Complexity Science and Cohorts in Teacher Education

Autor: Gaalen Erickson, Steve Collins, Anthony Clarke, Anne M. Phelan
Rok vydání: 2005
Předmět:
Zdroj: Studying Teacher Education. 1:159-177
ISSN: 1742-5972
1742-5964
DOI: 10.1080/17425960500288333
Popis: In this paper we examine the nature of our self-study practices in an elementary teacher education cohort called CITE (Community and Inquiry in Teacher Education). We argue that self-study is not only important to our continued work in CITE but also a critical feature of professional practice in general. Two general questions frame our analysis: (1) What is significant about cohorts in teacher education? (2) How might complexity science inform our understanding of cohorts in particular and of teacher education programs in general? We argue in the paper that the use of a cohort-type structure in a teacher education program provided us with flexibility and potential for improvisation to address the perennial problems of program fragmentation. To better understand our own teaching and learning practices in this community setting, we sought an analytic framework that emphasized the importance of the learning potential of the collective as opposed to just the learning potential of the individual. We argue that...
Databáze: OpenAIRE