Preparing Teachers for Anti‐oppressive Education: International movements

While theories and recommendations continue to proliferate in the educational research literature on what it means to teach towards social justice and to prepare teachers for such teaching, so do concerns that these theories and recommendations fail to account for the ways that the contexts of teaching—cultural contexts, national contexts, political contexts—always affect teaching in idiosyncratic, unpredictable and even contradictory ways. Given that much educational research fails to trouble the US‐centric nature of prevailing conceptions of social justice and teacher education, it is important to learn about the unique as well as shared challenges facing teacher educators around the globe. In this article, teacher educators from Asia, Africa, North America and South America offer a sampling of initiatives in anti‐oppressive teacher education; that is, initiatives to prepare teachers to teach various subject matters to various age groups, addressing various forms of oppression in various cultural and community contexts.     

Virtual praxis: Constraints,approaches, and innovations of online creative arts teacher educators

Higher education, and in particular, initial teacher education, has been significantly transformed through the introduction of e-learning. However, online teacher education presents particular challenges in the creative arts, which has traditionally developed student understanding through embodied and collaborative learning experiences. In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with eight online arts educators in teacher education programs to understand their perspectives and pedagogy in online arts coursework. Using Engeström’s Activity Theory as an analytical lens, the findings highlight how these academics navigated challenges and opportunities to facilitate authentic, praxis-focused arts experiences to prepare pre-service teachers for the classroom.     

Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of simSchool as preparation for inclusive education: a pilot study

The shift towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular schools has meant that general classroom teachers need to be skilled in educating students with a diverse range of needs and abilities. Together with theoretical study and as a supplement to practical experience, teacher educators have begun to explore virtual and simulated classrooms to help prepare pre-service teachers for the complexity of the teaching profession. In this pilot study, we examined the perspective of pre-service teachers on a classroom simulation program called “simSchool.” Two-hour-long tutorial sessions focusing on catering for student diversity and the educational needs of students with autism spectrum disorder were conducted. The pre-service teachers’ responses to an 11-item questionnaire are discussed, highlighting the potential of simSchool as well as some current limitations of this approach in the context of Australian teacher education courses.     

Preparing early childhood educators for global education: the implications of prior learning

This paper outlines the increasing cultural diversity of Australia’s education settings and explicates the global education movement and the new Australian Early Years Learning Framework. It discusses the implication of these factors for early childhood education practice and early childhood teacher education. The key research question considered in this paper is what prior learnings do early childhood educators utilise to consider global education? Data are presented on a research project that explores the prior learning of pre‐service early childhood educators at a major Australian university. The paper shows that, unlike primary and secondary pre‐service teachers, most early childhood education pre‐service teachers have significant professional experiences in educational settings. These prior experiences have a significant impact on pre‐service early childhood educators’ knowledge, beliefs and attitudes in the area of global education and align strongly with the global education curriculum movement and new national curriculum.     

“Finding the Joy in the Unknown”: Implementation of STEAM Teaching Practices in Middle School Science and Math Classrooms

In response to a desire to strengthen the economy, educational settings are emphasizing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum and programs. Yet, because of the narrow approach to STEM, educational leaders continue to call for a more balanced approach to teaching and learning, which includes the arts, design, and humanities. This desire created space for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) education, a transdisciplinary approach that focuses on problem-solving. STEAM-based curricula and STEAM-themed schools are appearing all over the globe. This growing national and global attention to STEAM provides an opportunity for teacher education to explore the ways in which teachers implement STEAM practices, examining the successes and challenges, and how teachers are beginning to make sense of this innovative teaching practice. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of STEAM teaching practices in science and math middle school classrooms, in hopes to provide research-based evidence on this emerging topic to guide teacher educators.     

Through the lens of home-educated children: engagement in education

Engagement and participation are important for successful outcomes in education, yet disaffection in the UK, according to some exclusion and absence statistics, shows a growing trend. The purpose of this research was to develop a starting point for a theory of children’s engagement in education using grounded theory method. Evidence from home-educating families suggests that disaffection is a problem that is unique to school education. The research investigated home educated children's perceptions and experiences of home education. A flexible, semi-structured, qualitative design, encouraging children to determine the structure of their narratives was employed, using photovoice. Analysis followed grounded theory method and the results highlight themes for future development, refinement and further investigation. Important findings are that perceptions of self, and flexible and supportive learning contexts that provide children with a sense of active and autonomous involvement are linked to learning engagement and enthusiasm for learning. The conclusion outlines reasons why educational psychologists should become involved in discussion and research relating to home education. Limitations of the research are discussed and issues for future research are considered.     

