Stopping to thinks school‐based and higher education‐based primary student teachers' reflections on their learning

This paper examines trainees' perceptions of the impact, on secondary mathematics trainees, of collaborative school‐based work involving small groups of trainees, a university tutor and a class teacher. The findings suggest that trainees' become better able to plan and deliver a coherent yet diverse sequence of lessons, that their awareness of children's learning styles and misconceptions was raised and that preconceived notions about teaching and learning were challenged and mediated. A few trainees found the experience unhelpful and threatening. The role of the tutor was found to influence trainees' responses to the program and, to an extent, moderate the effects of variations in teacher involvement. Some implications are discussed.     

The Role of the HEI Tutor in Initial Teacher Education School-based Placements

One area of great change and continuing development in the UK is the mentoring role of the Higher Education Institution (HEI) tutor during trainees' school-based professional placements. It might be suggested that with schools assuming ever greater responsibilities for trainees the role of the HEI tutor in school is diminishing and may even become extinct. This paper suggests that whilst tutors' roles are clearly changing, tutors have a crucial role to play in minimising the limitations and maximising the undoubted benefits of professional placements. A wide range of issues relating to trainees' placement schools, HEIs, the development of school-based mentors and trainee teachers, and the role of the HEI tutor are evaluated with suggestions for improving future practice.     

Team-based simulations: Learning ethical conduct in teacher trainee programs

This study aimed to identify the learning aspects of team-based simulations (TBS) through the analysis of ethical incidents experienced by 50 teacher trainees. A four-dimensional model emerged: learning to make decisions in a “supportive-forgiving” environment; learning to develop standards of care; learning to reduce misconduct; and learning to develop an integrative approach. Most of the simulations differed from the original incidents. The reason for these discrepancies may be due to the fact that trainees' decision making depends greatly on the context and people involved. Findings suggest that teacher training programs should incorporate TBS as an integral part of their curriculum.     

Trainee Change through Teacher Training: A case study in training English language teachers in Spain

In the course of giving greater importance to trainees' previous knowledge about and experience of teaching and learning foreign languages, the role of teacher training courses as agents of change has recently been questioned. Through a research project reported in this article I tried to find out to what extent two teacher training courses I was recently involved in caused trainees to change their points of view in relation to some of the fundamental issues involved in teaching. Special attention was given to the sources of these modifications, particularly to the role that teaching practice plays in them.     

The Relationship of Facilitative Functioning to Effective Peer Supervision

This study was conducted to investigate the process of peer supervision. The criterion used was counselor trainees' growth in facilitative functioning. The study sought to ascertain whether the facilitative counselor trainee was also the effective peer supervisor, to provide information on evaluating the peer-supervisory experience, and to shed light on the most effective techniques of supervision. Peer supervisors were found to be effective in improving the performance of counselor trainees in the core dimensions of empathy, respect, genuineness, and concreteness. A significant positive correlation was found between peer supervisors' level of empathy in the counseling relationship and the trainees' ratings of supervisors on the relationship questionnaire. No significant correlation was found, however, between the trainees' ratings of their supervisors and the improvement demonstrated by the trainees in the core conditions. In addition, no significant correlation was found between the extent of the trainees' improvement and the supervisors' level of functioning as counselors. The relationship between trainees' responses to the supervisor role-analysis form and their improvement in counseling skills suggested that the most effective supervisors were structured, didactic, and more technique oriented.     

Primary Teacher Trainees: identity formation in an age of anxiety

This paper considers primary teacher trainees' understandings about touching the children in their care. A sample of 182 graduating trainees in Auckland, New Zealand, was surveyed. The majority considered touching children to be a source of regulation and anxiety for them. The paper suggests that the trainees' insistence on ‘being aware’, taken together with their failure to name ‘sexual abuse’ as an explicit concern, is unlikely to produce a capacity to engage critically with what is at stake for teachers in an era of heightened anxiety about child vulnerability.     

Training special educators: sustaining professional development in special school placements

With the rapidly changing demographic due to survival rates from medical advances, the need to strengthen training on SEND is now recognised, and special school placements valued, having been previously marginalised within initial teacher training. Practices developed since 2008 at one university to support progression of trainees to gain advanced and specialist skills in SEND were evaluated for effectiveness. This involved ten school mentors, 14 primary trainees on four‐week extended enrichment placements and three trainees with prior experience on final formally assessed seven‐week placements in special schools. This article presents the resulting consolidated developmental placement structures and a proposed compulsory one‐week model for trainees to gain core skills, underpinned by a shared understanding of trainee professional development needs and related support systems. Quality mentoring practices and sustaining trainees' emotional learning journey were integral to their developing pedagogical skills and understanding, so endorsing the debate for more humanistic approaches to teacher training.     

