In search of a ‘professional

compass’?

GTE January 2014Dr Clare Brooks

GTE January 2014Dr Clare Brooks

Since then ...• Age of super-complexity• Increased accountability• Policy/popular discourse of “crisis”• Changing expectations by “teacher professionalism”

• School locus of change: policy technologies

• Teacher resilience and commitment

• What does it mean to be a geography teacher in this day and age?

Teacher Identity research …

• But says little about role of subject (geographic) identity?

Interplay ...- Context (s) - Individual

Important …- Sense of “self”- Emotional- Sustaining

- Shaped through reflection- Revealed through stories

Being a teacher and Doing teachingSelf and Others : Identity and Culture

Negotiating the classroom – Helena

Helena’s lesson on the AndesLesson episode Brief description of activity Knowledge “source”

Lesson Recap Student Recall StudentsExtended recap Working in pairs, recall on knowledge

from previous lessonStudents

Atlas activity Pair work with atlas, describing location

Atlas

Contrasting Andes and Alps

Slide show (with music) of people living in the Andes.

Slide Show / students

Ask the Expert Textbook spread – developing questions and answers

Textbook

Note taking from newspaper article

Interrogation of a newspaper article on farming practices of the Incas

Newspaper article

Plenary Review of skills used during lesson Students

Perspectives on Knowledge

• Content determined by the (GCSE) specification• Locational knowledge– “important”; “key”; “geographical”

• Ask an expert– “just recall”; “no understanding”

• Textbooks and Articles– “because I’m not allowed to talk to them”

• Underpinned by her “subject story”:– Geography is about ways of understanding the world– Learning geography is about getting best results

Influences are

mediated through

contexts –

Cultures of

influence

Mediated through subject expertise

• Place• Social

Justice• Balance• Seeing

world differently

• May not seem geographical at first

• BUT full of meaning

• Articulates purpose

• Developed early in their geographical career (when it became meaningful to them)

• Sustained their desire to continue with geography

• Sustained their desire to teach (or pass on geography)

• Continues to sustain them

These identities are shaped by subject/discipline (after Stengel)

• the relative focus on academic, pedagogical, utilitarian and existential concerns;

• the extent to which the moral is allowed and encouraged;

• the underlying view of knowledge.

Showing direction

• Macro level – “what should the GNC include?”• Meso level – “school assessment policy?”• Micro level – “how to explain x?”

• Moral dimension• Meaningful and Purposeful• Grounded in their geographical expertise

A Professional Compass

• Significance?–Political–Developmental–Personal–Professional