Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research

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The Difficulty of Change: The Impact of Personal

School Experience and Teacher Education on the
Work of Beginning Language Teachers

Maria Ruohotie‐Lyhty & Pauli Kaikkonen

To cite this article: Maria Ruohotie‐Lyhty & Pauli Kaikkonen (2009) The Difficulty of Change:
The Impact of Personal School Experience and Teacher Education on the Work of Beginning
Language Teachers, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 53:3, 295-309, DOI:
10.1080/00313830902917378

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Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research
Vol. 53, No. 3, June 2009, 295–309

The Difficulty of Change: The Impact of Personal School Experience

and Teacher Education on the Work of Beginning Language Teachers
Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty and Pauli Kaikkonen
University of Jyväskylä
MariaRuohotie-Lyhty
10.1080/00313830902917378
0031-3831
Original
Scandinavian
302009
53
[email protected]
000002009
Taylor Article
(print)/1470-1170
Journal of Education
CSJE_A_391909.sgm
and Francis (online)
Research

This case-study investigates the impact of personal school experience and initial teacher
education on the work of six beginning language teachers. Insights into the thinking and
acting of the subjects are gained through an interpretative analysis of their interviews.
The findings indicate that one’s own school experience has an important role in
constructing practical knowledge during the first years of teaching. Part of this
experience is unconscious and difficult to express in words; nevertheless, it has an
impact on the actions of the beginning language teacher. Furthermore, the ability of the
teachers in the study to use knowledge learned during the teacher education is dependent
on their ability to self-reflect.
Keywords: beginning teachers, practical knowledge, language education, teacher
education

In recent years, European language education research has experienced a strong para-
digmatic change, which has profoundly affected research methodologies (Hu, 2007), the
goals of language education (Byram, 1997; Kaikkonen, 2001), and the focus of foreign
language education (FLE) research. Foreign language education research has benefited the
methodology and understanding of general education research and is no longer limited to
the fields of linguistics or even applied linguistics (Kohonen & Pajukanta, 2003, p. 149;
Watson-Gegeo, 2004, p. 332). The new paradigm has various names or focuses: language
education (Kohonen & Pajuranta, 2003), language socialization (Watson-Gegeo, 2004),
culture-centred language teaching (Byram, 1997), and autobiographic language teaching
(Jaatinen, 2007). Yet it has a common focus on how the language is seen in relation to
human growth and the learners’ life world (Kohonen & Pajukanta, 2003, p. 149). The learn-
ing environment and dialogic relationship between the learners are accentuated in the learn-
ing process and the student’s active role in it is acknowledged. Language is understood to
have a mediatory value in interaction and understanding between people from different
cultures. In this process, intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 1997), which
also includes skills other than just linguistic, becomes the target of education. The new view
reflects the conception of the critical and emancipatory paradigm of an active learner and
political actor (Byram, 2002). Language education aims at “growing out of the shell of
one’s own language and culture” (Kaikkonen, 2001). Moreover the critical paradigm also

Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty, Department of Teacher Education, University of Jyväskylä; Pauli

Kaikkonen, Department of Teacher Education, University of Jyväskylä
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty, University
of Jyväskylä, Department of Teacher Education, PO Box 35, 40014 University of Jyväskylä,
Finland. E-mail: [email protected]
ISSN 0031-3831 print/ISSN 1470-1170 online
© 2009 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research
DOI: 10.1080/00313830902917378
http://www.informaworld.com
296 RUOHOTIE-LYHTY AND KAIKKONEN

