The circulation of expertise in teachers’ professional communities

This study qualitatively explores expertise as a critical resource on which quality teaching depends. The study sample is comprised of six South African schools from the poorest poverty quintiles achieving relatively higher and lower academic outcomes. From interview data gathered over three years with teachers and other school staff, findings reveal significant differences between schools in the kinds of expertise that circulate in teacher communities. Remediation strategies that support student learning at specific levels of complexity stand out as a significant form of expertise. In schools performing above demographic expectations, teachers have more opportunities to access knowledge as an instructional resource, enabled by the recognition of differences in expertise. The study offers insight into what kinds of pedagogic strategies might disrupt educational inequalities and support the quality of teaching and learning within a system of scarce resources.     

Review of teachers’ mental health research in China since 1994

To summarize the widely dispersed literature concerning Chinese teachers’ mental status, the present paper conducted a quantitative research synthesis with a focus on the current situation and development in teachers’ mental disorders. On one hand, the results demonstrated that many critical problems existed in the exploration of this issue, such as the primary application of one uniform research type (i.e., theoretical discussion) and single-scale method (i.e., SCL-90); on the other, the comparison analysis showed that college teachers obtained significantly higher pathological prevalence than the other two (i.e., kindergarteners and teachers of middle or primary schools). And such negative prevalence has increased over the years and became sharper after 2000. Additionally, mental disorders seem more severe in country teachers (relative to those working in town), teachers aged above 40 (relative to those younger), and female teachers (relative to males). It is suggested that urgent attention should be paid to further improve the research level by highlighting the methodological consideration, especially focusing on the in-depth survey investigation, refined experimental study, as well as high-caliber qualitative research, and thus clarify the mechanism of teachers’ psychological disorders.     

The Master’s in Teaching and Learning: expanding utilitarianism in the continuing professional development of teachers in England

The article focuses on the policy rhetoric of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). This is a new degree being launched in the summer of 2010 aimed, initially, at teachers who have just joined the profession. The degree presages the aspiration for a Master’s level teaching profession in England. Professional development as conceived in the MTL is continuous rather than continuing and permeating the vision is the language of ‘personalisation’. Teachers will be accompanied on the journey by an ‘in-school coach’. These notions suggest a highly tailored approach to continuing professional development (CPD), with careful attention to the identification of teachers’ needs and close support from a colleague. The article argues that, contrary to this impression, the MTL marks a new and significant step in expanding the utilitarianism of the English education system. The MTL represents a deepening hold on education by the state and a growing scepticism about the value of higher education in the CPD of teachers. It also aspires to a changing culture in schools as the workplace becomes the locus for the CPD of teachers. As other authors have described, the national character of education systems in Europe and in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Asia reflect an increasing instrumentality. The MTL, then, can be seen as part of a global phenomenon; in this case the policy lever of CPD is employed to support performative and audit policy agendas via a rigid accountability system. The MTL also represents a particular form of neo-liberal governmentality where increasing centralisation is ‘masked’ by a ‘simulacra of care’.     

The development of teachers’ knowledge and behaviour in promoting self-discipline: a study of early years teachers in Thailand

The study reported in this paper examines the challenges of developing an in-service training programme for early years teachers in a school in Thailand relating to the topic of enhancing young children’s self-discipline. It is argued that in-service training in Thailand has tended to focus on knowledge acquisition through direct instruction during short courses. By contrast, the training programme developed during the project employed the Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination and Internalisation (SECI) Model, first developed in Japan, that integrates knowledge acquisition with social learning activities. A blended methodology was employed to examine the efficacy of the SECI approach that included interviews with teachers and school leaders, classroom observation, questionnaires and behaviour checklists. Findings suggest that an adapted SECI model is effective in the education of teachers in Thailand and may have relevance more widely in the field of teacher education in other nations.     

Inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools in Ghana: influence of teachers’ and children’s characteristics

The issue of where to teach children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities has been a great concern as countries respond to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Salamanca Statement on inclusion of 1994. In this study, the responses of 500 trained and untrained mainstream primary school teachers selected from three of the ten regions of Ghana were analysed to investigate their attitudes to including children with SEN and disabilities in mainstream schools in Ghana. These attitudes were examined alongside teachers’ characteristics such as gender, age, length and level of teaching experience, and knowledge of SEN, and also the type, nature and degree of children’s SEN. The results showed that teachers in Ghana were positive towards the inclusion of children with SEN and disabilities with a few reservations which are elaborated. On the basis of the findings, conclusions were drawn that the inclusion agenda should be subject to national and local interpretation, aimed at ensuring that policies and regulations on SEN are fashioned to meet local situations and standards.     

Creativity development in preschoolers: The effects of children’s museum visits and other education environment factors

As one of the potential contextual factors for creativity development, children’s museum has been introduced to China from the western world in recent years, with the aim to offer a new informal educational environment to enhance children’s creativity. Based on experimental data for two groups of 4-year-old preschoolers (218 for the family mode and 202 for the preschool mode) from Beijing with an appropriately one-year long intervention (September 2017 to July 2018), this study examines the effect of regular visits to a children’s museum and other education environmental factors on young children’s creativity measured by Torrance’s Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) test. Results indicate that in terms of family visit, compared to the control group, the intervention that offers 18 times free tickets to visit a children’s museum significantly improved the experiment group’s originality (a sub-measure of creativity) by an additional 34.51 %. A beneficial effect of this intervention was also found in improving children’s fluency from the sample of preschool group visit (46.80 %). In addition, family education environment factors such as public preschool attendance, frequency of visits to science museums, and the degree of parents’ latitude were also found to positively affect creativity. Children’s personal features such as sex and geographic location of the family are also found to be related with children’s creativity.     

Psychological and physical intimate partner violence and young children’s mental health: The role of maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms and parenting behaviors

Young children are at significant risk of exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV), and vulnerable to exposure-related psychopathology, yet few studies investigate the effects of exposure to IPV on children under the age of 5 years. The current study investigated the role of maternal PTSD symptoms and parenting strategies in the relationship between mothers’ IPV experiences and psychopathology in their young children, ages 3–6 years in a community-based cohort of 308 mother-child dyads at high risk for family violence. Data were collected from 2011 to 2014. IPV history and maternal PTSD symptoms were assessed by self-report questionnaires. Children’s symptoms were assessed with a developmentally-sensitive psychiatric interview administered to mothers. Punitive/restrictive parenting was independently-coded from in-depth interviews with mothers about their disciplinary practices. Hypothesized direct and indirect pathways between physical and psychological IPV, maternal PTSD, maternal parenting style, and children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms were examined with mediation models. Results indicated that neither physical nor psychological IPV experienced by mothers was directly associated with children’s symptoms. However, both types of victimization were associated with maternal PTSD symptoms. Examination of indirect pathways suggested that maternal PTSD symptoms mediated the relationship between mothers’ psychological and physical IPV experiences and children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms and mothers’ restrictive/punitive parenting mediated the relationship between mothers’ psychological IPV and children’s externalizing symptoms. In addition, there was a path from maternal physical IPV to child externalizing symptoms through both maternal PTSD symptoms and restrictive/punitive parenting. Findings highlight the importance of supporting parents in recovering from the sequelae of their own traumatic experiences, as their ensuing mental health symptoms and parenting behaviors may have a significant impact on their children’s emotional health.     

Supporting students’ mental health in schools: what do teachers want and need?

There is a growing expectation in the UK for teachers to have an understanding of common mental health problems in young people. This study aims to identify the training needs of secondary school teachers to enable them to adequately support and educate their students around mental health. Nine focus groups, each with between four to eight participants, were conducted with secondary school teachers in the UK. Discussions were centred on the needs and wants of teachers in terms of mental health training, provision and advice. Participants were also shown three online resources as an example of existing training. Thematic analysis was used to structure the data. Participants wanted training on how to identify and provide early support for students who are struggling, without taking on the perceived role of a therapist. Participants also emphasised the strong need for practical, interactive and expert-led training that provides resources that can be adapted to individual settings. Implications and recommendations are discussed.     

