The crisis of transcendence and the (im)possibility of teacher education

Abstract

This thesis assesses the possibility of pedagogical transformation through teacher education. Though this is the substantive focus, it also addresses what is essentially the intellectual question of our age: how are we to respond to the crisis of transcendence which accompanies the twentieth century critique of Enlightenment aspirations? How can it be possible for humanity to transcend the parameters of existing thought and practice when the empirical foundation of that critique has been put into question? With regard to teacher education this is considered through an assessment of models of teacher learning and their meta-theoretical rigour. I assess the validity of teacher education premised upon three major theoretical movements: liberal-pragmatism, poststructuralism and dialectical materialism. These theoretical movements have all influenced my research over the last decade; the intellectual journey I have taken is traceable in the publications presented here and in the reflection that forms the commentary. Ultimately my intellectual search has led me to reject pragmatist and post-structuralist accounts of teacher education and to advance an incipient but nonetheless radical understanding of teacher learning as dialectically transformative.