influences the view of teacher education. Since teaching is no longer considered as a mainly
technical performance, teacher education concentrates more on the teacher’s thinking and
supporting its development. The teacher is seen as a change agent (Hawkins, 2004, p. 4).
The necessary question still remains: To what extent does the paradigmatic change
penetrate the everyday schoolwork of language teachers? Therefore, it is worth asking how
deeply the new kind of teacher education has influenced the practical knowledge of the
newcomer teachers. If we assume a correlative relationship between language education
research and classroom pedagogics, these questions are extremely important. Yet the
process of becoming a teacher is still not well known, and in the field of language teaching
there are only a few studies concentrating on this issue (Warford & Reeves, 2003). Further-
more, it has been established that a new teacher’s induction process is critical as regards his
or her whole career (Heikkinen, 1999, p. 288; Loughran, Brown, & Doecke, 2001, p. 8).
By asking these questions, this study concentrates on finding out the role of these newly
qualified teachers in the context of school change. New teachers seem to accept the princi-
ples of a new kind of language teaching during their studies (Kaikkonen, 2004), but have
also confronted the traditional teaching during their “apprenticeship of observation” as
pupils themselves in schools (Lacey, 1977). They are at a turning point of two traditions.
Young teachers’ capacity to apply in practice the principles they have acquired during their
teacher education is commonly considered fairly low, because of the many challenges they
confront in their work. Many studies indicate the decline in innovative teaching approaches
(Loughran, Brown, & Doecke, 2001, p. 8; Schempp, Sparkes, & Templin 1998, p. 158).
Still, the young teachers are vital for the change. In which circumstances is change through
them possible? This study attempts to make visible the processes affecting the work of new
teachers. It examines their capacity to apply learned principles in practice and the role of
their own school experience in the context of everyday teaching.
This study is part of a larger longitudinal research project in the Department of Education
at Jyväskylä University, aiming at finding out how novice language teachers’ knowledge and
practice develop during their first years at work, in what ways they develop their practice,
and what kind of information they benefit from in this process. Furthermore, personal, social,
and political factors that influence the decision-making of the teacher in new situations are
also explored in this research project.

Theoretical Underpinnings
In the field of novice teacher research, two different approaches can be distinguished
according to the focus of the study. The first approach is sociological and concentrates its
interest on the social environment of the beginning teacher (Sabar, 2004; Williams,
Prestage, & Bedward, 2001). The main question becomes whether a novice teacher is at the
mercy of the school environment or whether s/he is capable of mastering his or her own
development. Many researchers are sceptical about this (Zeichner & Tabachnik, 1981, p. 7).
In the most pessimistic vision, the process of socialization into the profession has been
described as being a process of indoctrination in which the new teacher adapts to the school
culture (Zeichner & Tabachnik, 1981, pp. 7–10). The professional education the teacher has
is “washed out” by the school reality. In a more positive manner of viewing the induction,
the existing community changes through the new teacher as well (Lacey, 1977, p. 22). As
an outsider the new member sees the community in a different way and upsets the existing
balance (Heikkinen, 1999, p. 287). The new member is an opportunity for change. The new
 THE DIFFICULTY OF CHANGE 297

teacher’s role as a change agent is still seen as difficult. To be able to influence the school
culture, the new teacher has to cross the gap between that of being a stranger to the status
of an insider who has social power in the community (Schempp, Sparkes, & Templin, 1993,
p. 461). This requires a certain degree of adaptation to the existing rules and realities
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 74). Day (1999, pp. 59–60) describes this process as a two-way strug-
gle, where the new teacher attempts to realize his or her own ideas, but is at the same time
an object of strong assimilation pressure. The second approach concentrates on the individ-
ual teacher. As Britzman (2003) points out:
First, because teachers were once students in compulsory education, their sense of the
teacher’s world is strangely established before they begin learning to teach. We enter
teacher education with our school biography. (p. 1)
This viewpoint reveals the other controversy of becoming a teacher. In addition to the
complexity of the relationship between the individual and the community, new teachers also
confront the complexity of their own thinking when starting their full-time work at school.
The new teacher’s craft knowledge encompasses not only teacher education, but several
layers of former experiences about teaching and education (Kaikkonen, 2004). The
decision-making of new teachers in a certain situation is a result of how they interpret the
requirements of the situation and of their goals and values; it contains both their personal
history and future expectations (Kelchtermans & Vanderberghe, 1994, p. 46). This individ-
ual starting point is prevalent in the present study. The meaning of the environment is
present through the individual teacher, not directly. In adopting this agenda, the study joins
a number of studies of teachers’ professional knowledge base starting from the 1980s. The
underlying presupposition is that teachers’ development can be looked at from the perspec-
tive of their own knowledge growth.

