Conceptualizing Teachers' Ways of Knowing

This article addresses issues related to the ways teachers learn mathematics and the teaching of mathematics and the relevance of those ways to their professional development. Preservice teachers' understanding of school mathematics lacks sophistication, a situation that needs to be addressed in mathematics teacher education programs. What is critical is the means by which they encounter and explore the mathematics they will be teaching. Fundamentally, their mathematical experiences need to be congruous with the kind of teaching we would expect of a reflective, adaptive teacher. The article contains both practical and theoretical considerations of how these experiences might be structured. Theoretical orientations for conceptualizing teachers' belief structures are offered as a foundation for conceptualizing teachers' ways of knowing. The moral dimension of teacher education is considered as a backdrop for understanding how teachers come to know.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Using Reflective Journals to Enhance Impoverished Practicum Placements: A case in teacher education in Ethiopia

This article investigates the value of writing reflective journals for student teachers during practicum placement. The author invited 10 pre‐service education degree teachers to write a weekly reflective journal throughout their four weeks practicum teaching. Each student teacher was given the opportunity to revisit the issues in his journals through a subsequent reflective dialogue. At the end of the practicum, the student teachers were asked to complete one additional reflective journal to provide their views about how useful and challenging they found the task of writing reflective journals on their teaching experiences. The author also kept observation notes to reflect on his own experiences of involving student teachers in reflective journal writing. It was concluded that the student teachers benefited immensely from their experiences of writing reflective journals for the purpose of reflecting on their practical experiences. They reported that the activity helped them improve their teaching experiences and deepen their understanding of the complexities involved in learning to teach. The study has implications on the role of reflective journals as a means of engaging teacher candidates in reflective thinking, a recently emerging notion in the education of teachers in Ethiopia.     

Supports and Concerns for Teacher Professional Growth During the Implementation of a Science Curriculum Innovation

Internationally, considerable reform in science education is occurring which promotes constructivist philosophies and advocates constructivist-inspired pedagogical strategies that are new to many teachers. This paper reports on the supporting factors necessary for teacher professional growth and the issues of concern that were evident during one primary teacher's successful implementation of a unit of work based on a draft of a new state-wide science syllabus which proposes such approaches. One researcher (CEP) provided guidance during the writing and implementation of the unit through professional development workshops complemented by ongoing collegial support. The analysis of the teacher's practice reveals that professional growth required a willingness of the teacher to engage with change and modify his professional practice. The support factors for teacher growth consisted of an appropriate program of professional development, teacher understanding of the elements of the curriculum innovation, and successful experiences in implementing new approaches. In contrast, the issues of concern were: the adequacy of support for planning including the time required to understand the innovation and make changes to teaching practice; science equipment; teacher knowledge; classroom management strategies; and ways to cope with change. Understanding of these support factors and issues of concern is vital for the successful implementation of science curriculum innovations.     

Developing adaptive expertise in the wake of rehearsals: An emergent model of the debrief discussions of non-rehearsing teachers

This study explores conceptual links between practice-based teacher education and adaptive expertise, drawing on constructs of teacher noticing and position. We specifically examined debrief discussions following rehearsals, focusing on the experiences of non-rehearsing teachers (NRTs) who participate in rehearsals as students. We propose an emergent model of how debriefs can support NRTs’ development of adaptive expertise, through qualitative analysis of debriefs with secondary mathematics teachers. Debriefs provided opportunities for NRTs to socially construct adaptive expertise through making their experiences public and considering implications for teaching. We discuss ways debriefs contribute to the co-construction of adaptive expertise in practice-based teacher education.     

Sewing Seams of Stories: Becoming a teacher during the First World War

In this article the author shares a partial biography of Elizabeth Evans, who became a domestic science teacher in Britain during the First World War. This story begins with a small collection of artefacts—professional letters and personal photographs—which infuse our understanding of teaching and learning and Elizabeth’s everyday life nearly a century ago. This inquiry is an entry point to an interpretive process that explores questions of teaching during war and the interrelationships that defined Elizabeth’s lived experiences.     

