developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs

Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 1020–1041

Developing fundamental principles for teacher educationprograms and practices

Fred Korthagena,�, John Loughranb, Tom Russellc

aVrije Universiteit, Amsterdam & Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80127, 3508 TC Utrecht, The NetherlandsbMonash University, AustraliacQueen’s University, Canada

Abstract

Traditional approaches to teacher education are increasingly critiqued for their limited relationship to student teachers’

needs and for their meager impact on practice. Many pleas are heard for a radical new and effective pedagogy of teacher

education in which theory and practice are linked effectively. Although various attempts to restructure teacher education

have been published, no coherent body of knowledge exists about central principles underlying teacher education

programs that are responsive to the expectations, needs and practices of student teachers. By analyzing effective features of

programs in Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, this study contributes an initial framework of seven fundamental

principles to guide the development of responsive teacher education programs that make a difference.

r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Pedagogy of teacher education; Theory–practice-relationship; Teacher educators

1. Introduction

The field of teacher education is recognized hereas one whose problems have been generally wellknown since the turn of the centuryy [yet] thetroublesome circumstances remain basically un-changed (Lanier & Little, 1986, p. 527).

As Lanier and Little (1986) indicate, teachereducation has long been characterized as a field ofstudy that is of little importance to the academy.They highlighted the point that teacher educatorsthemselves were often not even a part of research

conducted into their work. This situation graduallychanged through the 1990s as the:

voices of university researchers, of law makers,and of policy analysts, speaking about whatteacher educators do or fail to doy [began to bechallenged by] teacher educators discussing theirown work [as] they describe their aspirations forthe teachers they teach, their methods forrealizing their aspirations, [and] the conceptsand theories that ground these methods (Fen-stermacher, 1997, p. viii).

In this new century, teacher education is beginningto be better recognized and valued as an object ofacademic research. There is a certain urgency forthis research on teacher education to be carried out

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�Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 30 2710692;

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E-mail address: [email protected] (F. Korthagen).

as, for several reasons, teacher education finds itselfin a difficult position. Consider the following threepoints:

First, complaints from graduates of teachereducation programs, school administrators, parentsand politicians about the irrelevance of teacherpreparation for the reality of everyday practicein schools have generated pressures to rethinkboth the structure and the practices of teachereducation (Barone, Berliner, Blanchard, Casanova,& McGowan, 1996; Sandlin, Young, & Karge,1992). In fact, as Bullough and Gitlin (2001) note,the teacher education program in which they ‘‘firstworked together was disjointed, fragmented andconfusing [for] methods courses were disconnectedfrom curriculum courses, and both were discon-nected from practice teaching’’ (p. 1). Further, asBen-Peretz (1995) emphasized, traditional ap-proaches to teacher education are generally char-acterized by a strong emphasis on theory that is‘‘transferred’’ to teachers in the form of lectures onpsychology, sociology, and general education. Intraditional models of teacher education, teachingpractice is usually seen as the opportunity to applypreviously learned theories (Carlson, 1999; Clandi-nin, 1995) and lecturing appears to be viewed as anappropriate form of teaching about teaching; thistheory-into-practice view of teacher education isincreasingly being challenged for its many limita-tions and inadequacies.

Second, during the final decades of the 20thcentury, more and more research presented evidencethat there were reasonable grounds for some of thecomplaints about teacher education. A strand ofresearch studies documented the phenomenon ofthe reality shock faced by new teachers: not only didgraduates of teacher education appear to experiencesevere problems during their first period in theprofession (Veenman, 1984), but also a ‘‘washing-out’’ effect of insights gained during teacherpreparation was inferred, raising doubts aboutwhether the insights from teacher education hadactually been achieved (Cole & Knowles, 1993;Zeichner & Tabachnick, 1981). Teachers appearedto go through a distinct attitudinal shift, generallycreating an adjustment to traditional ways ofteaching (Muller-Fohrbrodt, Cloetta, & Dann,1978) and a dislike for reflection and theoreticaldepth (Cole, 1997). As Wideen, Mayer-Smith, andMoon (1998) concluded, the transfer from theorypresented during teacher education to practice inschools is often meager and teacher education

practices are often counterproductive to teacherlearning.

Third, new conceptions of learning and teachingdeveloped, such as constructivist views (Fosnot,1996; Sigel & Cocking, 1977), and new insights intothe nature of knowledge started to surface, such asviews of knowledge as situated (Brown, Collins, &Duguid, 1989), strongly interwoven with experienceand emotion (Cobb & Bowers, 1999; Damasio,1994). Importantly, these views contrast starklywith traditional practices in teacher education, thevery same practices that were supposed to prepareteachers for new approaches to learning andteaching. In order to change educational practices,it is necessary to break the circle of traditionallytrained teachers who teach in a traditional manner(Stofflett & Stoddart, 1994). This represents a majorchallenge for teacher educators and researchers.

Late in the 20th century, a search for new ways ofpreparing teachers emerged. For example, one couldobserve a rise in the number of alternative certifica-tion programs (which often originated from theproblem of teacher shortages) and a trend to createprograms that were closely linked to professionaldevelopment schools (Bullough & Kauchak, 1997;Darling-Hammond, 1994). In such attempts torestructure teacher education, an emphasis onpractice instead of theory came to the fore. It isnoteworthy that in these situations, an inversion ofthe previous problem of reality shock oftenoccurred: teacher education seemed to boil downto learning the tricks of the trade, without muchdeepening through theory. This meant that a basicproblem was still not being addressed adequately,much less solved, namely, how to connect theoryand practice in such a way that teachers would beable to handle the problems of everyday teachingthrough theory-guided action.

Ashton (1996) appealed for a search for a radicalnew and effective pedagogy of teacher education.During the last decade, this has been a major issuein teacher education in many countries. Readingaccounts such as Tom (1997) may even lead teachereducators to believe that we are already working onthe issue, as some teacher educators have publishedbooks focusing on new pedagogies of teachereducation (for example, Bullough & Gitlin, 2001;Korthagen, Kessels, Koster, Lagerwerf, & Wubbels,2001; LaBoskey, 1994; Loughran, 2006; Loughran& Russell, 1997; Richardson, 1997; Segall, 2002)and issues concerning practices in teacher educationare now regular topics at conferences on teaching

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and teacher education. However, for a number ofreasons, these positive developments fall short ofaddressing some of the perennial and persistentdilemmas of teacher education.

As the report of the AERA Panel on Researchand Teacher Education (Cochran-Smith & Zeich-ner, 2005) has stressed, complex methodologicalissues are associated with attempts to establish anempirical basis for effective teacher education.Experimental designs are often impossible, as thenumber of variables involved is large and thevariables are hard to control. Claims about whatworks often lack sufficient empirical support. Morefundamentally, our knowledge concerning teachereducation practices shows a gap between theory andpractice. Every educator knows that even if we hadsubstantial empirical knowledge from research, thisknowledge could not simply be applied to concretecircumstances in specific institutions, such as situa-tions with large student enrollments. Indeed, inthinking about fundamental change in the pedagogyof teacher education, there is a risk of making thesame mistake as in preparing teachers: innovatorsmay try to restructure teacher education either onthe basis of research focusing on isolated issues(a research-based approach) or on the basis ofpractical circumstances within teacher educationinstitutes (a practice-oriented approach). Again, thebasic problem persists and begs the question: Can

we integrate these two perspectives to arrive at a

pedagogy of teacher education that is both empiri-

cally based and practically oriented? This paperaddresses this problem by constructing the basis of apedagogy of teacher education in the form offundamental principles for teacher education pro-grams and practices.

In order to do this, we first describe our approachto conducting this study and then provide a briefoverview of features of three teacher educationprograms embedded in institutional contexts onthree continents. By drawing from three ongoingcases of specific programs in which faculty are, orhave been, trying to reconsider the nature of teachereducation, we attempt to link theoretical insightsabout the professional development of teachers, onthe one hand, with practice in teacher education, onthe other. From our case studies, we have extractedseven fundamental principles for guiding program

development and change, and we connect theseprinciples with the research literature. This impliesthat, in carrying out our case studies, we haveextrapolated principles such as learning from

experience and reflection, which are now central tomuch thinking about teachers’ professional devel-opment, to our own development as teachereducators and researchers.

