Dr Katharine Burn[back]
Katharine taught history for ten years in secondary schools in Oxford. Her varied roles, as head of faculty, mentor to PGCE students and professional tutor gave her an abiding interest in teachers' professional learning. As University Lecturer in Education (Professional Education) she now teaches on the PGCE history programme and is responsible for developing a new part-time Masters for practising teachers. She acts as a reviewer for the Oxford Review of Education and recently co-edited a special issue of the journal devoted to ‘Learning in and across the professions'. Katharine is a member of the Teaching and Teacher Education Research Group.
Katharine's research interests are concerned with teachers' professional learning. As a full-time history teacher she conducted practitioner action research studies into mentoring within initial teacher education (ITE), and investigated experienced teachers' conceptions of continued professional development. Her doctorate examined the distinctive contributions of school and university to student-teachers' learning within a school-based ITE partnership.
Working in conjunction with the Historical Association, and colleagues from Oxford, Warwick and Southampton, Katharine co-led a TDA funded research and development project to produce web-based induction materials for new history teacher educators, based in part on her doctoral research (http://www.historyitt.org.uk/).
The TDA also funded a small-scale collaborative action research project, which Katharine directed with Anna Pendry to explore ways of developing student teachers' subject-specific pedagogical knowledge in related to disputed aspects of the school curriculum. The project report is available at http://www.ttrb.ac.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?contentId=12012. Issues raised by the research were reported in a presentation on ‘The Role of School Subject Departments in ITE' at the 2006 UCET conference, and developed within the ESRC-TLRP thematic seminar series on Curriculum, Domain Knowledge and Pedagogy (http://www.tlrp.org/themes/seminar/moon/) held at the RSA in 2007.
Katharine is also a member of the Developing Expertise of Beginning Teachers (DEBT) Project, a 3-year longitudinal study run jointly with researchers from the University of Cambridge to investigate teachers' professional learning, through their PGCE, induction year and 2nd year of professional practice.
Her current interests relate to the opportunities for professional leaning within secondary school subject departments.
Hagger, H., Burn, K., Mutton, T. & Brindley, S. (in press) Practice makes perfect? Learning to learn as a teacher Oxford Review of Education.
Burn, K, Childs, A. & McNicholl, J. (in press) The potential and challenges for student teachers' learning of subject specific pedagogical knowledge within secondary school subject departments, The Curriculum Journal 18 (4)
Burn, K. (2007) Professional knowledge and identity in a contested discipline: challenges for student teachers and teacher educators, Oxford Review of Education, 33 (4) 445-467.
Burn, K. & Edwards, A. (2007) ‘Learning in and across the professions' Special Issue editorial Oxford Review of Education, 33 (4) 397-401.
Burn, K. (2006) Promoting critical conversations: the distinctive contribution of higher education as a partner in the professional preparation of new teachers, Journal of Education for Teaching 32 (3) 243-258.
Burn, K. (2005) The Development of Professional Knowledge for Teaching Historical Enquiry and Historical Interpretation (Research and Development Award 25), Teachers Resource Bank. Available online at http://www.ttrb.ac.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?contentId=12012
Burn, K. (2004) Working with adult learners, Unit 2 of History Initial Training (HITT) Induction website for history teacher educators, published online at http://www.historyitt.org.uk/
Burn, K., Hagger, H., Mutton, T. & Everton, T. (2003) The complex development of student teachers' thinking, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 9 (4) 309-331.
Burn, K., Hagger, H., Mutton, T. & Everton, T. (2000) Beyond concerns with self: the sophisticated thinking of beginning student teachers, Journal of Education for Teaching 26 (3) 259-278.
I am also a regular contributor with Anna Pendry to the ‘Move Me On' section of Teaching History concerned with the challenges for mentors of working with history trainees.