What and how do student teachers learn during school-based teacher education

This study looks at how student teachers learn to teach during school-based teacher education. It explores the changes that occurred in the practical theories of the student teachers and how the student teachers made these modifications. Eight student teachers were closely monitored during their training. The study's findings show that all student teachers developed broad, well-structured practical theories that focused on pupils' learning processes. Their learning processes displayed considerable individual variation. As a result of these findings, several questions have been formulated for further research concerning the impact of learning style on learning outcomes and learning in a work-based context.     

Mexican-American Students’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Expectations: Do Perceptions Differ Depending on Student Achievement Levels?

This exploratory study examines the learning beliefs of high and low achieving, low-income Mexican-American students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 ninth grade students. The qualitative analysis shows that students’ perceptions of their teachers’ expectations of a “good” student or a “not so good” student did not differ along achievement lines. However, the students’ perceptions about what it means to be a good student differentiated the low-achievers from the high-achievers. This study’s findings may be used to inform educators about Mexican-American students’ orientation towards school and learning, in hopes for creating more equitable educational settings where all students achieve to their fullest potential.

Restructuring reforms in Turkish teacher education: Modernisation and development in a dynamic environment

The paper examines the effectiveness of recent reforms in teacher education in Turkey, specifically the restructuring of programmes in university faculties of education. It first, briefly, sets the reforms of the 1990s in an historical context, prior to the 1997 Act which increased the length of compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years, and the 1998 restructuring of faculties of education. It considers the national need for the restructuring of teacher education and the issues involved. The thrust of the paper is a study of how teacher educators across the country perceive both the changes and their effect on the quality of teacher education, methodology as a discipline, school partnerships, and relationships with the Ministry of National Education.     

Activism through attrition?: An exploration of viral resignation letters and the teachers who wrote them

In recent years, there has emerged a new phenomenon in response to contemporary educational policies: public teacher resignation letters. Through the theoretical frames of participatory democracy and identity, and analyzed in light of literature on teacher attrition and activism, we investigate the following questions with 8 teacher resigners: (1) What are the rationales of and implications for teachers to resign in public ways? (2) How are teachers' public resignation letters a reflection of their personal and professional identities?     

试论复杂性教育理论的脉络结构和意蕴

复杂性科学蓬勃发展为其融入教育领域的研究提供了必要和充分的条件,随着研究的逐渐深入和扩展,构建复杂性教育理论的框架不啻为一个有益的尝试。为了能够更加清晰地掌握复杂性教育理论的脉络结构和意蕴,可以从知识的复杂性和整体与部分的关系、认知的复杂性和元认知、教师的复杂性和统一性与多样化的关系、学生发展的复杂性和非线性与不确定性、教育生态的复杂性和全球化与相互依存、教育价值的复杂性和三重实在与两种文化等六个方面加以剖析和阐释。     

All that glitters is not gold: Challenges of teacher and school leader licensure licensing system in Qatar

In 2001, the Government of Qatar began a comprehensive education reform (Education for a New Era) based on RAND's recommendations and options for building an educational system that would meet the country's changing needs. Nine years later, Qatar's educational landscape has significantly changed. Among these changes is the introduction of Professional Standards for teacher and school leaders and Qatar's first system for the registration and licensing of teachers and school leaders that are directly linked to the professional standards. This study seeks to analyze school leaders’ perspectives regarding the Qatar National Professional Standards for Teachers and School Leaders and the recently introduced accompanying licensure system. The study reports results from questionnaires addressed to 74 school leaders. These findings illuminate problematic issues and indicate that these policies use ambiguous terminology and procedures, ignore local educators’ input, and provide unrealistic expectations of society, lack consistency and created resistance on the part of educators. Discussion is provided that centers on the implications of importing educational products and the need to take into account the local culture in implementing these products.     

Elementary mathematics teachers’ judgment accuracy and calibration accuracy: Do they predict students’ mathematics achievement outcomes?

In this study we investigated whether elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of their students, as reflected in both the accuracy and confidence with which they are able to estimate their students’ task-specific performance on sets of mathematics problems, predicted students’ overall mathematics achievement. Thirty-nine teachers made predictions about the performance of a random sample of target students (n = 150) in their classrooms on sets of “easy” and “difficult” multiplication and division problems. Teachers also provided confidence ratings for those judgments. From these data, indicators of teachers’ judgment accuracy, judgment confidence and calibration accuracy (a measure of metacognitive monitoring) were then related to all of their students’ (n = 834) performance on year-end standardized mathematics achievement tests. Multilevel analyses indicate that teachers’ calibration accuracy, but not their task-specific judgment accuracy, significantly predicted students’ mathematics achievement. Implications for future research on teacher knowledge as well as professional development programs are discussed.     

Classroom management and students' mathematics achievement: The role of students’ disruptive behavior and teacher classroom management

Establishing a well-organized classroom conducive to learning is a key element of high-quality teaching. However, less is known about the degree to which the classroom management process is affected by the specific students in the classroom. Using two large-scale datasets of German secondary school students, the present two studies examined the effectiveness of teachers' classroom management in mathematics while taking into account students' disruptive behavior in the classroom. When controlling for the average level of disruptions in the classroom, both students' disruptive behavior and teachers' monitoring activity were negatively associated with students' mathematics achievement, whereas no associations occurred for teachers' structure and rule clarity. The results suggest that teachers' monitoring activity needs to take into account students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom, highlighting the complexity of effective classroom management.