Defining Practical Knowledge

Underpinning the decisions teachers make every day is an individual knowledge base
(Kettle & Sellars, 1996). This knowledge base of pedagogical decision-making has been a
subject of many empirical studies and draws on an approach called practical theory, practi-
cal knowledge, mental models, etc. In this study, we prefer the concept practical knowledge,
which can be distinguished from theoretical knowledge as it is mainly implicit, personal,
experienced knowledge, and is not always objectively proved (Handal & Lauvås, 1987).
Theoretical knowledge can, however, become a part of it through experience (Niikko, 1995,
p. 13). In addition, practical knowledge includes personal beliefs (Van Driel, Beijaard, &
Verloop, 2001, p. 137), values and attitudes (Johnston, 1994, p. 75). The beliefs related to
pupils, school, teaching, and learning function as powerful lenses when the teacher
interprets new information and acts in a certain situation (Pajares, 1992, p. 328).
Enrichment of practical knowledge occurs when explicit knowledge and practical
knowledge interact. The outside world meets the personal one in a dialectic process. The
new information becomes a part of the knowledge base by a process of interpretation in
which new information is influenced by former experience and beliefs (Handal & Lauvås,
1987, p. 12; Ojanen, 2000, p. 88). The early experience has, therefore, an important role in
the teacher’s later information creation. Pajares (1992, p. 317) suggests that beliefs accepted
at an early age are extremely long-lasting. An individual can hold on to a false belief even
if new information that reveals this falsity has been scientifically proved. Already at an early
298 RUOHOTIE-LYHTY AND KAIKKONEN

age a person has learned how teachers act and speak and these experiences have influenced
the images a teacher later connects with a good teacher (Schempp, Sparkes, & Templin,
1998, p. 145). Most of this past experience affecting practical knowledge is hidden (Ojanen,
2000, p. 77), so that a person does not remember the incidents underlying his or her beliefs.
However, their impact on the present action is important (Stenberg, Wagner, Williams, &
Horvath, 1995, p. 918). The implicit nature of practical knowledge makes it difficult to
define (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985, p. 183). Teachers may not even be aware of the gap
between their practical knowledge and their expressed goals (Senge, 1994, p. 202).
According to a number of studies, teachers are not just prisoners of their past experi-
ence (Ojanen, 2000, p. 89). The role of reflection is well documented in the research litera-
ture as a key to professional development for teachers. It is also strongly linked to the
process of practical knowledge development (Kettle & Sellars, 1996, p. 3). Reflection can
be qualified as returning to the lived experience and seeing it in a new context (Ojanen,
2000, pp. 75–76; sf. also Kolb, 1984). Reflection is, thus, a good way to become aware of
one’s practical knowledge and to change its contents. Poikela (2005, p. 24) takes an even
broader approach to the role of reflection in experiential learning and sees reflection as
being a part of every phase of the learning process, not just turning to it afterwards (reflec-
tion on action). A reflective learning process also includes the observation of one’s own
action (reflection in action) (Schön, 1983, p. 50), and critical planning (reflection for
action) (McAlpine, Weston, Beuchamp, Wiseman, & Beuchamp, 1999). According to this
conception of the experiential learning process, analysing experience also necessities the
ability to observe one’s own action and to identify its different aspects. The result of the
reflective learning process is a better-organized learning experience.

Methods
Participants
The six subjects of this case study (Anna, Maria, Johanna, Sara, Sini, and Hanna) carried
out their academic pedagogical studies in 2002–2003 at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland).
These studies consisted of a number of educational courses and school practice based on
dialogical and reflective learning. The theoretical framework of the studies is that of language
education and the student teachers are encouraged to emphasize the development of their
pupils’ cultural, meta-cognitive, and communicative (especially oral) skills in their language
teaching. The teaching practice includes 20 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) points
of a total 60 ECTS points in education required for a language teacher certificate. The current
study, as mentioned, is the first follow-up study of a larger longitudinal research project
running from 2002 until 2009 conducted at the University of Jyväskylä. The research project
began with a study of student teachers’ (n = 22) experiences of teacher education in 2002–
2003. After starting their work as beginning language teachers (n = 15) at school, qualitative
data is sampled systematically, and the research project is planned to continue until 2009
(cf. Kaikkonen, 2007; Nyman, 2007). The six subjects chosen for this case study are those
who have worked for the longest time at school, and are therefore suitable as subjects.
Most Finnish language teachers find jobs within the national educational system and teach
children and youth from 7 to 18 years of age. However, the teacher certificate gives the qual-
ification to work in adult education or in the private education sector as well. All the six
subjects worked mainly in the upper classes of the comprehensive school (grades 7–9) or in
 THE DIFFICULTY OF CHANGE 299

the upper secondary school (grades 10–12) during the collection of data in 2004–2005. Two
of them also had extra classes in the lower part of the comprehensive school (grades 4–6)
and two within adult education. Most of the subjects taught more than one language (the
languages were English, German, and Swedish). One of them had a permanent teaching
position, the contracts of the other five were temporary.

