Many contemporary education systems encourage the notion of the teacher as practitioner-researcher as part of their professional learning agenda. Simultaneously, it is acknowledged that practitioner research might be remodelled in local contexts when used to support educational reform. This paper describes respondents' theories of how a particular cultural phenomenon, 'kiasuism', profoundly shapes the type of work teachers do as researchers in Singapore schools. 'Kiasu' can be defined as the notion of 'being afraid to lose out' and 'winning at all costs'. In highlighting such insights, this study aims to foster greater cultural and contextual sensitivity by providing a more nuanced understanding of the Singapore context. Twenty participants, including academics, policy-makers and teachers, were involved in this investigation.
There is a strong critique of the reductionist, technical and instrumentalist impacts of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers from critical policy researchers in education. At the same time, advocates of the standards espouse their potential as providing a common language of teaching. We argue that both views are based on logical rather than empirical warrants. Therefore, this study sought to gather empirical data via a survey of 229 teacher education students followed by focus groups in an endeavour to record their perceptions on the use of the standards as assessment criteria for professional experience. The findings are that a majority of the students were advocates of the standards as a learning scaffold. This was especially true in contexts where their supervising teachers were not au fait with the standards. The implications of this study for teacher educators are that the formative assessment potential of the standards requires pedagogical consideration in professional experience alongside their more commonly understood role as summative assessment criteria.
Dialectics of development: Teacher identity formation in the interplay of ideal ego and ego ideal AbstractThis paper results from research examining pre-service teacher development in relation to experiences of mentoring during the Professional Experience component of their program. The paper focuses on the interplay between pre-service teachers' personal aspirations for their own practice and identity and their perceptions of more socialized and formalized, institutional requirements. The paper highlights the developmental potential of dialectical interactions between these 'inside out' and 'outside in' perspectives on pre-service teachers' practice and identity, drawing on psychoanalytic theory in order to gain insights into this process by viewing the pre-service teachers wishes and aspirations for their practice and identities as manifestations of the Lacanian ('inside out') ideal ego; while the school culture and the mentor teachers' (actual and anticipated) comments and judgments are read as representations of the ('outside in') ego ideal. The paper concludes with considerations of how universities and schools, preservice teachers and mentors, might be encouraged to recognize the need for a sustained and open-ended dialectic between the ego ideal and the ideal ego in ways that might enrich the professional identities available to pre-service teachers.
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