Nag Chowdhuri, Meghna;
Archer, Louise;
(2023)
Getting comfortable with discomfort: supporting primary science teacher educators’ capacity for socially just pedagogy.
Journal of Education for Teaching
10.1080/02607476.2023.2283436.
(In press).
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Abstract
Despite longstanding calls for social justice-oriented teaching, there remains limited understanding of how to achieve it. This paper reports findings from a research-development project that explored the experiences of UK-based primary science teacher educators participating in a nine-month equity-oriented professional development programme and offers insights for supporting teacher learning for social justice. Analysis of written reflections and open-ended interviews with 15 teacher educators identified three types of reflection that supported justice-oriented practice: personal privilege in relation to race, class, gender and science; the norms and values of educational professional development; and practical implementation of justice-orientated professional development with teachers and schools. We discuss the importance of creating safe and brave spaces for critical reflection for primary science teacher educators and highlight the productive potential of experiences of discomfort that generated humility, empathy and insights that resulted in more equitable practice. The paper underlines the value of supporting educators to embrace discomfort as part of social justice-orientated professional development and calls for a greater valuing of and support for expanded models of professional development that foreground critical reflection and go beyond ‘top tips’, ‘quick fixes’, and dominant norms around professional ‘politeness’.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Getting comfortable with discomfort: supporting primary science teacher educators’ capacity for socially just pedagogy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/02607476.2023.2283436 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2023.2283436 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Social justice; teacher professional development; teacher educators; equity in primary science |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183065 |
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