Building new teachers’ voices on teaching as part of a Practice-Based Teaching Education course

Abstract

This study examines how teachers learn to teach from a dialogical perspective, emphasising the development of their voices in a Practice-Based Teaching Education course. The participants included 56 experienced teachers enrolled in an online learning environment. The study’s empirical evidence comprised 219 short written reports submitted by these participants throughout the course. Each teacher selected and revised three to five practical training resources, producing corresponding reports that reflect fragments of the practical knowledge they acquired. Each report consists of four sections: the resource producer, the discourse communicator, the pedagogical content, and the teacher’s teaching goal. These written reports served as thematic units of analysis, and the data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings reveal four main types of voices that emerged from the teachers’ practice-based knowledge: (1) a practical voice derived from classroom practice, (2) a practical voice representing the teachers themselves, (3) a theoretical voice from academics, and (4) a theoretical voice from education broadcasters. The study also discusses the pedagogical implications of these findings for teacher education.