Procedures
This study specifically aims to extend the understanding of the significance of language
teachers’ own school experience and the impact of teacher education on the work in school
during the first few years (the so-called induction phase). The research approach is phenom-
enological and hermeneutic. It highlights the human experience through the analysis of
meanings (Hatsch, 2002, p. 30; Van Manen, 1990, p. 9). The main data consists of six inter-
views (2004–2005) with newly qualified teachers who have worked less than two years in
Finnish schools. Data collection took place in the middle of the 2004–2005 academic year
through focused in-depth interviews. The main themes of the interviews were the subjects’
own school-time experiences, their teacher education, and their everyday work at school.
The subjects were also asked about their goals and what their normal language lessons were
like. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The result was a large
mass of text, a collection of young teachers’ stories about their first year at work.
In 2003, at the end of their teacher education (the first part of this longitudinal research
project), the same young teachers had described the aims and goals they set for future
foreign language teaching in schools (this study is reported in detail in Kaikkonen [2004,
2007]). In their narratives, the concepts of authenticity, teaching culture, and communicative
and meta-cognitive skills were strongly present. They had mainly accepted the theoretical
framework of language education provided to them during their teacher education. The same
study (Kaikkonen, 2004, 2007), however, also showed that the young teachers’ own former
school language teaching was rather traditional and strongly opposed to their new experi-
ences of language education. Their own language learning experiences had been dominated
by mechanical exercises, teacher-centred teaching, absence of cultural context, a language-
centred teaching context, and teaching orientated to the mastery of grammar and vocabulary.
These individual experiences provide the subjects with two clearly different approaches to
teaching languages. This contradiction between the subjects’ own school time experiences
and their professional education acts as a starting point for this part of the research project.
The main questions of the study are: (1) Has teacher education succeeded in guiding the
beginning teachers towards modern working methods and language education? or (2) do the
beginning teachers develop their practice starting from some other experience, for example
their own school experience? To answer these questions we start by analysing the
importance of the subjects’ school experiences to their present teaching practice. Teacher
education becomes visible through the contrast it forms to these experiences.
The hermeneutic nature of the study is particularly visible in the analysis process of
the data. The three-part analysis consisted of asking questions, finding answers, and asking
new questions, which arose from the answers. In each phase, the analysis deepened and
the picture of the meanings of the experience sharpened. The first part of the process was
to analyse the teachers’ narratives relating to their own school experiences that they felt
meaningful for their present teaching practice. In conducting the analysis, however, it
became evident that the teachers were not fully aware of the factors that guided their
300 RUOHOTIE-LYHTY AND KAIKKONEN

teaching practices and that thus the phenomena could not be explored by only asking them
directly about the matter. This individual observation was supported by the theories of
practical knowledge development (Ojanen, 2000). The discrepancies between the teachers’
explicit goals and their practice led us to believe that the school experience was exerting a
greater influence on the teachers’ work than they believed it would. To access these possi-
ble unconscious former models we chose to concentrate our interest on the everyday work
of the teachers. We studied what kind of models were seen in the narratives of their every-
day choices and practices. As a result of this analysis the second main category of the
study was formed, that of the implicit meaning of the school experience. Yet these results
still required clarification as the individual teachers seemed to use their experience in
fundamentally different ways in constructing their practical knowledge. The quest for
explanation led to an analysis of their self-reflection, the third part of the analysis process.
The whole process leaves us with new questions, which are discussed at the end of this
study.

Findings
This study shows that personal school experience has an important role in constructing
practical knowledge at the early stage of teacher development. The findings of this study are
summarized under the following sub-headings: the explicit meaning of school experience,
the implicit meaning of school experience, and the meaning of reflection in the professional
development process. The first part explores the subjects’ views of their own school
experiences and how the experience has shaped their teaching design. The second part
approaches the unconscious meanings of the experience by contrasting the subjects’
objectives with the described teaching practice. The last part demonstrates the importance
of reflection in constructing beginning teacher’s experience-based knowledge base.

