Revisiting teaching archetypes: Re-conceptualising student teachers' lay theories and identities

Abstract

Increasingly, as the pace of change quickens to unprecedented speed, education systems are being deregulated and subject to market forces as a general tendency to privatise the public sphere (Beck, 2000a). Globalisation, or glocalisation as Beck (2000) prefers to name it, as a more accurate description of the asymmetrical relationship between the local and the global, and the impact of the 'infotainment telesector' (Homer-Dixon, 2001) is impacting very differently within national educational systems depending on how these forces are 'refracted' at the national and local level (Goodson, 2004). Consequently, there is a growing tendency also to increase regulation of teacher education, to mandate and to prescribe particular kinds of programmes, their requirements and delivery as well as the process of certification and re-certification. This kind of hyper-rationality applied to teachers' lives and work contrasts with Government mandates that increasingly also broaden the role of teachers to include care and concern, to foster self-esteem, identity and citizenship while simultaneously seeking to develop skills that are marketable in the global economy, to boost individual country's market share and to improve competitive edge in the 'Knowledge Economy', to address simultaneously the knowledge economy and the knowledge society (see Hargreaves, 2003; Stoll, Fink & Earl, 2003). In such circumstances, it is appropriate to ask: what has teaching and schooling already done to student teachers before entry to a teacher education programme and what are the factors that appear to contribute most to their professional identities in the making and the lay theories of teaching that they have already well formed and we know from previous research to be tenacious and powerful? The primary purpose of this chapter is theoretical rather than empirical. It sets out to re-conceptualise student teachers' and beginning teachers' professional formation by connecting teaching archetypes with lay theories and identity formation. Part of the purpose of this re-conceptualisation is to create greater awareness of the relationship between continuity and change: that teaching archetypes, lay theories and identity are constructed from past present and future. The chapter concludes with some comments on the implications of this re-conconceptualisation for initial teacher education and early professional learning. Teaching archetypes and lay theories are discussed simultaneously, and this is followed by consideration of identity formation as a means of extending discussion. However, the discussion is intended to be cumulative in its impact. Due to the fact that I am located within the Irish educational system, this discussion takes on heightened significance. It is generally accepted that Irish society has changed rapidly and radically during the past twenty years (see Corcoran & Peillon, 2002; O'Toole, 2003; Sugrue, 2004). Consequently, finding continuity in such circumstances becomes more of a challenge, but is crucially important also for individual integrity and social cohesion. It is anticipated that due to global forces, these realities will resonate with other contexts also. © 2005 Springer.