This article was downloaded by: [94.226.234.213] On: 11 February 2013, At: 05:16 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Research Papers in Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rred20 Teacher educators' conceptions of learning to teach and related teaching strategies Vincent Donche a & Peter Van Petegem a a Institute of Education and Information Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium Version of record first published: 20 Apr 2011. To cite this article: Vincent Donche & Peter Van Petegem (2011): Teacher educators' conceptions of learning to teach and related teaching strategies, Research Papers in Education, 26:2, 207-222 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2011.561979 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
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This article was downloaded by: [94.226.234.213]On: 11 February 2013, At: 05:16Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Research Papers in EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rred20
Teacher educators' conceptions oflearning to teach and related teachingstrategiesVincent Donche a & Peter Van Petegem aa Institute of Education and Information Sciences, University ofAntwerp, Antwerp, BelgiumVersion of record first published: 20 Apr 2011.
To cite this article: Vincent Donche & Peter Van Petegem (2011): Teacher educators' conceptions oflearning to teach and related teaching strategies, Research Papers in Education, 26:2, 207-222
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2011.561979
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Teacher educators’ conceptions of learning to teach and related teaching strategies
Vincent Donche* and Peter Van Petegem
Institute of Education and Information Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, BelgiumTaylor and Francis LtdRRED_A_561979.sgm10.1080/02671522.2011.561979Research Papers in Education0267-1522 (print)/1470-1146 (online)Original Article2011Taylor & [email protected]
Many contemporary pre-service teacher education programmes aim to enhance theself-regulation and active knowledge construction of student teachers. Fosteringthe growth of these life-long learning skills in teacher education is an importanttask for teacher educators. It is often taken for granted that teacher educators whenengaging in innovative practices will be able to take on these new roles offacilitators for learning. However, research investigating the relationship betweenteachers’ thoughts and actions showed a picture of great variability. Studiesinvestigating the relationship between teaching conceptions and strategies amongteacher educators are scarce. To better understand why teacher educators teach theway they do, we aim in this study to advance current understandings of teachereducators’ conceptions of learning to teach and related teaching strategies. Datawere collected from 119 teacher educators of a Belgian Institute of TeacherEducation. Results show that teacher educators have different conceptions oflearning to teach and that these conceptions are moderately associated with theirteaching strategies. Relationships between teacher characteristics and contextualfactors yield possible explanations as to why inconsistencies are also presentbetween likewise conceptions and strategies. The results are not only important fortheory, but also for teacher education practice. Within current contexts ofeducational change, it is an important prerequisite to recognise these individualdifferences and, if needed, to also seek out ways of enhancing discussion andpedagogic development for teacher educators.
Keywords: teaching style; teaching approach; learning to teach; teachereducation; teacher educator; teacher beliefs and practices
Introduction
Stimulating self-regulation, knowledge growth and abandoning more transmission-oriented education is a current and contemporary innovation policy in many highereducation and teacher education programmes in Europe and abroad. It has led to amultitude of innovative practices, known under a variety of terms, such as the imple-mentation of more ‘student-centred’, ‘powerful’ or ‘new’ learning environments’ (DeCorte et al. 2003; Simons, van der Linden, and Duffy 2000). A central goal of thesemore process-oriented views on teaching and learning is to ensure active knowledgeconstruction and greater self-regulation behaviour of students when learning(Vermunt and Verschaffel 2000). Former research into how student learning can beoptimised from this perspective has shown that many factors within the broad teachinglearning environment are involved and important to be taken into account (Entwistle,
McCune, and Hounsell 2003; Vanthournout et al. 2010). Stimulating learners to bemore active and self-regulated sets new tasks not only for the students themselves, butalso for the teacher educators who are key agents in the design of these new learningenvironments and whose teaching approach or style influences students’ learningapproaches (Evans 2004; Gow and Kember 1993; Prosser and Trigwell 1999). Formerresearch in teacher education has underlined the importance of investigating teachers’beliefs, conceptions and related practice in the context of educational change (Calder-head 1996; Clark and Peterson 1986; Fullan 1982). Some studies point to the fact thatteacher beliefs and conceptions can act as barriers for curricular reforms as theirnature is often claimed to be stable or resistant to change (Kagan 1992; Nettle 1998;Pajares 1992). Other studies have highlighted the importance of investigating teacherbeliefs and conceptions in order to better understand why teachers teach the way theydo (Van Petegem and Donche 2008). A closer look at studies investigating in depththe relationship between teaching conceptions and strategies shows that teachers’conceptions of teaching have been predominantly investigated in university contextswith no clear attention to teacher education contexts. Teaching conceptions are there-fore largely described in categories in which lecturers’ views on fostering especiallymore ‘academic’ ways of learning, such as learning from textbooks, and less ‘practiceoriented’ ways of learning, such as learning from field experiences, are concerned (fora review see Samuelowicz and Bain 2001). However, if we aim to further clarify therelationship between teacher educators’ conceptions and teaching strategies, it isimportant to understand the learning to teach process as a complex phenomenon inwhich many actors and aspects of formal and informal ways of learning are involved(Oosterheert and Vermunt 2003; Van Eekelen, Boshuizen, and Vermunt 2005). Bydrawing upon former research findings into teaching conceptions, conceptions oflearning to teach and teaching approaches, we take a first step in this direction in thisstudy. We aim to come to a more comprehensive understanding about these particularteaching conceptions of teacher educators and explore the relationship with theirteaching strategies. A comprehensive description of teacher educators’ conceptionsand strategies is important for both theory and practice. Results may demonstrate howteacher educators differ in their understandings of the ‘good’ ways of learning to teachstudents in teacher education and how their conceptions are related to their teachingstrategies in daily practice. In addition, it can shed more light upon teacher educators’dispositions towards process-oriented teacher education in the light of many currentinnovation policies in current teacher education programmes. In these programmes,the promotion of self-regulation and active knowledge construction are central andunderpin the introduction of teaching–learning methods, such as among others prob-lem-based learning, project-centred teaching or competency-based teaching in prac-tice (see Vermunt 2007).
Conceptions of teaching and learning to teach
In the past two decades, a considerable amount of research has shown that teachersin higher education have different beliefs about and conceptions of teaching (for areview see Samuelowicz and Bain 2001). In many studies in which teachers’ teachingconceptions have been studied, a general categorisation has been made betweenteacher-centred/content-oriented and student-centred/learning-oriented conceptions ofteaching in which, respectively, a more traditional and more constructivist pedagogicalparadigm is present (Kember 1997; Prosser and Trigwell 1999; Prosser, Trigwell, and
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Taylor 1994; Samuelowicz and Bain 2001). In the traditional pedagogical paradigm,the teacher’s role is to pass on knowledge and students have a predominantly passiveand receptive function in education. In the constructivist pedagogical paradigm, teach-ers and students have their own responsibilities in the learning process. Teachers areguides and facilitators in learning environments fostering active processes of knowl-edge construction of students (Vermunt and Verloop 1999). Former research in thisdomain has given a lot of attention to more ‘academic’ conceptions of teaching focus-sing on the fostering of more theoretical ways of learning in which practice-orientedways of learning have been under-investigated (Samuelowicz and Bain 2001). Inteacher education, student teachers undertake more than only learning from theory aslearning activities take many shapes, such as learning from field experiences andrelating theory to practice (Korthagen 2001; Schulz and Mandzuk 2005), and learningwith and from others involved in the learning to teach process, such as teacher educa-tors, colleague teachers and mentors (Donche and Van Petegem 2005; Oosterheert,Vermunt, and Denessen 2002; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, and Moon 1998). If we aim tobetter understand teacher educators’ conceptions about teaching within teacher educa-tion, it is important not to ignore their conceptions of how students should learn toteach. In addition, these beliefs can be important aspects in facilitating betterunderstanding of their teaching conceptions and related practice.
Relating teaching conceptions and teaching strategies
An important assumption inherent in many studies focusing on teachers’ conceptionsand practice is that thought governs action and thus also teaching practice (Bandura1986; Pratt 1992). Studies investigating the interrelatedness between teachers’conceptions of teaching and teaching strategies have highlighted the presence ofconsistent and inconsistent assumptions between thought and practice (Fang 1996;Murray and McDonald 1997). For instance in higher education contexts, researchinvestigating teaching approaches have found sound relationships between likewiseconceptions and likewise strategies, such as a conceptual change conception and astudent-focused teaching strategy, on the one hand, and between an information-transfer conception and a teacher-focused teaching strategy, on the other hand(Prosser and Trigwell 1999). These studies built up evidence for the so-called consis-tency hypothesis, claiming the interrelatedness between teacher conceptions and strat-egies (Gow and Kember 1993; Kember and Kwan 2000; Lindblom-Ylänne et al.2006; Trigwell and Prosser 1996a). The expected consistency between thoughts andactions is however not always present and also inconsistencies or disjunctionsbetween teacher conceptions and practices have been reported (Fang 1996; Murrayand McDonald 1997; Trigwell and Prosser 1996b). Other studies have identified thatthe relationship between specific teachers’ beliefs or thinking and actions can berather problematic or even not present (Borko and Putnam 1996; Calderhead 1996).In the last decade, more attention has been focussed on why inconsistencies betweenteachers’ conceptions and strategies are sometimes present. Studies investigating theimpact of factors affecting teaching conceptions and/or strategies have indicated theexplanatory value of some personal and contextual factors. Personal factors, such asgender (Nevgi, Postareff, and Lindblom-Ylänne 2004), and teaching experience(Beijaard et al. 2000) have been found to have a differential impact on teachingconceptions. Contextual factors such as discipline and course contexts were found tobe associated with different approaches to teaching (Lindblom-Ylänne et al. 2006).
