Perspective Chapter: Enhancing Student Teachers’ Professional Development through Active Learning

Abstract

As a contrast to traditional approaches to learning, this chapter explores two examples of active learning conducted with student teachers in Norway. In the first example, the chapter reports from a case study on student teachers’ engagement with the Scandinavian Romani exhibit at a local museum. For this example, the chapter discusses student teachers’ possibilities for developing a critical consciousness through immersive experiences. In the second example, the chapter presents and discusses a project using virtual reality (VR) technology designed to build student teachers’ capacity for their future professional role in schools. For this example, the chapter addresses the development of student teachers’ awareness of their own professionality and their active role in home-school cooperation. In both examples, the chapter draws attention to the leading role of the teacher educator, who actively facilitates a collaborative, interactive, and participatory learning environment. Theoretically, the chapter elaborates on student-centered learning from the perspectives of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, underlining the significance of active engagement and critical reflections.

1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the relation between student teachers’ professional development and student-active learning methods in teacher education. By introducing and discussing two examples of active learning conducted with student teachers in Norwegian teacher education, the chapter will draw attention to the teacher’s role when incorporating collaborative, interactive, and participatory approaches in teacher education. In the first example, I will report from a case study on student teachers’ engagement with the Scandinavian Romani exhibit at a local museum in inland Norway. In the second example, I will introduce a project using virtual reality (VR) technology designed to build student teachers’ capacity for their future professional role in schools.

In the two examples, I will illustrate how the teacher educator plays a crucial role in student-centered learning by acting as “a more competent peer” [1]. This role includes modeling behavior for student teachers and providing a space in which they can imitate the role of a professional teacher. Moreover, it includes the responsibility to nurture and challenge reflections, skills, and understanding by asking questions and providing critical instruction, guidance, and scaffolding [2]. As such, this chapter will challenge the view that student-active learning methodologies reduce the role of the teachers to passive facilitators who leave the learners to grow and advance on their own.

As noted by Bergmann and Sams [3], a common misconception regarding student-active methodologies is that they turn the teacher-student relationship upside-down compared to traditional teaching approaches. Within this misunderstanding, the teacher, who played the active part in the traditional classroom, is replaced with the active student, leaving the students to discover, interpret, and develop knowledge and skills on their own. I argue that utilizing the potential for positive outcomes of student involvement very much depends on the teacher educator’s ability to plan, structure, and lead the process of learning. Applying student active learning methodologies in teacher education implies rethinking the role of the teacher educator. The positive outcomes of student success and development are more likely to happen when teachers engage with their students, take their responsibility seriously regarding creating a positive learning environment, and provide guidance and support for their active student learners.

This chapter is structured as follows: first, I will provide an argument for why student-centered learning should be considered an imperative not only in school but also in teacher education. Second, as a background for presenting and discussing the two pedagogical examples, I will elaborate on the concept of student-oriented learning, tracing its roots back to the works of classical education thinkers, such as Freire [4, 5] and Dewey [6, 7]. Third, I will refer to two examples of student-active learning methodologies in teacher education, discussing how the two examples can contribute to enhancing student teachers’ professional development, focusing on critical consciousness and self-reflection. In particular, I will draw attention to the leading role of the teacher educator, discussing what we can learn from these examples regarding a collaborative, interactive, and participatory involvement from both student teachers and teacher educators.

2. Why study student-active learning in teacher education?

An important aspect of teachers’ professionality is the ability to promote instructional strategies that encourage students to take an active role in their own learning. Examples of such strategies include project-based learning, group discussions, and hands-on activities, all designed to help students develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, and a deeper understanding of the subject matter. By engaging students actively in the learning process, teachers can help students retain information and knowledge more effectively. In addition, by creating a learning environment in which students participate as active learners, teachers play a critical role in helping students feel more connected to their school and community and feel more invested in their own learning. In turn, a learning environment where all students feel valued, respected, and supported can lead to improved academic outcomes and greater social-emotional well-being.

As noted by Darling-Hammond [8], the kind of teaching that supports twenty-first-century skills in education, such as that incorporating creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking, “is very different from what was required when the goal was merely to ‘cover the curriculum’ and ‘get through the book’”:

Students entering school today will leave to work in jobs that do not yet exist, using knowledge that has not yet been discovered and technologies that have not yet been invented, facing complex problems our generation has been unable to solve [8].

