The influence of experience on pre-service and novice teachers – the Croatian perspective

This paper researches students’ and teacher trainees’ personal experience of student-centred teaching during their education in grades 1–4 of primary school. The questionnaire comprised 45 statements and was completed by 403 primary school teacher trainees and 535 students (future teachers) at Faculties of Teacher Education in Croatia. The research results show that students do not have sufficient prior experience that they could use as inspiration in their future teaching practice and that in the course of their education they were mainly exposed to traditional approach to teaching. The majority of teacher trainees are aware of the importance of student-centred teaching although they cannot fully give up the control of students and educational process. This research opens up the issue of a paradigm change within the teaching system and education in Croatia as well as the issue of changes within education and professional development of teachers.     

Australian teachers voice their perceptions of the influences of stereotypes,mindsets and school structure on teachers’ expectations of Indigenous students

Research demonstrates that teachers’ expectations of students have long-term effects on students’ educational, occupational, health and well-being outcomes. In this Australian-based study, teachers were invited to explore the questions Do teachers have different expectations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students? Why/why not? The findings provide insight into how teachers perceive the expectations of other teachers in relation to Indigenous learners and highlight the underlying assumptions of those perceptions. Teachers also provide valuable insight into what they feel is needed to address these issues. Recommendations are made to enhance pre-service teacher education and professional development to better support those working with Indigenous learners.     

An exploration of the relationships between elementary school teachers’ humor styles and their emotional labor

Teaching requires emotional labor. Humor is a promising but under-explored means of coping with such labor. A questionnaire was administered to 302 primary teachers to assess three kinds of emotional labor (surface, deep, and genuine acting) and four humor styles: two adaptive (affiliative and self-enhancing) and two maladaptive (aggressive and self-defeating). Affiliative and self-enhancing humor were positively correlated with emotional labor, whereas aggressive and self-defeating humor were negatively correlated with such labor. These results can help raise awareness of teaching’s emotional demands, and encourage teacher-training and professional-development programs to showcase appropriate ways, including humor, of coping with workplace emotions.     

A review of research on teachers’ use of student data: from the perspective of school leadership

Despite the increased worldwide acknowledgment of the importance of teachers’ use of formative and/or summative assessment data to improve teaching and learning, empirical research on its impacts on student learning is sparse. Even more so is the lack of studies on the best ways for school leaders to develop teachers’ capacity. Teachers generally have low efficacy in using student data to inform their day-to-day instructions. Teachers lack the basic skills to understand, interpret, and analyze data, develop instructional strategies based on data, and implement research-based instructional strategies in classrooms to address the weaknesses reflected from data analysis results. Any gap in this chain of instructional actions would lead to ineffective teaching and learning in classrooms. This study synthesizes research located from on-line databases on teachers’ data use conducted in the last 14 years and examines the nature, impacts, and shapers of teachers’ use of student formative and/or summative assessment data to improve teaching and learning. This review provides a much-needed guide to school leaders and policy makers in the USA, as well to other jurisdictions that want to make evidence-based decisions in the hopes of improving student learning and teachers’ capacity in data use.     

The importance of school leaders’ engagement in socialising newly qualified teachers into the teaching profession

This article focuses on the importance of school leaders’ commitment to socialising newly qualified teachers (NQTs) into the teaching profession. Framed by a social constructivist perspective, the article is based on four challenges novice teachers face as described by four school leaders. The aim is to illuminate how school leaders have understood the conflicts and differences that come to light in these challenges. School leaders’ experiences of the encounter between NQTs and schools point to how the facilitation of the teachers’ professional development at their schools was challenged and how follow-up and guidance of NQTs only started after the problems were disclosed to colleagues and the school leaders. This study indicates that there is a lack of insight into NQTs’ work situation, a fact that seems to exacerbate a negative development in the school environment. We argue that school leaders must be more proactive by being aware of the dynamics of the teaching team when NQTs join a previously established team. School leaders should communicate the expectations they have for how the team can welcome NQTs’ new ideas, on the one hand, and offer support if they encounter challenges, on the other. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the composition of teaching teams must be reassessed from year to year so that they serve as an arena that promotes professional development for both NQTs and established teachers. Poor relationships with colleagues and a lack of cooperation within teacher teams may also have a detrimental effect on student learning. School leaders have a great amount of power and influence, perhaps much more than they are aware of, when it comes to the wellbeing of NQTs and their decision to remain in the profession. We underline the importance of the role school leaders have in socialising NQTs into the teaching profession by paying attention to how they are welcomed and mentored by their colleagues in school.     

