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Research into the Dynamics of University Students’ - artykuł w języku angielskim, Publikacje z Edukacja

Social Representations of Early Childhood Education Change and Stability

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Research into the Dynamics
of University Students
Social Representations of
Early Childhood Education –
Change and Stability
Zuzanna Zbróg
Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland
Abstract
This article presents university students’ social representations of early school education. The
research is of alongitudinal nature and was carried out with the same groups of students for
over aperiod of three years (at the beginning and the end of their university studies). Social
representations may be manifested in utterances, but also appear in actions and interactions in
everyday life, as well as in the way we organise our lives, institutions, and rituals. The analyses
and interpretations included in this article answer the problem question: How do the dynam-
ics of social representations of early childhood education students change over the course of their
studies at university? The tasks that were given to the groups of students (designing agame for
playing school, including awriting description and role-playing) demonstrated their social rep-
resentations of early school education. They required the joint creation of ideas, coordination
of solutions and justification of one’s position. The study of the pedagogical discourse of teacher
candidates made it possible to recognise what may be described as apredictable approach to
child education and thereby establish the concepts of teacher and pupil, as well as the concepts
of learning and teaching, adopted by the students. The theory of social representations and the
concept of cognitive polyphasia were applied to determine how different kinds of knowledge
coexist in agroup of early childhood education students.
Key words: social representations, cognitive polyphasia, concepts of early childhood education.
International_trends_in_preparation.indb 184 2017-11-29 15:28:08
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Research into the Dynamics^9

of University Students’

Social Representations of

Early Childhood Education –

Change and Stability

Zuzanna Zbróg Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland

Abstract This article presents university students’ social representations of early school education. The research is of a longitudinal nature and was carried out with the same groups of students for over a period of three years (at the beginning and the end of their university studies). Social representations may be manifested in utterances, but also appear in actions and interactions in everyday life, as well as in the way we organise our lives, institutions, and rituals. The analyses and interpretations included in this article answer the problem question: How do the dynam- ics of social representations of early childhood education students change over the course of their studies at university? The tasks that were given to the groups of students (designing a game for playing school, including a writing description and role-playing) demonstrated their social rep- resentations of early school education. They required the joint creation of ideas, coordination of solutions and justification of one’s position. The study of the pedagogical discourse of teacher candidates made it possible to recognise what may be described as a predictable approach to child education and thereby establish the concepts of teacher and pupil, as well as the concepts of learning and teaching, adopted by the students. The theory of social representations and the concept of cognitive polyphasia were applied to determine how different kinds of knowledge coexist in a group of early childhood education students.

Key words: social representations, cognitive polyphasia, concepts of early childhood education.

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introDuction

Changes which occur in the global economy, politics, and social life alter what is required from education. As a result, it becomes necessary to focus instruction on the development of every subject and encourage lifelong learning, so graduates can have a positive impact on the environment and actively participate and coop- erate with others for their own sake, for the sake of their country, and for the sake of the international community. The current (Polish) school does not fulfil these expectations. We still struggle with departure “from the transmission education model to the transformative education model, from shaping a child to supporting its autonomy, engagement, responsibility and common learning” (Bałachowicz, 2015, p. 60). The two education models (the transmission model and the transformative model) result from different paradigms (behaviourism and social construction- ism) and, therefore, different ways of perceiving a child’s education, a child’s activ- ity, different types of learners, and a teacher’s activities, all of which result from a different understanding of the function of the school. Jerzy Trzebiński (2002, p. 21-22) describes these patterns as cognitive and action models with reference to the specific ways in which we perceive, name, think, remember, understand, and act. The model is not a physical copy of reality but constitutes its distinctive idealisation: it represents reality’s most typical and fundamental elements and properties. The model is a crucial category of constructivism and constitutes a mental representation of a socially established reality. The description of the models indicates a close semantic relation with the category of social representations (hereinafter: SR), which is the goal of this pro- ject (described in detail in Section 2.). The fact that representations are shared means that they are shaped in the process of social communication (similarly to patterns) and constitute a frame within which mutual relations are produced and determined. The shared representations determine the scope of interpretation patterns available and simultaneously constitute the reality in which we live. They ensure the exchange of thoughts, reciprocal understanding, gathering of infor- mation, and distribution of negotiated beliefs, concepts, ideas, and perceptions. Our SR of education is established by our own experiences as pupils. We obtain our SR from the media, during conversations with others, and while preparing to become a teacher. We are confronted with them while reading professional liter- ature, observing professional teachers, participating instudent teaching assign-

