Working towards balance: Arts integration in pre-service teacher education in an era of standardization

Drawing on pre-service teachers’ curriculum, the promises and pitfalls of three orientations to arts integration—making, analyzing, and balancing—are described. While few pre-service teachers create balanced curriculum where students make and analyze art, even fewer implement such lessons as student teachers. By contrast, most pre-service teachers initially approach arts integration by asking students to make or analyze art. Such patterns imply teacher educators need to identify fieldwork placements supporting arts integration, frame pre-service teachers’ initial arts integration as steps to be nurtured by continuing professional development, and prepare teachers committed to the arts to resist narrow definitions of learning in a climate of standardization.     

Pre-service and In-service Secondary School Teachers’ Knowledge about Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Attitudes toward Students with ADHD

This article reports on a mixed-method inquiry into pre-service and in-service secondary school teachers’ knowledge about Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and attitudes toward students with this disorder in Hong Kong. The inquiry revealed no differences between pre-service and in-service secondary school teachers concerning their knowledge of ADHD and attitudes toward students with ADHD. It also identified possible sources of participants’ knowledge and a variety of factors underlying their attitudes toward students with ADHD including sociocultural beliefs and working conditions. The findings call for teacher educators to develop better education programmes to support both pre-service and in-service teachers in undertaking the challenging task of teaching students with ADHD.     

Virtual praxis: Constraints,approaches, and innovations of online creative arts teacher educators

Higher education, and in particular, initial teacher education, has been significantly transformed through the introduction of e-learning. However, online teacher education presents particular challenges in the creative arts, which has traditionally developed student understanding through embodied and collaborative learning experiences. In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with eight online arts educators in teacher education programs to understand their perspectives and pedagogy in online arts coursework. Using Engeström’s Activity Theory as an analytical lens, the findings highlight how these academics navigated challenges and opportunities to facilitate authentic, praxis-focused arts experiences to prepare pre-service teachers for the classroom.     

Pre-service teachers and visual arts education. A study based on artistic creation as a way of interrogating reality / Los futuros docentes y la enseñanza de las artes visuales. Un estudio basado en la creación artística como forma de interrogar la realidad

: This study explores pre-service teachers’ knowledge of visual arts education and their ability to undertake creative processes. It is a study conducted with 88 primary school student teachers from a university in southern Spain. The participants were required to produce an artistic piece in which they were asked to reflect their thoughts on visual art education. The resulting pieces served as a tool for inquiry which enabled us to evaluate their theoretical and practical knowledge after performing an analysis of their form and content. After analysing the data, we concluded that future teachers are aware that arts education develops many types of skills, although they are only partially able to carry out a satisfactory artistic creation process. Therefore, it is essential to reinforce the training of pre-service teachers in the domain of artistic processes. Questioning pre-service teachers directly, and doing so through artistic creation, has allowed us to ascertain their level of knowledge of the visual arts.     

Pre-service teachers’ decision-making: Efforts to mediate learning with bilingual children with disabilities

Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory, this study explores how seven teacher candidates described the learning difficulties that bilingual children with disabilities experienced while learning in a bilingual afterschool program. This study also analyzes the volitional actions the candidates took as they aimed to achieve the fine balance between affording opportunities for compensation within “desirable difficulty” and ensuring there were no remaining barriers. We found that the candidates’ decision-making process, guided compensation, was highly complex and collective, and identified three forms of guided compensation: Cultivated, Renegotiated, and Pursued. We offer implications of these findings for researchers, teacher educators, and pre-service teachers.     

