Professional development lost in translation? ‘Organising themes’ in Danish teacher education and how it influences student-teachers’ stories in professional learning communities

Abstract

Retaining the quality of teachers and improving teacher education and professional development through professional learning communities (PLCs) has long been on the policy agenda of, among others, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Framework for 21st Century Skills. This study explores and compares student-teachers’ use of PLCs in Danish teacher education institutions and how PLCs are shaped by institutional, organising themes. An ‘organising theme’ is conceptualised as a fundamental ‘idea’ of how – for instance institutional – everyday practices become organised; exploring how institutional organising themes are translated into educational practice in students’ PLCs makes it possible to understand how local moral worlds in teacher education institutions shape students’ communal work and professional development. Drawing on situated learning, social anthropology of institutions and the literature about PLCs, the professional narratives of three Danish student-teachers are compared. The findings suggest that professional development in PLCs takes place in the intersection between personal stories, situated learning in PLCs and institutional themes.

Introduction

During the past decade, there has been a global trend in education involving pressure for higher student performance (Daly, 2012; Schleicher, 2012). Schools ‘have to be responsive to high-stake accountability policies that enforce “tightened” output control as a means to raise student performance’ (Sleegers et al., 2013: 118). Teachers play a pivotal role in children’s learning processes (Guerriero, 2017; Hattie, 2009); they are urged to become ‘high-level knowledge workers’ (Schleicher, 2012: 11) and constantly expected to advance their professional knowledge and that of the profession (Prenger et al., 2018: 1). Peer networks such as teachers’ professional learning communities (PLCs) have been singled out as one of three major domains in attaining and developing teacher professionalism in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agenda on the teaching profession (cf. Gomendio, 2017). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) agenda on teachers emphasises professional teacher development as a collaborative and life-long process (Villegas-Reimers, 2003). The Framework for 21st Century Skills also underlines PLCs among teachers as essential to model classroom learning (cf. Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). However, it has been suggested that the current crisis in teacher education concerns the disappointing impact of teacher education on teacher behaviour and learning (Grossman, 2008, cited in Korthagen, 2010: 98). For instance, researchers from many countries have demonstrated that the effects of teacher education are eliminated by school experiences; new teachers find it hard to survive in classrooms and they implement little of what is learned during their professional preparation (see Korthagen, 2010: 98–99). Denmark has one of the world’s most expensive education systems, using substantially more resources in its schools than other similar countries; however, Danish pupils score significantly lower in Programme for International Assessment of Students (PISA) studies than many other countries (Andersen, 2010; Gomendio, 2017). The question is how Danish teacher education prepares teachers for their future work in schools in line with the international agenda that highlights teacher education as a collaborative and long-term process.

Research has shown that teachers’ use of PLCs in schools has a positive influence on their professional learning (Korthagen, 2010; Prenger et al., 2018; Sahlberg, 2011; Sleegers et al., 2013; ) and on pupils’ learning (Timperley et al., 2007: 205). A PLC can be defined as a group of people sharing and critically interrogating their professional practice in ongoing, reflective, collaborative, and learning-oriented ways, thus operating as a collective enterprise (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011; Prenger et al., 2018: 1; Stoll et al., 2006: 223), concurrently gaining new competencies as they identify and produce meaning through the social network (Korthagen, 2010). PLCs among teachers have been identified as ways to integrate professional development as collaboration and exchange with colleagues (e.g., other teachers) and with schools’ agenda of continued professional learning (Korthagen, 2010; Prenger et al., 2018; Sahlberg, 2011; Sleegers et al., 2013).

In Denmark, collaboration with a diverse array of stakeholders such as pedagogues, school psychologists and parents constitute a vital element in schoolteachers’ working lives (Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet, 2015). Furthermore, classes are taught in cross-curricular and cross-professional teams; pupils’ welfare and learning are governed by teachers in cooperation with professionals from after-school care and school psychologists; and teachers are expected to work closely with parents. As such, teaching is by no means an individual task. Exploring PLCs among Danish student-teachers may therefore substantiate the discussion about improving schoolteachers’ collaboration and lifelong professional learning in contexts that emphasise similar educational principles in primary schools. Currently, Danish teacher education programmes include no formal measures addressing student-teachers’ cross-professional and collaborative learning beyond compulsory group work, though student-teachers’ participation in PLCs is a fundamental principle of Danish teacher education (cf. Danske Professionshøjskoler, 2018). Many Danish teachers, like their colleagues in other countries, feel unprepared when first entering the profession (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2013). In Denmark, the need for closer integration between teacher education programmes and schools has been suggested (Danske Professionshøjskoler, 2018). One way of doing this is by focusing on the conditions that promote, support and sustain professional learning among educators (see McLaughlin and Talbert, 2006; Mitchell and Sackney, 2011). This calls for studies focusing on how student-teachers’ cross-professional and collaborative learning during teacher education can be enhanced to better match the needs of schools.

This article, therefore, explores the following questions: How do student-teachers make sense of and appropriate PLCs as learning sites for professional development? How do formative ideals about teacher education influence students’ use and acknowledgement of PLCs? How does collegial work in PLCs influence students’ orientations towards working in collegial teams, and thereby their professional development? The article explores what Danish student-teachers’ participation in learning communities means for their professional development, and how ‘organising themes’ during their education influence their use of PLCs and thus professional development. An organising theme can be understood as ‘the key idea that turns a collection of courses into a coherent program’ (Galluzzo and Pankratz, 1990, p. 10), and a ‘unifying concept, metaphor, principle, or theme’ (Short, 1987: 6). It is not a discourse or generalised rule, but a kind of principle permeating, penetrating and mingling with people’s own understandings and meanings. In Denmark, ‘general education (. . .) [must] permeate the entire [teacher] education’, so teachers can prepare pupils for ‘participation and co-responsibility in a society with freedom and democracy’ (Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet, 2012: 1); yet, current evaluations of Danish teacher education suggest that general education is differently interpreted, depending on the subjects in which they take place (Danmarks Evalueringsinstitut, 2018: 5). Inducing general education means that teacher education colleges must instil professional identities among student-teachers, and these identities must be internalised as formative acts (Hegstrup, 2005: 38). The question is how the category of ‘general education’ can be understood as an organising theme and value in the teaching profession, and how this influences students’ collaborative work and their professional development in PLCs.