Meanwhile, the complex processes of globalization, internationalization, and immigration continue to alter the landscape of education [9]. As cultural and linguistic plurality become integral aspects of the educational experience, different perspectives are introduced into the dialog. Such intercultural exchange may not only stimulate new ideas and innovations but also transform traditional notions and values [10]. The central in-demand skills that employers demand within such a context will be to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across different cultural backgrounds. More than to follow directions or “simply to recall a canon of received knowledge” [8], students need to incorporate the abilities to assess and evaluate different solutions to problems, to make sense of complex information, and to develop a lifelong-learning mind-set. As such, the traditional teacher-oriented methods used to impart information, what Darling-Hammond [8] framed as “chalk and talk-methods,” need to be replaced by teaching methods that allow students to take an active role in their own learning.

All of these expectations surrounding contemporary schooling have implications for teacher training. In recent years, teacher educators have increasingly recognized the value of student teachers’ engagement in their own learning. New preparation programs typically allow student teachers to discuss and review research to actively develop a basis for systematic and critical reflection regarding professional practice. These programs also allow student teachers to develop their professional experiences by conducting their own inquires using methods such as action-based research to strengthen the quality of their own teaching. Likewise, by incorporating teaching methods that utilize collaboration, interaction, and participation in teacher education, prospective teachers are given opportunities to engage in reflexive and critical thinking that may help them prepare for future work in a complex school environment and in society [11, 12, 13].

Nevertheless, a growing body of teacher education research has called for radical improvements in traditional teacher training [14, 15]. The repeated critiques of traditional teacher education programs include the divide between the field of practice and the university, the fragmentation of content and pedagogical knowledge, and the absence of innovative teaching strategies and inquiry-based learning in the programs. Over the past decades significant improvements have been made in many countries, for example, by developing undergraduate teacher education programs into five-year practitioner research-based master’s models or initiating one- or two-year graduate programs to support newly qualified teachers [8]. Still, prior research has indicated that many teacher programs require improvement, not least by challenging, developing, and transforming the well-established and dominant role of lecture-based teaching practices [14, 15].

From the perspective of such a critique, prospective teachers need to actively engage with knowledge rather than passively reproducing it. A continually changing society requires professional teachers who can help students to engage in their learning to develop critical thinking, the skills for problem-solving, and the ability to address the emerging challenges and problems that do not have existing answers [16]. Thus, it is imperative that teacher educators not only lecture about the necessity of student-active learning, but also find ways of facilitating and promoting real student teacher engagement. With this background, there is reason to discuss how contemporary teacher education programs can apply methods that more actively involve prospective teachers in the learning process.

3. Student-centered learning in contrast to conventional academic instruction

In prior decades, student engagement in school and higher education has attracted considerable attention not only in research literature, but also in the general educational discourse, headlining educational conferences, meetings, and seminars across the globe [17, 18, 19, 20]. As noted by Trowler [18], “a sound body of literature has established robust correlations between student involvement in a subset of educationally purposive activities and positive outcomes.” According to Trowler [18], such positive results include enhanced “satisfaction, persistence, academic achievement and social engagement,” making student-centered learning an essential aspect of a wide range of pedagogical debates.

Central to the concept of student-centered learning is the view that learners’ engagement is a key contributor to students’ success [20]. As such, student-centered learning can be described as the pedagogical approaches that prioritize the learner as the focal point of the educational experience. Where the learner is seen as an active contributor to the process of learning, the teacher assumes the role of a facilitator guiding the learner through a process of inquiry and discovery. Consequently, students are not reduced to the role of passive recipients of knowledge provided by the teacher; rather, they are empowered to take ownership of their own education, developing a deeper understanding of the subject matter, and sharpening their critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills [17, 18].

Characterized by its attention toward activity, interaction, and experience, the concept of student-centered learning has a lengthy historical background, including inspiration from behaviorism, organizational learning, and motivational theory. However, by acknowledging that engagement “is not just behavioral, but includes emotional and cognitive dimensions” [20], the socio-cultural perspective on teaching and learning has played a specific and important role in developing student-centered methodologies. As such, the approach to knowledge production in student-centered learning resonates notably with the works of classical education thinkers, such as Dewey [6, 7], and Freire [4, 5]. Although the problems that these theorists addressed in their writings were very different and the contexts for their writing varied substantially, their ways of framing education have inspired student-centered learning initiatives for decades.