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representations theory (hereinafter: SRT) is the ideal theoretical base for such research. Serge Moscovici, in a study titled La psychoanalise, son image et son public, published in 1961, suggests that SRT should be used to analyse the way in which theory/scientific knowledge penetrates society and changes its language, common sense thinking, and behaviour. New phenomena/objects (here these are usually students’ new experiences and increased pedagogical knowledge) bring new meaning and old phenom- ena/objects undergo transformation as their previous meaning is modified. The appearance of new knowledge – according to the creator of SRT – is the perfect time to research the process by which the social forms of pedagogical knowledge are constructed. This is because it is at this point that the majority of communica- tive mechanisms appear, which serve to reconstruct the common-sense construct and taken-for-granted knowledge (Moscovici, 2001). SRT is, therefore, a good the- oretical base for researching students’ SR. This is particularly important since, as Dorota Klus-Stańska (2015) emphasizes, problematic aspects connected with the knowledge of students are rarely the subject of scientific research. Most often, the research conducted focuses on their opinions, which should be treated as second-hand information. It is equally difficult to carry out research among aca- demic teachers, e.g., through applying the method of observation. “This blank spot on the map of pedagogical, empirical data is constructed on the basis of oppressively generated, specific permissions. The lack of research creates a barrier of paradoxical unawareness: the researchers of educational processes (like aca- demic teachers on pedagogical courses) do not have access to the practices they produce. This means that they do not know what educational processes they acti- vate themselves. In any case, they have no information concerning the scientific perception of knowledge” (Klus-Stańska, 2015, p. 113). After establishing the foundations, this paper intends to show the results of teaching early school education students at the university (or lack thereof) in their SR. The real changes (based not on students’ opinions but on the image conveyed in their representations) are conceptualised as traits of memory with an internal structure interacting with inseparable normative and evaluative dimen- sions. Therefore, SR are understood as acquired social knowledge consisting of beliefs, ideas, and stereotypes. They direct our choices and allow the rapid pro- cessing of social information. Empirical studies that belong to this field of research are scarce (see Hejnic- ka-Bezwińska, 1995; Leppert, 1996; Mizerek, 1999; Kędzierska, 2005, 2007; Čer- vinková, 2013). Instead, it is the professionally active teachers who are the subject

188 Zuzanna Zbróg

of pedeutological research (e.g. Dróżka, 1993, 2002, 2004, 2008; Nalaskowski, 1998; Polak, 1999; Dylak, 2000, 2013; Klus-Stańska, 2000; Męczkowska, 2002; Kwiatkowska, 2005; Bałachowicz, 2009; Kędzierska, 2008, 2012, 2013). Quoting the Combs’ Approach to Teacher Education, Henryka Kwiatkowska emphasizes the importance of familiarisation with a teacher candidate’s personal knowledge as a starting point or reference point for actions connected with aca- demic professional education. “It is vital for the colleges educating teachers to be interested in these resources of (personal – Z.Z.’s note) knowledge because they play an important role in making decisions about the effectiveness of pedagogi- cal-psychological education” (Kwiatkowska, 2008, pp. 124-125). More research inquiries should focus on the sources of student’s previously developed personal knowledge in the context of social construction (representa- tions are forms of social knowledge, see: Augoustinos et al., 2014, p. 97). The requirement of being familiarized with knowledge before beginning one’s educa- tion refers primarily to students in theoretical and empirical fields. In reference to the constructivist model of education, it is necessary to identify a students’ infor- mal and personal knowledge in order to be able to “rationally educate, ‘transfer- ring’ the student to higher levels of cognitive and skill competences and to the higher levels of understanding of phenomena and events occurring in the class- room” (Kwiatkowska, 2008, pp. 122-123). Surprisingly, this is rarely discussed (see: Sajdak, 2013). The issue of SR of (early) education in Poland (to the author’s best knowledge), has not yet been reviewed in the context of Polish pedagogy. This is particularly the case when it comes to longitudinal, empirical research.

