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In this study, critical reflexivity was a key aspect of the preservice teachers’
methods. Critical reflection of the preservice teachers ranged from the simple
awareness that they were applying teaching methods’ theory learnt at university to
a broader conceptualisation of their professional learning trajectory. The adoption
of a reflective practitioner approach might be regarded as a separate mediating arte-
fact acting as a boundary object between the two activity systems.
The acknowledgement of the transference of university learning to professional
experience was the first level of reflection evident among the preservice teachers in
this study. This is apparent in an interview from the postexperience interview of one
preservice teacher:
Because even though I feel we would have started the prac [practicum] thinking ‘Oh my
god I don’t know anything’ but you do, it’s just about taking all that knowledge and apply-
ing it.
This is the most basic level of translation, but it still exists as a repudiation of the
discourse that establishes a false binary between theory and practice. This discourse
is evident in the following excerpt from another postexperience interview with a
preservice teacher:
And even teachers will say ‘forget what they taught you at uni, now you’re in a school’ and
[preservice] students will say ‘we learnt more in those three weeks than we did in the whole
semester’ and I get cranky when they say that because it’s different learning, it’s not better
learning.
The different learning alluded to here is amplified by this preservice teacher:
You’re not just learning about behaviour management theories like Skinner’s and Glasser’s;
they’re not just people, you don’t just say ‘Glasser says this and Skinner does that’. It’s to
give you a grounding in what you see in the classroom so when you think about what you’re
doing [so] you realise how you’re positioning yourself in the equation. I think if you make
that context [the school] obvious then hopefully the learning’s a bit more meaningful.
The preservice teacher is translating the theories of Glasser and Skinner into
their context and practice in their words ‘positioning yourself in the equation’. This
is evidence that teaching methods combined with a critically reflexive approach can
act as boundary crossing objects for preservice teachers on their first professional
experience. It can be seen that in this case, a reflective approach and the teaching
knowledge they learned in university-based courses can develop their capacity to
cross boundaries to develop their effective teacher repertoire. It is important to see
evidence of the preservice teachers’ theory and practice application in this profes-
sional experience.
The University Mentor as Boundary Broker
The community is an important aspect of the activity system. In our model, there are
two different communities situated in the activity systems of the school and the
university. The university mentor and preservice teachers are the only people
T. Loughland and H.T.M. Nguyen