The ‘outdoor school’ as a school improvement process: empirical results from the perspective of teachers in Germany

This paper focuses on school improvement processes in the context of weekly curricular-based teaching and learning activities outside the classroom – known as Draußenschule or ‘outdoor school’ – in three German primary schools. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three teachers two years after implementing the ‘outdoor school’. The teachers’ experiences show that the implementation and (ongoing) development of an outdoor school affects (1) teaching as such; (2) the school staff, and (3) the entire school as an organisation. The three areas are interlinked in different ways and the school improvement process cannot be approached from the perspective of any one area alone.     

Feeling voice: The emotional politics of ‘student voice’ for teachers

In recent years, student voice has become a popular school reform strategy, with the promise of generating relations of trust, respect, belonging and student empowerment. However, when student voice practices are taken up by schools, student voice may also be associated with less affirmative feelings: it is often accounted for in terms of teacher ‘fear’, ‘resistance’ or ‘uncertainty’ about altered power relations. Such explanations risk individualising and pathologising teachers’ responses, rather than recognising the complexities of the institutional conditions of student voice. This article considers the affective politics of student voice: that is, the contestations that attend who gets to name how student voice feels in schools. Working with data from an evaluation study of three Australian primary schools who engage in ‘exemplary’ student voice practices, we listen to school leaders and facilitating teachers’ accounts about the responses of other teachers at their schools to student voice. Parallels are drawn between the construction of some teachers as reluctant, and previous analyses of ‘silenced’ student voices in schools. We argue that, in order to analyse the enactment of student voice in more nuanced tones, it is necessary to consider the profoundly emotional experience of teaching and learning, the ambivalences of teachers’ experiences of student voice and contemporary reconstitutions of teacher subjectivities.     

Pre-service teachers’ conceptions of creativity in elementary school English

Widely thought to be something worth encouraging in young learners, creativity has popularly been associated more with music and art than with other areas of the curriculum. There have been many studies of creativity but few that focus explicitly on what counts as creative thinking in specific subject areas. The aim of the research reported here was to determine pre-service teachers’ conceptions of creativity within the curriculum for English. The study involved analyses of primary school trainee teachers’ responses to questionnaires and follow-up focus group discussion to identify their conceptions. A group of 48 trainees in the final year of an undergraduate degree in primary education leading to qualified teacher status in England completed the questionnaire. Of these, eight volunteered to participate in a follow-up focus group discussion to further explore ideas. Responses were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Conceptions of creativity in English were found to be limited, focused mainly on naïve views of story writing and dramatic activity. Responses indicated that they were often unable to distinguish clearly between the concept of creativity, an example of its occurrence in the classroom, and what feature of that example made it creative. Consequently, their limited constructions of creativity were confused. It is important that teachers in schools as well as those responsible for training teachers in universities are advised that trainees’ conceptions of creativity in English may be inadequate in several respects and that they may not recognise opportunities for creativity. Pre-service training programmes could well benefit from structured courses on the forms and applications of creativity.     

Transprofessional competences of school teachers in the digital environment: education employers’ perspective

Education and Information Technologies - The shift towards digitalization in education, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic-related issues, has led to the emergence of a need to expand the borders...     

Chinese elementary school teachers’ perceptions of students’ classroom behaviour problems

This study examined teachers’ perceptions of classroom behaviour problems in five provinces of the People’s Republic of China. Researchers surveyed 527 Chinese teachers from 27 elementary schools. Consistent with previous studies in China, teachers perceived non‐attention to be the most frequent and troublesome behaviour problem. Teachers’ perceptions of which behaviour problems were most difficult to tolerate and most negative in their effects on student development were also investigated. Approximately 45% of the teachers reported spending too much time on behaviour problems. Significant differences were found in the prevalence of teachers’ perceptions of student misbehaviour and of the time spent on classroom management; there were also differences in these perceptions according to students’ gender, type of school, classroom subject taught, and teachers’ level of experience. The implications of these findings for researchers and practitioners are addressed.     

Preservice elementary school teachers’ knowledge of fractions: a mirror of students’ knowledge?

This research analyses preservice teachers’ knowledge of fractions. Fractions are notoriously difficult for students to learn and for teachers to teach. Previous studies suggest that student learning of fractions may be limited by teacher understanding of fractions. If so, teacher education has a key role in solving the problem. We first reviewed literature regarding students’ knowledge of fractions. We did so because assessments of required content knowledge for teaching require review of the students’ understanding to determine the mathematics difficulties encountered by students. The preservice teachers were tested on their conceptual and procedural knowledge of fractions, and on their ability in explaining the rationale for a procedure or the conceptual meaning. The results revealed that preservice teachers’ knowledge of fractions indeed is limited and that last-year preservice teachers did not perform better than first-year preservice teachers. This research is situated within the broader domain of mathematical knowledge for teaching and suggests ways to improve instruction and student learning.     