2. Design of the study

The central research question driving our study is:What central principles shape teacher education

programs and practices in ways that are responsive

to the expectations, needs and practices of teacher

educators and student teachers? Our search forresponses to this question was driven by an under-lying concern for teacher education to be mean-ingful and valuable for student teachers and teachereducators alike. Hence ecological validity was animportant criterion that shaped our study. Itrequired us to build our study on realistic examplesfrom efforts to improve teacher education. More-over, we suggest that the development of a sharedprofessional language among teacher educators andresearchers (Loughran, 2006) is a prerequisite fordeveloping a knowledge base on which to buildteacher education practices in different settings andcountries. Thus it seemed important for us to movebeyond specific contexts and cultures to the cross-cultural approach adopted for this study.

Three cases from different continents wereanalyzed: programs at the IVLOS Institute ofEducation at Utrecht University, The Netherlands,at the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University,Canada and at the Faculty of Education at MonashUniversity, Australia. By analyzing programs atwhich the authors work, we were able to provideinsider perspectives. The three programs lendthemselves to comparison because they sharegeneral structures. In all three, the end-on model(post-graduate teacher preparation) has been themajor program structure for a considerable periodof time. While there have been minor variations inthe structure of these programs over time, all threeshare the familiar organizational features of curri-culum method subjects and educational founda-tional subjects, with school teaching experience(practicum) constructed as the real world site forapplying ‘‘university education to school teachingpractice.’’ In many ways then, each of theseprograms carries the stereotypical structure of atraditional teacher education program that hasattracted so much scrutiny and criticism in recentyears. Hence, the fact that the research programunderpinning this paper is drawn from such

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program structures offers real opportunities forabstracting these principles to teacher educationmore generally.

All three programs have been the objects of manyprevious research studies. We elected not to collectnew raw data, but to carry out a meta-analyis ofthese documented research studies (Brouwer &Korthagen, 2005; Hermans, Creton, & Korthagen,1993; Kessels & Korthagen, 1996; Koetsier &Wubbels, 1995; Koetsier, Wubbels, & Korthagen,1997; Korthagen, 1985; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999;Korthagen & Russell, 1995; Korthagen et al., 2001;Loughran, 1996, 1997, 2002; Loughran & Russell,1997; Northfield & Gunstone, 1983, 1997; Russell,1995, 2002; Upitis, 2000; Vedder, 1984; Vedder &Bannink, 1987). We also used different kinds ofprogram documents in order to extract ongoingprinciples and features underlying the programs.The criteria for including a principle were:

1. that on the basis of the materials under study, itwas evident that the staff of the teacher educationprogram consider the principle to be fundamen-tal, in the sense that without this principle theprogram would lose its essential nature;

2. that the principle could not be considered as self-evident (such as ‘‘having students study text-books’’) or in any sense ‘‘normal.’’ Rather, theprinciple should differentiate the approach fol-lowed in the program from several others in theworld;

3. that the principle could be recognized in manypractices throughout the entire program.

While searching for these underlying principles,we also focused on paradigmatic examples (a termused by Freudenthal, 1978) of good practice, i.e.,program elements that are representative of severalof the important characteristics of a program. Whenwe present our findings below, these paradigmaticexamples help to clarify and support the principleswe derived from the three cases in this paper. Thus,for each principle, we describe a paradigmaticexample to allow the reader to understand morefully the concrete meaning of the principles and tocheck their ecological validity. Moreover, we believethe examples are helpful in moving beyond theindividual context of the cases to a broader moregeneralizable situation. In this respect we follow theguideline of naturalistic generalizability (Stake &Trumbull, 1982), whereby rich descriptions ofcontexts are crucial so that others can draw

analogies to their own situations (see also Steven-son, 1996). In addition, we wish to contribute towhat Lather (1991) calls catalytic validity, i.e., thedegree to which the research can lead to transfor-mations of practice (see also Zeichner & Noffke,2001).

Through ongoing framing and reframing (Schon,1983) of our situations, through exchanges of e-mail, face-to-face meetings, and workshops andconference presentations, we challenged each otherto sharpen assumptions and present evidence for theprinciples that we derived, grounded in the casesand in theoretical frameworks in the professionalliterature (based on the notion of dialogic validity,Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 1994). This procedureincluded weighting the credibility of alternativeinterpretations and considering patterns in the cases(pattern matching, Merriam, 1998).

Our methodology conforms to familiar ap-proaches to teacher research (Cochran-Smith &Lytle, 1993; Zeichner & Gore, 1995) and self-study(Hamilton, 1998; LaBoskey, 2004), i.e., types ofresearch in which analyses of the tensions, dilemmasand problems of practice (Berry, 2004) directlyinfluence the improvement of this practice. Henceour approach draws on notions of reflective practice(Bode, 1940; Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Dewey,1933; Schon, 1983, 1987), but it also extends someof the initial approaches to individual knowledge ofteaching about teaching that were developedthrough the reflective practice movement of the late1980s and early 1990s (e.g., Calderhead & Gates,1993; Clift, Houston, & Pugach, 1990; Grimmett &Erickson, 1988; Osterman & Kottkamp, 1993). Weare therefore purposefully attempting to push thisknowledge base beyond the individual so that ashared language of practice is more accessible andmore directly applicable across contexts and there-fore to teacher education programs more generally.

One final measure also strengthened our study.We did not carry out our task as an isolated groupof three teacher educators from three different partsof the world, but we have broadened our study, firstby means of an interactive symposium at the 2001meeting of AERA, and secondly, by creating a web-site on which questions collected from the sympo-sium audience formed the basis of an on-goingdiscussion. This paper seeks to extend the discussionto the broader AERA community and to begin tocreate a basis for an understanding of the value ofconsidering teacher education as being constructedon foundations of learning to teach in ways that


might be articulated through what we have come toterm principles of practice.

3. General description of the programs and program

change

In this section, we briefly outline the generalfeatures of the three programs, as well as trends inchanges within these programs.

At Queen’s University in Canada, the traditionalnature and timing of the practicum was challengedby introducing an early extended practicum thatinitially spanned 14 of the first 16 weeks that makeup the first term (Fall) and with the practicumbeginning on the first day of the school year.Although the practicum now begins 4 weeks into theschool year, candidates continue to be placed incohorts (generally 4–10 per school) and supervisedby a Faculty Liaison who works across all subjectsand grade levels. This major change in structure wasintended to shift the focus of professional develop-ment from learning in university classrooms tolearning from firsthand experience. Upitis (2000)provides a detailed account of the rationales forprogram consequences and the issues that arose inthe first year.

Among faculty, the change in program structurehas challenged two assumptions that were em-bedded in the structure followed for almost 30years and virtually taken for granted:

1. Those learning to teach can readily translatewhat they are told into practice.

2. Supervision of those learning to teach shouldfocus on the subject being taught rather than onthe overall process of professional learning.

The structural changes in the program have paidrich and complex dividends by highlighting andfocusing attention on how teacher educators thinkabout their work. No one publicly anticipated theextent to which changes in structure would generateintense pressures on individuals’ longstanding ped-agogical practices. The pressure on professionalbelief systems followed the pressure on practices,and several basic questions continue to serve aspoints of on-going discussion among those whoteach in the program:

1. How, if at all, should one’s teaching change whenteacher candidates have much greater depth ofteaching experience?

2. Is it appropriate for secondary candidates to besupervised by individuals who are not experts inthe subject the candidate is teaching?

At Utrecht University in the Netherlands, theteacher preparation program has been developed inclose cooperation with school administrators andmentor teachers and is built around two mainteaching practice periods. The first is a 4-monthperiod in which the student teachers go to theschools in closely collaborating triads and graduallystart to teach whole classes. Regularly, they comeback to the institute for group discussions andinquiry about their teaching and reflection on theirpractice. After a 2-month period at the institute,devoted to workshops on specific educational issues,further reflection, a small research project andtheory based on the experiences in the teachingpractice period, the Final Individual TeachingPractice Period begins. During 4 months the studentteacher gains full responsibility for several classesand is supervised at a distance by the mentorteacher, who does not visit the lessons. This meansthat the supervision draws heavily on the student’sexperiences and reflections.

The Utrecht program has seen gradual changesover the last two decades, as more and moreprogram elements were improved, often as a resultof research into their effectiveness. However, theunderlying rationale has remained the same, whichis that it is important in teacher education tocontinuously commute between practice and theory(for details, see Korthagen et al., 2001). Reflection isseen as the essential tool for linking practice andtheory, and from the very start of the program thereis strong focus on systematic reflection. This meansnot only that the student teachers are stimulated toreflect because their supervisors continuously askthem stimulating questions, but also that consider-able emphasis is put on learning how to reflectin a structured manner, on your own or togetherwith peers.