Evaluation of children’s after-school programs in Taiwan: FAHP approach

The need of after-school programs has become urgent for school-age children in many industrialized countries due to social structure changes. This research develops a hierarchical framework to evaluate after-school programs from two distinct aspects??service quality from parents?? perspectives and marketing strategy from operators?? perspectives??each aspect respectively associated with five mutually independent criteria. Two different questionnaire surveys are conducted respectively to parents and providers in Hsinchu, Taiwan based on pairwise comparison on Saaty??s nine-point scale. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is then employed to calculate the relative importance of the criteria under each aspect. The results show that the top three concerns from parents?? perspectives are communication and attentiveness, teacher qualification and counseling, and fee and location, whereas the top three concerns from operators?? perspectives are promotion, price, and product. Our findings reveal a consistency between the concerns of parents and of operators, but the important rankings from the two perspectives are not exactly the same, implying that the parents and the operators do have somewhat different viewpoints in evaluating the after-school programs.     

From preschool teachers’ professional development to children’s knowledge: comparing sets

Recently, there have been increased calls for enhancing preschool children’s mathematics knowledge along with increasing calls for preparing preschool teachers to meet the demands of new preschool mathematics curricula. This article describes the professional development program Starting Right: Mathematics in Preschools. Focusing on four episodes that revolve around the topic of equivalent sets, it demonstrates how engaging preschool teachers with challenging tasks may promote their subject matter knowledge as well as their pedagogical content knowledge, leading to an interweaving of knowledge and practice. Assessment of the program included assessing the children’s knowledge. Results indicated that students of participating teachers learned to be more flexible and to give more possible answers than students of non-participating teachers.     

Reading teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature and English phonology

We investigated relationships among elementary teachers’ reading-related content knowledge (knowledge of literature and phonology), their philosophical orientation toward reading instruction, their classroom practice, and their students’ learning. Correlations showed little relationship between instructional philosophy and content knowledge, and little relationship between instructional philosophy and classroom practice. However, relationships emerged between content knowledge and instruction, and between kindergarten teachers’ phonological knowledge and their students’ reading achievement. We recommend that the recent focus on teacher’s disciplinary knowledge be broadened to include teachers of beginning reading and that teachers be afforded opportunities to develop the necessary knowledge base to teach reading effectively.     

The role of sociocultural mediational tools in EFL teachers’ development: insights from a life history approach

The sociocultural orientation in general education, which has gradually leaked into second language teacher education, argues that teachers usually employ social relations, cultural artefacts, and theoretical concepts to mediate their thinking and practice. Against this background, the present study aimed to explore how three male Iranian English as a foreign language teachers have capitalised on the three sociocultural tools to mediate their development. The findings revealed that not all three mediational tools, though each influential in its own terms, have been available wholesale to the teachers and that different academic and teaching phases have yielded differential access to the tools. The authors indicate that during school as student, human mediation, particularly of apprenticeship, seems to be the dominant tool available for the teachers to mediate their development. Later on, in higher education institutes, although the human apprenticeship is still visible, cultural artefacts and scientific theories start to surface influencing the teachers’ learning and teaching trajectories. The implications for both teachers and teacher educators are discussed.     

Do teachers’ perceptions of children’s math and reading related ability and effort predict children’s self-concept of ability in math and reading?

This study investigated to what extent primary school teachers’ perceptions of their students’ ability and effort predict developmental changes in children’s self-concepts of ability in math and reading after controlling for students’ academic performance and general intelligence. Three cohorts (N?=?849) of elementary school children and their teachers were followed for four years. Children’s self-concepts and performance ability in math and reading were measured annually during Waves 2–4. Teachers rated the children’s ability and effort at each of the four waves. Domain-specific differences and developmental changes could be identified in the associations between teachers’ perceptions and children’s ability self-concepts. Teachers’ ability perceptions predicted children’s concurrent and subsequent ability self-concepts in math and reading, whereas teachers’ effort perceptions predicted children’s math ability self-concept only at Wave 4. Analyses with multi-sample procedure showed that these models were similar for boys and girls and for children in different cohort groups.     