Creating expansive learning opportunities in schools: the role of school leaders in initial teacher education partnerships

This article analyses the learning opportunities afforded pre-service teachers when participating in a primary school placement in London, England as part of their university teacher education course. Cultural historical activity theory is used as a theoretical framework to address how pre-service teacher learning opportunities are constructed. Building on a previous year-long ethnographic study which explored how and why pre-service teacher learning opportunities differed in school settings, this paper introduces a small scale pilot study. The study integrates developmental work research into an initial teacher education school/university partnership, and considers the role of the school leader in this. Possibilities for pre-service teachers, teachers and teacher educators to work together in a research process that is integral to an initial teacher education partnership are forwarded, with the aim of ensuring that critical enquiry and learning are kept at the forefront of the activity.     

Change in teacher education: How holmes was hijacked

Summary A movement among universities noted for research and for rigorous scholarship that would have insured a significantly improved education for prospective teachers was transformed in a short time, about ten years, into another agency of centrally inspired “school refrom,” The Holmes Group’s initial program called for prospective teachers to undergo five years of general education and teacher education, devoting the undergraduate years largely to arts and sciences. It also called for a closer collaboration between teacher educators and arts and science faculty in order to prepare preservice teachers to teach more rigorous pedagogically organized subject matter. Included in the early Holmes agenda was the concept of a professional development school as a public school site for pedagogical application, under the direction of veteran teacher cadres. However, as a consequence of an increasingly liberal academic ideology, informing a persistent criticism of Holmes’s original proposals as elitist and insufficiently activist, the Holmes group came in a short time to underplay its call for a five-year program, to back off from a closer collaboration between teacher educators and arts and sciences faculty, and to transform its concept of an affiliated public school from a site for pre-service pedagogical classroom practice into an exemplary school-to-be. Some hope may remain: the Holmes staff recently distributed the “Conference Proceedings” of the January 1998 annual convention held in Orlando. On page 42 of those proceedings, Arthur Wise, the peripatetic head of NCATE (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education—now a Holmes “partner” at the national level) found Holmes neglectful of an appropriate concern for arts and sciences education for prospective teachers. Wise was a “ranconteur” in Orlando; as such he was expected to provide a “reflective response” to the conference. He said, apologetically, I might offer my one sound of criticism ... I just worry when I see that ... we may be paying too much attention to the external aspects of school and maybe not enough to the guts of the matter which is, after all, content and how to teach it.     

Parents,teachers, and learning: Fostering communication skills in children

Conclusion It cannot be stressed enough that parental involvement in their child's learning process is necessary. However, this involvement must be more than attending periodic parent-teacher conferences and asking how the child is doing in school. Parents need to understand, and teachers need to reiterate, that the parent is one of the most important teachers a child will have. While curriculum improvement in the schools continues to dominate educational agendas, the home environment unfortunately is easily overlooked as being influential in a child's learning. Educators need to recognize that influence, and while curricula continue to improve, the integration of communication skills at home must be considered to ensure the child the best possible education. Communication between home and school should be ongoing. This combined effort develops a speech and language arts curriculum to its fullest and includes all appropriate individuals involved in the development: educators, parents, and children.     

Pre-service education for primary school English teachers in Indonesia: policy implications

Although English is only an extra-curricular subject at primary level in Indonesia, expectations over the improved quality of the teachers are exceptionally high . This is the case in the past few years in which the low proficiency of primary English teachers and their lack of teaching competencies have repeatedly been pointed out as major constraints. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether this problem is attributed to the delivery of pre-service education in preparing primary school English teachers. This paper gathered data from teachers, language teacher educators, primary school principals, members of educational boards, and educational consultants. The data were analysed using Grounded Theory in order to examine the adequacy of pre-service education in Indonesia to prepare primary school English teachers as well as factors that contribute to its efficacy or lack thereof. The findings of the study demonstrate the need for specific preparation for primary school English teachers as well as further training for teacher educators. This present study is highly relevant to Indonesia and other Asian countries where teacher efficacy is a major concern.     

