Mapping the geography of praxis teacher education: Signature pedagogies and other mechanisms of educational practice

Education and teacher education have a significant role in establishing the basis of a knowledgeable, just and civil society. They locate community and family culture as being ‘of the whole world’ that frames formal programs where teachers and students alike investigate how to engage the interests and aspirations of others. We discuss continuing research at one Australian university of pre-service teacher immersion in professional practice and a redefinition of teaching as intersubjective praxis inquiry. Eight signature pedagogies of Teacher Education have been identified from data gathered from pre-service teacher programs. Preliminary analysis of portfolio interview and staff reflective data indicates that the signature pedagogies support practice-theorising and that praxis protocols strengthen knowledge and teaching as civic virtues for all citizens. Pre-service teachers have undertaken semi-structured interviews regarding their understanding and critique of the signature pedagogies, while lecturers have engaged in focus group discussions regarding the veracity of the signature pedagogies as situated geography of teacher education. We define professional practice as substantiated and theorised professional activity that is undertaken to achieve consequences governed by a set of parameters to ensure the consensus of participants. At this point, there are different concepts of practice and a unified ‘practice theory’ has not as yet emerged internationally. Drawing on the insights of Aristotle, the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1987) raised the issue of the ‘internal goods’ of any co-operative activity such that human understanding of the end results is deepened and extended. According to MacIntyre, it is direct engagement with these ‘internal goods’ of a practice that enables the development of human virtue and which in turn, enables further goods to be accessed and experienced. More recently, the practice theorist Theodore Schatzki (2001) has defined practices as ‘arrays of activity’where the social is constituted by a field of ‘embodied, materially interwoven practices’ that are organised and emerge through shared practical understandings amongst participants. Accordingly, in this paper, we report on the mechanisms of practice that support intersubjective praxis teacher education, accepting that learning always occurs within a particular context or ‘site’ and is open to constant cycles of refinement as conditions alter and new thresholds of quality teaching and learningare reached.