Disciplinary sub-cultures in secondary teacher preparation in Québec as an object of research?

Abstract

This research problematizes the notion of disciplinary sub-cultures drawing on various Anglo-American studies conducted in the field of the analysis of the implementation of educational policy and the analysis of learning to teach. On this basis, this research focuses on beginning teachers’ socialization into subjects’ subcultures. This study investigates to what extent students in secondary teacher preparation have different conceptions about the knowledge they transmit depending on the discipline they learn at university. A questionnaire of 38 scales was constructed and administered to 109 students: 33 students in mathematics and 76 in French. A PCA suggested the extraction of three dimensions. To analyse the effect of the discipline an ANOVA was conducted using the component scores as dependent variable. A significant effect was found for each of the three dimensions. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.