More recently, new program structures havebeen introduced, alongside the original program,especially programs in which people from otherprofessions wanting to become teachers receivetailor-made guidance. As these new programs havenot yet been the objects of empirical research, we donot include them in this study.

At Monash University in Australia, the tradi-tional Graduate Diploma of Education (a 1-yearend-on course) has been supplemented by the


introduction of double-degree programs (B.A./B.Ed. and B.Sc./B.Ed.). An economic need torationalize teaching across the traditional 1-yearend-on program and the double-degree programsmeant that less attention was paid to the reasons forthe specific structures of these programs and to theparticular needs of the student teachers within eachprogram. Student teachers came to be viewed as thesame, regardless of program enrollment. Rationali-zation pressures have severed earlier links betweenresearch on teaching and on learning about teach-ing, on the one hand, and the program’s structureand purpose, on the other. Where once decisionsabout program structure were based on under-standings of teaching and learning about teachingthat were responsive to the needs of studentteachers, and where once the research and practicewere supported in meaningful and valuable ways,teacher educators began to retreat to the safety oftheir own classrooms, a response that many teachereducators will no doubt recognize. This retreat intothe private world of the classroom comes at a cost,as teacher educators’ concerns for their personalgroups of student teachers overshadow the programas a whole. Thus program coherence is easilydiminished as the reasons for particular organiza-tional and pedagogical structures tend to beforgotten and an institutional amnesia develops.

The contexts of these three programs sharesimilarities to many others around the world andthus we believe that our analysis of these three casesallows us to arrive at principles applicable to othercontexts. On the other hand, the three cases arespecial in the sense that they have been documentedand researched for many years, offering us solidground for analyzing the cases. Moreover, in allthree cases the issue of learning from practice hasbeen a central point of attention for many years.The teacher educators in the three programs sharethe assertion that one does not learn throughexperience, but through reflection on experienceand through interaction with others. Hence, forboth the educators’ teaching and the studentteachers’ learning, reflection and intercollegiallysupported learning are viewed as important corner-stones of practice.

This emphasis on reflection and intercollegiallysupported learning expresses a process view oflearning and knowledge, not a product view ofknowledge. Theory added to student teachers’reflections is built as much as possible around theirexperiences, questions and concerns. Moreover,

much of the theory is not so much of a conceptualnature, but is tailored to the specific situation underconsideration and has the characteristics of phron-

esis (Kessels & Korthagen, 1996), which means thatit focuses on developing awareness of thosecharacteristics of specific types of situations thatare important to the question of how to act in suchsituations. Phronesis can be seen as the opposite ofepisteme, which is generalized knowledge aboutmany situations and which aims at understanding

these situations. Phronesis involves awareness offactors that are not of a solely cognitive nature: itimplies sensitivity to the feelings of the participantsin the situation and to relational aspects, and itimplies a commitment to certain values embedded inthe situation. Phronesis is thus relevant both to theteacher educators’ practices and to the practices oftheir student teachers. This implies a synergy ofteaching and learning that is crucial to our under-standing of teacher education and a foundationalaspect of the principles that we outline in the nextsection.

4. Principles for change in teacher education

programs and practices

From our ongoing analyses of the three cases ofpre-service teacher education and our three-wayconversations about the interpretation of thesecases, we have constructed seven principles ofstudent teacher learning and program change inteacher education that we see as fundamental. Atthe heart of the intention of reflective practice is thedevelopment of the role of experience in pre-serviceteacher education as a central plank of all threeprograms considered in this study and, as such,learning from experience is critical in shaping thefollowing principles. Below we describe theseprinciples and illustrate them with examples frompractice, translating these paradigmatic examplesinto vignettes.

Principle 1: Learning about teaching involves

continuously conflicting and competing demands

Teacher education is inevitably inadequate(Northfield & Gunstone, 1997) and cannot fullyprepare teachers for their entire careers. Thissuggests to us that teacher preparation needs tofocus on how to learn from experience and on howto build professional knowledge. In so doing, thereis a need to respond to a range of conflicting and


competing demands. The following vignette illus-trates how these competing demands can be mean-ingfully used to help student teachers learn fromtheir experiences in ways that might help to shapetheir thinking about their teaching. It is an excerptfrom a reflective report by two student teachers atMonash University.

In EDF 3002 [a third-year subject], we formsmall teams [of three or four student teachers] toteach something to our peers for about 45minand it is video-taped. We are responsible for de-briefing that experience, getting written feedbackfrom the class and then, after watching the video,writing up what we learnt through the experi-ence.

In my team, we decided to do some group work. Ithought from the start that our lesson wouldengage the class, promote collaborative thinkingand point out new ways of looking at the issue ofcloning. By each of us moderating a group, I feltwe would be able to keep people on track andproduce a more meaningful contribution foreveryone. I am now a little concerned that werestricted our learners too much through ourconstant presence—I mean how much structureis too much?

We wanted to do group work because of whatthe group did in last week’s class. In their groupwork they just walked from group to group in away which I found unhelpful because it seemedsuperficial and they didn’t really question us andwhen we did it was just, ‘‘how are you going’’ andof course we replied, ‘‘OK.’’ I thought, ‘‘How canyou control what groups are talking about if youonly spend a couple of minutes with them?’’

While I listened in my group last week I didn’tcontribute so I wanted my group this week tovoice an opinion regardless and if we were ineach group then we could control the discussionand get everyone to talk and learn what wewanted them to learn. However, the discussion atthe end left me wondering whether anything hadactually been learnt by the learners. Was whatoccurred a group sharing of information andknowledge on different points of view on cloning,or was it just a superficial glossing over? So forthe moment I am still pondering what constitutesgood and bad learning and teaching (Extractsfrom reflective report by Angela and Michael,Monash University).

This vignette highlights the value of studentsstruggling with the need to simultaneously be bothlearners of learning and learners of teaching so thatthey come to better understand not only how aparticular teaching approach influences their learn-ing, but also how that teaching was constructed andperformed. Clearly, what they experience as learnersof teaching dramatically shapes their views ofpractice. Therefore, modeling approaches thatcreate opportunities for student teachers to becognizant of their learning about learning and theirlearning about teaching need continually to be madeexplicit.

Similarly, a student teacher’s learning (howpowerful, useful, and meaningful it is to them)and its relationship to the teaching that created (orinhibited) that learning need to be specifically linkedto the learning of their students when they are in therole of teacher. For although student teachers maynot have experienced meaningful learning when aparticular teaching approach was used, they maywell believe that their students will experience itdifferently when they are the teacher. This waspointed out by Lortie (1975) as the apprenticeshipof observation. Hence student teachers may sub-consciously discount their own learning experienceswhen they become the teacher and fail to see thattheir students’ experiences as learners in a particularsituation may well be the same as what theyexperienced under comparable circumstances. Al-ternatively, they may attempt to do somethingabout it and assume that by making easy changesin teaching, changes in learning will naturallyfollow:

One thing I remember when I was a student inclass was that it had always looked so mucheasier when someone else was doing ity Teach-ing is a lot more complex than standing out thefront talkingy I need to listen to my students(Denise, post-teaching practicum response, Mon-ash University).

When a student teacher such as Denise develops thisinsight, the next competing demand she mayencounter is that between her wish to really listento the students and the need to keep control over theentire classroom. She will only learn how to dealwith this dilemma if she gets sufficient relevantexperiences, both as a learner and as a teacher, andif, in relation to these experiences, the teachereducator demonstrates alternative perspectives andapproaches to practice.


