Principles under pressure: student teachers' perspectives on final teaching practice in early childhood classrooms

Global concerns about what constitutes an appropriate curriculum and pedagogy for young children inevitably raises questions for teacher educators and the content of teacher education programmes. These concerns have been particularly visible in England following recent policy initiatives and the resultant ‘academic shovedown’ and ‘high stakes’ performativity culture in schools. Against this background, this article reports on a qualitative study of student teachers' experiences of their final teaching practice, identifying pressure from a range of sources to deliver a more formalised curriculum than they were prepared for in their university-based courses. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner among others, we consider the socio-political and -cultural sources of pressure linked through human agency, and the implications of these for teacher educators. The study argues that student teachers of young children may be faced with cognitive and emotional dissonance between the content of university-based training on the one hand, which promotes a developmentally appropriate, play-based approach in keeping with the Early Years Foundation Stage (the statutory curricular framework in England), and the reality of pedagogical practice in early years settings on the other.     

Assisting teachers and students to reform the mathematics classroom

This study examines the usefulness of selected aspects of Tharp and Gallimore's (1988) theory of assistance as a theoretical framework for describing and analyzing change efforts in a middle school mathematics reform project. Drawing upon Tharp and Gallimore's redefinition of teaching as assisting performance and learning as the result of assisted performance, the social organization of a school-based mathematics reform effort in which teacher educators, mathematics teachers, and students both assist and are assisted is analyzed. In addition, one particular classroom assistance activity is presented and analyzed in terms of characteristics of assistance that, according to the theory, should lead to significant learning.     

Investigating teachers' ‘take-up’ of reflective practice from an In-service professional development teacher education programme in South Africa

One of the key phases in ‘the action research cycle’ is reflection (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988; McNiff, 1988). The extension of teachers' reflective capabilities is one of the stated goals of the University of the Witwatersrand's teacher education programmes. In this article aspects of the findings of a 3-year research project, which investigated teachers' ‘take-up’ from a mixed-mode, inservice professional development programme initiated by the university in 1996 are discussed. The research team has described the overall project as ‘a practice-based case study of cases’. Data sources included classroom observations, videotapes of some of the lessons observed, interviews with teachers, written teacher narratives and questionnaires, and samples of learners' work- all obtained from working with the same sample of primary and secondary school teachers of English, Mathematics and Science for each of the 3 years of the project. The authors engage with what counts as ‘evidence’ of the reflective practices of teachers and consider what factors might enable or constrain the development of reflective capability by teachers working in underresourced, multi-lingual contexts. They reflect on their practices as teacher educators and outline some changes to the programme that could assist teachers to become more reflective practitioners in their classrooms and schools.     

‘I see what I see from the theory I have read.’ Student teachers learning through theory in practice

This article presents and discusses experiences from a research and development project where Norwegian student teachers were encouraged to bridge theory and practice by following a pupil’s learning processes over time, and to write papers based on empirical data and relevant subject theory. The evaluations of the project received high ratings from the student teachers, and an inductive analysis of the answers to open-ended questions revealed three key aspects behind its success: commuting between field practice and coursework, the authenticity of the tasks and future relevance for the teacher profession. These aspects are interpreted building upon Dewey’s concept educative experience. The findings are discussed in the light of the importance of understanding pupils’ knowledge, and the role of writing in inquiry-based learning processes. The project is also placed within an international discussion on the relationship between field practice and theoretical coursework as arenas for learning in teacher education.     

Teacher Educators’ Activity Aiming to Support Inquiry Through Mathematics and Science Teacher Collaboration

This study explores teacher educators’ (TEs’) activity as they support mathematics and science teacher collaboration in co-designing and jointly implementing tasks. We view TEs’ activity through the lens of Activity Theory and expansive learning and draw evidence from data generated within the mascil project that linked mathematics and science teaching with workplace situations through inquiry-based teaching. We focus on five TEs’ actions and goals, use data from their professional development sessions with teachers and from the TEs’ interactions during their own meetings, and highlight the illuminating case of one teacher educator. We trace evidence indicating paths of actions followed by each Teacher Educator and look for indications of their professional learning. Our analysis reveals generic and content-focused actions. All TEs faced different kinds of contradictions and had difficulties handling them. In terms of professional learning, all TEs adapted their prior teacher education practices and appreciated the critical role of epistemological differences between the two disciplines.

