Oxford Review of Education

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/core20

Learning cultures: understanding learning in a

school-university partnership

Adeline Yuen Sze Goh

To cite this article: Adeline Yuen Sze Goh (2020): Learning cultures: understanding learning in a
school-university partnership, Oxford Review of Education, DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2020.1825368

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2020.1825368

Published online: 12 Oct 2020.

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OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2020.1825368

Learning cultures: understanding learning in a

school-university partnership
Adeline Yuen Sze Goh
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, Brunei

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Improving the learning experiences of student teachers in a school- Learning cultures; school-
university partnership has always been an agenda for those involved university partnership;
in initial teacher preparation (ITP) programmes. In the pursuit of this teacher education; teachers’
learning; Bourdieu
improvement, this paper presents an argument in favour of a cultural
approach to understand learning at school placements and univer­
sity in a school-university partnership. Drawing on data from
a completed qualitative field study of a group of student teachers
enrolled in a one-year teacher training programme, a learning culture
approach is used to illustrate that learning through participating in
the practices within the learning sites in a school-university partner­
ship is central to becoming a teacher. Accepting this premise, the
article attempts to discuss the implications of using a cultural
approach for understanding the learning process involved in
a school-university partnership. The article also addresses the issue
of ways in which we could advance our thinking in improving valu­
able learning experiences of student teachers through using
a cultural approach.

Introduction
In many countries, the process of becoming a teacher involves enrolling in an initial
teacher preparation programme (ITP). Most ITP programmes require the collaborative
effort, or more specifically a partnership, between a school and a higher education
institution (HEI) to train prospective teachers. There has been an extensive amount of
research on school-university partnerships (e.g. Edwards & Mutton, 2007; Furlong, 1996;
Furlong et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2006) predominantly emphasising the salient features of
different models of partnership. These features have been a recurrent theme in current
policy discussions and of longstanding global interest amongst researchers, policymakers
and practitioners in the field of ITP. Differing roles and responsibilities of schools and
universities underpin the different models of a partnership. In recent years, there has been
a significant shift in the research on school-university partnership towards the use of
socio-cultural theories like Lave and Wenger's (1991) ‘communities of practice’ (Sims,
2006; Sutherland et al., 2005) and Engeström’s (2001) activity theory (Edwards &
Mutton, 2007; Tsui & Law, 2007). The turn towards socio-cultural theories to understand

CONTACT Adeline Yuen Sze Goh adeline.goh@ubd.edu.bn Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education,
Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong BE1410, Brunei
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. Y. S. GOH

learning marks a fundamental change in how school-university partnerships are concep­

tualised through a participatory perspective, emphasising the social and communal
dimensions of learning. In this spirit, this paper draws on data from a completed research
study which sought to understand the process of how individuals learn to become
a vocational teacher in Brunei. This included the career decision-making of individuals,
learning in the workplace and learning on an ITP programme. In this paper, the aim is to
focus on the latter stage of the process by examining the learning of a group of
unqualified college teachers enrolled on an ITP programme. More particularly, the
paper seeks to explore the use of a cultural approach to understand how these unqua­
lified in-service teachers learn through participating in the two learning sites of the
school-university partnership. The paper considers the following research questions to
explore this learning:

(a) What factors are evident in the professional learning of in-service teachers on an
ITP programme?
(b) Does learning on the programme lead to transforming their identity as a teacher?
(c) Are there aspects of the programme that facilitated and/or constrain their learning?

Within the teacher education literature, there are a limited number of studies which seek
to understand learning as social practices at the institutions within a school-university
partnership which, it is argued in this paper, is crucial if we want to improve student-
teachers’ learning experiences. In studies where such approaches are used to examine
student-teachers’ learning, there is usually an emphasis on pre-service teachers in school
placements rather than in higher education institutions. Also, there are a limited number
of research studies taking a learning cultures approach (Hodkinson et al., 2007) which
have examined the learning of in-service teachers returning to their workplace for place­
ments. Such an approach helps us understand how particular social practices impact
upon teachers’ learning. The paper begins with a review of the studies focusing on
learning within a school-university partnership. This review is followed by a discussion
on Hodkinson et al.’s (2007) ‘theory of learning cultures’ which is used to analyse the social
practices in the learning sites within an ITP programme. Subsequently, the context of the
study is presented, which emphasises the structure of teacher education in Brunei.
Following this, the study’s methodology and findings are presented to support the
discussions in the subsequent section.

