CSSE 2014 Presentation
Learning and Teaching
Contemporary theories on teaching and learning: For educational researchers, teaching and learning are increasingly viewed as an inquiry-based and knowledge-building process (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Kaser & Halbert, 2013; Timperley, 2011; Timperley & Alton-Lee, 2008) and research results support the claim that learning happens as the learner actively seeks and creates knowledge for a particular purpose. Furthermore, learning is collaborative and effective learning takes place in communities (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011). Additionally, complexity theory conceives of learning as “dynamic, active, experiential and participatory, open-ended, unpredictable and uncertain” (Morrison, 2008, p. 28).
All these theories, although substantially supported in educational research, can be in competition with the practical demands of a test-preparation discourse.
The Process of Coming into Being
- I readily suspended my previous plan on teaching and learning to embrace a test-driven curriculum and instruction method. Her perception of teacher identity for this theme is a shift from an educator emphasizing cultivating the “person” to an efficient project manager who showed competence to meet customers’ needs within limited time spans.
- I questioned whether my teaching could genuinely benefit students in their later academic work. The narrowing of curriculum contents to the test and the differences that exist between test requirements and real academic tasks made the author feel ambivalent about my teacher identity.
- I realized that helping students to deal with such gatekeeping practices as tests also empowers them in their later academic work. In conclusion, the teacher identity as experienced by me is discursively positioned (and often constrained) by competing discourses. Therefore, a teacher needs to develop an awareness of the complexity involved so as to negotiate a viable teacher identity that can improve both teaching and learning.