Students’ meaning making process in understanding practice through theory

In this paper, we seek to understand how student teachers make sense of a classroom event by analyzing
it with theory in exam papers. The relation between theory and practice is both the most central
perspective in teacher education and an ontological and epistemological “Gordian knot” which has been
discussed widely in educational literature (e.g., Korthagen, 2008). Our contribution to this discussion is to
examine how student teachers analyze a self-experienced practice situation in an exam paper in the
intersection between understanding the school practice on the one hand and, on the other hand, the
theoretical aims and demands of the teacher's education.
On this background, our research question is, “How do student teachers analyze a self-experienced
practice situation, and how do they make sense of the relation between theory and practice in exam
papers?”
In this study, we examine 30 practice assignments from student teachers who are enrolled in three
different classes in teacher education. To understand the sense-making in the students' analyses, we use
the concept of envisioning building (Langer, 2011). The concept can explain the students' process of
creating his or her understanding of a text, i.e., their description of their practice situation. To examine
this sense-making process, we analyze the students' way of noticing (van Es & Sherin, 2021), including the
concept of framing (Scheiner, 2020), which is a culturally and historically constituted form of organizing
and structuring experience.
Our preliminary result indicates that the students categorize the classroom events with the concepts of
big t-theory (Korthagen, 2008; Nielsen, 2015). They notice what they, in their education, are demanded to
fulfill in the goals of the practice exam to show their competencies with theoretical concepts visualized in
their exam paper.
Keywords: Envisionment building, Framing, Learning to noticing
References
Korthagen, F. A. J. (2008). Linking Practice and Theory – The Pedagogy of Realistic Teacher Education.
Routledge.
Langer, J. (2011). Envisioning literature: literary understanding and literature instruction. Teachers College
Press.
Nielsen, B. L. (2015). Pre-service teachers’ meaning-making when collaboratively analysing video from
school practice for the bachelor project at college. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(3),
341–357. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2014.983066
Scheiner, T. (2020). Towards a more comprehensive model of teacher noticing. ZDM – Mathematics
Education, 53, 85–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-020-01202-5
van Es, E. S., & Sherin, M. G. (2021). Expanding on prior conceptualizations of teacher noticing. ZDM –
Mathematics Education, 53, 17–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-020-01211-4