Taking and teaching the test are not the same: a case study of first-year teachers’ experiences in high-stakes contexts

Background: Policymakers’ use of high-stakes exams to improve students’ academic achievement affects teachers and their tenure in the field at all levels of schooling. Novice teachers now being inducted into the field have been educated almost exclusively in these high-stakes learning environments. Yet, how their familiarity with these contexts combined with their experiences in their own classrooms affect novices’ induction into the field of teaching has not been fully examined. Aim: This article presents findings from an investigation into the experiences of two first-year teachers who were educated and trained to be teachers in the same high-stakes education system in which they taught. It examines how these first-year teachers viewed policymakers’ reforms affecting their teaching and tenure in the field. Methods: This qualitative case study centers on the experiences of two first-year teachers working in the same high-stakes standards-based accountability teaching context in which they were educated – the case. This study provides insight into the issue of how novices’ familiarity with high-stakes reform combined with their experiences in their own classrooms impacts their conceptions of their teaching and their tenure in the field. Outcomes: The findings from this case study reveal how policymakers’ high-stakes reforms impacted the development of these novice teachers in significant ways. Not only did they have to learn how to teach as they taught, but they also had to ensure they were teaching all of their students to pass the high-stakes exams. Their varied experiences also demonstrate how these high-stakes exams can ‘test’ beginning teachers out of the classroom. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that first-year teachers’ familiarity with policymakers’ high-stakes reforms is not enough to prepare them for the expectation that they immediately improve students’ academic achievement on high-stakes exams. Such findings not only challenge what it means to be a educator in these contexts, but they also shed light on how larger political and economic forces impact the teaching and tenure of novices. To support new teachers, teacher educators and mentors should rethink the education and induction processes while helping novices understand as well as prepare for the role context plays in their teaching and development as professionals.     

You Must Be Present to Win

Data show that 46% of all teachers in public schools will leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching (Ingersoll, 2003). These data refer to teachers from all disciplines including physical education. To address these problems school districts have developed teacher induction programs that show promising results. Our literature search revealed a range of teacher induction studies based on the general population of teachers, but limited information exists specific to physical education teacher induction programs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine major issues surrounding teacher shortages and retention, to illustrate how school districts have addressed these problems through teacher induction programs, and to determine implications for the field of physical education. In addition, recommendations are provided for bridging physical education teaching licensure programs with teacher induction.     

Helping Pre-Service and Beginning Teachers Examine and Reframe Assumptions About Themselves as Teachers and Change Agents: “Who is Going to Listen to You Anyway?”

The focus of this article is how to ensure (beginning) teachers’ needs as practitioners are part of the discursive dialogue in physical education teacher education programs. We consider the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency,’ teachers as ‘change agents’ and refer to ‘workplace learning’ as we examine the extent to which the social structure of the school and the teaching profession, and?/?or the capacity of the individual to act independently, ultimately determines a teacher's behaviour in reaction to teaching expectations. We are interested as physical education teacher education faculty in how we (1) strive to help pre-service teachers examine and reframe assumptions about themselves as teachers and change agents, and (2) examine taken-for-granted school practices and processes. We share ways that physical education teacher education programs could encourage pre-service teachers agency and the relationship between initial teacher education and induction.     

Preservice secondary subject teachers incorporating movement integration into classroom practice

The present study explores Finnish preservice subject teachers’ perspectives and experiences with movement integration in academic classrooms. In the study, 44 subject teachers applied an integrated approach to infuse physical activity into a required teacher-preparatory course. The program’s framework is the constructivist learning approach. Data were collected through interviews, classroom observations and field notes. The findings show that movement integration was a new concept for the preservice teachers and that their experience positively influenced their beliefs regarding the use of that concept in academic lessons. Thus, it is possible to support implementation of movement integration into secondary academic classrooms.     