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These studies yield perspectives to further investigate the possible gap between beliefsand actions of teacher educators.
This study
Drawing upon findings from the above-mentioned studies, we designed an explor-atory survey study to investigate the relationship between teacher educators’ concep-tions of learning to teach and their actual teaching strategies. We also took intoaccount several personal and contextual factors in order to explore their possibledifferential impact on teacher educators’ conceptions and strategies. Four questionsare central to this study:
(1) How do teacher educators differ with respect to their conceptions of learningto teach?
(2) How do teacher educators differ with respect to their teaching strategies?(3) To what extent are conceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies
interrelated?(4) Are personal and contextual factors such as gender, experience and discipline
related to teacher educators’ conceptions and strategies?
Four expectations are guiding this study and will be empirically examined. First,based upon former research findings on student teachers’ conceptions of learning toteach (Donche and Van Petegem 2005; Oosterheert and Vermunt 2001), we alsoexpect that teacher educators have different conceptions of learning to teach.Second, we expect that teaching strategies are multi-dimensional in nature andcould vary basically from more student-focused to more teacher-focused teachingstrategies in line with former research (Gow and Kember 1993; Kember and Kwan2000; Prosser and Trigwell 1999). Third, we expect relationships between likewiseconceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies, supporting the consistencyhypothesis in which conceptions about teaching do well in accord with relatedteaching practice (Gow and Kember 1993; Prosser and Trigwell 1999). Four, in thecase of the presence of inconsistencies or lack of a relationship, we expect thatfactors such as gender, teaching experience and discipline may have a differentialimpact on teacher educators’ conceptions and related teaching strategies (Beijaard etal. 2000; Lindblom-Ylänne et al. 2006; Nevgi, Postareff, and Lindblom-Ylänne2004).
Method
Respondents
The participants in this study were 119 teacher educators from a pre-service teachereducation institute in Belgium. The institute organises three-year teacher educationdegree courses. After completion of the pre-service teacher education programme,students obtain a professional bachelor degree which allows them to teach in eitherkindergarten, primary or lower secondary education (first and second stage of second-ary education-group or key stage 3 and 4). Of the total group, 75% of the teachereducators were female with an average of 13 years of teaching experience in teachereducation and 16 years teaching experience in general. Eighteen percent of the teacher
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educators taught on the degree course for kindergarten, 42% taught on the degreecourse for primary school teachers and 40% taught on the degree course for lowersecondary education.
Instruments
Conceptions of learning to teach
In order to assess the dimensional structure of teacher educators’ conceptions oflearning to teach, we were guided by the content domains of the ‘Inventory ofLearning to Teach Process’ (ILTP) and former research findings. The ILTP is areliable and valid self-report questionnaire which examines conceptions with regardto learning to teach among student teachers, the cognitive and regulative activitieswhich they undertake and aspects of emotion regulation (Oosterheert, Vermunt, andDenessen 2002). In order to map teacher educators’ viewpoints on how learning toteach should take place in teacher education, we transformed the ILTP items intostatements about what teacher educators find important when student teachers learnto teach. The resulting ILTP-TE questionnaire (teacher educator version) consistedof 52 statements which were entered on a Likert scale from 1 (entirely disagree) to5 (entirely agree). In the ILTP-TE questionnaire we made a further distinctionbetween general and specific conceptions of learning to teach. General conceptionsof learning to teach are related to the mental models which teacher educators haveconcerning student teacher learning. Specific conceptions of learning to teach zoomin on beliefs teacher educators have about what kind of specific regulative andcognitive learning activities student teachers should be engaged in when learning toteach. To check the construct validity of the general conceptions of learning toteach (19 items), a principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation wasconducted and an inspection of the scree plot was carried to determine the numberof factors to be retained. The analyses yielded three reliable factors with acceptableeigenvalues (ranging from 2.12 to 3.74) and with a factor solution accounting for45.30% of the total variance. Principal components factor analysis, with varimaxrotation on specific conceptions of learning to teach (33 items) and inspection ofthe scree plot, yielded four reliable factors with acceptable eigenvalues (rangingfrom 1.48 to 6.01) and with a factor solution accounting for 46.75% of the totalvariance. Within this dimensionality of conceptions of learning to teach aspects ofmore teacher- and student-centred conceptions are present. This is, respectively,present within the components measuring how learning to teach should be moreexternally regulated, like for instance by means of asking help from mentors, andwithin scales measuring more self-regulated learning activities, such as activeengagement in discussion with others and the search for information in anindependent way. The dimensionality found in conceptions with regard toregulative and cognitive activities are comparable, to a certain extent, with thedimensionality found within student teacher learning (Oosterheert, Vermunt, andDenessen 2002). However, three scales measuring specific conceptions wereomitted from further analyses as the internal consistency of the scales were too low.These concerned scales measure ‘the use of pupil-centred evaluation criteria’ andconceptions with regards to emotion regulation. A short description of each scale,an example item, the number of items and the satisfactory levels of internalconsistency are described in Table 1.
