Development of the Beliefs about Primary Education Scale: Distinguishing a developmental and transmissive dimension

In this article the development and validation of the Beliefs about Primary Education Scale (BPES) are described. The BPES is an 18-item scale for assessing primary school teachers’ beliefs toward the nature of good education, subdivided in a transmissive dimension (TD) and a developmental dimension (DD). Both dimensions assess beliefs toward the general orientation and objectives of education, the nature of the educational content, and desirable ways of knowledge acquisition. An explorative study (n=352$n=352$) revealed a two-factor structure. Both dimensions were uncorrelated, which leads to the suggestion that teachers hold layered belief systems. In a following study (n=381), construct validity of the BPES was confirmed. The BPES’ DD and TD were shown to correlate significantly with constructivist and traditional teaching beliefs.     

Performance of the S[... formula ...]2 Statistic for the Multidimensional Graded Response Model

S−χ2 is a popular item fit index that is available in commercial software packages such as flexMIRT. However, no research has systematically examined the performance of S−χ2 for detecting item misfit within the context of the multidimensional graded response model (MGRM). The primary goal of this study was to evaluate the performance of S−χ2 under two practical misfit scenarios: first, all items are misfitting due to model misspecification, and second, a small subset of items violate the underlying assumptions of the MGRM. Simulation studies showed that caution should be exercised when reporting item fit results of polytomous items using S−χ2 within the context of the MGRM, because of its inflated false positive rates (FPRs), especially with a small sample size and a long test. S−χ2 performed well when detecting overall model misfit as well as item misfit for a small subset of items when the ordinality assumption was violated. However, under a number of conditions of model misspecification or items violating the homogeneous discrimination assumption, even though true positive rates (TPRs) of S−χ2 were high when a small sample size was coupled with a long test, the inflated FPRs were generally directly related to increasing TPRs. There was also a suggestion that performance of S−χ2 was affected by the magnitude of misfit within an item. There was no evidence that FPRs for fitting items were exacerbated by the presence of a small percentage of misfitting items among them.     

Critically Conscious or Dangerously Dysconscious?: An Analysis of Teacher Candidates' Concerns in Urban Schools

Drawing on a teacher concerns framework, alongside notions of critical consciousness, this article examines the extent to which teacher candidates' (TCs') concerns are related in any way to the critical scholarship they have engaged with throughout their teacher education coursework. Utilizing teacher candidates' written dilemmas of practice during student teaching as the primary data source, the authors utilize consensual qualitative research for data analysis and share results within and across concern categories as related to notions of critical consciousness and dysconsciousness (King, 1991). Results indicate that TCs' posted self concerns lacked a critical inward journey; that TCs were more likely to be critically conscious regarding their own positionality in schools, yet overwhelmingly dysconscious when talking about students and families; and that large percentages of dysconscious task concerns seem related to TCs' lack of critically conscious posts about self. The authors suggest the importance of more focused mentorship and assignments aimed at asking questions designed to promote critically conscious ways of being in classrooms, and similarly suggest the importance of considering notions of critical consciousness in concerns-based studies moving forward. The authors end with a note of caution on the movement toward “core practices” in teacher preparation and instead suggest the importance of programming that focuses on uncovering and eradicating dysconsciousness among TCs working with historically marginalized youth.     

Teachers’ opinions on quality criteria for Competency Assessment Programs

Quality control policies towards Dutch vocational schools have changed dramatically because the government questioned examination quality. Schools must now demonstrate assessment quality to a new Examination Quality Center. Since teachers often design assessments, they must be involved in quality issues. This study therefore explores teachers’ opinions on assessment quality evaluation criteria. Pre-vocational and vocational teachers (N=211$N=211$) responded to a questionnaire. Contrary to expectations, results show that teachers deem classical and competency-based quality criteria equally important. Vocational teachers gave higher importance scores than pre-vocational teachers, possibly due to the pressure they experience to improve the quality of their assessments.     