To match the complexities of the social processes, the study draws on different theoretical perspectives to explore the interplay between institutional systems and human intentionality, with a view on how individual values and virtues operate in institutional contexts. By listening to students’ voices, ‘the missing voices in the study of practicum’ (Clift, 2017: 225) can be included, enabling an exploration of the convergent influences, apart from teacher educators and the institution, on becoming a teacher, and to direct the narrative away from the homogeneous and deficit view on teachers, which is often inherent when they are described as groups. The article draws on literature about PLCs (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999; Mitchell and Sackney, 2011), social theory of learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and theory of the anthropology of institutions (Barth, 1994). The social nature of learning has been highlighted in several learning theories (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Exploring university colleges (UCs) as institutional settings that provide meaning and space for becoming in ‘contexts of shared experience’ among students (Kleinman, 1992) may shed light on the changing and significant forms of morality, such as norms, standards, values and ideologies of the Danish teacher education context, and what this means for student-teachers’ use of these contexts in terms of professional development in a broader context.

Context: teacher education and PLC in Denmark

Danish teacher education started in 1791 with its primary task to train teachers to educate children in a peasant society with a focus on Christian religious values and ethics; religious themes permeated all teaching at teacher education colleges (Markussen, 2005: 70). The formative foundation of Danish teacher education remains grounded in moral aspirations (Markussen, 2005), focusing on democratic values (Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet, 2012). In 2007, Danish teacher education colleges merged with other institutions offering professional bachelor courses into seven UCs. From 2013, the new UCs were built as large complexes, many of them designed with steel, glass and raw concrete, and housing an average of 10,272 students and 1577 student-teachers per UC (Danske Professionshøjskoler, 2017). Group work among students is compulsory during the first two years of the four-year teacher education programme and highlighted as obligatory during both teaching in classes and practical training periods; furthermore, students are examined in groups. Students’ use of learning communities with their fellow students during teacher education is central since collective and collaborative work is essential for students’ future work in Danish schools. In schools, collegial supervision and cross-curricular collaborative work is seen as a promising strategy for promoting professional learning; collaborative work is mandatory for Danish schoolteachers and considered beneficial for school processes. Teachers work together in different group constellations and with other pedagogical personnel to plan, effect and evaluate teaching and children’s schoolwork and welfare. Participating in different PLCs is, therefore, a basic unifying principle of Danish teacher education; however, how teacher education institutions support students’ learning, for instance in PLCs, is generally a theme ignored in the literature.

Related research: conceptualising PLC

Despite the popularity of PLCs among researchers, practitioners and educational policy-makers, research on PLCs differs significantly on the dimensions and approaches employed to conceptualise them (Sleegers et al., 2013: 118). There is no universal definition in the literature about what a PLC is (Prenger et al., 2018; Sleegers et al., 2013; Stoll et al., 2006), and the literature contains numerous conceptualisations of the term (see McLaughlin and Talbert, 2006; Mitchell and Sackney, 2011). Complaints have been made that the concept is ‘fuzzy’ (Westheimer, 1999, cited in Sleegers et al., 2013: 120) since it draws on multiple theoretical conceptualisations and offers diverse explanations about what a professional learning community is. However, there appears to be international consensus about the tenor of the concept (Bolam et al., 2005, cited in Sleegers et al., 2013: 119) since it gives individuals, groups, whole school communities and school systems power to get involved in and sustain learning over time (Stoll et al., 2006: 221). In addition, PLCs seem to be prerequisites for successful learning in a changing and increasingly complex world (Hargreaves, 2000; Stoll et al., 2006: 222), and teachers emphasise life-long learning and collaboration with their colleagues as important to professional development (Ifanti et al., 2017). Regardless of international approval of PLCs as a prerequisite of collective and deep learning, studies of PLCs among student-teachers in organisational contexts of teacher education remain a neglected area. The intention here is not to provide a comprehensive or exhaustive review of the literature about PLCs and professional development, which countless articles and books have previously explored, but to offer a way of rethinking PLCs as discursively produced in institutional settings. The focus of analysis is on student-teachers’ contextual, socio-cultural and motivational aspirations to engage in PLCs during their teacher education, which is an area that has been overlooked in numerous studies on teachers’ learning communities in schools. Only few studies define PLCs in terms of the participants’ personal capacities (see Sleegers et al., 2013: 121) and/or explore links between organisational, relational and personal aspects.

The notion of PLCs is grounded in assumptions that teachers’ work outside their classrooms can be as important as what they do inside with regard to school improvement, teachers’ professional development and student learning (Hargreaves, 2000: 151; Sleegers et al., 2013: 119). For instance, teachers who work more with colleagues have access to the expertise they need to improve (Hargreaves, 2000). Overall, PLCs refers to a group of people sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, growth-promoting way; operating as a collective enterprise (Prenger et al., 2018: 1; Stoll et al., 2006: 223), thereby supporting school development (Sleegers et al., 2013: 120). These definitions involve the sharing of practices (i.e., ‘deprivatised’ teacher practices) between teachers aiming at improving student learning in terms of critical reflection (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011). In studies drawing on socio-cultural theory, PLCs have been conceptualised as collaborative learning and reflection in social networks and the production of new, professional, situated meaning (cf. Korthagen, 2010; Prenger et al., 2018; Sahlberg, 2011; Sleegers et al., 2013; Wenger, 1998). In spite of the diversity of the concept, definitions of ‘teacher learning community’ all feature a common image of a professional community where teachers work collaboratively to reflect on their practice, examine evidence about the relationship between practice and student outcomes, and make changes that improve teaching and learning for their students (see, Mitchell and Sackney, 2011).

