Societal trends such as increased accountability, teacher shortages, and flexibility in learning paths affect the work of teacher educators. This study explores the collective agency of Dutch geography teacher educators as they enact the subject pedagogy curriculum within this rapidly changing context. Whilst teacher agency has been widely studied, research on teacher educators—particularly from a collective perspective—remains scarce. Drawing on Priestley et al.'s ecological approach, this study aims to disentangle teacher educators' collective spaces of agency by means of cultural, structural, and material resources. Using focus group interviews with three teams of geography teacher educators, we identified three key challenges that define their collective spaces of agency: (1) accommodating students' developmental phases, (2) gaining insight into students' internship learning, and (3) the growing divide between subject-specific and general teacher education. Thematic analysis revealed that teams of educators experience a different sense of agency in each of these spaces, depending on their ability to draw on the available resources. Our findings show that teams of educators draw on strong subject teacher identities (cultural resources) and experience collective agency when enacting subject pedagogy at the course level (structural resources). Their sense of agency is weak at the institutional level, particularly in relation to curricular change. This study contributes to a more profound understanding of teacher educators' collective spaces of agency. Disentangling these spaces can help teams of teacher educators to identify the necessary resources to restore their sense of agency in difficult times.
MULTIFILE
Research-based teacher education can be understood in different ways: as a call to understand teacher education institutions as research institutions, as the ambition to educate student teachers to have an inquiring attitude, as the basing of teacher education curricula on the latest research, or as a combination of all three.In this chapter we reflect on a method of connecting research, curriculum development and practice in teacher education, presenting a case study of a conversational community of teacher educators and researchers. The aim of the conversational community was to understand the process of curriculum design in teacher education as an inspiring and practical combination of design research, self-study, collaborative action research and curriculum study by teacher educators. This process was supported by a conversational framework in which curriculum development was understood as an ongoing dialogue between vision, intentions, design and practice in the teacher education curriculum. Using the conversational framework in this single case study of a conversational community, we have tried to connect teacher education research, curriculum development and practice in a meaningful way.
DOCUMENT
Werkplekleren is een belangrijk onderdeel van beroepsopleidingen. Toch weten we weinig over hoe praktijkopleiders het leren van studenten op de werkplek ondersteunen. In dit promotieonderzoek wordt de begeleiding van studenten tijdens stages onderzocht.
Within TIND, Christian Roth studies the training of interactive narrative designers with the goal of developing teaching methods and learning tools for artists and designers to enable the creation of more effective artefacts. Interactive Narrative Design (IND) is a complex and challenging interdisciplinary field introducing new affordances in technique and user-experience. This requires practice-based research for further development of the educational format, demonstrating its potential while identifying and overcoming common learners’ challenges. This project aims to develop a framework for the design and evaluation of meaningful interactive narrative experiences that effectively stimulate a variety of cognitive and emotional responses such as reflection, insight, understanding, and potential behavior change. It provides tools, methods and activities to enable aspiring or practicing narrative designers through an interdisciplinary approach, including game design, immersive theatre, behavioral and cognitive psychology, and the learning sciences. HKU education means to prepare students for success in the creative industries and IND plays an important role for current and future jobs in education, arts and entertainment. IND has the potential to create an emotional impact and spark transformative change by offering agency, defined as the ability to influence narrative progression and outcomes in a meaningful way. This enables interactors to feel the weight of their own choices and their consequences, to explore different perspectives, and to more thoroughly understand complex multi-stakeholder issues, which could have significant impact on the success of emerging artistic, and learning applications. The research project is directly embedded in the curriculum of the HKU school Games & Interaction with annual educational offerings such as the Minor Interactive Narrative Design (MIND) and HKU wide broad seminars. Course evaluation and literature research will be used to create new and adjusted training for different HKU schools and the industry. Outcomes will be shared via an interactive website and events.