Using possible-selves theory to understand the identity development of new teachers

Questions about identity and future success often occupy the thinking of individuals during life transitions. Possible-selves theory describes how future-oriented thought provides identity-relevant information and motivation to pursue self-relevant goals. Expected and feared possible selves of beginning teachers (n = 221) were analyzed revealing four main categories (i.e., interpersonal relationships, classroom management, instruction, and professionalism). Differences between student and beginning inservice teachers suggest a transitional trajectory that could have implications for understanding the “how” of teacher identity development. Possible-selves theory may help bring a degree of unity across divergent frameworks and help link identity to broader issues of teacher development.     

Language teachers: Research and studies in language(s) education,teaching, and learning in Teaching and Teacher Education, 1985–2012

The article reviews twelve of 79 articles focusing on language teachers, language(s) teacher education, teaching, and learning published in Teaching and Teacher Education since 1985. The twelve articles, divided into three sections, include narrative inquiry and identity, teacher education topics, and contexts. The articles provide local and contextual expressions that taken together begin to compose a landscape or sphere where various language education researchers share wonderments and puzzlements, queries and inquiries, and insights and understandings. The TATE articles provide puzzle pieces lending evidence to a plausible postdisciplinarity sphere of growing and developing research and studies in language(s) teacher education.     

A seven year longitudinal multi-factor assessment of teaching concerns development through preparation and early years of teaching

This study was designed to assess, over a seven year period from the commencement of teacher preparation through five years of teaching, the development of teachers' self, impact, and task concerns as formulated by Fuller for a longitudinal sample of teachers (N = 60) and to determine what, if any, personal and academic attributes of teachers might be associated with these teachers' changes in concerns about teaching as postulated by the Fuller model. Statistically significant developmental changes in the teachers' concerns about teaching were identified with concerns about survival as a teacher (self concerns) decreasing and concerns about the task of teaching increasing, as hypothesized by Fuller; whereas the teachers' impact upon pupil concerns were highest in intensity but relatively stable at all four points in career development. Interactions between career stages and teacher characteristics were identified, however, indicating that the self and impact concerns can not be adequately explained by just points of time in career development as also hypothesized by Fuller. Concerns about teaching were found to be related to grade point averages, gender, and personality type but not with basic academic skills, academic majors, family characteristics, ACT scores, and locus of control orientations.     

The impact of shared book reading on children's language skills: A meta-analysis

Shared book reading is thought to have a positive impact on young children's language development, with shared reading interventions often run in an attempt to boost children's language skills. However, despite the volume of research in this area, a number of issues remain outstanding. The current meta-analysis explored whether shared reading interventions are equally effective (a) across a range of study designs; (b) across a range of different outcome variables; and (c) for children from different SES groups. It also explored the potentially moderating effects of intervention duration, child age, use of dialogic reading techniques, person delivering the intervention and mode of intervention delivery.Our results show that, while there is an effect of shared reading on language development, this effect is smaller than reported in previous meta-analyses ($\bar{g}$ = 0.194, p = .002). They also show that this effect is moderated by the type of control group used and is negligible in studies with active control groups ($\bar{g}$ = 0.028, p = .703). Finally, they show no significant effects of differences in outcome variable (ps ≥ .286), socio-economic status (p = .658), or any of our other potential moderators (ps ≥ .077), and non-significant effects for studies with follow-ups ($\bar{g}$ = 0.139, p = .200). On the basis of these results, we make a number of recommendations for researchers and educators about the design and implementation of future shared reading interventions.     

How failure shapes teacher identities: Pre-service elementary school and mathematics teachers’ narrated possible selves

This study explored pre-service teachers’ possible teacher selves with respect to how they have been shaped by their experiences of math failure. The study contributes to identity research by applying the theory of possible selves and by comparing and contrasting narrated possible teacher selves of pre-service elementary school teachers and pre-service mathematics teachers. Three categories of possible selves were identified: teacher traits and actions, student strategies, and teacher self-development. How possible teacher selves may inform teacher identity development and teacher preparation in the context of teaching mathematics is discussed, as are methodological considerations for examining narrated possible selves.