some of the complexities of online
communication and new media that raise all sorts of interesting possibilities for
English teachers and the young people they teach.
For example, one such workshop explored the social media site Twitter, focusing
on how individuals construct online identities through language and other multi-
modal means. The workshop participants examined and discussed extracts from
the twitter streams of the celebrity couple, Shane Warne (Australian cricketer)
and Elizabeth Hurley (UK film actress). They wondered whether there might be a
place for texts like these in the secondary English classroom and what teachers and
students might do with them. The discussion began with an examination of some of
the features of twitter discourse such as the use of markers like hashtags and retweet
symbols. Soon the discussion moved beyond the “grammar mechanics” of twitter
to questions of cultural value and meaning-making through multimodal text work.
Below is an extract from the conversation during the workshop:
John: I do remember watching a British comedy show talking about the way
the BBC news has gone interactive. So it turns out that the aliens have
arrived. We’re all being enslaved and so and so … Slough says, “Well,
bloody good because it’s about time! These Tories have done nothing.
I say, up with the aliens!” …and it’s like, you know, what’s it got to do
with anything?
Elise: Yeah, but you can’t discount it all.
Sally: It’s about democracy, to an extent, or you hope it is.
Scott: Or a gesture towards it. … I think for me it forces questions of value. It
forces you to confront how do you make an evaluation and a judgement?
So it has the potential to force us to clarify what we see as important,
what we see as…
Paul: But a lot of your students might surprise you with a logic that makes
sense as to why it’s valuable. You might not have thought of it, you
might not see any value in it but if you pose that question to them, they
might surprise you.
Sally: That’s critical engagement isn’t it? Evaluate it, think critically about it.
That’s a good thing.
Natalie: And making the familiar strange too. When you take a step back and
you analyse a text that is part of your everyday behaviour that you never
think about… It’s amazing what insights you get into these big issues
about identity and community and how people relate to each other and
how people use language in ways that they’re not even consciously
thinking about.
Nina: In a lot of ways it’s kind of a cultural studies kind of perspective.
Elise: Yeah.

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John: … That’s what makes this space so interesting I think, that you can get
those different ideas butting up against each other and really requiring
you to develop a perspective on what you think is important in the
classroom.
(Extract from inquiry group workshop, October, 2011)
Whereas Mishra and Koehler’s (2008) TPACK framework defines the
disciplinary knowledge of English teachers and the digital “tools” that they might
use in the classroom as partially discrete entities, pre-service teachers and teacher
educators in the extract above present a view of language, communication, and
technologies (and also politics and sociocultural realities) as deeply intertwined—
even as necessary conditions for the existence of the other. There is little or no sense
that these pre-service teachers are developing “content knowledge” divorced from
“technological knowledge” as they inquire into these new media artefacts and the
complex social interactions that shape them.
The deterministic notion of technology “enabling” learning in the classroom, as
much of the discourse associated with TPACK suggests, is clearly at odds with the
conversation represented here (and the many other similar conversations in English
staffrooms and classrooms around the world). Such a notion does not allow for the
myriad ways in which new media artefacts like a twitter feed might be utilised in an
English classroom to explore issues as fundamental as identity and representation,
narrative, and even democratic participation. It is worth noting that this inquiry-
based but critically focused conversation is mostly driven by the preservice teachers,
as they draw the conversation one way and then another in response to their peers’ or
their lecturers’ input. These students are just embarking on their journey as teachers,
but clearly they are bringing diverse knowledges and critical lenses to their teacher
education experiences, and one could argue that they are collectively generating new
knowledge through their dialogue and lively exchange of ideas and perspectives.
This is a far cry from the notion of a teacher’s expertise involving representing and
reformulating given subject matter so as to make it comprehensible to students in
classrooms, as elements of PCK and TPACK suggest.

CONCLUSIONS

Our account of the TTF project evokes teaching and learning environments (in
universities) that are deeply social spaces, mediated but not driven or determined by
technological software and/or devices. These environments allow pre-service English
teachers to develop creative and critical perspectives on English teaching knowledge
and practices and on other issues such as culture, critical thinking, and values, too. In
these environments, new technological affordances are variously embedded within
teaching and learning practices but in ways that we believe are very different from
accounts of TPACK teacher practices typically presented in literature that expounds
the merits of TPACK. Peter’s posting and the other participants’ contributions to

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the conversation in the TTF English education inquiry group suggest that they are
already envisaging classrooms as dialogic ICT mediated spaces, where support for
the critical and creative voices of their future students will be as important as any
teaching of social media required by school curriculum documents.
The research stories from this project portray English teacher education as a
flexible space where shared knowledge can evolve through bringing texts and
experiences with texts into dialogic relationship with each other, appreciating the
ways in which local and extra-situational factors connect with these texts but also fan
out beyond the university classrooms. The classrooms are not bounded spaces where
knowledge can be neatly defined before, during, or after the pre-service teachers
“get to work.” They are not reified by pre-determined outcomes, or ICT standards
that pre-service students or teacher educators must achieve. With governments,
corporations and other educational organizations all beginning to pick up on the
idea of TPACK and other frameworks like it, the danger is that the kinds of flexible
English classrooms envisaged by Peter and other inquiry group participants will
be replaced by standardised, predictable practices that inhibit other possible ways
of knowing and practising. This is a particular danger for new teachers, for whom
current conditions can seem natural—as if “it has always been this way.”
Of course, the “ready-made … body of authoritative thought” (Voloshinov, 1986,
p. 78) embodied in TPACK and other standards-based “initiatives” is seductive in
its simplicity. Typically, such neatly packaged initiatives promise solutions to the
challenges of the work that goes on in school classrooms and university workshops
and lecture theatres that have eluded all others before them. The simplicity of
educational initiatives can be a powerful selling point, and yet we believe this is
where the greatest danger lies for teachers and researchers. Even when, or especially
when, they are dressed up as new technologies, we would argue that such initiatives
are dangerous if they are allowed to take hold, and limit the way teachers and
teacher educators can talk about, understand, and imagine their relationships and
their classrooms. At this time, there is a clear need for English teachers, teacher
educators and education researchers to explore other ways for teachers in schools
to work collaboratively with teacher educators and pre-service teachers, in ongoing
professional networks, in order to speak back productively to standards-based
rhetoric (Parr, 2010). There are certainly many useful and constructive debates to
be had around issues of technology, pedagogy, curriculum, and knowledge. The
standardizing and technologizing imperatives of frameworks such as TPACK (and
the standards-based policies that are fast growing up around them) are, we argue, not
the best place to begin.

NOTE
1
Mishra and Koehler, the originators of the framework, use both TPCK and TPACK acronyms.
Generally TPCK was used in published papers prior to 2007. Since this time TPACK has been used.
In our chapter we generally employ the more recent form, TPACK. For a fuller explanation of the shift
from TPCK to TPACK see Parr, Bellis, and Bulfin (2013).

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S. BULFIN et al.

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10. FOSTERING PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

PARTNERSHIPS IN LITERACY TEACHER
EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter we seek to investigate how and what literacy teacher educators might
learn as they bring together and work alongside pre-service and serving teachers
within school-university partnerships. A further focus is how such educators might
best be supported institutionally to cross the traditionally perceived boundaries
between schools and universities in attempts to provide what Zeichner (2010) has
termed “hybrid spaces,” spaces in which “the traditional dichotomy of academic
and practitioner knowledge” (p. 89) can be overcome and resolved. In order to
develop our arguments through the specific lens of literacy teacher education, we
draw on case study data from developing partnership work at Monash University,
Australia, illustrating and discussing the rich potential of “hybrid spaces” to develop
and facilitate positive approaches to professional learning for teacher educators,
alongside teachers (who may also be mentors) and pre-service teachers.
We write together, coming from opposite sides of the world but connected
through our research on teacher education and the work of teacher educators.
One of us (Simone) began her academic career as a Literacy teacher educator
and became increasingly interested in the best ways to build productive school-
university partnerships, doing the “bridging across” and “between” schools and
universities (see, for example, White & Reid, 2011). The other (Jean), once a school
teacher and then a teacher educator, has highlighted the role of teacher educators as
second order practitioners in her research (Murray, 2002). She has also identified
the professional learning needs of teacher educators as a distinctive occupational
group. Our experiences of partnership within and across schools and universities in
Australia and England vary significantly since, as the section below shows, concepts
of partnership and understanding of the genuine learning potential within them have
been different in each country.
This chapter is structured as follows – first, we set the contexts for the case studies
by looking briefly at two underpinning areas of literature: literacy as a subject
area within teacher education, and partnerships between schools and universities
or colleges. We then introduce and analyse the case study data from the (literacy)
teacher education partnership project at Monash. Our aim here is to investigate

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 135–148.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
S. White & J. Murray

the ways in which a literacy teacher educator, Caroline (pseudonym), developed

school-university partnerships and created and negotiated hybrid spaces. We also
focus on the institutional support required for this work and the professional learning
resulting.

LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION, PARTNERSHIPS,

AND PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

Literacy teacher educators often have deep levels of specialist expertise in the
subject, developed through both high levels of academic qualification and experience
of teaching in schools and/or in Higher Education (HE). They are often stated to
have key parts to play in influencing the professional learning of pre- and in-service
teachers (Koerner, Rust, & Baumgartner, 2002). It should be acknowledged though
that those serving teachers may also have very high levels of expertise in literacy
teaching, and furthermore, pre-service teachers also bring their previous knowledge
and life experiences of literacy into teacher education. These many and varied forms
of knowledge, held by the different sets of actors in teacher education, mean that in
exemplary quality partnership work between universities and schools, it is important
to avoid a one-way, top-down process of “transferring” expertise from HE-based
teacher educators to serving and pre-service teachers. Rather than this top-down
model, we need to identify and develop the rich potential of “hybrid spaces” in
partnerships to develop and facilitate “three-way” professional learning about
literacy teaching for teacher educators, teachers, and pre-service teachers “with the
student, the teacher (or mentor) and the university teacher engaged in a form of
collaborative assessment and forward planning” (MacBeath, 2011, p. 380), making
use of the varied expertise of all parties. With these questions in mind, we now turn
to a brief analysis of literacy as a subject within teacher education.

Literacy (Teacher) Education: Twenty First Century Challenges for Educators

Literacy takes a central place in education and “its accepted importance for all
developed countries is indicated by the centrality it has acquired in the international
comparisons adopted by the OECD member countries, together with mathematics
and science” (Freebody, 2007, p. iii). Increased literacy capabilities for individuals
are often tied to increased life choices, opportunities, and mobility and collectively
by society are viewed as offering more equitable distribution of social and economic
goods. Literacy education is thus often seen as a key pedagogic site for inclusion
and social justice, as a great deal of academic learning done in schools and beyond
is contingent upon children’s literacy capabilities (Dooley, Exley, & Comber, 2013).
Further, without the capacity to engage with digital literacy and make meaning
with texts through various modes (written, visual, multi-modal) children and young
people can remain limited in their participation as learners and citizens.

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As Cope and Kalantsis (2000, as cited in Kosnik, Menna, Dharamshi, Miyata, &
Beck, 2013) note:
Contemporary literacy pedagogy must engage the complexities of our globalised
society, wherein knowledge is constructed amidst multiple communication
channels and increasing linguistic and cultural diversity. (p. 526)
Given the high stakes of literacy education, the emphasis on multiliteracies, and,
the importance of digital technology, what is taught in initial teacher education is
therefore often hotly debated and contested. Literacy teacher educators are presented
with the need to balance the preparation of teachers for the classrooms of today and
for the classrooms of the future (White and Forgasz), including how to: build a sound
knowledge base of literacy/ies theory; attend to diverse content knowledge (such as
reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing); satisfy current curriculum policy
reforms; utilise 21st century teaching embedding a rapidly changing social media set
of tools into their practices; and provide a broad base of literacy/ies strategies and
approaches for an increasingly diverse student population.

School-University Partnerships: Procedures, Processes, and

Genuine Learning Spaces

Schools have always been integrally involved in teacher education, not least as the
arenas for the student teacher practicum. In more recent decades however, exact
forms of partnership work – and the associated “boundary crossings” (Zeichner,
2010) and professional learning involved for pre-service teachers, HE-based teacher
educators, and mentors – have varied across time and national contexts, often driven
by specific policy changes and/or practitioner initiatives.
In England, for example, there were strong examples of practitioner or university-
driven partnerships extant in the 1980s (see, for example, McIntyre, 1990) but
government legislation from 1992 onwards made it mandatory for HEIs to offer
pre-service courses with schools, thus making partnership a “core principle of
provision” (Furlong et al., 2006, p. 33). These partnerships spawned new emphases
on the importance of mentors in schools, their expertise, professional development,
and career opportunities; also emphasised were new roles for HE-based teacher
educators to support and manage those partnerships. Large numbers of teacher
educators and mentors became involved in boundary crossing activities and the
professional learning opportunities offered by them. In the early stages of partnership
arrangements in the 1990s, there was often an emphasis on HE-based educators
assuming “expert” roles in devising and implementing programmes for teachers and
mentors to follow when working with pre-service teachers; in this kind of model,
HEIs often dominated the partnerships (Furlong et al., 2000). Other models of
partnership (Furlong et al., 2004), however, saw teacher educators, teachers, and
mentors joining together in the mutual development of “pedagogies of guidance”

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S. White & J. Murray

(Guile & Lucas, 1999, p. 27) for developing pre-service teachers’ learning. These
pedagogies, at their best, drew upon strong senses of trust, shared values, and the
genuine exchange of the varying expertise of all the parties involved in educating
pre-service students; such pedagogies also prioritised developing good collaborative
learning opportunities for both mentors and HE-based teacher educators. Some
forms of partnership in England then certainly created versions of what Zeichner
(2010) (see below) was later to call in the initial teacher education arena, “hybrid
spaces” which in turn enabled the development of research-informed or “clinical”
practice in schools and teacher education (Burns & Mutton, 2013).
In Australia partnership models between schools and universities have historically
been less developed than in England, but now the country is beginning to consider
shifts to school-based models as described above, with increased focus on the work of
mentors or school-based teacher educators and their roles in pre-service programmes.
Following other international policy reforms, including those in England, the
Australian Government announced through the National Partnership Agreement of
Improving Teacher Quality Report (Council of Australian Governments, 2008, p. 4)
the following priorities:
1. The systemic response to strengthening linkages between initial teacher education
programs and transition to beginning teaching and teacher induction, and;
2. The professional learning implications of pre-service teachers and in-service
teachers working together as co-producers of knowledge.
These priorities were taken up in different ways across the six States and two
Territories and by universities and school clusters. In Victoria, the partnership
initiative was titled School Centres of Teaching Excellence (SCTE) and seven such
centres were formed across the State. At Monash University, this SCTE partnership
work sought to explore in particular the teacher education curriculum (as opposed
to just the practicum) component and to design ways for pre-service teachers and
in-service teachers to work together as “co-producers of knowledge.” The partnership
work also led to the need to reconsider the roles of the university-based teacher
educator in facilitating these initiatives. While the partnership work included many
disciplines, for the purposes of this paper we focus only on two Literacy teacher
education partnerships.
The SCTE work (and subsequent other partnership projects) has in many ways
followed Zeichner’s (2010) call for teacher educators to consider the creation of
“hybrid spaces,” which attempt to:
overcome the traditional dichotomy of academic and practitioner knowledge
and resolve one of the central problems which have been seen to plague
university-based teacher education, namely, the disconnect between the
campus and school-based components of programs. (p. 89)
“Hybridity,” in the kind of conceptualisation which Zeichner adopts, draws on the
notion of “third space” or “in between spaces” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 2) that exist in the

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“overlap and displacement of domains of difference.” Rather than adopt an either/

or approach, hybrid spaces are seen in Zeichner’s work as facilitating a “both and
also” (Soja, 1996, p. 5) approach enabling multiple stakeholders such as pre-service
teachers, teachers, and teacher educators to learn with and from each other.
In the partnership work at Monash, these “domains of difference” are
conceptualised as perceived divides between university and school, research and
practice, curriculum and practicum, teaching and initial teacher education and pre-
and in-service teachers. In attempting to break down these perceived “divides,” the
approach used here accords with Wenger’s (1999) beliefs that learning does not just
occur within the boundaries of separate, closed communities of practice, but also
occurs between communities, as learners interact with one another and members
move between communities. Wenger considered that people usually participate
in more than one community of practice at a time, referring to this as “multi-
membership.” For teacher educators working across schools and universities, their
multi-memberships may be fraught as they are negotiating their identities across
different boundaries and educational spaces, whilst trying to broker the learning
of the pre-service teachers across those learning spaces. As Williamson, Ritter and
Bullock (2014) describe:
One of the more difficult tasks faced by members of a community of practice
is negotiating meaning between various communities of practice, or brokering.
However, by coordinating connections across communities, participants are
able to open up possibilities for learning, and to gain new perspectives that are
not apparent within one community alone. (p. 246)
Or, in Wenger’s (1998) words,
The job of brokering is complex. It involves processes of translation,
coordination, and alignment between perspectives. It requires enough
legitimacy to influence the development of a practice. (p. 109)
It is against this multi-faceted backdrop that we now turn to the illustrative case studies
of two Literacy school-university partnership projects developed, implemented, and
“brokered” by a Literacy teacher educator, Caroline.

LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION IN SCHOOL CONTEXTS:

AN AUSTRALIAN CASE STUDY OF PARTNERSHIP

In order to provide the data for this chapter, documentation from two Literacy case
study partnerships as part of the broader and on-going Monash partnership project
have been analysed alongside an interview with the Literacy teacher educator,
Caroline, who designed and implemented the partnership initiative. Caroline is an
early career teacher educator, working full time in higher education for the past three
years. She was employed originally as a sessional or contract lecturer, working part-
time at the university and part-time in a school until she secured a full-time university

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contract. She is currently completing her PhD studies in the field of literacy, digital
technology, and the early years of schooling. A brief outline of the two models that
Caroline created is provided below in order to set the scene for the discussion of
the ways in which she reflects on her work as “border crosser” and her professional
learning as a Literacy teacher educator.
Both case studies involved the first of three university Literacy curriculum
units entitled “The Early Years.” A semi-structured interview with Caroline was
conducted in order to analyse the work, professional learning, and support required
in moving towards a “three-way approach” to partnership. Caroline was asked
questions about her work in establishing the school-university partnership models;
her motivation in doing so; the mechanisms of support she received and required
in order to do this work; and the benefits and challenges she identified for different
stakeholders (teacher educator, teachers, and pre-service teachers and children) of
the approach.
Caroline described herself as “passionate about literacy education,” with expertise
in the use of digital technology (for example, iPads) to promote oral language with
young children; she was involved (through her PhD studies) in exploring the links
between “the use of multi-modal texts, ICT, and contemporary picture storybooks
in the classroom with young children to promote oral language and literacy
development.” One of the key drivers for Caroline was a social justice agenda, keen
to improve the literacy learning of children through a more meaningful partnership
with the teaching of her literacy unit.