In Experience and Education, originally published in 1938, Dewey [7] outlined a theory of learning based on a deep and practical appreciation of students’ personal experiences. For Dewey, learning takes place when human beings interact with their surroundings. According to Dewey, education is essentially a social process in which students take an active part in the process of learning. This participation is seen as constitutive for gaining new knowledge and involves continuity and interaction between the learner and what is learned, formulated in the following question: “How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present?” [7].

The answer that Dewey gives to this rhetorical question is that schools should create a relationship between the students’ histories and everyday lives and the school’s curriculum [21]. Having their own histories and life-worlds mirrored in the school’s teaching, in textbooks, and in the knowledge and skills that schools provide, motivates students to seek new understandings [7]. For Dewey, it is imperative that teachers “become intimately acquainted with the conditions of the local community, physical, historical, economic, occupational, etc., in order to utilize them as educational resources” [7].

Half a century later, Freire [4, 5], formulated a corresponding approach to teaching and learning. Sharing Dewey’s idea that curriculum should correspond to students’ previous knowledge and experiences, Freire emphasized that the turn from a teacher-oriented education to the inclusion of the students’ experiences “must also include a global, critical dimension” [5]. Acknowledging the significance of students’ experiences and active participation in the process of learning is more than a technique “simply to confirm the status quo or motivate students” [5]. Instead, taking students’ life-worlds into account when teaching should also affect and perhaps even alter the students’ experiences [4]. In this way, Freire laid the foundation for Young’s [22] influential thinking regarding “powerful knowledge” and his argument that “the main purpose of school is to enable all students to acquire knowledge that takes them beyond their experiences” [22]. Thus, while Dewey emphasized the significance of context, Freire found that the contextual starting point also may create a space for action, intervention, and even transformation [21, 23].

Both Dewey and Freire developed their thinking in contrast to traditional education, where the role of the school is to pass a pre-defined and controlled body of knowledge to the learners. In Dewey’s critique, traditional education has failed, as it overlooks the significance that real-life experiences have in the acquisition of knowledge. In a similar vein, from Freire’s perspective, traditional education represents what he called a banking model of education [24], stating that teaching is the transfer of knowledge from someone who knows to someone who does not, thus isolating knowledge from practice and personal experiences. Dewey and Freire would agree that, within a traditional model of education, the roles of both the teachers and students are reduced. While teachers are seen as providers of a static body of knowledge, transferring what the curriculum prescribes as relevant information, students are pictured as “blank slates,” or passive recipients, waiting to be filled with new knowledge. In Dewey’s and Freire’s view, traditional education created a sharp distinction between school and other arenas, for example, children’s leisure time, largely ignoring the significance that students’ own experiences have in motivation and transformative learning.

A common concern for Dewey and Freire is that teachers continue to play an active role within a learner-centered education [4, 5, 6, 7, 24]. In both Dewey’s and Freire’s alternative, the teacher is responsible for selecting the content and building the curriculum that incorporates diverse perspectives. For learning to take place, it is the teacher’s task to plan, organize, and facilitate spaces for interaction and collaboration. Engaged teachers take responsibility for relating their teaching to the lives of the students, responding to students’ natural curiosity by providing adapted learning activities and integrating assessments that measure real accomplishments, and giving students a direction in which to proceed to raise their academic level. Hence, in Dewey’s and Freire’s student-centered models, the teacher activates the power of the co-construction of knowledge and strategies that may occur when students’ experiences are used as a starting point for teaching.

4. Student teachers’ professional development: using the museum as a site of learning

As part of my teaching in a two-year master’s program at INN University in Norway, my team and I collaborated with a local museum to use it as a site of learning for student teachers. More specifically, we let our student teachers engage with the exhibit Latjo Drom—The Romani/Travelers’ Culture and History, which displays the life and history of the Romani people in Norway. The exhibit is located at the Glomdal Museum in Elverum, which has been a pioneering institution in including ethnic minority cultures in their exhibits [25]. In bringing student teachers to the museum, we have been interested in how the exhibit can create a space for student teachers to develop a nuanced and in-depth understanding of the traditions and current situation for one of Norway’s national minorities [26].

