CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.4 The need for a pedagogy that responds to the needs of pre-service teacher
2.4.1 Pre-service teacher professional identity
Professional teacher identity development is a dilemma for pre-service teachers who must navigate among a myriad of matters such as their personal perceptions of teachers, based on their experience of teaching practice, learning to teach processes offered by the teacher education curriculum and what the society expects from them (Beltman, Glass, Dinham, Chalk, & Nguyen, 2015; Olsen, 2008). In the teacher development process, from pre-service to service teaching, the matter of teacher identity is significant (Alsup, 2006; Danielewicz, 2014; Friesen & Besley, 2013).
Teacher identity is a complicated mix that has a host of components (Olsen, 2008).
The following Figure 5, according to Olsen (2008, p. 25), illustrates the complexities that shape the identity of a teacher in professional life.
Figure 5: Teacher Identity as Dynamic, Holistic Interaction among Multiple Parts (Olsen, 2008, p. 25)
The various components highlighted in Figure 5, demonstrate the interwoven nature of the factors that connect in no order, to shape the identity of a teacher. Thoughts and events such as an individual’s background, social settings, previous experiences, ambition (as this relates to Figure 5), lead to the development of teacher identity.
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To further substantiate the complexities of teacher identity, Izadinia (2013) suggested the following model in Figure 6 of how pre-service teachers mature to attain a self- image for the teaching profession.
Figure 6: Student teacher’s identity (Izadinia, 2013, p. 708)
According to Izadinia (2013), whose model is presented in Figure 6, many factors can build teacher identity in pre-service teachers. The broad features such as “educational contexts, learning communities and prior experiences” (p. 708), encompass other necessary sub-elements in the intersecting circles. It should be noted that some components of developing teacher identity are significant in my study that investigated the impact of U-CE on the identity and future practice of pre-service science teachers in the school of education in a university.
Despite research on teacher identity as being related to the social circumstances surrounding pre-service teachers’ development, aspects such as the contemporary issues confronting teachers and the power of teacher identity in the classroom setting have not been given adequate consideration by scholars (Reeves, 2018). In another
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view, Olsen (2011) argued that a theoretical framework is critical in supporting the complexities associated with the build-up of teacher identity. Izadinia (2013) analysed 29 evidence-based studies on teacher identity and discovered that four main emphases emerged in the work of these researchers. These findings were “(1) reflective activities, (2) learning communities, (3) context and (4) (prior) experiences”
(Izadinia, 2013, p. 694). However, only three out of the 29 first-hand studies highlighted the negative shortcomings in teacher identity development that, in her view, relate to pressure experienced by the pre-service teachers. This pressure, Izadinia (2013, p. 703) asserted, concerns the blending of the “constructivist nature”
of teaching and other methods that pre-service teachers were trained with while in the higher institution of learning with “traditional” teaching in the schools that the practicing teachers want them to emulate. My study disrupted this pattern by adopting a critical approach to learning to teach. This was to integrate critical pedagogy into their professional growth towards becoming teachers which could be adapted to the school context in which they find themselves in the future.
Bennett (2013, p. 53) contended that “identity development is a continuous process framed within changing social and historical contexts”. The author insists that self- identity must take a series of steps to attain it. In a study conducted in South Africa, Oswald and Perold (2015) discovered that a teacher’s identity emerges from the social experiences of the teacher that have been reflected upon over time and these pieces of knowledge shape the outcome of his/her professional self-image. The researchers affirm that in the process of transforming to develop self-identity in a teaching career, a teacher develops agency for change within the context of the social system in which he/she finds him/herself. To corroborate the result of Oswald and Perold (2015), Steenekamp, van der Merwe, and Mehmedova (2018) found that pre-service teachers’
exposure to educational activities, such as an excursion influences their constructive development of teacher professional identity towards compassion that inspires them to be agents for change in the classroom. As part of the U-CE project undertaken by the participants of this study, the pre-service science teacher participants went on an excursion to an Eco-school. There they were taught about eco-friendly and indigenous ways of planting food garden plants to address nutritional and health needs as well as food insecurity among the student community that resided in that university campus.
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In addition, Sutherland, Howard, and Markauskaite (2010) observed that in the process of becoming a teacher, pre-service teachers reflect through their practices in the teacher training course and in effect incorporate their experiences to conceptualize self-esteem for professional identity. Teacher identity can bring about a professional agency that can be used to improve societal dialogues and the bargaining of transformational changes in the schools and the country at large (Buchanan, 2015).
Therefore, I argue that through the U-CE, pre-service science teachers will integrate the constructs of change and transformation into their learning to teach thereby enhancing future pedagogical principles when they become professional teachers.
In designing the biology module, where food security was a central concept with the teaching of nutrition, and a critical pedagogical stance was advanced, the cultivation of indigenous plants was encouraged. This marked another digestion from the
“normal” curriculum because PSTs were encouraged to cultivate African indigenous plants, based on the knowledge they constructed from an IK holder. Therefore, it is necessary to include literature on IK and its relatedness to the curriculum.
2.4.2 Indigenous knowledge infusion in university curriculum vis-a-vis