Learning through Partnerships in Literacy Education

i. Partnership 1 – Railway Primary School. This partnership was initiated by a

school principal who sought to engage the university literacy resources to
address a need in the school. The Principal identified a major issue with many of
the children entering school with limited oral language development. Children
also struggled to “break the code” in reading skills and comprehension. This
issue had “multiple and flow-on” effects for their later literacy development. In
consultation with Caroline, a particular plan was made to create a partnership
model that would benefit the children’s learning and build their listening and
speaking skills, widen their language experience and vocabulary, and build
confidence in articulating their ideas with supportive adults (for example,
pre-service teachers, parents, and community members). To do this, an Early
Years Literacy university curriculum unit was identified as the appropriate
match where pre-service teachers could learn about literacy research that they
would traditionally be learning about at university with a “both/also” approach
of working alongside teachers and children in the Preparatory/Kindergarten and
Years One and Two classrooms.
Matching the university Early Years Literacy curriculum to the daily literacy
routines of the school, however, meant considerable negotiating and brokering

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by Caroline. In short, the unit was timetabled to specially align with the morning
Literacy block at the school. Sixty pre-service teachers were enrolled in the unit
and attended the local school (rather than the university) as their main site of
learning. Caroline designed and established a model whereby the first hour at the
school was a research-based workshop conducted in the school hall. The second
hour of the workshop was based in the Early Years classrooms where pre-service
teachers were paired and assigned a small group of children to work with on
oral language development. It is important to note that Caroline and the teachers
organised for the pre-service teachers to participate in the diagnostic assessment
of the oral language of each child at the beginning of the unit so they could build
appropriate learning experiences. With the support of Caroline and the teachers,
the pre-service teachers then planned and implemented a series of literacy
activities designed to improve the oral language development of their assigned
children. Caroline’s own expertise in multiliteracies and the use of tablets (such
as iPads) provided further modelling and stimulation for pre-service teachers to
in turn plan for their children’s learning through and with technology as the basis
for language experience activities. The final hour was spent back in the school
hall where Caroline and the class teachers (who were all released from teaching
as part of their team-teaching initiative) critically reflected on the teaching and
learning strategies together through small-group or whole-group discussions.
ii. Partnership 2 – Gumtree Primary School. The second partnership (building
from the experiences of the first) also came about through communication by the
school principal looking to improve Literacy education (oral language, writing,
and reading) more broadly in the Early Years at her school. This principal also
sought to increase the professional learning of the teachers in the use of digital
technology. She therefore asked if pre-service teachers might be encouraged to
showcase a multiliteracies approach in their planning and teaching of reading
in order to support teachers’ own professional development of the use of ICT
embedded into their literacy teaching. 40 pre-service teachers were enrolled in
this unit that again spanned 12 weeks. For this particular unit, Caroline again
organised the learning across both the university and school sites. This time, she
divided the 12 week unit development into three sections, a pre-school focus held
at the university, a school focus held in the school every week on a Thursday
afternoon, and then a post-school focus held at the university. She divided the
three hour workshops describing it as a “flipped classroom” approach where she
required the pre-service teachers to engage with theoretical readings provided
in an on-line learning environment prior to coming to school so they would
come ready to engage with the materials in a practical and applied approach.
She matched the unit curriculum weekly focus to what the pre-service teachers
would focus on in the classroom in discussion with the teachers. This required
extensive planning by Caroline ahead of time to align the content material of the
unit with a focus for the pre-service teachers and the class teachers. It meant for
example, that the use of phonics in writing could be discussed at university, as

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well as being observed in practice at the school. Pre-service teachers again were
involved in planning and teaching with children and were supported by Caroline
in introducing digital technology in their lessons.

Professional Learning in Partnerships: Rewards and Challenges

Caroline described herself as someone who had worked as an early childhood and
primary school teacher for many years and who, on entering HE as a literacy teacher
educator, was keen to maintain her “currency” in the classroom. Caroline spoke
about her commitment to work across school-university spaces as a way for her to
keep a “dual role” as a teacher and teacher educator and described how this work
helped her pre-service teachers engage more with the literacy theory.
I found the pre-service teachers were much more receptive to the fact that I was
an actual teacher as well as a university teacher/educator, because they would
actually see me interacting with the children, and so, I suppose in terms of the
content I was delivering it was giving me more credibility, because they could
see that I actually was able to teach literacy in a schoolbased setting, which
was quite interesting.
She reflected that this type of work where she worked in school classrooms and
university seminar rooms “kept her current and up to date in her own work as a
literacy teacher educator and researcher.” She also described the richness of making
connections. Caroline notes:
I really wanted to be out, interacting and engaging with literacy with children
again. And then being able to observe and watch how my own students were
interacting with children, and really start to get them to reflect and draw
connections between what we were talking about in terms of theory, and what
they were actually doing in practice. So the discussions that we were having
in terms of literacy out of that school/university partnership were a lot richer,
because they were able to actually build on their understandings.
Clearly, the work Caroline is trying to do as a literacy teacher educator is time-
consuming as she navigates the spaces (physical and virtual) between pre-service
and in-service teacher education, between research and practice, and between school
and university. At the heart is her motivation to do this “bridging” work in order to
address what Kosnik and Beck (2009) identify as one of the laments of literacy pre-
service teachers and their desire for more explicit links between what was learnt at
university and at school. Here is how one pre-service teacher from the Kosnik and
Beck (2009) study described the issue:
I think looking at theory, the theoretical aspect of literacy, is great. But…we
should have been given actual schedules, examples of how to organise your

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literacy program…so perhaps more observing is needed, more modelling,

instead of just a lecturing environment. (p. 6)
Unlike this student, Caroline reported that pre-service teachers relished the
opportunity to learn alongside the children. She observes:
…it gives them that confidence to work with children on their literacy in an
environment where they are not being assessed, they are being supported by
both the university based teacher educator, and also the school based teacher
educators… [they can] think about where a particular child is in terms of their
literacy development, and then sort of planning and thinking about where they
need to go according to what is effective practice. The conversations that they
would then have around that were interesting, so you could see them flicking
back to their readings and, okay, if I want to focus on phonics, these are some
of the things that underpin that, and then you need to have those conversations
with them.
Caroline spoke about her desire to bridge more closely what has been identified as
a “theory-practice lag” (a term coined by Lin Goodwin in conversation) to describe
the catch up time required by pre-service teachers in linking theory to practice. This
bridge work was a motivation for her to continue to work in these spaces and for her
own professional learning. It also sharpened her ability to link research to practice
in the moment of teaching. Caroline described the opportunity to have a shared
practice space at the school where the teacher, pre-service teachers, and teacher
educator together experienced and witnessed “practice” and were then in the best
position to step back and reflect and discuss the links between research and practice
together.
So it constantly, I think, pushed my own knowledge in terms of the theory, when
I was talking to some teachers and they would say something, and I would be
talking about the theory that surrounded it. For the pre-service teachers, I just
think …that ability to link the theory to the practice was really, really important
… What I found previous to them having been out … I’d be talking about the
theories around oral language development and what that might look like, and
the conversation wasn’t as rich. They (pre-service teachers) weren’t drawing on
the prior knowledge in order to sort of build their understanding around that.
Whilst there were many benefits, these partnership models also brought new
challenges. One particular challenge emerged in the new relational practices of
different professional groups learning and working alongside each other. A three-
way model, like that advocated by MacBeath (2011) and cited earlier in this chapter,
signals a more equitable learning endeavour away from a hierarchical top-down
model; new roles and power shifts are created and different “positioning” of the
stakeholders occurs. In the Gumtree Primary School model, Caroline spoke about

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the difficulty many of the pre-service teachers had in their first school experience
moving into a classroom space and working alongside peers and teachers. She
emphasized it was:
risky behaviour, it’s more confronting, people’s theories are being questioned,
we’ve come to work with our own personal theories, and this work now can
problematize this from different perspectives.
Caroline spoke about some pre-service teachers wanting to return to a “safe”
model of “knowledge transfer” where they were receiving the information they
believed they should be learning about literacy education in a university seminar
room. She also interestingly notes that some pre-service teachers struggled to use the
digital technology with the children. She attributes this discomfort with too much
new information and not feeling “in control” of the children’s learning.
They felt that – they were much more in control when they were just reading,
say, a traditional story rather than using an iPad. So they found that it was much
more student-centred with the iPads which they didn’t really like. Because
only having been at uni for a couple of weeks and then going out and working
with children, they sort of felt as though they didn’t have as much control. So
I think that in itself has brought challenges.
For teachers as well this model required a new way of working in becoming a
school-based teacher educator and moving away from a “maestro” model of “follow
me” (Graham, 2006). For some teachers and teacher educators this was a risky space
where their knowledge and practice could be questioned and critiqued by one another
and by the pre-service teachers. Caroline spoke about the desire to position everyone
as “we are all experts together.” This thinking required significant shifts though in the
ways in which the triad of professional actors are positioned and position themselves
Student teachers are actually being positioned as experts in something the
teachers don’t actually know about. So in terms of multi-modality, in terms of
multi-model texts, the school had obviously – said that they would like to look
at literacy and iPads. Fortunately that is my PhD. So what our students were
doing was actually going out and using multi-model texts with the children
themselves, which then sparked lots of interesting conversations with the
teachers, because as they were wandering around our students were saying,
well, this is what I’m using, and this is what it can do, and this is the literacy
aspect to it.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

While this is a small-scale study, the two cases of establishing innovative literacy
school-university models offer insights into the considerable professional learning
potential for all those involved in the initiatives. It also shows how such professional

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learning can support the “active collaboration” (European Commission, 2013,

p. 2) between schools and universities and across settings that is essential for high
quality teacher education. The data also indicates the institutional support required
to build and sustain such a partnership – both for university-based and school-based
educators.
Caroline’s professional learning here is rich and professionally rewarding. She
is clearly developing her awareness of what constitutes good practice in working in
partnership, building understanding of the necessary brokering and trust-building
skills this complex work requires. The European Commission report (2013, p. 4) on
teacher educator knowledge refers – rather dryly – to these areas as the “transversal
competences” which enable teacher educators to work across and between schools
and universities. These competences are positioned in the report as central to teacher
educators’ work as they support the required “active collaboration” (p. 2) between all
those educating teachers, in whichever setting. But, by teaching alongside the pre-
service teachers in these classrooms, Caroline is also actively engaged in updating
her professional knowledge of teaching literacy in the Early Years. This experience,
made visible to the pre-service teachers through her teaching expertise, gives her a
valued form of what Murray (2002) has termed experiential first order knowledge
(or knowledge of schooling) which enables her to strengthen her credibility with
the students. This striving for on-going credibility with students has been noted
as a feature of teacher educators’ identity work and professional learning across a
range of international studies (see, for example, Davey, 2013; Mayer et al., 2011;
Murray, 2014).
In this case, Caroline’s teaching also provides her students with a direct model of
good practice in Literacy teaching, something which pre-service students frequently
crave and which certain modes of teacher educator pedagogy can provide very
effectively (Loughran, 2006; Swennen & van der Klink, 2008). Caroline’s first order
pedagogy (teaching the children), contextualised within the classroom and focused
around the children’s learning needs, becomes then the vehicle for enriching and
integrating her second order pedagogy (her teaching of her pre-service students).
In a number of analyses of teacher educator learning, the competences or domains
of knowledge identified are – perhaps necessarily – identified as if they were discrete
areas of knowledge or learning (see, for example, European Commission, 2013;
Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013; VELON, 2012). Such analyses are useful for identifying
the many elements of teacher educators’ knowledge, but in essence such knowledge
is only powerful once it is being deployed as practice within specific contexts
which – as in the partnership work here – require the integration of seemingly
discrete areas into a repertoire of practice designed to meet learners’ needs. Kosnik
et al. (2014) describe these as spheres of overlapping knowledge which the Literacy
teacher educators in their study needed to both understand and apply. Here Caroline
integrates her spheres of knowledge about the first order field of schooling, including
current literacy policies, practices and materials, the second order field of teacher

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education and its pedagogy, and her specific knowledge of literacy research into a
powerful repertoire of practice.
Caroline also attempts to prioritise developing good collaborative learning
opportunities for all; this clearly results in learning for the pre-service teachers
and for the serving teachers but, importantly, it also creates contexts for her own
professional learning. In this it has much in common with Guile and Lucas’s
(1999, p. 27) “pedagogies of guidance,” cited earlier in this chapter. In the Monash
partnership, learning happens partly because of Caroline’s willingness – and that of
her students and the teachers – to live with uncertainty and the sense of teaching as
enquiry, questioning previous knowledge, practices, and pedagogies, and interrupting
previous models of knowledge transmission.
The partnership case study presented here shares many findings with the work
of Kosnik and Beck (2009) in that it recommends a “together we ‘figure it out’
model” (p. 4), consistent with an interactive inquiry approach to construction of
pedagogy (Beck & Kosnik, 2006). Caroline came to the enterprise, as a “whole”
individual; or as Kosnik et al. (2013) state, she is “not a compartmentalised being
for whom research is in one silo, practice in another, and personal experiences in yet
another” (p. 537). From a literacy education perspective, high quality partnerships
between schools and universities, constructed around shared values and principles,
offer potential for a “third” or “hybrid” learning space to be created; this does not
exist solely in the university or in the school, but bridges both. Literacy teacher
education partnerships can differ from practice teaching or practicum because they
offer an embodied experience of primary school literacy practice, high in intellectual
quality with understanding generated through well-guided reflection. This is
particularly important in literacy teacher education partnership work since, as Luke
(1999) states:
With this type of experience, pre-service teachers, it is envisioned, are able
to problematise deficit thinking about children’s capabilities that is the worst
enemy of equitable and socially just outcomes. (p. 11)
This is not always an easy task – in the partnership work discussed here and in
many such similar scenarios – as boundaries by their very nature promote tensions
and challenges as people mediate their various experiences and understandings
between different communities of practice. Yet, as Wenger (2000) states, “while
boundaries can be a source of separation and disconnection; they are also places
where perspectives meet and new possibilities arise” (p. 233).

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11. NEW KNOWLEDGES FOR TEACHER

EDUCATING?1
Perspectives from Practicing Teacher Educators

In the international conversations surrounding teacher quality, there is a deafening

silence about teacher educator quality. In fact, there is very little discussion about
what teacher educators should know and be able to do, and what their preparation
should constitute—or if they even need preparation at all. An implicit assumption
seems to be that in order to engage in educating teachers, one simply needs to
transport one’s experience from the K-12 classroom to the university level (Berry,
2007; Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006; Lunenberg & Hamilton, 2008;
Zeichner, 2005). In essence, teaching is teaching is teaching, no matter the age of the
students, the content, the purpose, or the level of education.
In this chapter, we reject this assumption and argue that the field needs to look
closely at what it means to educate teachers well, that quality teacher educators
matter, and this quality requires formal preparation. Our perspective is shared by
many scholars who have examined the teachers of teachers (cf., Kosnik & Beck,
2008; Murray & Male, 2005; Ellis & McNicholl, 2015) and echo sentiments
expressed by Dinkelman (2002), that “though the work of teaching shares much
in common with the work of teacher education, the two positions are significantly
divergent in important ways” (p. 1). What this preparation means or should entail
remains, however, an open question.
To address this question, we turned to practicing teacher educators who are
currently engaged in preservice teaching. In this study, we define teacher educators as
those who have earned doctorates and work in university-based teacher preparation
programs. Our analysis of their responses indicated that while current teacher
educators have many ideas about what they need in order to do their jobs well, their
responses did not stray far from prevailing ideas of teaching and knowledge, and
did not seem to reflect a constantly shifting 21st century world where conceptions
of teaching, learning, literacy, and the very nature of what it means to know, are
evolving and changing in fundamental ways.

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 149–162.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
A. L. Goodwin & C. Chen

THE STUDY

Context

This chapter draws upon a larger study of practicing teacher educators’ perspectives
on their preparation for their role, i.e., what they learned or were taught in their
doctoral programs versus what they came to realize they needed to know once on
the job (Goodwin et al., 2014). Two hundred and ninety-three teacher educators
(self-identified) first completed an online survey, which included two open-ended
questions and an invitation to be interviewed. Eighty percent of the group was White,
75% were female. Other demographic data revealed that the majority were tenured
or tenure-track faculty, lived in urban settings, and worked in U.S. universities with
medium to low emphasis on research; unsurprisingly, the majority reported spending
more time teaching than on research activities. Just over half of the respondents had
received their doctorates in the past ten years in many fields—other than teacher
education—and, as a group, were very experienced with an average of 23.47 years
in education.
Using a 5-point likert scale, the respondents rated 45 survey items in terms
of importance to their work as teacher educators and strength of their doctoral
preparation. Survey items were organized into eight domains: theoretical knowledge,
ability to apply theory, content knowledge, familiarity with research, ability to
conduct research, interpersonal skills, reflection, and professional activities; a ninth
domain was created, consisting of “multicultural/social justice” items embedded
within the other eight clusters. Few significant differences in response patterns were
noted, with participants generally rating all items favorably on both importance and
preparation. In other words, everyone thought everything was important and felt that
their doctoral program did at least an above average job in preparing them in these
areas. However, t-test comparisons did indicate that respondents felt less adequately
prepared in teaching/teacher educator related skills than in conducting research
or the other areas surveyed. The one significant difference that stood out was the
inverse relationship between experience and diversity, i.e., less experienced teacher
educators rated diversity as more important than their senior peers. This difference
notwithstanding, diversity as a topic was noticeably absent from the interviews.
Interviews were conducted with 20 randomly selected survey completers who
talked further about their doctoral preparation in relation to their teacher educator
role; most had not elected to do teacher education work, but stumbled into it by
happenstance. Their responses unveiled troubling images of minimal attention to “a
pedagogy of teacher education” (Loughran, 2006, p. 173) or to their development as
teacher educators. Instead, their doctoral programs emphasized research training—
research apparently separate from practice or teacher education. Even the few who
aspired to be teacher educators found their doctoral preparation lacking, while
most of the 20 counted themselves lucky if they happened to connect with a good

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advisor who guided and mentored them. Essential to their current work were the
ability to bridge knowledge and practice, to be self-directed learners, to collaborate,
and to negotiate the many conflicting agendas they faced in the academy. Finally,
interviewees recommended that doctoral preparation for teacher educators should
include knowledge about the teacher education field, and provide intentional
mentoring and apprenticing opportunities to teach, do research, and learn about
professional life in the academy.
This summary of the findings from the larger study serves as a conceptual
backdrop for our present inquiry, which enables us to extend and deepen what was
learned from the initial phase through an analysis of one of the open-ended questions.
Triangulating survey and interview data with responses from this open-ended
question affords an opportunity to identify confirming patterns and gain insight into
respondents’ beliefs about the knowledge base and skill set required for the work of
teacher educators, beyond the structured choices offered by the survey. Specifically,
the question asked: What is one thing that your doctoral program could have done
to better prepare you for your future work as a teacher educator?2 Of the 293
respondents who completed the survey items, 258 answered the question, offering
285 responses.3 In the discussion below, we analyze these responses, looking across
the data for common themes. Table 1 offers an overview of what respondents said.

