Chapter 2: Practitioner Research in Initial Teacher Education

Initial Teacher Training (ITT) providers are required to adhere to statutory guidance that determines content, structure, assessment, and the management of training programmes (DfE, 2022). Added to this, the ITT curriculum is pre-defined in a core curriculum mandated by the government (DfE, 2019a). Stenhouse (1975) argued for a ‘process’ rather than an ‘objectives’ curriculum model that defines learning not as a target to be hit but something to be deepened in the context of Humanities teaching. The objectives model now underpins the domain of teachers’ professional learning and training, especially since the introduction of the core curriculum. An objectives model in ITT presumes a technical model of teaching and requires pre-service teachers to demonstrate certain behaviours. This chapter explores the value of the process model in teacher education where pre-service teachers participate in practitioner research to gain a deeper understanding of their practice, rather than to achieve prescribed curriculum objectives. In this process, pre-service teachers are viewed as both producers and consumers of knowledge.