The lure of hegemonic masculinity: investigating the dynamics of gender relations in two male elementary school teachers’ lives 1

This paper is based on an investigation into the dynamics of masculinity in two male elementary school teachers’ lives. It draws on a poststructuralist approach to empirical analysis that is informed by Sondergaard who argues for the need to attend to the ‘constitution of social practices and cultural patterns’ through which subjects make sense of their lived experiences. This approach, it is argued, is supported by Convery who stresses the need to ‘sensitively confront’ the identity claims that are inscribed through teacher narratives. In this sense, the author provides an account of the dynamics of masculinity in two male elementary school teachers’ lives, which attend to issues of sexuality and social class in examining how gendered identity management impacts on pedagogical practices and philosophical approaches to teaching. This poststructuralist analytic inquiry, with its emphasis on interrogating essentialized notions of fixed identity, illuminates the contradictory practices of hegemonic masculinity in male elementary school teachers’ lives. Such empirical inquiry, it is further argued, is necessary given the failure of educational policy, in its insistence on the need for more male role models in elementary schools, to deal adequately with the complexities and significance of male teachers’ masculinities.     

Supporting school teachers: primary teachers’ conceptions of their responses to diverse sexualities

Teachers experience a range of situations in the primary school context where students talk about, share ideas and use words and actions that might be described as non-heteronormative in character. This article reports on teachers’ experiences of the ways in which they respond to actions and events they see as non-heteronormative. It identifies six different ways in which teachers conceptualise their pedagogical responses to the situations they encounter: (1) being nonchalant, (2) avoiding a response, (3) being uncertain, (4) maintaining home and school boundaries, (5) protecting students’ well-being and (6) embracing non-heteronormative sexualities. Teachers’ responses to these events are important in that their actions may affect how students interpret and understand the world. Primary school teachers will benefit from support in knowing how to respond appropriately when faced with a scenario or situation that is non-heteronormative in character.     

Effects of pre-service teachers�� receptive vocabulary knowledge on their interactive read-alouds with elementary school students

There are individual differences in the amount and type of vocabulary that adults produce to young children in the home environment before the children enter school. How many words a mother knows is a significant predictor of a child??s vocabulary. The current study addressed the question of whether there were individual differences in the amount and type of vocabulary that pre-service teachers produced in their first read-aloud lessons to first and second grade students. Specifically, would pre-service teachers with higher vocabulary scores differ from those with lower vocabulary scores in their choice of books to read and in the language they used to discuss the books? Results indicated that pre-service teachers with more advanced vocabulary scores chose books with more vocabulary diversity and sophistication. When they chose narrative texts, they also chose books that were more difficult in terms of their semantic cohesion. Both the receptive vocabulary of pre-service teachers and the language in the books that they chose had an effect on the ??teacher talk?? that they used in the lesson surrounding the book reading. Just as parents show individual differences in the richness of the language input provided to their children before they enter school, pre-service teachers own knowledge of language varies, and this influences the linguistic input that they provide to their students.     

Examining the influence of pre-service teachers’ digital native traits on their technology acceptance: A Serbian perspective

Education and Information Technologies - Many seem to believe that today’s pre-service teachers as born after 1980 are digital natives, or that they are “native speakers” of the...     

Mathematically based and practically based explanations in the elementary school: teachers’ preferences

This article focuses on elementary school teachers’ preferences for mathematically based (MB) and practically based (PB) explanations. Using the context of even and odd numbers, it explores the types of explanations teachers generate on their own as well as the types of explanations they prefer after reviewing various explanations. It also investigates the basis for these preferences. Results show that teacher-generated explanations include more MB explanations than PB explanations. However, many still choose to use mostly PB explanations in their classrooms, believing that these explanations will be most convincing to their students. The implications for teacher education are discussed.     

The effect of teacher education programs on future elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge: a five-country analysis using TEDS-M data

This article addresses the problem of how opportunities to learn in teacher education programs influence future elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge. This study used data collected for the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). TEDS-M measured the mathematics content knowledge (MCK) and the mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) of future teachers in their final year in teacher preparation programs. The purpose of this study is to explore whether elementary teaching candidates’ MCK and MPCK are associated with their opportunities to learn in mathematics courses and mathematics methods courses in five countries. The results showed that opportunities to learn in some teacher preparation components are more important than in other components.