Student teachers’ appraisal of the importance of assessment in teacher education and self-reports on the development of assessment competence

Abstract

Competence in assessment has been identified as a key feature in teachers’ professional success. However, assessment competence is a complex field, comprising capacity in both summative and formative assessment. Hence, a detailed view on how student teachers perceive assessment is the focus of this study. Based on an official catalogue of assessment standards, over 900 student teachers repeatedly rated the importance of the standards and the frequency with which they behaved in accordance with the standards in practicum situations. Analyses revealed that (a) students perceived assessment competence as a contextual entity distinguishable from other domains, (b) while they assigned high importance ratings to assessment standards in general, standards concerned specifically with external evaluation were seen as relatively unimportant, and (c) they perceived a rise in their own assessment competence during their teacher education. Taken together, this suggests that in the student view assessment competence is important and develops over time.     

Perspectives of ‘STEM education and policies’ for the development of a skilled workforce in Australia and India

ABSTRACT

In an increasingly competitive world, it has been proved that invention, development, and profusion of new technologies through science and technology are the fundamental source of economic progress. Australia, which is one of the world leaders in education and India, which has the capacity to produce the highest number of young skilled manpower to lead the world, both understand the current situation and have signalled their commitment to restoring the national strategy for STEM education. The proposed study focuses on a comparative understanding of the interplay of inclusive policies, government’s initiatives, knowledge gap from the literature and potential future challenges that Australia and India could face in STEM education at the school level. The question we asked is: what are the important inferences and best practices in STEM education that can be mutually beneficial to broaden the Strategic Partnership? It is identified that the governments of both the countries are determined to utilise the young population to train them as skilled workforce in order to meet the future demand of industries. Australia’s constructivist approach to education and the well-defined system of vocational training outperform India, which is still following the traditional approach. However, Australia has failed to engage students adequately in STEM and needs to revisit the efficacy of the current education model, while India needs to espouse the well-defined Australian framework, which could help to enhance quality infrastructure, curriculum, constructivist teaching and transparent policy implementation. In addition, both the nations must work hard to attract bright students in the teaching profession in order to promote a conducive environment for scientific learning.     

The importance of collaboration for knowledge co-construction in ‘close-to-practice’ research

This commentary is offered in response to the British Educational Research Association (BERA)’s commissioned report on close-to-practice research. In conducting a rapid evidence assessment coupled with a small number of qualitative interviews, the report represents an overly dichotomised and partial approach to understanding the relationships between research and practice, and the nature of knowledge generated within such relationships. Specifically, the report fails to adequately address the central importance of collaboration to the generation of knowledge and assumes that knowledge is either academic research or practitioner enquiry, without considering a more integrated, co-constructed ‘third space’. I argue that practice-focused research should be fundamentally concerned with making an impact on practice and, therefore, effective collaboration between research and practice necessarily entails grappling with issues of power and democratisation. These are values that underpin and shape research in important ways that must be considered in conceptualisations of methodological quality. I also raise questions about the transparency and quality of decision-making in the close-to-practice BERA report, including whether the six papers identified as ‘high quality’ by the authors would meet their own definition. Their report is not definitive, but rather a catalyst for further discussion. I offer suggestions for some practical steps for how BERA could work to provide a more holistic framing for this vital field of inquiry.     

Understanding teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy in inclusive education: implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education

Although there are clear differences in national policies regarding inclusive education, the international debate has not fully considered their impact on implementation within different countries, for example on teacher education. This paper reports on results from a comparative study of in-service teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy in implementing inclusive practices in South Africa and Finland and its implications for teacher education in these countries. A sample of 319 South African and 822 Finnish primary and secondary education teachers completed a questionnaire containing a scale measuring sentiments, attitudes and concerns on inclusive education as well as a scale measuring teachers’ self-efficacy in implementing inclusive practices. A comparative analysis indicated that whereas the overall sentiments towards disabilities were positive in both countries, teachers had many concerns about the consequences of including children with disabilities in their classrooms. While the most positive aspect of self-efficacy among the South African teachers was their self-efficacy in managing behaviour, the Finnish teachers saw this as their weakest point. Self-efficacy, in particular efficacy in collaboration, was clearly related to overall attitudes towards inclusion. The implications of these findings for pre-service and in-service teacher education are discussed.     

Course quality in higher education teacher training: What matters for pre-service physics teachers’ content knowledge development?