The Explicit Meaning of School Experience

The teacher’s knowledge about teaching begins with their earliest school experiences of
teaching and learning. Even before a pupil has the ability to reflect or analyze teachers’
behaviour, he has stored in his mind pictures about what a teacher is, how he speaks and
acts, and what the responsibilities and routines of a teacher’s work are (Schempp, Sparkes,
& Templin, 1998, p. 145). According to the research literature this apprenticeship of obser-
vation during a teacher’s own school years has a powerful impact on what kind of teacher
a person wants to be (Schempp, Sparkes, & Templin, 1998, p. 145). All participants in this
study emphasized the importance of their own school experience, which has had an effect
on their ideas related to teaching and education. Three main themes can be distinguished
from the interviews, namely: the teacher’s personality, the relationship to pupils, and
language pedagogy.

The Definition of a Good Teacher

The definition of a good teacher through one’s own experience was the most common
theme of the interviews. All six subjects emphasized significant experiences, which were
connected to their former teacher’s personality and professional success. Mostly, the
definition of a good teacher was portrayed through one or two significant relationships, in
 THE DIFFICULTY OF CHANGE 301

other words they referred to a teacher they had admired or disliked. These teachers were
highlighted as a type of model teacher or, on the contrary, as a failure:
A year before I came to the university when I was in the polytechnic, there was a really
perky German teacher there. It was nice to think that I would like to be like that, because
he1 was like so vigorous and a real expert. (Sara)
My opinion is that he was a good teacher. At the same time he was competent and nice,
but still strict. He certainly held a lot of authority; nobody had the courage to contradict
him. But he was still really nice and was like really competent. (Anna)
The only thing that I can think of was my upper secondary school German teacher, that
I think that some of the assertiveness and some other things really come from what he
had in his teaching. (Maria)
I remember especially those Swedish classes, they have stayed in my mind. Our class
wasn’t an easy one and especially in the Swedish classes I often had pity on him, our
teacher. (Johanna)
Yes, or actually, maybe bad, of course in that sense that in grades 7 to 9 we had quite a
young [teacher] like less than thirty, that it was a bit—we were a really difficult class, so
it was a bit like that—that it didn’t go so well. (Sini)
The definition of a good teacher had some common features. They were “competent” and
“nice,” but still “strict.” The atmosphere in their lessons was good because of their ability
to control the situation and the pupils. In two interviews the definition was also sharpened
through its opposite, a bad teacher experience. A teacher who did not cope with the class
was labelled a failure. The image portrayed of the model teacher was quite stable; it did not
consider the possible sources of the teacher’s competence or incompetence. That is natural
because it was the description by a pupil.

Relationship to the Pupils

Another important theme in the interviews was the teacher’s relationship to the pupils:
This English teacher might even in the corridors…he always spoke just English, he was
always muttering his own things, you could always hear him muttering. We thought it
was really funny and we got through to him, we made contact with him there through
this. (Hanna)
He [English teacher] tended to have bêtes noires. This was what we always heard about
from our form master and we knew who had been complaining about our class. (Johanna)
The beginning teachers no longer just describe how the teacher was, but how he or she
acted. The interviews contained ten mentions of experiences related to this theme. Five of
these were strongly positive. In these episodes the teacher was qualified as fair, approach-
able, interactive, and assertive. The subjects wanted their own relationship to the students

1
The pronoun ‘he’ has been used here in the citations, although in the original interviews the
gender reference is not specified as the Finnish language does not differentiate between genders in
personal pronouns.
302 RUOHOTIE-LYHTY AND KAIKKONEN

to be qualified in a similar manner. Even when the beginning teachers reported negative
experiences, these had an influence on their current actions. These experiences were used
as models of something that the teachers wanted to avoid in their work, for example, a lack
of communication, being unfair, or ignoring weaker pupils.

