Collaborative Teacher Educator Professional Development in Europe: Different Voices, One Goal

In this paper we present an embedded case study focussed on the learning activities provided for and by us through our involvement in an international forum focused on the professional development of teacher educators. The aim of this research was to get more insights into the complicated processes of professional learning across national borders. Data included personal narratives about learning and documentary analysis of written accounts of the forums’ activities. Following a collaborative self-study approach we utilised an interactive exploration of the data, using coding techniques derived from grounded theory. We conclude that our professional learning can be seen through two inter-related perspectives. The first perspective is the interplay between our own learning and the ways in which we want to support colleagues in their professional development. The second perspective is the reciprocal effect of working in national as well as in transnational contexts. By studying our professional learning processes we developed insights in how a shared communal international forum can be established without losing individual voices and national perspectives. Moreover, by our involvement in an international forum we also continue to develop our own self-understanding as ‘educators of teacher educators’.

Music teacher biography and its impact on teaching practice

This paper describes research carried out as part of a wider doctoral study on ‘the biography of music teachers, their understanding of musicality and the implications for secondary music education’. Music teachers will come from a range of diverse backgrounds, though research data would suggest that most seem to have been educated as ‘classical’ music performers which will have an affect on what they perceive to be central competencies in the development of young musicians. In turn, this will determine, to some extent, what is taught and learned in the secondary music classroom. This study explores the impact of the biography of secondary music teachers as they seek to develop the musicianship of their pupils and present the activities in which the young people will be expected to participate. A mixed methods approach has been taken, including surveys, observation and interviews. Surveys amongst a sample of experienced and trainee teachers have produced a range of quantitative data on respondents’ experience of and values related to music education; whilst qualitative data in the form of lesson observation notes and transcription of semi-structured interviews have been the result of working with a small sub-set of participants. The outcomes of study have suggested a clear link between biography and classroom practice but that there are also other potential tensions which arise, such as in the subject knowledge development of practitioners as they move from musician to teacher. Implications for a variety of stakeholders in secondary music education include a consideration of the development of subject knowledge together with potential review of national and local education policy, the nature of undergraduate music study and the ‘shape’ of initial teacher training in England.