Dilemmas, Tensions And Complexity: How College Based Teacher Educators Use Modelling In Their Practice With Their Student Teachers

Modelling is a teaching method employed by teacher educators to demonstrate, explain, debate and theorise their practice and so support the learning of their student teachers. Research undertaken in the Netherlands and Australia has highlighted that although using modelling is judged to be a highly effective strategy and considered one of the roles and professional competencies of a teacher educator (Korthagen et al. 2005; Loughran and Berry, 2005), Lunenberg et al. (2007) concluded that there is little evidence to suggest that teacher educators fully recognise or utilise it as a teaching method. There are a number of reasons why this seems to occur: one of the reasons given is that the trait is “difficult to develop alone” (Loughran and Berry, 2005, p.194); another is the impact a teacher educator’s professional identity has on their pedagogical decision making, including feelings of vulnerability when teaching colleagues (Noel, 2006, Lunenberg et al. 2007, Boyd, 2011). The research undertaken on modelling in European settings to date, much of which has been done in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, has focused on university based teacher educators such as White’s (2011) self-study. Therefore, this paper focuses on how this English university-based teacher educator, as part of his Doctor of Education (EdD) study, is using an action research approach to work collaboratively with a team of four teacher educators from an English general further education (FE) college who teach in-service student teachers working in post-compulsory education and training, and how together they are exploring the participants’ use of modelling in their practice and how they might extend and further develop its employment in their teaching. In doing so, I am seeking to answer three questions: firstly, how do teacher educators in FE colleges use modelling in their practice; secondly, what impact does the professional identity of FE based teacher educators have on their teaching behaviours and use of modelling; thirdly, what type of professional development do teacher educators based in FE need to support their use of modelling.
Key words: Modelling, Action Research, Professional Identity, Professional Knowledge, Continuing Professional Development