Learning within a school-university partnership

Learning within a school-university partnership can be understood in terms of individuals
participating in the social practices existing within the two institutions. That is, we can
perceive the two institutions as two different instances of social practices, in which
learning occurs through participation (Billett, 2002). To explain what is meant by this, it
is necessary to make a brief digression into the different approaches to understanding
learning. Sfard (1998) claimed that the approaches to understanding learning could be
summarised into two competing root metaphors: learning as acquisition and learning as
participation. These two views of learning are commonly termed as the cognitive and
either situated or socio-cultural perspective. Since then, there have been longstanding
 OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 3

debates and discord in the educational research community as to whether learning

should be rightfully viewed from the cognitive or socio-cultural lens. Sfard (1998) and
Säljö (2003) argued that these debates are between protagonists of two paradigmatically
different and largely incompatible views of learning. Any attempts made to reconcile
these two views represent ‘either an unnecessary foray into theoretical terrain or an
unachievable feat of epistemological/ontological reconciliation’ (Alexander, 2007, p. 67).
Drawing on the acquisition metaphor, the cognitive perspective falls within what
Beckett and Hager (2002) claim as the ‘standard paradigm’ of learning which centres on
the mind and largely focuses on propositional knowledge rather than the practical
knowledge. That is, the mind is privileged and separate from the body and what lies
outside the mind. On the contrary, Beckett and Hager (2002) and Prawat (1998) criticise
this dualistic thinking as flawed and argue for a holistic view of learning. In contrast,
drawing on the participatory metaphor, situated or socio-cultural theories focus on how
individuals learn through participating in the activities or practices. These socio-cultural
theories support the influence of social, cultural and contextual factors on the learning of
individuals. Researchers who draw on these socio-cultural theories situate themselves
within different traditions, for example, situated learning; communities of practice theory;
cultural and developmental psychologists; cultural-historical activity theory; Vygotskian
education theorists, to name a few.
On the one hand, there are researchers (e.g. Cole, 1990; Wertsch, 1991; Hedegaard,
2014) who draw upon Vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural theory of human learning, where
they analyse learning in school settings which focus mostly on children’s development.
They are primarily concerned with integrating cognition, and the situated or socio-
cultural processes that influence thought. For example, researchers like Fleer and
Hedegaard (2010) tried to capture the dynamic processes of how different institutional
practices afford development, such as children’s development at home and school. On
the other hand, there is a different strand of situated or socio-cultural theories that focus
on the workplace. They are strongly influenced by work in anthropology, sociology and
Deweyan philosophy, which view learning as what Beckett and Hager (2002) claim as
‘embodied’. By this, they mean that learning involves the whole person, including the
physical, the emotional, the practical and the mental. This view makes sense as most
workplace practices involve more than just the mental activity but include physical and
practical activity. Hence, instead of focusing on conceptual change and cognition within
school learning, their focus is on learning on the job through participating in the work
activities within communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), seeking to understand how
newcomers learn to become a part of the workplace community.
There are different socio-cultural theories about how the individual and the social co-
exist and how they relate to each other. For example, Billett (2001) sees the individual as
separate but interacting with the social, so that they are interrelated. There are research­
ers rooted within the Vygotskian perspective who consider the role of interpersonal and
semiotic contributions and some who accentuate activity as a mediation between the
individuals and social practices through reciprocal interactions and transformations (Cole,
1990; Scribner, 1997; Wenger, 1998; Wertsch, 1991). Instead of seeing the individual as
separate from the social, Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004) reinforced and strengthened
Brown et al.’s (1989) earlier claim that individual learning is inherently contextual, which
suggests that individuals are a reciprocal part of the context, and vice versa. Put simply,
4 A. Y. S. GOH

individuals do not merely occupy an external and separate context where they learn, they
are part of the learning situation, and their actions are part of the practices of that
situation (Hodkinson et al., 2007). This view of learning, which will be discussed in more
detail below, fits with Bourdieu’s notions of field and habitus, where he argues that it is
not individuals who are influenced by and influence social structures. Instead, those
structures are represented through their accumulated dispositions, which he calls their
habitus. Through this socio-cultural view, learning within the school-university partner­
ship can be understood as two different instances of social practices, in which learning
occurs through participation. Taking a cultural approach to learning, Hodkinson et al.
(2007) prefer to see these instances of social practices as two overlapping ‘learning
cultures’ through which people learn. If we accept this premise, it enables us to explore
how certain practices beyond the learning sites impact the learning of individuals.