Language Pedagogy
While telling about experiences related to the personality of a teacher or to the relation-
ship to the pupils, more positive experiences were registered than when speaking about
language teaching. The teachers interviewed considered their former language teachers’
methods to be mainly insufficient or they were even negatively toned. Many of the subjects
mention that their goal was to use more varied teaching methods than their own teachers
had used, they also stressed the significance of oral communication compared to their own
school experience:
It is so that I try to do these things differently, and what was missing almost totally from
that old schooling, were those oral exercises, but luckily they are now included more in
the material, if you just make use of them. (Sini)
The results were similar to the results of the former part of this research project (Kaikkonen
2004, 2007). The teachers’ language teaching during their own schooling was at variance
with their pedagogic education. The willingness to teach differently resulted from this
contradiction. One of the teachers also points out a situation where the clash between her
school experiences and teacher education becomes visible in an everyday teaching situation:
Interviewer: During your time at school this didn’t probably exist?
Teacher: No, no, that was the difficulty then, I remember so clearly, when I for
the first time went to give classes, the first time I taught grammar in a
way that they [pupils] were like: Why, why do you say it like this? They
can’t learn like this [I felt]. I felt that I am not teaching anything, when
I don’t tell them directly what the rule is—it kind of took a while to
unlearn this. (Johanna)
Even though the model of language teaching as a whole was felt to be insufficient, some of
the teachers interviewed felt that they had been able to use some methods from their former
school teachers:
Hmm, well, yes I notice for example like some, this is easier for me through examples,
like when we go through a new chapter, I might use some similar styles, that, that my
own teachers, my own teacher used then. (Anna)

Findings of this Section

The memories of a good teacher can work as a baseline for a teacher’s own personality
and relationship to the students. These kinds of comparisons are necessary, because they are
the only long-term experiences of teaching. With the experience and with the emotions
connected to them, the beginning teachers of this study visualized how they wanted to relate
to their students or teach. The explicit meaning of one’s own school experience is most
strongly visible in the teachers’ goal-setting.
 THE DIFFICULTY OF CHANGE 303

The Implicit Meaning of School Experience

The gap between teachers’ theory and practice is well documented in the literature. The
teacher is only partly aware of his or her practical knowledge, which is mainly unconscious
(Handal & Lauvås, 1987, p. 17). The things that teachers do are not what they say they will
do (Senge, 1994, p. 202). During the interviews, it became noticeable how difficult it was
for the subjects to identify the importance of their former school experience to their current
actions. Some hints let us notice that the meaning of former experience was revealed to the
teachers only partially and at certain moments. One of the subjects described it thus:
Yes, sometimes I notice yeah, that sometimes it occurs to me that this is what he (teacher)
[would do/say], that it is true that maybe something comes from there. Like for example
in the lessons, when I raise my voice and ask something, like what does this mean, then
it occurs to me that I am exactly like he was. (Anna)
These unconscious former school experiences are accessible only through the teacher’s
actions and choices. This study approaches the question of implicit practical knowledge by
comparing teachers’ described practice, their own ideas of teaching, and their own experi-
ence at school, which were documented both in the first part of the research project
(Kaikkonen, 2004, 2007) and again in the interviews conducted for this study. It examines
what kind of similarities or differences are to be seen between teachers’ personal school
experiences or teacher education experiences, and their actions. Even though it is not justi-
fied to claim that the manifestation of traditional models in the teachers’ way of working
would prove that the teacher is just copying the earlier models of his or her teachers, it can
reasonably be claimed that these have had an influence on the beginning teacher’s actions.
In analyzing the subjects’ narratives about their everyday teaching, we looked for
themes that could be linked to one of the two alternative models of teaching languages:
language education or traditional language teaching of the subjects’ own school time (see
Tables 1 and 2). Two groups were found in this analysis. Three of the teachers inter-
viewed (see the themes found in the narratives of Anna, Maria, and Sini) described
approaches that can be largely linked to the descriptions of the subject’s experiences
during former school years. The described practice was contradictory to their manifested
goals. The descriptions of the other three (Johanna, Sara, and Hanna) were less contradic-
tory and their described teaching methods corresponded better with their explicit aims.

