Exploring the Contradictions in Learning to Teach: The Potential of Developmental Work Research  

Oleh:

Ellis, Viv

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education (Full Text) vol. 15 no. 1 (2008), page 53-63.
Fulltext: D305D883d01.pdf (195.53KB)

Isi artikel

This article discusses aspects of a programme intervention (the DETAIL project) in the learning processes of beginning English teachers, teacher mentors and a university-based teacher educator. The research reported here has taken place in the context of the Oxford Internship Scheme (OIS) (Benton 1990; McIntyre 1997), a highly successful pre-service teacher education programme that (along with a similar scheme at Sussex University) is often seen as influential within the ‘national experiment’ of school-based teacher education in England (Furlong et al. 2000). The intervention is being researched within the framework of Developmental Work Research (DWR) (Engestro¨m 1991, 2007), particularly a version elaborated by Edwards and Fox (2005) sometimes known as ‘DWR Lite’. DWR is a form of research that aims to enable participants to move from (in Vygotskyan terms [Vygotsky 1986]) ‘everyday’ to ‘scientific’ understandings of what they are trying to do through identifying, working on and expanding the object of activity with the tools offered by third generation Activity Theory (Engestro¨m, Miettinen, and Punamaki 1999). Third generation Activity Theory is perhaps most often associated with a triangular representation of the activity system.1 Conceptually, however, it is Engestro¨m’s elaboration of the ‘bottom line’ of the triangle – rules, community and division of labour – and the complex interrelationships with subject, tools and object that has the potential to allow participants in DWR to identify and work on contradictions within the activity systems in which they are participating. My focus in this article is on the concepts of teacher identity and teacher agency that emerged very early on in the research as the beginning English teachers (known as ‘interns’ in the OIS), teacher mentors and the university-based teacher educator (myself) started to negotiate the new terrain of the intervention. Specifically, I examine the knowledge about identity and agency produced by teacher mentors as they engage in DWR-framed research and consider its implications for pre-service teacher education.

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