In sum, the development of practice in light ofcompeting demands requires an approach thatrevolves around the need to create meaningfulcollaboration in learning and teaching, collabora-tion of peers and collaboration of teacher educatorsand student teachers. Teacher education practicesthat support the search for ‘‘the recipe’’ for how toteach or that make it appear as though teaching issimple and unproblematic reduce the impact of theconflicting demands associated with learning toteach. Consequently, not paying attention to theassertion above may lead to teacher educationpractices that inadvertently encourage studentteachers to search for the right way to deliverinformation in spite of their experiences to thecontrary. Helping student teachers recognize andrespond to the competing demands in their learningto teach is one way of helping them to learn inmeaningful ways through experience. In traditional‘theory-into-practice’ approaches to teacher educa-tion this seems to have been overlooked and it maywell explain the phenomenon of the reality shock ingraduates. For if—as a teacher education student—you start to believe that teaching is about translat-ing theory into practice in a direct manner, theconfrontation with the complexities of practice isshocking. Beginning teachers very soon discoverthat they are not the only ones struggling so muchwith everyday problems in their classrooms. AsElliot (1991) explains, the only way out of thefeeling of always falling short is to adapt to thecommon habit of teachers to consider teachereducation too theoretical and useless. Then theycan no longer be ‘blamed’ for not functioningaccording to the theoretical insights. Elliot (1991,p. 47) concludes:

The perceived gap between theory and practiceoriginates not so much from demonstrable mis-matches between ideal and practice but from theexperience of being held accountable for them.

This also clarifies how the second principle is linkedto the problems stated in our introductory section.

Principle 2: Learning about teaching requires a view

of knowledge as a subject to be created rather than as

a created subject

The doctrine that teaching is telling has deeplyinfluenced both teachers and teacher educators. Theidea that teachers are to be taught the results ofresearch carried out by researchers (who are not

seen as teachers) helps to account for the wide-spread sense of irrelevance of courses in schools ofeducation (Russell, 1999, p. 234). It also promotesthe conviction that experience is largely irrelevant tolearning and that experience actually hampers thedevelopment of more effective ways of learning andteaching in schools. All three of our cases showattempts to develop a more process-oriented view ofknowledge and to break with traditional ways tointroduce theory into teacher education programs.The cases clarify that what is important is not only achange in the choice of theory that is relevant toteachers, but also a change in the nature of theory inteacher education and in the way it is developed inteachers. As Freudenthal (1978) states, the tradi-tional view is one of ‘‘knowledge as a createdsubject’’ (p. 72), that is, created by others. Freu-denthal advocates a view of knowledge as a subjectto be created by the learners themselves, by aprocess of guided reinvention. For teacher educa-tion this has at least three advantages.

1. The kind of theory resulting from studentteachers’ own reflections on practical problemsis much more linked to their own situations andconcerns, and thus has much greater emotionalsignificance for them.

2. Student teachers get used to the process oflearning to develop such knowledge, whichprovides them with a capacity for ongoingprofessional growth during their careers asteachers.

3. In this way teachers are prepared to take adifferent approach to theory in their teaching ofstudents in schools.

This second principle for the pedagogy of teachereducation lies at the heart of what it means to teachthe students, and not the curriculum principle 3). Itsconsequence is that teacher educators shouldactively create situations that elicit the wish forself-directed theory building in their students.Moreover, teacher educators must be able to fostergroup processes in which student teachers togetherwork on the creation of their own theories ofteaching, for example, through intercollegiallysupported learning (see principle 5).

An example of a representative program elementis the one-to-one (Vedder, 1984). It is part ofthe Utrecht undergraduate orientation coursethat prepares students interested in following thepost-graduate teacher education program. It has


been developed in response to the problem thatteaching a whole class on a regular basis appears tobe a complex experience for beginning studentteachers, an experience that tends to foster concernsfor survival without the atmosphere of safetynecessary to a balanced learning process. Moreover,during periods of classroom teaching, studentteachers rapidly begin to focus on classroommanagement rather than on the learning of theirstudents. This is why the first teaching practiceperiod has been simplified as follows.

Each prospective teacher gives a one-hour lessonto one high school student once a week for eightweeks. Neither the university supervisor nor thecooperating teacher is present during the actualone-to-one lessons, but there are supervisionsessions and seminar meetings during the one-to-one period. The lessons are audio-recorded,and are subsequently the object of detailedreflection by the student teacher. This reflectionis structured by means of the ALACT model(named after the first letters of the five phases, seeKorthagen et al., 2001 and Fig. 1).

For the one-to-one teaching experience, thephases of the ALACT model are translated intostandard questions, which are addressed by thestudent in a personal logbook. These includesuch questions as:

1. What did you expect and how did you preparefor it? (phase 4 of the ALACT model)

2. What actually happened? (start of phase 2)

3. Choose some episodes from the tape and describewhat you did and what the student did, what youthought and felt, and what you think the studentthought and felt, and how these aspects influ-enced each other (concretizing phase 2).

4. Try to derive conclusions from this (phase 3).5. Formulate your intentions for the next lesson

(phase 4).

The third question is often the most crucial one,as it focuses on the details of the lesson.During the one-to-one period, the studentteachers form pairs. Of the eight one-to-onelessons, four are discussed by the studentteachers in these pairs, and four lessons arediscussed by the pair and the supervising teachereducator. The university supervisor can thusoffer small theoretical notions fitting in with theprocess the student teacher is going through(phronesis). After both types of discussion thestudent teacher writes a report with the mostimportant conclusions.Vedder (1984), who studied the effects of the one-to-one arrangement, distinguishes two maintypes of effect. The first has to do with thedevelopment of practical skills, which appears tobe promoted by the link that has been createdbetween theory and practice. The second isrelated to the promotion of reflection. A majoradvantage of the one-to-one arrangement ap-pears to be that it focuses the student teacher’sattention on the learning process of a singlestudent, instead of on the issue of maintainingclassroom order (Vedder & Bannink, 1987,p. 10). At the same time, the student teachersappear to become aware of their own learningprocesses, as documented in their logbooks. (Thisis a specific point of attention at the end of theone-to-one period.)A general finding is that by listening to the audio-recordings, the student teachers rapidly find outthat they failed to listen to what the student wassaying, or started an explanation before theproblem was clear to the student. As one of theUtrecht student teachers put it: ‘‘The one-to-onecaused a shift in my thinking about teaching,from a teacher perspective to a student perspec-tive.’’ This quote is representative for the learningprocesses of most student teachers in the one-to-one. However, there also appear to be consider-able differences between student teachers in whatis learnt during such a one-to-one arrangement.

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Trial

Action

Looking back onthe action

Awareness ofessential aspects

5

1

4

3

2

Creating alternativemethods of action

Fig. 1. The ALACT model describing the intended process of

reflection.

F. Korthagen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 1020–10411028

To mention some examples, one student teacherfocused on the lack of self-confidence in thestudent she worked with, and started a search forways of improving the child’s self-image, whileanother student teacher was confronted with hertendency to explain things at a fairly abstractlevel. She developed the wish to include moreconcrete examples.

In summary, the one-to-one gives student teachersmany opportunities to learn on the basis of theirown experiences and the concerns they developthrough these experiences. They learn not so muchby being taught by their teacher educators, but bystructured reflection on their experiences and dis-cussions with peers. In this way the student teachersbegin to create their own professional knowledge.

Principle 3: Learning about teaching requires a

shift in focus from the curriculum to the learner

Consider the following excerpts from a studentteacher’s logbook:

From my perspective, my contribution to theteaching episode did not achieve what I wanted itto achieve. However, I take solace in the fact thatI believe that it was a valuable lesson in what notto do and in my belief that others might benefitfrom my mistakes.

Shortly after I placed the transparency on theoverhead projector I witnessed blank disinter-ested faces staring at the screeny I witnessedlarge blocks of small print on an overhead thatdoes absolutely nothing to engage the learner.The amazing thing that accompanied my realisa-tion was that I did absolutely nothing to remedythe situation. I soldiered on completely aware ofthe situation, but unable to think of a way to getmyself out of ity I would never presentinformation to High School students in thismanner. Why did I do it in this situation?Ultimately, good teaching practices are goodteaching practices, no matter who you areteaching (Extracts from reflective report byElaine, EDF3002, Monash).

Elaine illustrates how actions sometimes defy belief.She knew what was happening yet she could donothing about it, continuing to act in a manner thatshe believed to be inappropriate. This vignettehighlights an important issue in learning aboutteaching: it is crucial that student teachers have

opportunities to access the thoughts and actions ofteachers in ways that help to illuminate not only theteaching actions themselves, but also the feelingsand the reasons for particular teaching actions.

To fully illuminate the dynamics of a teachingsituation, student teachers need opportunities tounderstand what is involved in planning theteaching, doing the teaching, and reflecting onthe teaching. Then they need to link all of these tothe relationship between the teaching and theconcurrent learning. One way of creating suchopportunities is by helping student teachers toexperience teaching practice being both constructedand deconstructed—and for them to be central tothe process—so that their learning about teaching isembedded in their experiences of learning andteaching (Segall, 2002).