ONE THING I WISH I HAD LEARNED…

Understanding and Practicing Teacher Education

Almost 52% of the total responses (148) related to knowledge about teaching or
about doing teacher education. Responses fell into four sub-categories: preparedness;
understanding teacher education; practicing teacher education; teacher education
context.

Preparedness.  Beyond a small handful of respondents who felt well prepared, 19%
of these 148 responses talked about not being prepared, or not being prepared…
but. In terms of the latter, but reflected the anomalous experience of a few who
got something other doctoral students did not: “I was lucky in that I received both
assistantships in research and teaching while in graduate school. Many students
do not receive these”;4 “I got opportunities to teach and develop teaching skills,
but not all did.” Aside from the few “lucky” ones—whose preparedness was a
function of chance, the remainder tended to excuse their programs for not preparing
them. For them, but represented the qualification that “My program was NOT
designed to prepare teacher educators.”5 Respondents described programs focused
on “educational leadership and policy …educational technology…educational
psychology,” that therefore “weren’t preparing me to teach teachers.” Undoubtedly,
one cannot expect a doctoral program that is not intended to prepare teacher

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Table 1. One thing doctoral program could have done to better prepare for
future teacher educator work

Categories and # of responses Sub-categories and # of responses % of total # of

responses

Understanding & Practicing Preparedness = 28 52%

Teacher Education/Educator Understanding = 47
work
N=148 Practicing = 58
Context/landscape = 15
Research and Publishing Better preparation = 24 19%
N=53 Research funding = 12
Publishing = 12
Research Context = 5
Mentoring General = 12 10%
N=28 Specific = 16
Navigating the Academy Culture = 6 6%
N=18 Relationships = 6
Politics = 6
Teacher Educator Identity The role = 9 5%
N=15 The self = 6
N/A or Nothing 4%
N=11
Other 4%
N=12
Total = 285 responses Total % = 100%

educators to offer preparation it never advertised it could. However, it was ironic

that these responses came from self-identified teacher educators, all doing work
they were never prepared to do. One respondent acknowledged that “to be a teacher
educator needs to have its own professional qualification that allows more time to
consider how to teach teachers how to teach,” but another admitted that “frankly, to
have addressed all of these areas mentioned above would have required an additional
one or two years more of study.”
The rest of the respondents who spoke of not being in the “correct” program did
not appear to notice this interesting juxtaposition of lack of preparation and/or current
employment. The remaining respondents in the subcategory of preparedness, spoke
of drawing upon other sources to inform their work. Many “learned to be a teacher
educator on the job,” often reaching back to “use my 6–12 experiences to fuel my
instruction.” Most of the respondents relied on their own preservice programs on the

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MA or undergraduate level—“I have been referring to my initial teacher training”—

or described already having some teaching, “I already had 5 years of experience
as a secondary math teacher,” or teacher education experience and therefore not
needing “teacher training” from their doctoral program. One respondent summed
up the preparation for teacher educators quite well: “I only learned ABOUT teacher
education and was never presented with opportunities to learn how to ‘do’ teacher
education.” Again, it is ironic that one respondent offered this advice:
As you refine this questionnaire, I encourage you to ask questions pertaining
to whether respondents credit their doctoral program or other teacher training
programs (such as their bachelor’s or master’s) with providing training in a
specific area. You may also wish to ask if (and where) respondents received
their bachelor’s and master’s level teacher training.
In fact the survey was specifically framed around doctoral preparation for
university-based teacher education, based on the assumption that teaching teachers
means “moving from being first-order practitioners—that is, school teachers—to
being second-order practitioners…[who] …now work in the second order setting
of [Higher Education]” (Murray & Male, 2005, p. 126). This second order setting
demands knowledge and skills that are qualitatively different from knowledge gained
from teaching. All of these respondents who felt comfortable, or were compelled, to
draw upon their past K-12 experience simply reconfirmed the misconception that all
one needs to educate teachers is to have been a teacher oneself.

Understanding teacher education.  Respondents made many suggestions for

knowledges they felt they needed from their doctoral programs to inform their teacher
educator work—47 of 148 responses. These included more “formal coursework” on
areas such as “the theoretical underpinnings of designing and implementing teacher
education programs” or “teaching the academic discipline” or “the social-emotional
dimensions of learning and teaching” or “assessment, assessment, assessment.”
Respondents also wanted “more coursework on the broad field of teacher
education,” to “understand a variety of models of teacher education and examine
their effectiveness,” and be “introduced…to the literature on teacher education.”
Most of these suggestions were phrased in general terms, but nine respondents did
convey awareness that being a teacher educator is not “simple” work that “need not
be highly specialized” (Hoban, 2004, p. 121), but rather involves specific knowledge
and skills. These respondents expressed a need for “a focus on theories and practices
concerning adult learning” and “more explicit consideration of pedagogy for teacher
education.” Finally, despite all the swirl around new technologies, there were only
two mentions of technology.

Practicing teacher education.  More than a third of the 148 responses (58 or 39%)
desired “more practical knowledge, less theory,” because they found their programs
“did not really focus on teacher education in terms of preparing to teach teacher

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candidates” but were “more focused on preparing educational researchers.” All of the
responses either stated, or implied, the need for “time explicitly focused on teaching
practice, so that as teacher educators, we can move fluidly from one to the other,
and so we can help our student do the same.” Examples of suggestions included that
programs provide: “more clinical experiences”; “ongoing opportunities to teach pre-
service and in-service teachers with mentoring (as an integral part of the doctoral
program)”; “greater diversity of course teaching options…[instead of teaching]…
the same two courses (one I taught 17—yes, 17—times)”; and “experience in
supervision of student teachers.” Respondents also wanted “instruction from teacher
educators,” to teach “under the guidance of a veteran or highly skilled teacher
educator,” because “professors had little if no experience teaching in public/private
schools, and it showed.” Probably “because… professors had no recent K-12 based
context from which to reference,” respondents wanted “more mentored experience
teaching teachers,” bemoaning that “no one ever observed my teaching and gave
feedback.” Finally, teacher education practice also meant working with the field,
learning how “to build productive relationships with school districts, administrators,
and teachers.”

The teacher education context.  Only 15 responses, but still 10% of this category,
were concerned with the teacher education landscape—issues, reforms, politics.
Respondents expressed a need to learn more about how to navigate “the system”
so as to be able to “anticipate the changing trends in education and prepare…for
those future challenges” and “work within the constraints of accreditation and state
and local policy contexts.” They indicated the importance of understanding “the
total picture of teacher education, not just the discipline-specific parts” so as to gain
“a more holistic perspective on teacher education programs.” “The role of politics
and big business in educational policy and reform agendas” was clearly on the
minds of several respondents who seemed invested in “[having] an impact on the
development of educational policy in my state and in the US” not “only critiquing
current & historical teacher education contexts.”

RESEARCH AND PUBLISHING

Interestingly, at the same time that respondents were critical of their programs for
being “heavy on theory, light on praxis,” 53 responses (19%) also identified research
as a critical knowledge for teacher educators. This seems to directly contradict
respondents’ characterizations of doctoral curriculum as preparation for/of
researchers until one looks more closely at what they specified. Analysis of responses
made clear that respondents wanted to learn to be competent teacher educators and
competent researchers, and they not only wanted to learn about research, but they
wanted that learning to be less narrow and more practical. Within this category, about
half of them wanted a “broader range of research methods training” so they could
be equipped “to do BOTH qualitative and quantitative research.” Stronger, better

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and more were terms that were used often to describe respondents’ desires around
their research training. Thus they wrote of “more opportunities to investigate diverse
research methodologies” and “a stronger focus on action research/self-study,” so
as to be “better prepared for the rigors of educational research.” Respondents
also wanted a “stronger focus on…conducting research” and “more collaborative
opportunities.” They felt that “being a part of a research team” would have helped
them learn “how to work with others in research groups following graduation.” The
dual focus on both knowing and doing became evident in respondents’ wish that their
programs had included “learning the landscape of federal and foundation grants,
how to apply, how to work with your university and advancement/development
office, what “indirect costs” and other key terms are,” and “developing better grant
writing skills” for the instrumental purpose of helping “students get published prior
to graduation rather than do papers just for class.” Respondents also grounded their
responses in particular contexts, and “would have liked to learn more about how to
do research on teacher education” or about “how important research is to obtaining
and keeping a position in teacher education.” This translated into wanting assistance
to support work that is relevant to teacher education, such as “securing funds for
qualitative research,” or “grants that [involve] some aspects of teacher training/
professional development.”

MENTORING

About 10% of responses pointed to the lack of mentoring. Respondents talked

equally about mentoring in general, and about specific kinds of mentoring they
felt they needed as a leg up to their teacher educator positions. What was evident
from the general responses was that respondents felt that mentoring was essential to
“helping me attain my degree in a timely manner” because it can mean both socio-
emotional as well as “financial support to complete my work.” But the presence of
mentoring alone is insufficient, mentoring also needs to be specific and intentional.
Respondents wanted to “have more organized opportunities for teaching, research,
and service instead of each of us having to find our own way,” “more and better
mentoring in my area of interest instead of required mentoring areas,” plus a “[focus]
more on personal relationships/community relationships throughout the program.”
Closer connections with faculty seemed to be at the core of the particular kinds of
mentoring respondents wished they had received: “more opportunities to teach and
engage in scholarly research with faculty” or “active mentorship in funded research
with a senior researcher,” opportunities that “a few students had…most of us did not.”
Respondents also wanted their professors to help with “career counseling,” “[guide]
me with ideas of what to do next,” and “[prepare] me for life after graduation,”
especially “if they weren’t going to be researchers.” However, respondents perceived
that faculty do not “give (teacher education) the respect it deserves…[because]…at
an R1, teacher education is considered bottom of the barrel work,” and often failed
to “model best practices with their doctoral students; to connect and collaborate with

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doctoral students in the way the literature shows motivates and ensures academic
success.”

OTHER KNOWLEDGES

The remainder of the responses clustered into 4 categories, each of which hovered
around the 5% mark, and therefore represented a small percentage of the opinions
shared. Still, two of the four categories focused on critical issues, so if respondents
had been directed to give more than one response, perhaps these two issues would
have received more “votes.” Both were connected to the idea of being a faculty
member in the academy: navigating the academy, and teacher educator identity. In
terms of the former, respondents were equally interested in “more attention to the
culture of higher education,” “focusing more on relationships” such as “dealing with
‘difficult’ people – turf guarding, spotlight seeking, passive conflict management,”
and preparation “for the politics and bureaucracy of the workplace.” Notions of
navigating competing demands and managing relationships were themes that
also emerged in terms of a teacher educator identity. Respondents wished they
had learned more about “being a faculty member – expectations, balance, how
to manage teaching, research, and service,” with “a MUCH heavier emphasis on
teacher educator identity.” In their talk about relationships, respondents focused
on the self, expressing that they needed “a lot more discussion on the balancing
of personal and professional life,” even “a course specifically for teacher educator
development, taught by a tenured professor or team of professors.” What appears
again is the tension between learning about teacher education in theory and living
teacher education in reality; the former emphasizes intellectual understanding, but
reality reveals the absence (and necessity) of socio-emotional knowledge: “I think
we could have been more reflective about our own identities as teacher educators
along with our practices. The focus was primarily on understanding literature and
research about teacher education.”
The rest of the responses were either non-responses—N/A, or “nothing,” or they
were outliers that did not fit into any larger or meaningful category.

NEW KNOWLEDGES?

The question of what teacher educators need to know and be able to do is central
to this inquiry, as well as to the larger study in which this inquiry is embedded.
What we see when findings from both the larger study and this inquiry are cross-
referenced is a great deal of similarity and overlap. Therefore, the responses to
this single open-ended question not only expanded the interview sample by 258
participants, but more importantly, provided assurance that what we learned
from the interview sample actually represented the views of almost all of the 293
teacher educators who completed the survey. Specifically, a minimum of 88% to
a maximum of 95%6 of study participants’ perspectives, opinions, experiences,

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and recommendations converged quite convincingly; they assessed their doctoral

programs as: (too) focused on research, theory, and the preparation of researchers;
paying minimal or no attention to teacher education, pedagogy, practice, or schools;
devoid of mentoring around programmatic or professional choices. Unsurprisingly,
respondents wanted to have access to better program experiences—in terms of
content, skills, research opportunities, relationships—as a matter of course,
not chance or luck. They expressed a desire to learn about teacher education—
university-field connections, working with school practitioners, models, research
and literature, policy and politics, history and theory, pedagogy—basically
everything so as to acquire a rich and well-rounded understanding and command
of the profession they had either aspired towards or found themselves in as a result
of circumstances they had not anticipated (such as the availability of positions).
The open-ended responses also echoed sentiments expressed by interviewees in
the larger study: that skillfulness in negotiating conflicts and managing competing
agendas, along with access to collaborators and mentors, are essential to success in
the academy, especially for teacher educators who perennially fight low status in
higher education institutions.
What these findings tell us is that these respondents, including those who were
first teachers, did not come naturally to their new teacher educator role or identity.
Similar to teachers, teacher educators are not born but cultivated, which means
that teacher educating should be a deliberate practice that embraces careful study,
extensive skill development, and much practice; one does not simply transform from
teacher to teacher educator when one moves into higher education (Berry, 2007;
Hollins, Luna, & Lopez, 2014), despite prevailing perceptions that becoming a
teacher educator really is that simple (Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013). This perception
likely endures because the work of teachers and the work of teacher educators are
related yet different endeavors (Murray & Male, 2005; Williams, Ritter, & Bullock,
2012), such that teacher educator work seems deceptively familiar to teachers, a
mere extension of teaching, when in reality it is far more complex. According to
Southworth (1995, cited in Wood & Borg, 2010), the transition from teacher to
teacher educator is a complicated process that requires teacher educators to realign
and reshape their “substantial selves”—i.e., the experiences and professional
identities they bring from the classroom to the academy—with/into their “situational
selves”—the new identities they need to adopt in the unfamiliar setting in which they
find themselves. Thus, the internalization of a teacher educator identity depends on
more than performing as a teacher educator, it requires adopting a particular stance,
mindset, and professional core, all of which are based on specific knowledges and
ways of knowing (Loughran, 2014). In contrast, more than half of the respondents
in this inquiry seemed to define teacher educator practice as doing more so than
being or thinking, as evidenced by the lists of skills and discrete content areas they
suggested for inclusion in doctoral preparation for aspiring teacher educators. Their
instrumental position seemed analogous to that of preservice teachers who often
seek the practical and concrete over the conceptual. Only a very small number of

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the respondents focused on what it means to be a teacher educator, bemoaning the

absence of attention to developing their identity as teachers of teachers.
Much empirical literature on novice teacher educators highlights their struggle
with their professional identity (Murray & Male, 2005; Luna et al., 2004; Williams,
2014; Wood & Borg, 2010). This makes respondents’ minimal mention of teacher
educator identity concerns stand out all the more. This absence could be attributed to
the fact that most of the respondents talked about being unprepared for their teacher
educator role, so when they were asked about one thing they need to do a better job,
they elected the expedient and immediate—what they had learned they were missing
(and therefore needing) to do their jobs well. Perhaps if they had the option to add
more thoughts, the importance of developing a teacher educator identity might
have surfaced more strongly. Alternatively, the absence could be considered a little
less acute if respondents’ desire for more mentoring was read as an implicit cry for
guidance around becoming a teacher educator. Still, only a handful of respondents
identified mentoring as a gap, so perhaps this explanation is less than viable. A third
explanation could be extrapolated from the larger study—3/4s of the interviewees had
not intended to go into teacher education, but ended up there because, pragmatically,
that was where the faculty openings were. While this lack of vocational choice did
not come up as a strong theme here, there were several respondents who did note
that teacher education was not where they thought they would land upon completion
of their doctoral studies. It seems reasonable to say that if respondents were not
intending to enter teacher education in the first place, they would not identify as
teacher educators, but perhaps see themselves as academics of a different flavor who
happen to teach teachers as part of their workload.
This third explanation is further bolstered by the fact that a good portion of the
respondents reached back into their own preservice preparation or classroom teaching
experience to inform their teacher educator practice. In the absence of formal teacher
educating, and given a professional context that has not recognized the need for
teacher educators to be prepared, it is natural that teacher educators would (could)
not differentiate between their teacher identity and a teacher educator identity. This
is exacerbated when novice teacher educators “[do] not always have the support of
more experienced teacher educators because it is assumed that they [do] not need
it” (Williams et al., 2012, p. 252), given their past classroom experience. Boyd and
Harris have found “conservatism” takes hold when teacher educators are essentially
encouraged to “hold on to their identity as schoolteachers rather than develop a
new professional identity as academics” (2010, p. 21). Learning on the job, learning
from the past, learning that is idiosyncratically personal means that nothing changes:
history is regurgitated in teacher preparation as teacher educators unwittingly
replicate what they learned and how they taught children, even as those who educate
teacher educators do the same. In fact, without preparation, new teacher educators
are left to not just repeat their past, but repeat their distant past as respondents talked
about reaching back many years into even undergraduate certification programs.
No wonder Murray and Male found that beginning teacher educators felt like

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“imposters” given their feelings of insecurity around their knowledge and skill base,
juxtaposed against “institutional assumptions that new teacher educators already
possess pedagogical expertise” (2005, p. 136).
Our findings reveal that, according to the responses of this group of practicing
teacher educators, the notion of “new knowledges” for teacher educating may be
premature, since teacher educators don’t seem to have had opportunities to learn “old,”
“basic,” or “necessary” knowledges to help them develop into competent teachers
of teachers, who understand the difference between “a knowledge of teaching about
teaching and a knowledge of learning about teaching and how the two influence one
another” (Loughran, 2008, p. 1180). Rather, they have received no knowledges at
all in any kind of coherent, organized, theoretically grounded, or formal way; their
education and preparation have been left up to chance, circumstance, context, and
individual initiative. What we see then is teacher educators caught in a tangle that
ensures that teacher educating is seen as unnecessary at best, if it is even considered
at all. This tangle is caused by (1) a lack of understanding of the difference between
teacher education and teacher educating—that the two are significantly different and
therefore cannot depend on the same knowledge base—which results in (2) novice
teacher educators perceived as already knowing (from prior teaching experience or
preservice preparation) what they need to do their job well, when (3) this experience
is insufficient because it looks backward and is therefore stale, which means that
(4) teacher educators should not rely on this historical knowledge, yet must because
they have no other well to tap, so they simply (5) repeat the cycle and teach what
they know, in ways they were taught, which results in teacher education standing
still, unable to progress.

