Teacher learning: development in and with social context - Lynne Slonimsky and Karin Brodie

Internationally, research has shown that it is extremely difficult for teachers to change their practices to become more learner-centred. In this paper we work with a multi-level analytic framework to analyse the changing practices of a South African teacher of English who attempted to become more learner-centred in his teaching after attending an in-service teacher education programme. The case traces changes in the teachers' practices over a period of three years. A focus on the interplay between official curriculum discourses, prior teacher education, principles and practices privileged in the in-service programme, the teacher's established practices and his classroom context enables a rich illustration and deeper explanation of some of the most pervasive patterns of change reported in the literature. We propose that the tendency for teachers first to work with phenomenal forms of privileged practices before making substantive changes and the gap between espoused and enacted practices are inherent to the processes involved in learning new practices, social relations and conceptions of knowledge, learning and teaching.
From: SARE with EWP, Vol. 12 no. 1 (2006), pp. 45-62