conceptual framework

Social representations as a tool of description

and understanding of reality

SR is the basic theoretical and methodological category in the SRT. According to Moscovici (1984, 1988, 2000), it concerns a specific type of knowledge which may be called lay-knowledge, common sense knowledge, everyday, stereotypical, or even naive knowledge. The specificity of this kind of knowledge consists in not only in the social nature of its creation, but also in its importance for explaining the processes of primary socialisation or habits originating from the social group.

190 Zuzanna Zbróg

The results of research into SR show a clear connection between social rep- resentations and the behaviour of people within a certain SR (e.g. Wagner, 2015) 3. Therefore, identifying a person or group’s SR may be scientifically inspiring.

The concept of cognitive polyphasia^4

Social representations should not be viewed as logical and coherent patterns of thought. On the contrary, they may be full of fragmented thoughts and contra- dictory ideas. Within the concept cognitive polyfasia, social representation refers to the fact that everyday thinking about something may be characterized by dif- ferent, sometimes opposite, forms of thinking (Höijer, 2011, p. 5). Polyphasia describes the state in which various types of knowledge, characterising differ- ent rationalities, function simultaneously in the mind of a unit or in one’s social awareness. This is indirectly connected with the necessity for flexibility in com- munication and plurality in public discourse. According to Jovchelovitch (2007), SR constitute fields of knowledge which are continuously moving; as a result, the researcher may focus on how various representations collide and compete in the social sphere, how they coexist in the same context, in the same social group, or even in the same unit. Research on cognitive polyphasia has led to the conclusion that SR comprise a dynamic structure which is in continuous movement, even if a group is coher- ent. Knowledge is not simply given to us but is constructed in social processes and is constantly developing (Berger, Luckmann, 1991). Different types of rep- resentations and explanations coexist alongside each other. By this virtue, units and societies can understand complexity and react to various situations in social life (Jovchelovitch, 2012). Therefore, the process of a teacher’s education should, theoretically, enable him/her to change his/her representations into ones that reflect the current social needs. This is important considering that research by Priego-Hernandez has demonstrated that encounters between knowledge systems 5 take place on the

(^3) What causes problems for researchers studying SR include the establishment of the basis on which some pieces of information are remembered and others are forgotten and identifying the reason for such selection. (^4) Several important concepts have been developed within the last decades within the framework of approaches characteristic of SRT. The concept of cognitive polyphasia is one of them. (^5) Sandra Jovchelovitch defines a knowledge encounter as “the meeting between two or more rep- resentational systems, expressing different subjective, intersubjective and objective worlds” (2007, p. 129).

9. RESEaRCh iNTO ThE dyNamiCS Of UNivERSiTy STUdENTS’ SOCiaL REPRESENTaTiONS... 191

macro level as group encounters (e.g. encounters of teachers as professionals and students preparing to become teachers) and on the micro level between individ- uals (e.g. encounters of teachers or students having access to different knowledge resources) and within the frame of one’s own “I”^6. A state of cognitive polyphasia can be generated by different dimensions of representational fields, e.g., contents, processes, and emotions. This means that people may give various meanings to objects (have different points of view), and think differently (understand some- thing in a different way and feel something in a different way) (Jovchelovitch, Priego-Hernandez, 2015, p. 172). This serves as advice for SR researchers and provides information about which dimensions can be identified during data anal- ysis in terms of oppositions and contradictions (of contents, processes, and emo- tions). Until the dynamics of contradiction within the frames of SR studied are precisely described and developed, no campaigns or activities intended to change the representations will be effective. The approach to researching students’ SR considered the results of studies on cognitive polyphasia, and enabled the analysis of research outcomes for the coexistence of various kinds of knowledge in the group studied.

