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.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

Making Research Relevant in Preservice Early Childhood Teacher Education

Increasingly, researchers, teacher educators and governmental agencies underline the need for early childhood professionals to be able to conduct and use relevant research in their practice. In contrast, early childhood teachers tend to draw exclusively on practical advice rather than research evidence to evaluate and develop their teaching. To address these contradictions in expectations, recently developed preservice early childhood teacher education programs have included a core research subject that aims to foster an appreciation of the value of research and its contributions to professional practice. This study examines the effectiveness of teaching and learning approaches designed to make research relevant to undergraduates at an Australian regional university by tracking students' changing views about research during a one-semester teaching period. The findings of this study show that relevant learning experiences, such as designing and conducting a simple research project, modeling research, collaborative inquiry, focused reading, and organizing a research conference, significantly changed student perceptions of the relevance of research to their teaching and their future role as early childhood professionals.     

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.     

Developmentally Appropriate Technology Use and Early Childhood Teacher Education

Early childhood teacher education methods classes often emphasize the application of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP). In today's digital age, it is important for teacher educators and their students to think about how to extend DAP to technology use. In this article, two contrasting classroom scenarios are provided to illustrate developmentally appropriate technology use (DATU), a new educational term coined by the authors. Briefly, DATU is defined as use that both respects the unique challenges presented by children's levels of development and capitalizes on children's natural desire to actively, collaboratively construct knowledge and solve problems. A five-element framework for guiding teachers toward DATU is explained.     

Bicultural Development within an Early Childhood Teacher Education Programme

This paper reports findings from a doctoral study which focused on processes implemented within an early childhood teacher education programme at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, that aimed to deliver on a stated commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi /the Treaty of Waitangi. This 1840 treaty guaranteed protection to Ma ¥ ori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. As a result of the impact of colonisation by Britain, Ma ¥ ori have become marginalised within their own country, and their language is threatened. Recognition of the treaty necessitates a restorative process that may be termed 'bicultural development'. This paper describes key features of the bicultural development process implemented within this teacher education programme. Cet article rapporte des re´sultats d'une e´tude doctorale qui s'est concentre´e sur des processus mis en application dans un programme d'e´ducation d'enseignant spe´cialise´ sur la petite enfance a ¤ l'universite´ de Waikato a ¤ Hamilton, Nouvelle-Ze´lande, qui a eu comme but a ¤ proce´der selon un engagement affirme´ au Te Tiriti o Waitangi /Traite´ de Waitangi. Ce traite´ du 1840 a garanti la protection aux Ma ¥ ori, le peuple autochtone d'Aotearoa/Nouvelle Ze´lande. En raison de l'impact de la colonisation par la Grande-Bretagne, les Ma ¥ ori sont devenus marginalise´s dans leur propre pays, et leur langue menace´e. La reconnaissance du traite´ ne´cessite un proce´de´ fortifiant qui peut etre nomme´ 'le de´veloppement biculturel'. Cet article de´crit les caracte´ristiques principales du proce´de´ du de´veloppement biculturel mis en application dans ce programme d'e´ducation de l'enseignant. Este arti´culo informa sobre los resultados de un estudio doctoral que se centro´ en los procesos puestos en ejecucio´n dentro de un programa de educacio´n de ensen ¨ antes especializados en la primera infancia en la universidad de Waikato en Hamilton, Nueva Zelanda, que tuvo como propo´sito proceder como fue indicado previamente de acuerdo con el Te Tiriti o Waitangi /Tratado de Waitangi. Este tratado de 1840 garantizo´ la proteccio´n a los Ma ¥ oris, la gente indi´gena de Aotearoa/Nueva Zelanda. Como resultado del impacto de la colonizacio´n por Gran Bretan ¨ a, los Ma ¥ oris han sido marginados dentro de su propio pai´s, y su lengua esta´ bajo amenaza. El reconocimiento del tratado hace necesario un proceso restaurativo que se puede llamar "desarrollo bicultural". Este arti´culo describe las caracteri ´sticas dominantes del proceso de desarrollo bicultural puesto en ejecucio´n dentro de este programa de educacio´n para los ensen ¨ antes.     

Developing Portfolios to Evaluate Teacher Performance in Early Childhood Education

One goal of the teacher's professional portfolio is to describe the full range of abilities and document effective teaching over an extended period of time. In this article we discuss the procedure that teachers can use in developing their own portfolio assessment to help generate data for making decisions about teaching performance. The development of a teacher portfolio requires planning, time, organization and cooperation from students, colleagues, parents and supervisors. The format of the portfolio may vary from individual to individual and be based upon personal preference. Organizations and contents of the teacher portfolio are suggested. Questions and associated lists of teaching artifacts are discussed based on the authors' experiences as early childhood classroom teachers and university professors. The answers to these questions will guide the selection of activity-generated products to best represent the essence of the teacher performance.     

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).     

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.     

Use of Dialogue Journals and Video-Recording in Early Childhood Teacher Education

This study utilizes students' journaling and video-recording of field experience teaching sessions as vehicles for inquiry into the development of the process of productive reflection within the piloting phase of an experimental course, designed by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE). The NCRECE course is designed to improve teachers' interactions with children as well as their implementation of curricula to promote gains in children's social and academic development. The piloting of the NCRCEC course took place in the Winter Quarter of 2007 in a 4-year university in the Midwest United States. By guiding students to reflect on their actions through use of dialogue journals and video-recording, this action research aimed at scaffolding students' productive reflection. Students participating in the pilot course kept weekly journals with the instructor in an online dialogue format throughout the quarter. As a culminating activity, they video-recorded one language-based lesson in a preschool classroom and wrote a self-analysis of the lesson. The paper presented here is a report of a part of this study pertaining to the use of dialogue journals and videos in supervision of preservice early childhood teachers. It is hoped that this action research study will validate the concurrent use of journals and video case analyses as a means of promoting self-conscious productive reflections, and as an opportunity to clarify content knowledge and link theory to practice.     

美国幼儿教师教育标准及启示

制定幼儿教师教育标准是幼儿教师教育的基础性工作。美国全国幼儿教育协会制定了幼儿职业准备标准,提出了“促进幼儿发展与学习”、“构建同家庭、社区的关系”、“对支持幼儿及其家庭的措施进行观察、建立档案、开展评估”、“开展教与学的活动的知识和能力”、“成为一名专业人士”等五项幼儿教师教育的核心标准,还提出了范围广泛的普通知识教育标准。为了适应我国幼儿教育发展的需要,我国应尽快制定专门的幼儿教师教育标准,美国幼儿教师教育标准为我们提供了镜鉴。     

晚清幼儿师资培育及其职业化历程

晚清幼儿师资职业化经历了立足于本土、不断积累、逐步获得突破的演进历程。本文梳理了晚清幼儿师资的来源,整理了清政府主动采取本土改造、＂引进来、走出去＂等措施培养幼儿师资的政策,描述了晚清有识之士从＂女子无才便是德＂到＂兴女学＂培育幼儿师资的立场转变,并介绍了晚清幼儿师资职业化发展的历程。