Connections teachers make between creativity and arts learning

Background: Creativity is often cited as one of the capacities that needs to be actively encouraged in all aspects of schooling. However, what creativity is and how it may be promoted through formal teaching and learning approaches remain contested. There are also differences between educators in terms of how they understand, discuss and conceptualise this complex concept.

Purpose: This paper focuses on the difficulties associated with talking about creativity in education. It considers the ways in which schoolteachers who are involved in the area of arts education understand, describe and discuss the concept of creativity and how it interacts with their classroom practice.

Sample: Twenty-three educators who taught Arts (either as generalist primary classroom teachers or as specialist teachers), and the leadership team from a Kindergarten to Year 9 (pupil ages 5–15) school in the suburbs of a city in the Australian state of Victoria participated in the project.

Design and methods: In this phenomenological study, data were gathered from participants through questionnaires, discussion groups, email prompts and reflective journals. The material was analysed qualitatively.

Findings: By examining the teachers’ dialogic and discursive responses about creativity, it was possible to capture some broad ways in which the participants spoke about creativity. Data were analysed thematically and grouped into categories that represented the connected ‘creative orientations’: thinking orientations, action orientations, emotion orientations and skill/outcome orientations.

Conclusion: There is a need for educators in and across a range of discipline areas to share, map and think about creativity. The approach adopted in this exploratory study offers a way that could be used to focus discussions and help facilitate educators’ talk about creativity.     

Learning to teach 3D printing in schools: how do teachers in Korea prepare to integrate 3D printing technology into classrooms?

3D printing implementation in educational contexts has gained considerable attention in recent years. However, research shows that both in-service and pre-service teachers lack digital literacy and the confidence required to teach this emerging technology. This study reports the current challenges and opportunities in 3D printing education in Korea and identifies the range of knowledge required for teachers to integrate 3D printing technology into classrooms in meaningful ways. The technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework was used to analyze the certificate program for 3D printing educators and in-service teachers’ practices. The findings from interviews with 10 in-service teachers and participant observation in the 3D printing training workshop for pre-service teachers revealed that technological knowledge is overly emphasized in the 3D printing teacher training curriculum. Thus, many in-service teachers develop their content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge by exchanging ideas with other teachers online and running project-based courses with flipped classroom approaches. Two potential paths were discovered for developing curricula that cross over the domains of the TPACK framework to successfully integrate the technology into classrooms: collaboration between teachers in different subject areas and industry experts to develop technical knowledge and curriculum, and contextualizing 3D printing technology in relation to open-source digital culture.     

Student perceptions of learning environment: disciplinary program versus general education classrooms

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine student perceptions of the learning environment in their program major and general education classrooms. The participants were 870 undergraduate students majoring in engineering, fine arts, education, economics and nursing programs at a university in Thailand. We found significant differences in the perceptions of the classroom learning environment across various disciplines. Engineering and economics students perceived the learning environment in general education classrooms as more cooperative than the learning environment in program major classrooms. Fine arts and nursing students perceived greater involvement among students in the program major classrooms than in the general education classrooms. Our findings contribute to the body of research on inter-disciplinary differences in classroom learning environments in universities and the ways in which these differences may impact student learning outcomes.     

What Can Research Tell us about Teacher Education?

If it is true that educational research should not merely offer us better understandings of educational processes, but also offer us suggestions for good practice by ascertaining 'what works' most effectively in diverse contexts, then there are potentially four ways in which such research could be of use to those engaged in teacher education. This paper explores three of them-those which it argues are of most use to teacher educators. From research into the processes of teaching and learning we have learned a great deal about the complex nature of teachers' expertise and the extent to which it is determined by highly specific contexts. In seeking to understand more about the processes involved in learning to teach we have come to recognise the strength of the personal agendas that beginning teachers bring with them and the active role they play in negotiating their own learning. On this basis research offers teacher educators a number of suggestions for good practice: about the ways in which we should expect beginning teachers to make use of research-based generalisations; about how we can help them gain access to the wealth of expertise embedded in the practice of experienced teachers; and about how we can encourage them to subject their own preconceptions to serious critical evaluation.     

Learning engagement in distance and rural settings: Four Australian cases

This investigation explored the role of the home supervisor (usually a parent) in creating meaningful learning environments for young students’ numeracy development. The case study data (from four home sites in remote areas of Australia) illuminated the role that the supervisor plays in developing student’s numeracy in distance-education learning contexts. The case studies highlighted various pedagogical practices across these rich and diverse educational settings. The quality of the teaching and the influence of the distance education materials on the student’s numeracy outcomes were attributed to the resources that were supplied to the home site, the supervisory engagement, and the extent to which learning partnerships were fostered among classroom teachers, parents and other members of the extended community.     