There is a body of research focusing on professional development within PLCs in schools arguing that teachers who collaborate will often acquire new expertise (Hargreaves, 2000; Prenger et al., 2018). The link between professional improvement and powerful, responsible, and lively professional communities has been established (Sahlberg, 2011: 183). However, forced or ‘imposed’ collegiality may be resisted by teachers (Hargreaves, 2000: 166; Little, 1990); furthermore, group dynamics can work against mutual learning (Little, 2003), causing either support or resistance to professional learning (Timperley et al., 2007: 205). It is, therefore, important to explore under which circumstances learning communities in UCs support the development of students’ professionalism. Though most studies about PLCs focus on interpersonal relations or community aspects such as collective learning in groups, organisational learning and/or mutually supporting relationships and developing shared norms and values (see, Stoll et al., 2006), a few studies mention personal capacities as important (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011; Sleegers et al., 2013). Dimensions of PLCs often appear to be intertwined (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011; Sleegers et al., 2013; Stoll et al., 2006), and PLCs offer opportunities for blending various pathways of learning in pursuit of new professional narratives (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011: 40). A learning community requires different kinds of organisational structure so contact among teachers does not become minimised (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011: 87); yet, the link between organisational capacities and personal dimensions, and how institutional processes shape student-teachers’ use of and professional development in PLCs, has been grossly overlooked in the literature.

Theoretical framework

Communities of practice as social, situated professionalisation

This study employs a situated learning perspective to explore social and situated aspects of students’ learning in their communities of practice (CoPs) (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and what role institutionally embedded organising themes concerning ‘general education’ play in this learning. Social theory of learning is an analytical framework that may explore what Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999: 251) call ‘how knowledge and practices are related, and how teachers learn within communities and other contexts’; it focuses on how individuals acquire professional skills through apprenticeship in CoPs (Lave and Wenger, 1991), for instance when students work together in different social constellations during teacher education, and on the relationship between learning and the social situation in which it occurs, such as formal and informal meetings between different kinds of students in different institutional arrangements of practice. The focus of analysis, therefore, is the social engagement of students in the specific learning contexts in which their cooperation takes place, such as during classroom work, practical training, study groups, leisure time activities, and other peer-socialisation during free time in and out of college. Drawing on Wenger (1998), understanding student-teachers’ collaboration as CoPs can shed light upon how students’ learning processes are also situated in processes of participation in the professional community of teacher education, rather than defining learning as the result of cognitive processes and acquisitions of propositional knowledge. In relation to professional studies, this means asking what kinds of social engagements provide the proper context for student-teachers’ learning, and which enables them to be legitimate members of situated student learning communities. According to Wenger (1998), a CoP exists in a domain in which members engage in joint activities that enable them to learn from each other and learn to share a set of common practices. Therefore, a CoP is more than a social club or a network of connections; it provides its members with social identities and commitment to the community, which distinguishes it from other groups of people. A CoP is also more than students sitting together in a classroom listening to a teacher; this position does not automatically induce feelings of belonging and togetherness, engagement, a willingness to help each other, or a shared identity – for instance, with regard to how it creates personal stories of becoming a teacher when being a student in a specific classroom or community. Being in a community is a way of talking about the social configurations in which students’ enterprises are deemed to be worth pursuing and where their participation is recognised as competence (Wenger, 1998). Students’ CoPs will therefore be approached by exploring students’ shared engagement in the collective practice of studying in a CoP, the social forces and structures that tie CoPs to certain practice, how these communities provide meaningful contexts for students’ experience at UCs, and how CoPs create personal histories of becoming in the context of UCs, thereby possibly turning into PLCs. Using Wenger’s approach about learning, meaning, and identity and community-belonging as ‘deeply interconnected and mutually defining’ (Wenger, 1998: 5) during processes of development, professional development will be explored as processes of professional identity development, understanding students’ professional development as their ‘negotiated experience of [professional] self’ (Wenger, 1998: 150). This view will facilitate a more inclusive perspective on students’ professional development than simply exploring professionalisation as something related to obtaining skills, competences and practices, and will include students’ personal voices as they negotiate the context of teacher education.

Organising themes in local, moral worlds

Organising themes are as mentioned key ideas that turn ‘a collection of courses into a coherent program’ (Galluzzo and Pankratz, 1990, p. 10). By exploring the institutional organising themes and their translation into educational practice in students’ PLCs, it will be possible to understand how local moral worlds in teacher education institutions shape students’ communal work. ‘Local moral worlds’ are contexts of shared experience which mediate macro-social forces and shape specific local effects so they are particular, intersubjective and constitutive of the lived flow of experience in the micro-contexts of daily life (Kleinman, 1992: 171–172). They may help us to see students’ learning processes as not only cognitive and resource-oriented but also as socio-culturally and discursively produced, for instance in collective arenas such as PLCs. Conceptualising teacher education institutions as distinct local moral worlds (Kleinman, 1992) can shed light on the significance and changing form of morality, such as norms, standards, values and ideologies in the social context of Danish teacher education, what this means for students’ use of these contexts of shared experience, and how these local moral worlds stemming from the institution influence and organise students’ PLCs.

