Establishing a Nuanced Phenomenographic Argument for the Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions of Teaching

Introduction

Theoretical Framework

Methods

Data Analysis

Three steps detailed below were taken in the data analysis.

Identifying Ways of Experiencing

The PTs’ ways of experiencing were accepted as partial experience-based conceptual reflections. The PTs had gained partial documentation from their reality created primarily through their teachers in university-based teaching. The PTs received the same teaching during the teacher preparation program. However, the gained experiences could differ from one PT to another. The differentiation of the critical conceptions of the PTs or a search for variation in meanings was, therefore, the first step of the analysis.

Three sub-steps, frequency, pregnancy, and position were followed for conceptual differentiation (Sjostrom & Dahlgren, 2002; Soysal & Saruhan, 2023). First, the PTs uttered some conceptions more frequently than others while reacting to the conversation openers, even though the interviewer asked for other aspects of the phenomenon. In addition to the nuclear ideas that the PTs repeated frequently, the surrounding/bounding ideas were also monitored to enlarge the PTs’ core meanings. This was the pregnancy as the PTs ramified their core conceptions. Finally, the position of the utterances of the PTs within a longer piece of the transcript was also functional in the differentiation of the actual intentions of the PTs. In the initial parts of the utterances, a PT had focused on a specific conception; then, after zooming in, in the last parts of the utterances, s/he summarized his/her ideas by emphasizing the initial conception they had delivered. Thus, the specific positions of the utterances were also helpful in selecting, marking, and differentiating the PTs’ conceptions.

Constructing Categories of Description

The above-clarified differentiation was a theory-laden and data-driven open-coding process. In the second step, constructing categories of description, an axial coding process was taken. Higher-order conceptions were collapsed based on the analytical teaching conceptions experienced and documented by the PTs. The essential and theory-laden criterion was the focused dimension (Åkerlind, 2012) in collapsing the higher-order themes obtained from the analytical differentiations from the meanings pool. Five guiding principles were considered to form internally homogenous and externally heterogeneous categories of descriptions. Finally, three coders trained themselves to ask the below-stated questions to assign the differentiated ways of experiencing to the categories of description.

Does the way of experiencing include only the teacher in identifying the teaching phenomenon as a knowledge delivery process? (Focused dimension: monologic teaching)

Does the way of experiencing incorporate both the teacher and the students in describing the teaching phenomenon as an interactionist process? (Focused dimension: dialogical teaching)

Does the way of experiencing cover the teacher, the students, and a version of academic rigor seeing the teaching phenomenon as the social co-construction of knowledge (Focused dimension: dialectical teaching)

Does the way of experiencing involve the interpretations of the process of teaching as a dynamic, flexible, content-driven, and context-sensitive phenomenon (Focused dimension: adaptive-pragmatic teaching)

Does the way of experiencing embody a version of the reflection-in-action or reflection-on-action interpretation as a way of understanding teaching as a metacognitive monitoring activity (Focused dimension: reflective teaching)

Diagramming the Outcome Space

The last supplementary analysis was establishing an outcome space. There was an additional search for the structural relationships between the categories of description. This is where the hierarchy between the categories of description comes in. There were linear (sequential, equal value among the categories of description) and hierarchical (increasing breadth of awareness) relations between the categories of description based on the considered criteria. In schematizing the outcome space, a pre-diagrammatic thinking tool (conceptual spectrum) based on the state-of-the-art literature on the teaching phenomenon was considered (Figure 1). The extracted categories of descriptions were re-located within a structural-hierarchical continuum, including an incremental breadth of awareness regarding the teaching phenomenon.

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Figure 1.

Five guiding principles for schematizing the structural and hierarchical relationship between the extracted conceptions of PTs regarding the teaching phenomenon.

Findings

Four categories of description were generated based on the PTs’ externalizations. Each includes an intra-hierarchical conceptual order (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Categories of description-1: Teaching is the transmission of knowledge.