In the exhibit, the student teachers become familiar with the diversity of the Romani people’s history and culture in Norway. The exhibit is comprised of a wide range of Romani artifacts, such as tools, clothing, decorative knives, and other handicrafts, all presenting the Romani’s traveling way of life and the advanced skills and knowledge their communities have developed for centuries. In addition, the exhibit includes larger items, such as a life-size horse model, a car, a caravan, and a fully equipped 40 ft. boat, to portray how the culture of traveling has evolved and been adapted through generations.

The student teachers also encounter a multimodality of pictures, films, texts, and examples of Romani music, both older folk music and presentations from newer artists that actively incorporate their Romani background when composing and performing. In a separate part of the exhibit, the student teachers learn about the racism and social exclusion the Romani people have suffered in Norway, including cases of lobotomy, forced relocation into labor colonies, and forced sterilization. These dramatic experiences of discrimination, stigma, and violence are documented through the use of pictures, films, and personal narratives telling the story of how Norwegian authorities in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s worked systematically to erase the Romani culture and to assimilate the Romani communities into the dominant culture. The exhibit, titled Latjo Drom, meaning to wish someone a safe and pleasant journey in the Romani language, thus gains a deeper meaning. Not only does the title emphasize the distinctive Romani way of life, it also bears a message of hope and reconciliation, reminding the visitors about the past and the power of transformative change.

The cooperation and interaction between schools and museums has a long history and has been mutually beneficial in many ways and on many levels [27, 28]. Frequently, the museum is seen as an extension of the classroom, facilitating inquiry-based and experiential learning in ways that engage the students and support the curriculum goals. However, as noted by van der Kooij [27], schools’ collaboration with museums can also very often take a form in which the museum acts largely as a provider of services and the school as a consumer. The teachers adopt a passive and observatory role, leaving the instruction to the curators. In this way, the teachers give the impression to the students that a field trip to a museum is more equivalent to leisure time than to school-based learning. Hence, in such a case, the collaboration with the museum has little significance beyond the isolated visits.

In visiting the Latjo Drom exhibit with student teachers, the concept of student-centered learning is introduced to them as part of the master’s courses at the university, which includes reflections on the teacher’s role when providing collaborative, interactive, and participatory approaches to teaching and learning. At the venue, the student teachers are first given a guided tour through the different sections by one of the curators, before they explore the exhibit by themselves or in groups. In this way, they are offered the opportunity to engage with the emotions that the exhibit evokes through the artifacts, imagery, texts, and sounds. Later, we allow the student teachers to discuss in groups, posing questions such as: “What did you learn from the exhibit?”; “How did you respond to the exhibit?”; and “How does your encounter with the exhibit relate to those of your peers?” As part of the group work, the student teachers are also asked to revisit one part of the exhibit by free choice and prepare a presentation for the others on the opportunities and challenges they could face if they were to allow their students to engage with this content as future teachers. The group work ends with a plenary discussion led by my colleagues and me in which we ask questions to emphasize reflection upon concepts from the course, such as diversity, discrimination, and minoritization and how they correspond and intersect with the exhibit. One example of these questions is: “To what extent may the Latjo Drom exhibit elaborate or even challenge the concepts presented in the course?” Moreover, we ask the student teachers to reflect upon how an exhibit like Latjo Drom can be utilized with students in school and what role the teacher should have in this regard. An important part of this discussion is how the teacher may help the students see the direct, indirect, and even subtle forms of historical and contemporary discrimination against the Romani communities. Drawing on Freire’s [4, 5] transformative approach to education, such knowledge also includes becoming aware of the structures that have allowed systematic discrimination to occur.

In this way, the integration of the Latjo Drom exhibit in the master’s courses offers opportunities for engaging emotionally with the exhibit. Following Dewey’s [7] idea that experiences are not only a phenomenon of the intellect, but also have to do with bodily involvement, the student teachers encounter a form of learning that involves the senses and emotions. Moreover, as emphasized within the framework of student-centered learning, the student teachers involve themselves in group work activities and self-directed learning [17, 20]. Instead of regarding the teacher educator as the primary source of knowledge, the student teachers take an active role in their own learning [18].