Educational practice is construed in the daily negotiations between bureaucrats such as teacher educators, administrative personnel and their clients (Lipsky, 1980), that is, student-teachers. Mitchell and Sackney (2011: 19) and Sleegers et al. (2013) argue that teachers’ work in PLCs is the result of complex dynamics and interactions and the interplay of organisational, personal and collective narratives. The concept of ‘institutional logic’ (Gulløv, 2004) may encapsulate the less visible and embedded forms of micropolitics, as encountered in street-level bureaucrats’ practices, in a given institutional setting such as teacher education (cf. Dahl, 2017: 38). Identifying institutions as social systems, whose activities are organised in an interplay between human meetings and the tasks and occasions that lead to these meetings (Barth, 1994), may unmask a structure in which practice, for instance in PLCs, may be understood.

Methods

Research design and methods

Data were generated during six months from 2017 to 2018 in two UCs in Copenhagen, the Danish capital city, and in provincial eastern Jutland. Three student-teachers, two female (24-year-old Melinda and 28-year-old Katie) and one male (27-year-old Oliver), were selected based on two focused group discussions with four students in each UC and several individual semi-structured interviews. The selection criteria encompassed individual differences in using students’ communities and what this meant for students’ changing understanding of the teaching profession (see Dahl, 2018). Cases were chosen strategically to illustrate diversity and to produce context-dependent knowledge, which, according to Flyvbjerg (2006: 224), ‘rules out the possibility of epistemic theoretical construction’ since it is concrete, practical and situated in a specific context, in this case students’ learning communities. Focusing on this kind of knowledge rather than ‘predictive theories and universals’ (Flyvbjerg, 2006: 224) could therefore illustrate how each of the three student-teachers developed different kinds of expertise, ways of orienting themselves and constructing meaning in students’ PLCs. So, the relatively small number of cases (three student-teachers) should be seen not as a limitation, but rather as an approach to study the complexities and contradictions of real life, constructed here in the form of case studies with substantial elements of narrative. Students were interviewed individually two–three times, using the life-story method (Riessman, 2008) (in all, seven in-depth interviews) to explore meaning and patterns of student life and engagement in learning communities. The life-story interviews combined two approaches: a thematic account of students’ lives (Riessman, 2008) in teacher education; and a dialogical approach emphasising life as something which is performed in front of others (Chase, 2005) such as other students and teacher educators. Interview themes centred on students’ professional ideals and values; interpersonal relations and positions in teacher education; personal, relational and organisational capacities in relation to collective learning; participation in formal and informal learning communities; and collaborative work among students. Two teacher educators, one 45-year-old male and one 53-year-old female, were also interviewed about organisational values and structures, students’ collaborative work, professional development and students’ PLCs. Additionally, two weeks of participant observation were conducted at one of the UCs. All interviews were conducted in Danish (translated into English by the author) and lasted between 2 hours and 4 minutes and 2 hours and 24 minutes.

Data analysis

The data analysis focused on a decentred analytical approach, based on the assumption that people’s lives and actions are related to opportunities and limitations manifested in and across contexts. The analysis therefore addressed subjects and their participation in various communities and social contexts, which also became objects of analysis. This was done to emphasise that persons are participants involved in personal trajectories in relation to structural arrangements of social practice (Dreier, 2009: 195). By analysing individual students’ stories as cases, proximity to the object of study (student-teachers) and inclusion of feedback from them led to richer learning processes during the analysis (cf. Flyvbjerg, 2006: 223).

All interviews were transcribed, translated into English and, together with observations, coded for content using Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) grounded theory. Data were then analysed in three steps. First a ‘lengthwise reading’ (Haavind, 2000: 172) in which occurrences and reflections related to professional development in students’ learning communities were emphasised. These included: social, personal and professional engagement; meaning-making; processes and struggles with inclusion, participation and collaboration; and joint activities and social positioning across different learning communities. Second, a ‘crosswise reading’ (Haavind, 2000: 174) compared and categorised sections from the first step in overriding and transverse themes. In the third step, phenomena such as informal, institutional shaping of students’ learning communities, which could not be included in the pre-understandings, were analysed in detail by including more of the context to establish sets of connections (Strathern, 1987) between students, intergroup processes and moralities/themes in the UC organisation. This made it possible to situate professional development in learning communities in a wider context of social situated participation, institutional morality and personal meaning-making.

Findings and discussion

Overall, the analysis is inspired by Lave’s (1988) view on context that allows social practice to be investigated at three distinct analytical levels: at the level of semiotics; as practice in the lived-in-world; and as a dialectical relationship between the experienced world and the constitutive order. These levels include the community/institutional, interpersonal and personal plane of analysis (Rogoff, 1995). The way in which organising themes in Danish teacher education shape the micro-context of students’ everyday college life is explored first. Second, three students’ personal and professional life stories are linked to how students use and acknowledge college morality and the social college arena. Life stories are analysed as narratives to explore how occurrences become connected in personally and professionally meaningful ways (Riessman, 2008), assuming that past and present activities and expectations for the future influence how present life is constructed (Chase, 2005). Third, the way in which students use and negotiate PLCs as different social arenas of professional learning in college is discussed. Finally, what this means for professional development in PLCs is discussed. Local moral worlds (Kleinman, 1992), social institutional meetings (Barth, 1994) and situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) are concepts used creatively to inform the analysis about students’ professional learning and development.

Translation of organising themes in Danish teacher education

The organising theme or key idea that may turn the collection of courses into a coherent programme (Galluzzo and Pankratz, 1990) was in Danish teacher education proposed by the legislative frame as something that should provide general education focusing on formative aspects by facilitating teachers in schools to ‘prepare pupils for participation, co-responsibility, rights and obligations in a society with freedom and democracy’ (Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet, 2015: section 1). In one of the largest Danish UCs, with 10,087 students and 2504 student-teachers, this was translated into the key idea that teachers should develop ‘a strong professional identity and attachment to professional environments and [who] are responsible for their own professional teacher development’, being ‘critical and constructive in relation to the pedagogical and educational political practice’, and acquire ‘a professional approach to the school’s role as a formative and educative institution’ (Professionshøjskolen University College Capital, 2017: 3). How were these lofty visions translated into unifying concepts in organising themes that in practice influenced students’ collaborative learning, and what did formative aims regarding being critical and constructive mean for students’ work in PLCs?