Figure 2 summarizes the PTs’ ways of experiencing teaching. For this description, the PTs conceived the teaching phenomenon as a monological activity, such as transmitting knowledge to others. The teaching phenomenon appeared to the PTs as taken-for-granted and less problematic.

Figure 2 incorporates two sections showing an intra-hierarchical conceptual order. The PTs’ first (C1-1) and second (C1-2) teaching conceptions include delivery modes of teaching, excluding student voices as alternative/invalid/incomplete ways of understanding from the instructional process. Therefore, these descriptions are teacher-focused or monologically-oriented. The first conception indicates the primary knower role of the teacher while teaching (see the extract from participant J103).

“The greatest task of a teacher is to teach. Teachers should love to share their knowledge. Because I love to share my knowledge, I will always say that I will become a teacher to convey my knowledge to others. If you do not have this feeling, you cannot teach anything. A writer says that good teachers tell their learning, not from their books.” (J103, Male, Classroom Teaching)

The second way of experiencing displays the pedagogical need of a teacher that s/he first had to be taught the content; then, in the same manner, s/he would be able to teach the content in the way she was taught (e.g., S112). This shows how these two ways of experiencing separate the teaching and learning or the teacher and learner.

“How a subject is taught to me also affects my instructional choices. For example, while I do not remember some of my math teachers, I never forget some. I can teach math to my students by re-considering what and how my favorite teachers taught me.” (S112, Male, Mathematics Teaching)

The third (C1-3) and fourth (C1-4) conceptions have additional aspects of the teaching (see Figure 2). In the last two conceptions, the core meaning attributed to the teaching phenomenon (knowledge and its transmission) was not altered; instead, the PTs added a few further points exceeding their first and second conceptions.

“I think there are three parts to teaching—input, process, and output. For example, we prepare activities for lessons. These are curriculum-based. These are the inputs. The process is the lessons we teach. But the most important is the “output.” So, we have to ask what we tell, what we teach, and whether there was authentic learning.” (C044, Female, Turkish Language Teaching)

For instance, according to the PTs, for the third conception (see Figure 2), a teacher should be able to provide illustrative feedback to students regarding how much of the delivered information is appropriately acquired by the students. The main idea the PTs held with the third teaching conception was that the effect of the monological instruction should be confirmed via a version of a summative assessment (e.g., C044).

““I was able to teach this subject…” For me to say that children need to use what they have taken from me in their daily lives. In a lecture at my internship school recently, I asked my students, “Why should we brush our teeth for at least 2 minutes?” I explained the answer to the question. But for the teaching to be finalized, students must brush their teeth at home for at least 2 minutes.” (W123, Female, Classroom Teaching)

For the fourth conception, in addition to delivering the subject matter knowledge and its impact’s evaluation, the PTs conceptualized that teaching is related to the transfer of additional knowledge indicating where, when, and how the students would operate such provided knowledge (e.g., W123).

For this description, the PTs included learners in the teaching process. Therefore, the conceptions presented in Figure 3 involved the individual features in addition to the knowledge transmission and its impacts’ evaluation for the teaching mostly related to the teachers, not the learners.

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Figure 3.

Categories of description-2: Teaching is responding to the structural and emergent needs of learners.

Figure 3 displays the intra-hierarchical relations between the first (C2-1) and second (C2-2) conceptions. The PTs believed that teaching is more achievable when individuals develop an interest in learning. However, for the first teaching conception, the PTs did not provide details concerning how the learners’ interests should be captured. Such experience was therefore focused only on the learner/individual, not on the teaching or instructional ways of grasping a learner’s interest while learning a particular idea.

“First of all, everyone learns according to their own needs. For example, I may need math; therefore, I want to learn math. If I need English, I learn accordingly. At the outset, you need it. For example, there is a broken faucet in the house. You investigate to learn to repair it because I am more motivated to learn what I need at that time. This is more helpful.” (C015, Female, Classroom Teaching)

Exigency was another aspect of the first conception (Figure 3; see also the explanation of C015), reflecting the experiences of the PTs that a teaching process can be triggered if students need new knowledge/skill. However, similar to the interest conception, the PTs failed to explain how the students could be encouraged to learn or did not attach the individual-led conception to the teaching phenomenon.