     

How epistemic reflexivity enables teacher educators’ teaching for diversity: Exploring a pedagogical framework for critical thinking

Recent research points to the importance of teacher educators teaching for diversity in initial teacher education programmes. Teaching for diversity is an approach to teacher education in which an understanding of specialist literature and a focus on critical thinking supports a social justice agenda as opposed to merely using different tips and tricks to prepare future teachers for teaching diverse learners in the classroom. In this study, we explored how Australian and New Zealand teacher educators negotiated a social justice agenda in teacher education programmes, using a new transdisciplinary framework of epistemic reflexivity. The Epistemic Reflexivity for Teacher Education (ER-TED) framework draws on epistemic cognition (Clark Chinn’s Aims, Ideals, Reliable epistemic processes – AIR – framework) and Margaret Archer’s reflexivity to explore knowledge claims in teacher educators’ pedagogical decision-making. The findings identified how teacher educators in our study discerned and deliberated with respect to epistemic aims for justification, which involve transformative critical thinking and critical thinking for self. They reported good knowledge (ideals) as being scholarly in nature, and reliable epistemic processes based on higher-order thinking (analysis and evaluating competing ideas) or engaging with multiple perspectives. The teacher educators in our study are clear examples of how strong overall evaluative epistemic stances enable teaching for social justice. We argue that the ER-TED framework can help us as a profession to address teaching for diversity in teacher education programmes based on the belief that the pursuit of social justice requires an evaluativist epistemic stance.     

Classroom interaction studies as a source for teacher competencies: the use of case studies with multiple instruments for studying teacher competencies in multicultural classes

Dealing with ethnic and linguistic diversity is one of the major challenges in today’s education. Therefore, the formulation of competencies for teachers and teacher training should take into account the specific requirements of teaching in multicultural schools. In 2002, a series of small‐scale studies were conducted to identify and formulate teachers’ communicative competencies in multicultural classes through a mixture of instruments and data sources. The studies aimed at providing recommendations for improving these competencies through teacher education and professional development. This study reports on the multiple instruments used to study the practical knowledge and behaviour of experienced teachers in multicultural schools by discussing research evidence from a series of case studies from primary and secondary education. These case studies explored teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and behaviours in creating healthy teacher–student relationships as well as making lesson content accessible for all students, including students with limited language skills. The findings show how small‐scale studies with multiple data collection techniques can help in providing an empirical foundation for the formulation and specification of teacher competencies in multicultural settings. Based on our findings, we argue that by conducting multiple investigations in different settings, using a variety of instruments and by interpreting this data from different communicative domains, a valid, reliable and complete picture of teachers’ scientific competencies can be obtained.     

On Cocoons,Consciousness, and Courage: Preparing Justice-Oriented Teacher Educators Through Critical Pedagogies

In this article, we share findings from a 3-year project in which novice teacher educators participated in Freirean culture circles and Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed (teatro) in order to critically explore the work of justice-oriented teacher education. Anchored in one of the project’s most resonant scenarios, the article illustrates how teatro cultivated among participants courage to confront injustice, while also shedding light on the complexities teacher educators may face when attempting to facilitate teacher learning, particularly when such learning is centered on equity and justice.     

Teaching teachers to teach Boris: a framework for mathematics teacher educator pedagogical content knowledge

The notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was posited in the context of school teaching and the knowledge used by teachers teaching school students. It has been examined for a number of discipline areas, notably mathematics. There are, however, other teaching contexts, including those of teacher educators, whose students are pre-service teachers (PSTs). The content these teacher educators teach is not subject discipline knowledge (or not solely), but the PCK for teaching a subject discipline. What knowledge do teacher educators use as they teach PCK? This paper presents a framework for the PCK required of mathematics teacher educators as they work to develop PSTs’ PCK for teaching mathematics. The framework builds on existing research into PCK and categorises aspects of the work of teacher education. The framework’s usefulness is examined by studying the PCK used by the first author in building PSTs’ understanding of mathematics teacher PCK.     

What and how teacher educators prefer to learn

In which areas and domains do individual teacher educators prefer to work on their professional development? What kind of learning activities do they want to take on and with whom? Are there significant differences in these preferences between teacher educators? This article reports on a recent survey (N = 268) about the professional development of teacher educators and differences in learning preferences between less and more experienced teacher educators and between university-based and school-based teacher educators. Findings show, for example, that while most university-based teacher educators were mainly interested in improving their teaching, less experienced school-based teacher educators were more focussed on aspects such as coaching skills. In this study, ‘learning profiles’ have been developed for four categories of teacher educators. These profiles may help to create more meaningful arrangements for teacher educators’ initial education and further professional development in a context where teacher education is required to have a more school-based as well as a more research-based orientation.     