This study examines the impact of course quality on pre-service physics teachers’ content knowledge (CK) development. Teachers’ CK is one prerequisite to effective teaching. To support teachers in developing CK, the quality of higher education content courses plays a major role. Yet, models of course quality for higher education vary in their dimensions and it is hence not clear how course quality is best conceptualized. To address this issue, we analyzed data from N = 107 pre-service physics teachers’ CK over one year. We used confirmatory factor analysis to determine the number and nature of dimensions for course quality. Next, we used path models to investigate the impact on CK development. Our results show that a four-dimensional model described CK course quality best and that the cognitive support dimension in particular supports CK development. This highlights the importance of focusing on cognitive support for improving pre-service physics teachers’ CK development.     

Agency in the darkness: ‘fear of the unknown’, learning disability and teacher education for inclusion

This paper proposes inclusion phobia as a sharper and more operative definition of the ‘fear of the unknown’ often cited as an explanation for resistance to inclusive education. Using ‘severe and profound learning disability’ as the paradigm case, we situate the phobia surrounding this label in its social and historical context. Our hypothesis is that resistance to inclusion for this group is not rational but amounts to a thought disorder in a psychiatric sense. Using qualitative case studies of pre-service teachers on practicum and headteachers engaged in decisions about admissions, we demonstrate the workings and impact of inclusion phobia. We illustrate its trajectory from a general social dysfunction, to the systems that channel it to the individuals caught up in it. Our aim is to expose inclusion phobia so that, teacher educators, teachers and pre-service teachers might, in knowing it, find new ways to remedy it. In doing so, long standing resistance to inclusive education is made more tractable. We conclude with our own proposals for an anti-phobic curriculum for teacher education.     

The subject and the setting: re-imagining opportunities for primary teachers’ subject knowledge development on school-based teacher education courses

The landscape of teacher education is undergoing significant change in many countries and this is often associated with a move towards greater school involvement in the preparation of teachers. One aspect of teaching expertise that is particularly challenging for primary student-teachers is the development of subject knowledge across a wide range of subject areas. Subject knowledge for teaching is multi-faceted and is itself linked to broader questions about curriculum and the content that should be taught. It is timely, therefore, to consider how subject knowledge development might be reconceived in a school setting and how university and school staff might work in new ways with student-teachers to this end. Communities of practice theory is employed as a framework for analysing the learning environment and evaluating these future possibilities. It is argued that collaboration with peers, with their mentoring teachers and with a wider professional community is an under-exploited way of integrating facets of subject knowledge: giving this time and status through structured activities might be a particularly fruitful form of hybrid working in situ. The paper concludes by proposing four principles to underpin this sort of practice.     

Opportunities and challenges in the development of teachers’ knowledge: the development of narrative authority through knowledge communities

This work examines generative approaches to teacher professional development that pay attention to how personal, interpersonal, contextual and situational factors influence teacher knowledge developments over time. Using examples from our research programs, we show how critical it is to intentionally account for how teachers filter their professional development experiences through their personal practical knowledge expressed in community. By featuring Pat (the pre-service case) and Liz (the in-service case), we illustrate how teachers develop their narrative authority in knowledge communities and show why knowledge communities are critical to the sustained development of narrative authority. We argue that attending to these critical matters creates opportunities for understanding that can lead to confirmation of, refinement in, or transformation of present practices.     

Reforming teacher education in England: ‘an economy of discourses of truth’

This paper is an attempt to think aloud about the current policy proposals in circulation in England that address pre-service teacher education. Rather than dealing with details of policy and points of specificity in practice, the focus of this paper is with how propositions are justified and the overall ways in which meanings are being managed; a fundamental aspect of policy analysis.     

‘Our common world’ belongs to ‘Us’: constructions of otherness in education for sustainable development

The aim of this article is to analyse how good intentions in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) discursively construct and maintain differences between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. The empirical material consists of textbooks about sustainable development used in Swedish schools. An analysis of how ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are constructed and maintained is done with help from critical race theory, whiteness studies and Popkewitz’ notion of double gestures, exclusion through intentions of inclusion. The analysis departs from five dichotomies: tradition/civilisation, dirtiness/purity, chaos/order, ignorance/morality and helped/helping. We consider these dichotomies as cogwheels operating in an ‘Otherness machinery’. Through this machinery, ‘We’ are constructed as knowing, altruistic, conscious and good. The Other is simultaneously constructed as ‘uncivilised’ or as a ‘bad’ Other in need of higher moral standards. With help from these two Others, ‘Swedish exceptionalism’ is formed. The ESD project could then be understood as a colonial and excluding project, and we ask how it is possible to avoid that ‘our common world’ only belong to ‘Us’?     