“For example, I discussed equality and justice with my students in one of my practicum classes, and the discussion went elsewhere. But I could not stop this discussion because the students wanted to discuss it. I just wanted to have these justice and equality discussions for humans, but the students also wanted to discuss animal rights through zoos because, unfortunately, they had watched the cruelty to animals in a zoo in the news. So, I could not prefer to stop arguing that with my students.” (P113, Male, Classroom Teaching)

For the C2-2 (Figure 3), the PTs externalized a broader conception of teaching. The PTs conceptualized that the needs of the students may not be under the prescriptively defined curricular outcomes that they use to adjust and designate the teaching topics. Within the C2-2, the PTs experienced a distinction between the student-led instructional needs and the predetermined scopes of the curricular purposes. Therefore, there is an explicit link between individual-led interest/instructional needs and the teaching phenomenon presented by the PTs. Regarding dialogical teaching, the C2-2 implies that the difference between the curricular outcomes and students’ needs, such as their differentiating or alternative mental schemes or experiences about a curricular topic, should be considered to design the teaching activity (e.g., P113).

Within this description, the PTs emphasized individual differences and group-based needs in organizing a teaching activity (Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Categories of description-3: Teaching is taking individual differences and group-based needs into account while planning, designing, and implementing instruction.

With the C3-1 (Figure 4), the PTs acclaimed that students may have some intellectual limits to successfully capture a curricular topic and its intentions. The PTs commented that the flow of a teaching activity could be determined or adjusted with the students’ intellectual restrictions that can be emerged randomly during a lesson. As externalized within the below-located quote, D088 conceptualized that within a specific moment of her teaching, she realized that students had no adequate understanding of the climate term. This automatically modified the streaming of the lesson. Regarding dialogical teaching, it seems that D088 tried to consider her group’s prior understanding as an alternative point of view but as an intellectual restriction to continue the lesson. D088 might prefer to continue teaching-by-telling by delivering content about the climate. However, as she declared, she preferred considering the conceptual difference as an intellectual limitation or restricted breadth of awareness embedded in her students’ existing mental schemes requiring re-adjusting the lesson flow.

“In a class where we talked about weather events… But before I prepared the course content, I also looked at the curriculum. The students did not know much about the season. This severely limited my activity. I did not know what to do at that moment since I aimed to teach climates. So, I got a little confused. I brought the topic back to weather events, and we just discussed seasonal changes. Then I checked the curriculum, and there was a warning in square brackets such as “the climate term is not mentioned in this unit.” (D088, Female, Classroom Teaching)

For the C3-2, contrary to the C3-1, the PTs perceived the students’ mental restrictions as a starting/triggering point to plan the teaching activity. The difference between the C3-1 and C3-2 is that with the C3-1, the PTs conceived the students’ prior mental schemes as a limitation for a teaching activity. The PTs with the C3-2 experienced the teaching by utilizing the students existing conceptual understanding as a triggering point to re-direct the lesson’s flow. The below-located interpretation from L032 shows that taking individual differences or group-based needs into account may enrich the teaching activity rather than constrain the teaching activity.

“That is the rule: enrich your instruction with multiple methods and techniques to create a positive instructional climate. I expect the students to understand the diversified issues in their own lives. I finish the lesson with an assessment students can associate with their life. While evaluating the lesson, I expect the students to express themselves in their own words rather than remembering the monologues. I do not exclude the background knowledge my students bring to class but use them to enrich the content.” (L032, Female, Classroom Teaching)

According to the PTs, the limited (C3-1) or alternative (C3-2) reasoning/thinking patterns embedded in the students’ mental schemes should be considered for planning and operating teaching. However, C3-1 and C3-2 do not include a concrete teaching idea as an instructional recommendation, as found in C3-3 (Figure 4). As exemplified in the below-located interpretation of a participant, the PTs reported that teaching should embody an instructional diversification in the sense of inevitable individual differences or group-based needs, in which there may be an interaction between aptitude (students and learning) and treatment (teachers and teaching).

