Changing pedagogical practice in teacher education: Negotiating the spaces between realism and relativism

This article reports a self-study from a larger research project that explored the impacton pre-service and in-service teacher education of a new national curriculum inNew Zealand and the conceptualisations of epistemological shifts signalled by thatdocument. A pedagogical initiative to introduce inquiry-based learning into a graduatediploma course for pre-service primary teachers was the result of and the catalyst forfurther reflection on my practice and the (mis)alignments between my theoreticalunderstandings and beliefs and my pedagogical choices. In this article I focus on thetensions and contradictions I encountered while attempting to enact, in a tertiaryenvironment, a pedagogy that aligned with the underpinning principles of the newcurriculum. I describe the model that I developed to understand those tensions andcontradictions, which are characterised as the spaces between realism and relativism.I suggest that negotiating these spaces is part of the process of becoming a teacher and ateacher educator in the twenty-first century.