Aktionslæring som grundlag for bachelorprojektet på læreruddannelsen: et uddannelsesdidaktisk designeksperiment

The present study follows two bachelor groups through part one of their bachelor projects in the fourth and final year of teacher training. The groups study selected aspects of their own teaching practice by means of action learning intervention, analysis and reflection, in accordance with principles based on Action Learning. This paper aims to reach an understanding of the potential and the challenges that the bachelor groups encounter in the course of their work with action learning in their projects.

The educational design was developed on the basis of national and international research as well as experiential knowledge from the education concept called ‘Teaching Lab,’ developed in Nørre Nissum College of Education within VIA University College, Denmark. The design is based on a reciprocal relationship between College and school, and aims to develop an educational framework model accommodating the ways in which higher demands may be met within the bachelor project. To this end, student teachers are to take as their point of departure a topical aspect or situation within elementary-school practice, and carry out an empirical investigation related to it. The intention is moreover to develop a design that partly facilitates an experimental and investigative approach, and partly combines the dual aims of teacher training in a meaningful way, in preparing students for their future work as teachers in primary and secondary school practice, as well as for further academic studies. The design assigns a central role to the didactic competences of students, which entails focusing on the capabilities of students teachers in planning, implementing, reflecting upon and developing teaching.

Philosophically and educationally, the investigation is grounded on an eclectic approach. With its starting point in the Constructive Paradigm that has change and development as its primary objectives, educational design research is here combined with a humanist, qualitative approach based on analysis and interpretation in line with hermeneutic principles that focus on the projects carried out by the bachelor groups.

The theoretical framework supporting this paper consists of two supplementary perspectives focusing on didactic categories and relations as well as levels of understanding. The empirical basis consists of documents outlining functional and contextual analyses, video-documented educational talks and lesson and action plans, which the bachelor groups produced throughout the course of their projects, as well as by semi-structured interviews carried out with the bachelor groups in two phases.
Results achieved in this study point to the fact that throughout their projects the bachelor groups have identified and investigated topical aspects or situations in the teaching practice of elementary schools, which include professional challenges of relevance to their teaching lives in the context in question.
The results of the study, moreover, point to the fact that the bachelor groups were challenged in identifying and investigating the aspects and situations in question in the coherent didactic structure that they are embedded into. To a limited extent, the educational aspects and situations are analyzed and reflected upon, in the light of didactic relations serving to clarify the nature of the problem at hand in more detail. In the studies carried out by the bachelor groups, this entails working with aspects and situations characterized by multiple interpretations. This becomes important in drawing up hypotheses and development, and in implementing action learning interventions, which are only shed light upon to a limited extent by the didactic research question, which it is the aim of the intervention to challenge. Accordingly, observations and educational talks supply students with a broad empirical material that brings up themes of relevance to the profession, but which are only to some degree pertinent to the research questions in the bachelor projects. Finally, there are indications that the bachelor groups have become more conscious of the teacher’s role and responsibility in teaching, to the effect that learning spaces should be created. This points to their having achieved deeper understanding of the professional potential in action learning, which highlights the interplay between teaching and learning.

In conclusion, this study leads us on to considerations of further development of its design, in the course of which the following points should attract attention. One is that of enhancing the functional and contextual analyses of the bachelor groups, by means of implementing a professional pilot project. Secondly, counselling and expectations should be made to match each other, by means of introducing a counselling contract that identifies essential challenges in the ongoing bachelor projects.