NEW KNOWLEDGES TOWARD NEW DIRECTIONS

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), in

collaboration with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), has outlined core
knowledge and skills for 21st century learners and therefore for teacher preparation.
While their focus was teacher candidates, their recommendations offer some direction
for teacher educating as well, especially since teacher educators are responsible
for teaching these knowledges to preservice teachers. These knowledges include
a range of new literacies—e.g., financial, global, environmental literacy; cognition
and different ways of learning and creating; new technologies and technological
pedagogical content knowledge; life and career awareness. We do not suggest that
these ideas are all-inclusive, but they do offer another critical lens through which
to assess our findings and notions of knowledges for teacher educating that may
be seen as “new.” Our respondents basically made no mention of technology. The
two lone mentions were not framed in terms of new media, digital learning, virtual
environments—anything that might imply even a nod toward technology with an
innovative bent. There were few mentions of diversity, mostly related to special
education. Globalization, social justice, equity…were all terms that came up only

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once or twice…cognition and thinking, not at all. New visions for novel ways of
preparing teachers, reconfiguring school partnerships, restructuring field placements
did not enter the conversation; essentially, the survey results hinted at no new
knowledges that could potentially point the way toward new directions for teacher
education.
We do acknowledge that our question directed respondents to assess the past,
yet all the participants were currently engaged in teacher educator practice. So the
fact that their responses seemed focused on the “what is” versus the “what might
be” may be an indication of the distance teacher educating needs to travel before
teacher education can move beyond more of the same, and into the new. A first
step in defining new knowledges and therefore new directions for the purposeful
development of teacher educators, should be an acknowledgement that formal
preparation is actually necessary. This would mean “a reconfiguration of the work
of teacher educators as academic work” (Ellis & McNicholl, 2015, p. 5), through
programs specifically designed to educate those who teach teachers, or university-
based “professional teacher educators” (Furlong, 2013). Such programs would take
the form of doctoral preparation focused on “the labour of teacher educators and
the social structures and material condition within which they are situated” (Ellis &
McNicholl, 2015, p. 5). A quick sweep through doctoral programs in the U.S. reveals
only a handful of institutions offer teacher educator preparation, even while over
1400 institutions are in the business of preparing teachers—and therefore in the
market for hiring teacher educators. In the face of this, doctoral study specific to
teacher educating becomes essential in “the transformation of teacher education
as…an important form of higher education” (Ellis & McNicholl, 2015, p. 5).
However, the conflation of teaching work and teacher education work as basically
synonymous, a singular skill set transportable from one location or age/grade
level to another, has resulted from—and simultaneously contributed to—minimal
understanding of a knowledge base for teacher educators. While work on this notion
is nascent, there is scholarship, both conceptual and empirical, that offers some
guidelines. In an international study of literacy teacher educators, Kosnik et al.
(2015) identified four spheres of knowledge essential to respondents’ work in teacher
education: “research; pedagogy of higher education; literacy and literacy teaching;
and current school district and government initiatives” (2015, p. 52), knowledges
echoed in our study. In considering the education of teacher educators, Ellis and
McNicholl (2015) “focus on knowledge and knowledge creation” which they believe
is “more conducive to the development of the profession and the discipline” (p. 124).
They delineate four types of knowledge for teacher educators—professional, policy,
critical, and public—each of which is recursively informed by research even as it
generates new understandings. Goodwin and Kosnik (2013) suggest five domains of
knowledge that “could be useful in helping us think differently about what teacher
educators should know and be able to do” (p. 343): personal, contextual, pedagogical,
sociological, and social.

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The professionalization of teaching begins with the assertion that teachers are
taught and developed, not born (Goodwin, 2002). If teacher educators are to be seen
as professionals, the same assertion applies. The “profession”—including teacher
educators themselves—must recognize that teacher education work is specialized
and unique, that it requires advanced preparation as well as practice, and that it
deserves serious examination and research. Otherwise, teachers will continue to be
prepared by teacher educators who are struggling themselves to define their role,
learning as best they can on the job, guided by outdated models, personal theories,
or stagnant knowledge.

NOTES
1
This term was originally introduced in Goodwin et al. (2014) to signify educating those
who educate teachers, i.e., teacher educator education, and to differentiate this from
“teacher education” which is broadly associated with the preparation of K-12 teachers.
2
The second open-ended question asked, “Is there anything else that you would like to add
with regard to teacher education practice and preparation?”
3
A few respondents offered more than one comment. However, in every instance, the
additional comments were unique and thus fell into different coding categories. Therefore,
the number of responses per category also equals the number of respondents.
4
All quotes without attribution are taken directly from question responses.
5
All emphases, unless indicated otherwise, are original.
6
293 teacher educators completed the survey, 258 or 88% of whom also completed the
open-ended question about their doctoral preparation. 20 of the 293 teacher educators who
completed the survey were interviewed in depth about their doctoral preparation. If none
of these 20 overlapped with the 258 who completed the open-ended question, then the
maximum possible number of participants who addressed the question of their doctoral
preparation was 258+20=278 or 95% of 293 study participants.

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12. INTERTWINING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND

LITERACY METHODS COURSES
Exemplary Practices of Six Literacy/English Teacher Educators1

Teaching 2.0 is not just traditional teaching “done better” [but] a radically
different approach to teaching and learning that requires educators to
understand, and make use of, the affordances of Web 2.0 tools.
 (Bullock, 2011, p. 103)
As forms of communication (e.g., text messaging, blogging, videos, Instagram)
proliferate, those of us in teacher education often grapple with the place of digital
technology (DT) in our courses. We struggle with both the logistics of using DT
and re-conceptualizing our courses to actualize what Bullock (2011) describes as
“Teaching 2.0”. Part of the problem is we are being asked to teach in dramatically
new ways, with few examples of what “this” looks like in practice. Kirkwood
and Price (2014) suggest that “sharing of ‘good practice’ and ‘lessons learned’
among members of the higher education community can help academic teachers to
concentrate on effective uses of technology and to avoid the unnecessary duplication
of effort and expense” (p. 7).
We are conducting a large-scale study of 28 literacy/English teacher educators
(LTEs) in four countries (Canada, US, England, and Australia). This multi-year study
has the overall goal to study in depth literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs), with
special attention to their backgrounds, knowledge, research activities, identity, views
of current government initiatives, pedagogy, and course goals (Kosnik et al., 2013;
Kosnik et al., 2014).
In this chapter, we present six LTEs who were remarkably able at intertwining
digital technology (DT) with their literacy/English courses; working with the data
from a subset of the larger sample allowed us to take an in-depth look at their
practices. This chapter reports on three specific sub-goals:
• How do LTEs conceptualize literacy in a digital age?
• How do they embed DT into their literacy/English courses?
• What are the advantages of the LTEs’ digital technology-rich approach?

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 163–177.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
C. Kosnik & P. Dharamshi

CONTEXT

Given the complexity of the issues, a multidisciplinary approach is required to

address the research questions stated above. Accordingly, we draw on three bodies
of literature, each being relevant to the broader issue of DT and literacy/English
education. Although addressed individually, we need to think of the three as
interrelated.

Changing Nature of Literacy

Given that we have a range of choices for communication at our disposal with
“virtually all [Canadian] students [having] access to the Internet inside and
outside of school” (Steeves, 2015, p. 3) our understanding of literacy is evolving.
Traditional definitions of literacy conceptualized it as a “simple process of
acquiring basic cognitive skills” (UNESCO, 2006, p. 147). This understanding
“characterizes reading and writing as neutral processes … [and] assumes a
universal set of skills necessary for decoding and encoding mostly printed text”
(Alvermann, 2010, p. 13). However, this restricted approach has been called into
question as communication tools proliferate and research reveals “all reading and
writing occur within larger society structures of power that position people in
different ways” (Street, 1995, pp. 132–133). Further, Williamson (2013) argues:
“In a knowledge-based economy, students must now be able to produce ideas
rather than just consume them” (p. 2). Strong literacy skills have the potential
to “contribute to socio-economic development, to developing the capacity for
social awareness and critical reflection as a basis for personal and social change”
(UNESCO, 2006, p. 147).
The knowledge, skills, and dispositions our students need to participate in a world
where “one third of [Canadian] students in grades 4–6 have Facebook accounts
(even though the site’s terms of use forbid anyone under the age of 13 from joining
the network)” have mushroomed. “With 25% of [Canadian] fourth grade students
and 85% of eleventh grade students having their own phones” (Steeves, 2015,
p. 4), the multiplicity of communication processes has a far-reaching impact on
society. Teachers and teacher educators in particular are faced with the challenge of
considering the balance between traditional literacy teaching and new multimodal
processes. Hiebert writing in 1991, at a time of rapidly emerging DT, astutely
argues that our new understanding of literacy is not “old ideas with a new name,
but rather it represents a profound shift from a text-driven definition of literacy to
a view of literacy as active transformation of texts … in the new view, meaning
is created through an interaction of reader and text” (1991, p. 1). Nevertheless,
literacy instruction should not be conceptualized as either traditional practices or
digitally-rich pedagogy; rather, we need a comprehensive approach that includes
both (Alvermann, 2008; Claypool & White, 2012; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; New
London Group, 1996). Bullock (2011) comments on Teaching 2.0 as follows:

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The social affordances of Web 2.0 technologies have altered our expectations
for what is possible online and, by extension, what is possible in digitally
enhanced classroom environments. People have become used to interacting in
collaborative and collective ways in their personal lives, to the extent that their
dissatisfaction with teacher-directed, transmission-oriented learning situations
is bound to increase at all levels of the education system … I believe that the
concepts of networked publics and collective intelligence challenge educators
not to simply develop strategies to replicate a traditional face-to-face, non-
digitally enhanced environment, but to go further and fundamentally alter their
pedagogical approach in conjunction with, and as a result of, the possibilities
associated with digital technologies. (p. 96)

Teacher Educators

Teacher educators are being asked to conceptualize and teach literacy in ways they
did not as classroom teachers (Kirkwood, 2009). Despite a growing number of policy
initiatives, attempts to incorporate DT into teacher education literacy programs are
proving challenging (Kirkwood, 2009; Otero et al., 2005; Walsh & Durant, 2013).
According to Boling (2005), “research has revealed that teacher educators do not
always have the knowledge, skills, or dispositions necessary for meaningfully
integrating technology into their classes” (p. 3). Often, use of digital technology is
an afterthought, something tacked onto a course (Bullock, 2011). Warschauer (2011)
asks the central question: “What kind of knowledge and skills does it take to be a
good teacher with technology?” (p. 74). In turn, what should be taught in literacy
methods courses?

Digital Technology

We define digital technology (as used in education) as a tool that extends or

creates a space for teaching and learning (e.g., a Wiki that operates as a shared
space for constructing knowledge). The proliferation of DT is widespread: “among
[American] families with children age 8 and under, in 2013 … three-quarters [have]
access to some type of “smart” mobile device at home (e.g., smartphone, tablet)”
(Common Sense Media). The Media Awareness Network (2010) found that 14% of
Canadian 4th graders engage in writing an online diary or Weblog. Incorporating
DT into literacy programs in an authentic and effective manner still largely eludes us
(Otero et al., 2005; Selwyn, 2011; Walsh & Durant, 2013). Bullock (2011) notes that
teaching with DT is quite different from using Twitter or Facebook to communicate
with friends. Although many student teachers use DT for personal communication
they do not have a broad understanding of literacy nor do they intuitively know how
to teach with DT (Kosnik, Menna, & Bullock, 2012).
There is growing research on use of DT in schools. One framework for analysis
is the Substitution, Augmentations, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model

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developed by Ruben Puentedura (2014). The continuum is from substitution where

“technology acts as a direct tool substitute with no functional change” to redefinition
where “technology allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable”
(Schrock, n.p.).
The model proposed by Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, and Newby (2010) is
designed for teacher education. The six uses of DT are:

1. information delivery,
2. hands-on skill building activities,
3. practice in the field,
4. observations and modeling,
5. authentic experiences,
6. reflections (p. 20).

This model is helpful only to a degree because it is generic. In the following

section we provide a modified model which focuses on DT and literacy teacher
education.

SAMPLE AND METHODOLOGY

To put together the sample of 28 LTEs, lists of teacher educators in Tier 1

(research-intensive) and Tier 2 (teaching-focused) institutions were compiled and
we systematically worked through them. A range of experience (e.g., elementary/
primary and secondary teaching) and a gender representation comparable to that in
the profession as a whole were considered.
All participants were interviewed three times over the period April 2012 to
February 2015. Each semi-structured interview was approximately 60–90 minutes
in length. The first interview addressed background experiences (e.g., education)
and research activities. The second interview considered pedagogy (e.g., goals for
courses, assignments, teaching strategies). The third interview focused on use of
digital technology and future plans. Interviews were done either face to face or via
Skype and were audio-recorded and transcribed.
Much of the methodology was qualitative as defined by Merriam (2009) and
Punch (2014). Qualitative inquiry is justified as it provides depth of understanding
and enables exploration of questions that do not on the whole lend themselves to
quantitative inquiry (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Merriam, 2009). It opens the way
to gaining entirely unexpected ideas and information from participants in addition
to finding out their opinions on simple pre-set matters. A modified grounded
theory approach was used, not beginning with a fixed theory but generating theory
inductively from the data using a set of techniques and procedures for collection
and analysis (Punch, 2014). As the analysis progressed, key themes were identified
and refined – adding some and deleting or merging others – through “constant
comparison” with the interview transcripts.

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In terms of participant selection for the present chapter, after analyzing all
of the data we identified a subset of six LTEs who used DT extensively both in
their teaching and as a way to support student teacher learning. For data analysis,
qualitative software NVivo was used. After open coding we applied Ottenbreit
et al.’s (2010) framework to further analyze our data: (1) information delivery,
(2) hands-on skill building activities, (3) practice in the field, (4) observations and
modeling, (5) authentic experiences, and (6) reflections (p. 20). In this stage, we
documented the LTEs’ use of DT; however, we felt this was not sufficiently focused
on literacy teaching because each discipline has specific features and different
demands. It did not address the complexity of literacy pedagogy (both in higher
education and in classroom teaching). What do student teachers need to learn about
literacy teaching given that our communication patterns are changing? How can this
be taught in higher education? We then re-analyzed the nodes to determine what
was actually being taught and the specific uses of DT regarding literacy. This led to
identifying three categories: changing nature of literacy; supporting student teacher
learning in specific areas; and building community.

FINDINGS

We begin with some background on the subset of participants who we deemed

exceptionally able in use of DT for literacy teacher education. Figure 1 shows that
our sample included LTEs with a range of experience both as classroom teachers and
as university faculty. This is followed by “thumbnail” sketches of our six participants.

Years as a classroom teacher Years teaching at the university

Carolina (Australia) 24 7
Dominique (U.S.A) 8 3
Hailey (U.S.A) 6 20
Jessie (Canada) 0 7
Melissa (U.S.A) 6 6
Stella (England) 16 10

Figure 1. Background of participants as of 2013

Carolina teaches in a rural satellite campus of a large university in Australia. Her

pedagogy was exceptional because she seamlessly integrated DT into her practice.
She balanced lectures with a range of social media opportunities. Student teachers
were expected to contribute to wikis and blogs and access podcasts/vodcasts. She
described her multi-modal pedagogy as “multi-layered-ness” and said she came to
literacy teaching “from multiple angles.”
Dominique works in a large, urban, research-intensive university in the U.S. One
of the features of her practice was that she used DT to “track and document the

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thinking that I was doing with my [literacy] class.” Her website and blogs were
places to “document our charts and then talk across the charts after class and keep
raising questions and posting articles and doing all this stuff before, during, and after
class.”
Hailey teaches in a top-ranked university in the U.S. which is very focused
on child-centred learning. In her teaching she experimented with creating hybrid
courses (on-line and face-to-face) which included formal classes and small student
teacher on-line communities. As she began to intentionally integrate DT into her
teaching she founded a “support group” for faculty in her program which created a
space for them to talk about DT.
Jessie works in a teaching-focused university in Canada. Her research centres on
multiliteracies and she was exceptionally able in helping student teachers consider
how changing communication patterns affect our understanding of literacy. Her
classes were rich with multi-modal processes that facilitated student teachers’
understanding of the power of images and the place of DT tools such as iPads.
Melissa works at a prestigious school of education in the U.S. where her
multicultural perspective framed her courses. Through multi-modalities (e.g.,
Boalian theatre, videos, cartoons, comics, children’s literature) she emphasized the
importance of valuing children’s out of school literacy practices.
Stella, based in England, teaches in a secondary English program. She used
DT to connect her students to the wider community (e.g., through BBC projects)
and her pedagogy was rich with multi-modalities, which included drama, comic
performance, and bringing poetry to life. She wanted her students to experience “all
those kind of different modes of operating within a genre.” She has been extremely
interested in DT since her own teacher education program and was continually
finding new ways to use DT.
When asked how they learned to use DT so effectively all said through trial and
error. Some learned from their student teachers and Teaching Assistants, but for the
most part it was through their own efforts.

Changing Nature of Literacy

The LTEs were well aware of the newer conceptions of literacy, changing literacy
practices, and literacy as a form of social capital. They recognized that all aspects of
literacy evolve as DT continues to influence our communication practices.

Conceptions of literacy.  Many of the participants used terms such as multiliteracies

and critical literacy to describe their position on literacy theory. When asked about
researchers whose work resonated with their approach they referenced: Rosenblatt,
Street, Alvermann, Gee, Wilhelm, Strickland, Luke, Cope, Kalantzis, Kemmis, New
London Group, Vasquez, Heath, Delpit, and Moje. Many acknowledged that some
of the texts by these researchers were difficult for student teachers but felt reading
them would expand their views of literacy.

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All regularly used multi-modal texts (e.g. commercials, images, cartoons) to help
student teachers understand that literacy is not neutral or a defined set of skills. All
recognized that student teachers tended to rely on their own experiences as pupils,
which were usually rooted in a narrow view of literacy focused on skills. A number
had their student teachers complete a literacy autobiography to help them analyze
their previous schooling experiences, which in turn helped them identify their own
filters.

Changing literacy practices.  Building on the theories introduced in the readings,

the six LTEs wanted their student teachers to appreciate the ever-increasing ways we
communicate. Many commented that student teachers do not necessarily recognize
these newer forms of social media as ways to communicate. Carolina observed: “it
still surprises me with the literacies for the future, the assumptions we make about
young people’s knowledge of technology … I just presumed they would know so
much. But they are actually so restricted.” To help the student teachers many had
them track the tools they used for communication in a single day. They wanted
student teachers to “transfer” use of multimodal tools used in their personal lives
to their professional work. Many let student teachers use digital tools (e.g., digital
essay) to present their learning on literacy (e.g., course assignment). They modeled
multi-modal teaching and made explicit what they were doing and why.

