Chapter 53
Flows of Knowledge in Teaching Teams:
A Collaborative Approach to Research
in Early Childhood Education
Marek Tesar, Andrew Gibbons and Sandy Farquhar
The aim of this chapter is to theorise and propose ways to consolidate and build
knowledge about the nature and impact of teacher education on teaching team
relationships in Early Childhood Education (ECE). ECE teacher education provides
a critical opportunity to study and practice being in a teaching team. In this chapter,
we explore the nature of early childhood (EC) teaching teams with a focus on
‘knowledge’. The‘knowledge relationships’within teaching teams are complex
elements of the EC curriculum that have received little sustained, critical attention
in educational research. Two aspects of team relationships are of particular value
here because of their capacity to enrich the experiences of teachers and children in
ECE: (1) the ways in which new and/or beginning teachers are welcomed into the
knowledge community of an EC centre; and (2) the ways in which the sharing and
construction of knowledge in a teaching team impacts on teaching and learning in
the EC curriculum. These two elements are of significance to teacher education in
terms of both how the student experiences the study of teaching as an experience in
preparation for being a teaching team member, and how that experience translates
into being in a teaching team.
The chapter contributes to two essential and ongoing wider research needs
identified in Aotearoa New Zealand: the nature and promotion of twenty-first
century teaching and learning environments—environments characterised in rela-
tion to open, dynamic, and collective knowledge environments; and the experiences
of beginning and new teachers as they enter their teaching teams (‘new teachers’
M. Tesar (&)S. Farquhar
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Farquhar
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Gibbons
Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
M.A. Peters et al. (eds.),A Companion to Research in Teacher Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4075-7_53
785