A common view of learning to teach includes theassumption that the university-based components ofteacher preparation offer the theoretical under-pinnings of teaching and that school teachingexperience (practicum) offers a situation in whichthose previously learning principles of teaching arepracticed. This view creates many difficulties,including the fact that the ‘‘expertise’’ of teachingpractice is often assumed to reside largely in schoolswith teachers. This view diminishes the richpossibilities that can be made available at theuniversity site.

One way to reframe this situation involvesconstructing appropriate ways for student teachersto genuinely engage in experiencing the variousaspects of teaching in an environment where suchengagement is the focus, rather than in an environ-ment where successful teaching and controllingstudents are the dominant concerns. In so doing,moving out into the school practicum experiencemight then be more meaningful and informing.However, for many student teachers this is difficultbecause they have a real need to develop some of theskills of teaching (questioning, wait-time, listening,structuring content, timing) and to become compe-tent at them before a focus on learning-by-teachingcan readily be grasped and responded to. When weconstruct teacher education programs that aredriven by curriculum, this difficulty is simplyexacerbated.

‘‘Telling is not teaching, listening is not learning,’’is a message that must be embedded in experienceand constantly revisited if it is to have real meaningfor practice. Thus there is a constant need to ‘‘nottell the class’’ about an issue (in the teaching


situation), but to make the issue a part of theteaching episode. This goes to the heart of what itmeans to teach the students, not the curriculum andto the heart of the problem, stated in the introduc-tion, of linking practical experiences and theory.The learning of student teachers is only meaningfuland powerful when it is embedded in the experience

of learning to teach. As teacher educators we needto be actively creating situations where this canoccur and for it to be a natural part of teacherpreparation. Teaching a curriculum of presentationskills, questioning or interpretive discussions is verydifferent from embedding student teachers’ learningin ways that enable them to experience the ‘‘doing’’of the curriculum more than the information of thecurriculum. This is at the heart of the dilemma thatteacher educators constantly face yet seldom ad-dress, in what Myers (2002) describes as constantreliance on telling, showing, and guided practice. Ifthe telling, showing and guided practice approach isto be displaced, there is a need to reconceptualizeteaching about teaching in terms of teaching thestudents, not the curriculum. A subtle, but impor-tant reformulation is that this means helpingstudent teachers learn how to teach, i.e., helpingthem to learn how to help children learn.

Principle 4: Learning about teaching is enhanced

through (student) teacher research

Following directly from the previous principle isthe need to trust that student teachers can andshould research their own practice. Student teachersare emerging professionals who are capable ofdirecting their own professional development byresearching their own teaching. By creating andsharing their understanding of practice through theresults of their own research, perceived distinctionsbetween theory, practice, transmission of knowledgeand socialization into teaching may be confrontedand their professional roles may be better recog-nized, defined and enhanced.

Student teachers encounter many new andperplexing experiences during their practicum pla-cements. This substantial range of experiences canbe viewed as data from which they might becomemore informed about their own development asteachers. Therefore, actively researching their ownpractice can be a catalyst for student teachers tocome to ‘‘see differently,’’ to reframe a situation(Schon, 1983, 1987), and to thereby gain insightsinto how they might come to better understand that

situation and act within it. This is in stark contrastto highlighting a particular problem and tellingstudent teachers what it is they should know orlearn from that situation. For example, studentteachers (and, for that matter, many experiencedteachers and teacher educators) often struggle withinterpretive discussions (Baird & Northfield, 1992;Barnes, 1975). If student teachers can create asituation where they physically force themselves towait rather than rush in to fill the gap in adiscussion, they can experience what it might belike if students are given time to think and respondthoughtfully rather than play ‘‘guess what’s in theteacher’s head.’’ One way to create opportunities forstudent teachers to begin to research their teachingand to begin to see things differently involves thedevelopment of anecdotes (van Manen, 1999), asused in the Monash program (see Loughran, 1997,2002). These can be viewed as opportunities forstudent teachers to collect data and develop under-standing through framing and reframing on a small,but critical, scale. By encouraging episodes to bereconsidered, developed and articulated through thewriting of anecdotes, the meaning derived fromsituations can unsettle some of their taken forgranted assumptions about teaching (Brookfield,1995) and increase the likelihood that new ways ofseeing will emerge.

If teacher education programs genuinely focus onthe student teacher as learner, then it is the ability toanalyze and make meaning from their experiencesthat matters most; this contrasts starkly withsettings in which the teacher educator filters,develops and shares knowledge with student tea-chers. The central distinction here is that theknowledge developed by student teachers research-ing their own practice may not necessarily be new toteacher educators, but the process of developing theknowledge is dramatically different when studentteachers are responsible for its development. Who isdoing the learning is what really matters. Forexample, when student teachers are given permis-sion to collect and analyze their own data from theirown experiences during a practicum, the subsequentassertions about practice (see Table 1) are qualita-tively different in value and meaning from whensimilar assertions are passed on to them by a teachereducator. This difference extends further whenstudent teachers document and share these asser-tions with their peers because their sense of owner-ship is based on drawing on their experiences inorder to learn from those experiences. This can lead


to recognition of new ways of seeing the practicesetting.

The assertions in Table 1 represent importanttransitions in thinking by student teachers andpowerful ways of their informing their own practice,making such learning meaningful and useful andoffering them interesting insights into practice as aresult of framing and reframing. Learning byresearching their own practice is therefore a crucialcomponent in learning about teaching and inteaching about teaching, and another means ofcounterbalancing the tendency in traditional teachereducation to create a gap between research-basedknowledge and practice.

Alternative approach:

Student-Directed Learning: Cutting the PuppetStrings:

Teacher as Researcher assignment (4th year,double degree, Monash)

I like organisation. I schedule my life into half-hour blocks, and then fill them. I like to feel incontrol. I like waking up knowing exactly howthe day will pan out. Unpredictable events in thedaily schedule are good for dramatic re-tellingswith friends, but they aren’t known for theirproductivity. If I forget to do something, or ascheduled event runs over time, I kick myself fornot being prepared.

This is reflected in my teaching practice. If I amnot in control, I tend to be insecure, edgy andwithout focus. My last teaching round was thevery picture of control and cohesion. Preparationfor class was completed early. I could explainexactly where the class was going to get to by theend of the period. It was calm, complete andpredictable. If anything that didn’t appear in mylesson plan occurred, it was swiftly ignored andthe group was re-focussed. I could fall back tothe detailed script, assured that if we stuck to themiddle of the road we would all be happy at theend of the lesson. But too many times there wasrandom mutation. New ideas! New interpreta-

tions! Unforeseen areas of fascination! Activitiesshifting focus. They were learning, it was stillrelevant, but I was pushing them into what wasperhaps a restrictive and narrow pathway. Isubconsciously wanted them to focus on what Iwanted them to think about, not what theywanted to think about.

In this project, the idea of a student-focusedlearning environment will be analysed andexamined. In this case, I attempted to give aYear 9 English class the opportunity to experi-ence a student-focused learning environment. Ihoped to create a student-focused learningenvironment by handing over as much of thedecision-making to the students as possible. Myjourney is documented in my journal and lessonplans, from which the analysis that follows isdrawny The most important outcome for mewas an increased awareness of the way I teach. Iam now convinced that students need to beactive, or more active, in their learning environ-ment. If teachers make too many decisions onbehalf of the students, it becomes highly un-balanced and much more like work. The sameresults, or the same outcomes, can be achieved by‘‘making it new.’’ If the teacher is able to moveand grow with the students, then they are muchmore likely to begin to own their learning. Theyare responsible for it; teachers are only there tosupport, guide and instruct when it gets tootough. There are many instances in schoolingwhere direct instruction and formalised criteriaare beneficial. But having watched these studentsgrasp their challenges and solve their problems, Ihave become increasingly aware of the studentshaving individual needs. Everyone is different,with different skills and ways of thinking. If wecut the strings, they are given more of anopportunity to create, grow and mature aslearners. But they should feel safe in the knowl-edge that their teacher is there to help andsupport when they need ity If the students were

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Table 1

Examples of student teachers’ assertions about practice

� The medium of instruction influences the success (or failure) of the lesson.

� Sometimes you teach in ways you do not like because it helps you cope.

� Too much enthusiasm (student and teacher) may lead to other problems.

� Students may have more control over what works in the classroom than the teacher has.

� The success of teaching strategies is dependent on students’ skills and students may or may not have those skills.