Literacy as a form of social capital.  All six LTEs regardless of the terms used
(multiliteracies, critical literacy) recognized that literacy is not neutral. Melissa
described her approach as multicultural because she wanted her student teachers to
recognize the cultural capital children bring to schools. She used a variety of resources
as a springboard for discussion of difficult issues (e.g., race, gender, class). Given
her critical literacy approach she “used cartoons to talk about issues of power and
privilege in a very non-threatening way.” For example, they watched and analyzed
Sid the Science Kid videos. Although “Sid is supposedly African-American and
Jewish … he doesn’t speak African-American.” She showed videos “as an entry point
to problematize issues of representation in terms of really difficult issues, issues that
a lot of times they tip-toe around.” Similarly, Dominique aimed to have her student
teachers “walk away with … a foundation for what it means to teach and learn in
diverse spaces … I wanted them to really think about that deeply.” Dominique created
a series of digital stations “around gender and equity, stereotypes, and intersections
around race and gender … we watched a video about being a basketball star and talked
about how race and gender were represented.” Dominique then asked the student
teachers to think about creating “a counter message.” They looked at advertisements
for children’s toys in different countries, which raised “issues that are often invisible.”
In another vein, Jessie argued that her student teachers needed to understand and
capitalize on their pupils’ out-of-school literacy experiences (Alvermann, 2010).
The divide between home and school literacies often limited what students could
contribute by overlooking their skills and interests.

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Supporting Student Teacher Learning

For these six LTEs, DT was not simply layered onto their courses nor was it an end
in itself; rather, it was a tool to support learning. None felt it was their responsibility
to teach how to use the tool (e.g., PowToons). Overall their goals were to help the
student teachers deepen their knowledge of specific literacy topics, learn pedagogical
strategies for being a 21st century teacher, and gain the dispositions of Teaching 2.0.
We subdivided these three broad goals into six specific goals, and gathered examples
of each goal from the LTEs (see Figure 2).

Fostering Teaching 2.0: Specific Goals and Examples

Specific Goals Example
Make literacy classes • Post comments on each other’s work (e.g., Wall Wisher, Text
participatory tagging, Voice Thread)
• Post comments in asynchronous time
• Provide student teachers with feedback on-line and encourage
them to respond to the feedback
• During class student teachers post questions or contribute
comments to a shared space
• Before class student teachers post comments about the readings
• Create Wordles when analyzing a text
Create an • Develop a repository of resources on a university platform
infrastructure for (e.g., Blackboard) or on their own website
accessing resources • Share books, videos, websites on a class Wiki
and sharing • Use DT tools (e.g., Smartboard) to access info on the spot
resources while teaching
• Access materials/videos for use in teaching (e.g., Globe
Theatre productions of Shakespearean plays)
Provide authentic • Student teachers make an iMovie on a specific topic (e.g.,
learning experiences bullying)
• Analyze videos student teachers created during their practice
teaching
• Skype with authors they are reading
• Participate in teacher communities by contributing to blogs and
Twitter feeds
• Participate in teacher-focused events (e.g., contribute a piece to
a BBC competition on current affairs/news)
• Student teachers create podcasts on an aspect of literacy to
share with broader community
• Watch videos of authors they are reading (both scholarly
articles and children’s literature)
• Student teachers post photographs of themselves on the
university platform as a way to introduce themselves to their
classmates

Figure 2. Goals and Examples

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 INTERTWINING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND LITERACY METHODS COURSES

Fostering Teaching 2.0: Specific Goals and Examples

Specific Goals Example
Gain an • View videos from other countries (e.g., teachers in Japan) to
understanding of see similarities to and differences from their own context
the increasingly • Participate in world-wide teacher communities
globalized nature of • Participate in crowd-sourcing
literacy • Share statistics on literacy beyond their home country
• Use visual representations (e.g., photographs) to move student
teachers beyond their immediate world to unpack a range of
issues (e.g., gender representation in children’s literature)
Reframe issues • Watch videos of teaching (exemplary or poor practice) and
related to literacy analyze them
and literacy teaching • Use videos from their practice teaching classes as “data” for
their inquiry projects
• Student teachers select a picture from a photo array and
relate the action in the photograph to a theory they have been
working on
Bridge practice • Reflect on practice teaching by sharing and analyzing
teaching and the photographs/videos they took
academic program • Use email and social media to remain connected during
practice teaching and as a place for student teachers to ask
questions or share concerns
• Create a video case study of pupils which relates to a theory of
literacy

Figure 2. (Continued)

Two Extended Examples of Supporting Student Learning

Hailey. For Hailey the university on-line platform allowed her to significantly
change her teaching. For example, her student teachers had to complete a multi-step
assignment documenting and analyzing their work with a child over a period of time.
They had to regularly submit their lessons and reflections. DT allowed Hailey to
change how and when she gave feedback.
It used to be that they would hand it in to me on the day of the course and that
meant that I got twenty papers to read and deal with at once. And they didn’t
get the feedback before they did the next session. Now, as soon as they write
it up, I can be pretty good at giving them feedback within an average of two
or three days.
For this assignment Hailey is not the only one to provide feedback. She formed
groups of approximately six student teachers. All had to post videos and reflections
of their work with children, then the student teachers in the group commented on
each other’s work. She explained:

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When they see the video, they really see how different children can be. And
they see then, of course, how differently others interact [with the children].
And then when they give each other feedback, they begin to build a much more
intimate and meaningful discourse community.
Hailey commented that student teachers were highly invested in this process because
they had opportunities to observe each other teach, their comments focused on the
teaching, and the process helped them become a learning community. A benefit to
her, the professor, was that reading the feedback student teachers gave each other
provided an insight into their thinking which could not be captured in a traditional
essay or in a regular class discussion. “[B]ecause they’re able to express themselves
differently, through different media, both individually and collaboratively, it’s given
me a totally new understanding of what they know.” Giving the student teachers
time to think about their responses was a huge benefit of working in asynchronous
time. “It provides me with a totally different lens into what students think, how
students think, how they construct knowledge, what they know. In the asynchronous
sessions, it gives them the gift of time.” Having more time led to them making
more in-depth observations and allowed everyone to participate. After reading the
online contributions Hailey adjusted her teaching accordingly to address the student
teachers’ questions and/or gaps in their knowledge.

Jessie.  This teacher educator used a multi0modal approach to address particular

topics. “I find it helpful to illustrate what I talk about when I talk about the global
and the local.” For example, when discussing Aboriginal issues they would look at
a picture book. “Then we’ll move to a TED Talk, or we’ll move to a blog.” This had
a dual purpose. It shows different forms of representation and also “how texts shift
when they move from a printed book onto a screen.” She further explained: “So I’ll
do a lot of work where we [draw on] Marshall McLuhan’s idea where we look at
what the medium offers.” Jessie noted another strength of her multimodal approach.
When I use technology, I can say something like “When we work with children in
text, we think about reading words, which is fairly easy. But we also think about
how visuals function in notions of design.” And then I’ll say “So let’s try to have
an activity where we think about this.” So we will go to five different websites
and we’ll talk through what those websites look like, how they function. What’s
functionality? How do you read the page? And what ends up happening is that
they realize that we read digital pages in a F-pattern. We work from the top of the
screen down to the bottom, which is fairly different from the way we would read
a linear text. So I find it very helpful to illustrate those kind of multi-modal points.

Building Community

When asked about their goals, all six LTEs identified developing the class into a
community as a key one. All used the affordances of DT to build community.

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Delivering interactive courses.  In describing the format of their courses, the LTEs
mentioned using a variety of digital technologies to enact an “interactive approach.”
This approach made space for discussion among student teachers, which helped to
develop a sense of community among them. The LTEs made use of their “smart”
(technology-enhanced) classrooms to capitalize on opportunities as they presented
themselves (e.g., do an immediate search on Wikipedia). Dominique, for example,
accessed blogs, websites, and social media applications (e.g., Tumblr, Twitter) to
encourage discussion “before, during, and after class.” These tools allowed student
teachers to raise questions and elicit responses on a given topic. Given that student
teachers had access to the blogs and websites, they were able to (and encouraged
to) continue discussion after class. Dominique explained that digital tools were an
“integral part of the class” and were “embedded” into her course. These ongoing in-
and out-of-class discussions helped to strengthen the community.
With student teachers immersed in on-going online discussions, the LTEs were
able to effectively use precious time in their courses on discussion rather than
covering readings. Melissa explained:
They’re able to put [comments] there so that they already know what people
are thinking before they come to the classroom. I don’t need to present the
material to them. They know it from the readings, but they need to figure out
how each other connected with the readings. So in the class, what we do is we
engage, I engage them in pedagogical practices that are aligned with what they
are reading and make those visible.

Creating online communities.  All six LTEs used digital tools to create online
learning communities whereby student teachers had the opportunity to deepen
professional relationships with their peers as well as start building networks with
educators around the world. Many LTEs used internal learning management systems
(i.e. Blackboard) or Wikis where student teachers could participate in ongoing
conversations. Stella noted that online learning communities gave student teachers
“opportunities to network with each other” and to share multimedia content (e.g.,
articles, videos, blogs) with one another other on these platforms. Stella commented
on the advantages of online communities: “They share resources and materials in a
way that perhaps they weren’t able to do twenty years ago.”
To acquaint student teachers with a wider and more global online community of
educators, LTEs like Carolina “built in opportunities for them to engage in social
media through the use of blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.” Some LTEs had student
teachers join global conversations on literacy topics via Twitter, while others asked
student teachers to respond to course readings by creating and/or responding to
publically posted blogs.
In an era of educational reform in which alternative certification routes to
teaching are becoming commonplace, the LTEs acknowledged the value of online

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communities for those in alternative certification programs. Stella noted, “their first
port of call may [often] be the school rather than the university.” To help student
teachers overcome feelings of isolation or being overwhelmed, she developed an
online learning community for her student teachers by using Wikis. She said, “I think
that will be a really important turning point in the way we use technology because I
think we may have to re-think some of the things we’re doing.”
Given the ubiquitous nature of social media, several LTEs created boundaries
to maintain their privacy and their professional relationship with student teachers.
Melissa and Stella made the deliberate decision not to participate in course-related
social media communities (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Melissa commented:
“Here’s my rule for Facebook: I only have them [add me] once they graduate. I feel
like I have to have somewhat of a boundary.” As a result, communities developed on
social media platforms were often for student-only use.

DISCUSSION

The six LTEs profiled in this chapter were hardworking, committed to their student
teachers, and ingenious. The DT tools they used were not ends in themselves; rather
they were used to meet particular goals related to literacy and to address broader
social issues. All wanted student teachers to grow beyond their own experiences as
pupils, believing that once they experienced interactive, technology-rich teaching
and learning they would be in a better position to teach that way.
The courses developed by our participants were significantly different from those
offered by the other 22 LTEs in our study. The former had truly reconceptualized
their teaching in relation to DT, not simply tinkering with it; they constructed
highly participatory experiences that occurred before, during, and after the official
3-hour class. Learning occurred in multiple ways: readings, f2f discussions, online
communities, viewing, analyzing, and providing feedback on texts which immersed
student teachers in the issues of literacy. It went far beyond introducing “methods”
to teach literacy; it was framed by learning to teach literacy as a global citizen.
This ambitious goal was matched with unparalleled support by the professors. Their
multi-modal/technology-rich teaching practices modeled the possibilities available
to teachers and students; however, they were constantly trying to balance preparing
student teachers to address the traditional forms of literacy (which they will probably
observe in schools) with more expansive understandings. They had not discarded
typical elements of literacy methods courses such as teaching the writing process
or components of a balanced literacy program. With many governments narrowing
their view of literacy to focus on skills and drills (Murray & Passy, 2014), there was
a constant struggle to balance the government’s requirements with their own broader
views of literacy.
By immersing student teachers in a rich literacy community, the LTEs hoped
they would reconceptualize literacy beyond a finite set of perfunctory skills to an

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understanding that literacy is socially and culturally embedded. By drawing on

images, videos, and current events, they included perspectives and information
beyond their local context. This encouraged student teachers to think globally,
which made their literacy courses highly engaging and authentic. The LTEs used
their literacy courses and the affordances of DT to address broader social issues
(e.g., race, class, gender) because they believed these issues profoundly affect
children’s identity and learning. They wanted their student teachers to understand
the importance of literacy and the complexity of being a literacy/English teacher.
The pedagogy of these LTEs had a number of elements. The following graphic,
Figure 3, was created to illustrate these elements – they do not occur lock-step but
are dynamic and recursive.

Figure 3. Elements of Teaching 2.0

The kind of work described in this chapter is labour-intensive. With few examples
to follow and often a lack of institutional support, the six LTEs spent significant
time preparing their classes. Not surprisingly time is major challenge! And their
extraordinary efforts may not be sustainable for long periods. All remarked that

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student teachers responded positively to their courses, but we wonder if they

appreciate the extraordinary efforts of their professors.
The examples of these six LTEs actualize what Bullock (2011) calls Teaching 2.0:
“a radically different approach to teaching and learning that requires educators to
understand, and make use of, the affordances of Web 2.0 tools” (p. 103). Faculty, like
student teachers, need to be part of a learning community where they can address
issues and share examples. LTEs need to work with other faculty (either in their
home institution or beyond) which can be facilitated by social media. By profiling
the work of six LTEs we are taking up Kirkwood and Price’s (2014) suggestion:
“[The] sharing of ‘good practice’ and ‘lessons learned’ among members of the higher
education community can help academic teachers to concentrate on effective uses of
technology and to avoid the unnecessary duplication of effort and expense” (p. 7).

NOTE
1
We wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous
funding of this research.

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 SECTION 4
MOVING FORWARD
 CLARE KOSNIK, SIMONE WHITE AND CLIVE BECK

13. LITERACY/ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATORS

MOVING FORWARD
A Cross Case Analysis

INTRODUCTION

We have taken a novel approach to this final section of Building Bridges: Rethinking
Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era. Rather than simply providing a
summary of the previous 12 chapters, we have used these chapters as data. Since
the authors’ own research and experience as teacher educators was a large part of
the basis for their respective positions and arguments, they provided us with a rich
set of evidence. Given their extensive experience in the complex world of teacher
education they have much to contribute. We decided to capitalize on their first-
hand knowledge of the field by analyzing the chapters, noting common themes
and issues, and identifying solutions they have found to work in practice. Selwyn
(2011a) says, “questions which explore digital technologies in schools from the
lived experiences of those using (and those not using) them should be at the forefront
of any educational technologist’s mind” (p. 40). In keeping with this position, what
experienced teacher educators are actually doing and not doing should be at the
forefront of any discussion of teacher education.
Our approach here is consistent with that of Mary Kennedy, who argues that we
need to build on what people are actually doing because utopian ideals are often of
limited value. Her position might be described as “utopian realism” (Halpin, 2003),
since it frames research in a language of practical possibilities. In a 2010 article
on teacher education significantly titled “Against Boldness,” Kennedy maintains
that we should avoid sudden, “over the top” reforms and instead begin with present
practices, working to improve them in incremental ways. In an earlier article (2006)
she observes:
The TE collective vision includes images of learning communities, with children
happily co-constructing knowledge, but they are still images – photographs
unrelated to any particular curricular purpose. It does not help teachers who
must envision specific sequences of events that start with a problem, move
through an examination, and ultimately lead to a satisfying conclusion.
Because of these failures in the TE collective vision, teacher education often
fails to give teachers the tools they need to develop a sustainable practice and

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 181–192.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
C. Kosnik et al.

may in addition actually hinder them from developing these tools on their own.
(p. 211)
Bold reforms often advocated by governments should be tempered with realistic
suggestions. A comment made repeatedly by our authors was that digital technology
is not a magic solution and it will take time to figure out how to integrate it effectively
into teacher education. We should not look to it to “transform” education. As Selwyn
(2011b) notes:
Despite repeated predictions of inevitable change and impending
transformation, digital technologies are used inconsistently in educational
settings, usually with little large-scale conclusive “effect.” Much of what
is written and discussed about educational technology is, therefore, more a
matter of faith than it is a matter of fact. (p. 714)
Bullock in his chapter makes a similar plea for realism when he states that technology
is just one piece in the teaching and teacher education puzzle, and moreover not a
new piece.
Nowadays the words educational technologies bring to mind images of tablets,
interactive whiteboards, and computers. Indeed educational technology is
tacitly understood by most to be synonymous with both the digital world
and novel devices. It is easy to forget that the education system itself is a
technology, designed in part to produce a literate population and to pass on
particular social norms. (Building Bridges, pp. 3–4)

REVIEWING THE CHAPTERS: TEXT AS DATA

As we reviewed the chapters it was eminently clear that the teacher educators were
hard-working, committed, and thoughtful. Not surprisingly it was equally clear that
being a teacher educator is very demanding work. Although our contributors are
located in different countries, work in a range of institutions (e.g., teaching-focused,
research-intensive), teach in different programs (e.g., undergraduate, master’s level),
and are at various stages of their career (e.g., junior faculty, full professors), it was
surprising the level of consistency of the issues. Both at the Symposium in London
and in Building Bridges: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education in a Digital Era, the
contributors’ passion for their work was apparent. In the face of daunting challenges
such as globalization, centralization, de-professionalization, standardization, and
“accountability,” they maintained outstanding commitment at the grassroots. It has been
a true honor to edit a text with such inspiring contributors. However, it needs to be noted
that reading about the issues and challenges they face was sobering. Being an effective
and responsible literacy teacher educator in today’s climate is not for the faint of heart.
Good teaching is good teaching, but being a teacher educator is not simply the
same as being a teacher; there is a pedagogy of teacher education (Loughran, 2006).
This is pointed out by Goodwin and Chen in their chapter:

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Similar to teachers, teacher educators are not born but cultivated, which
means that teacher educating should be a deliberate practice that embraces
careful study, extensive skill development, and much practice; one does
not simply transform from teacher to teacher educator when one moves
into higher education (Berry, 2007; Hollins, Luna, & Lopez, 2014), despite
prevailing perceptions that becoming a teacher educator really is that simple
(Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013). This perception likely endures because the
work of teachers and the work of teacher educators are related yet different
endeavors (Murray & Male, 2005; Williams, Ritter, & Bullock, 2012), such
that teacher educator work seems deceptively familiar to teachers, a mere
extension of teaching, when in reality it is far more complex. (Building
Bridges, p. 157)
Accordingly, how and where DT meshes with teaching for teachers and teacher
educators respectively should be addressed as related but somewhat different
questions, accompanied by examples of the effective use of DT in each setting. Our
contributors have given us their “lived realities” and context-specific responses, not
simply a reiteration of unquestioned faith in DT (Selwyn, 2011, p. 714). A practical as
well as a theoretical approach is needed to dispel the myths about the transformation
of teaching through the use of DT. Those of us who are long-time educators and
have lived through so many heralded “solutions” to complex issues are wary of the
next shiny new initiative that is presented as solving all the supposed problems of
education. Again as Bullock notes:
It is always worth remembering that the concept of utopia – technological
or otherwise – requires us to consider its often-overlooked definition of “no
place.” The history of educational reform is grim; the history of educational
reform due to technology is even less heartening. Cuban’s (1986) excellent
discussion of the use of technology in education provides much-needed
sobering reminders about the ubiquitous cycle of technological adoption:
enthusiasm, small-scale implementation, and status quo. (Building Bridges, p. 4)

RETURNING TO THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The overall research questions that framed our Symposium in London have
subsequently guided our analysis of the 12 chapters.
• How is our understanding of literacy evolving in light of the new ways we
communicate?
• How can literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) prepare student teachers to
develop and implement literacy programs that capitalize on digital technology
(DT)?
• What teacher education curriculum changes are required to better prepare future
teachers to integrate DT into their own teaching?