  1. “Selective prevalence. Distinct systems of knowledge are held together and retrieved separately at different points in time/space; here we can use the metaphor of multiple drawers, where different knowledges are kept and drawn upon to respond to different contexts and fulfil different func- tions. [...]. Selection involves recognition of multiple knowledges, which are used alternatively depending on situations and which aspects of phe- nomena are being considered. In this type of cognitive polyphasia, dif- ferent knowledge systems live side by side retaining their content, logic, and emotional load” (Jovchelovitch, Priego-Hernandez, 2015, p. 174). In the context of this paper, such a situation may occur when student teach- ers function according to the traditional, transmission model and when they function according to the transformative model; that is, interaction between the behavioural and the constructivist model would take place interchangeably in the school context depending on the situation.
  2. “Hybridization. Multiple systems of knowledge are drawn upon simulta- neously and interpenetrate generate single mixed representational field. [...] Representations are not just combined or applied simultaneously, but amalgamate and create a new form of knowing. In such encounters there

(^6) Author’s own examples on the basis of Jovchelovitch, Priego-Hernandez (2015, p. 171).

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The analyses and interpretations in this article constitute an answer to the problem question: How do the dynamics of social representations of early childhood education student’s change over the course of their studies at university? The material discussed in this paper focuses on responses from the same group of five female students. It represents an excerpt from a broader study, which was conducted with all pedagogy students at our university during those years (full test). Each of the groups involved in the study comprised 4-5 students who had chosen to work together. This is advantageous for SR research, which benefits from the existence of good relationships between group members for engagement in the task and quality dialogue. The group of five female students discussed in this article was selected because the participants showed the greatest change in their SR of early education.

The methodology of research

On account of the fact that SR researchers claim that “all methods and their meth- odological background are tools causing the empirical research to be fruitful for the understanding of the social representations” (Flick et al., 2015, p. 79), the research methods applied in this study constitute a selection of methods con- nected with the specificity of the subjects studied as well as theoretical findings concerning the representations themselves. None of the methods commonly used in SR studies were designed exclusively for SR research, yet they have all be widely used in the social sciences and humanities. The following were taken into consid- eration when deciding on research methods.

  1. The theoretical foundation is that the change/modification in SR is a result of gaining new knowledge. This project analyses the change of representation as a result of personal experience and common-sense and social knowledge, which are influenced by the scientific, pedagogi- cal knowledge students acquire during their studies and student teach- ing assignments.
  2. Methodological findings concerning the ways of researching SR as well as what people know, how they think, how they act, and how they under- stand the phenomena around them were taken into consideration (e.g. Wagner, 2015). SR may be manifested in utterances, but they also appear in actions and interactions in everyday life, as well as in the ways we organise our lives, our institutions, rituals, etc. (e.g. Moscovici, 1984). Therefore,

194 Zuzanna Zbróg

researchers usually use an ethnographic approach which includes infor- mal discussion and observation of a social group. Analytical materials applied in SR research are of a discursive nature. This makes it possible to reach basic (sometimes hypothetical) shared representations when participants develop and question their representations in a conversation or discussion. In other words, it occurs during the co-construction of meaning in a group, when members of the group try to negotiate a common position and rep- resentations for a given object. This suggests the need to research the pedagogical discourse of teacher candidates. The tasks, which were given to the groups of students, required joint devel- opment of ideas, agreement on solutions, and justification of one’s own position. These qualities make it possible to understand what may be described as a pro- spective model of child education. Hence, it becomes possible to determine the students’ concepts of teacher and pupil as well as the concepts of teaching and learning.

Designing a game for playing school – written description (agreed on in groups)

After Jerome S. Burner (1996), this project assumes that the concept of teacher and the substance of a teacher’s actions are strongly connected with everything that is the subject of the profession: the choice to become a teacher presumes a concept of the pupil which may be later acquired as the right way of thinking about the process of learning. Analysis of data of the tasks which aimed at revealing the SR of early child- hood education (pupil, teacher, learning, teaching, etc.) consisted in designing a game of playing school. Table 1 presents a chosen example. It should be remem- bered that the research was a real panel study: we observed the solution presented by the same groups of five students. The group which showed the greatest change was chosen to be described in this article.

