Transformational practice: critical teacher research in pre-service teacher education

This article traces the experiences of three pre-service teachers as they engaged in teacher research as part of their teacher education program and considers how teacher research might disrupt dominant paradigms that aim to de-contextualize teaching and offer one-size-fits-all solutions to address inequities. In particular, the article examines: the role of the teacher’s personal and academic history in the design of their teacher research projects; how their research worked to disrupt and complicate classroom cultures and practices; and the ways in which the pre-service teachers interpreted their research in light of new contexts during their first year of teaching. This work has critical implications in an era when teacher education programs are under attack, including: the value of drawing on pre-service teachers' lived experiences as an entry point into inquiry; creating highly localized inquiries; and positioning novice teachers as knowledgeable practitioners who are able to share research with colleagues.     

From assistant teacher to teacher: challenges and pathways in situated pre-service teacher education

Vocational pathways to Higher Education have a key role in opening teacher education to under-represented groups but bring with them particular challenges. Teacher educators need to address the challenges faced by these learners, of not only connecting their learning but also challenging their knowledge, and doing so in an invested work environment. This paper shares my experiences as a teacher educator working with two groups of Indigenous and non-Indigenous para-professional pre-service teachers in remote and urban Central Australia. I identify four key role-shifting challenges individuals face in developing their professional practice and locate them in two interdependent areas: social sphere challenges arising out of the situated learning setting of professional experience, and those occurring in the personal sphere of professional identity. I suggest that the new ways of mentoring and the development of student’s reflexive capacity needed to address these challenges can best be mobilised by re-positioning the role of professional identity at the centre of both professional experience and academic learning.     

Concepts,policies and practices of teacher education: an analysis of studies on teacher education in Portugal

Education policies, and in particular those related to teacher education, are central to the construction of Europe as a knowledge society and for facing the social and economic challenges that European countries must respond to in this millennium. This article presents an analysis of studies on the evaluation of in-service teacher education conducted in Portugal since 1992. Based on the results of this analysis, the study develops a reflection on the concepts, policies and practices of in-service teacher education, contextualising it within a wider equation related to teachers’ education in Europe. The study consisted of content analyses of scientific articles, research reports, studies of evaluation and legal documents that provide the guidelines for in-service teacher education in Portugal. At the end, a final reflection and some general recommendations for teacher education are presented. There is a focus on the importance of placing in-service teacher education at the centre of educational contexts and on the problems that this causes in teachers’ work, emphasising its importance for social justice in Europe.     

Policy interventions in teacher education: sharing the English experience

Over the last 40 years, teacher education in England has been the focus of a stream of ‘reforms’ with the ultimate aim of placing provision into schools, the justification for such a radical policy being that higher education is alleged to be failing to provide good quality teachers thereby compromising the social and economic development of the country. The process whereby these reforms have been introduced is described and then used as a way of comparing and contrasting the way in which similar reforms can be identified in the international teacher education communities represented in this special issue of the Journal of Education for Teaching (JET). The paper closes by identifying lessons that can be learned from international comparators.     

地方高师高层次教师教育人才培养的机遇与对策

教师教育的变革给地方师范大学发展带来了前所未有的挑战;《国家中长期教育改革和发展规划纲要》颁布及全国教育工作会议的召开,对教师教育提出了新的要求;我国研究生教育结构性调整,为地方师范大学发展提供了新的视角。笔者认为,地方师范大学将挑战与要求转化为发展动力,抓住难得发展机遇,提升教师教育人才培养层次,扩大教育硕士规模,坚持培养原则,创新培养保障措施,确保培养质量,是其充分发挥自身优势与突出办学特色,在激烈市场竞争中谋求长远发展的较佳选择。     

(Re)turning to practice in teacher education: embodied knowledge in learning to teach

