Changes in Approach to Teacher Education

Three Paradigms and Challenges

Abstract

This paper traces the paradigm shift in teacher education and its discourse over the past two decades, and identifies the changes in teacher education research necessary to respond to the latest paradigm shift. Through analysing the rhetoric used to demand and／or promote ways to ensure that teachers gain necessary knowledge and skills to meet expectations and changing needs in their practice, this study identified the paradigm shifts in teacher education: these shifts move from In-Service Teacher Education, Continuous Professional Development, and to Continuous Professional Learning. The shifts in paradigm can be characterised by changes in (1) the perception of teachers as an occupational body, changing to an autonomous practitioner; (2) the recognition of and moving away from uncritical objectification of teachers as objects to be monitored for quality; and (3) the approach to quality assurance from external monitoring, to more of an organisational practice with collaborative and ongoing reflections. This paper then concludes with the important remark that teacher education research needs active engagement in adding another layer of reflection on its potential objectification, of teachers as “objects to be studied,” both in their practice and discourse. Sensitivities to the subject-object relation are necessary in order to bring about a new culture intended to deconstruct the unexamined relationship that research community has with teachers and practitioners. This new culture would bring a whole new approach to invite practitioners as participating actors in knowledge creation in the field of teacher education. The key to the success and failure of teacher policy lies in the hands of teachers. However, teachers have long been objectified as instruments to implement pedagogy, much like the education research had long objectified learners as the object to be taught. It is thus necessary to reflect upon the rhetoric that surrounds the questions of teacher education research, in order to make teachers into participants in their own professional growth and in the system of quality assurance.