A cultural approach to understanding learning within the school-university

partnership
Hodkinson et al.'s (2007) cultural approach to learning sees culture as being constituted
by the actions produced and reproduced by human activity, either as an individual
activity or collective activity. This approach suggests that culture exists inherently in social
practices through the interactions and communications of the people involved in them
(Biesta, 2004). It follows that individuals participating in these cultural and social practices
will have their learning influenced accordingly. When thinking of culture as human social
practice, there is a tendency to focus on the agency of individuals. Hodkinson et al.’s
(2007) learning cultures theory draws on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and field to over­
come the agency and structure readings of culture. Learning culture is not the same as
a learning site but refers to the social practices through which people learn and are
constituted by the positions, dispositions and actions of the individuals. Hence, learning
culture has no boundaries. The learning culture of a learning site allows us to think that
factors impacting a particular learning site can and do originate and operate beyond the
learning site itself (Hodkinson et al., 2007). Learning culture allows us to ‘rethink’ the two
learning sites, i.e. the placement and the university in relational terms. That is, a student-
teacher’s learning is influenced by factors both within and beyond each of the learning
sites when she or he is located in one or the other site at any particular time and place. In
essence, the two learning cultures overlap.
Habitus can be understood as a battery of dispositions which are transposable and
durable, and which orientate how individuals engage with aspects of their lives. These
dispositions are accumulated and developed throughout life and are strongly linked to
individual positions. The positions, dispositions and actions of the individual learners that
constitute the practices of a learning site are constructed through their positioned life.
Habitus is analogous to what Billett (2009) refers to as ‘personal epistemologies’.
Hodkinson et al. (2007) assert that dispositions allow us to view learning as embodied
and practical, including both cognitive and emotional components. There are researchers
like Claxton (2007, p. 115) who writes about how positive learning dispositions could be
cultivated. Edwards and D’arcy (2004) also look at how dispositions for collaborative
engagement are enacted. In their study on the learning careers of young people,
Bloomer and Hodkinson (2002) illustrated that these dispositions are influenced mainly
 OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 5

by prior experiences and orientate individual learners to different learning opportunities.

These studies highlight the significance of dispositions in understanding learning.
However, given that Bourdieu theorised that dispositions can and do change, none of
the studies cited examine how a change in positions and dispositions could influence the
learning of individuals. Such a change in positions and dispositions as a result of partici­
pating in several learning cultures could contribute to new learning (Hodkinson et al.,
2007) through a process of ‘learning to become’.
Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’, Hodkinson et al. (2007) see the field as
a conceptual tool to understand how learning cultures work. The most helpful analogies
for understanding how field works are those of ‘market’ and ‘game’. A field is like a market.
For Bourdieu, all individuals are positioned differently, depending on the amount of
cultural (e.g. the amount of explicit and implicit knowledge valuable to the field), social
(e.g. whom you know and who knows you) and economic capital they possess (Bourdieu,
1986). Subsequently, individuals are competitors who strive to maintain or increase their
capital within the rules of a game. These rules which are not explicitly codified are usually
defined by those who have much more purchasing power. However, we need to acknowl­
edge that there are many learning cultures or ‘games’ going on at the same time.

Teacher education in Brunei

The study reported in this paper was conducted before all the local university-based ITP
programmes were replaced by the Master of Teaching (MTeach) qualification, as the sole
pre-service teacher education programme in the country. Most vocational teachers are
recruited to teach in the public sector upon completing their first degree from
a recognised university. Until recently, novice vocational teachers were required to
teach at any college, with the responsibility of a full-time teacher, for at least a year to
a few years before enrolling in an ITP programme. Normally, these beginning teachers
were guided by informal mentors during these first few years of teaching at the college
(Goh, 2013).
The ITP programme for vocational in-service teachers was one of many offered by the
local university. The programme required them to be at the university for four days a week
and at the college placements once a week. These college placements were also their
workplaces prior to enrolling on the programme. Although the student-teachers were
required to return to the colleges where they had been teaching for teaching practice,
they did not have the same responsibilities as a full-time teacher. The programme had
a school-university partnership which could be located in the middle of a continuum from
HEI-led partnership to collaborative partnership, as illustrated in Furlong’s (1996) paper.
A few of the features as laid out by Furlong in his work on HEI-led partnership and
collaborative partnership help describe the features of the ITP programme in Brunei. First,
student-teachers were exposed to different forms of professional knowledge from both
the school and university. Second, university lecturers usually observed and provided
feedback about the student-teachers’ teaching and discussed student-teachers’ perfor­
mance with mentors. Third, mentors who were teachers in the college placements were
seen as having equally legitimate professional knowledge. Fourth, student-teachers were
expected and encouraged to judge and critique what they had learned in the university
and applied in the college placement. Student-teachers were required to follow the rules
6 A. Y. S. GOH

and regulations set up by the college placement and would typically need to follow the
tasks and advice given by their mentors. The role of the mentors was to guide the student-
teachers in their teaching practice. At the same time, they had to satisfy the assessment
requirements set out by the university. They were required to maintain a teaching
portfolio, consisting of their daily lesson plans, lesson reflections and any records of
their non-related teaching activities which would be assessed by the university lecturers
and the mentors.

