Using 'modelling' to improve the coherence of initial teacher education

Internationally, initial teacher education programmes usually include trainee teachers in formal taught sessions facilitated by a teacher educator. These formal taught sessions are intended to build on and to shape the more informal workplace learning gained by supported teaching experience in schools. The formal teaching provides opportunities to foreground the trainee teachers’ experiences as learners, but the pedagogy of teacher education is complex and the intentions of teacher educators and actual learning outcomes of these sessions is uncertain. Many teacher educators use an element of ‘modelling’ within their approach, although the frequency, nature and impact of this strategy is contested. Modelling may also be used by school based teacher educators during more informal workplace learning, for example when being observed teaching and in the ensuing debrief with a trainee teacher. This chapter argues that explicit modelling of ‘being a learner’ by teacher educators may provide the ‘glue’ required to make the domains of knowing and the layers of purpose in the complex pedagogy of teacher educators more coherent for trainee teachers.