Dialectical relationships and ZPD in ITE:

-      Alternative perspectives that open up the student teacher are needed to develop a student teacher’s awareness of knowledge (the world) as a dynamic phenomenon (including schools, curricula, pedagogy and education research).
-      This could involve:
u  Drawing on literature that challenges the practice being observed
u  Ensuring the student is aware of developments within the subject
u  Challenging student teachers’ assumptions about learning in the subject.
-      Student teachers also need to be aware that the knowledge that they are developing is constructed from a combination of the ‘personal’ (their experiences) and the ‘collective’ (the literature and the professional wisdom of experienced teachers).
-      They need to understand the particular context they are in, how the personalities and backgrounds of staff has informed the curriculum and pedagogy of the department and how working with different personalities and teams would lead to different approaches.
Tutoring in Practice:
-      Broadening student teachers’ views beyond context specific experiences and thus developing a wider professional identity
-      Making explicit links between research, theory and practice to enable student teachers to consider alternative perspectives, best practice examples and underpinning assumptions about their practice.

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