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Teaching strategies
In order to assess differences in teaching strategies of teacher educators weconstructed a self-report questionnaire. The resulting questionnaire ‘TeachingStrategies of Teacher Educators’ (TSTE) is an adapted version of a reliable and
Table 1. ILTP-TE questionnaire: description of general and specific learning to teachconceptions, example items, number of items (N) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha)of the resulting scales.
Scales Description Example items N α
General The extent to which student teachers …
Practising and testing
Ought to regard teaching as a mere process of learning by experience and experimenting in practical situations
Practising in classrooms is the only way to help students to learn to teach
9 .77
Strong emphasis on self-determination in improving teaching
Must take a great deal of initiative and responsibility themselves when learning to teach
It is better that students decide for themselves on which points they can improve their teaching
3 .75
Developing awareness under external direction
Ought primarily to be stimulated and externally controlled by others (e.g. mentor/teacher educator) in order to arrive at an awareness of how they can improve their teaching
It is important that instructors and mentors encourage students to reflect on their teaching
7 .69
Specific
Pro-active, broad use of the mentor
Ought to ask for help from the mentor. This help can take the form of practical suggestions, helping students interpret their classroom situations and letting mentors evaluate the students’ way of teaching
Students should ask the mentor how he/she would approach the same classroom situation
6 .72
Looking for conceptual information independently
Should look up background information on their own initiative and autonomously in order to improve and understand their own teaching
Students should answer their own questions about teaching by consulting literature on their own initiative
5 .69
Actively relating theory to practical experience
Ought to make conscious use of conceptual information provided by others to help them situate their own experiences with learning to teach and to be able to improve the way they teach
Students should try to relate the theory to their classroom experiences
5 .68
Developing ideas/vision through discussion
Should make intentional use of the expertise of experienced colleagues in order to obtain a different perspective on their own teaching or to help them further develop their overall vision of teaching
Students should ask experienced teachers in their school for their opinions about teaching
5 .77
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valid questionnaire developed by Roelofs and Visser (2001). This questionnairemapped key components of constructivist learning environments (De Corte et al.2003) in a multidimensional way such as the authenticity of learning tasks, fosteringof self-regulation, self-evaluation, process-oriented guidance and cooperative learn-ing activities. We used a selection of scales and transformed the scales from theexisting questionnaire into scales applicable in teacher education contexts. In thatway we aimed to measure how teacher educators succeed to realise more student-centred teaching strategies during their practice, such as the use of teaching activi-ties aimed at fostering more authentic learning, discovery-oriented learning anddifferentiation or more teacher-centred teaching strategies, such as the use of differ-ent forms of direct instruction. The statements were entered on a Likert scale from 1(almost) never to 4 (almost) always. To further check the construct validity of 45items tapping teaching activities, a principal components factor analysis with vari-max rotation was conducted and an inspection of the scree plot was carried to deter-mine the number of factors to be retained. The analyses yielded seven reliablefactors with acceptable eigenvalues (ranging from 1.83 to 7.85) and with a factorsolution accounting for 50.3% of the total variance. A description of each scale,example items, number of items and the satisfactory levels of internal consistencyare described in Table 2.
Table 2. TSTE questionnaire: description of different teaching strategies, example items,number of items (N) and internal consistency of the resulting scales.
Scales Description Example items N α
The extent to which … How far do you succeed in …Tie-in with students’
perception and experience
Students’ experiences, prior knowledge and environment are taken into account during teaching
Giving students the opportunity during the lesson to talk about their experiences or provide information themselves?
6 .66
Process-oriented instruction
Students are encouraged to be more self regulated in learning
Encouraging students to find the solution to a problem/assignment on their own?
5 .75
Constructive learning environment
Students are more activated in learning (with control of teacher)
Getting students to collect information about topics which come up in the lessons on their own?
