Beyond teacher training: Singaporean teacher preparation in the era of new educational initiatives

This article attempts to identify the limitations inherent in the model of teacher preparation as training within the context of current educational reforms in Singapore. Through clarifying the distinction between training and education, this article argues that two largely overlooked aspects of teacher education—one concerning transforming the beliefs of pre‐service teachers, and the other concerning initiating teachers into a wider context of worthwhile perspectives and understanding—are highly desirable, if pre‐service teachers are to teach the new ways and to become well‐informed and morally‐sensitive professionals. The article, therefore, purports to underscore the need for a broader vision of teacher preparation, and argues for the central role of theory in the education of teachers.     

Get real: making problematic the pathway into the teaching profession

Learning to be a teacher is a complex and very personal matter that involves transformation from student teacher (pre‐service teacher) to teacher. The pathway to being a teacher is scattered with what appears to be competing tensions in various realities. This paper explores those tensions and realities through the context of two final year integrated field‐ and campus‐based subjects that all pre‐service teachers undertake as they complete their four‐year teacher education journey into the primary (ages 5‐ to 12‐years‐old) teaching profession. We then propose a framework involving a variety of realities that pre‐service teachers face through the recognition and resolution of the tensions these pre‐service teachers experience in the workplace.     

Attitudes and self‐efficacy of pre‐service teachers towards inclusion in Pakistan

This study sought to determine the attitudes and teaching self‐efficacy of pre‐service teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities into regular classrooms. A questionnaire was administered to 194 pre‐service Pakistani teachers (male 73, female 121) enrolled in a 1‐year teacher education programme at a government university in Pakistan. Overall, male pre‐service teachers expressed more positive attitudes than their female counterparts regarding the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. Surprisingly, those pre‐service teachers majoring in special education did not express more positive attitudes towards inclusion than their counterparts who were preparing to teach in mainstream schools. However, participants with training in special education, knowledge of disability legislation, teaching experience and personal experience with a disability reported higher levels of self‐efficacy towards teaching within inclusive settings. The findings of the study are discussed with possible implications for policy‐makers and teacher educators in Pakistan and other countries in the South Asian region.     

Things Fall Apart and Come Together: Using the Visual for Reflection in Alternative Teacher Education Programmes

In this article, we focus on the use of the visual for reflection in ‘alternative’ pre‐service teacher education and, in particular, we address the question: How and what can we learn about teacher education using the visual? By way of illustration, we focus on the use of pre‐service teachers’ photographs in a public exhibition, participatory video documentary production and pre‐service teachers’ use of photographs in their professional teaching portfolios. The article draws from research done in relation to three alternative pre‐service teacher education projects based at McGill University in Canada and the University of KwaZulu‐Natal in South Africa.     

‘I never imagined I’d have to teach these children’: providing authentic learning experiences for secondary pre‐service teachers in teaching students with special needs

This article describes a collaborative and cross‐curricula initiative undertaken in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The project involved developing an integrated approach to providing professional year pre‐service secondary teacher education students with experiences that would assist them to develop their knowledge and skills to teach students with special needs in their classrooms. These experiences were undertaken in the authentic teaching and learning context of a post‐school literacy program for young adults with intellectual disabilities. In preliminary interviews pre‐service teachers revealed that they lacked experience, knowledge and understanding related to teaching students with special needs, and felt that their teacher education program lacked focus in this field. This project was developed in response to these expressed needs. Through participating in the project, pre‐service teachers’ knowledge and understanding about working with students with diverse learning needs were developed as they undertook real and purposeful tasks in an authentic context.     

Preservice elementary teachers' views of their students' prior knowledge of science

Pre‐service teachers face many challenges as they learn to teach in ways that are different from their own educational experiences. Pre‐service teachers often enter teacher education courses with pre‐conceptions about teaching and learning that may or may not be consistent with contemporary learning theory. To build on preservice teachers' prior knowledge, we need to identify the types of views they have when entering teacher education courses and the views they develop throughout these courses. The study reported here focuses specifically on preservice teachers' views of their own students' prior knowledge and the implications these views have on their understanding of the formative assessment process. Sixty‐one preservice teachers were studied from three sections of a science methods course. Results indicate that preservice teachers exhibited a limited number of views about students' prior knowledge. These views tended to privilege either academic or experience‐based concepts for different aspects of formative assessment, in contrast to contemporary perspectives on teaching for understanding. Rather than considering these views as misconceptions, it is argued that it is more useful to consider them as resources for further development of a more flexible concept of formative assessment. Four common views are discussed in detail and applied to science teacher education. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 497–523, 2008     

