Time for Balance in Pre-service Teacher Education: Renewal Based on Thinking and Judging

The social theories of the political commentator and philosopher of modern times, Hannah Arendt (1958), can be used to guide the ‘profession of education’ towards a re-conceptualisation of teacher education. Within a context of rapid, constant and pervasive change teacher educators are challenged on a daily basis. They too need some time to facilitate personal renewal and change in this post-modern world. Bauman’s (2001) concept of ‘Tertiary Learning’ consisting of breaking regularity, preventing habitualisation and rearranging the fragmentary experiences into patterns, which exist until further notice, can guide teacher educators in their quest for renewal. This paper argues that if beginning teachers need to be, as Coulter (2001) suggests, “thinking and judging actors and spectators living in a world that that believes in plurality and natality”, then so too do our teacher educators need to be free from habitual thinking and habitual judgement. Teacher educators need the ability to stand back and take a bird’s eye view of the programs they operate and then be willing, in a mindful way, to return to the play preparing teachers to be good thinkers and judges in their own right. Our humanity, at the cusp of the third millennium, has the potential to learn much by critically reflecting about the past one hundred years or so of enormous social, political, economic and technological change and about the kind of future we would like to leave for our successors. It is within this reflection that this document is situated. Wolcott (1983) in describing his use of story presents the need of the anthropologist to illustrate the real events bounded by time and circumstance. “The effective story should be ‘specific and circumstantial,’ but its relevance in a broader context also should be apparent. The story should make a point that transcends its modest origins. The case must be particular, but the implications broad.”(Wolcott, 1983) One of the broad implications, or part of the big picture with respect to teacher education revolves around the question of how the future is and can be prepared for our successors and by whom? Firstly, this preparation, within the Western World, would seem to occur through the steps, processes and procedures implemented over time in and by our educational institutions. What takes place in our educational institutions is conducted through and guided by our teachers. Teachers, following on from parents, are major contributors to the success of, and the preparation of, our successors. Secondly, this preparation of our successors is influenced in a unique way in this age by the pervasive power of Technology. We live today in the Digital Age (Dyson, 1998) and the new currency of this age is knowledge. This knowledge would seem to be the ‘new wealth’ of the 21 Century. However as early as 1957 Arendt (1958) issued a warning applicable to the now digital age and the forth-coming genetic age which is also referred to by Dyson (1998). “If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of knowhow) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technologically possible, no matter how murderous it is. (Arendt,1958,pp 3) Without providing answers Arendt encourages men in the plural, that is, men living and moving and acting in this world, to do one simple thing that all of us as humans can do. What she proposes is that “we think what we are doing” (Arendt, 1958). In our thinking we need to consider what kind of capable teachers are needed in the schools of the 21 century to handle rapid technological and social change? We also need to think about what will be the learning demands of a generation of students who have lived from their earliest days surrounded by audio, video and digital games and toys? Although these are not easy questions to answer I am convinced that the teachers of the 21 Century cannot alone be the holders of knowledge, as the monks of the 16 century were, because this is now impossible. The invention of the printing press, and now the availability of the Internet makes modern knowledge available to anyone at anytime. The teachers of the 21 century need to be able to point to knowledge and resources, they need to encourage thinking and reflection. They need to be flexible in