Supervised Teaching Practice as a Partnership Process: Novice and experienced student-teachers' perceptions

The article examines the views trainee teachers on a Postgraduate Diploma in Education Course have about their Supervised Teaching Practice (STP). Data obtained through quantitative and qualitative methods revealed that in general the trainees held a positive view of the STP. A closer examination indicated some differences between novice and experienced trainees in their perception of the role of the STP and its impact on their teaching and learning. Experienced trainees tended to evaluate the STP from a pedagogical perspective, perceiving it as a valuable mechanism for facilitating their teaching. But novice trainees tended to be more concerned with the contextual and technical aspects of the STP being less ready to contemplate its impact on their teaching. Results suggested that trainees' years of teaching experience is an important factor to be considered when conducting the STP. Implications are drawn about the role of the supervisor in helping novice trainees overcome their concerns associated with the early stages of professional development; clarifying the role of the supervisor; the need for involving a school mentor in the STP, and strengthening the existing school-university partnership in teacher education.     

Becoming a lecturer in further education in England: the construction of professional identity and the role of communities of practice

Further education colleges in England offer a wide range of post‐school education and training provision. Recently they have undergone major transformations that have resulted in considerable changes to the work of those teaching in them. In this paper we examine how cultures of learning and teaching in colleges are affected and how the nature of professional identity has changed. The paper considers the formation of professional identity amongst a group of trainee lecturers completing a one‐year full‐time teacher‐training course at a university in the English Midlands. Lave and Wenger's work on apprenticeship to communities of practice is used to examine the effect of trainees' teaching placement on the development of professional identity. Rather than identifying effective processes of increasing participation in existing communities of practice, a strong sense of marginalisation and alienation amongst trainees was observed. The paper argues that this is detrimental both to trainees and experienced lecturers if they are to actively engage in building new forms of professionalism for the future.     

The synthesis of subject and pedagogy for effective learning and teaching in primary science education

The issue of science subject knowledge, and how to address the demands of this for both practising and trainee primary teachers, has constituted a core research enterprise in recent decades. The Professional Standards for Qualified Teacher Status entail considerable conceptual demands for many primary trainees. Generating meaningful causal explanations of scientific phenomena lies at the heart of both the scientific endeavour itself, and of effective classroom teaching. To focus on knowledge acquisition per se in teacher education, however, obscures the critical issue of subject‐related pedagogical knowledge that ultimately influences classroom practice. This article explores the development of both subject knowledge and subject‐related pedagogical knowledge in science education. It is informed by science education literature, as well as by a substantial body of empirical research into trainees' learning of aspects of physical science accumulated over a five‐year period. Learners' perspectives of the synthesis of subject and pedagogy raise important questions concerning the nature of teacher education.     

The Usefulness of Educational Research for Trainee Teachers' Learning

In this paper the authors argue that subject-related educational research can play an important role in trainee teachers' learning since it provides a disciplined perspective from which trainees can derive new ideas and understandings related to their own developing practice as well as a critical basis from which to formulate, examine and justify their views through reference to a wider, collective pool of experience. However, the authors strongly argue that research will only contribute usefully to trainees' learning provided certain fundamental principles governing the inclusion of research within the structure of the training course as a whole are applied. In the first section of the paper the authors define ten necessary principles which determine the conditions for successful use of research-based ideas in trainees' learning. Research-based ideas introduced on a training course, it is argued, must be seen by trainees, and subject mentors, to have a significant practical relevance with regard to classroom practice. The ideas and arguments must be carefully selected and strategically integrated within a course and must elicit informed critical evaluation. The second half of the paper consists of two illustrative examples of how these principles are applied in the integration of two research-based ideas ('inductive grammar teaching' and 'Interpretations of History') on the Modern Foreign Languages and History PGCE courses at the University of Cambridge School of Education.     

Microcounseling: Techniques in Assessing Clients' Attitudes toward Guidance Tests

Microcounseling techniques were used to conduct an experimental study. The objective was to train naive college students who were interested in counseling to assess clients' attitudes toward guidance tests. A correlation of .797 was obtained between clients' ratings of attitudes toward tests and the trainees' ratings of clients' attitudes toward tests. Findings were consistent with the results of other microcounseling studies. Individual differences among the trainees were noted and comparisons were made between the trainees' own ratings, judges' ratings, and clients' ratings of trainees. Lack of a control group imposes a serious limitation on interpretation of the results.     

Effects of Counselor's Ordinal Position When Involved in Role Play Practice in Triads

To investigate the effects of the order of being the counselor when involved in role-play practice, 36 novice trainees were assigned to counseling triads and then to the levels of ordinal position—counselor first, second, or third. Each participant also served as a client and as an observer within the triad. No difference among the three ordinal positions was found in the trainees' abilities to produce reflection of feeling responses. Similarly, there were no differences between those trainees who functioned as as observers before being the role-play counselor. There was a significant positive linear trend, however, for ordinal position (i.e., the accuracy of the trainees' reflection of feeling responses steadily improved from first counselor role play to third counselor role play). These results are discussed from a social-learning theory perspective.     

