ABS015 - Extending the teacher educator role: developing new tools for working with school mentors

This project followed up eight key respondents from a year-long ethnographic study undertaken with teacher educators in 2006 (Douglas, 2014).  The initial research explored the experiences of teacher educators when working with school mentors.  The current study, through in-depth interviews, explores reflections from the past respondents to developments which have taken place in teacher education and in their own career profiles over the 9 years since the first study.  The analysis in this study uses a cultural-historical and activity theory lens (Engeström, 2008). This focuses attention on learning as a social phenomenon, a process that takes place within social systems that have evolved culturally and historically and that offer participants in those systems certain tools with which to work on a shared object.  The findings focus on how teacher educators support their role in higher education which for many in England is moving into schools (White 2014, O’Dwyer, & Atli 2015) whereas other nations have extended the process of placing teacher education under the auspices of universities.  The findings focus on new tools appropriated by teacher educators which have developed in response to the changing nature of their work. Tensions arose from changing policy contexts for teacher education in England with new tools used to negotiate the object of teacher education activity such as an extended university-led forum for developing the ‘collective’ of school mentors, collaborative research projects, shared writing and publication activities and the development of related Continuing Professional Development courses.