Bridging the Gap Between Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Cultural Values, Perceptions of Values Held by Scientists, and the Relationships of These Values to Conceptions of Nature of Science

This study explored preservice teachers’ views of their own cultural values, the cultural values they believed scientists hold, and the relationships of these views to their conceptions of nature of science (NOS). Parallel assignments in a foundations of early childhood education and a science methods course required preservice teachers to explore their own cultural backgrounds and their perceptions of the cultural backgrounds of scientists. The Schwartz Values Inventory was used to measure preservice teachers’ personal cultural values and those they perceived of scientists. The Views of Nature of Science version B questionnaire and interviews assessed teachers’ conceptions of NOS. Copies of student work were collected and sought for themes indicating how preservice teachers perceived scientists’ cultural values and how those perceptions changed over time. We found that from the beginning to the end of the semester, preservice teachers perceived fewer differences between their own cultural values and those they perceived scientists held, though they did not change their own cultural values. We found that preservice teachers’ NOS conceptions improved, and that they were related to both their cultural values and those they perceived scientists held. Preservice teachers who indicated the fewest differences between their own cultural values and those they perceived scientists held the most informed conceptions of NOS.     

Early Practicum Experiences: Preservice Early Childhood Students’ Perceptions and Sense of Efficacy

The current study explored early practicum experiences (those occurring before student teaching) in an early childhood birth to kindergarten teacher education program. Undergraduates enrolled in practicum courses completed questionnaires about their overall practicum experience including: socio-emotional components (their perceived fit with their cooperating teacher and intrapersonal feelings while in the classroom), overall practicum satisfaction, and their sense of teacher efficacy. Results revealed that practicum students generally reported feelings of being energized and relaxed, though some practicum students reported feelings of frustration in their practicum classrooms. Feeling energized and relaxed and students’ perception of fit with their cooperating teacher were positively associated with practicum satisfaction and practicum students’ teacher efficacy. Feelings of frustration were negatively associated with students’ fit with their cooperating teacher, practicum satisfaction, and students’ teacher efficacy. Higher levels of practicum satisfaction predicted higher practicum students’ teacher efficacy. Findings highlight the importance of understanding early practicum experiences and what factors of the practicum experience contribute teacher efficacy. Implications for future research and practice for early childhood teacher preparation programs are discussed.     

Australian TESOL Teachers’ Cultural Perceptions of Students

Over the last decade, research in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) has increasingly focused on the relationship between culture and learning. Researchers such as Kumaravadivelu (2003) have been vocal in their opposition to the practice of cultural stereotyping. In the current study, Holliday’s (2005) model of Culturism was used as a theoretical basis. Six Australian TESOL teachers were interviewed to determine the nature and extent of the cultural stereotypes that they held, particularly as they pertained to specific learning-related behaviours. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that teachers most often grouped students in terms of national or regional cultures and believed that cultural background strongly influenced student learning behaviour, resulting in the formation of a number of stereotypes. Despite this, the findings also demonstrated that teachers were self-aware of the pitfalls of cultural stereotyping and took other factors influencing student behaviour into consideration.     

Change or Durability? The Contribution of Metaconceptual Awareness in Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Learning of Science Concepts

This longitudinal study examined the role of metaconceptual awareness in the change and the durability of preservice teachers’ conceptual understandings over the course of several months. Sixteen preservice early childhood teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to reveal the participants’ conceptual understandings of lunar phases (pre, post, and delayed-post) and level of metaconceptual awareness (delayed-post only). Based on the change and stability in participants’ conceptual understandings from pre to post and from post to delayed-post interviews, participants’ conceptual understandings were assigned into three groups that described the profile of their long-term conceptual understandings: “decay or stability”, “continuous growth”, and “growth and stability”. The results indicated that participants in the “continuous growth” and “growth and stability” groups had significantly higher metaconceptual awareness scores than participants in the “decay or stability” group. The results provided evidence that metaconceptual awareness plays a more decisive role in the restructuring of conceptual understandings than the durability of conceptual understandings.     

The Roles of Hong Kong Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Creativity and Zest in Their Self-efficacy in Creating Child-centered Learning Environments

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationships of preservice teachers’ year of study in the teacher education program, creativity, zest, and self-efficacy in managing children’s behaviors to self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments. Data were collected from 275 Hong Kong preservice teachers via self-reported questionnaires. Results showed that creativity had a direct positive linkage with self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments. Zest was associated with self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments, however, indirectly through self-efficacy in managing children’s behaviors. Year of study was unrelated to both self-efficacies. Practice or Policy: Preservice teachers’ creativity and zest can be conceptualized as personal resources for creating child-centered environments. Teacher education programs should therefore incorporate components of fostering pre-service teachers’ own creativity and zest.     