In Danish teacher education, values were communicated particularly through the physical layout of the institution and staged nature of modules, in which students exchanged peers, localities and academic subjects each semester. Most students reported that they preferred the former, smaller teacher education colleges which often were situated in historical buildings in town centres, in spite of the new larger UCs often having better equipment. One student, for instance, described her former teacher education college as a space of ‘cosiness, cohesiveness, and a place where we knew the teachers’. Moving to the new UCs, many of the students described how ‘a new spirit’ emerged: the impressing architecture occasionally had limited space for student life apart from classroom teaching, and one UC specifically lacked a study room in the library; Friday bars in many of the UCs could only contain a maximum of 100 students out of the several thousand enrolled students; and parties in the ceremonial hall took place in glaring lights that could not be adjusted, leaving little space for informal socialising. Students refrained from sitting outside on the lawn to socialise because this rendered them visible to students and staff inside the building, who might regard them as ‘non-working’ and therefore ‘out of bounds’. Many students experienced arriving at social events at the UC knowing no one because the festival halls often housed several thousand students. Value communication also occurred during teacher educators’ and staff’s ‘relationing’ with students: students were told by administrative staff not to spill food and drink on the expensive furniture, designed for the occasion; teacher educators talked of the new reform as ‘modulisation’ – a kind of practice where they repeated the same subjects for new students each semester, instead of the previous practice of teaching the same classes in different subjects over longer periods. Teacher educators thought of ‘modulisation’ as similar to working in a factory, preventing them from getting to know their students. As one teacher educator explained: ‘I teach the masses [of students] on an assembly line’. Students experienced that teacher educators were stressed due to overwork, observed them eating packed lunches while teaching, and felt little attachment to them. The well-defined roles in UCs for both students and teacher educators did little to facilitate mutual interaction or the establishment of a common history. UCs seemed to be social systems, which due to the divided structure of human interaction and hard functionalism (Tanggaard and Szulewicz, 2013) of the physical surroundings provided spaces of becoming that downgraded human interaction and attachment.

Personal and interpersonal capacities are shaped and constrained by the kind of organisation within which people work (Mitchell and Sackney, 2011: 97). According to Mitchell and Sackney (2011: 97), individuals may feel isolated when institutional structures are dissolved; and the existence of defensiveness and resistance among professional staff may also work against the creation of a learning community and discourage improvement in teaching and learning. Though this also characterised the local moral world of UCs (Kleinman, 1992), students also felt that impersonal relationships with teacher educators and the institution meant that they moved closer to each other and found alternative ways of encountering the detached surroundings: students arranged pre-parties so they could appear at the UC party together with familiar students, and arranged to take modules with students whom they knew in advance. Other students made profound use of college sport facilities to feel socially attached to the institution. The point is that the new UC structure provided new spaces for becoming in spite of the somewhat dissolved and dehumanised physical surroundings. Most students, however, reported that UCs were large, impersonal institutions with a focus on academic performance rather than places to which they became emotionally attached or felt belonging. Students’ learning, and thus movement towards greater participation in both becoming (competent) and belonging to the overall institutional community of the UC (Wenger, 1998), did not, therefore, seem to stem from the institutional organising themes about building ‘strong professional identity’ and ‘attachment to professional environments’, as proclaimed by one UC (Professionshøjskolen University College Capital, 2017: 3). Turning to students’ personal narratives of learning and becoming may inform us further about institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences of the constitutive order of UCs.

Students’ stories: professional learning in student communities

Melinda’s story: confused about a teaching career, feeling pressurised and looking for attachment

Melinda, a 24-year-old student, grew up in a small village in a provincial area in Northern Jutland, Denmark, with her older sister and mother, who worked night shifts as an unskilled worker. During her childhood, she was very much left to herself; Melinda describes incidents of her mother partying with friends, and her older sister being away from home, leaving the 9-year-old Melinda to look out for herself. Instead, she felt emotionally attached to many of her teachers, who often provided her with food and medical care. Melinda was a bright pupil yet her good marks in schools provoked her family, who referred to her as ‘a white sheep among black sheep’, pinpointing her marginal position in a dysfunctional family. Melinda enrolled at university yet soon found it hard to thrive in the impersonal one-way teaching monologues in the lecture hall among hundreds of students. So, she dropped out of university during the first semester and reluctantly enrolled at a UC on the advice of her boyfriend. However, the course was more difficult than she had first anticipated and she felt lonely among her classmates. Melinda started in a study group initiated by a teacher educator, but she mostly used the group to share notes and continued to ‘feel close to the teacher educators’ all through her studies. She rarely went to the college parties since she felt these parties were too impersonal; she knew no one in the mass of several thousand students and had not developed the kinds of close social bonding with students in her class that permitted her to be invited to pre-parties. She worked part-time as a social worker in a youth project and was good at spotting isolated pupils, yet often engaged herself too much in these pupils’ problems: for instance, sharing telephone numbers and engaging in social activities with them in her free-time. She experienced teaching practices as periods where she ‘learned the most’ during her studies, mostly due to interaction with teacher educators and supervisors, who provided ‘work with colleagues’ that gave access to the expertise Melinda needed in order to improve (cf. Sleegers et al., 2013: 119). She favoured being grouped with co-students during the practical training, enabling her to share her anxiety and fear about being confronted with teaching an audience. Most of her energy, however, was used on engaging with teacher educators and feeling an urge to help troubled pupils.