9 .78
Cooperative learning
Cooperative learning among students is encouraged
Getting students to work together in groups?
5 .69
Discovery oriented learning
Students are able to self-direct their learning
Getting students to plan what to work on for themselves?
7 .69
Differentiation Taking individual differences in learning into account
Giving different assignments to students with different levels?
5 .77
Direct instruction Use of direct instruction in teaching practice
Asking a large number of quick questions during the class in order to check that students understand the material?
8 .75
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Data analyses
First, mean scale scores were calculated in order to quantify the different componentsof learning to teach conceptions and teaching strategies. All total scores were trans-formed into a scale with a minimum score of one and a maximum score of five points.Second, Pearson correlations were calculated in order to explore the relationship withinand between teacher educators’ conceptions of learn to teach and teaching strategies.We applied the criteria of Cohen (1988) to interpret the strength of the correlationpatterns, in which r > .10 and < .30 is indicative for a weak, r >. 30 and < .50 for amoderate and r > .50 for a strong correlation. In a last step, multiple-stepwise regressionanalyses were calculated to explore the predictivity of teacher educators’ conceptionsof learning to teach and teaching strategies on the basis of personal and contextualfactors.
Results
Different perspectives on learning to teach
Table 3 provides an overview of the descriptive data and the interrelatedness of thescales. The significant internal correlations in the conceptions of teacher educatorsvary on average from .22 to .59 which mainly shows that the scales measure differentaspects of teacher educators’ conceptions with regard to learning to teach. The highercorrelations in the scales which measure specific conceptions with regard to learningactivities may be an indication that there is a degree of overlap with what the scalesmeasure. This may apply to a certain extent to the scales ‘pro-active broad use of thementor’ and ‘actively relating theory to practical experience’ as well as the scales‘looking for conceptual information independently’ and ‘developing ideas/visionthrough discussion’.
The results show a very high average score on the scale ‘developing awarenessunder external direction’. The teacher educators appeared, in general, to agree thatlearning to teach is primarily a learning process that ought to be seen by students as aprocess in which external direction is important. The low-standard deviation on thisscale shows that, compared to other conceptions, teacher educators differ little fromeach other in this regard. In the conceptions relating to cognitive and regulative activ-ities, we found very high average scores on the scales ‘pro-active broad use of thementor’ and ‘actively relating theory and practice’. Teacher educators in general agreeon the importance of external regulation and control within the learning to teach
Table 3. Mean scale scores, standard deviations and correlations between scales.
Scales M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
Conceptions of learning to teach1. Practising and testing 2.96 .512. Self-determined learning-to-teach 2.90 .65 .24*3. Develop. awareness under ext. 4.45 .39 −.02 −.164. Pro-active, broad use of the mentor 3.98 .51 .10 −.15 .32**5. Looking for conceptual information 3.72 .60 .06 .22* .28** .186. Actively relating T/P 4.26 .43 −.11 .02 .56** .26** .52**7. Develop. ideas/vision 3.61 .63 .04 .16 .27** .30** .59** .39**
process. Scales measuring conceptions of learning to teach, in which self-regulationand active knowledge construction are important issues to be strived for (respectively,the scales ‘looking for conceptual information independently’ and ‘developing ideas/vision through discussion’), have less high average scores. The higher standard devi-ations on these scales show that teacher educators differ more from each other withregard to these conceptions. The results suggest that the examined learning to teachconceptions of the teacher educators in this sample can be situated in between thestudent- and teacher-centred paradigm. Although individual variability is presentregarding these conceptions of learning to teach, the results indicate that teachereducators in general underline the importance of shared regulation of learning to teachprocesses. They are in favour of more self-directed learning pathways, but this seemsto have to go along with a strong emphasis on the steering role of the mentor andteacher educator in the learning to teach process.
Towards process-oriented teaching
Table 4 provides an overview of descriptive data and the interrelatedness of thescales measuring individual differences in teaching strategies. Almost all the scalesshow a positive statistical correlation with each other. The correlations vary between.23 and .51, which points to the fact that the different scales represent differentaspects of teaching. We found a rather high correlation between the scales ‘coopera-tive learning’ and ‘constructive learning environment’. A possible explanation forthis relationship is that there is an emphasis in both scales on achieving a learningenvironment in which student teachers can learn together and from each other. Wealso found high correlations between the scales ‘discovery-oriented learning’ and‘constructive learning environment’, which can be explained by the fact that in bothscales the emphasis is on enhancing self-regulation in student teacher learning.However, there is a difference between what the two scales measure, given that thescale ‘constructive learning environment’ also emphasises the more directing role ofthe teacher educator in the teaching process. The positive correlation between thescale ‘direct instruction’ and ‘process-oriented instruction’ can be explained by thefact that both scales emphasise the role of the teacher educator. The first scalemeasures the extent to which the teacher educator succeeds in encouraging self-regu-lation among student teachers, while the second scale is more concerned with theextent to which the teacher educator has control over their learning. The positivecorrelation observed between the scales ‘discovery-oriented learning’ and ‘differenti-ation’ seems to indicate that teacher educators who stimulate student teachers to usemore self-regulatory skills when learning from practice tend also to pay more atten-tion to individual differences in learning when supervising and supporting studentlearning.
