Developing a Pedagogy of Teacher Education: Understanding Teaching & Learning about Teaching

Developing a Pedagogy of Teacher Educationdemonstrates how teacher educators genuinely need to understand that a pedagogy of teacher education must go way beyond the transmission of information about teaching. The book purposefully portrays and explores the complex nature of teaching and learning about teaching and illustrates how important teacher educators' professional knowledge is and how that knowledge must impact teacher education practices. The book comprises two main sections. Section one is concerned with the notion of teaching about teaching and highlights important aspects of the knowledge and skills about practice that require teacher educators to be more than just good teachers. Loughran shows that the distinction between teaching student-teachers and teaching them about teaching is crucial. Teacher educators, he says, must unpack for student-teachers the pedagogical expertise that allows practice to push beyond the technical-rational, or tips-and-tricks approach, to teachingabout teaching in a way that displays the appropriate attitudes, knowledge and skills of teaching itself. Section two focuses on learning about teaching drawing attention to how student-teachers must recognize and respond to two competing agenda as they learn about teaching. Student teachers need to not only concentrate on learning what is being taught but also the way in which that teaching is conducted. These two competing agenda demand that teacher educators respond appropriately in the way they teach about teaching so that both agenda are simultaneously be addressed. This is a challenging but exciting book that overtly values teaching about teaching and pushes the knowledge of practice in teacher education in such a way as to enhance the valuing of teacher educators knowledge, skills and ability in shaping the learning about teaching that they attempt to create for their student teachers.

John Loughran is a senior member of the Faculty of Education at Monash University as the Foundation Chair in Curriculum and Professional Practice.