Methodology
This paper draws on data from a completed longitudinal study seeking to understand the
learning of individuals in becoming a teacher in Brunei. The study is framed within an
interpretative framework based on a group of twelve in-service teachers undergoing
a one-year full-time ITP programme.
Permission was asked from the lecturer at a local university whether access could be
gained to his student-teachers. I was a staff member in the same faculty as this lecturer,
but I was not involved in teaching this group of in-service student-teachers. The study
utilised a sampling strategy based on practical and pragmatic guidelines such as 1) ease of
access to the participants; 2) the willingness of participants to be interviewed during the
time allocated to them; 3) a selection of participants that reflected a balance in gender
and a range of criteria such as teaching area and the number of years of teaching
experience; 4) the number of participants which had to be manageable within my limited
resources. Within these guidelines, the whole sample (refer to Table 1) was planned to
reflect as wide a range of participants backgrounds as possible.
Ethical approval was granted through appropriate channels. All participants were
given information regarding the purpose and nature of the study, where they provided
‘informed consent’ for their involvement in the study. They were assured that their
participation in the study would not affect their assessment grades. Anonymity and
confidentiality were assured for all participants of the study, where pseudonyms have
been used.
There were two rounds of data collection. Each student-teacher was interviewed twice,
once at the beginning and once at the end of the programme, using a semi-structured
interview protocol. Each interview was of approximately one hour’s duration, and

Table 1. A list of participants.

Pseudonym Gender Teaching area Years of teaching experiences prior to ITP programme
Anna Female Engineering 3
Amanda Female Computer Studies 2
Michael Male Engineering 3
Phillip Male Engineering 3
Sheryl Female Home science 3
Mary Female Nursing and Health 2
Faith Female Business studies 3
Pam Female Business studies 2.5
Greg Male Business studies 3
Andrew Male Home science 2
David Male Engineering 3
Sarah Female Business studies 4
 OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 7

student-teachers were interviewed at the university. These interviews were digitally

recorded and subsequently fully transcribed verbatim. In the first round of the data
collection, the student-teachers were encouraged to share their previous education
experiences, their learning experiences at their workplace and to discover their expecta­
tions and the beginning learning experiences of the ITP programme. The second round of
data collection involved another round of interviews. The second round of interviews was
derived from, and informed by, the analysis of the first round of interviews. The interviews
served as follow-up questions to take the interview to a deeper level by asking for more
detail (Rossman & Rallis, 2003). Interview questions emphasised the learning experiences
of the ITP programme (Hollway & Jefferson, 2000) such as how student-teachers viewed
their teaching after being in the programme; how they viewed their mentors; how they
saw themselves as a teacher. Due to the limited time-frame and resources, the data were
drawn from student-teachers’ interview data alone, which could be seen as a limitation of
the study. But given how I collected my data and the nature of the data, the research
participants’ perspectives were central to how I made sense of the specific learning
cultures of the workplace and university setting, which has subsequently influenced the
analysis of the data. Key documentation from the university and the teaching placements
respectively were collected and analysed to understand the context and to confirm my
knowledge of the vocational teacher training system.
The process of data collection and data analysis was cyclical. Each stage of data analysis
helped to inform the subsequent data collection, which focused on deepening under­
standing and examining in-depth the experiences of these student-teachers. Preliminary
analysis was done during the first round of interviews. This analysis has helped to refine
the follow-up questions in subsequent interviews and provided an overview of the
patterns in the responses, which progressively led to focusing upon specific issues. The
interview data were approached with reference to the three-stage process of description,
analysis and interpretation posited by Wolcott (1994). The data gathering also involved
stages similar to those suggested by Moustakas’s (1990) ‘heuristic analysis’, which
involved initial engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, explication and creative
synthesis to achieve an in-depth understanding of the interview data. Drawing from Guba
and Lincoln’s (1989) version of the ‘hermeneutic circle’, analysis of the data involved
moving between the parts and the whole as neither each of these could be understood
without reference to one another, as ‘meanings could only be understood in relation to
a larger whole’ (Hollway & Jefferson, 2000). Through immersion in the first and second
interview transcripts, case studies of individual student-teachers’ learning were written up
for each participant using a largely descriptive process incorporating significant sections
of the original interview data to represent the individual’s own words. The prime task for
writing individual case studies for each participant was not just to produce a story of the
individual, but rather to reflect the study’s interest in the understanding of how they
learned to become a teacher. Subsequently, through scrutinising these twelve case
studies, comparisons were made to look for issues of agreement and differences, to
identify patterns across the individuals involved. Through a rigorous inductive and
iterative process, the revealed patterns were examined, and themes began to emerge
from these case studies. This procedure also involved contextualising the data within
a broader theoretical framework within the same research field. Here, the theory of
8 A. Y. S. GOH

learning cultures and cultural theory of learning provided an overarching framework

which was used as a set of ‘thinking tools’ to link these case studies with broader issues.

