The normative in educational research – who is the ‘desired teacher’?

We research how to facilitate learning. In the case of mathematics teacher education, we research how to facilitate student teachers’ learning how to facilitate learners’ learning of mathematics. Any answer to such questions have directly or indirectly worked from a vision of what is meant by ‘learning’, ‘mathematics’, ‘teaching’. Hence, it seems to me impossible that teacher education, and research on same, can be separated from a normative dimension.

What I got curious about is the extent to which the underlying notion of mathematics is the same. In my research youth, I explored what it meant to change the content of the mathematics class to be about authentic modelling with mathematics. I read Sfard’s book on Thinking as Communication. I pondered the philosophy of mathematics. I read Dowling’s the Sociology of Mathematics Education and Mellin-Olsen's the Politics of Mathematics Education, and thought about what mathematics learners could fairly be said to need to learn (or benefit from learning). I read Skovsmose’s Towards a Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education and reflected on different kinds of reflections.

Then I got in with some teacher educators. And over time, my questions started to include what we actually assume about good teaching. What is the ‘desired teacher’ of our curricula? Teacher education materials? Assessments?

Recently, I had the great joy that two colleagues agreed to do some empirical work on this. We collected some observation protocols used to assess student teachers during their practicum – thinking this would give a fairly strong indication what universities or national education departments value in teachers. We stole some earlier ideas the way researchers should and altered them to fit our purpose, and then we coded. Statement for statement.

In all the cases, our analysis suggests that the desired teacher is not a technician implementing given approaches unreflectively as has been suggested in some of the discussions of developments in teacher education. Neither was the ‘born teacher’ part of the picture – teaching and good teaching is a practice that must be learned.

That said, there were substantial differences between the various observation protocols. So substantial that we suggested four different types of ‘ideal teacher’ reflected in the documents: the knowledgeable teacher, the constantly improving teacher, the successful teacher, and the knowledge-transforming teacher. And we added one which we only saw traces of in the literature: the inspired teacher.

Now we look forward to seeing to what extent these can be analytical categories in their own right. And to what extent they can help us shape the discussions around what 'desired teacher' we want teacher education programmes to convey.