Pre‐service teachers’ preconceptions,misconceptions, and concerns about virtual schooling

Over the last decade, online distance education has become a common mode of study in most states in the USA, where it is known as virtual schooling (VS), but many people have misconceptions about it. Pre‐service teachers’ personal histories as students and their preconceptions, misconceptions, and concerns influence pre‐service teacher training experiences. A qualitative study of an introductory field experience course that included this new mode of schooling for the first time analyzed the personal journals and online discussion responses of 65 pre‐service teachers in the USA. Analysis identified that common misconceptions and concerns included career threat, viability of VS, academic dishonesty, reduced interaction, teacher feedback, and lack of rigor. The curriculum innovations in this innovative teacher preparation program were shown to address these misconceptions and concerns and facilitate understanding and acceptance of VS as an alternative form of education by many of these pre‐service teachers.     

Forces of Innovation and Inertia in the Late 19th Century French University System (with special reference to the academic institutionalisation of the social sciences)

In initial teacher training and when providing in‐service training for teachers we hope to make a contribution to science education by preparing people to become very good teachers of pupils. Recent Circulars produced by the Department for Education prescribing the content of teacher training courses in England include an explicit assumption that ensuring strong subject knowledge in teachers is the major contributor to good teaching and hence high standards in pupil achievement. This article reports on a small‐scale research project designed to look at the characteristics of good primary science teachers. The question is raised as to how these teachers came to be good teachers of science in the primary school. The findings call into question the efficacy of an approach to initial teacher education that focuses so much on the development of subject knowledge.     

Discipline orientations of pre‐service teachers before and after student teaching

This study examined the classroom discipline orientations of pre‐service elementary teachers both before and after the student teaching experience. Prior to beginning and immediately after completing their full‐time student teaching experience, pre‐service teachers (N = 220) from three southeastern universities in the USA completed a discipline belief instrument which identified their preferred model of classroom discipline. The results showed that the student teaching experience significantly increased beginning teachers’ preferences toward a more assertive discipline model (Rules and Consequences) and decreased their preferences toward the humanistic discipline model (Relationship–Listening). These results demonstrate that the student teaching experience may be creating a dissonance in prior knowledge and beliefs, and experiences of pre‐service teachers in classrooms. The results of the study suggest that teacher education programs can help pre‐service teachers transition more smoothly into classroom teaching by providing a school–university partnership as well as more lessons and advice on handling specific classroom management situations.     

“That's more like how they know me as a person”: one primary pre‐service teacher's stories of her personal and ‘professional’ digital practices

In contributing to debates about how student‐teachers might draw from personal experience in addressing digital literacy in the classroom, this paper explores the stories that one primary student‐teacher told of her digital practices during a larger study of the role of digital literacy in student‐teachers' lives. The paper investigates the ‘recognition work’ this student‐teacher did as she aligned herself with different discourses and notes how themes of ‘control’ and ‘professionalism’ seemed to pattern her stories of informal and formal practices both within and beyond her professional education. The paper calls for further research into how student‐teachers perceive the relevance of their personal experience to their professional role and argues for encouraging pre‐service and practising teachers to tell stories of their digital practices and reflect upon the discourses which frame them.     

Normalizing literary responses in the teacher education classroom

In this essay, the authors present analyses of data emerging from a study of a classroom of pre‐service English language arts teachers' readings of a young adult novel that challenged normative sexuality stereotypes. They argue that when literary fictions are included within teacher education ‘methods’ courses, the possibility that literature might support generative learning is eroded by the normative structures of teacher education, particularly those pedagogical beliefs and practices that separate discourses of experience from discourses of knowledge. The authors offer a brief overview of studies of human consciousness, with particular attention to how literary experiences can contribute to its development. They suggest that the identities that co‐emerge with conscious awareness are structured by normalizing discourses instantiated within teacher education methods courses. The essay concludes with a discussion of how the conscious awareness of beginning English teachers might be more expansively developed within pre‐service teacher education.     

In‐service Education and the Superintendency: Lloyd Wolfe in San Antonio,Texas, 1902–1908

During the early 20th century, practicing San Antonio teachers took part in several different types of in‐service education. This paper investigates the types of in‐service education present during the superintendency of Lloyd Wolfe (1902–1908), a progressive San Antonio educator who employed innovative approaches to in‐service education. Influenced by Francis W. Parker, Wolfe placed emphasis on methodology that stressed child‐centred activities and real‐world problem solving. The paper explores how Wolfe disseminated his ideology to his teachers through the lectures and content of a summer in‐service programme. It contemplates criticism from conservative San Antonio politicians who considered some of the approaches to in‐service education both too progressive and too costly. It demonstrates how personal ideology of particular superintendents shaped and changed teacher education programmes. Finally, the author places the San Antonio programme in a broader context that contributes to what is known about early teacher education programmes in the USA.     