Trauma narratives and nomos in teacher education

The present article draws on data from a three-year study of pedagogy in teacher education that attempts to disrupt normative structures of reading and being in the teacher education classroom. The author uses Bourdieu’s work to emphasize the ways in which academic fields become ruled by unspoken rules and practices – “nomos” – and demonstrates a use of trauma narratives in teacher education that can disrupt such unspoken rules and practices. The article challenges taken-for-granted assumptions in teacher education that students must be positioned as future teachers; that reading educational research and texts should be a priority; that writing assignments should be privileged; and that a cognitive approach to learning in teacher education should be privileged.     

Reading for meaning: problematizing inclusion in Indonesian civic education

This paper reports on the use of the Index for Inclusion in five socioeconomically different primary school contexts in Indonesia. The research was designed and developed through Australian and Indonesian teachers and teacher educators collaborative efforts over a year. The work took place during the post‐Suharto reform period and focuses on the field of Civics education. The research examines what the ethic of inclusion means to teachers participating in political and educational democratization as they attempt to embrace and develop citizenship classroom practices that feature respect for difference. The theoretical interest is in both citizenship theory and inclusion; showing how the civic cultures of school and nation intersect; and the implications of that intersection for inclusion theory and cross‐cultural theorizing of inclusion more broadly.     

Becoming a teacher in a gambling city: a case study of two pre-service teachers’ motivation for teaching in Macau

The present case study investigates the teaching motivation of two pre-service teachers studying in teacher education programs in a Macau university. The findings indicated that while Macau is a gambling center and abundant job opportunities are provided by casinos, both participants were highly motivated to improve the teaching and learning situation in Macau and bring positive changes to the Macau educational context. The findings also demonstrated the facilitative role of teachers and teacher educators in the formation of the motivation of student teachers. The study concludes with implications for enhancing the motivation of pre-service teachers, and the role of teacher education programs in Macau and other similar contexts.     

An educational practices framework: the potential for empowerment of the teaching profession

This paper outlines new educational policy initiatives that have been recently introduced to Australian schooling contexts and describes the challenges of providing rich and empowering professional development opportunities for classroom teachers and educational leaders in an era of heightened accountability and change. A framework for large-scale professional learning is proposed; one that adopts a theoretical lens associated with practice architectures, situated within community- and individual-focused professional learning experiences. The theoretical component of the model has been utilised effectively in a number of countries, while the personalised learning component is drawn from an evidence-based project that established a national learning framework.     

Expanding and sustaining arts-based educational research as practitioner inquiry

ABSTRACT

As practitioner inquiry is now established as a widely-recognized research tradition and flourishing movement for educational change, we might consider ways that practitioner inquiry could be conceptualized and executed to broaden implementation, deepen understanding, and sustain inquiry within teacher education. Arts-based research may be an ideal methodology for the extension and sustainment of such inquiry as its visual, performative orientation lends itself to participant engagement and provides access in the representation and dissemination of results. This article will put forth models for advancing arts-based practitioner inquiry within the field of teacher education, by drawing from multiple cycles of a dual-layered, ABER study. This vision of arts-based practitioner inquiry is that of inclusion, increasing the number of those who conduct and interact with research; collaboration, blurring boundaries between the inquiries of teacher educators and pre-service teachers; accessibility, tapping into the power of the arts to engage and communicate in ways that scientific language cannot; and continued engagement, using learning from one cycle to inform inquiry in the next.     

Narratives of learning communities in environmental education

Abstract

This article introduces the core concepts that emerged from five environmental education action research studies conducted by a group called Learning Communities in Environmental Education, Science and Mathematics (CEAMECIM) from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (FURG) in the south of Brazil. The studies focus on teacher education processes in learning communities involving teachers, researchers and environmental educators, and the critical writing and reading texts of classroom recordings to problematise participants’ teaching practices. CEAMECIM used action research cycles to examine narratives of educational action, narratives from teachers concerning their development as environmental educators, and narratives of their development of a sense of belonging, with a particular focus on critiquing social models that are based on hierarchies and individuality. From this analysis, we propose a new perspective on being and learning how to become a learning community, crystallised by the belief that ‘we are more when we are together’.     

Becoming-teacher: Encounters with the Other in teacher education

Teacher education – as currently practised – is solidly based on a developmental model of growing expertise, where novices move from error to effective practice by replicating the strategies and classroom moves of model teachers. Short timelines and limited opportunities for experience create challenges for students wishing to become teachers. Deleuze's construct of Becoming opens new perspectives on what it means for prospective teachers to explore the notion of Becoming-teacher, where learning about teaching is an encounter with ever-new situations and relationships. This chapter concludes with an invitation to teacher educators to experiment in their own practice, to do with their students, to fully explore the potentialities of Becoming-Teachers.