Process-oriented design principles for promoting self-regulated learning in primary teacher education

Many recent studies have stressed the importance of students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) skills for successful learning. Consequently, primary teacher educators have been encouraged by policy makers to increase their students’ SRL opportunities in educational pre-service programs. However, primary teacher educators often find it difficult to implement these innovations in their teaching. In the present study, a literature search concerning SRL was conducted. Based on this search, seven process-oriented design principles were formulated, resulting in an SRL model for primary teacher education. This SRL model provides more insight into relevant SRL aspects and can support SRL implementation in pre-service teacher education.     

Designing a Curriculum for Teacher Educators

This article describes the experiences of a small group with designing a curriculum for beginning teacher educators in teacher education institutes as well as in schools. Based on the Dutch professional standard for teacher educators, literature study, case studies and discussions with colleagues and experts, six groups of competences were formulated and an educational approach consisting of three learning tracks was developed.     

Educating the teacher educator—A Ugandan case study

Who educates teacher educators? How are teacher educators educated and prepared for their roles and tasks? This article uses a review of a two-year full-time Diploma in Teacher Education (DTE) for teacher educators in Uganda to engage with these questions. The article begins with a presentation of the Ugandan teacher education context and a literature review, focusing mainly on teacher educator knowledge, preparation, roles and tasks. It then presents the review process and discusses the main findings that emerged, exploring their implications for the education of teacher educators in Uganda and internationally. The main implications concern the critical role of teacher education pedagogy, context, teacher educator knowledge, tasks and roles, reflective practice, practitioner research, and the background, capacities and education of the educator of teacher educators.     

Teacher educators' competences in fostering student teachers’ proficiency in teaching and learning with technology: An overview of relevant research literature

Teacher educators play an important role in preparing student teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms. This article presents an overview of research literature on teacher educators' competences in preparing their students to teach with technology. A literature search yielded 26 relevant research articles. Four domains of competence were identified: technology competences, competences for pedagogical and educational technology use, beliefs about teaching and learning and competences in professional learning. The literature focuses on teacher educators’ competences in using technology for teaching. Research on the competences that teacher educators need and have as second-order teachers is lacking. Recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Teacher Educators' Readiness,Preparation, and Perceptions of Preparing Preservice Teachers in a Fully Online Environment: An Exploratory Study

With a view to attracting more students and offering flexible learning opportunities, online teaching and learning is becoming increasingly widespread across the higher education sector. It is now found across a wide range of disciplines (e.g., business, health, psychology, accounting, information technology) and program levels (e.g., from associate degrees to doctorate degrees). Online delivery is also strongly represented in the teacher education sector at many universities. Research of online delivery in higher education generally and teacher education specifically has pointed to a range of benefits and challenges associated with this mode of learning. Within the teacher education literature, many aspects of the online preparation of teachers remain poorly understood. More specifically, there is scant literature on the experiences and beliefs of teacher educators in relation to their readiness and preparation for online teaching as well as their beliefs in relation to the appropriateness of online education for preservice teachers. This article responds to this gap in the literature and reports on an exploratory study that worked with academic staff, teaching in a fully online teacher education course, at a mid-size Australian university. Twenty-seven teacher educators completed a 34-item questionnaire that consisted of closed and open-ended questions. With regards to readiness and preparation for teaching online, the majority of teacher educators reported lacking confidence and competence in the technological and pedagogical skills required to teach online. By and large, the study participants were welcoming of individualized “at-elbow” support that seemed to abate some of their fears of online teaching. The teacher educators were generally divided on whether the online classroom was an appropriate method for preparing preservice teachers. This article concludes with several recommendations for consideration by teacher educators who work in an online environment and sets the stage for a more ambitious study.     

Modelling by teacher educators

A desirable professional competency of teacher educators is the ability to explicitly model for their students, the thoughts and actions that underpin one's pedagogical approach. However desirable, the articulation of knowledge of practice is a difficult and complex task that demands considerable awareness of oneself, pedagogy and students. This article explores the nature and development of explicit modelling by two teacher educators in the context of a preservice education programme in an Australian University. The article illustrates how through their collaborative self-study, the teacher educator/authors have begun to conceptualise a pedagogy of teacher education that is based on learning from the experience of ‘being explicit’.     

