Subject- and experience-bound differences in teachers’ conceptual understanding of sustainable development

This article describes the results of a nationwide questionnaire study of 3229 Swedish upper secondary school teachers’ conceptual understanding of sustainable development in relation to their subject discipline and teaching experience. Previous research has shown that teachers have difficulties understanding the complex concept of sustainable development. According to the Swedish curriculum, all teachers in all subjects should integrate a holistic perspective of sustainable development including economic, ecological, and social dimensions. This study shows that teachers differ in their understanding of the concept mostly according to their subject traditions. Social science teachers emphasize social dimensions and science teachers’ ecological dimensions, respectively. Teachers are aware of the relevance of the three dimensions to various degrees, but do not generally have a holistic understanding. The greatest uncertainty in teachers’ understanding is related to the economic dimension. Science and social science teachers are critical of incorporating economic growth into the concept of sustainable development while language, vocational, and esthetical–practical teachers are not. No experience-bound differences of the teachers’ understanding could be found, but recently qualified teachers consider their understanding of sustainable development to be poorer in comparison with more experienced teachers’ self-evaluation. The study highlights the need for further training in sustainable development since more than 70% of the questioned teachers stated that they need such training.     

Exploring pre-service secondary teachers’ understanding of care

Care in teaching has been widely investigated; however, little research has sought secondary pre-service teachers’ understandings of caring and their potential responsibility to care for students. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews were employed with four focus groups, involving 12 (2 male and 10 female) participants. Data were analysed within a qualitative paradigm using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and inter-rater reliability. Five overlapping themes were identified, and although many tensions around the ambiguities of establishing appropriate boundaries to care were shown, caring was deemed central by the participants to being effective teachers. Overall, pre-service secondary teachers agreed that neither pedagogy nor discipline strategy would be effective without care. Training implications and suggestions for future research conclude this paper.     

Developing pre-service teachers’ understanding of children’s risky play

This study examines the effectiveness of an intervention course for changing early childhood pre-service teachers’ understanding of children’s risky play. Twenty-six of the early childhood pre-service teachers who were enrolled in this course filled out an open-ended questionnaire at the beginning and end of the six-week course. Data from the pre and post surveys were triangulated with data obtained through the researcher’s reflective notes and participants’ brief evaluations and drawings. The results of the data analysis indicated that participation in the intervention course had changed pre-service teachers’ beliefs. As a result of the course, pre-service teachers’ positive perspectives on children’s risky play increased and their understanding became enhanced. Results are discussed in relation to the literature and the implications of examining early childhood education programs are explored.     

Accountability and the affective labour of teachers: a Marxist–Vygotskian perspective

This article addresses the issue of affective labour in education in the context of standards-based reforms and accountability. In particular, it focuses on neoliberal strategies of rationalization and control that produce a number of social pathologies, such as alienated teaching and learning and reified social relations between teachers and students. The article turns to affective labour as something that enables teachers to counteract these effects. This argument arises from the analysis of interviews with teachers who continue to generate and sustain the sociality of teaching and learning. Affect directs teachers?? commitment to practice that is governed by feeling, passion and the ethics of care. What gives affective labour such an important position is that it is both outside and beyond accountability and performativity measures. It is identified with the general pedagogical activity that cannot be structured by measuring devices such as students?? test scores or standards. The article concludes with the application of Vygotsky??s ideas about the role of affect in education and argues that affective labour has an expansive power of ontological freedom that cannot be controlled.     

Learning to become a teacher in Australia: a study of pre-service teachers’ identity development

This study aims to examine how pre-service teachers learn to teach in Australia context during their practicum and how this learning experience constructs their identities as teachers through activity theory framework. Data were drawn from interviews with two pre-service teachers, interviews with their supervising teachers and university mentors, lesson plans, and supervising teacher’s feedback. The findings indicate that the two pre-service teachers’ identity formation is a continuing process and an outcome of the collective activity through their interaction with their coordinating teachers, mentors and students. We argue that teachers’ identity formation is related to their agency to seek and offer support to others. The pre-service teachers could produce and reproduce their identity in the relevant community through their agentive action to interact with others.     