“When I try to talk about the same topic with my students at the same grade levels, I think and believe each class or each student has a different harmony. So, a teacher should always have a plan B and plan A. Unfortunately, the images and videos I chose with my advisor while discussing the dilemma of justice and equality did not attract my students’ attention. They also made good interpretations, but the discussion did not reach our intended point. Afterward, I explained the Heinz Dilemma. I narrated it a little bit by storytelling. How a thief saves his wife’s life makes him a hero, had aroused the students. But videos and images about justice and equality worked very well in another group. I think it depends on the group.” (C118, Male, Classroom Teaching)

As seen in Figure 5, the C4-1 and C4-2 imply the PTs’ teaching conceptions in terms of individual construction of knowledge. The other two, the C4-3 and C4-4, are more attached to the socialized ways of the co-construction of knowledge.

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Figure 5.

Categories of description-4: Teaching is the individual and social construction of knowledge.

The PTs described that teaching is more related to conceptualizing a topic. It is how an individual may form his/her concepts during teaching. For the C4-1, the PTs explained the teaching phenomenon with the concept formation term. Furthermore, the PTs provided cognitively instrumental ways of teaching via concept forming, such as mapping out the concepts (e.g., F023).

“What should a person undertake if s/he wants to learn a subject? I was a student who could not learn in class. I had trouble in school. I was a student who could not learn in the classroom system. So, I developed a concept map or something else. I figured out how I could learn. For example, when a teacher comes and tells me, “Learn this!” I cannot. They must free me. I will draw the concept map. I will write on my own. I will draw. Of course, I will come to the same conclusion. No other person captures the concepts embedded in my concept mapping. Perhaps, for others, this is a ridiculous idea. But I do understand it. When I do this, everything is resolved for me. Now, I have learned those concepts myself.” (F023, Female, Mathematics Teaching)

In the C4-2, the PTs referred to the specific aspects of teaching, such as facilitating the deconstruction and reconstruction of individually organized mental schemas. This is connected to the Piagetian teaching concepts, such as cognitive development as equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation (Piaget, 1971). According to the PTs, teaching is to scaffold individually-led cognitive processing where students either deconstruct or reconstruct their cognitive patterns. Thus, these conceptions of the PTs are in harmony with the first wave of constructivism as cognitive/solo constructivism (Miller, 2002); therefore, this can be accepted as more learner-focused.

In dialectical teaching, cognitive deconstruction/reconstruction is a dynamic process where an individual collides with different or contradictory cognitive schemes to reach a novel, broader mental status that may be more explanatory than the previous one in describing, for instance, a curricular concept. For instance, as seen in the below-located quote (T452), it is mentioned that teaching is something to press the students to think and talk about words and their classification in novel ways. As summarized below, the teaching phenomenon is conceptualized as involving the teacher making students dissatisfied with their conceptions of words and categorization. This process can be accepted as dialectical since there is a contradiction or negotiation between the existing conception and teacher-introduced or group-introduced conceptions that seem more intelligible in explicating the task presented by the teacher. In dialectical terms, negation is centralized (Williams & Ryan, 2020), and as externalized below, some students were aggressive since their classification approaches did not meet the criterion, such as covering many words within a single category. Thus, regarding dialectical teaching, the new conception appeared plausible since it could suggest the possibility of a more profound and fruitful grouping of words.

“When I present an idea to my students that they are unfamiliar with, they often do not embrace it first. But when I explain and insist on the idea, things change. For example, we did an activity in the lesson, and we planned it together with my school-based advisor. I gave the students dozens of words with different syllables and letters and asked them to group them. Each group made very different groupings. According to the number of letters, the number of syllables, their similarity, alphabetical order, etc. Then I asked which was the best classification—based on the best classification, which includes the largest number of elements, emerged. Some students were aggressive because their classification did not match it. However, when they reclassified the words according to their meanings, they agreed that this was the best classification method. There was no problem with the vocabulary skills of those children. The important thing was that they reached a new meaning for their classification skills.” (T452, Female, Turkish Language Teaching)

