The professional community relates to the members of an activity system of teaching. There is an underlying assumption in a professional activity system that members of a professional community subscribe to the ideal of the activity system and commit themselves to it. However, multiple and competing goals often coexist within an activity setting, though some predominate (Grossman et al., 1999). An activity system of the school where teachers belonged may have a history by which its members established specific goals and outcomes which guided the actions within the school. Student teachers on teaching practice were joining an already existing community of teachers in the school system.
However, as novices, student teachers were also guided by their own goals and outcomes which they expected to achieve in the school system and needed the support from teachers in the school to achieve their goals. The achievement of student teachers’ goals partly depended on their relationships with other teachers (and the congruence of their goals) as well as the nature of relationships between the college system and the school system.
The relationships between student teachers and teachers in the school were important to bring about professional socialization of student teachers, a process by which new subjects become members of the community of practice and take up more roles within the profession (Merton, 1957). During the process individuals acquire values, attitudes, the interests, skills and knowledge-in short the culture current in the activity system to which they are, or seek to become members (Merton, 1957). By including values, attitudes, and interests, Merton (1957) indicated that becoming a teacher involves more than the simple acquisition of academic knowledge and the skills necessary to conduct lessons. The community in the professional activity system helps student teachers to attain some level of professional socialization through sharing professional, pedagogical and social information, collaborating with each other, supporting and mentoring each other, etc.
8.5.1 Relationship between the college and secondary schools
The findings from the study revealed evidence of no deliberate collaborative links between the college and secondary school systems. The college did not make efforts to establish collaborative relationships with schools where student teachers conducted teaching practice. The schools were not told of any professional or supportive roles they were supposed to play apart from providing accommodation to student teachers. A teaching practice coordinator pointed out:
No contracts are signed between the college and schools. It’s just a request and once schools indicate their willingness, students are sent (teaching practice coordinator).
The absence of collaborative partnership suggested that secondary schools had no professional obligation to play so that favourable professional socialization took place for student teachers so that they could experience productive teaching practice. In addition, the absence of collaborative partnership meant that schools may not have felt bound to provide necessary conditions in which student teachers could explore subtle elements of teaching and the school culture while on teaching practice.
Some student teachers expressed concerns about the lack of support by saying:
I find lesson planning and preparation difficult. This is so because to find specific objectives which will satisfy tutors is difficult. Again, tutors emphasize that there should be both low level and high level lesson objectives. Sometimes objectives for the lesson can both be low and high level but the student teacher is forced to balance the objectives which become difficult when no one is supporting you (student teacher).
I did not get any support from other teachers on lesson planning. The only people that supported me were fellow student teachers. I thought there was not anything new that fellow student teachers would offer me (student teacher).
requirements of the pupils in the classroom in the school system. Obviously, teachers in the school did not feel the obligation to support student teachers in various ways such as lesson planning, ensuring that they had manageable number of periods as well as ensuring that the numbers of pupils in their classrooms were right for teaching practice. The absence of collaborative partnership between college and secondary schools meant that competing or different goals for the college system and the school system stood in the way of productive experiences of student teachers. The college system’s goals remained that of training effective teachers whereas for the school system, the aim was the learning of pupils. Student teachers who were placed at the school were caught between these variations of goals within activity systems. This represented a gap between related activity systems in the school system and the college. Student teachers were based at the school and the school system largely dictated their activities. It was not surprising that the school system assigned ‘four consecutive periods’ to a student teacher where the supervisors expected that student teachers would only manage up to three periods a day, as explored earlier (see Section 8.2 on division of tasks).
Collaborative partnership is now the orthodoxy in terms of describing the appropriate relationship between schools and colleges in teacher education in countries such as United Kingdom and other parts of the world (see Hargreaves, 1995). Collaborative partnership promotes ‘mutual engagement’ as working in partnership has the potential for the student teacher to copy effective practices and avoid defective practice (Rogoff, 1990). This appeared to bring about smooth relations within the activity systems of teaching as well as teacher education programme but this seemed to be lacking in the case of the student teachers in this study.
8.5.2 Relationships between student teachers and teachers in school
The student teachers at Limbani secondary school felt that non-collegial relationships existed with teachers at the school and there were no mentoring responsibilities assigned to school teachers. Teachers in the school system seemed to form social networks which kept student teachers outside some activity settings. Student teachers were not told about some events even though their presence in the school meant that they were part of the school community. Some student teachers lamented:
Teachers are not very open to us. Sometimes they meet without briefing us what really is needed most especially when it comes to condoling with the bereaved (student teacher). There were two teachers who were bereaved and the teachers didn’t inform us properly the procedures they follow when condoling such people. This hindered our participation since we were not briefed (student teacher).
The relationships between student teachers and teachers in the school demonstrated that the teachers and student teachers did not create a productive learning community of sharing information. This might be blamed on the fact that the college and the school in the first place did not have collaborative relationships. Informal social networks between teachers and student teachers in the school were important for the proper socialization of student teachers since teachers in the school were experienced and could provide some information to student teachers on many aspects of the actuality of teaching as well as secondary school culture in general. According to the findings here, student teachers did not have productive interactions with the wider school life due to detached social relationships between student teachers and other school teachers.