Investigating pre-service teachers’ acceptance of Web 2.0 technologies in their future teaching: a Chinese perspective

In recent years, there has been an exponential growth of the explorations around the pedagogical use of Web 2.0 technologies in China. This study offers an alternate perspective by examining predictors of pre-service teachers’ uptake of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching purposes. On the basis of prior related research focusing on the pedagogical use of ICT, an eight-factor research model was hypothesised. Data were collected from two universities in China through a questionnaire (N?=?464). Structural equation modelling analysis results suggested that perceived usefulness, perceive enjoyment, subjective norm, technological pedagogical and content knowledge, and facilitating conditions had statistically significant direct effects on intention to use Web 2.0 technologies. The findings can help stakeholders in China (e.g. teacher educators, school leaders, and education policy makers) develop a better understanding of the realities of teachers’ pedagogical use Web 2.0 technologies in China.     

‘Crossing’ the equals sign: insights into pre-service teachers’ understanding of linear equations

This paper reports on an exploratory study designed to determine and enhance the conceptual understanding of a group of pre-service mathematics teachers at one Irish university utilizing an established framework for understanding mathematics. 23 students on a one year Professional Diploma in Mathematics Education participated in the study, which involved the distribution of a pre- and post-test and engagement in a ten week intervention designed to enhance their subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The findings highlight that although there was an improvement in overall conceptual understanding across the entire cohort at the end of the intervention, within certain mathematical topics there was a statistically insignificant improvement and many deep-rooted issues remain. In this paper we focus on the pre-service teachers’ understanding of elementary algebra, in particular, how to solve a linear equation.     

Paragons of Virtue: teachers’ conceptual understanding of high ability in an egalitarian school system

Recent research suggests that teachers are useful in identifying high ability, provided they have some advance guidelines on how such identification should be operationalized and why. But how do teachers in an egalitarian school system, with neither specific knowledge nor guidelines, conceptualize and make provision for highly able pupils? A total of 232 teachers, representing all levels of the Swedish comprehensive school system, were questioned on different aspects of their conceptual understanding of talented pupils. Answers were given as brief written statements, and the data submitted to a content analysis which resulted in four cluster matrices. This showed that teachers can identify high ability fairly accurately with regard to cognitive attributes and personality characteristics, but fail to understand the socio‐emotional dynamics. Thus, highly able pupils appeared to have been regarded as ‘paragons of virtue’ possessing the social attributes of the teachers ‘ideal pupil’.     

Mathematics teachers’ learning: a conceptual framework and synthesis of research

How do practicing mathematics teachers continue to develop the knowledge and habits of mind that enable them to teach well and to improve their teaching over time? The question of how (and what) teachers learn lies at the crux of any effort to provide high-quality mathematics teaching for all students. This article reviews 106 articles written between 1985 and 2008 related to the professional learning of practicing teachers of mathematics. We offer a synthesis of this research, guided by Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (Teach Teach Educ 18(8):947–967, 2002) dynamic model of teacher growth. Their model emphasizes the recursive nature of teachers’ learning and suggests that growth in one aspect of teachers’ knowledge and practice may promote subsequent growth in other areas. We report the results in six major areas of teacher learning, identify several crosscutting themes in the literature, and make recommendations for future research aimed at understanding teachers’ professional learning.     

Using process drama to enhance pre-service teachers’ understanding of science and religion

I report an action research study that aimed at improving Thai pre-service teachers’ understanding of the relationship between science and religion and at assisting them to respond to this issue in a science classroom. The participants were twelve post-grad students pursuing Master of Art in Teaching Science at Kasetsart University. They took a course, Philosophy of Science, taught by the researcher in Semester A, academic year 2007. Process drama is the teaching strategy employed. The students were fully engaged in the process drama; doing research, producing, distributing, and criticizing the drama. Focus group, student journal, and observation were used to gather the data and the data was analyzed using qualitative analysis techniques. The focus groups revealed that the drama could help students reflect on the complexity and sensitivity of the issue. They found there was no inherent conflict between science and religion since they answered different questions and used different methods to achieve their results. However, the conflicts occurred when people were not aware of the basic differences between the two so they justified one on the basis of purpose and method of one another. The pre-service teachers also found consistency between science and Buddhism. They thought that the teachers of science should respond to the conflicts in a respectful, compromising, and neutral manner.     

Investigating the impact of TPACK development course on pre-service science teachers’ performances

Asia Pacific Education Review - The aim of this study is to investigate the Technology Pedagogy and Content Knowledge (TPACK) development of pre-service science teachers (PSTs) who participated in...     