Table 1
Themes Linked to the Goal-Settings of Teacher Education (Language Education)

Anna Maria Johanna Sara Sini Hanna

Communicativity – – x x (x) x
Intercultural learning, importance of the culture – – – x – x
Modern teaching methods – – x x – x
Teacher as tutor (x) – x (x) x x
Constructivism as learning theory – – x x – x
Learning to learn – x x x x x
Pupil as individual (x) (x) x – – x
Note. The themes found in the interviews and possible to connect with either of the models of language teaching
are marked with x or with (x) if the theme is vague.
304 RUOHOTIE-LYHTY AND KAIKKONEN

Table 2
Themes Linked to One’s Own School Experience (Traditional Language Teaching)

Anna Maria Johanna Sara Sini Hanna

Teacher-centred teaching x x – (x) – –

Mastery of different skills (grammar/ x x – – x –
vocabulary) as the goal of teaching
Language-centred learning environment x x – – x –
Mechanical exercises x x – – x –
Central role of textbook in teaching x x – – x –
Pupil as part of the mass – x – – – –
Narrow assessment x – – – – –
Note: The themes found in the interviews and possible to connect with either of the models of language teaching
are marked with x or with (x) if the theme is vague.

They were shown to be well aware of the link between their practical teaching and their
views of language pedagogics.
The working conditions of the six subjects are rather similar. According to them, the
pressure of the pupils and of the existing conditions (lack of time, big groups, heterogeneity)
guides them towards more traditional teaching methods. The focus of the subjects is,
however, clearly either on traditional (Anna, Maria, and Sini) or advanced ways (Johanna,
Sara, and Hanna) of teaching languages. This difference comes up only in the practices
described, while all the teachers’ former goals are convergent with the new language peda-
gogical way of teaching (Kaikkonen, 2004).
In the teaching approaches of Anna, Maria, and Sini the gap between theory and practice
is clear. Their theoretical knowledge about new ways of teaching languages is not integrated
in their practical knowledge, and their teaching resembles the model that they have learned
at school. However, the new language pedagogical model of teaching is still explicitly their
goal. This conflict between the models caused two of the subject’s guilt and feelings of
insufficiency (Anna, Maria):

I don’t really know, because in the back of my mind I always have the idea that I would
like to teach in a different way than I do now, that my objective would be higher, that I
could bring something, something a bit different to the class, like something that they
wouldn’t necessarily have ever tried, present things a bit differently, teach in a different
way. (Maria)

A common feature of the teachers using new language pedagogical methods (Johanna,
Sara, and Hanna) in practice was their expressed feeling of slow progress towards their own
goals. The direction was clear even when the pressure of the school environment was
adverse:

I kind of think about my way of acting, my own thoughts and what would I like to, how
would I like to teach and how can I realize it in my teaching and it is a kind of, like little
by little you see, you notice that maybe in a week or two you can’t really always bring
it, that it happens in baby steps, after all. (Johanna)
 THE DIFFICULTY OF CHANGE 305

The Role of Reflection

The results of the previous section raise many questions, of which dividing beginning
language teachers into two groups is the most important. Three of the teachers mainly used
their own earlier formed school approaches when teaching languages. However, the other
three teachers seemed to be able to teach more independently and follow their own ideas
about teaching.
The role of self-reflection arose as one of the important themes in the interviews with
Johanna, Sara, and Hanna, in contrast to the interviews with Anna, Maria, or Sini, which
did not contain any descriptions of situations including self-reflection. Reflection was not
one of the original themes of the interview, but it was raised in the interviews by the
teacher herself or by the interviewer as a result of what the interviewee had expressed.
Reflection was mentioned twice in the context of teacher education, several times by all
three subjects in the context of current work at school and once in the context of earlier
personal school experiences. Interestingly, the descriptions of self-reflection at work were
often connected with a description of failure. It accompanied an event where the teacher
had acted according to a model of teaching similar to their former school experiences.
Hanna points out:
It is usually the tiredness or then it is when you are in a situation for the first time when
there has been no time to think beforehand, that you do something that comes from your
own education, that you act according to that and I don’t say that in it [education] every-
thing was just good, but normally, normally I’ve learned to notice that I do something
wrong and then I think about it and why it happened so and then maybe next time I know
how to do better.
The ability to apply new knowledge seemed to be linked to the ability to constantly reflect
on personal practice, especially to the ability to identify situations where they failed to
follow their principles (reflection in action), and to the willingness to reflect upon these
situations afterwards (reflection on action) (Schön, 1983). The narratives also included a
description of the positive consequences of reflection. A negative episode in working in the
classroom and reflection upon it gave the subjects the possibility to change their model of
action (reflection for action) (McAlpine et al., 1999). It was the pressure of everyday school
life that revealed their former assumptions and experiences. These came up in situations
where decision-making had to be immediate. The maintenance of one’s aims was possible
through permanent self-reflection.