We observed a high average score on the scale ‘tie-in with students’ perceptionand experience’ which indicates that teacher educators in general pay a lot of attentionto linking learning contents to student teachers’ prior knowledge and fields of interest.The relatively high average scores on the scales ‘process-oriented instruction’ and‘direct instruction’ indicate that, in their teaching, teacher educators not only placegreat emphasis on encouraging process-oriented learning, but also strongly direct this.The difference in the average scores on the scales ‘direct instruction’ and ‘discovery-oriented learning’ shows that teacher educators, in general, succeed in encouragingself-regulation among student teachers, but at the same time also put aspects of direct
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instruction into practice. Given the low average scores on the scales, teacher educatorsalso appear, in general, to have relatively little success in achieving discovery-orientedlearning and differentiation in practice. The results show that teacher educators’ teach-ing strategies have both student- and teacher-centred characteristics in common.Although individual variability is present within teacher educators’ strategies, theresults indicate that teacher educators succeed in activating their students throughteaching but have limited success in practice in getting student teachers to determinetheir learning processes for themselves. The correlation results should however becautiously interpreted. An in-between position between student- and teacher-centredteaching practice can be a response to specific learner needs, such as a lack of pres-ence of self-regulatory skills of student teachers. In addition, it can also refer to diffi-culties teacher educators have in translating principles of process-oriented teachinginto practice.
Between consistency and inconsistency
Pearson correlations were calculated to explore the relationship between scalesmeasuring conceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies of teacher educa-tors (Table 5). In line with theoretical expectations we sketched above, we did findconsistent relationships between likewise conceptions and teaching strategies.Teacher educators who are more successful in supporting discovery-oriented learningamong student teachers also lean more towards the more student-centred conceptions,stressing that students should learn to teach in a more self-regulated manner. In addi-tion, teacher educators who more strongly agree that student teachers should under-take more self-regulated learning activities in learning to teach, such as ‘looking forconceptual information independently’ and ‘developing ideas/vision through discus-sion’, also appear to be more successful in applying aspects of student-centred teach-ing, such as creating constructive learning environments, using students’ priorknowledge in teaching practice and working with cooperative learning groups.
Although the moderate correlation patterns between the likewise conceptions andstrategy scales are supporting the consistency hypothesis, we also found inconsisten-cies in the results of this study. The correlation between the scale ‘direct instruction’and ‘developing ideas, vision through discussion’ suggests that teacher educators whosupport the principles of more self-regulation and knowledge construction in their
Table 4. Mean scale scores, standard deviations and correlations between scales.
Scales M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
Teaching strategies1. Tie-in with students’ perception and
conceptions of student teacher learning, also use forms of direct instruction in theirteaching. This finding supports, on the one hand, former research results in which theone-to-one relationship between likewise conceptions and strategies has not beenfound (Murray and McDonald 1997). However, the findings may also suggest that tosupport self-regulatory skills of student teachers direct instruction activities can not betotally left out of the teacher educators’ repertoire of teaching strategies. This seemsespecially important when confronted with student teachers having few to none self-regulatory skills. On the other hand, this finding may also indicate the difficulty atboth the teacher and learner level to accomplish a complete student-focused teachingmodel in practice. Constraints at a personal level (e.g. required learning or teachingcompetencies) or contextual level (e.g. time or workload) can be put at stake and needto be further examined to understand this relationship between conceptions and strat-egies. This argument for the need for further research is also supported by the ratherlarge presence of weak to no correlation patterns between the scales measuringconceptions and strategies. It is clear from these results that the consistency hypothe-sis between teacher educators’ conceptions and strategies can only be partiallysupported.
Personal and contextual factors
In a final step, we tested the assumption as to whether differences in conceptions oflearning to teach and teaching strategies can be explained by teacher characteristicsand contextual factors. First, results of regression analyses revealed that the numberof years of teaching experience as a teacher educator or teaching experience ingeneral, positively predicted some student-centred learning to teach conceptions. Inparticular a positive effect was found between the number of years of teaching expe-rience as a teacher educator and the conception underlining the importance of devel-oping ideas and vision through discussion (β = .27, p < .01). Another positive effectwas found between the number of years of teaching experience in general and theconception stressing the importance of self-regulation in looking for conceptualinformation (β = .30, p < .01). On the one hand, these results indicate that the more
Table 5. Relationships between conceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies.
