Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2007, Page 55

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Tímarit um menntarannsóknir, 4. árgangur 2007
Að kenna í ljósi fræða og rannsókna
and school practice. Its point of departure
is the planned changes in teacher education
in Iceland that include an increase in the
number of years of study from three to five
and increased emphasis on research findings
and theory. According to the policy advocated
by the Iceland University of Education future
teachers are expected to base their work on
theory no less than on experience. On the other
hand, it is clear that teachers in Iceland have
so far not been theory oriented. As a rule their
actions tend to be mediated by experience and
tradition. The author agrees with the policy
of the University of Education that future
teachers need to be more theory-oriented than
they currently are. However, realizing this
goal may turn out to be a formidable task.
The teacher education literature abounds with
accounts supporting this statement. In general
teacher education programmes seem to have
little impact on the school-related beliefs
student teachers hold when entering these
programmes. Improvements in this regard are
not to be expected, the author argues, unless
teacher educators take a close look at their own
attitudes toward teaching and learning and
develop new and more effective practices.
Going beyond current practices
Like other Western societies, Iceland is
changing rapidly in almost every sector.
Schools and the educational system, however,
change slowly, a condition that creates tension.
Increasingly, schools may not be in step with
the society at large. In particular, classroom
practices may not fit well with current practices
in other sectors of the society. Although new
and progressive practices have been adopted in
some Icelandic schools the prevailing pattern
is an authoritarian teacher standing in front of
the class, who is supposed to transmit “what
is known“ to those who do not know, i.e. the
pupils. In other words, pupils tend to be thought
of and treated as “tabula rasa, a blank slate“ to
quote Bruner (1996, p. 56). This contrasts with
new perspectives on learning emerging out
of educational research, exemplified by the
recent report How People Learn – Bridging
Research and Practice, published by the
National Research Council in the United States
(Donovan, Bransford and Pellegrino, 1999).
This report attempts to ascertain the meaning
of key findings in the area of school learning,
boiling down the results to three core learning
principles that the report advises teachers and
teacher educators to consider:
1. Students come to the classroom with
preconceptions about how the world works.
If their initial understanding is not engaged,
they may fail to grasp the new concepts and
information that are taught, or they may learn
them for purposes of a test but revert to their
preconceptions outside the classroom.
2. To develop competence in an area of inquiry,
students must: (a) have a deep foundation
of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts
and ideas in the context of a conceptual
framework, and (c) organize knowledge in
ways that facilitate retrieval and application.
3. A “metacognitive“ approach to instruction can
help students learn to take control of their
own learning by defining learning goals and
monitoring their progress in achieving them.
(Donovan, Bransford, and Pellegrino, 1999, pp. 10 – 13)
Building upon these principles, How People
Learn proposes a framework that emphasizes:
a) students’ ideas and preconceptions, b)
thorough understanding of basic ideas, c)
formative assessment and d) the students’
life-worlds, what they do outside school.
Apparently, this framework runs contrary to
current practices in most Icelandic schools
today. Accordingly, if we want to take research
on learning seriously new classroom practices
need to be developed. Here we face a difficult
task: schools and teachers are not that easily
changed. Cultural forces tend to direct their
activities and maintain the status quo (Putnam
and Borko, 2000). New teachers entering
schools with progressive ideas are usually
quick to discover that their ideas in many cases
do not fit very well with the school’s culture.
Besides, research indicates that preservice
teacher education may not be strong enough to