Meanwhile, through the group discussions, the teacher’s role in education is highlighted, emphasizing the empowering and transformative function teachers can have as implementers of education [4, 5]. Thus, learning is seen “as an intentional and active event that requires critical examination between all actors, teachers, and students” [29]. Hence, based on theory and my own experiences with the integration of the museum into teaching and learning, I believe that an experiential engagement with the Latjo Drom exhibit creates opportunities for enhancing the student teachers’ role as professional teachers.

5. Pursuing professional development for student teachers using virtual reality (VR) technology

At INN University, I have also been involved in a project in which student teachers in the five-year master’s program engage with virtual reality (VR) technology. Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs a computer-generated environment to stimulate the physical presence in an imaginary world—in our case, a classroom. The project was developed by a team of teacher educators at INN University in collaboration with in-service teachers at one of the schools in the area and a local company working with different types of VR style technology [2]. The purpose of the project is to advance the professional growth of prospective teachers, developing skills and knowledge with regard to home-school cooperation.

In the project, the student teachers use VR headsets to simulate their role as a professional in-service teacher, leading a conversation on social and academic learning with a student and her parent. In the Norwegian context, such a developmental talk is a central part of the school’s communication with the students’ homes. In Norwegian schools, in-service teachers are obliged to conduct planned and structured conversations with parents and students at least two times a year [30]. These conversations are initiated by the school and provide an opportunity for addressing the students’ academic progress and social development. However, for student teachers, there are few opportunities to rehearse such a developmental talk as part of their education. Instead, in teacher education, issues within the field of home-school cooperation are most often introduced on a theoretical level, meaning that the student teachers read relevant research literature on their own and attend lectures on home-school cooperation, regulations, laws, and practices.

In order to activate the student teachers’ engagement in their own process of learning, the VR project is designed as a “flipped classroom” practice [2, 3]. As noted by Burnett and Merchant [14], the introduction in recent years of digital tools has contributed to a radical change in teacher education pedagogy, for example, through the emergence of flipped classroom methodologies. Typically, a flipped classroom approach involves an initial stage, during which concepts, perspectives, and literature are introduced by the teachers, a middle stage, during which the students work independently, and a final stage, during which the students reflect upon the work they have conducted using the experiences and perspectives from the two first stages. As such, a flipped classroom practice stands in contrast to teacher-oriented education by allowing the students to work more independently, with their teachers acting merely as guides, mentors, or facilitators [3, 7]. In this way, the flipped classroom resonates with the principles of student-centered learning, emphasizing students’ engagement and active participation through technology-based learning activities.

In the VR project, the student teachers are placed in a work-related situation using VR headsets to encounter two virtual characters: Emilie, a student in the lower secondary school, and her father. Emilie is portrayed as a rather quiet and shy student who works hard in school but still performs on an average level, academically. She has several friends in school. As such, Emilie represents a type of student that many prospective teachers will meet in their future work.

In the simulation, Emilie and her father sit at a table in a classroom, while the student teacher is located behind a desk in front of the two, much as in a real-life scenario. The characters move and talk as they would in an advanced videogame; for example, Emilie may show signs of being embarrassed when the student teachers ask her questions, and the father may get upset when holding the school responsible for his daughter’s education. The conversations are limited to pre-produced statements and answers designed as responses to the kinds of questions asked by the student teachers. Based on the strategy the student teacher selects, a facilitator (often a teacher educator or a trained peer) chooses the type of response Emilie or the father will give. In all the different manuscript scenarios, the simulation is programmed so that the father sometimes interrupts the conversation, asking questions or posing comments directed either to the teacher or to his daughter. The simulation ends with either an accepted solution or with a situation in which the father is dissatisfied with the school.

After the simulation, which can last from three to five minutes, the student teachers gather for a group discussion, sharing their experiences in both leading the conversation and watching their peers perform the VR simulation. Here, they are also given the opportunity to draw on the theories and perspectives to which they were introduced before entering the simulation, including theories on home-school cooperation, communication theory, and perspectives on teacher professionality.