Conceptions of learning to teach
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Teaching strategiesTie-in with students’ perception and
experience teacher educators have with teaching and with teaching on the teachereducation degree course, the more they agree that student teachers ought to learn toteach in a more self-regulated and interactive manner. On the other hand, the resultsshow that although the number of years of teaching experience is related to theoccurrence of more student-centred learning to teach conceptions, no indicationswere found in this study that teacher educators with more teaching experience aremore successful in putting more student-centred teaching strategies into practice. Wecan infer from these findings that translating student-centred teaching strategies intopractice seems to not be consistently related to the amount of teaching experience.More experienced or less experienced teacher educators seem to have an equalchance of succeeding in realising student-focused teaching strategies. Given the lackof gender effects found in this study, it seems that in particular personal understand-ings or conceptions about learning to teach are more explanatory variables as to whyteacher educators teach the way they do. However, contextual factors also have anexplanatory value in this study. Regression analyses showed that the degree courseon which the teacher educator taught is related to the use of different teaching strate-gies. In particular it was indicated that kindergarten teacher educators made lessfrequent use of process-oriented teaching strategies (β = –.30, p < .01) in comparisonwith primary and lower secondary teacher educators.
Conclusions and discussion
In the present study, teacher educators’ conceptions of learning to teach and relatedstrategies were investigated. We expected to find a dimensional structure withinconceptions of learning to teach based upon former research of conceptions of studentteachers (Donche and Van Petegem 2005; Oosterheert, Vermunt, and Denessen 2002).In the study a multidimensional structure was found, indicating seven differentconceptions of learning to teach that can be assessed. Teacher educators were alsofound to considerably vary on these learning to teach conceptions. The results gener-ally showed that teacher educators’ conceptions are situated in between the student-and teacher-centred paradigm. In particular, scales measuring more self-regulatedlearning activities were moderately scored in comparison with scales in which theimportance for external regulation activities of teacher educators or mentors is under-lined. Although student-centred learning to teach conceptions were emphasised less inteacher educators’ conceptions, this does not mean that they have a predominant pref-erence for more teacher-centred teacher education.
We expected that teacher educators’ teaching strategies could be related to theassumed distinction between teacher- and student-centred educational paradigms(Samuelowicz and Bain 2001). In the study we identified by means of the TSTE ques-tionnaire seven different teaching strategies which to some extent could be situatedwithin the student- and teacher-centred paradigm. The results revealed that given thecurrent innovation policy about fostering process-oriented teacher education, teachereducators, in our sample, are less successful in enabling student teachers to learn toteach in a primarily self-regulated manner. The results show that teacher educators’teaching strategies have both student- and teacher-centred characteristics in common.
The expected sound interrelatedness between the teacher educators’ conceptionsof learning to teach and teaching strategies was only partially present. Results ofcorrelation analysis demonstrated moderate relationships between likewise concep-tions of learning to teach and teaching strategies which is to some extent comparable
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with former research on academics’ conceptions and strategies claiming the consis-tency hypothesis (Gow and Kember 1993; Kember and Kwan 2000; Lindblom-Ylänneet al. 2006; Prosser and Trigwell 1999). But the results of this study do not stronglysupport this hypothesis as inconsistencies and a lack of relationship were also found.In contrast to the above-mentioned studies we did not find a clear relationship betweenmore teacher-centred conceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies aimedat the transmission of knowledge. A part of the explanation may lay in the fact that inthe ILTP-TE scales the dimensionality of teacher-centredness is less captured withinthe present scales. In addition, the present study also showed that the relationshipbetween student-centred conceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies is notalways likewise. Teacher educators who exhibit more student-centred conceptions oflearning to teach also appeared to use more direct instruction. Therefore, some resultsare also in line with former studies in which the presence of inconsistencies or disjunc-tions in the level of teachers’ beliefs and practices has been reported (Fang 1996;Murray and McDonald 1997; Trigwell and Prosser 1996b). The occurrence of nocorrelation was also observed between some scales measuring conceptions and strat-egies. Therefore, we also found in this study support for the argument that the rela-tionship between specific teachers’ beliefs or thinking and actions can be ratherproblematic or in fact not present (Borko and Putnam 1996; Calderhead 1996; Fang1996). A possible explanation may be that translating conceptions into likewise teach-ing strategies and more in particular student focused teaching models may be difficultto achieve in practice if teachers have not yet mastered their new roles in the learningenvironment (Vermunt 2010). Not only personal constraints such as a lack of specificrequired teaching competencies, but also contextual constraints (e.g. time for peda-gogic development) may be important explanatory factors as to why consistencybetween likewise thoughts and actions is not always present. An alternative explana-tion may be that teacher educators’ teaching strategies may be a response to studentteachers’ learner needs. In the case of ‘negative friction’, it is possible that someteacher educators support student-centred teaching but can not put these principlesinto practice because they are confronted with student teachers who are more survival-oriented (Donche and Van Petegem 2005) or unregulated (Donche and Van Petegem2009). In order to enhance the self-regulatory skills of more unregulated student teach-ers and to generate more ‘positive friction’ in the teaching–learning environment(Vermunt and Verloop 1999), it still might be important to use, to some extent, directinstruction activities. However, further research is needed to examine this reciprocalrelationship between teaching strategies and learning strategies in teacher education.
