Becoming a teacher: Pedagogy, partnership and participatory evaluation in a school-based pre-service program

This paper describes a project situated within the core pedagogy and curriculum subjects of a Graduate Diploma and Bachelor of Teaching program at The University of Melbourne that investigates the development of teacher pedagogy. The project was developed in response to key issues identified in the research literature about teacher education, pedagogy, and school- university partnerships. While pedagogical change is often cited as a crucial element of reform (Kincheloe 2004, 2005) little has been published that presents the perspective of the emerging teacher. The project aims to contribute to the small body of ethnographic research (Evans, 2002; Britzman 2003) about the narratives of beginning teachers as well as the issues involved in developing school-based cohorts. Approximately 80 pre-service teachers working within school-based cohorts across four primary and secondary schools were invited to write narratives or to engage in reflective practice about the pedagogy of teachers they observed and their own pedagogical development. A small number of students were subsequently interviewed. The study also included the education students undertaking some participatory evaluation about the cohort process.