As a parallel to both Dewey’s [6, 7] and Freire’s [4, 5] work, the project was carefully designed so that the student teachers’ process of learning and professional development is guided by the team of teacher educators. Burnett and Merchant [14] argued that, by itself, the integration of digital devices and technologies in education makes very little difference with regard to enhancing student-active learning; rather, it is what teachers do with technologies that matter. On this basis, in both the first phase (where theoretical concepts are introduced) and the third phase (where experiences are discussed), the team of teacher educators takes a leading role.

In the first phase, the prospective teachers work individually and in groups with the concepts introduced in a traditional in-class lecture on home-school cooperation, an online lecture on communication, and in a podcast on relevant scientific models, including an experiential and student-centered model of learning. In this part of the project, we emphasize an active connection to the learning material with the student teachers’ previous knowledge and experiences about home-school cooperation [6, 7]. In this phase, the team of teacher educators constantly assesses the extent to which the student teachers are able to utilize and apply their knowledge independently [2]. In the second phase, which involves the actual VR simulation, the student teachers test their newly acquired skills and knowledge, and, in the third and final phase, they come together and discuss and analyze their experiences with the team of teacher educators. In this final phase, our team of teacher educators draws on Freire’s [4, 24] transformative perspective on education. Aiming to enhance the professional development of the prospective teachers, the teacher educators attempt to discern the connections between the student teachers’ prior knowledge and their interpretations of the VR simulation in a way that may advance and even alter their understanding of their professional role.

6. Conclusions

In this chapter, I have discussed the use of student-centered approaches in teacher education, drawing on two examples from my own practice as a teacher educator. In both examples, student teachers are provided hands-on practice opportunities to build the skills and knowledge important for their future work as teachers. Hence, the examples illustrate the teaching approaches designed to increase student engagement and enhance reflections on the professional role of teachers.

In analyzing the two examples in light of Dewey’s [6, 7] and Freire’s [4, 5] work on student engagement, I have attempted to demonstrate how these examples may hold the potential for altering the roles of the student teacher and the teacher educator compared to their roles in traditional teacher-oriented education. While conventional teacher-oriented approaches to teaching and learning often position the learners as passive interpreters of the knowledge that is selected and presented to them by the teacher, student-active learning methods aim to increase the engagement of the student without reducing the significance of the teacher. In the two examples, student teachers are seen as active co-constructers of knowledge, not as objects to be equipped with pre-determined knowledge. In a similar vein, the role of the teacher educator is neither to provide the learners with information, nor to be a passive facilitator who leaves the students to discover and develop skills and knowledge on their own [2]. Rather, by leading the process of learning in a planned and structured way, teacher educators may take an active role in constructing and developing knowledge in collaboration with the student teachers.

The study of student-centered approaches in teacher education should not overlook the risk of student-centered learning becoming a buzz-phrase that draws attention away from important educational discussions regarding the purpose of education. As noted by Biesta [31], Hultberg and Heiret [32], and others, a progressive, student-centered approach to teaching and learning fits well with the skills-oriented and neoliberal policy encouraging competitive individualism in education. As such, a student-centered approach in school and teacher education “risks neglecting knowledge about the social conditions that students act within” [32]. For example, to take real action on climate change, students need to know the underlying causes of the climate crisis and not simply to develop the practical skills to act.

Against this background, it is important to emphasize that incorporating collaborative, interactive, and participatory approaches in teacher education should give prospective teachers opportunities to engage in reflexive and critical thinking. Future research should further investigate how student-centered approaches in teacher education can empower student teachers “with greater understanding of complex situations rather than to control them with simplistic formulas or cookie-cutter routines for teaching” [33]. Thus, for student teachers, being prepared for work in a complex school environment includes developing an understanding of the underlying properties of a problem and a critical awareness of one’s social reality through reflection and action. As I have demonstrated in this chapter, a combination of Dewey’s practical and experience-based approach and Freire’s transformative perspective may be helpful in this regard. Enhancing student teachers’ professional development through active learning means advancing their participation and engaging them in their own learning. Likewise, it also implies the fostering of a critical consciousness with which student teachers can apply their knowledge and skills in pursuit of social justice. As highlighted in this chapter, the teacher educator’s guidance is crucial for developing this professionality in the active learning classroom.

Conflict of interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.