As seen in Figure 5, the C4-3 displays more expanded ways of knowledge construction terms around the teaching phenomenon. Regarding the PTs’ viewpoints, teaching is more achievable when a teacher permits his/her students to make original intellectual contributions to the content under discussion. Furthermore, as the PTs explained, teaching is more possible when a teacher allows for the epistemic (who knows to legitimize what counts and what does not count as a tangible contribution) and social (when and how students can participate in the discourse and take part in interactions) contributions of the students to the classroom interactions and exchanges. However, for the C4-3, the PTs did not account for how a teacher might allow the epistemic and social contributions of the students.

“I think there is no teaching. One can never learn with teaching, not with someone else’s teaching. We must be together to learn. Not with someone’s teaching. To benefit from learning, we need to transform the context we live in while it is transforming us. Teaching is not a learning tool for people. The teaching can only be used for animals. I think everyone in a class is a typical learner. Learning occurs when there are only learners in a class. For example, a teacher sees himself as a learner, so everyone has equal authority. Students learn not only from this teacher but from all the learners, including the teacher, by exploring and questioning together. Learning is the process of questioning within a group. Imagine a class. Everyone is independent and a collaborative researcher. All learners are trying to lead each other to ponder the topics. The teacher constantly asks questions, gives clues, and creates instructional diversity. There are alternative answers in this class, not true-false answers.” (S513, Male, Mathematics Teaching).

The above-stated conceptual gap seems to be closed in the C4-4. Based on the PTs’ expressions (e.g., S513), in terms of dialectical teaching, co-construction of knowledge is feasible when a teacher convinces students that there may be alternative or competing assertions about the topic. Furthermore, the PTs mentioned that for handling the teaching in the classroom, a teacher has to create an argumentative/evaluative or dialectical classroom context where the students and teacher work together to generate more explanatory and exploratory arguments to progress toward an intellectual-social consensus within an intellectually flexible and comfortable classroom setting (e.g., S513). These conceptions follow the second wave of constructivism as in Vygotskian constructivism, covering the intentional, productive, and dialectical reciprocal in-class interactions and exchanges of the less and more knowledgeable others, thus embracing both the teacher and the students.

Discussion

An outcome space (Table 1) was created to show the structural and hierarchical relationships between the description categories. Table 1 displays the focused dimensions of the phenomenon as monological, dialogical, and dialectical. Observing monological conceptions of teaching confirms that the PTs are still exposed to conventional university-based teaching in Turkish. Detecting a monological dimension within the PTs’ teaching conceptions indicates traditional teacher preparation as the diffusion of information from educators to the PTs. This finding is compatible with Leon-Carillo’s (2007) knowledge-source concept, Fox’s (1983) transferring concept, Gurney’s (1995) delivery concept, Hadar’s (2009) school learning concept, or Radmard et al.’s (2022) knowledge transmission modes of teaching domination resulting in negative experiences reported by schooling participants from elementary to secondary levels.

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Table 1.

Outcome Space.

Hierarchies	Categories of description	Focused dimensions
		Monological (1)	Dialogical (2)	Dialectical (3)
Level 1	Knowledge and its transmission (A)	A1
Level 2	Interest and exigency (B)–individual differences (C)		B2
			C2
Level 3	Construction of knowledge (D)			D3

It is also observed that the PTs experienced and conceptualized broader dimensions of teaching, such as dialogical and dialectical. These two conceptual aspects are highly compatible with the current state of Turkish teacher preparation strategy and policy, which include the implications of the learning theories and educational practices of Piagetian individual constructivism and Vygotskian social co-constructivism (Soysal & Radmard, 2017). Therefore, the current study tries to open up a discussion implying that the Turkish teacher training system should move forward to guide future PTs to recognize rather sophisticated dimensions of teaching phenomenon such as adaptive-pragmatic teaching and reflective teaching in the new era of teacher preparation.

