ABSTRACT
In this chapter we demonstrate how cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) can be a highly productive theoretical and methodological lens for studying how student teachers learn to become teachers. Through the course of their initial teacher education, student teachers carry out actions that are organized in different ways and situations, located both at higher education institutions (HEIs) and schools. In order to grasp how student teachers learn to become teachers, we need a conception of how the relationships between interaction, learning and available cultural tools on the one hand, and the activity in which they are used on the other, can be conceived theoretically and pursued analytically (Arnseth and Ludvigsen 2006). In each of the places, or spheres, that constitute a teacher education course there are different participants with multiple backgrounds, interests and motives for their actions. This means that the student teachers face a variety of tasks and expectations across spheres. What counts as knowledge is, in other words, inherent in the different spheres, but is legitimized in the participants’ situated interactions in situations (Ludvigsen 2009). What is considered methodologically important is to pursue an analysis that makes it possible to study how meanings of knowledge are constituted in talk between participants, and how the participants, through their actions, are responding to the institutional context they act in and thereby make it relevant (Roth et al. 2005; Arnseth and Ludvigsen 2006). In this chapter we will first explain how learning is conceived. In order to illuminate how student teachers become teachers, we will then direct attention to what characterizes participation over the course of a teacher education course. We will then describe how to pursue this analytically, and illustrate the description by an empirical analysis of participants’ talk. Finally we discuss our methodological concerns and conclude with why this theoretical and methodological approach is conceived as relevant for teacher educators and researchers within the field.