From university to working life: an analysis of field-based studies in early childhood teacher education and recently graduated kindergarten teachers’ transition to work

The aim of this article was to shed light on problematic issues related to the practical element in early childhood teacher education. We approach these questions mainly through scrutinizing and interpreting this part of kindergarten teachers’ university education in Finland. We then expand our analysis to include the broader issues of job commitment and the role of mentoring programmes among newly qualified kindergarten teachers. With the ‘kindergarten teacher as researcher’ as the chosen teacher model, our findings indicate that this aim can only be realistically achieved if all stages of the teacher education process are effectively linked. Key elements begin with the entry requirements for students and include productively connecting practicum experiences with on-campus courses, establishing a ‘double supervision model’, and cooperating with a stable network of early childhood centres for field studies. A further finding is that, despite a successfully completed professional education, the induction phase in the workplace can be a vulnerable time for novice teachers, suggesting an urgent need for mentoring programmes.     

Reading a mentoring situation: one aspect of learning to mentor

This paper describes and interprets the meanings that one novice mentor attributes to ‘reading a mentoring situation’, an organizing metaphor for describing how one experienced teacher of English learns to analyze one aspect of her learning in talking to mentor teachers of English throughout her first year of induction into mentoring. The study revealed that learning to become a mentor is a conscious process of induction into a different teaching context and does not ‘emerge’ naturally from being a good teacher of children. Thus, at an operational level, teacher education programs should prepare teachers for this passage by encouraging the dissemination of in-service courses that allow novice mentors the opportunity to articulate the construction of their new role. Such courses can be structured as ‘learning conversations’ whereby mentors are encouraged to reflect on their roles in the company of fellow mentors, mediated by an experienced mentor of mentors.     

中考体育部分项目训练方法探研

自从体育被纳入中考之后,提升学生中考体育成绩已成为广大体育教师关注的焦点。对中考体育项目训练方法进行探研,能使训练更加科学和高效,在增强学生体质,促进学生身心健康的基础上,提高学生中考体育成绩。文章结合教学实践,对中考体育部分项目训练方法进行探研。     

Call me teacher: the quest of new teachers

This narrative inquiry presents the experiences of a group of 10 new primary teachers grappling with relationships in the social context of their school environment during their first year of teaching. Their lived experiences are plotted together in the story of Gemma to provide one insight into the emotional dimension of attaining the identity of a real teacher in schools with individualistic cultures. Readers can add their stories to enrich interpretations of the text, extending the collaborative process beyond this group, to understand the difficulties faced by some new teachers motivated to say ‘call me teacher’. The paper concludes with a plea to take account of the emotional needs, as well as the professional development needs, of new teachers in the induction process by differentiating induction procedures and raising awareness of the different cultures experienced by new teachers during their placement as they strive to attain a positive identity.     

Threatening the patriarchy: teaching as performance

This article brings into conversation theories of performance and performativity to argue that the analogy of a teacher as a performer is a very complex discourse that both empowers and disempowers women teachers. As the field of teachers is increasingly comprised of women and the education policy and administrative leadership fields is increasingly comprised of men, there is an equally disturbing increase in the amount of disciplining, standardisation, and evaluation of teachers’ practices within schools in recent decades. The author argues that the perceived feminisation of the teaching field produces a situation in which teachers’ performance is threatening to the patriarchal institutions, causing further surveillance upon women and their role. Yet, in contrast, an analogy of performance also can allow teachers to subvert hegemonic patriarchal practices. Central to this discussion are notions of threat, corporeality, and temporality. The author concludes with examples of how teachers and researchers have successfully subverted and re-appropriated the teaching as performance analogy for the betterment of teachers, despite the complexity of this discourse.     