Findings
In order to convey a sense of how individual learners learned on the programme, I focus
upon three teachers, Mary, Andrew and Phillip (all pseudonyms) in order to show how
they learn in the different learning cultures within the ITP programme.

Andrew’s story
Andrew has been teaching home science in a secondary school for almost two years. Before
entering the programme, he held an administrative role at his school.
Andrew liked attending lectures, ‘I am enthusiastic about going to lectures [university]
rather than the placements because, in essence, we are supposed to be studying rather than
study and teach’. Andrew’s placement was a small department which consisted only of his
mentor, who was the head of department, and himself. His mentor knew he had assignments
at the university, and she would assist him whenever he was busy. ‘Before my classes on
Monday, I normally return to school to prepare for my lesson. It is not like other typical
subjects where you can come and teach. As for my lessons, I have to prepare the fabric, the
materials which involve a lot of work. That is why I think my mentor is beneficial because
sometimes when I am busy, I will text her to tell her what I need for my class, and she will
prepare it for me. I also need to prepare my lesson plans to be submitted to her before my
lesson’. Although his mentor understood his workload at the university, his colleagues
continued to involve him in the administrative tasks. ‘ . . . when I am in school, they [my
colleagues] don’t see me as a student. They see me as a teacher and their colleague as if like
I am not on the teacher training programme. Like it has never changed . . . I would like to see
myself as a student, so whenever I am given administrative work, I would take a minute and
remind myself that I am a student.’ Before I knew I was going on this course, I gave up my
administrative duties and responsibilities at the school. So when I return for my placements,
I don’t hold any administrative posts like ECA officer. I don’t have any non-teaching duties at
the school. All I need to do is to teach. I see this placement on Monday as a time for me to
practise what I have learnt at the university’. The programme changed Andrew, ‘I would say
I have more confidence in teaching the students, and I know my approaches are valid
because of the lectures here . . .

Mary’s story
Before becoming a nurse tutor, Mary was trained at the same nursing college before going
overseas to further her studies. She had been teaching for almost two years before joining the
ITP programme, where she was given an administrative position without any proper induc­
tion. At the outset of the programme, Mary seemed enthusiastic and had high expectations
from the course as she wanted to increase her confidence in teaching. She enjoyed the
different mix of in-service teachers from various institutions and subject disciplines, which
allowed opportunities to broaden their teaching perspectives, ‘ . . . as we come from different
backgrounds, during peer teaching, we are amazed at what the others can do, like how they
 OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 9

would use a teaching technique which I have never used before.’ When asked about how she
viewed her teaching at the beginning of the programme, she commented on the challenge of
using lesson plans as it was not a necessary practice at her college. However, after a few
sessions, she found the lesson plan helped her to build her responsibility to ensure that the
lesson was conducted as planned. She found it useful to practise her teaching at her work­
place. However, she found it challenging to be able to switch her role to a student-teacher at
her workplace. ‘I find it very difficult . . . every Monday I feel like I am in a new school. I am with
a different set of people.’ She had to learn to negotiate with her mentor, who was also the
college’s headmaster, to observe her teaching. Simultaneously, her colleagues continued to
see her as their full-time colleague rather than as someone who needed time to learn the
range of skills required as a teacher. ‘Most of them [colleagues] view me as a professional
colleague . . . They wanted to give me a lot of hours to teach . . . so I also need to be assertive
by putting some kind of barrier . . . or else I would end up with hundred hours of teaching and
top up with what I have to do here [university].’ Mary felt that the programme had changed
her, ‘ . . . ‘the thing I like most about the change in me, I am more relaxed . . . I think that I am
more accommodating and feel more relaxed. My students commented that they could see
I enjoyed teaching instead of getting over with the lesson and done with’.

