It's not about logic, it's about logic of practice: a case study of teacher education reform in New Zealand

Abstract

Institutional mergers are among the range of government-driven reforms of teacher education and, by extension, the teaching force. Such reforms inevitably provide positive outcomes for some and challenges for others. In this paper the authors focus on the anticipations, experiences and reflections of a group of teacher educators during a period when the colleges of education were being merged into the universities in New Zealand. The actions of a group of five experienced, curriculum specialist teacher educators from a former college of education, and three faculty leaders, were monitored over a period of three and a half years. During this period of change and uncertainty the teacher educators’ long-held ontological views about their field and sense of security were challenged. The authors report their representation of ‘their’ field of practice and their responses to the transformation of their institutionalised ways of knowing. They then, informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, turn to a critical-analysis of the different logics underpinning the practices of the university and former colleges of education.