F. Korthagen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 1020–1041 1031

given too much ownership of their learning, thensome would not move on at all. Others may movein a direction which really isn’t that productive,as it is in a direction they are familiar with or feelsafe doing. Students often don’t go for the mostchallenging idea or journey. They need to begiven encouragement and support to do this, anda few gentle nudges in the right direction do notgo astrayy The education of people, not justchildren, should be approached with an openmind. The teacher’s way is not always the bestway. The teacher should learn as much in theclass as the students do. The puppets do need afew strings attached, but should be given theopportunity to perform on their own as often aspossible. The puppeteer should not cut all thestrings. Just have the scissors handy, and beaware of each student’s individual journey(Student-teacher research report, Monash).

Principle 5: Learning about teaching requires an

emphasis on those learning to teach working

closely with their peers

As Putnam and Borko (1997, p. 1247) state: ‘‘Justas students need to learn new ways of reasoning,communicating, and thinking, and to acquiredispositions of inquiry and sense-making throughtheir participation in classroom discourse commu-nities, teachers need to construct their complex newroles and ways of thinking about their teachingpractice within the context of supportive learningcommunities.’’ This view concurs with McIntyreand Hagger (1992), who report that ‘‘collegiality hasbeen demonstrated to be a critical factor in helpingindividual teachers to develop their classroompractice’’ (p. 276).

In the restructured pre-service program atQueen’s University, teacher candidates are deliber-ately assigned to teachers in Associate Schoolswhere they are expected to meet weekly as a schoolcohort group. Arranging meetings within the schoolday is more than a matter of finding gaps in thetimetable, for some experienced teachers are reluc-tant to see any time taken away from the act ofteaching. Similarly, some teacher candidates arepuzzled about why they are meeting when theycould be teaching. Those who find it difficult tostand back from experience and look for patterns inaccounts of teaching experience are often those whoalso find reasons to be absent from meetings or toarrive late and leave early.

During the first 5 years of the restructuredprogram at Queen’s, differences across schools andamong cohort groups have been striking yet neversurprising. Despite the new intention of deliberatelyfostering working closely with one’s peers, theresults have usually not approached that intention,as the following illustrates:

In one school to which only four teachercandidates were assigned, it was impossible forthe four to arrange a time to meet for two hoursonce each week. Commitments to coaching teamsbefore and after school and to providing one-on-one tutoring during lunch periods became majorexcuses for never even attempting to work moreclosely with one’s peers.

When teacher candidates do arrange to meet, thesheer novelty and unfamiliarity of such meetingscan overwhelm the opportunity to explore thepotential benefits of working closely with one’speers. The norm of most prior schooling experi-ences has been that students are to workindependently and be assessed independently aswell. The ways in which the university succeedsor fails in providing initial structures and goalsfor in-school cohort meetings also affects theopportunity to learn about working closely withpeers.

The Faculty Liaison assigned to a school and itscohort group has the potential to support peersworking closely, if that individual is prepared toact on programmatic intentions. In reality, manyindividuals assigned as Faculty Liaisons areadjunct faculty members with little or no reasonto feel a personal investment in enacting a goalthat differs from the familiar norms of schoolsand universities. In addition, the timing of theFaculty Liaison’s visits to the school may or maynot fit with scheduled cohort meetings in thatschool.

The early commitment or lack of commitmentshown by one or two teacher candidates within acohort group can have a major effect onopportunities to work closely with one’s peers.The unwillingness of one or two individuals totake group meetings seriously can rapidly under-mine the prospects of successful meetings overthe 10 weeks of the practicum placement. Insharp contrast, the early, active, and dynamiccommitment of two individuals in a cohort groupof six can produce highly effective experiences ofworking with one’s peers. When one teacher


candidate took it for granted that everyonewould meet once a week and then ensured thata meeting room was reserved and an agendadistributed well in advance, the members of thegroup became the major source of support foreach other, readily enriching the support pro-vided by associate teachers or the FacultyLiaison.

When the Faculty Liaison responsible for aparticular school group is attentive to the processof learning to teach, weekly meetings can provideunique opportunities to develop perspectives onlearning to teach. Typically, it is but a few shortsteps from patterns in learning to teach to patternsin how students are learning to learn. When arestructured teacher education program deliberatelyemphasizes working with one’s peers, the stage isalso set for peer learning about teaching to continueinto a teacher’s career.

Isolation of the individual teacher in his or herclassroom is one of the most fundamental featuresof teaching. Although they may not think about it,students are as aware as teachers that it is rareindeed to see two teachers at work in the sameroom at the same time. How teachers work witheach other outside the classroom is well beyondvirtually every student’s experience. Thus newteachers arrive with an expectation that theirlearning about teaching in a pre-service programwill be an individual affair, perhaps even alonely one. When teacher candidates are assignedto individual experienced teachers for their practi-cum, they may have little opportunity to workclosely with their peers. Only on the return to theuniversity are they able to share experiences andexplore patterns in learning about teaching fromexperience, and often this learning will occur in thecorridors and coffee shops rather than in theirclassrooms.

To argue that learning about teaching requires anemphasis on working closely with one’s peers is thusan exercise in challenging the culture of the school(or university) as an organization. The challenge isclearly a substantial one, but if the norm of teacherscollaborating in learning about teaching is ever tochange, we contend that the change must begin inthe pre-service program.

For this reason, in the Utrecht program astructure named peer-supported learning has beenintroduced (Tigchelaar & Melief, 2000). It is nowused in every cohort group, with very positive

results. Within the setting of a whole group ofstudent teachers and early in the program, thestudent teachers are trained in using the ALACTmodel (Fig. 1), not only for structuring their ownreflection, but also to help each other reflect. Insmall groups of about three, they practice super-vision skills aimed at helping each other go throughthe phases of the ALACT model. During teachingpractice periods these groups of three meet on aregular basis for peer-supported learning. Eachsmall group is required to write brief meetingreports in which they both evaluate the process ofpeer-supported learning and describe the content oftheir small-group discussion. In the reports, theycan also put forward issues on which they wish toreceive further support from the teacher educator.Every 2 weeks, there are meetings of the wholecohort group, facilitated by the teacher educator.These group meetings are partly devoted to furthertraining in supervision skills, in order to supportand further develop the processes of peer-supportedlearning. In addition, on the basis of the problemsand concerns that formed the content of thesupervision sessions in the small groups, themesand issues are discussed in the whole group. This iswhere the teacher educator again takes the role ofsupporting the professional development of thestudent teachers, beyond developing their compe-tency to support each other. The teacher educatorcan introduce new content based on the issues raisedin the reports of the small groups.

Through this structure, a balanced sharing of theresponsibility for professional learning is createdbetween the teacher educator and the studentteachers. The structure has many advantages. First,it further strengthens the capacity of studentteachers to take responsibility for their own learn-ing. An important aim behind the structure is alsothat it prepares them for peer-supported learningduring the rest of their careers, thus creating acounterbalance to what Feiman-Nemser and Flo-den (1986) see as the highly individualistic and non-collaborative culture of teaching. As one studentteacher wrote:

What is more pleasant than being able to tellyour own story to people who have as muchexpertise as you, but who also struggle as muchas you do, and who are trying to help you inthe expectation that you will be helping themnext time? (reflective report by Kristel Peters,Utrecht).


The process of learning how to support each other’sreflection also promotes students’ insight into theALACT model and hence their individual compe-tency for reflection. Another advantage is the factthat, after an initial investment, the structure savestime for the teacher educator. Fellow-students canbecome valuable supervisors, thus taking over partof the role of the teacher educator. Moreover,through the reports of the small groups, the teachereducator receives concrete information about thelearning processes and the concerns and problemsthat surface with the student teachers. This helps theteacher educator in selecting the topics to be dealtwith in the group meetings and increases chancesthat these topics will be experienced as relevant bythe student teachers. Finally, many of the super-vision skills the student teachers acquire duringtheir preparation for peer-supported learning arejust as important in their guidance of their ownstudents in school.

A new development in recent years involves theuse of electronic tools, such as WebCT, to enablethe student teachers to communicate by e-mailduring their teaching practice periods (Admiraal,Lockhorst, Wubbels, Korthagen, & Veen, 1998).Especially in cases where the student teachers dotheir teaching practice in schools far removed fromeach other, this can be an excellent way to createpossibilities for exchange. Moreover, the teachereducator can easily monitor the conversations and,if appropriate, react to them, either to improve theprocess of peer-supported learning or to supportstudent teachers clearly in need of specific help.

