Abstract

Beyond measurement: Some crucial questions on research about professional competences of teachers

Angelika Paseka, University of Hamburg, Germany
Ilse Schrittesser, University of Innsbruck, Austria

The present research trends show a strong bias towards evidence-based approaches - evidence-based generally meaning measurement in some way or other. As for teacher education, it seems to be wide consensus that reflexivity is or at least should be one of the core competences of professional teachers. However can reflexivity be measured at all and if so where are the limits of the measurement approach? Or are there maybe other and even more valid options of finding out about reflexivity?
This paper presents some of the results of a project in which the authors have participated since 2005 and which was initiated by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture. In the course of the project a concept of competence has been developed which draws on Giddens’ theory of structuration. Giddens suggests that human agency and social structure are in a dialectic relationship with each other. Competence consequently means the agents’ capacity of reinterpretation when dealing with social structure.
In the project five domains of competence have been defined for professional teachers, among them reflexivity.
Understanding teachers’ activities under the perspective of structuration the measurement approach might fall short of capturing the full complexity of teaching practice. In order to identify reflexivity in the actions and thoughts of teachers as well as in the impressions teachers leave on others the authors have therefore chosen a different approach. They have looked for proofs or signs of reflexivity - or its lack - in how teachers comment on their professional practices and how these practices are perceived and interpreted in the eyes of others. They have collected linguistic data of teachers as well as of students’ comments on their teachers, which are analysed under the perspective of structuration and domains mentioned above.