Journeys in Teacher Training and Education

This book challenges some well-established assumptions in teacher training evaluation. It explores how teachers learn on a training course. By exploiting the imagery of a metaphorical journey of development, a framework is formulated for analysing teacher learning which distinguishes between applied knowledge, conceptual knowledge and knowledge of self. The descriptive framework therefore depicts the integration of levels for both the process and the products of learning and as such is a powerful tool for teacher educators. The book advocates an alternative ‘constructivist – responsive' method of evaluation for teacher education programmes that has the dual aim of learning through the evaluation (process) as well as from the evaluation (product). Human learning occurs on three levels: physical (body), mental (mind) and spiritual (soul) and these levels describe how we think as well as what we do. Evaluation of any training course needs to take into consideration the dimensions of learning, the influence of socio-cultural context and the interconnectedness of process and product: how the traveling and the developmental journey interact.