The nature and development of middle school mathematics teachers’ knowledge

In this article, we report on the use of a teacher profiling instrument with 62 middle school teachers at the start of a 3-year professional learning programme. The instrument was designed to assess the aspects of teachers’ knowledge identified by Shulman (1987) refined by Ball et al. (2008) and extended to include teachers’ confidence to use and teach various topics in the middle school mathematics curriculum and their beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning. Based on a hierarchical coding of items, the application of the partial credit Rasch model revealed that the profile items were measuring a single underlying construct and suggested that the various facets of teacher knowledge develop together. We describe the characteristics of four levels of the hierarchical construct measuring teacher knowledge and understanding for teaching mathematics in the middle years of schooling, and discuss the unique affordances of a holistic view of teacher knowledge in contrast to considerations of multiple knowledge categories.     

The development of student teachers’ professional identity

This study focuses on student teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity. The respondents are students enrolled in a three‐year course in secondary education teaching at bachelor level. Questionnaires were filled out by first‐year, second‐year and third‐year students from two colleges. The questionnaire included four scales: commitment to teaching, professional orientation, task orientation and self‐efficacy. In the first five months of the first‐year course, a shift in students’ task orientation was observed: students developed a more pupil‐centred view on teaching. Practical experience with classroom teaching again caused a shift: students focused less on the subject matter, on maintaining order in the classroom, on the long‐term educational qualification targets and self‐efficacy decreased. Students with work placement experience developed a more ‘realistic’ view of learning and teaching compared to students without this experience. A final important difference in professional identity is based on students’ gender: while male students tend to attach more importance to discipline in the classroom, their female counterparts focus more on student involvement.     

Procedural and conceptual changes in young children’s problem solving

This study analysed the different types of arithmetic knowledge that young children utilise when solving a multiple-step addition task. The focus of the research was on the procedural and conceptual changes that occur as children develop their overall problem solving approach. Combining qualitative case study with a micro-genetic approach, clinical interviews were conducted with ten 5–6-year-old children. The aim was to document how children combine knowledge of addition facts, calculation procedures and arithmetic concepts when solving a multiple-step task and how children’s application of different types of knowledge and overall solving approach changes and develops when children engage with solving the task in a series of problem solving sessions. The study documents children’s pathways towards developing a more effective and systematic approach to multiple-step tasks through different phases of their problem solving behaviour. The analysis of changes in children’s overt behaviour reveals a dynamic interplay between children’s developing representation of the task, their improved procedures and gradually their more explicit grasp of the conceptual aspects of their strategy. The findings provide new evidence that supports aspects of the “iterative model” hypothesis of the interaction between procedural and conceptual knowledge and highlight the need for educational approaches and tasks that encourage and trigger the interplay of different types of knowledge in young children’s arithmetic problem solving.     

The contributions of relationships with parents and teachers to Turkish children’s antisocial behaviour

The present study examined the concurrent contributions of parent–child and teacher–child relationship quality to Turkish children’s antisocial behaviour, with a specific focus on the moderating role of teacher–child relationships (closeness and conflict) on parent–child relationships when predicting antisocial behaviour. Participants were 94 children (56 boys) with mean age of 7.05 years (SD = .88) enrolled in 24 classrooms from five elementary schools in a suburban school district in Turkey. Mothers reported on their relationship with children and teachers reported on their relationships with children as well as children’s antisocial behaviour. SAS PROC MIXED was used to test hierarchical regression models of children nested within classrooms. Results showed that teacher–child conflict moderated the association between parent–child conflict and children’s antisocial behaviour. Such that, higher parent–child conflict was related to higher levels of antisocial behaviour at the context of higher levels of teacher–child conflict. In addition, teacher–child closeness also moderated the association between parent–child conflict and children’s antisocial behaviour. Such that when teacher–child closeness was at average or high levels, lower levels of parent–child conflict was related to lower levels of antisocial behaviour. Teacher–child conflict was positively associated with children’s antisocial behaviour. Limitations and future directions of the current study are discussed.