Student Teachers' Perceptions of the Effectiveness of their Initial Preparation

What influences how well-prepared student teachers feel towards working in schools upon completion of their initial teacher preparation (ITP)? In order to investigate this question, we used a path analysis using data from a longitudinal study investigating the experiences of trainee and early career phase teachers in England. The data were generated via self-complete questionnaires and follow-up telephone interviews with 1,322 trainees. Those on undergraduate or school-based programmes felt better prepared to work as teachers than one-year postgraduate trainees, perhaps because the former give higher ratings of the quality of assessment of, and feedback received on, teaching practice, and because of the clarity of theory-practice links in programmes. Across different kinds of ITP programme, good relationships with school-based mentors significantly boosted trainees' confidence that their ITP had effectively prepared them for teaching. Trainees' motives for entering the profession and their initial concerns about and expectations of ITP also affected their perceptions of its effectiveness, by shaping the way they experienced aspects of their courses. Implications of these findings for policy and practice in teacher preparation are discussed.     

A theoretical model and analysis of the effect of self-regulation on attrition from voluntary online training

A theoretical model is presented that examines self-regulatory processes and trainee characteristics as predictors of attrition from voluntary online training in order to determine who is at risk of dropping out and the processes that occur during training that determine when they are at risk of dropping out. Attrition increased following declines in trainees' commitment to training and self-efficacy. Trainees lower in conscientiousness were more vulnerable to dropping out than those higher in conscientiousness, and this effect was fully mediated by self-regulatory processes. Conscientiousness also moderated the effects of commitment and self-efficacy on attrition—a high level of conscientiousness provided a buffer against dropping out when trainees' commitment and self-efficacy declined during training. The number of hours that trainees worked per week moderated the effort/attrition relationship; spending extra time reviewing increased attrition for trainees who worked longer hours and decreased attrition for trainees who worked shorter hours.     

Old habits die hard: literacy practices of pre-service teachers

Reading methodology in pre-service teacher training may not be effective because of the literacy beliefs and practices of the trainees. This paper examines the reading practices of a group of pre-service teachers (n=29) in Singapore. Their personal approach to reading revealed that the majority split reading into two domains: leisure reading and academic reading. Trainees use multiple strategies in reading but these are confined to their leisure reading; for academic reading, they adopt a different set of strategies that are geared to remembering rather than comprehension or evaluation. These representations of reading and the associated strategies are developed and reinforced during their schooling. Due to the lack of congruence between the training and trainees' own representations, trainees fall back on remembered routines during their teaching.     

Every Child Matters: the perceptions of a sample of initial teacher education trainees in England

We discuss an investigation into the understandings of trainee teachers about government policy, using, as an example, the UK government's ‘Every Child Matters’ (ECM). We discuss the research methods used to gather and analyse data from 197 initial teacher education trainees in three institutions in England drawn from six subject areas. The project focussed on trainees' reactions to the anticipated outcomes of ECM and their confidence to help implement the initiative in their roles as form tutors (home room teachers) and subject teachers. Trainees react positively to ECM but reveal uncertainty about its precise meaning and about the roles they would need to adopt as teachers. We suggest that it is problematic for governments to expect teacher education communities to assist with the implementation of policies that have been inadequately characterised. We make recommendations about the role of initial teacher education in the further development of ECM.     

Next Steps for Mind,Brain, and Education: Strengthening Early‐Career Development

An increasing number of scholars are being trained in the field of mind, brain, and education (MBE), yet discussions of trainees' needs and how to meet them are rare. We, the inaugural International Mind, Brain, and Education Society (IMBES) Trainee Board, identify three broad needs of MBE trainees: guidance and support, greater access to and connections among the MBE community, and professional development. We report a first step to address these needs: a daylong trainee conference, which included sessions to foster connections among trainees, provide mentorship from MBE leaders, and provide knowledge and skill building for careers. Attendees' survey results suggest the conference successfully supported trainees' development. As substantial trainee needs remain, we offer specific ways that principal investigators, institutions, funding agencies, future IMBES trainee boards, and the MBE community can further address trainees' needs to support early‐career development and strengthen the MBE field generally.     

Meeting the requirements of the initial teacher training national curriculum for the use of information and communications technology in subject teaching,with one year's cohort of postgraduate primary trainees

Abstract

This article reports on a small-scale investigation into the effectiveness of a new information and communications technology (ICT) module for Postgraduate Certificate of Education primary trainees. The trainees are audited and later surveyed. Those involved with training in the school/university partnership are also questioned about the trainees' use of ICT in the classroom. A survey of attitude towards the use of ICT in primary schools gives interesting results which in many ways reinforce the expectations of this type of investigation. Two definitions of the usefulness of work with computers in the primary school are offered: for future functionality, and for wider learning benefits. The article concludes that the module was effective, but with certain provisos. The notions of future functionality and wider learning benefits are highlighted as an area for further investigation with a view to recommending more explicit involvement of trainees and with more well-defined, subject-centred work in ICT