What matters in Initial Teacher Education? Posthuman enquiries

Lambert, Louise (2020) What matters in Initial Teacher Education? Posthuman enquiries. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the affective experiences of neophyte teachers training to teach on a schools based model (Teach First) of initial teacher education (ITE) in England. The thesis maps a contemporary educational landscape where discourses of accountability, hero narratives and discursive constructions of ‘resilient bodies’ frame expectations about who teachers are and what it is that they do. The thesis unsettles these dominant mythologies to re-configure what the experiences of becoming teacher within complex and contradictory spaces might have to tell us about more sustainable practices for training teachers in contemporary ITE.

The thesis draws on and examines in depth, theories from posthumanism and new materialism, illuminating the potential for thinking, practising and researching differently and generatively in/with/through complexity, entanglement and multiplicity. It experiments with alternative ways of reading and presenting data and in doing so, enacts a critique of data as either passive or revelatory.

Through a series of collage making workshops conducted with early career teachers, the thesis explores the use of creative and participatory methodologies, motivated by the belief that creative practice is a generative approach for research and for practice and the intersection of the two. As such, the thesis suggests alternative conceptions of researching and practising ‘always-becoming’ teacher, suggesting the productive potential for alternative ways of world-making when connectability and affect are foregrounded, rather than research and practice as a means to seek solutions, outcomes and interpretations.

This thesis contributes to and makes recommendations for a re-imagining of initial teacher education. In addition to contributing to the emerging understanding of the potential and possibilities for posthuman thinking and theorising in ITE, this thesis also contributes to a growing body of work that questions and re-imagines data and the researcher, in close to practice contexts. It contributes additionally to the understanding of the developmental potential for arts based research methods, specifically in initial teacher education.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event October 2020 Completed
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Initial teacher education, posthumanism, new materialism, creative methodologies, collage
Subjects:	CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-02 - teacher training
Divisions:	Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences > College of Education and Social Work Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Depositing User:	Kip Darling
Date Deposited:	17 Feb 2022 12:02
Last Modified:	17 Feb 2022 12:02
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12853