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    Illuminating the assessment of practicum in New Zealand early childhood initial teacher education : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Aspden, Karyn Michelle
    Practicum is a core feature of initial teacher education. It is the site of induction and mentoring, intended to support the student teacher in their move from neophyte to graduating teacher. Practicum is seen by many to be the most powerful influence in shaping student teachers’ practice. Practicum is also a key point of assessment within the initial teacher education programme, leading to a determination of the student’s professional development and readiness to teach. This study illuminates the way in which assessment of practicum was enacted and experienced in four representative New Zealand initial teacher education institutions, offering a critical examination of institutional policy and practice, as well as the experiences of practicum participants – student teacher, associate teacher and teacher educator. Informed by the writings of Barbara Rogoff (2003) a multi-phase, mixed methods QUAL/Quan research design (Creswell, 2003) was utilised to foreground institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal factors that shaped the lived experiences of practicum assessment. In Phase One, key informant interviews with institutional representatives provided understanding of the policies and practices that define the assessment framework for each institution. In Phase Two, an online survey completed by seventy-four student teachers, twenty-six associate teachers and twenty teacher educators captured the experiences of key participants and their descriptions of the strengths and challenges of practicum assessment. Phase Three comprised a case study of one practicum triad from each institution. Interviews with the triad participants examined the way in which assessment of practicum was conducted in the context of relationships, highlighting the critical influence of the interactions between the triad members. Key findings support a view of practicum assessment as complex and multi-faceted, enacted with institutional parameters, but highly individualised in practice. The need for greater transparency and rigour in assessment practices is implicated in the findings of this study, as well as the importance of meaningful collaboration between participants that addresses entrenched hierarchical patterns within the triad. In highlighting the complexity of practicum assessment, a framework is proposed for conceptualising the way in which the experience of practicum assessment is determined by the influence of multiple institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal variables.
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    Bodies of knowledge : early childhood teachers' experiences of their initial teacher education programme and sense of preparedness for teaching : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Ord, Katherine Ann
    This thesis investigates the phenomenon of ‘preparedness’ as it is employed in relation to the preparation of early childhood teachers through initial teacher education. It is a descriptive account of how newly qualified teachers made sense of their learning to teach process through the lens of preparedness; a construct that was brought to the research process. Individual and group interviews with field-based and pre-service newly qualified early childhood teachers participating in the study were conducted over eighteen months. The programme leaders of participating teacher education institutions were also interviewed, and a range of teacher education programme and official documentation was examined. An interpretivist approach was employed in the design of the research, including data generation, data analysis and presentation of findings. This thesis argues that newly qualified teachers equate ‘being prepared’ with ‘being knowledgeable’. Rather than holding this knowledge as a store of ‘in-the-head’ knowledge, the research texts strongly suggested that as students approaching newly qualified teacher status, they desired to hold this knowledge in a practice, or an embodied sense. Through investigating participants’ stories of becoming knowledgeable this thesis argues that the process of accessing and acquiring the formal knowledge of teaching was aligned to the structural form of each institution, and to the way in which each positioned students in relation to that knowledge. From participants’ perspectives each institutional setting represents discursively different ways of coming to know teaching and being teachers. This thesis clarifies the conditions for teacher education students to understand knowledge for teaching and thus become “self authoring members” (Edwards et al., 2002) of early childhood communities of practice. It argues that the key to teacher education students’ sense of preparedness lies within the design of teacher education programmes. The stories of newly qualified teachers and the author’s interpretations of them make a contribution to on-going dialogue about what constitutes knowledge and knowing for teachers. It adds a voice to those who argue that learning to teach is not principally a cognitive process that privileges thought over action and theory over practice. Rather, this thesis contends that the nature of knowledge for teaching must be reconceptualised to take account of practice theories of knowledge.