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.
This study explores the culture of physics departments in Sweden in relation to physics teacher education. The commitment of physics departments to teacher education is crucial for the quality of physics teacher education and the way in which physics lecturers talk about teacher education is significant, since it can affect trainees' physics learning and the choice to become a physics teacher. We analyzed interviews with eleven physicists at four Swedish universities, looking for assumptions in relation to teacher training that are expressed in their talk. We found five tacit assumptions about physics teacher training, that together paint a picture of trainee physics teachers moving in the "wrong" direction, against the tide of physics. These are the Physics Expert Assumption: the purpose of all undergraduate physics teaching is to create physics experts. The Content Assumption: the appropriate physics content for future school physics teachers is the same as that for future physicists. The Goal Assumption: the role of a school physics teacher is to create new physicists. The Student Assumption: students who become physics teachers do not have the ability to make it as successful physicists. The Teaching Assumption: If you know physics then it's not difficult to teach it. We suggest that these five assumptions, if perpetuated without reflection, risk working against high quality physics teacher education. For physics teacher educators, our results can be used as a lens to reflect on the local departmental culture and its effect on teacher education.
when learning undergraduate physics. We also suggest how our findings may be used to inform the practice of university physics lecturers who come in contact with trainee physics teachers, and comment on the structure and organization of physics teacher education as a whole.
The aim is to describe special education teacher students' learning in the field of tension between informal learning during day-today work and formal university education. From the theoretical framework of Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, we perceive the students as moving on a learning trajectory through a landscape of practice. The students visit some of the landscapes of practice and others they ignore. The students are rejected in some landscapes and in others they are welcomed. The students are experiences of identification as well as dis-identification. Quantitative data were generated from surveys with students at the beginning of their training, at the end of their studies, or after graduation. The results of the questionnaire indicate that the length of time the students spent at the university, affected their assessment of their learning during their training. To a small extent the students sought advice from their university teachers concerning teaching issues. The teachers played an important role in their formal learning, whilst their fellow-students and principals influenced the formal and informal learning. This generated a contextual learning highly important to the professional formation of the special education teachers. In the field of tension between formal and informal learning a community of practice appeared.
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