A Fragmented Training Environment: Discourse Models in the Talk of Physics Teacher Educators
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A Fragmented Training Environment: Discourse Models in the Talk of Physics Teacher Educators Johanna Larsson 1,2
& John Airey
1,3
& Anna T. Danielsson
2,4
& Eva Lundqvist
4
# The Author(s) 2018
Abstract This article reports the results of an empirical study exploring the discourses of physics teacher educators. We ask how the expressed understandings of a physics teacher education programme in the talk of teacher educators potentially support the identity construction of new teachers. Nine teacher educators from different sections of a physics teacher programme in Sweden were interviewed. The concept of discourse models was used to operationalise how the discourses of the teacher education programme potentially enable the performance of different physics teacher identities. The analysis resulted in the construction of four discourse models that could be seen to be both enabling and limiting the kinds of identity performances trainee physics teachers can enact. Knowledge of the models thus potentially empowers trainee physics teachers to understand the different goals of their educational programme and from there make informed choices about their own particular approach to becoming a professional physics teacher. We also suggest that for teacher educators, knowledge of the discourse models could facilitate making conscious, informed decisions about their own teaching practice. Keywords Teacher education . Physics . Discourse . Identity
Introduction This study focuses on interviews with educators of trainee physics teachers. Our aim is to expand our understanding of the contexts within which trainee professional identity is
* Johanna Larsson [email protected]
1
Physics Education Research, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
2
Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Box 527, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
3
Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
4
Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2136, SE-750 02 Uppsala, Sweden
Research in Science Education
performed. To do this, we interviewed teacher educators from different sections of a physics teacher training programme in Sweden, asking how they see the teaching and learning that is carried out there as contributing to the creation of professional physics teachers. We were interested in the implicit ways of understanding the programme as relevant to trainee physics teachers that can be identified in the talk of these teacher educators. The effect of teacher education on the practice of teachers is unclear (Fishman and Davis 2005). Many trainees’ views about science teaching appear to be unchanged by their education, with new teachers instead relying heavily on the apprenticeship of observation (Lortie 1977) where a superficial understanding of what teaching entails, formed during years of general schooling continues to dominate their understanding of how a teacher should act. In fact, it has been shown that traine
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