Monological, dialogical and trialogical conferences in teacher education practicum

In this session I present findings from a study of nine triadic conferences undertaken at a special training school associated to one of the largest Teacher education programs in Sweden (Jons 2017). The conversations between the university teacher, practicum mentor and student were audiotaped during practicum placement in a upper secondary school. Conversations were coded in TRANSANA software, in a first step approached inductively by means of three questions; 1) who leads the conversation, and how?; 2) who or what determines the content of the conversation?; and 3) in what way do the three parties interact when conveying formative response?. In a second step, categories for coding the material was created and refined in an iterative process employing an abductive approach (Tavory & Timmermans 2014). Aspects of Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue (see Buber 1994; 1995a; 1995b; see also Jons 2008) was chosen for categorization, allowing for the suggestion of three different types of interlocutions; Monologic ones, where the university teacher leads the conversation and decides the content of it Dialogic ones, where the university teacher allows the student to lead the conversation and also to decide its content; and Trialogic ones, where the university supervisor leads the conversation, assuring the intended learning outcomes to be covered. Furthermore, findings show six of the nine conversations to be characterized by trialogic interlocution, one and a third to be of a dialogic nature and one and two third as having a monologic character. While the trialogic and dialogic conferences came forth as joint problem solving, the monologic ones rather appeared as a kind of examination. The implications for student learning as well as teacher education practice remains to be discussed and studied further.Triadic conferences in teacher education practicu