RR 92-8 Pedagogical balancing acts: A teacher educator encounters problems in an attempt to influence prospective teachers' beliefs.
Abstract
A teacher educator encountered problems in teaching an introductory teacher education course designed to challenge prospective teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning. In his dual efforts both to engage his students' beliefs and to encourage their consideration of alternative beliefs stated in educational literature, he found it difficult to establish a satisfactory working relationship with them, to organize productive interaction between their current beliefs and potential alternatives, to aid them to do the intellectual work involved in such interaction, and to manage the ambiguities and risks that the course presented them.