The fifth principle can be reformulated in terms ofthe need for horizontal rather than vertical relation-ships in learning to teach (Galesloot, Koetsier, &Wubbels, 1997): if, in teacher education, studentsget used to learning in collegial relationships, thiswill help to bridge the gap between what is done inteacher education and what those learning to teachactually need in their future practice.

Principle 6: Learning about teaching requires

meaningful relationships between schools,

universities and student teachers

Building on their experiences in the Monashprogram, Northfield and Gunstone (1997, p. 49)contend that ‘‘Teacher educators should maintainclose connections with schools and the teachingprofession.’’ The words flow easily from the tongueor the pen, and they just as easily vanish into the

realm of good intentions. Before teacher educatorscan maintain close connections with schools and theprofession, they must understand the many intricateways in which teaching itself is similar to anddifferent from teaching about teaching. Teachereducators also require a practical understanding ofthe impact of practice on theory and of theory onpractice as a sound basis for building ‘‘closeconnections.’’ How easily teacher educators assumethat close connections are somehow natural orautomatic, especially if the teacher educator hasrelatively recent experience teaching in a school. Aswe know, most do not, but in and of itself, that isnot the central issue. Close cooperation in the nameof supporting learning about teaching requires theability to hold three different perspectives simulta-neously: the perspective of the individual learning toteach, the perspective of the teacher in a school, andthe perspective of the teacher educator in theuniversity setting. Not everyone is willing and ableto do this.

In the Utrecht program, close co-operationbetween teachers in the schools, who supervisedthe student teachers, and university-based tea-cher educators has been influential during theprocess of developing the present programstructure and has certainly contributed to theintegration of theory and practice within thisprogram. Moreover, more than 80% of thecooperating teachers attended training coursesin supervising student teachers, given by teachereducators from Utrecht University. This wasfacilitated by the fact that for many years thecooperating teachers received time from theMinistry of Education for their task of support-ing student teachers’ learning. However, whenthis release time was considerably diminishedduring the 1990s, this changed the whole picture:cooperating teachers started to skip school-university meetings and the training courses.

The effect of a government decision illustrates aconclusion drawn by Bullough and Kauchak (1997):

Schools and higher education institutions areboth very busy places. Unless sufficient resourcescan be freed to provide opportunities to supportthe extended conversation needed to create ashared agenda and unless there is a greatercommitment to stabilizing participation, separa-tist partnership patterns will not only persist butpredominate (p. 231).


If we return to the Queen’s University experience,we see that while the traditional program structureappeared to give lip service to close cooperation, thereality was that teacher candidates arrived at threedifferent points in the school year, stayed for 3weeks during which they might be visited once by afaculty member, and departed to return to theuniversity. The routine was familiar, the rationalehad long been forgotten, and cooperation wasanything, but close. The new program structureprovided rich and ample opportunity for all that tochange, but there was never the time for schools anduniversity to explore together (cooperatively!) whatcloser cooperation might mean.

Extensive consultation with focus groups ofassociate teachers and principals had shown thatsupport for the new structure could be developed,but the nature of innovation carries an inherentcontradiction: everyone feels new levels of incom-petence because the demands of the new structureare unfamiliar and unpredictable. Working toachieve new levels of cooperation took second placeto the demands of arranging places for 600individuals who would be in schools for 14 weeksrather than the familiar 3 weeks. In sum, the goal ofuniversity–school partnership was announced asa significant aspect of developing the new programstructure, but there was little understanding ofthe possible relationship between structure andpartnership. Developing Associate Schools thatworked with a Faculty Liaison responsible for allthe candidates in the cohort assigned to oneschool seemed a major first step toward partner-ship but, as noted by Bullough and Kauchak (1997),the required resources as well as the requiredchanges in perspective were dramatically under-estimated.

There is one more important aspect. Despite theirnaturally different perspectives, experienced tea-chers in schools and teacher educators in univer-sities are accustomed to coming together to talkabout the development and progress of the teachercandidate who has moved from university to schoolin order to gain firsthand experiences of teaching,but they seldom have this conversation togetherwith that teacher. The experience of innovation andchange at Queen’s University failed to engageteacher candidates themselves in the dialogue aboutschool–university cooperation, and this may be akey element in understanding why the potential forschool–university partnership and cooperation hasnot been realized. During the initial period of

1997–99, most teacher candidates spoke verypositively about beginning their teacher educationexperiences with 14 weeks in schools (introduced bya week-long university orientation and supported bya 2-week return to the university near the midpointof the 14 weeks of teaching). Yet neither university-based nor school-based personnel saw those learn-ing to teach as playing a significant role in thedevelopment of closer cooperation. Rather, experi-enced teachers and experienced teacher educatorstended to react with their own personal perspectiveson whether extensive experience from the first dayof school was a productive way to initiate learninghow to teach. When some individuals were positiveand others were negative, no one had time toconsult with those learning to teach.

Ironically, all over the world, candidates’ voicesare rarely used to ascertain whether their teachereducation program achieves its goals. If sustainedinquiry and reflection are to be valued andembedded in a teacher education program, asGoodlad (1990) recommends, then candidates’perspectives must be credited. Cook-Sather (2002,p. 3) advances a strong argument for authorizingstudents’ perspectives. She contends that if aconstructivist model is adopted and students areactively engaged in their own knowledge construc-tion, then their voices must be attended to in orderto provoke a ‘‘conceptualization of teaching, learn-ing, and the ways we study them as morecollaborative processes.’’

When we explore the question of what principlesshape teacher education programs and practices inways that are responsive to the expectations, needsand practices of teacher educators and studentteachers, it is our conclusion that close cooperationis needed, not only in the sense of school–universitypartnerships, but also in three-way cooperationamong teachers in schools, teacher educators inuniversities, and those who are learning to teach.While school–university cooperation is often seen asthe broad goal, it is easy to overlook the teachercandidate who is passing through the programstructure en route to a classroom of her or his own.Ironically, if we were to view the temporarilypresent teacher candidate as the one with the mostto gain from closer cooperation, that goal might bemuch more readily achieved. The problems thatteacher education has faced for a long time may bewell due to the fact that this sixth principle has onlyrecently been taken seriously in the organization ofteacher education programs.


Principle 7: Learning about teaching is enhanced

when the teaching and learning approaches

advocated in the program are modeled by

the teacher educators in their own practice

Evidence of the importance of modeling thepractices teacher educators advocate comes clearlyfrom Segall’s (2002) revealing ethnographic inquiryinto the reality of teacher education experiencesseen through the perspectives of six teacher candi-dates in a social studies methods course at aCanadian university. Segall advances the notion of‘‘reading teacher education as text,’’ whereby theprogram, the interactions that take place within it,and the individuals who participate in thoseinteractions may be seen, understood, and read astexts. Segall’s work underscores the challenge thatconfronts teacher educators in altering deeply held,acculturated views of teaching and learning and theimperative of moving beyond a narrow instrumen-talist approach that emphasizes the ‘‘how to,’’ the‘‘what works,’’ and the mastering of the ‘‘best’’teaching methods (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985, citedin Segall, p. 13). Segall contends that unless thisalteration of deeply held views occurs, prospectiveteachers will be unable to recognize and challengetheir assumptions, talk to their school experiences,consider alternatives, and contextualize theorywithin practice and practice within theory. It isSegall’s conclusion that they will fall short of thegoals most commonly cited by teacher educators forthose future teachers who are expected to transformteaching practices in schools and work for socialjustice.

The contradictions persist between theory andpractice within teacher education institutions and,in many respects, little progress has been madethrough several generations of rhetoric aboutteacher education reform. Taken even further, theissue is captured in the following assertion: ‘‘Uni-versities generally, and university-based teachereducators particularly, have no right to recommendto teachers any teaching practices that they have notthemselves used successfully at the university’’(Russell, 1999, p. 220). So long as teacher educatorsadvocate innovative practices that they do notmodel, illustrate, and read as text in their ownteacher education classrooms, teacher educationreform will continue to elude us.

Student teachers report their disappointmentwhen they experience a class in which a lecture isused to present alternatives to the lecture method.

