Electronic Portfolios in Teacher Education: A Case Study of Early Childhood Teacher Candidates

The use of electronic portfolios is increasingly becoming popular in teacher education programs. The electronic portfolio allows learners to express their work and take ownership over their own ability to plan and assess and reflect upon their learning during a specific period of time. While many teacher education programs have adopted electronic portfolios in order to meet accreditation requirements, others use electronic portfolios to develop and improve on students’ technology skills—train students on how to better use technology in instruction and student assessment. Irrespective of the reasons for adoption, there is the need to assess students’ perceptions of electronic portfolios, and especially to explore the benefits and challenges students face in using electronic portfolios in their course work. Using a qualitative research design, the current study explored teacher candidates’ attitudes toward electronic portfolios and the differences that electronic portfolios bring to their profession. Such a study is necessary to help administrators identify students’ needs to ensure that they are gaining the maximum benefits from the use of electronic portfolios in their programs of study.     

Early Childhood Teacher Education: A Global Perspective

A couple of years ago I attended a presentation at a professional meeting that made a major impact upon my life. The session, “Ways of Achieving Excellence in a Global Community,” included presentations by early childhood educators from Australia, Hungary and Finland. At the conclusion of this sharing of ideas regarding what other countries are doing to improve the lives of children, I overheard an American colleague whisper to her neighbor in amazement, “My God! We're a Third World country when it comes to child care.” Without contrasts brought out by this session, however, this educator might have never been open to the world of ideas for improving children's lives.     

美国幼儿教师教育的普通知识标准

美国幼儿教育协会制订早期儿童教育专业的准备标准，提出了各个层次从业者的培养要求。就早期儿童教育专业候选者所需要的普通知识的准备而言，该组织提出了语言和读写能力、艺术、数学、身体锻炼和体育、科学、社会研究等领域的培养要求，可以为我国幼儿教师教育的课程改革提供借鉴。     

Early Childhood Teacher Education in Australia

The complexity of preparing personnel for early childhood services seems common to many countries of the world. Issues and problems include length of courses, pre‐requisites for entry to courses, core curriculum content, age range covered in courses, education and care elements and practicum requirements. This paper discusses early childhood teacher education provision in Australia and acknowledges that teacher educators in countries of the world have much to share and the discussion of solutions can only better the preparation of early childhood courses. A common theme is the need to raise the status and strengthen the early childhood profession by the provision of quality courses.     

Early Childhood Education in Societal Context: Teachers in Three Countries Speak About Early Childhood Education

Building on the cross-cultural patterns and systems research as well as social constructivism, in-depth interviews were conducted with key informant early childhood teachers in three regions with similar characteristics in Sweden, Russia, and in the United States. Inductive analyses revealed differences in responses among Swedish, Russian and American informants related to the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of societal system. United States teacher informants had a great number of separate topic comments and distributed them more evenly across all levels than did Russian and Swedish teacher informants who had more emphasis at the meso level. United States and Russian teacher informants discussed the lack of societal support for young children and their families, while Swedish teacher informants seemed to almost take this support for ranted. United States teacher informants suggested that early childhood programs were important in developing support networks among parents, while Russian teacher informants often gave information to parents and Swedish teachers spoke about mutually sharing information. United States teacher informants desired both strict rules with strong academic content and extension of the child's initiations through play; they emphasized activities and materials. Swedish teachers discussed a child- centered approach to social learning and creativity and desired to be with children rather than do activities with them. Russian teacher informants emphasized the importance of obedience, aesthetic education, and preparation for school and the labor of the larger society. These study outcomes deepen understanding about the multidemensional relationships between early childhood programs and societal contexts in which they are embedded, and they suggest alternative approaches to working with young children and their families.     

Science and Theatre Education: A Cross-disciplinary Approach of Scientific Ideas Addressed to Student Teachers of Early Childhood Education

There is, in Greece, an ongoing attempt to breach the boundaries established between the different teaching-learning subjects of compulsory education. In this context, we are interested in exploring to what degree the teaching and learning of ideas from the sciences’ “internal life” (Hacking, in: Pickering (ed) Science as practice and culture, 1992) benefits from creatively coming into contact with theatrical education as part of the corresponding curriculum subject. To this end, 57 students of the Early Childhood Education Department of the University of Athens were called to study extracts from Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, to focus on a subject that the Dialogue’s “interlocutors” forcefully disagree about and to theatrically represent (using shadow theatre techniques) what they considered as being the central idea of this clash of opinions. The results indicate that this attempt leads to a satisfactory understanding of ideas relating to the content and methodology of the natural sciences. At the same time, theatrical education avails itself of the representation of scientific ideas and avoids the clichés and hackneyed techniques that the (often) simplistic choices available in the educational context of early childhood education tend towards. The basic reasons for both facets of this success are: (a) Genuine scientific texts force the students to approach them with seriousness, and all the more so if these recount the manner in which scientific ideas are produced and are embedded in the historical and social context of the age that created them; (b) The theatrical framework, which essentially guides the students’ activities, allows (if not obliges) them to approach scientific issues creatively; in other words, it allows them to create something related to science and recognize it as theirs; and, (c) Both the narrative texts describing processes of “science making” (Bruner, J Sci Educ Technol 1:5–12, 1992) and theatrical expression constitute fields that are characterized by what, for the students, is a common and understandable manner of expression: the narrative.     