The role of intuition in pedagogical tact: Educator views

Pedagogical tact concerns a teacher's ability to adequately handle complex classroom situations that require immediate action. As such, pedagogical tact can be viewed as an enactment of teachers’ intuition. While most teachers, teacher educators, educational leaders and scholars readily recognise the importance of pedagogical tact (and by extension, intuition), few pre-service or in-service programmes devote explicit attention to developing this important teacher quality. This study set out to understand why. Specifically, data were collected to investigate how educators perceive intuition, and its role in teacher pedagogical tact. Ten focus group discussions were held with school board members, teacher educators, school principals, in-service teachers and pre-service teachers. Participants recognised two types of intuition commonly described in the literature (local and nonlocal), and affirmed the importance of intuition for teacher pedagogical tact. These educators also noted that teachers are rarely if ever encouraged to make conscious use of their intuition, let alone develop it. There was consensus that teachers differ in how well they are able to tune into their intuition. Though the scale of the study is small, the findings suggest that more attention should be given to developing teacher intuition and pedagogical tact than is currently the case.     

Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of self as inclusive educators

Teacher education institutions play a key role in preparing pre-service teachers to graduate as competent and confident inclusive educators. Seeking to understand pre-service teachers’ current perceptions of diversity and inclusion, and how they perceived themselves as future inclusive educators, this qualitative study employed inductive analysis to explore pre-service teachers’ self-perceptions as inclusive teachers, utilising the theory of possible selves. Forty-six (n?=?46) of 292 pre-service teachers enrolled in an inclusive education subject in a graduate entry teacher education programme in eastern Australia participated in this study. Findings revealed that pre-service teachers had developed good theoretical understanding of inclusive education through their coursework. However, their development of possible selves as inclusive educators was less well-defined in that they had difficulty extending their understandings of who they might be as inclusive teachers beyond their coursework samples. This difficulty in identifying their cultural selves beyond a stereotypical norm of who a ‘classroom teacher’ is indicates a need for more and extensive time for pre-service teachers to develop their professional identities as inclusive educators.     

Recognition,responsibility, and risk: Pre-service teachers' framing and reframing of lesbian,gay, and bisexual social justice issues

This paper presumes teachers play crucial roles in making more just societies and teacher educators must decide how they will participate in and/or shape a global dialog about LGB rights with pre-service teachers. This paper utilizes Fraser's theory of justice to consider curricular change. It examines the values and experiences pre-service teachers bring to their university education that shape their interaction with curricula. Analysis of classroom dialog suggests that pre-service teachers have a more complex understanding of structure and transformation than their nascent language around sexuality allows them to articulate. These optimistic findings lead to proposals for transforming how we teach about sexuality.     

UNDERSTANDING THE ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS OF PRE-SERVICE SECONDARY SCIENCE TEACHERS ABOUT TIDAL PHENOMENA BASED ON TOULMIN’S ARGUMENTATION

Constructing explanations and participating in argumentative discourse are seen as essential practices of scientific inquiry. The objective of this study was to explore the elements and origins of pre-service secondary science teachers’ alternative conceptions of tidal phenomena based on the elements used in Toulmin’s Argument Model through qualitative research. The data were collected from three pre-service secondary school teachers (D.-K. University, Teachers’ Colleges, junior and senior) in the Republic of Korea using a variety of qualitative research methods. We present three pre-service teachers as examples of 20 pre-service teachers for determining each pre-service teacher whether the pattern of his/her responses to all of the questions investigating a given concept can be explained by the consistent use of components of argument. The results of this study showed “the model with the Earth’s center at rest” backing their warrants as an element of Toulmin’s Argument Model. As a result, science educators must explicitly address these presuppositions or implicit beliefs and must help the students form links between their everyday experiences and scientific knowledge. Therefore, educators must be aware of the influence of students’ presuppositions and must use acceptable scientific concepts (the center of mass of the Earth–Moon system) based on argumentation to guide their construction of scientific concepts.     