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• What professional learning support do LTEs need to develop courses that integrate
and make greater use of DT?
By using our research questions as a framework, we were then able to analyze the
chapters to identify insights into the themes, issues, and challenges teacher educators
face and, equally importantly, document inventive (and feasible) ways of integrating
DT into teacher education. The ingenuity of our contributors showed ways to move
forward which in turn led us to query the “moral panic” (Bennet & Maton, 2011,
p. 783) that is so common in the discourse around DT and falling literacy rates.
We agree that, despite a growing number of policy initiatives, incorporating DT
into teacher education literacy programs is proving challenging (Otero et al., 2005;
Walsh & Durant, 2013); however, we believe this edited text helps explain the
situation beyond simply a blame-game directed at teachers and teacher educators.
Perhaps more importantly, it suggests that schools and schools of education are not
failing but rather adapting.
Teacher educators in universities, like teachers in schools, may face limited
budgets, work intensification, and increased accountability measures, but there are
many examples of truly outstanding practice. Rather than simply reiterating the
problems (which we know so well), this text as a collection aims to find ways to
navigate the roiling waters of politicized education systems, where teacher educators
are highly scrutinized and criticized yet in many ways are doing a fine job preparing
teachers for the 21st century.
We have organized this chapter around a set of salient issues, themes, and strategies.
Rather than discussing sequentially the three central fields of the text – literacy,
digital technology, and teacher education – we have chosen instead to address them
together through a trialectic conversation (see Figure 1). It would run counter to our
aims to see each as a distinct and separate entity. Entering into this “trialogue,” we
note that we will not attempt to solve the problems of teacher education with simple
strategies or binaries, or by ignoring the expertise of teacher educators. As Twiselton
highlights in her chapter, we need to work in the “in between” spaces. She cites Ellis
and Nicholl (2015) who argue that:
knowledge created through such “hybrid” practices of co-configuration is
stronger and more likely to lead to innovation and positive change in complex,
changing, and societally significant practices such as school teaching. (Building
Bridges, p. 102)
This chapter thus focuses on the hybrid spaces and overlap of the three fields and
the implications for the professional learning experiences of teachers and teacher
educators as boundary crossers (Tsui & Law, 2006) across these fields. According to
Prensky (2011), the challenge of moving to digitally-rich literacy programs is much
more complex and nuanced than seeing it as a clash between digital natives and
digital immigrants. Digital natives – “those who were born into the age when these
technologies were around from their birth” – may be “more at ease with DT” (p. 16)

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 LITERACY/ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATORS MOVING FORWARD

Figure 1. A trialectic conversation: Literacy,

digital technology and teacher education

than their parents and teachers (digital immigrants), but they still need to be taught
how to use DT comprehensively in their learning, and teacher educators must learn
how to shift their knowledge and practice to lead them in this direction. The chapters
in this book offer generative ways for teacher educators to embrace the richness of
literacies as social practices. As Bullock says:
Learning about technology matters in teacher education because we face the
same problem as those concerned with scientific literacy. Neither teacher
educators nor teacher candidates can hope to anticipate the technology
knowledge (technical competencies) that will be required in the future.
(Building Bridges, p. 10)

ISSUES AND THEMES: IMPLICATIONS FOR SHIFTING PRACTICE

In analyzing the cross cases, three central issue/themes emerged for Literacy/English
teacher educators (LTEs), namely: the importance of embracing the changing
definitions of literacy and DT; the changing and competing forces impacting their
work, identity, and role as teacher educators within a larger policy framework; and
the need for greater acknowledgement of and focus on “second order” (Murray &
Male, 2005) professional learning for teacher educators. In this section of the chapter
we examine these themes in turn, drawing on our text as data in order to illustrate
the various points.

Theme 1: Intertwining DT with Our Conception of Literacy

The various authors acknowledge a rich definition of literacy/ies and the importance
of teachers and teacher educators embracing “new” knowledges. As Goodwin
and Chen note:

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These knowledges include a range of new literacies – e.g., financial, global,

environmental literacy; cognition and different ways of learning and creating;
new technologies and technological pedagogical content knowledge; life and
career awareness. (Building Bridges, p. 159)
Collectively, the authors of the volume concur that there is indeed a “social turn” in
literacy studies. For example, according to Menna this turn positions literacy as a
situated social practice and recognizes multiple literacies.
New Literacy Studies acknowledges a plurality of literacies and recognizes
diverse ways of being literate. These scholars actively consider how people
engage with culturally recognized literacies practices to communicate, to
negotiate, and to construct meaning in different social contexts (Barton &
Hamilton, 1998/2012; Lankshear & Knobel, 2007; Street, 1993). Indeed, an
integral part of literacy learning is the capacity to effectively apply and adapt
language to a particular communicative circumstance. (Building Bridges, p. 18)
Similarly, García-Martín et al., citing Parry explain:
In his work with older students, Parry argues that teachers need to show
students “how to use these technologies effectively to ensure they end up on
the right side of the digital divide: the side that knows how to use social media”
(Parry, 2011, p. 2). (Building Bridges, p. 48)

Theme 2: Impact of Standards/Political Context

Another key theme that emerged across the chapters was the influence of policy
reforms on teacher education, with many of the chapters (particularly those from
England) highlighting the tensions of increasing standardization and accountability
both in the teaching profession and initial teacher education. In their chapter,
Bulfin et al. introduce this issue in a way that appears to ring true across the chapters.
Global technology companies, international bodies like UNESCO and the
OECD, national governments, and even educational researchers, continue to
express great enthusiasm for the “transforming impact of [ICT] on national
education systems” (UNESCO, 2011). This seemingly endless enthusiasm
continues to proliferate internationally despite vigorous critiques of claims
about so called “ICT facilitated learning,” in addition to troubling questions
about the ideological work done in the name of new technology by different
systems and stakeholders (cf., Picciano & Spring, 2013; Selwyn, 2011, 2013).
At the same time, governments across the world are introducing wide-ranging
policy reforms to improve the quality of education, hoping to better prepare
young people for an increasingly complex globalising world (Schleicher,
2012). Much of the focus has been on teachers and improving the quality and
capacity of the teaching workforce (e.g., Jensen et al., 2012; OECD, 2010).

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Very often this increased quality and capacity is directly linked to educators’
“ICT capabilities” and the ability of teachers and schools to “prepare students
for further education and training and for living and working in a digital
world” (DEEWR, 2008). In current educational policy discourse, improving
the quality of education is closely connected to both a teacher quality agenda
and a new technology agenda. (Building Bridges, p. 119)
Yandell in his chapter also highlights issues regarding standards. He observes:
The formation of teachers is to be policed through a single set of Teachers’
Standards (DfE, 2011), standards that themselves insist on teachers’ role in
the maintenance of (“high”) standards of linguistic propriety. Thus, a teacher
must “demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting
high standards of literacy, articulacy, and the correct use of standard English,
whatever the teacher’s specialist subject” (DfE, 2011, p. 11). (Building Bridges,
p. 38)

Theme 3: Professional Development for Teacher Educators

A number of authors explore the need for the preparation and ongoing professional
learning of teacher educators. This is accepted for classroom teachers, as García-
Martín et al. rightly state: “Initial teacher education cannot be expected to offer a
future-proof set of skills, understandings, and classroom practices. Keeping pace
with new technologies and evaluating their use and usefulness in classroom contexts
also has to be part of continuing professional development” (Building Bridges,
p. 52). But as Bullock notes, teacher educators also need help in this area:
I believe that teacher educators are not well prepared to forecast the kinds of
technical competencies that will be most useful for new teachers throughout their
careers. It is more important for new teachers to – again to paraphrase Hodson
(2008) – develop skills of recognizing useful technology for pedagogical
purposes. The development of social and epistemological competencies about
using technology in teacher education seems like a worthy goal for teacher
educators, one that will hopefully help future teachers problematize the idea
that using technology for teaching is automatically justified from efficiency
perspectives. (Building Bridges, p. 13)
And Kosnik and Dharamshi remind us:
Teacher educators are being asked to conceptualize and teach literacy in ways
they did not as classroom teachers (Kirkwood, 2009). Despite a growing
number of policy initiatives, attempts to incorporate DT into teacher education
literacy programs are proving challenging (Kirkwood, 2009; Otero et al., 2005;
Walsh & Durant, 2013). According to Boling (2005), “research has revealed
that teacher educators do not always have the knowledge, skills, or dispositions

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necessary for meaningfully integrating technology into their classes” (p. 3).
Often, use of digital technology is an afterthought, something tacked onto a
course (Bullock, 2011). (Building Bridges, p. 165)
However, the professional development of teachers is a challenging task. Bullock
highlights the complexity, noting:
Teacher education programs, and those who teach within them, are often
soundly criticized for failing to “prepare” teachers in ways that please their
associate teachers and their future employers. Again, Darling-Hammond (2006)
notes: “Learning how to think and act in ways that achieve one’s intentions is
difficult, particularly if knowledge is embedded in the practice itself” (p. 37).
Not only does teaching about teaching using digital technologies offer the same
challenges to teaching about teaching using any other approach or context, it
also problematically relies on the availability of devices for candidates to use
in the field. (Building Bridges, pp. 6–7)
Likewise, White and Murray observe:
Literacy teacher educators are presented with the need to balance the preparation
of teachers for the classrooms of today and for the classrooms of the future
(White & Forgasz, in press). Including how to: build a sound knowledge base
of literacy/ies theory; attend to diverse content knowledge (such as reading,
writing, speaking, listening and viewing); satisfy current curriculum policy
reforms; utilise 21st century teaching embedding a rapidly changing social
media set of tools into their practices; and provide a broad base of literacy/
ies strategies and approaches for an increasingly diverse student population.
(Building Bridges, p. 137)

STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES

While the themes above highlight some of the issues and considerations for teacher
educators, across the different chapters the authors also demonstrate different
strategies and approaches they use to implement new knowledges. For example,
Kosnik and Dharamshi explain that professional learning communities can be very
effective in facilitating the ongoing development of teacher educators.
Faculty, like student teachers, need to be part of a learning community where
they can address issues and share examples. LTEs need to work with other
faculty (either in their home institution or beyond) and this can be facilitated
by social media. (Building Bridges, p. 176)
Illustrations are offered of innovative responses to some of the challenges and
issues discussed earlier. For example, White and Murray describe the case of
Caroline, an exemplary literacy teacher educator who works across both university

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and school spaces with teachers as well as teacher educators. As the authors note,
Caroline’s teaching
…provides her students with a direct model of good practice in Literacy
teaching, something which pre-service students frequently crave and which
certain modes of teacher educator pedagogy can provide very effectively
(Loughran, 2006; Swennen & van der Klink, 2008). Caroline’s first order
pedagogy (teaching the children), contextualised within the classroom and
focused around the children’s learning needs, becomes then the vehicle for
enriching and integrating her second order pedagogy (her teaching of her pre-
service students). (Building Bridges, p. 145)
Menna in her chapter, documents a study that:
…highlight[s] the importance of providing student teachers with access
to a pedagogy of literacy teacher education, which offers them multiple
opportunities to bring their diverse experiences with literacy into conversation
with the broader field of literacy. The construction of a multifaceted approach
to literacy teaching is a complex process developed over time and in concert
with the daily realties of the classroom. However, the skills, dispositions,
and knowledge beginning teachers develop during teacher preparation are a
vital part of the foundation upon which they can build a rich and inclusive
pedagogical practice. (Building Bridges, p. 28)
Dymoke in her chapter describes a particular experience-based project involving
social media tools to enhance the content knowledge and pedagogy of pre-service
teachers.
Within a digital space, multimodal texts can be woven by many makers,
users, and readers of that text. They can be spliced or “remixed” (Knobel &
Lankshear, 2007, p. 8), rethreaded, redesigned, and changed by other makers.
Drawing on Gee’s notion of “affinity spaces” (2004, p. 83), we sought to
establish a community of learners who could share their knowledge and
experiences about poetry. We chose to use a wiki because of the collaborative
and participatory opportunities and the digitally afforded multimodality it
appeared to offer within a digital space that was only accessible to invited
participants. Students would be able to add images, sound, and video plug-ins,
as well as experiment with collaborative writing because a wiki allows users to
edit each other’s posts. (Building Bridges, pp. 60–61)
Goodwin and Chen offer a different strategy, one that connects doctoral studies to
the professional learning needs of teacher educators.
Finally, interviewees recommended that doctoral preparation for teacher
educators should include knowledge about the teacher education field,
and provide intentional mentoring and apprenticing opportunities to teach,

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do research, and learn about professional life in the academy. (Building

Bridges, p. 151)
Virmani and Williamson highlight themes of having the technology as invisible that
is keeping the content at the forefront of the lesson and the importance of redefining
classroom roles and structures in a technology-rich teaching. In teacher education it
is not expected that student teachers learn all of the tools used in classrooms but how
technology can support content development and pedagogy.
Focusing on invisibility combats the tendency to view technology as a way
to “teacher proof” the curriculum and allows for teachers to use technology
to support rather than drive instruction (Scherer, 2012). Through teacher
education, novice teachers will benefit from experiencing integrated lessons
where the technology is not isolated from content, but embedded and invisible
throughout the instruction. (Building Bridges, p. 88)

KEY PRINCIPLES

We conclude this chapter with a set of suggested principles drawn from across the
chapters; we offer them for ongoing discussion and research on the theory and
practice of teacher education.
• DT cannot stand on its own, it needs to be embedded
• The use of DT is not an end in itself
• The way we communicate is changing
• LTEs and STs need to adopt a critical stance
• Changes in practice must be accompanied by changes in identity
• Goals for teacher education and schooling need to evolve together and be
consistent
• Simple or simplistic solutions can have unintended consequences
• Examples of situated practice are essential, as examples for professional learning
• Generic standards provide a framework, but there is need for a narrative kind of
guidance for LTEs
• DT and literacy teacher education must be intertwined
• Context matters – we need to consider teacher education against the broader
backdrop of reforms

CONCLUSION

Doing a cross-case analysis of the chapters builds on our London Symposium, where
we shared our contexts and experiences and had lively discussion of the issues and
specific strategies and solutions. Building Bridges: Rethinking Literacy Teacher
Education in a Digital Era is a way to continue the conversation. We recognize this
is somewhat artificial, but we hope our endeavor will be of interest to others and lead

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to continued collaboration among our contributors. The multidisciplinary approach

we adopted – literacy, teacher education, and digital technology – has proven to be a
wise choice. Having experts from their respective fields offer insights beyond their
discipline-specific academic communities has been very enlightening. Our authors
have much to contribute in moving the field of teacher education forward, yet no one
individual or group (or government minister or policy document) can do it on their
own. We need to go on discussing across disciplinary fields and among multiple
stakeholders. We need to continue to explore:
• What we are trying to accomplish in education
• Our assumptions about student teachers as digital natives
• Models and approaches beyond simply placing student teachers in schools or
teaching them about a digital program
• A number of big questions about digital technology
We agree with Menna’s assessment:
The proliferation of such technological tools and the shifts in communication
practices has, in turn, necessitated a reconfiguring of literacy pedagogy and
literacy teacher education (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kosnik et al., 2013; Pahl &
Rowsell, 2005; Vasquez et al., 2013). Further research is needed, however, to
fully understand how the concept of literacy comes to be defined and engaged
within teacher education. (Building Bridges, p. 17)
To bring together certain aspects of this wide ranging discussion, Clive Beck’s
final chapter in the text discusses future directions for teacher education. At the heart
of our text is a concern to enhance teacher education. Beck’s approach offers both a
broad framework and specific suggestions for the field.

REFERENCES
Bennet, S., & Maton, K. (2011). Intellectual field or faith-based religion: Moving on from the idea of
“digital natives”. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology and
the new literacies (pp. 169–185). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Ellis, V., & McNicholl, J. (2015). Transforming teacher education: Reconfiguring the academic work.
London & New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Halpin, D. (2003). Hope and education the role of the utopian imagination. London: Routledge.
Kennedy, M. (2006). Knowledge and vision in teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 205–211.
Kennedy, M. (2010). Against boldness. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 16–20.
Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding teaching and learning
about teaching. London & New York, NY: Routledge.
Murray, J., & Male, T. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: Evidence from the field. Teaching and
Teacher Education, 21(2), 125–142.
Otero, V., Peressini, D., Meymaris, K., Ford, P., Garvin, T., Harlow, D., … Mears, C. (2005). Integrating
technology into teacher education: A critical framework for implementing reform. Journal of Teacher
Education, 56(1), 8–23.
Prensky, M. (2011). Digital wisdom and homo sapiens digital. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Deconstructing digital
natives: Young people, technology and the new literacies (pp. 15–29). New York, NY: Routledge.