Collaborating to “Grow Our Own”: The Helios STEM Middle School Residency Program

In this article, the authors explain the need for clinically rich middle school STEM teacher preparation. They describe how one university and school district with an established partnership collaborated to meet this need. The result was the formation of a residency program that aims to prepare high quality middle school STEM teachers who can fill the district’s vacancies. The residency program is centered around clinical experiences where the triad—consisting of a preservice teacher, collaborating teacher, and university supervisor—is the nexus of learning. The authors share the takeaways from their experiences, highlighting the perspectives of the members of one triad. They conclude with an examination of the residency program’s effectiveness in meeting its intended aim.     

A Topical Trajectory on Survival: an Analysis of Link-Making in a Sequence of Lessons on Evolution

This study explores the concept of link-making in relation to communicative strategies applied in the teaching and studying of biological evolution. The analysis focused on video recordings of 11 lessons on biological evolution conducted in a Swedish 9^th grade class of students aged 15 years. It reveals how the teacher and students connected classroom conversations, the frequency of references to conversations in whole-class settings, and the development of a theme focusing on species survival and extinction. Detailed examples from the data illustrate how this theme developed from its initiation during the first lesson, through discussion and clarification, to its wrapping up during the last lesson. They further illustrate how students made sense of what the teacher said and wrote, and how the teacher postponed issues, explained and developed topics, provided opportunities for link-making, organised the class, motivated students, and checked their understanding. The study’s methodological approach offers a way of including several time dimensions within research. Based on our findings, we conclude that the excerpts examined here did succeed in building ‘islands of coherence’ in the co-construction of curricular content. Moreover, the topical trajectory in relation to species survival provided opportunities for constructing a ‘scientific story’ in the classroom.     

Reconsidering an Economy of Teacher Education

This article has an overall aim as follows: to develop an alternative understanding to a narrow view of education, and in particular teacher training—preparatory and continuing—in terms of economy, as well as the competencies needed for the teaching profession. It takes the view that such an alternative is or could be found in the ideas put forward by Paul Standish, where poetry, or a more poetic understanding of education, is necessary—particularly in regards to teacher training.     

Thinking about Theorizing in Professional Development

This article describes two female beginning teachers from the same teacher education cohort. The two women had many experiences in common, but thought about these experiences quite differently. The article focuses on how their conceptions of students and of themselves as teachers changed over a 5-year period, and explores some of the interactions between their theorizing and their experiences. It also raises issues for teacher educators to consider.     

Using the Capability Approach to improve female teacher deployment to rural schools in Nigeria

This study focuses on the socio-cultural and institutional factors that affect female teacher deployment in rural primary schools in Nigeria. In Kwara State, there are extreme imbalances in teacher distribution between rural and urban areas due to female teachers’ active avoidance and/or attrition from rural posts. Given these problems, this article discusses an innovative use of the Capability Approach that informed a rural teacher deployment policy that addressed a number of issues that were specifically identified through female teachers’ values and lived experiences. This research not only had the positive analytical and political effects of prioritising the knowledge, participation and empowerment of female teachers; but it also provided a more fine-grained and holistic understanding of issues hindering effective deployment and retention of female Nigerian teachers, which informed the development of comprehensive and relevant strategies to address these.     

Teacher education in post-apartheid South Africa: Navigating a way through competing state and global imperatives for change

This article focuses on teacher education in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that the restructuring and reorganization of teacher education is at the nexus of the axes of tension created by national and global imperatives for change. Along with the dismantling of apartheid and the transition to a free and democratic state in 1994 came the urgent need for social reconstruction, democratization, redress, social justice, and equity. At the same time, and as part of a global context, the country needed global competitiveness, human capital development, global skills, international standards, and accountability. These competing modernist discourses have informed the design and orientation of the National Qualifications Framework and national curriculum that took place in parallel with, and simultaneous to, the restructuring and reform of teacher education. This article reviews literature pertinent to understanding the post-apartheid transformation in South African education in general and teacher education in particular. It concludes that policy makers have managed to navigate a way through the axis of tension created by opposed orientations to transformation. A more equitable and improved system of teacher education has been achieved but critical issues of teacher quality and quantity have emerged which urgently need resolution.     

