Student teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of children with special educational needs in the ordinary school

Given that research has suggested that the successful implementation of any inclusive policy is largely dependent on educators being positive about it, a survey was undertaken into the attitudes of student teachers toward the inclusion of children with special needs in the ordinary school. The sample was comprised of 135 students who were completing their teacher training courses at a university School of Education. The analysis revealed that the respondents held positive attitudes toward the general concept of inclusion but their perceived competence dropped significantly according to the severity of children's needs as identified by the UK “Code of Practice for the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs”. Moreover, children with emotional and behavioural difficulties were seen as potentially causing more concern and stress than those with other types of special needs. Finally, the survey raised issues about the breadth and quality of initial teacher training in the UK. Nevertheless, the recommendations provided at the end of this paper regarding teacher training are applicable beyond the UK context.     

The Recruitment of New Teachers from Minority Ethnic Groups

This article reports on part of a larger, ongoing two-year investigation supported by the Teacher Training Agency into the recruitment of new teachers from minority ethnic backgrounds via Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in England. The authors focus here on interviews with admissions tutors, course directors and other senior staff at teacher training institutions. The interviews revealed differences between institutions in the measures taken to attract minority ethnic students. The research indicates a need for much clearer guidelines for admissions tutors on the issues surrounding the question of 'positive action' on the recruitment of new teachers from minority ethnic groups.     

The role of postsecondary Education Institutions in the U.S. Department of Education's adult literacy initiative

On September 7, 1983, the U.S. Department of Education announced a nationwide adult literacy initiative designed “... to promote functional literacy for the entire adult populations.” The department is committed to conducting several activities to attack and solve the problem of adult literacy. Two of the activities pertain specifically to postsecondary education. They are:

? working with postsecondary education institutions to develop demonstration programs utilizing college work-study students in adult literacy programs;

? promoting college student involvement through literacy tutoring experiences in college courses and through student volunteerism.

The authors believe that there should be much greater participation in the initiative by postsecondary education institutions, and they propose that more extensive participation can be attained through the institutions' performance of their usual functions of teaching, service, and research.     

Student teachers' perceptions of poverty and educational achievement

This paper reports on a mixed methods study carried out within the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme at the University of Oxford on the ways that the course sought to frame and address the link between poverty and poorer educational outcomes. The study was concerned with the views held by ITE students on the effects of poverty on pupils' learning, well-being, and educational achievement. The paper initially explores why these questions are important, how they are framed internationally, and how they relate to current education policy, particularly in England. Data were collected from student teacher pre- and post-PGCE course questionnaires and a focus group discussion. The findings showed a tendency for student teachers to associate low achievement more strongly with family and cultural factors than with socio-economic or school factors, although there was some evidence that the thinking of some students changed during their programme. Implications for policy and practice in ITE are discussed with a view to ensuring that the social justice commitments espoused by many such courses are actually enabled more effectively to influence the learning experiences of beginning teachers.     

An investigation of general education requirements in college curricula

The subject of study is the impact of general education or “core” requirements on students in the Purdue School of Humanities, Social Science, and Education. The investigation, begun in 1969, deals with approximately 1100 beginning freshmen of which over 400 make up the experimental group. All students are being followed through their undergraduate years, the first two of which are reported here. The experimental group is differentiated from the other groups in that its constituents have been permitted to waive any or all core requirements. The experimental group has achieved a higher grade index while carrying a slightly higher course load. Contrary to expectation, they selected many core courses. They also indicated greater satisfaction with their programs, their school, and the University. Core requirements for future students have been modified as a result.     