Preparing pre-service teachers to integrate technology into K–12 instruction: evaluation of a technology-infused approach

The quality of how technology is addressed in teacher education programmes is conditional for how student teachers apply technology in secondary schools after their graduation. Two technology-infused courses of one teacher education programme were evaluated. In line with studies on the development of pre-service teachers’ technological, pedagogical and content knowledge, two important enablers were distinguished: (1) teaching practice to enact what was learned in teacher education institution as well as to receive feedback from students on this enactment, and (2) modelling of teacher educators and teachers in school. Both enablers might require further development of knowledge and skills of both teacher educators and cooperating school teachers.     

The beliefs and perceptions of pre-service teachers enrolled in a subject-area dominant teacher education program about “Effective Education”

Teacher educators and researchers have studied the improvement of teacher education programs so that pre-service teachers may be well prepared. Research has shown that not only teachers’ knowledge but also their beliefs have major influence on their approach to teaching. This present research examined the mathematics and science pre-service teachers’ beliefs and perceptions in Turkey. Specifically, the study focused on the student–teachers’ perspectives on “effective education” at the end of their subject area dominant program before the student teaching and the changes in those beliefs after having teaching experience. Many pre-service teachers described the teacher-centered environment as effective, and those who supported a student-centered environment discussed difficulties they faced in creating it during student and full-time teaching.     

Designing the ideal school as a transformative process: an approach to promoting teacher identity in pre-service teachers

This paper presents an approach to planning academic courses for pre-service teachers and for researching development of teacher identity. The approach was implemented in a course, conducted in an Israeli Master Teach program, designed to foster pre-service teacher identity transformation. The research described here addresses two questions: (1) To what extent does the approach contribute to the understanding of teacher identity formation? (2) Using this approach, how can pre-service teacher educators support teacher identity transformation? Using a metaphorical tool, students designed their ‘ideal school’ at the beginning and at the end of the course. Identity transformation was evaluated by comparing their designs. Demonstration of this approach methodology is presented through an analysis of the designs of one female student. Findings highlight the potential of this approach to reveal and cope with obstacles inhibiting transformative learning: narrow, imbalanced, inconsistent, and shallow perspective; rigid patterns of thinking; and lack of emotional awareness.     

Learning other people’s history: pre-service teachers’ developing African American historical knowledge

Drawing from the historical lens of cultural memory, I examined the development of three social studies pre-service teachers’ African American history knowledge. The participants were engaged in a rigorous summer reading program dedicated to learning African American history. This qualitative case study examined both pre and post interpretations of African American history and discussed the varied ways the subject was interpreted by the pre-service teachers. The findings indicated that the reading program influenced African American history knowledge both positively and negatively. The paper ends with recommendations for teacher educators interested in expanding the development of pre-service teachers’ knowledge of African American history.     

Can Technology Offer a Means of Mentoring Pre-service Teachers about Diversity?

This article discusses a project which has the goal of raising the awareness of pre-service teachers about the needs and potentials of low-income minority students through using technology to develop a comentoring community composed of teacher educators, teachers, pre-service students and elementary students. Using the interactive capabilities of video conferencing over the Internet, pre-service teachers engage in a 'virtual' field experience with a bilingual grade three classroom in a distant inner-city school. Pre-service teachers involved in the programme have the opportunity to be involved with students they would not experience in the local area, to be mentored by a teacher with knowledge of diversity, and to use technology in meaningful, productive ways. Benefits for participants—faculty, pre-service teachers, teachers in the school, and students in host classrooms—implications for pre-service teachers' understanding of diversity and limitations of the technology are discussed. 1     

“How will I get them to behave?”: Pre service teachers reflect on classroom management

This study examines how pre-service teachers think about disconnections between what they believe about teaching, what they learn in their university coursework, and what they observe of behaviour management practices in public school classrooms. Based on the reflective writings of teacher education students at an urban Midwestern university in the United States, this narrative research leads to a deeper understanding of how teacher educators can support and challenge future teachers in their ability to think critically and thoughtfully in developing their identities as future educators.