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Selwyn, N. (2011a). Schools and schooling in the digital age: A critical analysis. London: Routledge.
Selwyn, N. (2011b). In praise of pessimism: The need for negativity in educational technology. British
Journal of Educational Technology, 42(5), 713–718.
Tsui, A. B. M., & Law, D. Y. K. (2007). Learning as boundary-crossing in school-university partnership.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(8), 1289–1301.
Walsh, M., & Durant, C. (2013). Multiliteracies: A slow movement in literacy minor. In C. Kosnik,
J. Rowsell, P. Williamson, R. Simon, & C. Beck (Eds.), Literacy teacher educators: Preparing
teachers for a changing world (pp. 175–187). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

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 CLIVE BECK

14. RETHINKING TEACHER EDUCATION

PROGRAMS

This volume like our London Symposium is concerned with improving literacy
teacher education, especially by attending to developments in digital technology.
This needs to be done, however, against the backdrop of a general approach to
teacher education. In this final chapter I discuss several aspects of such an approach,
building in part on ideas already advanced in preceding chapters. The chapter does
not have a particular literacy focus, but the issues it raises are of relevance to literacy
teacher education along with other areas of teacher preparation.
Teacher education, like school teaching itself, is an enormously complex
enterprise and I can only touch on a few aspects here. However, I believe the ones I
have chosen are of central importance to the field. They are:
• a vision for teacher education
• a research-based teacher education program
• a campus program that embodies our vision
• a practicum component that connects the campus and the schools
• an appropriate technology emphasis
• an incremental approach to improvement

A VISION FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Fundamental to improving teacher education is arriving at a more adequate vision

for the field, one that gives direction to our enterprise, helps us pull together around
effective practices, and helps us respond to critics and current “reform” trends. I use
the term “vision” here in a broad sense that runs the whole gamut from abstract ideas
to practical principles and strategies. What I am concerned with might equally be
referred to as a “philosophy” of teacher education, an “approach,” a “conception,”
or even a “theory”: there is no perfect term. It is what Kennedy (2006) has in mind
when (talking about teaching generally) she says:
Although I use the term vision…I do not mean this in the religious, idealist, or
head-in-the-clouds sense of the term but rather…a feet-on-the-ground sense of
purpose and direction and of actions that get there from here. (p. 207)
Generating a broad vision for teacher education in this sense – though with varying
degrees of emphasis on theory and practice – has been taken up by many people

C. Kosnik et al. (Eds.), Building Bridges, 193–205.

© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
C. Beck

over the years, e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2006; Edwards, Gilroy and Hartley, 2002;
Feiman-Nemser, 2012; Furlong and Whitty, 2000; Goodlad, 1994; Hagger and
McIntyre, 2006; Kosnik and Beck, 2006, 2009; Labaree, 2004; Loughran, 2006;
Shulman, 2004; Sleeter, 2013; Tom, 1997.
Related to a vision for teacher education, of course, is a vision for teaching in
general. A central question in teacher education is: what approach to teaching should
we be trying to promote in our teacher candidates and ultimately in schools? The
answer to this question determines much of what we do in teacher education and
the pedagogy we model in the program. As several contributors to this volume
have noted it is certainly necessary to articulate a pedagogy of teacher education
(Loughran, 2006) but there must be a great deal of overlap between this and
pedagogy in general. To a significant degree, what constitutes good pedagogy cuts
across fields and levels: teaching is teaching is teaching. Developing a pedagogy
of teacher education is largely a matter of figuring out how to foster and model in
the pre-service setting – with adult students, in a university context, etc. – the very
approach to teaching we are advocating for the school setting.
While it is essential to develop a comprehensive vision for teacher education
(and teaching), we should not plan to impose such a vision on teacher educators.
That would go against key values of autonomy and professionalism that should
be part of the vision itself. Instead, teacher educators, teachers, and other theorists
and practitioners need to work together, sharing reflections and findings rather
than staying in our individual silos (and ICT can definitely help in this regard). An
enhanced “sharing system” would help us achieve deep new insights and a greater
degree of convergence. There will always be different viewpoints, but we need to
find ways to make people more aware of each other’s positions so we can learn
from each other, modify our views as appropriate, and reduce unnecessary and
unproductive differences. In the next section I will discuss in a little more detail the
form such a sharing system might take.
Where should we begin in developing a vision for teacher education? Fortunately,
there is already much (though by no means full) agreement on what constitutes good
teaching and teacher education. Key figures in education are widely referred to by
teacher educators: e.g., Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Freire, Schon, Greene, Lortie,
Apple, Giroux, Huberman, Noddings, Furlong, Whitty, Zeichner, Delpit, Lytle,
Cochran-Smith, Darling-Hammond. There are important differences between these
theorists, but they are united by a vision of teaching as student-centered, dialogical,
inquiry-oriented, inclusive, and aimed at much more than just subject-matter
acquisition. As Kennedy (2006) says:
Teacher educators are famous (or notorious) for the progressive vision of
teaching that they espouse. They embrace terms such as learning community,
co-construction, inquiry, and social justice. They do not all share the exact
same vision, of course. There are numerous variations on these themes… But
the terms capture the general framework of the teacher education community

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as a whole…what we might call the TE collective vision of teaching practice.

(p. 209)
We have this important and encouraging consensus to begin with, then; but
much more needs to be done. In many ways the agreement is illusory: it is often
more in words than in reality. We use a lot of technical terms in teacher education
(as in academe generally) and these can mask considerable lack of clarity about
what we are advocating, both in theory and practice. As Dewey (1938) said, “all
principles by themselves are abstract…everything depends upon the interpretation
given them as they are put into practice” (p. 20). If the practical implications of
theory are not thoroughly discussed, the danger is that neither we nor our students
will really understand it, let alone know how to implement it. Yes, we should
integrate technology, but just how should we do that without doing more harm
than good? Yes, teaching should be constructivist, but what is the balance between
student and teacher input? Yes, we should use an inquiry approach, but how much
place (if any) is left for “direct instruction”? In teacher education, we should
systematically pursue such questions rather than just restating our mantras. Once
again, the objective is not to arrive at an orthodox vision which is then imposed,
but rather to bring the discussion to a more explicit and concrete level so we can
all work together on fine-tuning what may be a largely shared vision though with
individual variations.

A RESEARCH-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

Developing an adequate vision for teacher education is dependent in part on

conducting more and better research. Research on teacher education (of which we
have seen many examples in this volume) has not been a high priority in universities;
and this is a serious liability at a time when evidence for the effectiveness of our
practices is increasingly demanded. If we are to avoid having inappropriate “evidence-
based reforms” imposed on us, we must do more research ourselves and devise more
effective ways to explain the validity of our research methods and findings. This is
stressed, for example, in the UK (BERA/RSA Report, 2014); in Finland (Sahlberg,
2015); and in the U.S., where Wiseman (2012) says that scholarship in teacher
education “must be encouraged if we are to continue to be viable in today’s policy
environment” (p. 88).
The research we conduct and draw on, however, must not be narrow and purely
quantitative, focused for example on the standardized test scores of our students’
students. We require a “wide-ranging and inclusive definition of research” (BERA/
RSA Report, 2014, p. 11). Moreover, we should reject an approach whereby
university-based academics do all the research and then give top-down “expert”
direction to the field. What is needed rather is a comprehensive approach to research
and knowledge building to which both academics and teachers contribute (Bryk,
Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015). According to Feiman-Nemser (2012),

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“[l]earning to teach is a bigger job than universities, schools, experience, or personal

disposition alone can accomplish” (p. 50).
I support Bryk’s (2008) call for a “new vision of research…organized around
core problems of practice” (p. 3), and a knowledge-sharing “system,” open and
loosely organized (somewhat like Wikipedia), to which academics and practitioners
contribute and on which both can draw (Bryk, 2008). Similarly, Cochran-Smith
and Lytle (2009) propose “[p]utting practice at the center and drawing on the
collective intellectual capacity of practitioners collaborating with others, such as
university-based researchers” (p. 161). In the same vein, Lowrie (2014) argues for
an “educational practices framework” that allows traditional and emerging experts
to engage in “sharing ideas, presenting options and stimulating rich practices and
[making available] resources, learning tools and curricula” (p. 43).
This approach assumes that teachers are researchers in an important sense who
contribute extensively to the knowledge building effort, a view I accept and that
has considerable support in the literature. For example, Schon (1983) describes
teachers as doing “experimental research” in the classroom (p. 66) and generating
“theory” that provides “springboards for making sense of new situations” (p. 317).
Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) speak of teachers as “deliberative intellectuals who
constantly theorize practice” (p. 2). The BERA/RSA Report (2014) stresses the need
for teachers to be “research literate” and “research engaged,” thus “enabling teachers
and leaders to drive change, rather than having it ‘done’ to them” (p. 40). Zeichner
and Liston (2014) observe:
[B]ecause of teachers’ direct involvement in the classroom, they bring a
perspective to understanding the complexities of teaching that cannot be
matched by external researchers, no matter what methods of study they
employ. (p. 5)
Over their years in the profession, teachers have a “sample size” and familiarity
with their “participants” that would be the envy of many academic researchers.
Moreover, they have strong motivation to get it right, since if their practice is
ineffective they have to live daily with the resulting lack of student engagement
and achievement.
I would add a note of caution, however. It is essential to stress that teachers
can and do (in varying degrees) conduct inquiry in the normal course of teaching,
without necessarily adopting special methods such as “action research,” “self-study
research,” etc. (valuable though these approaches are, where feasible). Of the 40
participants in our ongoing 10-year longitudinal study of teachers (Beck & Kosnik,
2014), not one has conducted an individual “action research” or “inquiry” project
of the kind advocated and typically required during their pre-service programs
(including our own). If we insist that teacher research must use formal protocols that
go beyond ordinary teaching, most teachers will not do it, will not see themselves
as researchers or inquirers, and will experience a loss of self-respect as a result.
More attention needs to be given to articulating and disseminating a narrative of

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teacher research as something that in large measure is feasible and already being
done as part of everyday competent practice, in line with the views of Dewey (1916),
Schon (1983), Bryk (2008), Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009), Loughran (2010), and
Zeichner and Liston (2014).
Given the extensive knowledge teachers generate on the job, I believe much
academic research should take the form of interviewing and observing teachers
and reporting on what they are discovering (as Clare Kosnik and I are doing in
our longitudinal study). Conducting research in this way gives academics ready
access to authentic classroom experiences and practices; lifts teachers’ morale by
affirming their expertise; extends teachers’ knowledge by informing them about
the conclusions their fellow teachers are coming to; and contributes to the general
sharing of educational knowledge among academics and practitioners.
Teacher education programs, then, should be research-based in that teacher
educators’ vision should draw on extensive research conducted by both academics
and practitioners (including on the use of ICT). In closing this section I wish to note
two other ways in which teacher education should be research-based. First, student
teachers should be introduced to relevant research literature as part of their pre-
service education; and second, student teachers should be prepared to be researchers
as part of their normal practice in the profession. These other components of
research-based teacher education are among those emphasized by Sahlberg (2015);
and by the BERA/RSA Report (2014), for example in relation to “clinical practice”
which includes “teachers’ experiential learning” as an integral component (p. 41).
Similarly, in the Norwegian context, Munthe, Malmo, and Rogne (2011) state:
[T]eacher education programmes must be research based… Teacher educators
must be researchers or must be in close contact with researchers who conduct
relevant research for teacher education; [and] research must be a natural part
of students’ learning: they should learn by reading and discussing research,
relating their teaching to research, and taking part in research. (p. 445)

A CAMPUS PROGRAM THAT EMBODIES OUR VISION

In order to prepare teachers effectively, it is not enough to have a sound vision of

teaching and teacher education: we must also model it in our program (as emphasized
by those chapters in our volume focused on the use of ICT in teacher education).
Unfortunately, we sometimes fail to do this. With long and venerable traditions
of transmission education we fall easily into, for example, giving a long lecture
on the value of dialogue or a stern talk on the importance of respect. According
to Aubusson and Schuck (2013), in the eight countries whose teacher education
programs they studied, there was often “a gap between the rhetoric and reality”
(p. 325); for example, teacher educators advocated fostering personal, social, and
learning skills but focused mainly on transmission of academic content. Sykes,
Bird, and Kennedy (2010) observe: “Teacher education…fits into cultural scripts,

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with much of it occurring in classrooms where instructors dominate discussion, use

PowerPoint, assign readings in texts, and give tests” (p. 467).
Modeling the vision we advocate is necessary for two main reasons: so student
teachers come to understand the vision through first-hand experience; and so we
ourselves refine it and understand it more fully as we attempt to implement it.
Personally, I am constantly surprised at how much my teaching vision develops as a
result of my own university teaching. Assuming the soundness of the constructivist,
inclusive vision discussed earlier, I will now outline several ways in which it can be
embodied in a pre-service program.
a. A dialogical instructional approach. At present in teacher education we often use
a top-down, “coverage” approach rather than an interactive one: we deluge student
teachers with theories and teaching strategies. A teacher educator in an interview
once said to us: “I try to cover all the main approaches so when they go out
they have at least heard of them.” As in school teaching, a coverage approach in
teacher education leaves students with minimal understanding of what is covered
and little opportunity to critique it or build on their own ideas and experiences, as
constructivism requires.
What we need to do instead is join with student teachers in constructing a
teaching vision, both in general and in relation to specific subject areas: we
should together build and refine a teaching approach (as all the contributors to this
volume advocated). Theories and strategies from the literature should certainly be
addressed in our classes, but usually incidentally through “mini-lessons” and for
purposes of exploring aspects of a teaching vision, rather than as an end in itself.
Of course, individual student teachers will diverge in certain ways from us and
each other in the teaching approach they finally adopt; but it will be considerably
enhanced by exposure to the literature and the various ideas discussed in class.
b. Extensive opportunity for students to talk. In order to embody constructivism
in the program, students must have more “air-time” in class than is common at
present, thus enabling everyone to learn from each other and construct their ideas
as they talk about them. (Again this can be facilitated by ICT, as has been noted
by many authors in this volume.) Giving all students a chance to talk takes up time
and hence reduces the opportunity for transmission by the instructor; but students
learn much more if they are genuinely involved in the conversation. I would add
that small-group work where students complete a prescribed task does not usually
count as student air-time, as they are answering someone else’s question rather
than their own: in fact, it may be just another form of transmission teaching.
One challenge in promoting student talk is that a few students tend to dominate,
leaving the majority without a voice and often quite bored. However, I have
found ways around this. For example, after an initial mini-lesson and whole-
class discussion on a topic, we go around the group one-by-one with each student
saying what they think. Usually there is not time to go around the whole group,
so with the next topic we go around in the opposite direction. Similarly, after

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small-group discussion, instead of reporting directly from the groups (with the
same people tending to report week after week), we again go around the room
with each person speaking to the topic and only reporting something from their
group if they wish to. A further strategy that works well is to have 3 or 4 students
each week present briefly to the whole class on their emerging project or essay
topic, with 3 students to their left or right responding to the presentation (with
a limit of 10 to 15 minutes in total for each presentation and set of responses).
Finally, even within whole-class discussion it is possible to have a substantial
number of students contributing if we keep a speakers list as students raise their
hand and encourage students to speak only once on a given topic or sub-topic.
Of course, in ensuring that everyone talks I am fortunate in having only about 70
students in my pre-service class, and I am able to divide them into two groups and
meet with each group separately throughout the year (except for social events).
But even with larger classes I have found that strategies similar to those outlined
above can be implemented.
c. A genuinely social program. If all students speak regularly in class they get to
know each other and become more of a community. This is important in its own
right (as Kosnik and Dharamshi emphasized in their chapter) and this in turn
facilitates frank and deep sharing and so enhances learning. Peterson (1992)
comments: “When community exists, learning is strengthened – everyone is
smarter, more ambitious, and productive” (p. 2). According to Dewey (1938),
“education is essentially a social process. This quality is realized in the degree in
which individuals form a community group” (p. 58).
This natural community building through intellectual sharing should be
reinforced by social activities such as: self-introductions at the first class;
personal news and announcements at the beginning of each class; various name-
games to get to know each other’s names (e.g., going around the group and saying
the name of the person beside you); and use of social media and a variety of
social events outside the classroom. Sometimes the term “learning community”
is used in education contexts and this is an important concept. However, I believe
a class should not be just a learning community but should have a major social
component: I prefer to speak simply of class community. Moreover, in my
experience the instructor has to participate in most class social events and indeed
take the initiative in organizing them, otherwise they rarely occur. Again, this is
in line with Dewey’s (1938) observation that “[i]t is absurd to exclude the teacher
from membership in the group” (p. 58).
d. An inclusive program. Inclusion should be modeled and embodied in the program
in a full sense. This is one reason why it is essential for everyone to talk in class:
in this way, students’ personal characteristics and talents are revealed, stereotypes
are dispelled, and prejudices are reduced. In addition, there should be deep and
frank discussion of personal views and experiences in relation to inclusion and
exclusion; and the instructor should lead the way by showing interest in every
student.

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One type of exclusion that is often overlooked is classifying students from

academically strong to weak; and this is often connected with literacy taching and
testing. Bainbridge and Malicky (2004) argue that “by far the greatest concern
with standardized tests…at all levels [is] the potentially negative impact that test
results can have on individual children by marginalizing them and telling them
that they are not good enough” (p. 122). While standardized tests are not common
yet in teacher education programs, the general concept that some people are
“brighter” than others and that a narrow band of cognitive knowledge and skill
should be the main focus of education tends to survive the teacher preparation
process; and this in turn reinforces prejudice against students due to poverty, race,
and ethnicity. Once again, this needs to be combatted in teacher education through
community building, frank discussion, and the instructor’s own modeling when
interacting with students.
e. Individualized instruction. Constructivist teaching requires a considerable degree
of individualization, so that students can construct their ideas in line with their
distinctive needs, experiences, and life contexts (Piaget, 1932; Vadeboncoeur,
1997). Again, digital technology can help greatly with this, if properly used.
Although people speak of co-construction (Wells, 1994) and social constructivism
(Richardson, 1997), rightly acknowledging how much we learn from others, in
the end individuals choose their own ideas to a substantial extent. Creating a
truly inclusive program, as discussed above, aids individualization since program
participants can then think in terms of individual characteristics rather than
stereotypes. Also, giving all students more air-time promotes individualization
as everyone can talk about their distinctive concerns and perspectives. This
should be carried further in projects and assignments by allowing students to
pursue issues that have special meaning and relevance for them. Paradoxically,
individualization does not undermine community since students get to know each
other better and feel safer and more at home. Nor does it undermine whole-class
learning or everyone learning many of the same things, since everyone learns as
individuals express their distinctive perspectives and insights.
f. Theory-practice connection. As discussed earlier, our vision of teaching and
teacher education should range from fundamental theory to concrete practice,
and this should be reflected in the teacher education program, with constant
exploration of the practical implications of general concepts and principles.
Excessive emphasis on technical terms and theories undermines constructivism
since it leaves student teachers unable to critique and modify what they are
learning. Multliteracies should abound. While key technical terms and theories
should be introduced as appropriate, their practical meaning should be explored
thoroughly when they are first mentioned and throughout the program.
g. A strong subject emphasis. One aspect of making teacher education practical is
linking it closely to subject teaching (as we have attempted to do in this volume).
Pre-service programs often focus largely on general social, political, and
educational issues and “general methods,” to the neglect of subject knowledge

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and pedagogy. While it is crucial for student teachers to understand general

matters, in most schools teachers are expected to teach subjects virtually all
day. Accordingly, in teacher preparation most of the general material should be
explored in relation to particular subjects. Only in this way will student teachers
understand how to apply the general ideas and principles. Of course, just focusing
on subject learning – as an end in itself – is equally inappropriate. Student teachers
need to learn to do both: teach subject content and “big ideas” at the same time.
And according to many researchers this is possible, and indeed a more effective
way to teach subject content (e.g., Gill & Thomson, 2012; Grant & Gradwell,
2010; VanSledright, 2011).