Phillip’s story
Phillip was teaching an engineering course before entering the ITP programme. Having
taught in his college for the past three years, Phillip knew the level of students he was
teaching. Over the years of teaching, he had developed his way of teaching at his college.
Although he was introduced to new teaching methods at the university, he decided to
continue with what he was practising prior to entering the programme. ‘ . . . I can see the
point of using these methods, but I am not so sure whether I want to implement it all as much
as . . . We are required to draw up the lesson plans which require me to put a lot more thought
into the structure and time . . . I will still use my way of structuring my lesson and will do one
for the university’. At the university, ‘I get to be in my students’ shoes . . . when I was teaching,
I never perceive what they are thinking and take it on from their viewpoint, but having to be
taught by someone else here, I can see what works and where it doesn’t.’ Back at the
workplace as a student-teacher, Phillip continued to see himself as a teacher when he was
in the classroom. He didn’t mind being given administrative duties as his colleagues con­
sidered him as a full-time teacher. ‘it’s very hectic every Monday. . . . We have to supervise
projects as well. Things like this which is not directly relevant to our teaching but we need to
spend time on these duties. This is two hours in the morning until 10 am then my class starts
for two hours . . . and for this semester, I have to take on more teaching workload, and I have
to fit all my lessons which were scheduled for a week to only Monday as I am the sole lecturer
for this module . . . I am also the timetable coordinator for the department . . . ’ Phillip had the
same mentor at the placement and when he first started teaching. ‘Although he has more
experience than me, I still disagree with certain things he said . . . he had got his points and
views about certain things. For example, for assessments, he would do certain things in
certain ways, I would say . . . there is another way of doing it . . . ’ During his second semester,
Phillip’s workload increased ‘ . . . the workload has become more challenging at my [place of
placement], so I have to practise time management as at the university I have assignments.
On top of this, I am taking on a new subject which I need to learn some of it . . . which includes
10 A. Y. S. GOH

the exercises, assessment schemes but in a day, you don’t have enough time . . . ’. Phillip felt
that the course helped him to understand his role much better compared to when he started
teaching. The course has also changed how he saw himself and his teaching. ‘ . . . in the
beginning, I was teaching like an engineer, where I gave lectures and didn’t provide tutorials,
a big mistake, but now, I have changed my approach. I will ask them to think and discuss in
groups.’

Discussion
Although student-teachers are part of several learning cultures at any one time, the
discussion presented here has primarily focused on two overlapping learning cultures
in the school-university partnership: the university site and the college placements which
can be seen as having social practices which influence learning. Most workplaces are
hierarchical, and an individual’s position within the hierarchy will influence their learning.
Mary’s, Andrew’s and Phillip’s learning at their respective placements relate to their
previous positions as full-time teachers within their workplaces. The unique arrangement
of having placements in the previous workplaces of in-service teachers brought about
a variation in their learning. The variation in their learning was due, in part, to how much
they repositioned themselves as ‘learners’ in their workplaces. That is, although there was
a change of roles from full-time teacher to student-teacher, student-teachers like Phillip
continued to view themselves as a full-time teacher and those like Mary and Andrew
preferred to protect their learner status.
Being in an ambiguous position in the college placements influenced student-
teachers’ self-identity, a situation which could have presented a barrier to their learning
and also mitigated any support provided by their mentors. This self-identity represents
a key influence in student-teachers’ dispositions to learning, as it partly determines the
extent to which they exert control over their learning. The relationships between
position, self-identity, dispositions and learning are complex. A change in the role of
a full-time teacher to a student-teacher resulted in a change in position in relation to
the learning culture of the placement. These changes subsequently resulted in a change
in their dispositions towards their learning culture. They saw their workplaces differently
as they were there only once a week, and their practices were different. However, this
change in dispositions was dependent on how they viewed themselves or their self-
identity in their workplace. Self-identity in this study is best understood as ‘how a person
sees themselves in the world’ and ‘a person’s dispositions towards and about themselves’
(Biesta et al., 2011, p. 94). When viewing identity as dispositional, this signifies that how
a person views themselves involves more than cognition. We see this in the relationship
between the self-identity of student-teachers like Mary and Andrew, who viewed
themselves as ‘learner’, and their dispositions towards their placement. For example,
they wanted to be positioned at the periphery where they had fewer responsibilities
compared to when they were full-time teachers. However, their colleagues continued to
view them as full-time teachers. They gave the student-teachers administrative work
and the same workload, which could have impeded their learning to teach, to construct
or reshape their work role and their identities as student-teachers. The differences in
perspectives created a tension which led Mary and Andrew to exercise their agentic
actions to take control of their learning by keeping their learner status. This example is
 OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 11