Conclusion
Based on this case study we draw the following conclusions. It seems evident that their
own school experience affects novice teachers’ practice during the first years of teaching.
Part of this experience is unconscious and difficult to express in words; nevertheless, it has
an impact on the actions of the beginning language teacher. Therefore, the beginning
teachers’ explicit aims in teaching foreign languages are only partly or even poorly congru-
ent with the teachers’ practice (cf. also Loughran, Brown, & Doecke, 2001, p. 19). The
ability of the subjects to use knowledge that was learned during teacher education was
dependent on their ability to self-reflect. In this study, as in a number of other studies
(Kettle & Sellars, 1996), the role of reflection was emphasized as a way of changing and
developing the contents of practical knowledge.
306 RUOHOTIE-LYHTY AND KAIKKONEN

The changing of the contents of practical knowledge requires a possibility to reflect on

one’s own experience (Kettle & Sellars, 1996). However, during the one year of teacher
education, exploring all previous school experiences is impossible. Von Wright (1997,
p. 264) argues that the lack of time during pedagogical studies can lead student teachers to
develop parallel models of teaching and learning. In this case the traditional and the new
language pedagogical model are not integrated and the practical knowledge remains
unchanged. In this study, everyday school life revealed to the subjects unconscious and
unchanged beliefs and experiences, which were different from their own intended teaching
approaches. The first years at school turned out to be an important phase for teachers to
change and develop the contents of their practical knowledge. Their own school experiences
and beliefs about teaching and learning related to this experience were only to be changed
through reflection on the present practice.
Though we consider that the outcomes of our study are interesting and worthy of note,
the study contains several limitations. It offers understanding about the situation of the
beginning teachers and the effects that teacher education and traditional models of teaching
have had on their work, but it gives only a mostly freeze-frame picture of their professional
development as a whole. This study took into account two of the major factors of the profes-
sional development of a novice teacher: personal biography and teacher education.
However, the process of becoming a teacher also includes workplace conditions, which
could provide further information on the facts that lead beginning language teachers to
resort to their own school experiences in place of their recently acquired pedagogical educa-
tion. The influence of different factors on the process must be found out in a profile study,
which this research project is dealing with at large. Neither does the study provide informa-
tion on the reasons why some teachers continue reflecting and others do not. According to
Moon (2001), the capacity for reflection is different from one individual to another. For
some it seems to be natural and some reflect only in certain favourable conditions. Further-
more, the factors affecting a person’s ability to use theoretical information in their practice
are most probably more complicated than presented in this study.
Some methodological issues should be also addressed here. The main question concerns
the role of the researchers in this project. The use of interviews can be problematic when
used as the main method of data collection in a study that tends to expose teachers’ mainly
implicit practical knowledge. Von Wright (1997, p. 260) notes that student teachers tend to
answer in a pedagogically correct manner when asked about their educational thinking. The
beginning teachers might do the same, especially when the interviewers represent their
former teacher education department. However, in our case we did not just ask for opinions,
but also asked: What do you do in your language classroom? This offered a view on the
artefacts of their beliefs and experience. In the phenomenological meaning analysis, the
interpreter’s role also raises some questions. To what extent can a person understand the life
experience of another? Being language teachers ourselves, the context is well known to us.
For us this is clearly a strength that comes from the fact that a teacher easily understands
the language of another teacher; the themes brought to the discussion are not strange.
According to Van Manen (1990), the starting point of phenomenological research is the
meaning universe of the researcher, the consciousness of the fact that our experiences are
possible experiences of others as well. The experience of others becomes understandable
through our own experience (Van Manen, 1990, pp. 57–58). However, the part of interpre-
tation must be visible and is made so in this study. The collaborative nature of the in-depth
 THE DIFFICULTY OF CHANGE 307

interviews, which made it possible to ask for specification and explanation, also helped in
conducting the analysis correctly.

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