一种全新的幼儿科学教育价值取向

体现教育个性,富有弹性的“科学生活”价值取向;体现以学为本,确立“科学兴趣”核心地位的价值取向;体现现代知识观,重视发掘潜力的“科学方法”价值取向;体现时代要求,人文色彩浓厚的“科学环保”价值取向;体现幼儿教育特点,重视综合实施的“科学——情感——社会”价值取向。     

Australian Early Childhood Teacher Education: Developments and Concerns

The history of early childhood teacher education in Australia dates back to 1897 with the establishment of the Kindergarten Union Teachers' Training College in Sydney. Since the 1970's, small, specialized, private teachers' colleges in each state have emerged to become part of the national government system of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE's). These institutions had as a primary goal to teach rather than to conduct research about teaching. CAE's have historically been primarily responsible for vocationally-oriented professional courses of study such as nursing, teaching, social welfare, media and communications, fine arts and health studies. It was in this CAE's system where students were prepared to be early childhood, elementary, and secondary teachers. These programs lead to a three-year Diploma of Teaching or a four-year Bachelor of Education. This approach was based on the Australian pattern of specialized teacher training which was generally provided immediately upon graduation from high school. Universities provided training in early childhood-related areas such as psychology, psychiatry, social work and medicine but did not include specialized early childhood teacher preparation per se (although they do provide secondary teacher preparation).     

Student-Produced Action Research in Early Childhood Teacher Education

This article describes how preservice teachers accomplish and write up action research projects as part of their teacher preparation at one university in the United States. The paper is divided into four major sections. In the first section, the instructor describes how teacher research is introduced to teacher education students and how they are guided through the processes of conceptualizing, doing, and writing up their projects. The next two sections are the stories of two 1st-year teachers who describe and reflect on what they learned from completing action research projects under the direction of the instructor. The concluding section offers generalizations that synthesize lessons learned by the authors.     

Innovations in Early Childhood Teacher Education: Reflections on Practice

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the instruction in a teacher education science content course that applied the theories that underlie cognitive constructivism. The methods used aimed to develop positive dispositions toward teaching practices that encourage exploration, collaboration, and individual student responsibility. Nurturing a love of science and an excitement towards learning through discovery were also goals. The theories spanned intersubjectivity and scaffolding from Vygotsky, individual responsibility for learning, and assimilation and accommodation of ideas to allow for individual construction of knowledge from Piaget. Project work, suggested by Katz and Chard, was also included, as were application of the experiential social construction of knowledge theories of Dewey and multiple intelligences from Gardner. Modeling the application of the theories behind cognitive constructivism fostered students’understanding of their appropriate use in elementary classrooms.     

幼儿英语教育师资培养浅谈

随着中国对外交流的拓展与加深,英语教育受到的重视程度与日俱增。在这种背景下,幼儿英语教育在全国大中城市普遍开展,但是整体现状却不尽如人意,教学水平参差不齐。因此,加强幼儿英语教育师资培养对于改变这一现象具有重要意义。本文针对幼儿英语教育师资培养提出了一些浅见和建议,以期对幼儿英语教育师资培养提供新的视角和助益。     

Growing Early Childhood Education Teachers in Rural Areas

Currently in South Africa, there are over 20 000 underqualified Grade R teachers who are enlisted into service to ensure that Grade R teaching can continue. The aim of the study reported on was to investigate the challenges and needs faced by underqualified teachers in order to promote the professional development of teachers teaching in rural areas. Phenomenology was used as the research design. By means of a qualitative research approach, purposeful sampling selected only underqualified early childhood education (ECE) teachers teaching in rural schools for more than five years or more in three provinces, as well as their school principals. The findings revealed the following needs and challenges: the need for resources; poor infrastructure; lack of parental involvement; overcrowded classrooms; the need for in-service training; needs of the rural communities; and support from an open distance learning (ODL) institution.     

德国学前教育的发展现况和未来趋势

德国的学前教育长期以来并没有形成统一的学前托管模式,入园率、师资等在原东德和原西德地区之间存在很大差异.德国的学前教育计划由各州自行制定、实施并监管,但联邦政府还是从政策和财政投入两方面积极推动学前教育的发展.为了使母亲有更多的就业机会,德国政府不断加强对学前教育的关注度和投入力度:从法律上保障儿童接受学前教育的权益;提供灵活多样的社会托管服务;将托管服务对象由3～6岁扩大到0～6岁并致力于改善托幼机构的育儿质量.