Using multimedia cases for educating the primary school mathematics teacher educator: a design study

The overarching goal of this chapter is to better understand how multimedia video case studies can support the professionalization of primary-school-mathematics teacher educators. We investigate the use of multimedia cases to support teacher educators in learning to mathematize and didactize and to learn how to use multimedia cases with their student teachers. The research study has an exploratory character; we will present a framework for the use of multimedia cases as a tentative answer, grounded in the researchers’ experiments and design activities.     

The teacher educator’s role as enacted and experienced in school-based development

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on teacher educators’ role and how it was enacted and experienced by teachers and leaders in a school-based development project. The arena for the teachers’ professional development was the school, and teacher educators at one teacher-education institution and three schools took part in the research. Teacher educators, teachers and school leaders were interviewed two years and two months after they formally took part in the project, for one year in a pilot program and afterward for three semesters. The findings show that the teacher educators enacted their roles differently, and that they realise that they should have collaborated more and coordinated their experiences from collaborations with teachers and leaders to learn from their experiences in school. The leaders and teachers were satisfied with the teacher educators’ lectures, but the teachers wanted more dialogue with teacher educators and felt that teacher educators should have helped them transform their knowledge into teaching actions in practice. Teacher educators taking part as supporters in teachers’ practice truly could infiltrate instruction and learning. The study demonstrates that culture, structure and content need to be coordinated to enhance school-based development.     

The Culturally Responsive Teacher Educator

Recent research on teacher diversity has highlighted the challenges new teachers of color face when they enter diverse school settings. In this study the pedagogy of three sociopolitically conscious teacher educators is investigated to understand how they tailor preparation for teachers of color. Findings revealed that teacher educators' pedagogy for teacher candidates of color was characterized by three mutually binding mindsets and practices: (a) teacher educators made an intentional choice to work as a change agent for communities of color; (b) teacher educators challenged sociocultural barriers to the academic and professional achievement of teachers of color; and (c) teacher educators implemented constructivist approaches as an instructional bridge to prepare teacher candidates of color to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Based on findings, the conceptual framework of culturally responsive pedagogy is reconstructed to generate suppositions about the culturally responsive teacher educator as a theoretical construct.     

Developing glocally informed diversity and equity discourses: examining inequity via autobiographical reflection

This study responds to the need for glocally informed discourses on diversity and equity that draw upon internationally situated, local narratives to contribute to larger analyses. Such work is vital so that cross-national educational discourses do not become infused with PISA score comparisons or globally dominant perspectives alone. This local qualitative case study employs narrative inquiry with observation and document analyses to examine one accomplished multicultural teacher educator’s US-based practice. This study demonstrates the benefit of engaging teachers in autobiographical reflection as a supportive precursor for appreciating and learning from students’ diverse backgrounds, and critically analyzing societal inequities, such as the institutionalized use of inaccurate or incomplete text-based narratives. Promising practices are offered for how teacher educators across international settings might help teachers to navigate complex personal and institutional spaces while working to ‘reconstruct society toward greater equity in race, class, gender, and disability’.     

Dancing in the ditches: reflecting on the capacity of a university/school partnership to clarify the role of a teacher educator

This paper used the data collected from reflective diaries, semi-structured interviews and surveys to identify and examine common themes identified in the roles required and/or perceived for teacher educators by both teachers and teacher educators. Collaboration, discussion and critique enabled personal reflection as teacher educators worked as partners to schools in a state-sponsored teaching and learning skills project. We have termed the collaboration in such an interactive project as one of ‘dancing in the ditches’, often requiring both groups to get out of their comfortable spaces and engage with each other in constantly moving situations. The teacher educators were required to be change agents at the interface of theory and practice and their experiences reflected individual journeys, but their reflections have ongoing implications for clarifying and professionalising the role of teacher educators.     

