ABSTRACT
In learning to teach in the 21st century, student teachers have to manage their own learning and support that of their pupils in increasingly challenging learning and teaching environments (Opfer, Pedder and Lavicza, 2010). In changing initial teacher education contexts (DfE, 2011), it is increasingly important for schools and higher education institutions (HEIs) to consider how they can best provide appropriate challenges, stimuli and support to student teachers to enable them to develop effective approaches to learning and to model these with their pupils (Burn, Hagger, Mutton and Everton, 2003; Gijbels, Segers and Struyf, 2008). A deep approach to learning is required in order to flunction efectively in complex learning environments and deal with supercomplexity described as the openendness of ideas, perspectives, values, beliefs and interpretations (Barnett, 2007). Student teachers need to have an increased awareness of their learning approaches if they are to make the best use of learning opportunities, self-regulate their own learning (Heikkilä and Lonka, 2006), and manage affordances and barriers within differing learning contexts more effectively (Evans and Kozhevnikov, 2011). Walker et al. (2009: 254) have argued that: ‘student teachers need to understand that sometimes it is necessary to see knowledge as complex, evolving, effortful, tentative and evidence-based: these epistemological beliefs are at the very core of deep approaches to learning.’ However, while approaches to learning research has strongly influenced practice in higher education, its influence and application to school settings has been limited (Evans and Waring, 2011). A better understanding is needed of what constitutes a deep approach to learning in the context of learning to teach. This is especially important given concerns surrounding whether the characteristics of a deep approach can be fully captured within existing measures of approaches to learning as a result of changes that have occurred in higher education and initial teacher education over the last ten years (Watters and Watters, 2007).