Two dimensions of teaching phenomenon, such as adaptive-pragmatic and reflective, were absent in the PTs’ experienced-based conceptions of teaching. The outcome space (Table 1) implies that the PTs experienced sophisticated ways of teaching phenomena, such as dialectical teaching, in their university-based educational journey. However, some other more sophisticated teaching experiences, such as adaptive-pragmatic or reflective, are still invisible in the expressions of the PTs. Thus, in this study, it is questioned why the PTs held a version of partial understanding of teaching. Furthermore, some recommendations are offered for expanding PTs’ experiences with more elaborated aspects of the teaching phenomenon.

First, understanding adaptive-pragmatic teaching includes routine and adaptive expertness (Stylianides & Stylianides, 2014). In the context of the present study, routine expertness incorporates three aspects of the teaching phenomenon reported by the PTs (Table 1). As understood from the PTs’ expressions, monological, dialogical, and dialectical aspects of teaching were experienced in a routinized manner. However, adaptive-pragmatic teaching incorporates adaptive expertise showing another version of understanding teaching, which is more situative, contextual, and dynamic. The PTs might not experience a version of adaptive-pragmatic teaching as it is needed considering both structural and emergent qualities of a teaching process concurrently. Bohle Carbonell et al. (2014) asserted that for an adaptive-pragmatic teaching process, PTs should be guided and scaffolded to experiment, make errors, and try different solutions to generate a dynamic-situative-contextual knowledge base for teaching action. As seen in some expressions (e.g., C118), the PTs seemed to experience enacting different teaching plans when needed. However, adaptive-pragmatic teaching is far beyond a teacher’s “current level of reliable performance - ideally in a safe learning context” (Ericsson, 2014, p. 192). Thus, for an adaptive-pragmatic teaching conception, PTs should experience generating a situative-dynamic teaching tool kit by viewing teaching “not only as a resource for learning to teach but as a central element of learning to teach” (McDonald et al., 2014, p. 500).

Like many other countries (e.g., Forzani, 2014), in the Turkish context, teacher preparation reforms are primarily gathered around a set of normative principles, including mostly dialogical and dialectical aspects of in-class teaching, which are characterized by specific instructional actions such as eliciting student thinking, orchestrating group work, collective argumentation, informal reasoning, etc. (Soysal & Radmard, 2017). Thus, the PTs might experience mainly the dialogical and dialectical dimensions of teaching, as diagrammatized in Table 1. On the other hand, Anthony et al. (2015) advocated that for an adaptive-pragmatic teaching experience, PTs should be pressed to consider what they are doing concerning aspects of teaching practice. One of the most instrumental ways of inviting PTs to experience a version of adaptive-pragmatic teaching is to provide learning opportunities where PTs make critical, data-based reflections on their in-class performances by promoting their metacognitive and self-regulated inferences about what aspects and how-aspects of teaching phenomenon (Timperley, 2013). In terms of the outcomes of the present study, it can be inferred that the participating PTs had no chance of being engaged in an adaptive-pragmatic teaching experience, which was an absence in their conceptions.

During the phenomenographic interviews, there were countless attempts to elaborate on the PTs’ teaching conceptions; however, they made no experienced-based attributions to the reflective side of the phenomenon. Classroom events might not occur as PTs intend. Beyond, in-class teaching incidents can mostly happen spontaneously, as that is the nature of classrooms. Thus, teachers’ pedagogical decisions and related actions should be changeable within seconds due to the emergent teaching qualities. Therefore, it should be accepted that teaching action requires dealing with micro-moments (Mameli & Molinari, 2013); however, this requires tremendous intellectual efforts associated with a different understanding of teaching, such as reflection-in-action, which was not observed in the PTs’ documentation.

Reflective teaching is about what a teacher sees when s/he looks at the teaching-related events in his/her classroom or another teacher’s and how much s/he interprets them instructionally (Van Es & Sherin, 2021). PTs are recently expected to conceptualize teaching phenomenon as an activity to select, analyze, and interpret the critical and unimportant situations that arise during teaching a subject (Van Es & Sherin, 2021). Teaching as inquiry is the state-of-the-art conception of teaching (Moeed & Cooney, 2021), implying that developing an excellent understanding of teaching demands studying the self as a prospective teacher. PTs are expected to have a broader teaching conception, such as problematizing, monitoring, analyzing, and interpreting their in-class actions. However, this higher-order aspect of teaching experience was not detected in the participating PTs’ expressions.

