The Critical Model of Integrative Teacher Education
Overview
Research group description
In CITE, teacher education is organized in the form of research groups, within which prospective teachers and teacher educators can investigate learning processes as both individuals and group members. The aim of this education has been to move beyond the traditional understanding of learning and teaching based on core subject certainty. In addition, in CITE we have created learning partnerships among the prospective teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. In CITE prospective teachers are systematically guided to take responsibility for their own learning as individuals and as a group. As a whole, the education is built on the idea that it is more important to understand the complexities of learning than to control them by didactical means. This means, among other things, that teachers have to be prepared to face unpredictable situations and demonstrate sensitivity when interacting with others.
The CITE group consists of prospective primary school teachers and teacher educators. During the first two years, the students conduct mostly their studies within CITE. The teacher educators share the responsibility with the students for the CITE study modules - the teaching and planning are implemented collaboratively. This enables the prospective teachers and the teacher educators to realize that conducting research, producing information, and presenting results are joint rather than individual processes. The theoretical basis of the education provided is grounded in psychodynamic theories. The role of language in learning is also very important, and it is seen as a psychosocial entity in CITE.
Research
The CITE group and its research emerged from a need to develop teacher education. Over the years, it has extended to cover teacher education from student selection to the eventual work of teachers in schools. While problems encountered in the research have made it necessary to think about the system of teacher education as a whole, the focus of the studies remains nevertheless on the student group.
CITE education reveals latent structures in teaching and learning, which are for the most part suppressed. These findings are part of the focus of the CITE research group. The focus has mainly emphasized the group processes and participants’ action strategies. The research has shown that this kind of learning is not an easy process. Indeed, some group processes that the study group unconsciously uses in avoiding actual work have been identified. According to the research findings on the study group, the group tends to use a great deal of its capacity in processing everything else but the substance of work.
In CITE, research has been conducted by teacher students and teacher educators. Since 2009, CITE has been at the core of a project called Critical Awareness in Teacher Education.
The education offered in CITE aims at helping prospective teachers to understand the reality of school life, instead of pushing them to seek control over it. Control over classroom situations, pupils’ behaviour, and even their thoughts and minds, has usually been perceived as the core content of a teacher’s professional skills. As a consequence, the learners’ own conditions of learning are overlooked. In CITE education, the aim is to develop teachers’ professional skills towards understanding, not controlling. CITE endeavours to find an alternative to the routines of school and education. Education is a holistic entity, and because the world is not structured according to school subjects, school itself should not be based on such artificial divisions.
Every week, two consecutive days are reserved for CITE studies. These days are composed of teaching and time reserved for self-directed group work. The students are encouraged to use their initiative in learning and they even have their own study projects. These projects provide the students with opportunities to gain learning experiences in accordance with their own interests. The student groups also meet regularly to discuss the group processes and emotions raised in both the learning and the team work. This consultation process is designed to support the prospective teachers’ understanding of and responsibility for their own learning. The purpose of the group sessions is to learn to confront any social dilemmas and controversial situations that arise between an individual and a group, and thus to develop abilities for deep self-reflection. One of the educators (Tiina Nikkola) is responsible for the group’s consultation process.
In CITE, learning is defined through the general and specific conditions of learning. The general conditions include the learning contexts, e.g., group dynamics, and the individual conditions of learning. Learning within an educational institution often occurs in groups. These learning groups are meaningful because the learning processes are connected to group dynamics and interactions. Yet the group is quite often treated superficially as an organisational entity, without understanding the group dynamics, which are very important for both individual and collective learning.
The specific conditions of learning are its content-specific features. Traditionally, the curriculum splits the phenomenon of learning into distinct parts that are loosely connected to the individuals’ everyday experiences or, in other words, their life-worlds. Learning happens in everyday experiences, but these experiences are infrequently encountered during studies. Knowledge can be perceived as either a product or a process. The educational tradition has prioritized the former: knowledge has been interpreted as something you can find in a textbook. This perspective ignores knowledge construction as a collaborative, social endeavour. It is our view that knowledge construction should be seen as both a personal and a social process. Therefore, we approach knowledge construction through three domains of knowing: 1) factual knowledge, 2) contractual/conventional knowledge, and 3) aesthetic knowledge.
