Abstract
Research and development tasks have been proposed as a learning solution in teacher education, where dynamic subject-matter knowledge and professional practices, and increasingly complex teaching environments generate emerging challenges for teacher education institutions and students. While there is an awareness that research is a complex practice, students are, however, expected to handle research activities as a natural part of the curriculum. This empirical study examined how teacher education students worked on research and development tasks linked to their school internships. The findings show that research and development tasks, viewed from an institutional perspective, bring together knowledge, activities, and experiences that allow students to construct their own repertoire of knowledgeable and teaching practices. But they also generate challenges, related to time management, to finding a balance between the needs of the teaching practice and the expectations of the teacher education programme, or to integrating different types of knowledge. The study raises awareness of how these tasks can be used to expose students to the realities of the teaching practice but also of the need for guidance and support required when such tasks are a part of the curriculum.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A definition and extensive discussion on the notion of research-based education can be found in Afdal and Damşa, Chap. 8, this volume.
- 2.
For reasons of confidentiality, the male participant will be referred to as ‘she’/‘her’ throughout the remainder of the text.
- 3.
The CASS-Query platform (Contextual Activity Sampling System; Salo et al. 2014) is developed and hosted at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland.
- 4.
This aspect is further addressed in the following sub-section ‘The student perspective’.
- 5.
The CASS platform failed to collect the survey answers for the last 2 weeks before the assignment deadline. The information regarding the activities was instead collected in the final interview.
References
Aditomo, A., Goodyear, P., Bliuc, A.-M., & Ellis, R. (2013). Inquiry-based learning in higher education: Principal forms, educational objectives, and disciplinary variations. Studies in Higher Education, 38(9), 1239–1258. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.616584.
Ashwin, P., Abbas, A., & McLean, M. (2016). How does completing a dissertation transform undergraduate students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(4), 517–530.
Bakken, J., & Sollid, H. (2014). Forskende lærerstudenter. In A. B. Reinertsen, B. Groven, K. A. Knutas, & A. Holm (Eds.), FoU i praksis 2013. Konferanse om praksisrettet FoU i lærerutdanning (pp. 12–18). Oslo: Akademika forlag.
Byman, R., Krokfors, L., Toom, A., Maaranen, K., Jyrhämä, R., Kynäslahti, H., & Kansanen, P. (2009). Educating inquiry-oriented teachers: Students’ attitudes and experiences towards research-based teacher education. Educational Research and Evaluation, 15(1), 79–92.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Villegas, A. M. (2015). Framing teacher preparation research: An overview of the field, Part 1. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1), 7–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114549072.
Dunn, M., Harrison, L. J., & Coombe, K. (2008). In good hands: Preparing research-skilled graduates for the early childhood profession. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(3), 703–714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.09.002.
Jyrhämä, R., Kynäslahti, H., Krokfors, L., Byman, R., Maaranen, K., Toom, A., & Kansanen, P. (2008). The appreciation and realisation of research-based teacher education: Finnish students’ experiences of teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 31(1), 1–16.
Klette, K., & Carlsten, T. C. (2012). Knowledge in teacher learning: New professional challenges. In K. Jensen, L. C. Lahn, & M. Nerland (Eds.), Professional learning in the knowledge society (pp. 27–48). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Markauskaite, L., & Goodyear, P. (2014). Professional work and knowledge. In S. Billett, C. Harteis, & H. Gruber (Eds.), International handbook of research in professional and practice-based learning (pp. 79–106). Dordrecht: Springer.
Munthe, E., & Rogne, M. (2015). Research-based teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.10.006.
Nicolini, D., Mengis, J., & Swan, J. (2012). Understanding the role of objects in cross-disciplinary collaboration. Organization Science, 23(3), 612–629.
Rasmussen, I., & Damşa, C. I. (2016). Heterochrony through moment-to-moment interaction: A micro-analytical exploration of learning as sense making with multiple resources. International Journal of Educational Research, 72, 149–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.04.003.
Säljö, R. (2010). Digital tools and challenges to institutional traditions of learning: Technologies, social memory and the performative nature of learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00341.x.
Salo, K., Shakya, U., & Damena, M. (2014). Device agnostic CASS client. In A. Marcus (Ed.), Design, user experience, and usability: User experience design for diverse interaction platforms and environments (pp. 334–345). Dordrecht: Springer.
Smith, K. (2015). The role of research in teacher education. Research in Teacher Education, 5(2), 43–46.
Smith, K., & Sela, O. (2005). Action research as a bridge between pre-service teacher education and in-service professional development. European Journal of Teacher Education, 28(3), 293–311.
Toom, A., Kynäaslahti, H., Krokfors, L., Jyrhämä, R., Byman, R., Stenberg, K., Maaranen, K., & Kansanen, P. (2010). Experiences of a research-based approach to teacher education: Suggestions for future policies. European Journal of Education, 45(2), 331–344.
Trent, J. (2010). Teacher education as identity construction: Insights from action research. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(2), 153–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607471003651672.
Van der Linden, W., Bakx, A., Ros, A., Beijaard, D., & Vermeulen, M. (2012). Student teachers’ development of a positive attitude towards research and research knowledge and skills. European Journal of Teacher Education, 35(4), 401–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2011.643401.
White, S., Hepple, E., Tangen, D., Comelli, M., Alwi, A., & Abu Hassan Shaari, Z. (2016). An introduction to education research methods: Exploring the learning journey of pre-service teachers in a transnational programme. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 44(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2015.1021294.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Damşa, C. (2018). Research and Development Tasks in Teacher Education: Institutional Framing and Student Experiences. In: Maassen, P., Nerland, M., Yates, L. (eds) Reconfiguring Knowledge in Higher Education. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72832-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72832-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72831-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72832-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)