Towards a complex framework of teacher learning-practice

Authors

Kathryn J. Strom, California State University, East BayFollow
Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

ORCID IDs

Kathryn J. Strom http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6411-2779

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

10-2020

Citation

Published in Professional Development in Education (2020), 16pp.

doi:10.1080/19415257.2020.1827449

Comments

Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Used by permission.

Abstract

Although many researchers agree that teaching is complex and contextually situated, dominant conceptions of teacher learning, and the enactment of such learning in practice, tend to be linear and reductionist. Because simplistic conceptualizations of teaching activity have far-reaching impact on teachers, students, and school systems, generating a complex theory of teacher learning-practice is nothing short of an ethical imperative. To tackle this task, we draw from an emerging body of teacher education scholarship that we consider the beginning of a ‘complex turn’. Drawing on this literature, we distill a set of conceptual shifts that, together, offer a set of theoretical tools to (re)think the processes of, and connections between, teacher learning-practice in ways that better account for the dynamic, multiplicitous, ever-shifting nature of these activities.