Awareness of the centrality of education and training in a knowledge society, the need for Lifelong Learning, and, connected to these, the search for recursive processes between theory and practice, require educators to look for training models suitable for emerging professionals and their development. Specifically, training models appear to be necessary; models that can activate a holistic approach, starting from initial training. Those models should be present in the different training steps (training for pre-service, newly hired and in-service teachers) and could build bridges among the different training steps so that the approach to knowledge and the development of professionality can become a habitus and a deeply-rooted personal drive. Learning paths in which videos are used can ensure those goals. The chapter describes a university training path for pre-service primary teachers in which class video recordings are used as binding objects whose discussion involves students, university professors and school teachers. Such process proposes Lifelong Learning also as interaction among different training levels.
TopIntroduction
Research on the use of videos in professional training has had a strong impact over the last two decades. The aspects being highlighted in those studies are: to introduce a professional vision (Sherin & van Es, 2009), to map teacher activity (van Es & Sherin, 2002), to avoid practice shock (Stokking, Leenders, de Jong, & van Tartwijk, 2003), to improve the quality of teaching (Blomberg, Sherin, Renkl, Glogger, & Seidel, 2014). These goals can have an impact both on pre-service training, and on in-service training and can foster in both cases a reflection on the practices that help acquiring a conscious professionalism.
However, most of those approaches don’t highlight one aspect that we consider relevant in the current context, this is connected to the evolution of the concept of professionalism and to the centrality of training in the knowledge society also to the role of Lifelong Learning in the development of professional and personal identity.
Lifelong Learning is widely used today, but it’s not always clear that such an approach also requires the overcoming of the division still present, mostly in Italy, among pre and in service training and research requires the creation of procedures for mixing the steps as well. In fact, there are some dispositifs1 that, often indirectly, can foster a different interaction between the training steps. Alternation (Vanhule, Merhan, & Ronveaux, 2007), both as theoretical concept in recursivity theory-practice, and as a dispositif for school-work in pre- and in-service training is one of the example of this process.
The proposal described in the present contribution identifies as central:
- 1.
The presence of dispositifs that can foster permeability among pre-service, in service training, and research,
- 2.
The presence of processes of mediation among different paths and roles,
- 3.
The presence of boundary objects, that is, artifacts which act as a bridge connecting the two training paths (pre- and in- service), for example the videos of didactical activities to be used during in pre-service, in-service training and in research,
- 4.
The presence of triangulation among students, expert school teachers and university professors.
We need to define the three profiles. Students here are meant as those who enrolled on a degree course to become primary school teachers. In Italy such a learning path lasts 5 years and can be accessed after secondary school. Students are normally 19 years old when they enroll in the university, even though you can find older students who wish to restart studying after an interruption due to work or graduates who wish to get an additional degree. Expert school teachers are here meant as primary school teachers with at least 5 years of work experience and available to participate in an academic experience to reflect on his/her professionalism, valorize it and offer their expertise to young students. Professors are here meant as university professors who are in charge of both the pre- and in- service teacher training. In such a last case, in relation to the situations described in the following paragraphs, the approach of the professor is the one of the Collaborative Research2 (Desgagné, 1998; Desgagné & Larouche, 2010, Vinatier, 2011b), that is, the professor develops his/her work along with a school teacher making him/her express his/her practices and fostering reflection on them.