Abstract
This thesis investigates what and how student teachers learn to teach the primary foundation subjects in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in England. Despite their role in providing a broad and balanced curriculum, the foundation subjects are often marginalised in both schools and ITE, raising questions about how student teachers develop the knowledge and confidence to teach them.The study is located within a constructivist paradigm and adopts a qualitative case study design. The data comprised student teachers’ written reflections and recorded conversations, generated as part of their ITE programme. Reflexive Thematic Analysis was used to interpret how student teachers described their experiences of learning to teach the foundation subjects across university and school contexts. The analysis was informed by existing literature on teacher knowledge, learning, and reflection, which provided sensitising concepts for interpretation.
Findings suggest that student teachers understood their learning through three lenses: teacher, learner and person. Through the teacher lens, student teachers foreground their perceived professional responsibilities and their enactment in practice. Through the learner lens, student teachers reflect on the relational, affective, and situated conditions that support learning. Through the person lens, student teachers reflect on their biographies, values, and identities. University reflections were often characterised by single lens reflections, whereas placement reflections encompassed multiple and overlapping stances. These insights led to the development of the Overlapping Lens Model of Student Teacher Reflection, which describes how reflection, learning and knowledge are in dynamic relation.
The Overlapping Lens model constitutes the thesis’ original contribution to knowledge. It offers a conceptual framework to describe the nature of student teachers’ reflections, learning and knowledge, based on critical depth and research paradigms of teacher learning. The Overlapping Lens model emphasises the fluidity of reflective levels within individual instances of reflection. Furthermore, the model gives insight into student teachers conceptualisations of learning and knowledge in the primary foundation subjects, implying diverse and varying perspectives, even within single accounts. This is distinct from existing models, which tend to imply that reflection occurs at discrete levels and fail to acknowledge inconsistencies in the student teachers’ paradigmatic assumptions that underpin their perspectives on learning and teaching.
| Date of Award | 15 Apr 2026 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Marc Turu Porcel (Main Supervisor) & Nena Skrbic (Co-Supervisor) |