‘Society has taught us to judge’: cultures of the body in teacher education

The body is a powerful symbolic form and all bodily activities are expressions of culture. The look, size, shape and physicality of bodies are perceived by all and compared to particular cultural standards. In this way the body is inscribed with culture and can serve as a site for social control. Various discourses of the body, including those around appearance, health and fitness, circulate within societal institutions and through relations of power these impact on the way in which we come to understand bodies. In times marked by individualised responsibility for all aspects of life, the body and technologies of self around bodywork are also significant in relation to self-formation and self-government. This research investigates the impact of various cultures of the body, on pre-service physical education teachers' understandings and meaning making about bodies, fitness, health and personal engagement in bodywork. Implications for future practices in teaching, relationships with school students and messages for teacher educators are also considered.     

‘Getting the pieces together’: negotiating the transition from pre-service to in-service teacher

For beginning teachers to make the transition to full professional membership they need to increase their professional knowledge of the art and science of teaching. This paper explores the difference in knowledge growth between beginning teachers who commence teaching in fragmented teaching situations in the first two years of teaching, and their colleagues who have stable, secure and continuing employment during this time. This paper argues that the employment context in which beginning teachers take up their profession has a significant, but hitherto largely unacknowledged, effect on the capacity of teachers to develop the craft of teaching (Elbaz, 1983 Elbaz, F. 1983. Teacher thinking: A study of practical knowledge, London: Croom Helm.  [Google Scholar]); on their continuing commitment to the profession; and on their self-confidence and self-image as teachers It is concluded that long-term, secure employment in one school, with full responsibility for a class of students and access to effective mentoring, is necessary if beginning teachers are to move beyond ‘survival’ to developing competency in the first two years of teaching.     

Marxist state theory and state autonomy theory: the case of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education

Abstract

In recent times, there have been a number of critiques of Marxist and neo‐Marxist analyses of the state and education policy. These have drawn on postmodernist, ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ and state autonomy perspectives. While the postmodernist and ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ approaches have attracted critical response, to date, the state autonomy perspective has, to our knowledge, gone unchallenged. To address this theoretical lacuna, this paper analyses one writer's attempt, via an historical case study, to uphold state autonomy theory by detailing the ongoing relationship between one quasi‐state agency and the practice of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education. We argue that there are serious conceptual weaknesses in this latest attempt to apply state autonomy theory to educational policy analysis. The arguments in the case study under consideration are seriously compromised by a basically flawed hypothesis, a misrepresentation of contemporary (neo‐) Marxist education policy analysis and by a failure to look at ‘the big picture’.     

Developing a ‘clinical’ model for teacher education

This paper reports on the introduction of a ‘clinical model’ of teacher education at the University of Glasgow in 2011. The account is set against the backdrop of a review of major contemporary developments in teacher education. The common focus in this work is on such themes as the key function of the practicum, on ‘teaching schools’ and on the roles and responsibilities of the various players in teacher professional learning. The context for reform of teacher education in Scotland is described, showing how the opportunity for a radical intervention arose. The distinctive features of the Glasgow model are set out and a summary of the findings of the internal evaluation carried out at the University is offered. Issues identified include challenges of communication, the nature of professional learning and the cultural embeddedness of existing practices. In the light of this initiative, the paper then reviews insights gained concerning the relationship between policy, practice and research in teacher education, before concluding with comments on the future of research in teacher education.     

A foreign model of teacher education and its local appropriation: the English teachers’ centres in Spain

This article explores the implementation of the English model of teachers’ centres in the context of 1980s Spain. Originally it was a top-down plan initiated by a national government. However, from the very beginning its fate was dependent on a bottom-up educational project carried out by pedagogical social movements. The first part of the article focuses on the multiple factors, the combination of which finally brought about the mediated educational transfer of the English teachers centres into Spain. The second part analyses the role played by the pedagogical movements during the implementation of this new initiative. The article concludes by evaluating how the interaction between the bottom-up and top-down processes gave impulse to the rapid establishment of a grand variety of innovative teachers centres, in the first stage, but ultimately brought about a consolidation of a single, hegemonic model, very different from the original object of educational transfer.     

Knowledge development of tweens in RE – the importance of school class and communication

This article draws on empirical findings from an religious education (RE) test done by 52 pupils in three different classes on two occasions at the beginning and end of the 2011/2012 academic year. The purpose is to examine whether RE knowledge development can be identified generally, whether there are differences between classes, and if so whether they can be related to communication patterns and describe directions of knowledge development within RE. A sociocultural perspective on learning is used, stressing the importance of communication and the discursive practices the individual is a part of for what is learnt. The findings show that RE developments over the course of the academic year can be identified in all three classes, and that there are differences among the classes in both achievement levels and developments, indicating variety in the degree to which the discursive practices of the classes facilitate RE learning. Among the individual communicative factors, ‘asking questions’ when one is curious or does not understand shows to be one important factor. The greatest developments seem to be among less complex and learning-about forms of RE knowledge.