The Draw‐An‐Environment Test Rubric (DAET‐R): exploring pre‐service teachers’ mental models of the environment

The use of drawings as representations of personal mental models or images is one method of analyzing personal beliefs. This article discusses the development of the Draw‐An‐Environment Test and Rubric (DAET‐R) for assessing the mental models or images of the environment held by pre‐service teachers. It also provides results of preliminary research using the DAET‐R to assess pre‐service teachers’ personal beliefs and understandings about the environment, as interpreted from their drawings. Results of this pilot study using the DAET‐R for scoring early childhood pre‐service teachers’ drawings of the environment suggest that the participants’ mental models of the environment are incomplete. Results of this study also show that the DAET‐R can provide information about pre‐service teachers’ beliefs about the environment useful to teacher educators in the development and delivery of environmental education.     

Pre‐service primary education teachers’ changing attitudes towards teaching: a longitudinal study

This study investigated the longitudinal changes in the attitudes of pre‐service primary education teachers towards the teaching profession as they progressed through training. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards the profession between their freshman and senior years. Moreover, the findings obtained through interview data have shown that both positive and negative changes occur in pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards teaching throughout their education, and these changes are observed to be related to teaching practice, cooperating teachers, teacher education institutions and teacher educators.     

In‐school Experience Designed to Meet Individual Needs

Current policies at both the state and national levels emphasise the need for increased attention to teaching children with special needs and more extensive school‐based experience in teacher education courses. This paper reports an in‐school experience which was an integral part of an on‐campus subject that focused upon teaching children with special needs. It also addressed a range of issues currently of concern in pre‐service teacher education, including the nature of the in‐school experience, managing the needs of children with learning difficulties in an integrated classroom, overcoming the socialising effect of block practice teaching, reinforcing the relevance of campus‐based subjects, maintaining a balance between the formal teaching expectations and the nurturing roles of teachers, providing teacher educators with recent and relevant in‐school experience, and producing reflective teachers with an understanding and appreciation of the ‘art’ and the ‘science’ of teaching.     

Preparing Pre‐Service Primary Teachers to Teach Primary Science: A partnership‐based approach

This paper reports on the effectiveness of a professional partnership approach to preparing pre‐service primary teachers to teach science. The study involved final year BEd pre‐service primary teachers at the University of Tasmania, each working in the class of a volunteer colleague teacher. The programme provided an authentic science teaching experience in which pre‐service teachers were supported to plan and teach a sequence of work in a chosen science topic and reflect upon the experience. Many reported an initial lack of confidence in science and no experience with teaching it during their normal practice teaching. During 2007 and 2008, teachers from 17 schools in Northern Tasmania volunteered to work with the pre‐service teachers in their classrooms for one lesson a week over a six‐week period. The findings indicated that this approach was an effective way to build the confidence of pre‐service teachers and may also have benefits for practising teachers.     

TEACHER EDUCATION: SUCKING OUT THE JUICE

This article sets out a proposal for raisins quality in teacher education and so for quality in our schools. The current system of teacher education is heavily regulated by CATE — the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education — which has been established by the DES to ensure quality. Paradoxically, these regulations may actually limit quality rather than enhancing it because they are principally concerned with quantity and balance rather than with process. So the paper argues that a better way must be found in which the processes involved in becoming a teacher, and the structures which shape the system, may assist each other. The components needed for raising quality are already within the system, but need nonetheless a radical re‐adjustment if quality is to be raised. The proposals made here concern the potential within CATE to become a national professional council for the teaching service as well as for teacher education; for making it a requirement on teachers to read for the Masters degree as part of their professional qualification; and for the consequent integration of pre‐service and in‐service teacher education.     

教师职前职后教育一体化改革探索与实践

教师职业是一种专业性职业,从业者需要专门的情感、知识和能力等素养。教师专业素养的形成,不应是自发的,而应该接受专门的教育。教师教育主要包括职前培养和职后培训。从教师专业发展的内在需要看,职前培养和职后培训需要在管理体制、目标、内容和师资等方面实现一体化。在实现教师教育一体化的探索中,省级教育学院有职后培训的优势,但在职前培养方面还需要积累经验。为了更好地创建新型教师教育体系,实现教师教育的一体化,四川教育学院作了多方面的探索,取得了预期的阶段性成果。