Lärarutbildning mellan det bekanta och det obekanta: En studie av lärares och lärarstudenters beskrivningar av levd erfarenhet i skola och högskola.

Lärarutbildning mellan det bekanta och det obekanta: En studie av lärares och lärarstudenters beskrivningar av levd erfarenhet i skola och högskola.

Avhandlingen Lärarutbildning mellan det bekanta och det obekanta belyser lärarutbildning utifrån ett hermeneutiskt fenomenologiskt perspektiv. Ett grundläggande intresse är att studera lärarutbildning från en synvinkel, där lärare och lärarstudenter framträder som figur mot bakgrund av de institutionella sammanhangen skola och högskola. Den övergripande fråga som studien ställer gäller vilka innebörder av fenomenet lärarutbildning som framträder, då lärarutbildning studeras som levd erfarenhet. Utifrån en förståelse av lärarutbildning som komplext fenomen, sammanflätas teoretiska antaganden och metodologiska överväganden. Det innebär en fenomenologisk förståelse av livsvärlden som intentional, levd och social värld, en hermeneutisk öppenhet för att sätta det bekanta på spel och en metodologisk strategi, som kännetecknas av följsamhet och lyhördhet.

Den empiriska studien visar att innebörden av lärarutbildning som levd erfarenhet framträder som temana enhetlighet, förebildlighet och marknadsmässighet mellan aktör och institutionellt sammanhang; som situationens personliga och kollektiva dimensioner mellan aktör och uppgift, och som mötets grad av närhet och anonymitet mellan aktör och aktör. När dessa innebörder av fenomenet lärarutbildning sätts på spel med de existentiella temana kroppslighet, tidslighet och rumslighet framträder glipor mellan de bekanta mönster som tidigare urskiljts. I rörelsen mellan det bekanta och det obekanta blir makt- och genusstrukturer synliga, och en möjlig lärarutbildning framträder mellan den bekanta lärarutbildning som varit och en obekant lärarutbildning som skulle kunna bli.

Teacher education between familiarity and strangeness. An inquiry into the descriptions of lived experience told by teachers and student teachers in school and at the university

The aim of this dissertation is to study teacher education as lived experience with an overall ambition to contribute to a deeper understanding of teacher education as a complex phenomenon. A basic interest is to approach teacher education from a point of view where the lived experience of teachers and student teachers in school and on campus is brought into focus. The main question of the study is: what meanings of the phenomenon teacher education emerge, when teacher education is studied as lived experience? To empirically inquire into lived experience a hermeneutical phenomenological perspective is developed. This means a phenomenological understanding of the life-world as an intentional, lived and social world, and a hermeneutical openness to put repeated and confirmed experience into play to open for new experience. The choice of participant observation and conversational interviewing as research methods made it necessary to develop a methodological strategy involving a flexible position as well as a wakeful position.

The results of the empirical study are presented in three in-betweens. Each of them focuses on a certain aspect of the life-world, as it emerges from the research question posed. The themes of unifying, modelling and of being market-oriented explore the meaning of teacher education as it comes forth between actor and institutional setting. Between actor and task, the meaning of teacher education takes shape in the lived situations of teachers and teacher students in school and on campus. When the meaning of the phenomenon teacher education unfolds between actor and actor, it is formed in the encounter with the other .

So far, the results are consistent with earlier research on teacher education. To challenge familiar descriptions and to approach complexity, the results are put into play by the use of corporality, temporality and spatiality as existential themes. This leads to the conclusions that the meaning of the phenomenon teacher education transpires from male and female perspectives. This conclusion puts at risk the gender neutral description of women and men within teacher education as teachers and students . Secondly, the meaning of the phenomenon teacher education is intertwined with situations where personal and collective experience of teachers and student teachers is expressed in feelings of familiarity and strangeness. This means that the past in the sense of what traditional teacher education used to mean is challenged by transformation in terms of what teacher education could mean. Thirdly, the meaning of the phenomenon teacher education always includes different meanings as well as a prevailing meaning that is interacting with the institutional setting. This puts into play the assumption that traditions always stay the same, and that reproduction dominates transformation.