Quality requirements for teacher educators

This study deals with the quality requirements that are needed for teacher educators. The tasks teacher educators have to do and the competencies they should possess (a professional profile), according to their fellow teacher educators, were identified. On the basis of a literature search on tasks and competencies of teacher educators, we made a first overview of tasks and competencies. Next, we conducted a Delphi study in three rounds, during which we held open-ended interviews and sent out two rounds of questionnaires. The resulting profile consists of five task areas and four areas of competence. For university-based teacher educators, a sixth task area (carrying out research) has been added.     

Service learning: preparing teachers to understand better culturally and linguistically diverse learners

Almost a decade ago, the new subject of citizenship was created in the English National Curriculum and several universities were funded to train teachers in this new subject. This presented a rare challenge, namely how to train people to teach a subject that did not exist in schools, and in which they were unlikely to have a specialist degree. In this article we have taken the opportunity afforded by the tenth birthday of the report in which Crick recommended this curriculum reform to reflect on that experience from the perspective of teacher educators. Through reflecting on the case study of citizenship education in England we highlight several themes that are of more general interest to teacher educators. The key issues that have emerged in this case study relate to the general problems of translating central policy into classroom practice; the nature and aims of subjects in the curriculum; and the identities of teachers in secondary schools. The article illustrates how teacher educators responded to the formidable challenge of creating (or at least contributing to) a new subject and a subject community.     

Teacher educators’ constructions of professionalism: a case study

This article addresses an under-researched area of teacher education by analysing teacher educators’ constructions of their professionalism and the constituent professional resources and senses of identity on which that professionalism draws. The research is an embedded case study of 36 teacher educators in two Schools of Education in England, using questionnaires and interviews. The study is framed by a broadly sociological concern with the (re)production of social patterns and relations through teacher education. The findings show that three modes of professionalism were constructed by educators within the sample group, with each deploying professional resources and senses of identity in varying ways to position individuals as credible and legitimate practitioners within the field of teacher education. The paper argues that professionalism may well be influenced by the complex interrelationships among individual biography, institutional setting, and national imperatives for teacher education.     

Teacher educators mediating curricular reform: anticipating the Australian curriculum

Many education systems are experiencing a re-scaling and consolidation of governance through rolling national agendas of standardisation and centralisation. The present article considers the case of Australia as it moves towards implementing its first national curriculum, to explore how teacher educators plan to retain pedagogical space for debate, diversity and contestation of such systemic curricular reform. The present article reports on an interview study conducted with nine teacher educators across the four curriculum areas included in the first wave of the Australian curriculum: English, science, mathematics and history. The analysis reveals how teacher educators reported professional dilemmas around curricular design, and planned to resolve such dilemmas between the anticipated changes and their preferences for what might have been. While different curricular areas displayed different patterns of professional dilemma, the teacher educators are shown to construe their role as one of active curriculum mediators, who, in recontextualising curricular reforms, will use the opportunity to reinsert both residualised and emergent alternatives in their students’ professional value sets. The study also identifies a new set of dilemmas emerging around the politicisation and standardisation of curriculum, and its impact on the teaching profession and teacher educators.     

Teacher education futures: today’s trends,tomorrow’s expectations

Education is facing significant political and contextual challenges that will impact its future. This study employs a Delphi methodology to investigate teacher educators’ views of current trends and their consequences for teacher education futures. Interviews were conducted with a sample of expert teacher educators drawn from eight countries. This provided international perspectives on both local and global trends. The data were analysed to identify and elaborate key themes reported by the participants. The article draws on these themes to develop brief narratives around current developments that the teacher educators argue will have a major impact on the future of teacher education. These narratives are used to develop possible scenarios to inform thinking about teacher education futures.     

Becoming a teacher educator: Voices of women academics in canadian faculties of education

Although much has been written on teacher education, voices of teacher educators have been ignored; we know little about their struggles and strategies. This article juxtaposes narratives of five women academics in Canadian faculties of education against the literature on continuity, change and critique in teacher education. I contend that a better understanding of these trends requires approaching them through narratives of involved individuals. The article focuses on the recruitment stage of a university career. For many, teacher education is a second career. Late entrants must “catch up,” while younger high flyers strive to reach ever-rising expectations of academic productivity.     

Examining the Challenges Early Childhood Teacher Candidates Face in Figuring Their Roles as Early Educators

Federal, state, and local policy makers' high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms are transforming the early childhood teacher education process. These reforms affect how early education teacher candidates figure their role as teachers. By employing Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain's conception of figured worlds to analyze the findings of a qualitative case study, this article examines how three early childhood teacher candidates' figured conceptions of themselves as early educators evolve in high-stakes classrooms and teacher education environments. It also investigates how these candidates see themselves addressing these reforms in their own classrooms. Such a study not only further details the impact reforms have on preservice teachers' conceptions of teaching, but it also provides a chance for early childhood teacher educators to consider strategies they might employ to assist their candidates in developing a figured conception of teaching that addresses these reforms in an developmentally appropriate manner.     

