190
addition, to be research-based (Kosunen & Mikkola, 2002). The aim of such a pre-
service teacher education—as this is understood in Finland—is to prepare teachers
who are aware of the effects of their actions and factors around their work, thus
equipping them to control their own activity and, perhaps, these factors. The goal is
to develop teachers who will base their educational decisions on rational arguments
in addition to experiential arguments; or, to put this in another way, to develop
teachers who have the capacity to use research and research-derived competencies in
their on-going teaching and decision-making. This goal also presupposes a general
understanding of research methods as well as a positive attitude towards research. It
also implies that the teachers should be able to undertake their own research. For
teacher education, these goals come together around a vision of the kind, and the
quality, of the pedagogical thinking appropriate for pre-service and in-service
teachers. As these goals have been operationalised at the University of Helsinki, the
aim is a balanced programme in which research-based pedagogical thinking is the
central organising concept across the three major strands in the pre-service
programme: subject didactics, educational theory, and teaching practice. These areas
are seen as being in reciprocal interaction, with the organising principle being the
conviction that there should be a research base for practice. In order to develop
research-based thinking, a continuous interaction of research and practice is the
pattern from the very beginning of the programme. The idea of a spiral curriculum is
applied—with the core courses vertically integrated, and research methods courses
integrated with other courses at every point in the programme. Thus research, theory,
and practice are fused—with the idea of research-based thinking as the connecting
glue. The final goal is the writing of the master’s thesis, but several minor formal
research papers are required throughout the programme (Bergem, Bjo¨ rkqvist,
Hanse´n, Carlgren, & Hauge, 1977). Let us now consider some examples of this
integration; we focus on the programme for class teachers, i.e., teachers who teach
mainly in grades 1–6, teaching all or several subjects to whole-class groups. We
begin by outlining some of the principles that have been the starting points for the
development of the programme. The first principle is that practice teaching should be
initiated as early as possible. Although many students at the University of Helsinki
have had teaching experience before they begin their teacher education, it is
important to experience schools in order to become familiar with their culture,
routine, and activities. Second, as we have already noted, educational theory,
research, subject didactics, and practice are presented as a totality. Thus, there is
practice teaching in every year and every study period, and every practice teaching
period is combined with theoretical and research studies related to the topic of the
practice period. The reading of research texts, mini-studies undertaken by students,
and seminars in which these texts and studies are discussed, are designed to support
teaching practice. In the second year of the programme, for example, when students
take courses in both the theory of teaching and assessment, the idea of instructional
evaluation is highlighted, and approached in the following way:
Although learning is not a direct consequence of teaching, the outcomes of
teaching-studying-learning need to be evaluated in relation to the aims and goals of
the curriculum. From this viewpoint, the teaching process seeks to achieve clearly
191
defined outcomes. Further, the choice of one or another teaching method or approach
presumes a weighing of their strengths and weaknesses in terms of outcomes. Such
assessments should be at the core of every teacher’s thinking because it gives the
teacher the capacity to develop, and justify, the arguments behind decisions about
teaching approaches. To take up some different issues, how should a teacher get to
know his or her students?—one of the themes of the first year of the Helsinki
programme. Discussions with students, formal interviews, and observation techniques
offer methods for securing comprehensive descriptions and understanding. Such
approaches presuppose, of course, an understanding of qualitative research methods
and their background assumptions, as well as the psychological theory and principles
developed in parallel coursework. Likewise, the teacher is always working with the
values behind the curriculum and questions around the purposes of education pose
issues which require systematic analysis. Philosophical studies provide the necessary
understanding for a teacher’s curriculum-making, assessment, and evaluation. The
idea of an autonomous teacher who is able to think and act on the basis of theory and
research, and to justify educational decisions using formal, systematic arguments,
presupposes an ability and a readiness to read the professional and research literature
critically. Teachers must be able to select what to read, evaluate what they read, and
appropriate what is useful or significant from that reading for their practice.
Although pedagogical thinking typically (and perhaps necessarily) mixes intuitive
and formal arguments, a research-based attitude makes it possible to steer thinking
and decisions towards practices which are grounded in a wider, and hopefully more
systematized, experience than the circumscribed worlds of immediate places and
settings. The culminating experience of the programme, the writing of the research
thesis, takes place over a 2-year period, beginning in the third year of the programme.
As they prepare their projects, students present and discuss their developing ideas and
their more formal research proposals in seminars, and complete methodological
studies in parallel courses.
To summarize, the research-based teacher education that is the heart of Finnish
teacher education and formalised by the writing of the master’s thesis, is directed at
preparing students for both critical thinking and autonomous decision making, and
thus for action guided by a gradually elaborated practical theory. The underlying
intention of the programme as a whole is to make an explicit demand on students to
acquire both knowledge about the research basis for the education they are
experiencing and the skills necessary to undertake their own research. Course
readings are selected because of their theoretical and methodological quality and
significance. In other words, the aim of the coursework is to help our students acquire
a research-based understanding and way of reasoning about schooling. They learn
how to discuss and argue with a constant reference to research, and not rely on
everyday thinking and ‘magical’ or ‘mystical’ arguments [4, 475–485].
Due to research-based teacher education Finland is on the leading position in
the field of education. It was found that the theoretical and practical training is
conducted through research. Students studying core subjects, have methodological
training, organized in close relationship with the school reality. At the core of this
training is the idea of an autonomous teacher who is able to think and act on the basis
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: |