One method of developing an understanding of reflective teaching is inviting PTs to self-explore or self-study themselves (or others) through forming personal teaching stories and narratives. Recent systematic reviews (e.g., Chan et al., 2021) show that PTs can be engaged in reflective teaching practices in different ways: (i) by asking PTs to share their reflections after enacting lessons in a typical practicum course, (ii) using artifacts of other teachers’ practices (e.g., specific instructional cases, specifically prepared video clips, and transcripts of lesson videos) to stimulate PTs to make reflections on the teaching activities, or (iii) asking PTs to share their noticing after observing others’ teaching. Expectedly, having a version of reflective teaching would require engaging in the above-listed activities of learning how-to-teach to develop teaching conceptions in the sense of reflective practice. However, during the interviews, the PTs did not tend to share an experience of reflection-in-action regarding the teaching phenomenon. This also implies that the educators of the participating PTs might not have an endeavor to guide them to make data-based reasoning and revisions on their initial or trial in-class performances (Eret-Orhan et al., 2018). Consequently, the PTs might not understand teaching as a reflective public performance.

Final Comments and Educational Remarks

This study concludes that at least the participating PTs still held limited conceptions regarding the teaching phenomenon. In global terms, Cochran-Smith et al. (2015) conclude that there is ample research on how PTs learn to reflect on, inquire into, and learn about changing classroom situations. However, some Turkish teacher educators (Günel & Tanriverdi, 2014; Soysal & Soysal, 2022) claim that adaptive-pragmatic teaching is an infrequent practice, for instance, regarding classroom talk, in the context of teacher preparation. Instead, teacher educators see the teaching phenomenon as an intellectual activity where PTs “must understand, adapt, and modify practices so they are fine-tuned to local histories, cultures, and communities.” (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015, p. 390). This is mostly about developing a breadth of teaching conception, such as adaptive-pragmatic teaching, that was absent in the jargon of the participating PTs.

It is highly recommended that Turkish teacher educators should ask questions about “how and under what conditions teacher candidates learn the complex skills of teaching as part of developing a reflective practitioner stance.” (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015, p. 390). However, some Turkish teacher educators (Günel & Tanriverdi, 2014; Soysal & Soysal, 2022) contend that reflective practice is a sporadic practice among Turkish teacher educators. Expectedly, in the context of the present study, the teachers of the participating PTs might not guide them to experience and conceptualize somewhat different breadthways of seeing the teaching phenomenon.

It should be noted that this is not a localized issue as teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching and related in-class teaching actions regarding teaching and how aspects of teaching remain uncharted territory (Vanassche et al., 2021). It would, therefore, not be fair to expect PTs to externalize rather sophisticated experience-based conceptions of teaching in the absence of teacher educators adopting an aspect of adaptive-pragmatic or reflective teaching practices for teaching how-to-teach. Furthermore, it is globally accepted that teacher educators are a community that has not yet been professionally researched. This is the mystery of higher education teaching how-to-teach (Darling-Hammond, 2020). This situation poses a severe pedagogical obstacle to the preparation of teacher educators (Darling-Hammond, 2020). In this context, the current study’s outcomes suggest that teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching should be re-considered and re-analyzed to test whether they hold complex aspects of teaching phenomenon such as adaptive-pragmatic or reflective. However, it should be noted that re-analyzing teacher educators’ teaching conceptions by considering simplified conceptual categorizations (teacher-centered vs. student-centered), a tenet observed in the previous studies, will not be informed in comprehending what they experience and conceptualize about sophisticated layers of teaching phenomenon. Thus, the current study’s structural-hierarchical thinking tool can investigate how-aspects and what-aspects of teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching before scaffolding PTs to develop an excellent and globalized understanding of teaching.