Katie’s story: rejecting a teaching career and using student communities to socially endure the course

Katie, a 28-year-old female student, was brought up in Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark, in a family with two other siblings. She became motivated to teach in primary school when she used to explain difficult topics to less able pupils. She applied for university but was accepted at a UC instead due to a fault in the administration. She decided to enrol in the teacher education programme since teaching took place in classrooms and emphasised social interaction among students. Nevertheless, she soon felt insufficiently challenged academically and was disillusioned in her studies, feeling that teacher educators and students were unmotivated and that the academic level was too low. During her first practical training, she found that pupils were rude, loud and different than she had imagined, which led to a dislike of teaching. However, she remained in teacher education as a diploma in teaching would qualify her to apply for a university diploma in education. Yet admission to university required high grades, and Katie therefore started to study hard and focus on her academic grades. She mostly worked in private, feeling that the other students did not match her academic level and high ambitions. Katie was bored in class and during practical training periods, yet coming to class and engaging in social activities helped her to complete what she thought was an academically unchallenging and overly relaxed course. She used most of her free time with other students in different college-related positions, including as a team leader of the handball club and a student counsellor, in order to practise her teaching skills and endure what she experienced as ‘a tough study’ with few possibilities for social attachment. Katie thought of her classmates as the main reason why she attended classes and was encouraged to come to class when she received text messages from other students, who worriedly asked about her whereabouts if she did not show up for class. However, in her second year, the number of students attending classes drastically declined making group work difficult, and this made her feel that other students lacked moral decency and social responsibility. For Katie, PLCs were not ‘prerequisites for successful learning’ that lead to ongoing, collaborative and inclusive learning (Stoll et al., 2006: 222–223). According to Katie, other students had a laid-back attitude and were not ambitious, leaving all the group work to be done by her. Therefore, she continued her studies in solitude, albeit feeling a sense of personal satisfaction when helping others as a kind of mentor (cf. Hargreaves and Fullan, 2000). As she expressed it, ‘It’s the coolest thing, if you sit with someone who can’t work something out and then you explain it so they understand it’. She had to work hard to gain good grades and her wish to assist other students therefore mainly developed into her writing the majority of the common assignments in the forced study groups in order to ensure that she achieved the academic level needed to continue at university.

Oliver’s story: teaching as career shift and looking for practical work and reflection

Oliver, a 27-year-old student, grew up in the second largest city of Denmark, Aarhus, in a nuclear family with three younger siblings. After high school, he began studying for an estate agent diploma at an academy profession programme but realised after one year that his expectations about spending much time with clients could not be met. During a sabbatical year, his interest in teaching increased as he worked as a substitute teacher in two schools. Supported by his father, Oliver enrolled at teacher education college. He was astonished by the many extra-curricular activities such as sports, clubs and societies, but he preferred to socialise with former friends out of college and only use his presence at teacher education to engage in studies. He rarely participated in college activities such as parties or sports activities, and only occasionally accompanied other study group members when sports activities formed part of a group assignment. Oliver felt that the teacher-initiated group work often led to unequal participation among group members and, therefore, preferred to participate in study groups, which he had chosen himself. ‘Imposed collegiality’ caused Oliver to resist working in groups with other students, a tendency that has been discussed in the literature (cf. Hargreaves, 2000; Little, 1990). Oliver found that study groups worked best when he experienced a social connection to other students in the group, saying ‘it is nice that you know some of the people you work with a little better [than the other students] so you can explore something in depth’. Being in a specific class over several years increased his learning; as Oliver explained, ‘it is another kind of community in classes where you are together for a long time’. He described his participation in different study groups as a ‘working community, in which tasks were delegated [among students]’, but, in reality, he invested himself in the different social constellations. Oliver experienced that ‘good group work’ depended on ‘knowing each other as persons’, similar to how some studies mention personal capacities in PLCs as important (cf. Mitchell and Sackney, 2011), since this provided him with a background to understand other students’ reflections. During the two last years of study, Oliver engaged in several group constellations where he occupied different roles. In one group with two female students, he was the one ‘always arguing, being almost political’; in another group with two male students, much time was invested in being empathetic towards an older student. His participation in PLCs was influenced by institutional demands, as communicated from teacher educators and during examinations, learning to argue pedagogical positions in front of children, parents and colleagues in a metacognitive, reflective way, and cognitive reflections about how to transfer theoretical knowledge into practice. He benefitted from other students’ practical experiences and used his engagement in the different study groups to argue ‘to the bottom’ of pedagogical theory. Though he occasionally felt teased by his social network for studying teaching, he came to acknowledge teacher education as ‘the most important and relevant [education] in the world’.

Students’ use of PLCs

The three students’ stories of being student-teachers and using student communities in teacher education are very different, yet illustrate how students brought personal meaning and significance into their studies. Students’ use of learning communities was highly influenced by the way they attached meaning to being teachers and how the institutional framing became ingrained in their social engagement and ‘relationing’ with other students. The three students’ social communities provided different spaces for them to negotiate the institutional themes which they were confronted with from teacher educators, classes, and students. Melinda, for instance, was confused about how the abstract institutional themes about being an engaged and critical student were to be translated into her own everyday student agency. She had difficulties in finding her own teaching identity and reported that ‘we were told over and over again that we should find out what was important for us so we could argue for why we did one thing instead of another’, and turned to teacher educators instead of other students for professional learning, direction and support (cf. Hargreaves, 2000: 162). Katie felt that many students were unambitious; she came to acknowledge teaching as a stepping-stone to something else and better, started focusing on getting good grades and avoided spending time and effort on grouping with other students in academic work. Her participation in social practice in students’ communities was characterised by social engagement rather that professional learning (cf. Lave and Wenger, 1991), and her meaning-making of PLCs, drawing on Wenger (1998), included social rather than professional learning. Oliver found relief in choosing his own student group towards the end of his course and came to acknowledge critical discussions for different pedagogical positions as a group practice which provided him with professional skills. Though he did not use teacher education as an arena for socialising, his study group work was highly dependent on whether he came to know other group members personally, meaning that social engagement, feeling belonging to fellow students (Wenger, 1998) and participating with group members according to their personal capacities (Sleegers et al., 2013) became important in his pursuit of professional learning.

