Dual identities: enhancing the in-service
teacher trainee experience in the lifelong
learning sector
Dr Kevin Orr & Dr Robin Simmons
May 2010
Project funded by ESCalate and The Consortium for PCET
Dual Identities
• Our project
• Work-based learning (WBL)
• Findings
• Recommendations
Dual Identities: The Project
• Explore the dual role of teacher-trainees in further
education (FE).
– “There I'm a teacher, but here I’m a student”
• Develop strategies to enhance the teacher training
experience by engaging with employers.
• Make recommendations to enhance the in-service
training experience.
Dual Identities:
What do we already know?
• A dearth of research on FE teacher training, most
particularly in-service training
• Work-based learning and “learning as becoming”
• Dual professionalism
• Relationship between individual and environment:
situated learning
Work-based learning and FE
• Long tradition of WBL in FE—internally and
externally
• FE colleges as ‘learning organisations’
• Dual identity: employee and learner
Dual Identities:
What do we already know?
Eraut (2004: 249) identified some problems with
researching WBL
• Informal learning is largely invisible.
• Knowledge gained in the workplace “is either tacit or
regarded as part of a person’s general capability”.
• “[D]iscourse about learning is dominated by codified,
propositional knowledge so … it [is] difficult to describe
more complex areas of work and…expertise”
Dual Identities:
What do we already know?
Social communities are in part systems of
relations among persons. The person is defined
by as well as defines these relations. Learning
thus implies becoming a different person with
respect to the possibilities enabled by these
systems of relations. To ignore this aspect of
learning is to overlook the fact that learning
involves the construction of identities.
(Lave & Wenger 1991: 53)
Activity
In your experience, what are the issues
involved in being simultaneously employee
and trainee?
Dual Identities: our study
• Two case studies: ‘Dale College’ and ‘Urban
College’
• Our methodology
• Use of semi-structured interviews with 4 teacher
trainers, 20 trainees and 2 college HR managers
Dual Identities: Findings
• Very positive attitude towards trainers and course.
• Very diverse situations of trainees; levels of
support; remission; understanding of managers.
• Heavy workload: both within the course and
teaching.
• Trainees do gain confidence.
Dual identities: findings
• For some, a disconnection between course and
practice.
• Trainees rarely considered as such by themselves or
others.
• Bureaucratic aspects of both teaching and course
meld.
• Course and teacher educators reinforce rather than
challenge attitudes.
• Trainees see teaching as coping; pragmatism over
flair.
Attitudes to the course
“I’ve learnt a lot on the course and I think it’s
enabled me to be a better teacher within my
role.”
“I’m full of praise for this programme.”
Attitudes to the course
“I didn’t realise [it] would be so prescriptive. I
thought there would be a lot more freedom… It
was very, very precise and you had to deliver to
the exact prescribed criteria.”
Second year trainee at Urban College
Professional Knowledge
“We’ve looked at learning models and learning
styles so far and a lot of the things that are there
I’ve already been doing; I just didn’t know I was
doing them.”
first-year trainee at Dale College
Teaching as coping
“I think it’s just the paperwork that goes with it
which is the biggest issue that I’ve got. There’s
too much paperwork which I really don’t know
that much about and people are ringing me up
and saying: ‘where’s that form?’ and I don’t even
know what that form is.”
second-year trainee at Urban College
Teaching as coping
“I don’t think, for the most part, I’m conceived as a
trainee teacher in terms of the responsibilities
that I’ve been given….”
second-year trainee at Dale College
The HR managers
“[The teacher educator’s] is a very crucial role to
us because they’re actually developing future
teachers and their expertise will reflect on,
hopefully, good success rates with our students.”
HR manager Dale College
The HR managers
“[The teacher educator’s] role is primarily as any
other lecturer; it’s just that they teach a different
subject. … So they will get people asking them
more questions, if you like but, to all intents and
purposes, they will be the same as any other
lecturer.”
HR manager Urban College
Activity
What recommendations would you make to
colleges to address the issues we have
identified?
Recommendations
• Teacher educators
– Alleviate bureaucratic elements of the course.
– Consider how support is given to maintain challenge.
– Increase integration and relevance of theory and professional
knowledge.
Recommendations
• Colleges as employers:
– Recognise trainees as a defined category of employee,
quantitatively and qualitatively.
– Parity with school teaching.
– Prioritise in-service course and its developmental role for the
organisation.