Learning about ways in which experienced teachersand teacher educators take risks and develop newteaching approaches is one way for new teachers tounderstand when and how it is possible andessential to take professional risks. For example,in the Monash program, student teachers areoffered the opportunity to critique their teachers’teaching and to discuss the pedagogical reasoning(from the teacher’s perspective) that underpinsdifferent teaching episodes. This has been reportedin detail by Berry and Loughran (2002); however,we offer the following as a brief insight intostudents’ understanding of such situations.

I [Berry] began to reflect on the delicate balancebetween exposing our vulnerability as teachereducators and maintaining students’ confidencein our position as leaders. I recalled instanceswhen John [Loughran] had struggled withdecisions about how to debrief students afterparticularly risky interventions. Now I wasbeginning to better understand and feel thatmyself—through experience. At the same time,student experiences were strong:Student 1: You gave us an opportunity to seehow a student’s interpretation of a teacher’sactions is not always synonymous with teacher’sinterpretation of his or her actions.Student 2: To examine the disparity in the rangeof experiences that students bring to class and toillustrate the sensitivity of students to teachers.Student 3: This session gave us an idea of what toexpect in the coursey We were shown howsometimes things don’t go according to plan.Some people will interpret things differently, ashappened today, and this just goes to show howconscious we, as teachers, must be of theinstructions that we do or don’t give to ourstudents.This was a powerful experience for [anotherteacher educator], one that preoccupied herthinking for some time, particularly because shehad never thought about her teaching in this way.As I [Berry] write about these experiences, I seehow even experienced teachers struggle to recog-nize the differences between what they intend toteach and their actual teaching behaviors (Berry& Loughran, 2002, pp. 25–26).

Making the pedagogical reasoning for practiceclear, explicit and understandable for studentteachers is an important aspect of modeling teach-ing in teacher education. Talking aloud (Loughran,


1996) is one way of doing this, but at the heart ofthis principle is the need for student teachers to seeinto their teachers’ thinking about teaching so thatthey can access the ideas and feelings associatedwith taking risks and learning about teaching inmeaningful ways.

5. Binding it all together: views, practices and people

Recently, the AERA Panel on Research andTeacher Education (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner,2005) published the final report on the immensework they carried out in a meta-study, analyzingalmost all the North American research on theeffectiveness of teacher education. Their finalconclusion was somewhat alarming, namely, thatthere is no clear evidence that certain approaches inteacher education may be more effective thanothers, and even that it may be questionablewhether teacher education can make a differenceat all. The results from a study by Brouwer andKorthagen (2005) show that this conclusion may bedue to the fact that the approaches were comparedon a high level of abstraction, i.e., in terms ofgeneral instructional strategies that a program uses.In their study they present empirical evidence thatmore specific principles guiding the practices withina program may lead to clear and positive outcomesin the graduates of such a program. This suggests anurgent need for identifying such principles, espe-cially principles that support the link betweenexperience and theory in ways that are responsiveto the expectations, needs and practices of teacher

educators and student teachers. This is what weattempt in this paper.

In almost every teacher education program in theworld, one or more of the seven principles can berecognized. We believe, however, that each of theprinciples is strengthened by the others, and it maythus be too simple to think that adding one principleto a program structure may lead to a significantimprovement. There are important interconnectionsbetween the principles and, as Fig. 2 shows, theyrepresent three main components of programs orprogram change, ones that in our view are funda-mental to any change in teacher education: (1) theviews of knowledge and learning that direct thepractices of the teacher educators, (2) programstructures and specific practices, and (3) the qualityof staff and organization.

Trying to change one principle in any one of thethree components without addressing the othercomponents will not, in our view, be very effective.For example, if teacher educators make theimportant step from building on episteme todeveloping phronesis, as when they start to seeknowledge about teaching as a subject to be createdinstead of an already created subject (principle 2),this will require helping student teachers to becomea strong community of learners in which they workand learn closely together (principle 5). This in turnhas consequences for the way teaching practices areorganized, which points towards the importance ofprinciple 6. In other words, we believe it is thecoherence across the three components in Fig. 2 thatwill make a difference.

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Fig. 2. Clustering of the seven principles into components of programs and program change.

F. Korthagen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 1020–1041 1037

6. Program change and development

We wish to emphasize that this points to a view ofprogram change in teacher education as an in-depthprocess that may take many years to becomeeffective. As Russell (1999, p. 221) reported: ‘‘It isfar too easy to propose early changes that fail togive the innovation a clear chance.’’ For example,the Utrecht program, which seems rather successfulat bridging the gap between theory and practice (asdocumented in Korthagen & Kessels, 1999, and inBrouwer & Korthagen, 2005), took shape over aperiod of more than 15 years in which programelements as well as underlying views of learning toteach were constantly discussed, researched andrenewed by the teacher educators involved.

The experience of radical program change atQueen’s University is also instructive. Although theinitial structure for the new program was set in placefor 2 years, it might better have been set in place forfive years. Within 3 weeks of the completion of thefirst full year, and with no attempt to collectrelevant and systematic data from university orschool settings or from those learning to teach, a1-day faculty retreat resulted in significant changesto that initial structure. Superficially, the changesappeared to respond to the concerns of the mostvocal. More deeply, the changes were a major stepaway from the ‘‘learning from experience’’ premisesof the initial structure. The pressure to understandhow fundamental premises had been shifted wasremoved the moment that any change at all wasmade, for the implicit message was that cries ofpersonal discomfort were sufficient to achieveregression to more comfortable and more tradi-tional structures. That first year did reveal that theFaculty Liaison role was a particularly crucialelement in the success of the new structure (Martin,2001). Those learning to teach knew no otherstructure, while schools and teachers who receivedthe preservice candidates quite naturally found thatthe radical changes required significant adjustments,as the new structure intended.

Change in program structures and practicesrequire a corresponding change in thinking aboutteacher education, with enormous consequences forthe daily work of teacher educators. These con-sequences go well beyond the level of programorganization and teaching or supervisory behavior;most of all, an attitudinal shift is involved. Changeis a long-term process of staff development (asillustrated in the Utrecht experience in contrast to

the Canadian experience) and involves training offaculty, student teachers as well as mentor teachers.Moreover, structures for intercollegially supportedlearning are crucial if change is to be more thansuperficial, not least because most teacher educatorsare appointed to their positions without any specifictraining for this profession (Korthagen & Russell,1995) and often without any support from moreexperienced colleagues (see Ducharme, 1993).

In many settings, however, component III inFig. 2 seems to be undervalued: systematic profes-sional development of teacher education faculty isstill not a common phenomenon. Experiences in theNetherlands and in other countries where theUtrecht training courses have been offered haveshown that a major effect of these courses is thatteacher educators come to understand, throughpersonal experience, the significance of learningfrom one’s own concrete work situations. They alsocome to understand the function as well as thedifficulties of reflecting on such situations. Thisseems to be a prerequisite for real change in teachereducation and is one way of addressing the retreatof teacher educators into their individual, isolatedteaching spaces and the protective response ofprivate practice that can so dramatically detractfrom genuine program development inherent inembracing a pedagogy of teacher education.

7. Conclusion

There has been a remarkable development of theknowledge base for teaching through extensiveeducational research over the last four decades.Nevertheless, the theory–practice issue seems in-tractable: telling new teachers what research showsabout good teaching and sending them off topractice has failed to change, in any major way,what happens in our schools and universities.Neither has having teachers write behavioralobjectives nor exhorting them to be reflectivepractitioners produced major leaps forward. Atthe same time, exploring fundamental assumptionsof teacher education associated with its universitycontext has proven difficult to achieve. Despiteproviding powerful accounts of teacher education’sshortcomings, Goodlad’s (1990) recommendationsappear to have had minimal impact on how newteachers are prepared for their profession.

Here we have attempted to illustrate how theprinciples we have constructed from our ownprofessional experiences in three teacher education


programs in very different locations offer ways ofdeveloping principles of practice that might moregenerally shape the nature of teaching and learningabout teaching. The articulation of these principlesoffers one way of building on the need for direct andexplicit attention to the place of experience inlearning about teaching that is so commonly toutedas an important approach for teacher educationthat makes a difference.

The seven principles presented in this paperillustrate one way of beginning to create a commonlanguage for the development of a pedagogy ofteacher education. These principles suggest guide-lines and possibilities (as opposed to rules andprocedures) to those teacher educators willing toaccept the challenge of reconstructing teachereducation from within. We believe these principlesare informative and applicable across contexts andwe suggest that they can help to develop newunderstandings of a pedagogy of teacher educationthat others might build on and extend in their ownprograms and practices.

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