Rehearsing Teaching Professionally in Teacher Education (RetProTE) – Building Purposeful Teaching Repertoires to Bridge Theory and Practice in Teacher Education

Project summary

Abstract

The overall ambition of RetProTE is to establish a practice-based supportive framework for Teacher Education (TE) in which pre-service teachers (PST) are provided opportunities to develop professional teaching repertoires in a space defined as the rehearsal room (RR). This approach implies a systematic redefinition and restructuring of TE to implement the RR as an explorative and analytic space and rehearsal as a tool for learning to teach. RetProTE is initiated in collaboration between Skåredalen skole in Haugesund and the educational authorities in Stord municipalities. Both partners are particularly interested in contributing to the development of knowledge-based practices, both in their own schools and in teacher education.

ReTProTE will be cross-disciplinary in its nature, elaborating on PST rehearsal in different subjects, supported by pedagogy, drama and oracy in Education. A further didactic relevance is to establish coherence between campus and practicum, theory and practice. The perennial divide between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ theory, is largely associated with conceptions of knowledge as conceptual and abstract,  and ‘practical knowledge’ as more perceptual and applied. The challenge, therefore, is one of transfer in terms of the connection or disconnection between what is taught in campus and what is experienced in the ‘realities’ of school practicum.

Building on the insights from former projects, we will implement and evaluate RetProTE as a model for rehearsing teaching professionally. We aim to consolidating the rehearsal room through examining i) how disciplinary and cross-disciplinary professional teaching repertoires can be repeatedly rehearsed and developed in TE, ii) how rehearsals in the campus can be a part of a larger ecology that aims to bridge the theory-practice gap and iii) how reflective rehearsals in the campus can develop PSTs’ capacities and commitments to teach in practicum in ways that support our more holistic visions of good teaching.

Goals

In order to this the establishment of ReTProTE has two overarching aims in order to bridge theory and practice in Teacher Education (TE):

• Process outcomes: To explore how the Rehearsal Room (RR) can be further conceptualised, implemented, developed and performed for enhancing pre-service teachers (PST)s’ professional teaching repertoires with the aim of developing and constituting a coherent TE programme

• Evaluation outcomes: To explore what being a part of ReTProTE means to all participants in terms of how they reflect in and on and about the RR processes

The aim with RetProTE is then to (but not limited to):

1) develop, protype, try out and implement new methods of reflective rehearsal on teaching in TE also involving intensive use of video and digital technology

2) develop new ways of collaboration between campus and the field of practice in TE, also involving rehearsals at campus

3) strengthen the progression in practicum through systematic use of reflective rehearsals