Preservice Students’ Perceptions and Level of Satisfaction with their Field Experiences

This paper reports on a study of students’ perceptions and level of satisfaction with the teaching‐learning process while participating in the field‐experience component of the four‐year Bachelor of Education course at the Australian Catholic University Signadou Campus in Canberra. It is argued that successful student‐teacher field‐experience programmes provide opportunities for ongoing renewal and growth. Essential to this process is the implementation of appropriate evaluative procedures which involve all the participating members of the programme. The success of the process is evidenced in the ongoing modification of the programme to accurately reflect the interests and needs of the participants. Such a process leads to higher levels of communication, satisfaction and reflection on practice by all interested parties. Through an analysis of students’ questionnaire responses, this paper provides insights into the changing nature of student perceptions about the quality of their field experiences and their level of satisfaction with the various components of the programme. The results indicate that as the focus moves from the university itself to independent student responsibility the levels of satisfaction increase.     

Preservice Teachers’ Participation and Perceptions of Twitter Live Chats as Personal Learning Networks

This study presents two cases in which undergraduates were introduced to Twitter in their teacher preparation program as a means of developing a personal learning network. Twitter live chats are synchronous discussions that allow education stakeholders to discuss issues and share resources, engaging on potentially a global scale via the social networking platform. This study examines how students participated in these live chats, perceived benefits and challenges and how prior experience and preconceived perceptions of Twitter influenced the live chat experience and intentions for continued participation. Pre-activity reflections, student tweets and post-activity reflections were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. While familiarity with Twitter varied, no participants had previously participated in a professional Twitter live chat; the majority of participants indicated a positive perception and intensions to continue participating in Twitter live chats. Plans for introducing, scaffolding and reflecting on initial Twitter live chat experiences are detailed and considerations and implications are discussed.     

A Survey Study of Early Childhood Teachers’ Beliefs and Confidence about Teaching Early Math

This study reports on results from the Early Mathematics Beliefs and Confidence Survey, administered to 346 preschool teachers in a large public school system in the Midwest. Survey results depict a much more positive view of teachers’ beliefs and confidence in early math teaching than previously reported. Results also suggest that teacher confidence varies with specific types of math knowledge and teaching abilities, and assessing math learning is a specific area where teachers lack confidence. Examining confidence in their math abilities and in teaching early math, results indicate that teachers are more confident teaching math and remain confident in teaching even when confidence in their abilities is low. Implications of results for early math professional development are discussed.     

The Influence of Teachers’ Efficacy and Beliefs Regarding Mathematics Instruction in the Early Childhood Classroom

This was a correlational study conducted with a population of prekindergarten educators from a large, metropolitan school district. The purpose was to examine if there were relationships between and among early childhood teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, their beliefs about the importance of mathematics, and their mathematics instructional practices. Examining teachers’ efficacy and beliefs can inform educational practice and help to differentiate between more and less successful instructional practices when teaching mathematics in the early childhood classroom. Data were collected on teacher efficacy and teacher beliefs about the importance of mathematics with two self-report questionnaires. The hypothesis that the teachers higher in efficacy will rate the importance of mathematics higher on the teacher-belief scale than the teachers with lower efficacy was found to be true with this sample, but the correlation was weak. The level of efficacy of the early childhood teachers in this sample confirmed that in assessing their capabilities, they rate themselves high in instructional strategies, classroom management, and student engagement. The early childhood teachers did not rate their belief in mathematics as high as their efficacy. Observations of mathematics instructional practices were conducted with twenty teachers. It was hypothesized that the combination of high teacher efficacy and high teacher mathematics beliefs would show alignment with the presence of standards-based mathematics instructional practices. The results were not statistically significant. No correlation signals a need for more research to explore what other personal or external factors relate to mathematics instructional practices in the early childhood classroom. The research may inform pre kindergarten teachers and teacher educators about effective instructional strategies and knowledge needed to launch early childhood students on a developmentally appropriate pathway to mathematical literacy.     