Perceptions and practices of multicultural education among Ethiopian secondary teacher education program officials,teacher educators and prospective teachers

This study explores the perceptions and practices of multicultural education among Ethiopian secondary teacher education program officials, teacher educators and prospective teachers. To that end, data were collected from secondary teacher education program officials, teacher educators and student teachers using questionnaire and interview. The data were analyzed by employing mixed methodologies. The study revealed that while Ethiopian secondary teacher education program officials and teacher educators have awareness about multicultural education, the prospective teachers’ awareness was found to be very low. Furthermore, there are inadequate practices of multicultural education in the secondary teacher education institutions. Suggestions which may enhance the implementation of multicultural education in the secondary teacher education program of the country and beyond are discussed in the article.     

What and how teacher educators prefer to learn

In which areas and domains do individual teacher educators prefer to work on their professional development? What kind of learning activities do they want to take on and with whom? Are there significant differences in these preferences between teacher educators? This article reports on a recent survey (N = 268) about the professional development of teacher educators and differences in learning preferences between less and more experienced teacher educators and between university-based and school-based teacher educators. Findings show, for example, that while most university-based teacher educators were mainly interested in improving their teaching, less experienced school-based teacher educators were more focussed on aspects such as coaching skills. In this study, ‘learning profiles’ have been developed for four categories of teacher educators. These profiles may help to create more meaningful arrangements for teacher educators’ initial education and further professional development in a context where teacher education is required to have a more school-based as well as a more research-based orientation.     

Building Bridges: A Cross-Disciplinary Peer-Coaching Self-Study

ABSTRACT

Cross-disciplinary self-studies and peer coaching have separately been shown to offer teacher educators meaningful professional development opportunities. However, the teacher educator literature has said little about combining cross-disciplinary self-studies with peer coaching. In this article, the authors report a two-year cross-disciplinary peer-coaching self-study by experienced teacher educators, one from English Language Arts and one from Mathematics Education. The purpose of the self-study was to examine the connections that bridge the two disciplines and the differences between disciplines that offer new perspectives. Results revealed important process connections involving standards for practice and academic vocabulary. The self-study also illuminated meaningful new perspectives about what questions are asked during whole-class discussion and how data is generated during student collaboration. This study demonstrates the benefits of combining cross-disciplinary teacher educator collaboration with peer coaching and has implications for individual teacher educators and teacher education programs.     

Teacher educators’ expertise: what do novice teachers and teacher educators say?

Expertise of teachers has been the topic of many studies in the field of teacher education published in recent years. Less attention is, however, given to expertise of teacher educators; the focus of this study. The study examines the issue by discussing some of the literature on the subject, and by asking novice teachers and teacher educators about the characteristics of good teacher educators, the professional knowledge of teacher educators and the difference between the expertise of teacher educators and teachers. Findings indicate that even though there is much overlapping in the expertise of the two groups of professionals, there are also distinct differences of importance to the current discussion on standards and education for teacher educators.     

Critical issues in supporting self-study

In this article, we focus on an analysis of critical issues in supporting teacher educators conducting a self-study. As data, we have used the digital logbooks written by the participating teacher educators, the outcomes of the interviews we held at the end of the support process, and of a follow-up questionnaire answered by the participating teacher educators six months later. We have found seven issues critical to enhancing the chances of self-studies being beneficial to the practice of teacher education as well as to the further development of a knowledge base for teacher education. In addition, our study points to four themes for further attention and research.     

Helping Preservice Teachers Learn to Teach for Understanding in this Era of High-stakes Early Education Reform

As early childhood education becomes more regulated through a range of education reforms and mandates, early childhood teacher educators are seeking ways to prepare their preservice teachers to address these policy constraints through appropriate teaching practices that foster learning with understanding. Using the National Research Council’s conception of learning as a framework for analysis, this article considers strategies to achieve this goal by first presenting findings from a case study that examined the training of a sample of preservice teachers who were both educated in high-stakes learning classrooms as well as taught to be early educators in these same environments. This article then uses these findings to the make case for practical and political approaches to teaching that can assist teacher educators in preparing their students for this regulated field of early education.