Transactions between class teachers and student teachers

Interactions are explored between three pairs of class teachers and B.Ed student teachers on school experience in a traditional context. The main issues raised are the benefits of having students — expected and real — for the teacher, the features inherent in a successful class teacher/student teacher relationship and the implications of the research findings for the new partnership models of school experience. It is suggested that class teachers are prepared to invest expertise and time to support the students with the expectation of deriving benefits for their classes.     

Certification and specialized competencies for teachers in gifted education programs

This article describes the value of Piaget's equilibration theory for understanding characteristics of the young gifted child. Key elements of equilibration theory are discussed. Differences in the equilibration patterns in gifted children are described and application of equilibration to other than cognitive systems is considered. The article concludes with some ideas for teachers and parents to help gifted young children search for equilibrium.     

Impact of teacher competencies on student emotions: A multi-method approach

As a consequence of international educational studies like TIMSS and PISA, quality of instruction has become a central topic in the discussion between educators, researchers, and policymakers. Teacher competencies are preconditions for instructional quality.This study focuses on the impact of perceived teacher competencies on student well-being and anxiety in physics instruction. Student emotions are one important aspect of the educational process and supposed preconditions of sustainable learning processes. In the study, we combine both qualitative and quantitative methods using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. In total, 431 students from 16 classes participated in this study: 24 students and eight physics teachers were participants of the qualitative study. Each teacher taught two classes, and therefore a comparison of the ratings of each teacher by students of two different classes was possible.The results of our study confirm the assumption that perceived teacher competencies have an impact on student emotions. Analysis of the qualitative data supports the quantitative results and demonstrates the importance of teacher competencies for student emotions. By comparing qualitative and quantitative results, we demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Consequently, we suggest a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.     

女子院校的教师礼仪探析

教师是人类灵魂的工程师,担负教书育人、为人师表的神圣职责。在传承文明的同时,自己的言行也于无形中影响、熏陶着学生,成为为学生传道、授业、解惑的楷模。认真组织全体教师学习教师基本礼仪规范,端正教师的教学态度,提升教师的文明礼仪水平,让教师用自己的人格魅力去感染学生,让学生从中汲取文明礼仪的养分,使教师在校园内成为学生学习的榜样,真正达到教书育人的良好效果。     

Education--a joint task for parents,kindergarten teachers and kindergarten student teachers

The aim of this research was to find out what kindergarten teachers, parents and kindergarten student teachers think about education and about themselves as educators. The basic question was: what kind of similarities and differences are there between these groups of educators? The sample consisted of 21 parents, 28 kindergarten teachers and 37 kindergarten student teachers voluntarily taking part in the study. The data were collected using thematic interviews and an open-ended questionnaire. The approach used to analyse the material was phenomenography. The results show that the groups of educators between themselves had quite similar conceptions of education and of being educators of small children. However, some differences were also found. The division of the conceptions of education was: education as a societal function or socialization, education as a way of supporting a child's development, education as care, and education as work and action. All groups, but especially parents, regarded education primarily as a societal function. All three groups paid rather little attention to education as a function of becoming a human being. Education as a function of care occurred in the conceptions of some educators. The conceptions of being an educator were linked to characteristic features of educators, to working with children, to commitment and self-confidence at work and to demands on and responsibility of an educator. In particular, parents paid attention to the demands and responsibility of being an educator. Kindergarten teachers and kindergarten student teachers emphasized working with children and commitment to education.     

Help-seeking behaviour of student teachers

Background

Student teachers struggle with a wide range of problems because they are lacking professional knowledge, inexperienced in dealing with colleagues and students, and unfamiliar with school environments. It is essential for the survival of student teachers to establish supportive relationships for professional and personal help. Traditional support mechanisms for student teachers, such as cooperating teachers and university supervising teachers, often fail to provide the needed help. Analysing student teachers' help-seeking behaviour provides an avenue to explore the support they received.

Purpose

The study investigates how student teachers seek assistance. Using a Help-seeking behaviour questionnaire, student teachers' critical problems and their efforts to find assistance are examined.

Sample

The participants were 40 student teachers in a secondary education teacher certificate programme at a university in Taipei, Taiwan. The participants belonged to a class of about 100 student teachers who did their internships at local junior and senior high schools. The participants were teaching in eight subjects, and about two-thirds were female. Every student teacher was assigned a supervising teacher from the university and a cooperating teacher at the placement school.

Design and methods

The questionnaire asked the student teachers to pick a critical problem that they had encountered during the previous week. They were asked to describe the problem, whom they asked for help, how many times and through which communication channel the help was provided. The questionnaire was administered during March and May 2001. Critical problems were sorted into categories. Frequencies and percentages of the help-seeking instances were accumulated for different people and problem categories.

Results

Some student teachers requested help many times; others made a limited number of requests. The number of requests ranged from 1 to 38 per problem, with an average of 12 requests per problem. Among the requests for help (n = 935), only 2% were directed to university supervisors. The student teachers sought help from the cooperating teacher 15% of the time, and 41% of the time they asked student teacher peers for assistance. About 90% of the communication was face to face, 9% was by phone and 1% was by email. The largest number of requests dealt with problems of individual students (19%). The second and third largest problem categories were administration and policy issues (16%) and lack of spare time (15%).

Conclusions

Peer support should be cultivated in teacher training programmes because peer student teachers' help was most frequently sought. Cooperating teachers and university supervising teachers' communication with student teachers can be improved. Various ways of contacting student teachers can be encouraged, but face-to-face communication must still be supported. It is important to keep finding new ways to assess the effectiveness of student teacher support. The results of the Help-seeking behaviour questionnaire can be used to examine the impact of programmes to improve student teaching.     

Weblog-based electronic portfolios for student teachers in Taiwan

This paper explored how the use of weblogs within the portfolio framework affected portfolio production and development for student teachers, and how the weblog-based electronic portfolio (WBEP) shaped student teachers’ reflective practice during the student teaching practicum. The individuals participating in this study consisted of 31 elementary school student teachers from a national university’s teacher education program in Taiwan. Qualitative data analysis revealed that about half the participants’ WBEP maturation level were at Level 2, the Curriculum Vitae WBEP. The two most prominent features of the WBEP platform on participants’ reflective practice were personal editorship and dialogues with others. Additionally, blog publicity promoted mandated dossier-like portfolios with which to evaluate performance with respect to external evaluation requirements. Thus, the reflective themes of most WBEP contents were rather uniform in the study.     

Preparing student teachers for alternative assessment in science

This material is based upon work supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation California State University Student Teaching Development Project (DOE-9250027) and the W. M. Keck Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding ordanizations.     

高师院校“双向校本师生培训模式”研究

教师教育一体化是当今教师教育发展的基本走向。章在分析现行高师师资培训局限性的基础上,借鉴校本培训的理念、成果,尝试建立高师院校的“双向校本师生培训模式”,并对其理念、运作以及支持系统等问题进行了研究和实验。     

Some new evidence on teacher and student competencies

This paper reports statistical analysis of the determinants of average student performance on standardized examinations, and also the determinants of the extent to which students fail such examinations. Unlike most other cross-sectional studies of performance among school districts within one state, this study uses the quality of teachers, as measured by standardized test scores, as a determinant of performance. Perhaps the most striking empirical result of the study is the finding that a 1% increase in teacher quality, as measured by standardized test scores, is accompanied by a 5% decline in the rate of failure of students on standardized competency examinations. The corresponding impact on average or mean achievement of teacher quality is. by contrast, quite modest: 0.5%–0.8% per 1% improvement in teacher quality.