Australian Early Childhood Teacher Education: Developments and Concerns

The history of early childhood teacher education in Australia dates back to 1897 with the establishment of the Kindergarten Union Teachers' Training College in Sydney. Since the 1970's, small, specialized, private teachers' colleges in each state have emerged to become part of the national government system of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE's). These institutions had as a primary goal to teach rather than to conduct research about teaching. CAE's have historically been primarily responsible for vocationally-oriented professional courses of study such as nursing, teaching, social welfare, media and communications, fine arts and health studies. It was in this CAE's system where students were prepared to be early childhood, elementary, and secondary teachers. These programs lead to a three-year Diploma of Teaching or a four-year Bachelor of Education. This approach was based on the Australian pattern of specialized teacher training which was generally provided immediately upon graduation from high school. Universities provided training in early childhood-related areas such as psychology, psychiatry, social work and medicine but did not include specialized early childhood teacher preparation per se (although they do provide secondary teacher preparation).     

Pedagogy and Post-coloniality: Teaching “Education” online

The academic study of Education1 1. A capital E is used when Education refers to Education as an academic subject or discipline. A lower case e is used to refer to education as a process. View all notes (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of “contrapuntal reading” with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course directly confront the fact of their everyday involvement in their object of study, Education. How do the questions raised by post-colonial and other critical social writers “appear” from such a position? How does the fact of our involvement complicate our theoretical or scientific knowledge of these? By means of an episodic, narrative form of writing, this paper describes a life history pedagogy for teaching a compulsory “social issues” course online to New Zealand pre-service teacher education students. As data I draw on online conversations with and between students as they engage in the production of contextualized life history interview narratives.     

GOVERNMENT MEMORANDUM ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE NETHERLANDS DURING THE NEXT DECADE

The information below gives the basic elements of the policy memorandum entitled “Higher Education in the Future: possible development in the long‐term and initiatives in the coming years” which was submitted to the Second Chamber for discussion, and which includes proposals for basic changes in the future higher education system of the Netherlands, such as:

• creation of one system of higher education with no distinction between university and higher vocational training;

• introduction of as large a range of courses as possible;

• inclusion of student research only where the study programme requires it;

• introduction of a more general type of higher education in addition, to courses providing students with specific professional qualifications.

     

The tensions of preparing pre-service teachers to be assessment capable and profession-ready

There is both a growing appreciation of teacher assessment capability for the improvement of school student learning and achievement and a commensurate drive for graduates in Australian Initial Teacher Education institutions to demonstrate impact on school student learning as part of a national accreditation process. We argue in this article that if institutions are to prepare assessment capable graduates who are “profession-ready”, attention to practice architectures is warranted. Practice architectures are the features in schools that enable and/or constrain practice. Skills, knowledge and understandings do not just cleanly transfer across Initial Teacher Education institutions and practicum contexts into graduate teacher classrooms. Practitioner identities are produced through “relatings” within specific social-political arrangement, “doings” that constitute activities afforded in material-economic conditions, and “sayings” that are a dominating medium in cultural-discursive frameworks.     

Norway's regional colleges

The regional college movement in Norway is in direct response to societal pressure felt worldwide to democratize and decentralize higher education. Created in 1969 as a three-college system coordinated by the Regional College section of the Ministry of Education, the current six institutions represent Norway's attempt to extend equal opportunity and employment-oriented education to rural and remote areas. Although initially established on a five-year experimental basis, the institutions appear to be in a solid position, having university endorsement as well as strong support of the local community constituencies. Another prominent factor giving support to the regional college movement is the egalitarian nature of Norwegian society. The “folkekögskole” (folk high school or people's college) which had become the accepted preparation for teacher training institutions throughout Scandinavia, helped to strengthen the case for short-term career-oriented education. The regional colleges operate with a high degree of administrative autonomy to allow each institution maximum freedom to develop regional identities. From the beginning, innovation and experimentation have been officially encouraged. Faculty and students participate broadly in institutional policy development, and at several colleges, in the actual day-to-day decision making process. The Ministry and institutional leaders appear firmly committed to goals expressed in the planning reports and in the enabling legislation: to prepare students for immediate employment in specific occupations and for further education in universities and professional schools, and to offer educational opportunities, including general education, for adults. Consideration in long-range planning should be given to:

1. Faculty development programs and training for administrators
2. Perfecting communication channels, and
3. Improving instructional efficiency through such means as an instructional resource center and an educational development team on each campus to encourage new ideas on improving instruction.