Stage I, 2013 The image of school which was agreed on by the (chosen) student group is asso- ciated with the traditionally fixed relation of pupils being the subordinates of the teacher in which the teacher’s attributes of power (desk, class register, red pen), as well as the teacher’s effort to maintain discipline through disciplining tools, are

196 Zuzanna Zbróg

focuses the attention of the child on its deficiencies and imperfections. The feel- ing of failure results in time in the feeling of adversity and anxiety and leads to constantly experiencing fear and a negative attitude towards school. Pointing out errors solidifies them in the memory of the student. Such consequences are visible in other research conducted by the author (Zbróg, in print), in which the centre and the periphery of the SR discussed was studied. Students primarily associate school with anxiety, fear, class record, and a red pen. The above-mentioned aspects of disciplining and subordinating the pupils appear as overt categories. Students write directly about “subordinating” the par- ent/pupil to the child/teacher and about silence as an element of the game of playing school. Silence may be understood “as exclamation demanding silence” (sjp.pl) which is strongly connected with demanding composure (e.g. in class, at home). The prohibition of speaking and disturbing adults: one might hear a pin drop, as silent as in church, as silent as in a grave. These are again references to instrumental (behavioural, transmission) pedagogy. Teacher’s/parent’s “Quiet!” is a stimulus and the reaction will be “silence” in the classroom/at home, obedient, sitting at one’s desk and executing the teacher’s commands. The utterances of students connected with the traditional “design” of the class- room, filling in worksheets, and “fixing” the material suggests the focus on verbal teaching and memorization learning strategies is central to their conceptualiza- tion. The pupil’s activities are limited to listening and obeying the instructions of the teacher. Pupils are perceived as passive participants of the teaching process, entirely dominated by the active teacher who strictly sets the frames of their (pas- sive) behaviour in class. Similar observations were made by Józefa Bałachowicz, who evaluated B.A. students’ suggestions for classes for young learners. They per- ceived the pupil as a “passive person who is not ready for the independent fulfil- ment of educational actions, who is immature and whose actions require constant guiding and supervising. Relations of a child with the socio-cultural world are organised by a teacher and the child is only their passive performer and imitator of suggested actions” (Bałachowicz, 2015, p. 15). The future teachers do not seem to care to know what the child feels, what he/she thinks about the world and school, or what he/she wants to learn about. If assuming at this stage the students’ SR is a reconstruction of their personal experiences, the academic teachers face a complex and difficult task of chang- ing it.

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Stage II (2016) The students’ SR of early school education are distinctly different. The utterances are characteristic of the constructivist rhetoric and of the transformative model of education, which is aimed at the joint construction of meanings, subjectivity of the child, relaxed atmosphere, and freedom of expressing thoughts (choosing the subject of the class), cognitive activeness, creativeness, etc. Changing roles and joint decision-making demonstrates progress towards ensuring the engagement of pupils in the learning process and their participation in it. The dialogue char- acter of mutual relations appears in the willingness to encourage joint discussion/ agreement on later elements of the game of playing school. Learning outside the school (in the kitchen) is connected with being aware of the fact that education does not only take place in the school building. Students focus on experimenting, experiencing, and learning through acting. They see the pupil as an explorer who is inspired by the “school” classes and may experiment further on his own. There- fore, there is no struggle to autoregulate the child’s activity. Referring to the concept of cognitive polyphasia in the 2nd phase, selective prevalence is observed for the constructivist model because knowledge about children’s learning, the concept of the role of the teacher, and the mind of the pupil is constantly activated – outside the designed situation in which evaluation appears. Then, the knowledge ascribed to the behavioural/transmission model appears. During the class, students suggest giving positive and negative grades as well as giving stamps made of potato and carrot for good behaviour, which is nothing else but a form of evaluation. Yet, from the students’ point of view, giving stamps is an expected reward for the children (they do not perceive it as a form of external motivation), which demonstrates the hybridization of behavioural and constructivist knowledge as well as the creation of a consistent amalgam – a new form of knowledge which is a blend of both didactic models. This is also seen in collectively decorating the room to make it look like a classroom, which places the location of education in the classroom, which is strongly fixed in Polish cul- ture. The solution suggested by the students may be evaluated positively from the point of view of SRT because it is known that the acceptance of a new SR is connected with anchoring it in previously existing, cultural foundations. Without this, the transformation of SR would face too strong a resistance, which would prevent any results.