Acknowledging Ambivalence in Teaching about Art and Aesthetics

In this article Daniel Brodén explores the ambivalence in teaching about art and aesthetics in the humanities. By comparing and contrasting Gert J. J. Biesta's educational theory and Jacques Rancière's writing on aesthetics, he hopes to bring some of the particularities of aesthetic experiences into focus and to discuss a tension in educational situations that concern students' interpretation of aesthetic texts: how the teacher, on the one hand, will serve as a representative for a formal system of education — or what Rancière calls a system of inequality — and, on the other hand, should respect the autonomy of the aesthetic experience. Brodén argues, however, that more interesting than the ambivalence itself is the question of how we can acknowledge this tension in productive ways. Thus, his aim here is to show how the teacher can contribute to the verification of an interpretive approach to art, with Rancière's axiom of equality in mind. Drawing on Biesta's writings, Brodén also highlights how the teacher can provide students with possibilities to pursue a subject-ness and how the risks involved call for a deconstructive approach to the enactment of teacher power. The article concludes by suggesting that we would do better not to view the ambivalence in focus as a problem, but instead to see it as something that calls for continuous engagement and critical reflection.     

Mathematics Standards,Cultural Styles,and Learning Preferences: The Plight and the Promise of African American Students

The 2007 film Freedom Writers portrays the real-life experiences of Erin Gruwell, a teacher at an inner-city high school in Long Beach, California. This article discusses the educational theories underpinning Gruwell's pedagogical practice, as seen in Freedom Writers, and identifies four themes—rewriting curriculum, treating students as creators of knowledge, creating classroom community, and teaching as self-realization—that make Gruwell's teaching successful.     

Understanding the Complexity of Becoming a Teacher Educator: Experience,belonging, and practice within a professional learning community

This article reports a literature review of self-studies by beginning teacher educators examining their experiences of the transition from classroom teaching to teacher educator. The authors conclude that becoming a teacher educator involves several complex and challenging tasks: examining beliefs and values grounded in personal biography, including those associated with being a former schoolteacher; navigating the complex social and institutional contexts in which they work; and developing a personal pedagogy of teacher education that enables construction of a new professional identity as a teacher educator. This research provides beginning teacher educators with a reference point for understanding their personal and professional transition to university-based teacher education. It also provides teacher education faculty and administrators with key information about how the transition from teacher to teacher educator can be supported and enhanced within professional learning communities.     

From university to working life: an analysis of field-based studies in early childhood teacher education and recently graduated kindergarten teachers’ transition to work

The aim of this article was to shed light on problematic issues related to the practical element in early childhood teacher education. We approach these questions mainly through scrutinizing and interpreting this part of kindergarten teachers’ university education in Finland. We then expand our analysis to include the broader issues of job commitment and the role of mentoring programmes among newly qualified kindergarten teachers. With the ‘kindergarten teacher as researcher’ as the chosen teacher model, our findings indicate that this aim can only be realistically achieved if all stages of the teacher education process are effectively linked. Key elements begin with the entry requirements for students and include productively connecting practicum experiences with on-campus courses, establishing a ‘double supervision model’, and cooperating with a stable network of early childhood centres for field studies. A further finding is that, despite a successfully completed professional education, the induction phase in the workplace can be a vulnerable time for novice teachers, suggesting an urgent need for mentoring programmes.     

Of Friction Points and Infrastructures: Rethinking the Dynamics of Offering Online Education in Technical Communication in Global Contexts

ABSTRACT

International interest in technical communication education is growing as more individuals gain online access worldwide. This factor means technical communication educators might find themselves developing online classes for students located in other nations. Doing so requires an understanding of aspects affecting international interactions in such educational contexts. This article examines central factors—or friction points—that technical communication instructors must understand and address to offer effective online educational experiences to globally distributed students.     

Methods that matter in addressing cultural diversity with teacher candidates

Drawing on a combination of prior experience, theoretical stance, and intuition, along with pedagogical practices identified to be effective in addressing diversity with teacher candidates, a model for teaching multicultural education to teacher candidates was designed. This study examined how particular elements of this model were effective in developing teacher candidate’s cultural competence. The results indicate that teacher candidates gained substantial knowledge about and experiences with issues of diversity by the end of the course. Participants pointed to the multiple methods employed in the class; in particular the interactive strategies, group work, diverse cultural experiences, and opportunities to critically reflect on these experiences as accounting for their gains. Their sense of ownership and understanding has given them the ability to use these strategies in their own future work. Implications for research and teacher education are discussed.     

Reform in teacher education: A personal comment

The Benton and Hoyt article reveals substantial information about attitudes toward teacher preparation in America. however, a notable set of issues are not a part of their data base because those responsible for programming teacher education have ignored them. This response presents a beginning at identifying such issues.