多彩与广泛:民国时期高等师范学校教师日常交往活动研究

民国时期六所国立高等师范学校的教师除学校课堂教学活动之外,还存在广泛的日常交往,因交往主体与交往空间的不同,可概分为校外场域的私人交往、学校场域的教师交往和课外场域的师生交往三种类型。登门互访、结伴出行、鸿雁传书、电话通讯等不同交往方式,校务讨论会、游戏活动、指导社团等各式交往活动共同构成了教师丰富多彩的日常交往图景。当前大学教师应通过多种交往形式,促进日常交往的多元化发展,推动感情融洽、和谐温馨的教师与朋友、同事、学生关系。     

Exploring the dyad: the relationship establishment between a novice physical education teacher and his mentor

The retention of new teachers is a noteworthy issue among physical education teachers. One way to combat attrition is with the implementation of induction programs that have a strong emphasis on mentoring. Mentoring creates a growth-in-connection for the novice physical education teacher as well as the mentor. The relational cultural theory (RCT) develops relationships based in situational boundaries between the mentor and the mentee. RCT explores the nature of human development based on the individuals involved in these relationships. The purpose of the study was to explore the perception of the relationship between a novice physical education teacher and his mentor and to determine if the mentoring relationship between the participants reflected the RCT model. Observations, interviews, and the researcher’s journal were used as a means for data collection. In this study, meaningful relationships occurred in the working relationship, as well as the personal relationship. It was indicated that when meaningful relationships are established, novice physical education teachers are more confident in their teaching abilities and are more likely stay in the profession.     

教师课堂霸权现象对小学生的影响与对策

当今的素质教育,是以人为本的教育,是以学生为本的教育,促进学生的全面发展。转变教学方式,给学生更多的主动性,而不是教师控制其言行。在一种和谐的教学氛围中,教师能够充分尊重学生的想法,做到教学具有启发性,这样才会有利于学生的身心健康。教师的霸权现象会造成恶性循环,以致阻碍了学生思维的创造性和发散性,不利于学习和成长。     

论教师良好的外表形象在师生关系建立中的作用

师生关系并不是一个新的话题,但教育界一直没有停止对师生关系的讨论。本文以教师外表形象这一概念为切入点,深入研究教师形象魅力的在师生关系建立中的作用,使教师从中获得一定的教育启示。并且借助形象设计技能,为教师更好地完善自身形象探索路径。     

A Conceptual Framework for Assessment Literacy: Opportunities for Physical Education Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

Although more nuanced understandings of assessment have been proposed in the physical education literature, assessment practices remain relatively underdeveloped, and when used, tend to focus on traditional, summative evaluations of learning. However, physical education teacher education programs can be used as an intervention to help pre-service teachers develop assessment knowledge and skill. Toward this end, the purpose of this article is to propose an evidence-based framework for helping pre-service teachers develop assessment literacy that is rooted in occupational socialization theory. The framework provides a four-phase approach to integrating assessment into teacher education, and includes suggestions for how physical education teacher educators can progressively help build pre-service teachers’ assessment knowledge in line with the focus given to instruction and planning. These suggestions acknowledge the technical and sociocultural aspects of learning to use assessment. Implications are discussed along with the need to help graduating pre-service teachers transfer lessons learned into the workplace.     

Promoting Conceptual Development in Physics Teacher Education: Cognitive-Historical Reconstruction of Electromagnetic Induction Law

In teaching physics, the history of physics offers fruitful starting points for designing instruction. I introduce here an approach that uses historical cognitive processes to enhance the conceptual development of pre-service physics teachers’ knowledge. It applies a method called cognitive-historical approach, introduced to the cognitive sciences by Nersessian (Cognitive Models of Science. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 3–45, 1992). The approach combines the analyses of actual scientific practices in the history of science with the analytical tools and theories of contemporary cognitive sciences in order to produce knowledge of how conceptual structures are constructed and changed in science. Hence, the cognitive-historical analysis indirectly produces knowledge about the human cognition. Here, a way to use the cognitive-historical approach for didactical purposes is introduced. In this application, the cognitive processes in the history of physics are combined with current physics knowledge in order to create a cognitive-historical reconstruction of a certain quantity or law for the needs of physics teacher education. A principal aim of developing the approach has been that pre-service physics teachers must know how the physical concepts and laws are or can be formed and justified. As a practical example of the developed approach, a cognitive-historical reconstruction of the electromagnetic induction law was produced. For evaluating the uses of the cognitive-historical reconstruction, a teaching sequence for pre-service physics teachers was conducted. The initial and final reports of twenty-four students were analyzed through a qualitative categorization of students’ justifications of knowledge. The results show a conceptual development in the students’ explanations and justifications of how the electromagnetic induction law can be formed.     