in stark contrast to studies about pre-service teachers where they strive to be seen as
teachers as this could increase their chance of ‘fitting in’ with the school culture. On the
contrary, there were student-teachers like Phillip who viewed themselves as full-time
teachers and continued with their previous workplace practices, e.g. administrative
duties in their placements. This finding points to the need for student-teachers to
exercise their professional agency to make choices and take stances in their work
and/or professional identities in circumstances where work roles and identity are
vague to other workers (Eteläpelto et al., 2015).
The positions, dispositions and actions of the mentors and colleagues had also influ­
enced the learning of the student-teachers in the placements. The extent of support
provided by mentors did not seem to have a significant effect on these student-teachers.
This lack of impact could be due to the position of the student-teachers where their
mentors view them as colleagues who did not require guidance in their learning to teach.
Bourdieu claims that having the right cultural and social capital relevant to the context
would normally increase individuals’ chances of success in learning. However, while being
positioned as a full-time teacher who had taught at least three years suggests that
student-teachers had the relevant cultural and social capital in relation to the placements,
such positioning also mitigated their learning opportunities. In some college placements,
student-teachers were able to retain their ‘learner’ status as their colleagues understood
the reduced workload given to teachers who were on the ITP programme. In the above
discussion, we see that the practices within the respective college placements, which are
made up of the dispositions and actions of the mentors and colleagues, provided differing
learning opportunities afforded by the learning cultures within respective college place­
ments. That is, the nature of learning cultures in Mary’s and Andrew’s placements could
have constrained and prevented their learning if they hadn’t exerted their agentic action.
Therefore, student-teachers’ learning in their respective college placements can be under­
stood as an interrelationship between their position within the placements, their
approach to protecting their learner status, i.e. individual learner agency, and the nature
of the learning culture of each of the college placements.
Hodkinson et al. (2007) acknowledged that their theory of learning cultures has the
tendency to marginalise individual learners and to overlook learner agency, in common
with Engeström’s model of activity systems and work on situated learning, where some
researchers also tend to neglect the role of individual agentic action (e.g. Engeström,
2001; Lave & Wenger, 1991). The findings above help extend the theory of learning
cultures as individual learner agency plays a vital role in changing the learning culture
of the learning sites. These findings also add to the growing number of researchers within
the socio-cultural framework that recognise the need to include individual agency within
a collaborative activity (e.g. Valsiner (1998), Stetsenko (2005), Edwards (2005), Wertsch
(1998), Eteläpelto et al. (2015), Billett (2009)).
Bourdieu (1984) prefers to view individual agency as partly for survival and partly an
attempt to do well to succeed; that is, to strive for ‘distinction’. We also see this individual
agency in the case of student-teachers like Phillip, who was writing two lesson plans, one
for himself and one for the university. This double workload came about as the result of
the tension between responding personally to the pedagogic approach and the need to
fulfil the course requirements. Bourdieu argues that although individuals can be agentic,
this does not suggest that individuals are ‘free agents’ who can choose whatever they
12 A. Y. S. GOH

want to do (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Their agentic actions are always influenced by
and constrained by their position within the learning cultures. In this study, participants’
agentic actions are limited by their positions as student-teachers.
The findings also support the view that learning is one mechanism whereby student-
teachers’ dispositions can change as a result of their engagement with the different
learning cultures they were experiencing, such as, in the ways they think of themselves
as a teacher. According to Hodkinson et al. (2008), participants can influence the nature of
the learning culture within which they participate intentionally either through striving to
maintain or change the practices. From the stories, we saw that the impact on individuals
in a learning culture was the result of their presence in it and whether they intended to
influence the learning culture or not. The significance of habitus of individual learners, as
shown from the stories, also influenced their learning. The student-teachers all had prior
experiences before entering the programme, i.e. the two learning sites. It is through these
experiences that their dispositions that make up the habitus were developed. Hence,
these dispositions orientate student-teachers to learning in their learning sites. These
dispositions, as Hagger et al.’s (2008) study has shown, could influence how student
teachers learn from their experience in the placements. Mary, who can be seen as
a proactive individual, knew she had to exert her agentic action to search for learning
opportunities in her workplace. For example, she tried to negotiate with her mentor to
observe her teaching, and she reminded her colleagues that she was on the ITP pro­
gramme. Mary’s agentic actions facilitated and enabled her learning. As mentioned
above, the in-service student-teachers’ position is different from pre-service student-
teachers, where they already have the cultural and social capital in relation to the
placements.
A change in position from full-time teacher to student-teacher resulted in learning,
which gradually changed some participants’ dispositions towards teaching through
participating in the two learning sites. At the same time, learning could also result in
the consolidation of existing dispositions towards teaching. Phillip’s dispositions to
teaching changed as he now approached it differently whilst Mary became more
confident in using different teaching methods. Simultaneously, the change in positions
resulted in the consolidation of existing dispositions as can be seen in Phillip’s case.
The student-teachers had different perspectives about teaching and a different view of
themselves and their students, i.e. more confident. In other words, student-teachers’
participation in the programme transformed their dispositions towards themselves,
and towards becoming a teacher. At the same time, learning on the programme could
be seen as successful in either consolidating or changing student-teachers’ existing
dispositions. It could be argued that we have to understand how these student-
teachers learn at both learning sites to get an overall understanding of their learning.
When viewed this way, student-teachers’ simultaneous movement between the uni­
versity site and college placement can be understood as ‘learning as becoming’
(Hodkinson et al., 2008), through participating in the overlapping learning cultures
over time. As shown above, due to their ambiguous position as full-time teachers who
become student-teachers in their college placements, they needed to exert their
agency to learn despite having the cultural capital in relation to their placements. In
summary, the process of ‘learning to become’ depends on the interrelationship
between individual positions, dispositions and capital, all of which vary from person
 OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 13