Students seemingly were aware of how institutional demands related to them, yet they interpreted these demands very differently. Melinda emphasised teacher education as a local moral world (Kleinman, 1992) in which she was to locate her own teacher identity, mainly in solitude. However, her story contains traces of social engagement, professional identity work and meaning-making of her stay at a UC through her social ‘relationing’ with teacher educators, which became a substitute for engaging in PLCs with students. Being a professional teacher for Katie seemed to be associated with scoring high marks; therefore, group work often ended with Katie writing the examination essays because she was unsure of the other students’ academic capabilities. Katie’s use of PLCs was thus characterised by unequal positions of learning in which some student members were even non-participants (cf. Lave and Wenger, 1991). Oliver thought of the institutional demands as something that acknowledged pedagogical knowledge and argumentative skills, though his story also carries traces of viewing personal skills such as empathy, body language and relational work with fellow students and pupils as important. Thus, his own participation in the PLC became ‘situated negotiation and renegotiation of meaning in the world’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 52) in which shared collaboration and reflection changed his learning profoundly.

For all three students, the formative ideal of ‘general education’ seemed to have little influence and did not become an organising theme for their everyday college life; yet laissez-faire morality in which ‘anything goes’ (Jacobsen and Kristiansen, 2001: 112) in the somewhat dissolved and dehumanised structures did not seem to be present either. The scenario about laissez-faire as the dissolution of structures and rules was hard to spot at teacher education institutions; the apparent lack of institutional morality seemingly created a new social order. Though teacher educators’ agency, the organisation of learning space in PLCs, and everyday college life seemed a chaotic intermingle of different moralities, for (some) students this meant moving closer to each other. Yet for most students the institutional dissolvements meant they apparently had to find their own personal ways of becoming teaching professionals. Personal meanings of being socially attached seemed at stake in all three students’ learning stories. Students’ need for recognition from other students and teacher educators was constantly negotiated. Many students were not aware of, or found ideals and principles for being teachers – such as the institutionally organising theme of becoming a critical and enlightened teacher – as too idealistic, vague, and something that did provide them with accurate or detailed guidelines for the practical teaching work. Rather, their participation in learning communities was conditioned by personal feelings and orientations towards what teaching studies might bring them in the future as opposed to the frame provided by the idealistic, institutional visions. Unlike in other contexts of teacher education (see Dahl, 2015), informal learning sourcing from the institution did not strengthen student-teachers’ communities, for instance, by provoking resistance – although there were some indications that students in this study got closer to each other. Students’ participation in learning communities seemed conditioned by a need to engage in social activities with their peers and feel attached to a de-personalised study environment. Stressed teacher educators, with whom students felt they seldom related to, and the issue of ‘modulisation’, that is, shifting classrooms, subjects, teacher educators and students each semester, seemed to work in two ways: some students focussed on their studies but viewed teaching as a stepping-stone to something else and better, while other students searched for meaning in alternative social constellations to PLCs.

Melinda’s engagement in learning communities, for instance, took the form of dyadic relations with teacher educators, mentors and supervisors whom she met during her studies. This social identification, however, was more targeted at completing the teacher education programme and obtaining a diploma than identifying with the professional institutional ideals of developing a ‘strong professional identity’ (Professionshøjskolen University College Capital, 2017: 3–4). Her learning opportunities were, to some extent, grounded in apprenticeship learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) in which novice teachers became shaped by subtle processes of enculturation such as language and implicit norms; however, her professional learning was entangled with social engagement with teacher educators rather than oriented towards students. Her learning seemed entwined in a profound need for emotional attachment and recognition by older and more experienced central participants such as teacher educators, perhaps as a substitute for lack of parental attention during her formative years. Her use of student communities was confined to engaging in obligatory student groups, yet she did not invest much personal energy in these student communities.

Katie, however, perceived the place as ‘cold’, impersonal, and something that did not give meaning to her life. She therefore used other students for social activities but refrained from profound professional participation in PLCs. When doing practical training in schools, she came to think of pupils as troublesome and stopped to reflect on what kind of teacher she was. Student communities were used to overcome feelings of boredom and attachment, and seldom to increase her professional learning. She experienced difficulty in identifying with teaching, viewing the UC as a place that did not offer her anything other than a diploma in teaching. Katie often talked of group work organised by the teacher educators as tiresome and hard, and of other students as ‘unambitious and unprofessional’; as a result, she often ended up doing the majority of work for other students who had a more laid-back attitude towards their studies.

Oliver chose teaching because he wanted to engage with children in his future work. He felt that he did not want to socialise with other student-teachers but rather keep his social network separate from the teaching course; however, his account of engaging in communal practice with fellow students reveals that his participation and professional development in learning communities was highly determined by personal acknowledgement of other group members. For instance, study group work increased in importance for Oliver at later stages in his teacher education where students could choose study groups themselves; he described successful group work as episodes of also ‘getting to know each other’ among the students in a group, indicating that feeling belonging and being a committed member were important assets of working in PLCs. His understanding of professional development was to be a ‘critical friend’, that is, a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through other lenses, and offers critique of a person’s work as a friend (Costa and Kallick, 1993, cited in Fletcher et al., 2016: 303). This indicates an understanding of professional development associated with learning to become a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1987) rather than living up to formative ideals of teacher education about developing ‘a strong teacher identity’ (Professionshøjskolen University College Capital, 2017: 3–4).