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to the teacher explain how to behave in a given situation, is emphasized. Stu- dents do not know that a situation in which the teacher only explains the rules of behaviour to the children (no matter if they provide examples or use reading materials, tales, etc.) is insufficient for teaching correct behaviour. Knowledge transmitted in this way does not have personal meaning for them. This is some- one else’s knowledge, therefore, it cannot be applied in new, problematic, and unusual situations. A new, unknown problem or a new social situation may only be solved if the solutions are given personal meaning; that is, when pupils are able to understand their own path through understanding their own experiences (Vygotski, 1986; Bruner, 1996). As a result, over time many pupils find it difficult to order socio-moral knowledge according to the ready patterns of behaviour, rules, and advice which teachers transmit in stiffened, algorithmic form. Rules of behaviour and rulebooks constitute a set of schematics, algorithmic regula- tions to be used in a strictly specified situation which has nothing to do with the essence of understanding and internalisation of the appropriate behaviour in problematic, controversial, and morally complex situations.

Stage II (2016) After over three years of studying at a university, only some students begin to understand that problematic situations may be an opportunity to create the social and moral intuition of a child and encourage self-reliance in interpersonal rela- tionships (this is the only group in which it was possible to observe the selective prevalence of constructivist knowledge). Self-reliant discovery of meanings devel- ops the pupils’ awareness regarding how to understand situations and think about the appropriate behaviour in a given moment. It teaches them that contemplation and learning “why something happens this way” is the most important. It is nec- essary to use natural situations so pupils continue gathering new experiences. It is vital for the teacher to organise such cognitive situations in which pupils contem- plate such problems, even if they have not encountered them directly. It should be emphasized that in none of the fictional (and collectively agreed on) scenes created by the students (apart from the one discussed in the article), was it possible to observe a clear appearance of constructivist knowledge. In all cases in which a behavioural problem was presented, there was an element of moralisation, lecturing the ready rules of behaviour and expecting an apology “on command” (Say sorry to each other. Shake hands to make up), without explain- ing the causes of the situation, without contemplating the possible consequences, and without considering actual feelings of the children, mainly feeling hurt by

200 Zuzanna Zbróg

another person. The “ceremony” of apologising (shaking hand to make up) is very often organised and it ends the problematic situation from the point of view of the possible educative actions. This is a situation in which the pupil under the “supervision” of the teacher learns to reproduce the enforced behaviour which he/she – like the teacher – treats as something obvious. In future, he/she will undoubtedly construct the world, establish it, and find his/her place in it through obedience to the presented aims and visions of reality.

conclusions

SRT may shed light on the way in which knowledge (as representation) is trans- formed by social practices in the process of communication and interaction between people in different social and cultural contexts, especially in the context of learning and professionalisation (e.g. of teachers). The essence of the dynamics of SR is the analysis of different forms of knowledge: commonsense, professional, and scientific. This is possible in any context, including the field of education (pedagogy). It is necessary to be aware of the way in which future teachers perceive the basic pedagogical categories with which they bind their professional future, as well as the future of the next generations. These categories include how they think about school, their profession, their pupils, and the basic educative processes: learning, teaching, moral development, etc. Recognizing one’s SR of early school education may prevent the implementation of changes which are not thought through, but rather mask the actual didactic problems in the academy. Bałacho- wicz (2015, p. 19) agrees, arguing that “[...] for the future educationists urgently need deepened reflexion on their own school experience and the construction of a model of school in their awareness during the studies. A critical approach to school and disclosure of what is concealed in the everyday functioning of educa- tion, or what seems normal, will allow us to open ourselves to alternative ways of school learning and teaching. This is not about rejecting all experiences of educa- tional institutions but about showing what fosters and what hinders development in a democratic society”. The self-reported exposition presented in this article shows what changes in the social representations of early childhood education took place after over three years of preparation for the teaching profession. It also reveals what expected

202 Zuzanna Zbróg

references

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