新教师专业发展:从师徒带教走向专业学习社群

新教师在入职后将面临专业知识、情绪感受和社会适应的专业困境,而目前新教师专业发展的主要形式——入职教育和师徒制——所秉持的仍然是传统教师专业发展范式,忽视新教师自主。因此,未来新教师专业发展应从专业学习社群的角度来建构,为新教师提供社群土壤。     

How do you get pre-service teachers to become ‘good at ICT’ in their subject teaching? The views of expert practitioners

The paper reports on a particular strand of the outcomes of the English contribution to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development comparative study, ICT in Initial Teacher Training, which aimed to develop insights into how courses of initial teacher training prepare student teachers to use information and communications technology (ICT) effectively in their teaching. The paper extracts from the broader dataset the views of practitioners who were identified as being particularly ‘expert’ in their use of ICT, on what strategies and interventions are most helpful in developing teachers who are able to use ICT to enhance learning in their subject teaching, and also what it means ‘to be good at ICT’ as a subject teacher. Although some findings confirm research elsewhere on the importance of Technological and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) frameworks, other aspects of the study question some of the assumptions which have been made about teacher induction in this field in England, which may have implications for the training of pre-service teachers in other countries.     

‘You should collaborate,children’: a study of teachers’ design and facilitation of children’s collaboration around touchscreens

Touchscreens are being integrated into classrooms to support collaborative learning, yet little empirical evidence has been presented regarding how children collaborate using touchscreens in classrooms. In particular, minimal research has been directed towards how teachers can design for and guide children’s touchscreen-based collaboration. Concurrently, the Programme for International Student Assessment and other international organisations have highlighted collaboration and ICT skills as crucial competencies for mastery in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, this article presents three narrative cases from a touchscreen project in Denmark, where 41 second-grade children and three teachers from two classrooms participated. The cases are based on ethnographic field data and 150 hours of video footage of natural occurring interaction in classroom settings. The ethnographic field data and video footage are examined using a collaboration model and embodied interaction analysis. Each case presents features of the subtle processes of children’s collaboration around touchscreens and teachers’ role in designing and guiding such collaboration. Thus, this article illustrates teachers’ and children’s situated processes of integrating touchscreens for collaborative activities in their classrooms.     

福建普通高校教师余暇锻炼现状研究

采用文献资料法、问卷调查法和数理统计等方法,对福建省19所高校教师1 900名非体育专业教师体育锻炼情况进行调查研究。结果发现:普通高校教师健康状况自我感觉良好,大多数教师参加体育锻炼态度较积极,但是绝大部分教师认为其体育锻炼不科学,且多数教师锻炼前的准备活动不充分甚至不做;同时,盲目追求大运动量,缺乏专业的指导,导致近半数的教师受到不同程度的身体损伤。在此基础上建议政府和高校要加大全民健身计划的宣传力度,对高校教师健身观念进行正确的引导;高校各级领导加强对教职工余暇锻炼的支持力度,增加教职工体育活动经费的投入;各高校工会应充分发挥其桥梁、纽带作用,为高校教师营造良好的体育锻炼氛围。     

Teachers and Polish children: capturing changes in the linguistic field

This article presents original insights into the English learning experiences of Polish children and contributes a longitudinal perspective on teachers’ relationships with them. Data from interviews conducted in 2016 with primary school teachers, Polish children and their parents are compared with outcomes from an earlier study ending in 2009, in order to examine whether teachers’ practice for their Polish children has persisted or changed. Previously, findings suggested that teachers in England are constrained by a monolingually-oriented curriculum and that they identify Polish children as a ‘model minority’. In the current study, interviews with teachers, parents and children were used to develop and question these findings. Using Bourdieuian notions of linguistic field, habitus and capital, data analysis illuminates: the changing responses of teachers to migration; the ways in which teachers’ pedagogy has adapted for children who have English as an additional language; and the fluid nature of children’s linguistic identities.