     

Counseling and advisory service for adult learners: An Open University perspective

The nature of counselling and advisory services which the Open University offers its students and applicants is dictated by the fact that its students are learning at a distance, are adults, and are not engaged in full-time study. In addition, a policy of open entry means that while some students come from a background of higher education, others have few or no previous qualifications. These factors require the University to try to provide an individual service to its applicants and students whenever possible. In pursuit of this aim students are allocated to Tutor-Counsellors, part-time staff who are locally based and who have a continuing responsibility for the progress of individual students from their initial registration until graduation. These Tutor-Counsellors play a considerable part in determining the extent, nature, and timing of the resources with which the university can support an individual student. Tuition for higher level specialist courses is normally provided by tutors at a greater distance, with the Tutor-Counsellors continuing to provide local generalist support. The Open University has set up a regional infra-structure of full-time academic and administrative staff for the support, briefing, supervision, and organization of this local network of part-time staff.     

Change in Teacher Education: interpreting and experiencing new professional roles

In this paper we consider the effect of moves by the British Government to make initial teacher education (ITE) in England and Wales more school‐based (Blake, 1993). To monitor the impact of this shift towards school‐based training we conducted a fine grain study of what was happening on the ground within the one‐year Secondary School‐Based Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute of Higher Education (ChIHE). * *At the time the research was conducted, the Institute's name was the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, hence interviewees refer to ‘WSIHE’ and ‘West Sussex’. View all notes Data were gathered from questionnaire surveys and interviews. Findings from our regional case study indicate that while school‐based ITE programmes may offer student teachers greater insight into school life, this should not be at the expense of developing students’ analytical and theoretical understanding of education and schooling promoted within higher education‐based work.     

Learning Communities' Impact on Student Success in Developmental English

Recent efforts to improve developmental education have included references to learning communities as examples of effective practices in basic skills education. The study “Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges” (2007 Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges . ( 2007 ). Sacramento , CA : The Center for Student Success, Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges.  [Google Scholar]) cited research from Tinto that suggested that learning communities and collaborative learning activities were effective in improving academic performance and persistence of developmental students. The improvement is because “students encounter learning as a shared experience rather than isolated experience,” and that learning communities “emphasizing collaborative learning have a positive impact on student attitudes toward learning” (Tinto, 1997b, cited in “Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges,” 2007 Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges . ( 2007 ). Sacramento , CA : The Center for Student Success, Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges.  [Google Scholar], p. 58). The problem under investigation in this study was whether learning communities were effective in improving student success in community college developmental English courses, and whether there were differences in learning community outcomes among gender and racial/ethnic groups. Student success was defined, for the purpose of this study, as successful course completion. This study of the impact of a learning community on success in developmental English in an urban community college demonstrated that learning communities are effective in assisting students to succeed in higher level developmental English courses. This level of success was not demonstrated in the lowest level developmental English courses, however.     

Effective integration of information and communications technology in teacher education

Abstract

Effective delivery of the new information technology (IT) curriculum for student teachers in the United Kingdom, which started in September 1998, is an important challenge for initial teacher training institutions. This article identifies three main obstacles that may limit its successful implementation – student access to computers, the communications and information technology (ICT) policy adopted by initial teacher training providers and the lack of encouragement for students to use ICT on teaching practice. The work is based on a survey carried out in 1997 of lecturers and students in three teacher training institutions in Northern Ireland. The findings have led to the proposal of basic guidelines to contribute towards the development and implementation of an effective ICT policy in initial teacher training institutions.     