Contemporary research conversations about the utility of practice theories to professional education support the reconceptualisation of pre-service teacher education in ways that provide strong preparation for continued professional learning. This paper reports on an empirical inquiry that introduced a theoretically informed practice-based intervention in a pre-service teacher education course in order to judge the utility of such an approach for student learning. Innovations within the Study of Teaching programme illustrate the bringing together of pedagogies of observation, pedagogies of enactment, and pedagogies of reflection toward an integrated theory of teacher education that focuses on the teaching body as a central site for research and for the building of preparatory knowledge and skill for ongoing learning. Data was collected from pre-service teachers involved in the programme through video and audio recordings along with individual and focus group interviews, questionnaires and student reflection on video recordings. These were analyzed within an emerging theoretical framework derived from both practice-theoretical literature and international empirical research into core practices. Initial findings suggest that a focus on practice within pre-service teacher education may enhance traditional understandings of ‘practice-based’ approaches that situate the study of practice outside of the university, in school settings. These findings have implications for the ongoing reform of teacher education in increasingly regulated contexts framed in terms of teacher quality.     

Innovation in teacher education: towards a critical re-examination

ABSTRACT

In the course of introducing a themed issue of the journal on “Innovation in Teacher Education’, we lay out an argument for re-examining the meaning of innovation in the field, shifting it away from the dominance of the economistic and technological. Acknowledging its status as a ‘buzzword’, we distinguish between purposes for innovation and, in particular, between changes driven by arguments for social mobility and those driven by social justice and equity. Two imperatives for innovation underpinned by arguments for social justice and equity are identified: the concept of a ‘teacher education debt’, built on Ladson-Billings’ more general notion of ‘education debt’; and the humanization of learning, teaching and becoming a teacher as person-centred, relational practices. The final section of the article introduces each of the six papers in the context of the discussion in previous sections about these imperatives for change.     

Making the Personal Professional: Pre-service teacher education and personal histories

Pre-service teachers tend to use their personal experiences as critical filters in accepting and integrating course content that is intended to develop professional decision-making frameworks. This may restrict their abilities to deal with pedagogical issues associated with the acceptance of diversity and individuality, and encourage an unthinking acceptance of the status quo in classrooms, schools and society. To address this problem and nurture the growth of 'reflective practitioners', we structured the content and experiences of one unit of the Graduate Diploma of Education (secondary) to allow for the integration of personal life histories with other views and perspectives. This paper reports on the use of this life-history approach, its potential and its limitations.     

关于数学教师教育的若干思考（续）

剖析了当前我国数学教师教育中存在的若干问题,并提出了一些改进的思路与方法．     

音乐教师教育专业化存在的问题与对策研究

近百年来,我国音乐教师教育在办学机构、政策法规、课程设置等方面做了大量的基础性工作,但距离专业化标准要求还有很大差距。如办学单位专业水准低、法规建设不够健全、课程设置不够合理等。重新评估音乐教师教育办学单位、继续建立健全音乐教师教育法规、尽快全面实施科学合理的课程方案等,是加快我国音乐教师教育专业化进程、提高其专业化水平的当务之急。     

Inclusive education: teacher perspectives from Malaysia

This paper reports on a survey of views of inclusive education expressed by nearly 300 Malaysian primary school teachers involved in remedial literacy and numeracy education under the country's Literacy and Numeracy Strategy. Overall, the views expressed were positive towards the principle of inclusion. However, despite common professional development on special educational needs, these teachers lacked a common consensus about the benefits of inclusion; they expressed concern about the lack of teacher skills in this area; and they articulated a negative view of children with disabilities and their families. The paper concludes that further professional development is required to address these shortcomings, and that, given the lack of sufficient teacher educators in this area, it seems likely that the government's aim of implementing inclusive education remains a distant goal.     

