Abstract:
There is a growing emphasis worldwide on learning throughout life and beyond formal educational settings. Attention has been given by various education researchers to the distributed character of knowledge production and learning practices within and across a range of learning and work sites . This paper is located within an emerging interest in using spatiality as a lens for examining identity processes and pedagogic practices . It is based on empirical data from two research projects concerning the use made of a problem based approach to learning by teacher education students as part of their professional preparation and, as newly graduated teachers, in everyday professional practice in secondary schools.
Utilising resources provided by actor-network theory and postcolonial theory, it addresses the question of how specific spatial arrangements enable or constrain particular processes of identity and the role of pedagogy in these processes. The argument is made that intricate inter-connections exist between subjectivity and spatiality and that neither exists as a single type. Teacher education students form several kinds of professional identity (novice, expert, novice-expert) and appropriate various kinds of pedagogic space (theory, practice, peer networks) as they 'cross' education courses with professional practice in schools. Problem-based pedagogy emerges as a threshold practice that involves a constant weaving to and fro between disparate spaces and selves. This practice is not necessarily benign, however. Pedagogy can function as politics by other means. Accordingly, the paper also addresses the interplay between power and pedagogy.
Utilising resources provided by actor-network theory and postcolonial theory, it addresses the question of how specific spatial arrangements enable or constrain particular processes of identity and the role of pedagogy in these processes. The argument is made that intricate inter-connections exist between subjectivity and spatiality and that neither exists as a single type. Teacher education students form several kinds of professional identity (novice, expert, novice-expert) and appropriate various kinds of pedagogic space (theory, practice, peer networks) as they 'cross' education courses with professional practice in schools. Problem-based pedagogy emerges as a threshold practice that involves a constant weaving to and fro between disparate spaces and selves. This practice is not necessarily benign, however. Pedagogy can function as politics by other means. Accordingly, the paper also addresses the interplay between power and pedagogy.