Knocking on the door to the teaching profession? Modeling the entry of prospective teachers into the workforce

We use a unique longitudinal sample of student teachers (“interns”) from six Washington state teacher training institutions to investigate patterns of entry into the teaching workforce. We estimate split population models that simultaneously estimate the impact of individual characteristics and student teaching experiences on the timing and probability of initial hiring as a public school teacher. Not surprisingly, we find that interns endorsed to teach in “difficult-to-staff” areas are more likely to find employment as public school teachers than interns endorsed in other areas. Younger interns, white interns, and interns who completed their student teaching in suburban schools are also more likely to find a teaching job, all else equal. Prospective teachers who do their internships at schools that have more teacher turnover are more likely to find employment, often at those schools. On the other hand, few of the characteristics of an intern's cooperating teacher are predictive of workforce entry. Finally, interns with higher credential exam scores are more likely to be hired by the school where they did their student teaching.     

Mentoring in Action on a Primary PGCE Course

Abstract

School‐based mentors are taking increased responsibility for the initial training of student teachers as a result of government policy to lengthen the proportion of time students spend in school during their training. The role of the mentor is critical in the development of a partnership model of initial teacher education (ITE), involving close collaboration between higher education institutions (HEIs) and schools. This article draws on our research into the practice of mentoring on the one‐year Primary Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute. Through observations of mentoring sessions at school we analyse the process of mentoring in action. Drawing on mentor observations and interviews with mentors, students and college (link) tutors we examine the diverse nature of mentoring and identify some of the common qualities of good mentoring practice.     

Agreement between student achievement level and teacher judgment of student need for compensatory education

Teacher judgments of student need for compensatory education (CE) agree moderately with scores on the CTBS. If a CTBS cutting score at the 35th percentile is adopted, a near-maximum agreement rate (for about three-fourths of the students) is obtained. The accuracy of teacher judgments is not influenced by the racial/ethnic or economic characteristics of the students, extent of individualization of instruction, how students are selected for compensatory services, or teacher's training and experience.The research is based on work performed under Contract No. OE300-75-0332, with the U.S. Office of Education. The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Office of Education positions or policy.     

Becoming a teacher of early reading: charting the knowledge and practices of pre‐service and newly qualified teachers

Education policy in England requires student teachers to demonstrate effective teaching of early reading, including systematic synthetic phonics, in order to qualify to teach. Although there is a range of literature about initial teacher education, little is documented about how pre‐service or ‘student' teachers develop specific knowledge and practices for teaching early reading and how they apply these in their first term as newly qualified teachers (NQTs). This research used a primarily qualitative longitudinal, collective case study design involving seven lower primary (3–7 years) postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) students enrolled at one university in the East Midlands of England. Semi‐structured interviews, classroom observations and documentary analysis with the students and their teacher mentors were used to gather data from entry onto the course to the participants' first term as qualified teachers. A thematic analysis was applied in conjunction with deductive observation codes developed from a previous study. Findings indicate a broad continuum of progression in student and newly qualified teacher knowledge and practice for teaching early reading which could be used to inform university organisation, mentoring and school participation. They highlight the influence of school cultures on the experiences of student and pre‐service teachers.     

School and campus interaction: a Canadian experiment in teacher preparation

Milburn, D. “School and campus interaction: a Canadian experiment in teacher preparation,” Revue ATEE Journal 3 (1980) 147‐155.

Information on the School Campus Interaction Programme (SCIP); an experiment in teacher education at the Faculty of Education of the University of British Columbia, Canada. SCIP aimed at closer interaction between the practice school and the university faculty and its students. This was achieved by giving students continuous school experience throughout the year, whereas students were always accompanied by and working with their teachers. The continual presence of the didactics professors in the practice school proved to be especially beneficial for the students as well as the schools. All participants in the programme reacted very positively to the programme.

The time spent in the practice school was increased largely at the expense of the available time for didactics, which was a matter of concern for the faculty members. However, this decrease in time for courses in didactics was found to be beneficial not only for the whole training course, but for those courses as well.