In addition, one student teacher had the feeling that some teachers in the school doubted their level of ability in carrying out certain tasks. One student teacher was assigned responsibilities during the school’s final year’s graduation ceremony:
I was one of the members in the food committee. Old members were not happy as such they wanted us to fail but instead we performed very well such that everybody was happy including the headmistress was even overwhelmed by our performance (student teacher).
This demonstrated that student teachers and the other teachers in the school did not create conducive community of practice where student teachers were expected to learn from other teachers. It appeared that some members of the teaching community were not happy with student teachers taking administrative roles. In a way, teachers in the school system could be said to be objecting to the legitimate peripheral participation (Wenger, 1988) which implies the social and psychological situatedness of the activity of teaching practice. This might suggest that student teachers had tacit boundaries set for them within the operation of the school system which they may not have been aware of. This hindered their involvement in other aspects of the multifaceted actions of teaching in the course of undergoing teaching practice.
In some cases, such as the way teachers are trained in UK, school teachers are actively involved in student teachers’ professional learning during teaching practice to ensure that student teachers get the support and advice they need for their growth. It is for this reason that some schools appoint teachers who work closely with student teachers. Mentors are expected to be exemplary practitioners of teaching so that student teachers can observe and emulate good practice (see Section 3.3.1). Mentors or ‘cooperating teachers’ perceptions of their roles include helping student teachers develop appropriate competence in classroom management, lesson planning, and lesson delivery among others (O’Neal, 1983).
A ‘cooperating teacher’ was necessary in addressing a number of issues that student teachers faced in the school environment. However, in the study I observed that the role of ‘cooperating teacher’ had been abolished for the following reasons:
To a greater extent, the cooperating teachers have proved a disappointment as most of them disappear from the sight of student teachers. They don’t assist. From this year 2005, cooperating teachers have been phased out, due in part to fiscal hiccups but also to the reason stated earlier (teaching practice coordinator).
The observations were that ‘cooperating teachers’ did not actually perform any meaningful role regarding supporting student teachers. Cooper (1995) also found that some ‘cooperating teachers’ identified money as a source of incentive. However, Guyton (1987) found that ‘cooperating teachers’ wanted to work with student teachers because they believed that student teaching was important and felt they had something to offer and had a professional responsibility to prepare new teachers. It could be argued that ‘cooperating teachers’ could bridge the differences between the college and school systems as noted earlier. In that way, the ‘cooperating teacher’ would play mediating role in minimizing the tensions which student teachers faced in the school system. I have noted in Section 3.3.1 how the term ‘cooperating teacher evokes undesirable undertones in some instances.
I noted that some teachers who had in previous years accepted to be ‘cooperating teachers’ were not appropriately skilled to assist student teachers. The teaching practice coordinator had this to say about cooperating teachers:
From my knowledge, cooperating teachers were never trained in a special way to help student teachers. It is assumed that since they were in the field they were knowledgeable and would assist the student teachers (teaching practice coordinator).
This might be blamed for the lack of assistance from cooperating teachers to student teachers. It would not be expected to gain any significant help from teachers who did not have appropriate skills for the role of cooperating teacher. The training of cooperating teachers seemed to be an effective way of preparing them for the mentor role. As a result of training, cooperating teachers may value their clinical-supervision expertise, improve their supervisory skills, feel more comfortable as supervisors, and may be more eager to accept student teachers and support them in many ways possible (O’Neal, 1983).
In the study I also found that the student teachers’ system did not regard the role of ‘cooperating teacher’ as unwanted even though it had been phased out by the college. One student teacher pointed out:
Cooperating teacher should be the most important person at the school for the student teacher. They know how to teach and can offer us proper support on how to go about it in the school. One thing is they must be qualified teachers and not the unqualified ones. We should observe them for a time and plan lessons together. They should also help in supervision because they
are in the school and understand all the problems that the school has. They would be more sensitive than the college supervisors as they know the resource availability better (student teacher).
This was viewed as contradicting what the college supervisors believed. The absence of ‘cooperating teachers’ meant that student teachers had to mostly work in detachment or ‘disengaged professional relationships’ (see Chapter Nine for a substantive discussion on disengaged relationship) to decide on what instruction worked, what standard of pupil work was acceptable, and what additional knowledge, skills, or insights would best serve them and pupils (Guyton, 1987).
I found that student teachers experienced a number of challenges as a result of the absence of cooperating teachers. Student teachers identified a number of threatening situations and these clustered around the following areas:
Teaching techniques in order to improve for the better; capabilities of pupils in class; information on pupils with special needs; information concerning school; formulation of objectives and how some topics can be taught ( student teachers).
The activity setting of teaching practice appeared to be threatening for student teachers. The student teachers were supposed to handle these challenges in private without the support of cooperating teachers or other teachers in the school. This meant that teaching was presented to them as private and individualistic activity. It would also be necessary to add that student teachers’ activity system lacked the support that would help in the attainment of their goals of developing as teachers within actual classrooms in secondary school systems. As noted from the sentiments of the student teachers, the absence of cooperating teachers reduces chances of student teachers to find appropriate solutions to some of the school related concerns which they faced.