Diversities of professional development

Students’ diverse use of PLCs influenced their professional development in different ways; in spite of that the institution proposed that students should participate in uniform ways, being critical and constructive during school practices and teacher education. Using PLCs did not initiate a meaningful identification with becoming a teacher for all students (for instance, Katie), and resulted in diverse learning processes since their participation in PLCs differed (such as Oliver and Melinda). Katie did not find meaning in partaking in communal learning as she experienced that other students did not share her professional ambitions. Her situated participation was characterised by individual challenges and paraphrasing of theoretical knowledge rather than by shared and collaborative professional learning where sets of common practice were shared (cf. Wenger, 1998). Melinda’s professional development, on the other hand, oscillated between being emotionally attached to pupils and simultaneously keeping a professional distance; she mirrored herself in teacher educators above engaging in relational work with students. Her professional development was characterised by inequalities and vacillation between feelings of inferiority and reliance on others to regulate self-esteem and give her a sense of value (cf. Kohut, 1977); however, her upbringing provided her with an empathetic approach towards pupils who had experienced similar difficulties. Oliver experienced that PLCs facilitated his professional development when student communities were self-chosen and worked on social bonding based on personal chemistry. Oliver’s professional development thus depended on building micro-contexts of shared history that initiated shared experience (Kleinman, 1992). His professional development became that of being a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1987) rather than deeply engaging himself in social processes and communal work with colleagues. However, one year after he finished the final teacher examination, he still had contact with former group members; this indicates that genuine learning communities characterised by meaning-making, shared identity and commitment to being a member of a specific group had developed (Wenger, 1998). Oliver’s participation could thus – in spite of group members’ having unequal learning positions – be recognised as competence for engaging in situated learning.

Conclusion

This article has explored and compared student-teachers’ use of PLCs in Danish teacher education institutions, how PLCs become shaped by institutional, organising themes, and what this means for students’ professional development. Drawing on Galluzzo and Pankratz (1990) and Short (1987), organising themes are conceptualised as tacit, unifying principles or metaphors that are sourced from the institution and form a kind of informal learning programme for students’ learning, in this case mingling and shaping their meaning-making and approach to participation in PLCs. The study is original, since it is one of the first to explore student-teachers’ professional development in terms of social learning in student communities, and at the same time discuss ‘principles’ that are sourced from the teacher education institution and how these arrange and shape students’ learning processes.

The findings point to two different but entwined processes of translation, or rather one institutional organising theme that influences students’ professional development in two different ways regarding students’ ‘negotiated experience of self’ (Wenger, 1998: 150). At the level of student learning communities, students joined CoPs with different agendas and this resulted in diverse use of and constellation of PLCs. At the level of persons, students developed different ways of identifying with learning communities, and these processes were fuelled by personal hopes and visions for future teaching careers and inspired by students’ own life histories. At both levels, professional development seemed ‘lost in translation’, since institutional principles about ‘general education’ (Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet, 2012: 1) only partly permeated the teacher education. Instead, the organisation of PLCs as sites for collegial collaboration and critical reflection seemed replaced by students’ personal and differently motivated agendas for professional learning, which came to dominate their participation in PLCs. The organising idea, sourcing from the institution, thus became translated into diverse professional learning accounts and ways of approaching the PLCs, possibly due to students’ experiences of college life as routinised and impersonal.

Overall, the article suggests that professional teacher learning is more distinct and multifaceted than institutional themes or principles regarding students’ professional development indicate. Institutional organising themes develop in the daily meeting between students, the institution and other actors, and become embedded in situated college practices as diverse and fluid negotiations of shared experience in the micro-contexts of daily community learning. Taking three student-teachers’ real-life experiences into account, the study shows how student-teachers use PLCs in diverse ways and thus develop professionally in more complex ways than anticipated in the inter/national agenda about teachers’ PLCs. Students’ learning is entwined in lofty, institutional ideals about developing critical and strong professional identities and at the same time contextual circumstances of ‘hard functionalism’ that downgrade their interaction and attachment. In this way, PLCs in teacher education do not become ‘the cornerstone of professional learning environments’ for all students, as international educational agencies hope (see Gomendio, 2017: 22), but contribute in different ways to students’ professional development.

Although Mitchell and Sackney (2011: 20) argue that a learning community is about people, and ‘it is with people that personal capacity is developed’, this study demonstrates that students did not build capacity solely due to other students and actors such as teacher educators at UCs, but rather build capacity in numerous and non-linear ways based on personal approaches and understandings of studying teaching. It is important to note that not all students rejected or resisted professional development as sanctioned by the institutions. The stories of other students might easily provide different translations of institutional organising themes and thus different accounts of students’ use of PLCs. The case-study approach without a control group and only including a few cases should not be seen as a weakness in this study, but as a methodology emphasising a detailed account of individual student’s ‘stories-in-context’ of the institution.

To enhance possibilities of turning PLCs into lifelong learning experiences for students, and for students to make use of PLCs during their studies, teacher education needs to include notions of how contexts of shared experience such as institutional organising themes influence personal trajectories of individual meaning-making. This means acknowledging the less visible and embedded form of micropolitics such as institutional organising themes that in a setting such as teacher education may enforce certain forms of professional practice and thus learning in front of others. The findings also suggest that organising themes sourced from the institution translate in paradigmatically different ways than firstly intended, and lofty ideas about cohesion and critical enlightenment do not meet students’ everyday experiences in the learning culture of PLCs. As mentioned by Korthagen (2010: 104), students negotiate their personal life and meaning in learning communities while supporting boundaries and social group processes. Knowledge in teacher education is ‘distributed’, so teacher education needs to generate meaning for students in the various social contexts and communities of which they are part. According to Hargreaves and Fullan (2012), ‘effective’ PLCs in teacher education promote shared inquiry into problems of practice and collective responsibility; so for PLCs to become ‘effective’, institutional arrangements in teacher education must be organised in ways that meet students’ different struggles and encounters with their studies and with student peers, and tailor learning communities to students’ needs and visions for their life as teachers, also at personal levels.