Examining the Content of Preservice Teachers’ Reflections of Early Field Experiences

This paper describes an exploratory study that examined the content of preservice elementary teachers’ reflections of their documented early field experiences of science teaching in authentic contexts. The study used an early field experience model that was focused on the objective of profiling an elementary science teacher as the practical merit of reflection. Preservice elementary teachers individually and collaboratively reflected on their early field experiences and used the resulting reflections to construct profiles of an elementary science teacher respectively in synthesis papers. Data sources included journal entries and synthesis papers resulting from individual and collaborative reflections. Thematic analysis revealed that profiles of an elementary science teacher constructed from both individual and collaborative reflections were based on the roles of teacher as a guide and teacher as a mediator. Analysis further revealed that classroom management and discipline and safety were the key foci factored within individual reflections while what promotes learning and the difference between what is effective and ineffective scaffolding respectively, served as the foci within collaborative reflections. Also, collaborative reflection provided a structured approach to reflection as it drew preservice elementary teachers into collective dialogue and negotiation capturing the tensions they faced when trying to make sense of the practice of other teachers. Implications include the need to frame early field experiences with objectives that are understood by all parties involved in early field experiences; and, the need to instill the importance of observation, documentation, and reflection which collectively sum up preservice teachers’ early field experiences.     

The Relationship Between Students’ Achievement and Early School Leaving in Rural Vietnam

Abstract

I am interested in understanding why resolving the key dilemma of redistribution and recognition of difference has proved to be so difficult. In this article I analyse the history of gender equity reform in relation to difference, with particular emphasis on Indigenous issues, applying recent theoretical understandings about equity and difference. The article documents how discourses of difference were framed and addressed in four major gender equity policy documents produced at the national level in Australia. In particular there is an emphasis on how the redistribution‐recognition dilemma is handled in the documents.     

Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions and Enactments of Project-Based Instruction

We present results of an investigation of preservice secondary mathematics and science teachers’ conceptions of project-based instruction (PBI) and their enactments of PBI in apprentice (student) teaching. We evaluated their thinking and implementations within a composite framework based on the work of education researchers. We analyzed survey responses, both qualitatively and statistically, from three cohorts of preservice teachers both before and after apprentice teaching. In addition we interviewed and observed a subset of these future teachers. We found that in general the preservice teachers held superficial views of PBI, as compared to the researcher framework. Participants reported time and curriculum restrictions as major barriers; however, teachers for whom enactment of PBI was presented as an explicit goal, and who were given support toward that end, were more likely to enact authentic implementations, regardless of previous reservations about PBI. Without this additional scaffolding, even teachers with high affinity for PBI were unlikely to implement it authentically.     

Pupils’ Perceptions of Teachers

Abstract

The study, with 536 second-sixth graders as subjects, attempted to investigate the relationships between teacher and “idea”-teacher discrepancies (hereafter designated as discrepancies) and six dependent variables. Results of the study were summarized as: (a) high-school achievement scorers tended to manifest low discrepancies, and vice versa; (b) boys appeared to exhibit higher discrepancies than girls did; (c) those more socially acceptable children seemed to exhibit low discrepancies, and vice versa; (d) those children who indicated higher school attitude scores had a tendency to show low discrepancies, and vice versa; (e) those children who rated themselves high on aggressiveness were inclined to show high discrepancies, and vice versa; and (f) there was no statistically significant relationship between peer-report aggressiveness and such discrepancies.     

Relationship between Cognitive Style and Teachers’ Perceptions of Young Children’s Academic Competence

The study investigated the significance of matching cognitive style of first- and third-grade students to their teachers. The Articulation of the Body-Concept Scale was administered as a measure of cognitive style to 20 first- and 20 third-grade female teachers and a sample (480) of six boys and six girls for each teacher. Teachers ranked their students according to their judgment of the students’ academic competence. Discrepancy scores were obtained based on the degree to which teachers differed in ranking their students in comparison to rankings on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills. A repeated measures analysis of variance indicated statistically significant main effects for grade level and a statistically significant interaction among the cognitive styles of teachers in ranking their matched and mismatched students according to sex in relation to the students’ academic achievement scores.     

The Integration of Preservice Teachers’ Naive and Informed Beliefs about Learning and Teaching

Preservice teacher education students are likely to have acquired naive beliefs about learning and teaching, that need to be integrated with theoretically informed beliefs, if they are to function effectively in classrooms. This study explored the nature of such integration using a sample of Graduate Diploma in Education students engaged in an educational psychology subject which was designed to help students develop constructivist beliefs and approaches to learning. Investigation of students’ journal entries, written statements, and stimulated recall interviews related to videotaped practice teaching sessions, revealed that students were able to integrate prior beliefs with the theoretical content of the course, enabling them to describe, and in some cases, evidence informed conditional knowledge.     

The Relationship Between Students’ Casual Interest in Science and Their Perceptions of the Undergraduate Laboratory Environment

Research in Science Education - Science instructors assume that they have created their laboratory curriculum in such a way as to reflect an ideal science instructional laboratory, but students may...