to person (see Goh, 2015) and the opportunities available through participating in the
different learning cultures across an individual’s lifetime, which Hodkinson calls ‘hor­
izons for learning’:
For any learner, it is the horizons for learning that set limits to what learning is possible, and
which enable learning within those limits . . . differing learning cultures offer different oppor­
tunities to learn (and inhibit or even prevent others), to anyone participating in them. We
have now shown that the same is true for the dispositions that make up any person’s habitus.
Both views are correct, but each is partial. Put differently, a person’s horizons for learning are
established through the on-going and sometimes changing interrelationship between their
dispositions and the learning cultures in which they participate (Hodkinson et al., 2008,
p. 40) [italics mine]

As shown in the findings, the student-teachers’ horizons for learning can also be influ­
enced by the extent to which they exert their agency to keep their learner status.

Conclusion
The paper seeks to explore the use of a cultural approach to understand how these
unqualified college teachers learn through participating in the two learning sites of the
school-university partnership. Based on the findings, the professional learning of the
college teachers depended on several factors working together. That is, their learning in
a learning culture depended largely on the interrelationship between the individual
learner and the learning culture of each of the learning sites which they were part of. In
other words, the interplay between the individual learner positions within the learning
sites, their dispositions towards the sites and the cultural and social capital that they
possess all contribute to the learning culture and subsequently their learning. Mutton
et al. (2010) point out the importance of the interaction between the dispositions of
individual learners and the contexts in which they learn to teach, in order to understand
their development in whatever specific context it occurs. The structure of the programme
required students to move simultaneously between the two learning sites resulting in the
changing of roles and positions, which either reinforced or changed their existing teacher
identities. The learning cultures of the placements could either potentially facilitate and/
or constrain the learning within the programme. As shown, the practices such as the
actions and dispositions of the mentors, colleagues and university lecturers within the
learning sites were almost central to the learning culture, and their impact upon the
quality of learning was significant. In parallel to this, individual learner dispositions can
also facilitate or mitigate the learning opportunities afforded in these learning sites
depending on the extent of their agentic action.
The use of a cultural approach such as Hodkinson et al.’s (2007) theory of learning
cultures raises the importance of ‘thinking relationally’ which considers the factors both
within and beyond the learning sites. This theory helps us to understand the learning of
the student-teachers at any one time and place within the school-university partnership. It
also makes visible that the actions and dispositions of the student-teachers, mentors,
colleagues and university lecturers are constituents of the learning cultures within the
school-university partnership. This understanding also warrants the need to consider the
individual dispositions to learning which includes the motives and demands student-
teachers encounter with the objectives of the different institutional practices (Hedegaard,
14 A. Y. S. GOH

2014). Student-teachers’ dispositions also influence their approach to learning from

experiences at different placements (Mutton et al., 2010). This understanding would
then allow university lecturers and mentors to work together to take a long-term focus
on the development of student-teachers, in creating learning cultures that would increase
the likelihood of valuable learning experiences. This finding supports Edwards and
Mutton's (2007) view on the need to focus on individual student-teacher trajectories as
college placements will provide different learning opportunities, which subsequently
develop different kinds of expertise.

Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Adeline Yuen Sze Goh is a Senior Assistant Professor at the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of
Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She gained her PhD from the Institute of Lifelong Learning
at the University of Leeds, UK. She has many years of experience in training vocational and technical
education teachers. Her research interests include workplace learning, transition from education to
work, teacher education and professional learning.

ORCID
Adeline Yuen Sze Goh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4263-5712

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