In the case of the occurrence of inconsistencies between conceptions and strate-gies, in this study, we expected that possible explanations may be situated at the levelof personal and contextual factors. In line with former studies, we did find that teach-ing experience and discipline have an explanatory value in this regard (Beijaard et al.2000; Lindblom-Ylänne et al. 2006). Teacher characteristics, such as the amount ofteaching experience in general and experience in teacher education in particular, werefound to be predictors for learning to teach conceptions but were not found to bepredictive of teaching strategies. Teacher educators who have more years of teachingexperience put more emphasis on the importance of student-centred conceptions oflearning to teach, but do not put these principles into practice to a greater extent thantheir less experienced colleagues. An important question remains as to whether thiscan also be related to the quality of teaching experiences which were not taken intoaccount in this study.
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Other limitations of this study need to be acknowledged. First, the results in thisstudy are limited with respect to the size of the sample and other replication studiesare needed to further examine the external validity of the ILTP-TE and TSTE ques-tionnaires in other teacher education contexts. A larger sample study would also allowto further investigate in depth the construct validity of the scales by using confirma-tory factor analyses. Second, we used self-report questionnaires and this raises thequestion as to how far the statements about conceptions of learning to teach and teach-ing activities are representing in a rich way, how teacher educators, respectively, thinkabout and act in learning environments fostering the learning to teach process. It ispossible that more variance in teaching strategies can be mapped when also the levelof student teacher interactions (Wubbels and Brekelmans 1998) and differences incoaching and supervising (Bolhuis and Voeten 2001) are taken into account. Finally,future studies are needed to further examine in depth, factors at the personal andcontextual level that are assumed to have an explanatory value regarding to concep-tions and strategies of teachers (Van Petegem and Donche 2006).
Notwithstanding the limitations of this study we were able to demonstrate thatteacher educators differ in their conceptions of learning to teach and teaching strategies.Although the relationship between teacher educators’ likewise conceptions and strat-egies was only partially present, we did find in this study that some teaching strategiesapplied by teacher educators are related to specific conceptions of learning to teach.
The results of this study are not only important for theory but also for practice. Thedescribed questionnaires ILTP-TE and TSTE used in this study can be useful forfuture research, in particular, to map teacher educators’ conceptions of learning toteach strategies, especially in the context of educational or curricular reform towardsprocess-oriented teacher education. Readers can, upon request to the first author,obtain these questionnaires and are invited to use them for further research purposes(e.g. establishing external and cultural validity). For practice, administering thesequestionnaires to teacher educator teams involved in likewise educational reformsmay enhance reflection about what kind of conceptions of learning to teach are atstake or what kind of teaching strategies are generally undertaken. It may, on the onehand, also give answers as to why teachers educators (do not always) teach the waythey want to do. On the other hand, it can provide a more data-driven insight into whatteacher educator teams find important to strive for and how they foster learning toteach processes in their daily practice in teacher education.
Notes on contributorsVincent Donche is an assistant professor at the Institute of Education and Information Sciencesof the University of Antwerp. His research interests are based on the level of learning andteaching conceptions and related learning and teaching strategies, the development of learningpatterns, the impact of counselling interventions on the development of learning patterns inrelationship with other individual differences and the assessment of the quality of learning andteaching pattern instruments.
Peter Van Petegem is full professor at the Institute of Education and Information Scienceswhere he coordinates the research group EduBROn (www.Edubron.be) and the ExpertiseCenter for Higher Education (www.ua.ac.be/ECHO). He is experienced with quantitative,qualitative and mixed method research, focussing on evaluation research at micro-level(e.g. learning and teaching styles, authentic assessment), meso-level (e.g. school self evalu-ation, policy making capacities of schools) and macro-level (e.g. evaluation of educationalpolicies, international comparative research).
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