Comparative and international education in initial teacher education: an Irish case study

Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, Comparative and International Education (CIE) has almost disappeared from the curricula of teacher education colleges in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Yet, CIE is experiencing a revival at postgraduate level. This article will explore the reasons for this dichotomy and the decline of CIE in initial teacher education. It will use findings from a research study in an Irish teacher education college to inform this exploration. The author initiated, developed, and offered a CIE course to final year BEd (n=24) students in 2003 and again in 2005. This article will use data gathered during the latter course to explore CIE for undergraduate trainee teachers, considering students’ motivation for choosing to study CIE, their perceptions of CIE, and their beliefs about how it may enhance their professional practice in classrooms. It will explore, in particular, a significant finding that emerged from the study – the potential of CIE in developing student teachers’ capacities to teach in multicultural classrooms.     

Finding a third space in teacher education: creating an urban teacher residency

This paper describes an urban teacher residency program, the Newark Montclair Urban Teacher Residency, a collaborative endeavor between the Newark, New Jersey Public Schools and Montclair State University, built on a decades-long partnership. The authors see the conceptual work of developing this program as creating a “third space” in teacher education. We detail the ways in which we conceptualize epistemology and clinical practice in teacher education, and changes in the roles of the community, and P-12 teachers that occur in a third space. Providing an account of our messy and nonlinear process demonstrates the struggles of creating new spaces for teacher education. We believe the theory that informs our work, the challenges we face, and the strategies for meeting those challenges illustrate the tenuous and ever-evolving nature of doing work in the “third space.”     

Confronting unsuccessful practices: repositioning teacher identities in English education

Teacher education programs attempt to prepare preservice teachers for the various challenges faced in the classroom. One particular challenge new teachers face is how to handle unsuccessful practices. This paper argues that confronting ineffective practices require that teachers respond to complex and dynamic challenges, making change difficult when solutions are not readily available. Presenting data from case-study research, the paper uses an identity framework and positioning theory to explore how two novice teachers navigate moments of unsuccessful practice. Findings suggest that when teachers confronted ineffective practices they repositioned their teacher identities in ways that depended on the ideologies of their school. The paper concludes with implications about the importance of extending typical reflective practices of teacher education with video analysis that challenges students to examine how they enact teacher identities over time within the figured world of their school.     

高师院校教师教育存在的问题与对策

教学计划是学校教育教学过程中的指导性文件,如何制定和实施教学计划直接影响人才培养的质量。针对高师院校教师教育存在的问题,应通过改革师范生的教学计划来解决。     

The last 40 years in Finnish teacher education

This article sets out to identify and discuss the changes that have taken place in Finnish teacher education during the last 40 years (1974–2014). A brief history of teacher education in Finland is presented, followed by the goals and aims of current research-based teacher education in Finland. Finally, the major changes in Finnish teacher education during the last 40 years are identified and discussed along with challenges for the future. These include the fact that with each passing year teacher education in Finland has become increasingly research-based. The ethical role of the Finnish teacher has changed from being a religious and moral example to being a principled professional who needs moral competence in pedagogical encounters. Teachers also need to master the rapid developments in information and communication technology in order to function in the same learning environments as their students.     

Collaborative teacher education: forging tangible connections between field and classroom

This paper describes a collaboration between the authors, a university course instructor for an introductory Learning Sciences course in a university-based teacher education program, and a site coordinator for its paired practicum experience. Drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the collaborators found that their weekly conversations focused on supporting novice teacher learning had the potential to (1) lead to more strategic support of pre-service teachers, and (2) lend greater insights into the nature of the larger teacher education activity system in which they both worked. They consider the ways the seemingly simple addition of weekly conversations across sites of teacher learning can create spaces that collapse traditional theory/practice divides in teacher education.     

语文教师与人文素质教育

本文从语文教育教学改革的整体上提出了语文教师在实施人文素质教育方面所承担的重要任务，提出了语文教师开展人文素质教育的途径。     

Social justice and school linkages in teacher education programmes

This paper investigates current research into the role of education in combating social injustice, assembles this research to indicate key features of a teacher education programme that would assist education for social justice, and links these features to one innovative university teacher education programme to ascertain some of the practical difficulties in establishing such a programme. The research indicated key approaches that would enhance the probability that graduates from teacher education programmes will be able to pursue social justice initiatives.