Finnish pre-service teachers’ and upper secondary students’ understanding of division and reasoning strategies used

In this paper, we focus on Finnish pre-service elementary teachers’ (N?=?269) and upper secondary students’ (N?=?1,434) understanding of division. In the questionnaire, we used the following non-standard division problem: “We know that 498:6?=?83. How could you conclude from this relationship (without using long-division algorithm) what 491:6?=?? is?” This problem especially measures conceptual understanding, adaptive reasoning, and procedural fluency. Based on the results, we can conclude that division seems not to be fully understood: 45% of the pre-service teachers and 37% of upper secondary students were able to produce complete or mainly correct solutions. The reasoning strategies used by these two groups did not differ very much. We identified four main reasons for problems in understanding this task: (1) staying on the integer level, (2) an inability to handle the remainder, (3) difficulties in understanding the relationships between different operations, and (4) insufficient reasoning strategies. It seems that learners’ reasoning strategies in particular play a central role when teachers try to improve learners’ proficiency.     

Fostering aspects of pre-service teachers’ data literacy: Results of a randomized controlled trial

The present study reports the results of a randomized controlled trial aimed at fostering specific aspects of pre-service teachers’ data literacy. The 6-h intervention focused on data types, reference norms, scale transformations, graphic displays of the properties of frequency distributions, and judgments about the magnitude of mean differences. Pretest-posttest comparisons of a data literacy test showed a large and significant effect of the intervention. Furthermore, main effects but no significant interaction effects with pretest scores were found for personal and motivational covariates (academic self-concept, value beliefs, study interest) on posttest data literacy.     

Graduate employability: a conceptual framework for understanding employers’ perceptions

This study provides a conceptual framework for understanding what employers think about the value of graduates with similar educational credentials in the workplace (their employability), using insights from the new institutionalism. In this framework, the development of employers’ beliefs about graduates’ employability is broken into a number of factors and mechanisms, including exogenous factors, initial signalling effects and the processes of both private and public learning. With such conceptualisation, this article discusses the implications for international higher education providers on how to improve their graduates’ employment by influencing employers’ beliefs.     

Elementary teachers’ needs: issues of retention and recruitment

The retention and recruitment of elementary teachers is an increasingly serious problem in many countries. This paper examines literature on work in general, and teaching in particular, in the light of data gathered from teachers who enjoy their jobs. It concludes that there is scope to improve the quality of elementary teachers’ professional lives and hence enhance recruitment and retention possibilities. A further implication would be the greater involvement of teachers in curriculum innovation and inspection.     

The development of elementary pre-service teachers’ professional noticing of students’ thinking through adapted Lesson Study

The purpose of the study was to investigate how Lesson Study influences pre-service teachers’ learning to professionally notice students’ mathematical thinking. The initial and last video-recorded discussions were analysed using a qualitative method. Findings suggest that Lesson Study can be useful means to improve pre-service teachers’ noticing expertise in reviewing and planning lessons. However, to maximise the effect of Lesson Study on developing pre-service teachers’ noticing expertise, several modifications need to be made to the Lesson Study protocol, which are discussed.     

The effect of concept cartoon-embedded worksheets on grade 9 students’ conceptual understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion

Background: A substantial review study of concept cartoons reports that few studies have indicated their functions. For this reason, the present study illuminates the extent to which concept cartoon-embedded worksheets (through constructivist context) accomplish these functions in conceptual learning.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to determine the effect of the concept cartoon-embedded worksheets on grade 9 students’ conceptual understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Sample: Within a quasi-experimental research design with control group, the sample consisted of 102 grade 9 students (aged 15–16 years) enrolled in an Anatolian High School. They were randomly assigned to control (52 students) and experimental groups (50 students).

Design and methods: While the control group followed the existing physics instruction, the experimental one was exposed to the concept cartoon-embedded worksheets. To collect data, two scales (Newton’s Laws of Motion Test –NLMT– and Interview about Instances –IAI) were employed.

Results: The results indicated that the experimental group performed better than did the control group.

Conclusions: It can be deduced that the concept cartoon-embedded worksheets are effective in improving grade 9 students’ conceptual understanding and in replacing their alternative conceptions with scientific ones.