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ERIC Number: EJ1232116
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Nov
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0311-6999
EISSN: N/A
What's Good Enough? Teacher Education and the Practice Challenge
Reid, Jo-Anne
Australian Educational Researcher, v46 n5 p715-734 Nov 2019
The idea of 'good enough' teacher education is taken from the work of Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst who proposed the idea of 'the good enough mother' (Winnicott in The family and individual development, Tavistock, London, 1965) in response to popular views of the time that good mothers all shared certain selfless characteristics, with negative effects for all those who failed to meet this impossible ideal of perfect mothering. I will argue that education researchers and professionals are now in a position to go beyond 'the crisis in teacher education' (that has once again this year been beaten up into a frenzy with the ATAR whisk) and begin to claim space for a reconceptualised teacher education, based on practice theory, which can take us forward with renewed energy and passion to challenge an impossible ideal of perfect teaching. As researchers, we need to mobilise our intellectual resources to address our colleagues in the field--our discipline leaders, our university managers, Deans, Vice Chancellors and our systems-based colleagues--to produce some effective self-talk about the place, nature and role of teacher education in this country. I will argue for the idea of a 'good enough' teacher education, one that explicitly aims to produce what I call, perhaps provocatively, a 'Good Enough' teacher--someone who knows she can never be fully prepared for the schools of today; who knows she is not 'classroom-ready' when she starts her career; but who is well prepared for her struggle every day, in and through her practice, to know and meet the needs of her students.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A