Reconceptualised family resemblance approach to nature of science in pre-service science teacher education

A recent framework on nature of science (NOS) is the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA). FRA presents NOS as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system with a set of categories: aims and values, scientific methods, scientific practices, scientific knowledge and social-institutional aspects of science. Although FRA has been problematised philosophically and its implications for science education have been considered by science educators, its empirical adaptations in science education are limited. In order to illustrate the educational adaptations of FRA, we refer to Reconceptualised Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science or RFN. We present a study based on a funded pre-service science teacher education project whose aim was to design, implement and evaluate the impact of RFN strategies. Fifteen pre-service teachers participated in a 14-week teacher education intervention that infused RFN. A 70-item questionnaire was designed to investigate the outcomes of the teacher education intervention. Individual interviews with pre-service teachers were also conducted. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis suggest that the teacher education intervention had an overall significant impact on pre-service teachers’ views of NOS. The paper contributes to the understanding of how NOS can be incorporated in science teacher education using a new orientation to NOS based on FRA.     

Responding Creatively to Challenges in Teacher Education: four women teacher educators tell their stories

This paper reports on a study that has mapped the stories of a group of women teacher educators. While the focus is on the period of change during the last 10 years from primarily teachers’ colleges to university‐based teacher education, the broader context of the individual women's lives is explored as well. The stories are mapped against each other and against relevant literature. In this way the study considers the challenge of change on the experiences of these women teacher educators. This study has been informed by feminist theory and has been constructed within a framework which is both narrative and collaborative. As Acker notes ‘one advantage of narrative is that history makes itself evident in the world of its actors’. In this way the intersections of the personal histories and biographies of the teacher educators within the social context in which they work are examined. These women teacher educators’ stories demonstrate similarities and differences in actions and reactions to the challenges they have faced in the last decade in teacher education. The similarities and differences are due to individual histories, career experiences and the character of the institutions in which they live their professional lives. In presenting this paper, the key focus is on reporting how the forces inherent in the changing nature of the educational environment have impacted on these teacher educators in such a way as to present challenges for each in the way they have developed in their profession as teacher educators.     

Does a teacher’s classroom observation rating vary across multiple classrooms?

Classroom observations have been increasingly used for teacher evaluations, and it is important to examine the measurement quality and the use of observation ratings. When a teacher is observed in multiple classrooms, his or her observation ratings may vary across classrooms. In that case, using ratings from one classroom per teacher may not be adequate to represent a teacher’s instructional quality. Drawing on the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) dataset, this study examined the variation of a teacher’s classroom observation ratings across his or her multiple classrooms. The results indicate that the math classrooms accounted for 4.9 to 14.7% of the variance in the classroom observation ratings and English language arts (ELA) classrooms accounted for 6.7 to 15.5% of the variance in the ratings. The results of this study suggest that teachers’ multiple classrooms should be taken into consideration when classroom observation ratings are used to evaluate teachers in high-stakes settings.     

(Re)beginning and becoming: antiracism and professional development with white practicing teachers

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on an educational foundations-based professional development (PD) curriculum of antiracist conscientization we as two teacher educators designed and implemented with eight white practicing teachers in the Midwestern United States. We first articulate our conception of educational foundations and curriculum theory as a framework for our PD. We briefly review literature on other PD on race in the United States, outline our data sources, and describe the pedagogy and curriculum of RaceWork’s Tripartite Model of race-visible and antiracist praxis. We then highlight, through interview data, the significance of group (relational) accountability and collaborative relationships that supported these teachers’ self-designed antiracist interventions in their own unique school contexts during the 2-year PD experience. An ongoing, relationship-based PD model leading to material antiracist changes and practices points to a need for a broader, more holistic, and contextualized conception of antiracist interventions in U.S. public P12 school contexts, but also one grounded in the notion that in a white supremacist society, we (as race-visible white educators) are always becoming antiracist.     

Teaching for a Sustainable World: the Environmental and Development Education Project for Teacher Education

The social, economic, political and ecological imperatives of sustainable development outlined in ’Our Common Future, Agenda 21’ and ’Caring for the Earth’ have established a renewed agenda for environmental education which links it very closely with development education. Teacher educators in Australia have responded to the need to link environmental and development education and to raise the level of attention usually devoted to them in teacher education programmes. The ’Environmental and Development Education Project for Teacher Education’ has been the result. The project has involved 20 educators, drawn from 11 universities, government departments and NGOs across Australia, in writing and trialing a set of 18 3‐hour workshop modules on environmental and development education for use in pre‐service teacher education courses. These modules, published in the project manual, ’Teaching for a Sustainable World’, illustrate how environmental education and development education are related and provide practical assistance for teacher educators who wish to include these important fields in their programmes. An intensive dissemination programme in 1993‐94 involves workshops for all Faculties of Education in Australia.