A PRACTICUM COMPONENT THAT CONNECTS THE CAMPUS

AND THE SCHOOLS

I have written before (with Clare Kosnik) about the characteristics of a good pre-
service practicum (Beck & Kosnik, 2002a, 2002b, 2006) and will summarize our
main points here, also commenting on the recent push to increase the time student
teachers spend in schools. Beginning with the latter issue, extending the practicum
component will not by itself improve a teacher education program; in fact, it may
reinforce traditional pedagogy by plunging student teachers into “real school” without
adequate opportunity to critique it. The campus program – with its attention to goals,
theory, and critique – remains crucial for sound teacher preparation (see Twiselton’s
chapter in this book). However, in many jurisdictions the connection between the
campus program and the schools needs to be strengthened, at least in the way it
is implemented. The 2012 OECD report on teacher education in OECD countries
argues for greater “complementarity between field experience and academic studies”
(p. 46). In the UK, the BERA/RSA Report (2014) proposes strengthening the link
through use of “clinical practice” and research-informed teaching models. In the
U.S., Zeichner (2010) speaks of the widespread problem of “the disconnect between
the campus and school-based components of programs” (p. 89).
Apart from the BERA/RSA (2014) clinical practice approach, measures effective
in overcoming the disconnect include the following. (a) On campus, much time
should be spent preparing for each practicum session and, even more importantly,
debriefing afterwards so student teachers can share and discuss what they
learned (both positive and negative) about teaching. (b) School-based mentors or
“cooperating teachers” need to be carefully selected and, where they prove unsuitable,
de-selected. (c) Student teachers should be clustered in a relatively small number
of schools, thus reducing travel time for supervisors, enabling student teachers to
support each other, and allowing supervisors to get to know each school and its
teachers and select and de-select mentor teachers in an informed and collaborative
way. (d) Practice teaching should either be continuous (e.g., every morning or two
or three days a week) throughout the program or occur in several shorter periods
(rather than just one block), in order to facilitate complementarity between the

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campus program and the practicum. (e) In addition to debriefing immediately after
a practicum session, there should be constant discussion in campus courses of the
implications of the student teachers’ practicum experiences.
While working to integrate the campus program and the practicum, however, it
is important to acknowledge that many tenure-stream university faculty may not
be able to spend much more time in the schools than they currently do, given their
other university obligations. Hagger and McIntyre (2006) in England and Conroy,
Hulme, and Menter (2013) in Scotland have shown how demanding involvement
with schools can be (while still advocating it); and Goodlad (1994) in the U.S. argues
that a full professional development school (PDS) model is usually not feasible.
Additional ways must be found to strengthen the university-school relationship as
discussed in chapters in this book and elsewhere (Beck & Kosnik, 2006).

AN APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY EMPHASIS

As we have argued at length in this volume, digital technology should figure

prominently in teacher education, while avoiding major pitfalls such as promoting
transmission education and reinforcing social inequalities (Selwyn, 2013).
Appropriate emphasis on technology is in keeping with constructivist pedagogy
in at least two ways. It acknowledges the diversity of literacies in society and
among student teachers; and it makes it easier for student teachers to participate in
constructing a vision of teaching. Aubusson & Schuck (2013) report: “There was
universal agreement [across the 8 countries studied] that teacher education…would
have to…at least match, if not lead, technological innovation in school settings”
(p. 330). And the 2012 OECD report on teacher education observes: “Digital media
have the potential to transform learning environments and empower learners to
become active in shaping their own education” (p. 43).
The new communication tools and increased access to ideas and information
place student teachers in a strong position to engage in knowledge construction.
Once again, teacher educators must not only advocate the use of technology in
teaching but model how to do so within the program. In projects and presentations,
students should be supported in taking advantage of digital search and discussion
opportunities. In this way they can, among other things, begin to participate in the
type of knowledge sharing framework discussed earlier. In their practicum sessions,
similarly, they should be encouraged to use digital technology appropriately, with
many of the strategies already modeled in the campus classes.

AN INCREMENTAL APPROACH TO IMPROVEMENT

Finally, in line with a constructivist vision of learning we need to proceed gradually in

improving teacher education, acknowledging and building on past accomplishments
(as advocated by Kosnik and Dharamshi in Chapter 12). I believe the current extreme
criticisms of teacher education arise largely from a simplistic, transmission view of

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schooling among politicians and the general public that is neither research-based nor
in the best interests of society or students. We teacher educators should maintain our
current commitment to a broad, constructivist pedagogy, while taking care to refine
it (through ICT, and other means) and provide better justifications for it.
At a general level, social and political philosopher Joseph Heath argues for
incremental reform. In his book Enlightenment 2.0 (2014), he offers a “second
take” on the original Enlightenment approach to social reform, which in his view
exaggerated the capacity of scholars to guide radical change. He makes the case
for “cumulative” improvement as follows: “If everyone insists on reinventing
everything, we’ll never get anywhere, simply because no one is smart enough to
understand all the variables and grasp all of the reasons that things are done exactly
the way they are” (p. 88). Heath asks rhetorically: “[O]nce we acknowledge this, is
the only alternative to fall back into an uncritical acceptance of tradition?” (p. 83).
His position is that, on the contrary, an incremental approach provides the basis for
“a more successful form of progressive politics” (p. 83).
Turning specifically to teacher education, Sykes, Bird, and Kennedy (2010)
also recommend an incremental approach to reform. What is needed, in their view,
is a combination of “(a) more realistic aspirations, (b) a process of continuous
improvement, and (c) a generous regard for [current] practice” (473). Elsewhere,
Kennedy (2010) rejects “bold” approaches to reform that are “unrealistic, out of
range, over the top [and] fail because they don’t take real circumstances into account”
(p. 17). Instead, she says we should engage in “studying our practices closely and
deliberately, deepening our understanding of the circumstances in which we work,
and finding small and sustainable ways to improve” (p. 19). Such an approach is
far from a weak compromise; rather it is a more effective way to achieve strongly
radical enhancements.
To conclude rather than seeing teaching and teacher education as “broken” and
needing to be “fixed,” we should acknowledge the deep insights of teachers and
teacher educators and move forward from there. At the school level, teachers should
be given more opportunities to share their insights and fine-tune them. At the teacher
education level, we teacher educators should practice what we preach, both to
improve our programs and to develop our ideas. And at a system level, we must work
to build a knowledge-sharing framework (Bryk, 2008; Lowrie, 2014) that facilitates
knowledge building and implementation among academics and practitioners using
digital technology and other means. This will place us in a stronger position to
enhance teacher education and gain support for it at policy, administrative, and
public levels.

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 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Clive Beck is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

at OISE/University of Toronto, teaching both pre-service and graduate courses. He is
currently conducting a SSHRC longitudinal study of 40 teachers of whom 20 began
teaching in 2004 and 20 in 2007. His books include Better Schools (1990), Learning
Values in Adulthood (1993), Innovations in Teacher Education (2006), Priorities
in Teacher Education (2009), and Growing as a Teacher (2014), the last three with
Clare Kosnik. He has served as Chair of Graduate Studies at OISE and President of
the American Philosophy of Education Society.

Natalie Bellis is an English teacher and curriculum leader at a secondary school in

regional Victoria, Australia. During 2011, she was seconded to Monash University
for the Teaching Teachers for the Future project. Recent publications include
chapters in Creating an Australian Curriculum for English (2011) and Language
and Creativity in Contemporary English Classrooms (2014).

Scott Bulfin is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University.

His research examines critical approaches to literacy and digital media, English
curriculum, and professional identity and writing. His most recent book is Critical
Perspectives on Technology and Education (Palgrave, 2015).

Shawn Michael Bullock is an assistant professor of science education at Simon

Fraser University and a certified professional physicist. His research is primarily
concerned with the role of reflective practice in learning to teach, learning to teach
science and technology, and science and technology teacher education. Dr. Bullock
has recently launched a research program devoted to exploring “maker pedagogy”.

Crystal Chen is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers

College, Columbia University, New York. Crystal began her career as a high school
English teacher. Her research examines teacher education in U.S. contexts; the
intersections of literacy and immigrant girls; and the work of community-based
organizations in urban communities.

Pooja Dharamshi is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Curriculum,

Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. Her doctoral
research aims at understanding the backgrounds, experiences, and pedagogies of
literacy teacher educators with a critical stance. Her previous experiences as a
classroom teacher in highly marginalized communities of New York City sparked
her research interests in the area of critical literacy. She has presented at conferences

207
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

for the American Educational Research Association and the Canadian Society for
the Study of Education. She holds a Master’s degree in Education from the City
University of New York. E-mail: poojadharamshi@gmail.com

Sue Dymoke is Reader in Education, National Teaching Fellow, and course leader
for the Secondary PGCE English programme at the University of Leicester, UK.
Publications include: Making Poetry Happen (Bloomsbury) edited with Myra Barrs,
Andrew Lambirth and Anthony Wilson; Teaching English Texts 11–18 (Continuum);
Drafting and Assessing Poetry (Paul Chapman Publishing).

Judit García-Martín is a Ph.D. candidate/student and Personal Researcher in

Training [Subprogram FPI-MICINN (grant/contract, BES-2011-045996, during
2011–2015) at University of Leon, Spain]. Her research interests include the use of
Web 2.0 technologies and social media as well as the effects these digital tools have
on education and different psychological variables. E-mail: jgarm@unileon.es

Jesús-Nicasio García-Sánchez is Professor of Developmental and Educational

Psychology at the University of Leon and Head of the Department. He has published
over 700 articles and books to international acclaim. He is Director of the Excellence
in Research Group, GREX259 JCyL. He has supervised more than 40 research
students and researchers, as well as directing over 40 funded research projects. He
has taught for more than 30 years at several different universities (UPV, UVA, ULE).
He has collaborated with a large number of universities, quality assurance agencies,
and leading scientific journals worldwide. He is a member and Spanish representative
of the EU-funded European research network, COST, European Research Network
Learning to Write Effectively (ERN-LWE). E-mail: jn.garcia@unileon.es

A. Lin Goodwin is the Evenden Professor of Education, and Vice Dean at Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York. She studies teacher and teacher educator
identities and development; multicultural understandings and curriculum enactments;
Asian/Asian American teachers and students in U.S. schools; and international
comparisons of teacher education practice and policy.

Clare Kosnik is Professor at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education/University

of Toronto and Director of the Jackman Institute of Child Study. She is currently
conducting a study of 28 literacy teacher educators in four countries (Canada,
US, England, and Australia). Her books include: Growing as a Teacher: Goals and
Pathways of Ongoing Teacher Learning; Innovations in Teacher Education; Priorities
in Teacher Education; and Teaching in a Nutshell (co-authored with Clive Beck). She
recently co-edited the text Literacy Teacher Educators: Preparing Student Teachers
for a Changing World, Sense Publishers. E-mail: ckosnik@oise.utoronto.ca

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 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Bethan Marshall is a senior lecturer in education at King’s College London and

is involved in teacher education. She specialises in issues relating to the teaching
of English and assessment on which she has written extensively including her
book English Teachers: An Unofficial Guide and Testing English: Formative and
Summative Practice in English.

Lydia Menna is a PhD candidate in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and

Learning at the OISE/UT. Her doctoral research examines how middle school student
teachers construct conceptions of literacy, engage with personal literacy practices,
and enact literacy pedagogy throughout their teacher education studies. Her work
as a literacy teacher educator with elementary and middle school student teachers
inspired her to pursue this research.

Guy Merchant is Professor of Literacy in Education at the Sheffield Institute of

Education at Sheffield Hallam University, where he specializes in research into
digital literacies in formal and informal educational settings. Guy is widely published
in international journals. With Julia Davies he coauthored the influential book Web
2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation (2009). He was lead editor of
Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People (2013) and
a contributing editor in New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy
(2014). E-mail: g.h.merchant@shu.ac.uk

Jean Murray (PhD) works at the Cass School at the University of East London. Her
research focuses on the sociological analysis of teacher education, with particular
interests in teacher educators’ identities and professional learning. She has produced
many publications and participated in numerous national and international research
projects.

Graham Parr is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash

University. His research interests include: creativity in English education,
professional learning, and teacher education. Recent publications include Inquiry-
Based Professional Learning: Speaking Back to Standards-Based reforms (2010),
and Language and Creativity in Contemporary English Classrooms (2014).

Samantha Twiselton is the Director of Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield

Hallam University. Before that she was Executive Dean of Education at the
University of Cumbria, having previously taught in schools. With experience in
teacher education, curriculum development, and language and literacy Sam has been
heavily involved in influencing Government policy on teacher education and was
recently a member of the advisory panel for the Department for Education Carter
Review of ITT in England.

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Rajeev Virmani is an Assistant Professor of mathematics education at the

University of Saint Joseph. He is committed to supporting elementary and secondary
novice teachers as they learn core-teaching practices to meet the complex demands
of teaching mathematics. Rajeev’s research focuses on instructional activities and
rehearsals to prepare novice teachers, facilitation practices of teacher leaders, and
preparing teachers to use technology in classrooms. He relies on his breadth of
teaching experience in middle and high school classrooms to inform his research
and teaching. Rajeev earned his doctorate from the University of San Francisco.

Simone White is the Chair of Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education at

Monash University and currently the President of the Australian Teacher Education
Association. Simone’s publications, research, and teaching are focused on the key
question of how best to prepare teachers and leaders for diverse communities. Her
current research areas focus on teacher education policy and research, professional
experience, and building and maintaining university-school/community partnerships.
Through this work, she aims to connect research, policy, and practice in ways that
bring school and university teacher educators together and break down traditional
borders between academics, policy makers, communities, and practitioners.

Peter Williamson is Associate Professor, Teaching, at Stanford University where

he serves as the Faculty Director of the Stanford Teacher Education Program for
Secondary Teachers. He is also a co-founder of the San Francisco Teacher Residency
Program. Peter studies urban education, English education, curriculum, and literacy.
He earned his doctorate at Stanford, where he later became Director of Stanford’s
Teachers for a New Era project. Himself a STEP graduate, Peter began his career as a
special education teacher working with students who were identified with emotional
and behavioral challenges. He then taught middle and high school English and
journalism in the Bay Area’s urban schools.

John Yandell taught in London secondary schools for twenty years before moving
to the Institute of Education, University College London, where he has worked
since 2003. He is the editor of the journal, Changing English, and the author of The
Social Construction of Meaning: reading literature in urban English classrooms
(Routledge, 2013).

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 INDEX

21st century communication, xv, 46, 85 English/literacy teacher education, xvii,

21st century teaching, xvi, 43–52, 77, 17, 23, 27, 28, 59–74, 119–131,
78, 137, 149, 188 135–146, 166, 167, 181–191, 193

A F
Adaptation, 106–109, 111–113 Film of the book, 106–108

B G
Balancing traditional pedagogy and
digital teaching, 73
Border crossing, 119, 140
C
Communication, xv, 13, 17–20, 26, 36,
40, 43, 46, 47, 49–51, 60, 85–87,
106, 124, 129, 130, 137, 141,
163–165, 167–169, 191, 202
Curriculum, xvi, 4, 5, 7, 27, 34–38, 41,
43–45, 51, 65, 73, 78, 81, 82, 84,
88, 96, 101, 105, 107, 108, 114, 121,
123, 127, 131, 137–141, 154, 183,
188, 190
D 31–41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 52, 59–74,
Digital divide, 48, 77, 186
Digital immigrant, 184, 185
Digital literacy, 27, 36, 40, 43–48, 51,
52, 77, 120, 127, 136
Digital native, 45, 114, 184, 191
Digital technologies, xv–xvii, 3–15,
21, 40, 43, 45, 48–52, 59–74, 77,
78, 121, 124, 137, 140–142, 144,
163–176, 181–185, 188, 191, 193,
200, 202, 203
E Maker pedagogy, 3, 10–15
Educational technology, 3–7, 9, 14,
80–84, 151, 182
Government mandates, 137
H
History of technology, 3, 4, 10, 13, 183
I
ICT standards-based reforms, 119–131,
186
Impact of policy, xvi, 31–41
Integration, 6, 19, 26, 65–69, 78, 80–82,
85, 87, 88, 95, 103, 145
L
Language arts, 24, 60, 81
Literacy, xv–xvii, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17–28,
77, 81, 105–114, 119–131, 135–146,
149, 159, 160, 163–176, 181–191,
193, 200
Literacy education, xv, xvi, 17, 19,
31–41, 126, 136, 137, 140–142, 144,
146
Literacy teacher education, xvii, 17, 23,
27, 28, 59–74, 119–131, 135–146,
166, 167, 181–191, 193
M
Multiliteracies, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 137,
141, 168, 169

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INDEX

Multi-modality, 61, 62, 105–114, 144, Subject knowledge development,

189 66, 99

N T
National curriculum, 34, 36, 37, 65, 105 Teacher education, xv–xvii, 3–15,
17–28, 31–41, 44, 49, 52, 59–73,
P 77, 78, 83, 87–89, 91–103, 119–131,
Partnership, xvii, 44, 94, 96, 98–103, 135–146, 149–161, 163, 165–168,
120, 126, 135–146, 159, 160 181–191, 193–203
Pedagogy, 3, 10–15, 17, 19–22, 24–26, Teacher education curriculum, 138,
28, 34, 40, 45, 65, 77–80, 82–84, 183
87–89, 92, 94, 95, 98, 122, 123, 125, Teacher education research, 6
131, 137, 145, 146, 150, 153, 157, Teacher educators, xv–xvii, 3, 10, 13,
160, 163, 164, 166–168, 175, 182, 65, 77–89, 98, 99, 121, 126, 127,
189–191, 194, 201–203 130, 131, 135–140, 142–145,
Performing and listening to poetry, 65 149–161, 163, 165, 166, 172,
Poetry pedagogy, 65 181–191, 194, 197, 198, 202, 203
Practice teaching, 21, 22, 110, 146, 170, Teacher educators’ professional
171, 201 learning, 135–146, 184, 185, 187
Teacher expertise with technology,
R 140
Reflection, 33, 40, 52, 59, 60, 63, Teacher formation, 33, 38, 187
69–73, 99, 146, 150, 164, 166, 167, Teaching 2.0, 163, 164, 170, 171, 175,
171, 194 176
Teaching knowledge(s), 123, 127, 130,
S 149–161
School-based educators, 145 Teaching with technology, 14, 27,
Social media, 45, 47, 48, 59, 69, 89, 59–74, 89
129, 131, 137, 167, 169, 171, 173, TPACK, 78, 79, 82, 83, 88, 121–127,
174, 176, 186, 188, 189, 199 129–131
Standards, xvii, 19, 33, 38, 39, 47, 70, TPACK critique, 121–126
81, 82, 84–86, 119–131, 186, 187,
190 U
Student teacher filters, 169 University partnerships, 135–140, 142
Student teachers, xv, xvii, 17, 20–28, 48,
51, 52, 59–73, 82, 92, 94–103, 107, W
137, 144, 154, 165, 167–176, 183, Web 2.0, 6, 163, 165, 176
188, 189–191, 197, 198, 200–202 Writing poetry, 59, 68, 69

212