The ethical claim of partiality: practical reasoning,the discipline,and teacher education

Practical reasoning refers to a teacher's capacity to discern particulars and make wise judgements about how to act in pedagogical situations. But how do teachers know what is right? How are teachers' preferences to be grounded and their choices justified? I explore the disciplines as one source of moral perception. Assuming that narrative unities underscore the coherence and continuity of an individual's experience, I generated data in the context of a 2‐year teacher education programme. The case study of an aspiring teacher of secondary school language arts illustrates how the intellectual virtues of a discipline can influence a student teacher's practical reasoning. I conclude that teacher educators must attend to the complex ways in which a prospective teacher's prior discipline may influence aspiring teachers' orientations to experience, their consideration of educational ends, and, finally, their characters.     

Decisions to enter and continue in the teaching profession: Evidence from a sample of U.S. secondary STEM teacher candidates

Given its prevalence and cost it is imperative to identify predictors of early career teacher turnover intentions and behavior. During their final year as education majors, 311 US, STEM Secondary Education students rated their student teaching experience, the strength of their teacher identity, and their intent to enter the teaching profession. Within 1–3 years after graduating 191 of them reported whether they remained in the teaching profession. One's identity as a teacher, as well as the perceived quality of student teaching experiences, predicted both intent and actual entry into the teaching profession. Furthermore, teacher identity mediated the relationship between student teaching satisfaction and outcomes.     

What a difference mentoring makes: service learning and engagement for college students

Colleges are increasingly interested in ways to better engage students in their academic careers. This article reports 20 college students' experiences as mentors for at‐risk fourth‐graders through a mentoring program called The Learning Connection (TLC), run by the Community Services Office at Moravian College. The study describes students' voluntary participation in service learning activities as a source of student engagement, the characteristics of the TLC mentoring program, the process by which student mentors reported their experiences over the course of the academic year, and the benefits of the mentoring program through the eyes of the college student mentors. At the beginning of the mentoring experience, mentors reported that the primary reasons for mentoring were to make a difference in a child's life and supplement classroom learning. At the end of the academic year, mentors reported that mentoring taught them important lessons about children, themselves, community work and the value of mentoring. Mentor feedback supports mentoring, specifically, and service learning, generally, as a source of student engagement for college students.     

Leadership without imposition

Community colleges require speech communication teachers with special competencies—competencies dictated by the educational goals, the student characteristics, and the community orientation of junior colleges. These teacher competencies should be taught through special master's degree programs and in‐service training provided by teacher education institutions and professional speech communication associations. Based on her experience as a teacher at community colleges in Texas and Illinois and as a director of teacher training in speech, the author suggests that community colleges are basically different than four‐year institutions, and need teachers with different skills.     

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF CANDIDATES' DIVERSITY COMPETENCE: RIGOROUS AND SYSTEMATIC ASSESSMENT OF CANDIDATES' EFFICACY TO TEACH DIVERSE STUDENT POPULATIONS

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES, 2010) continues to report substantial underachievement of diverse student populations in the nation's schools. After decades of focus on diversity and multicultural education, with integrating field and clinical practice, candidates continue to graduate without adequate knowledge, skills and dispositions to teach diverse students. The National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires teacher education programs to engage in assessment practices that examine candidates' competence to teach diverse students and to inform the unit. In this article the authors discuss the need to triangulate the results of performance-based assessment and to systematically examine the growth of candidates' competence to teach every student. They propose a rigorous and systematic unit (i.e., teacher education program unit) assessment practice, using reliable and valid instruments to measure candidates' efficacy to teach diverse students, which will provide effective data for teacher education programs to become proactive to improve programs.     

The relationship between perceptions of a Chinese high school's ethical climate and students' school performance

This study examined the relationship of school ethical climate and students' school performance within the context of a Chinese high school. Gender and grade‐level differences in ethical climate perceptions were also explored. Survey data on perceptions of school ethical climate based upon the dimensions of student‐to‐teacher, student‐to‐student and teacher‐to‐student interactions and relationships were obtained from 754 students. Results of the study showed that students' perceptions of their high school's ethical climate were related to academic achievement, gender and grade level. Students' involvement in extracurricular activities and student leadership generally did not seem to relate to their perceptions of ethical climate. Based upon these findings, the school's moral education intervention programs should increase their focus on the area of teacher‐to‐student relationships and interactions and the subgroups of male students, students in higher grades and students with lower academic achievement. Implications for future research on school climate are also discussed.     

Finding out more about teacher candidates' prior knowledge: implications for teacher educators

While it is recognised that prior knowledge is a key factor in determining future learning, its influence on learning to teach is less well known. This study investigates two cohorts of teacher candidates studying for a one-year, graduate qualification for primary teaching, who completed two tasks at entry to their initial teacher education programme: a task in writing and a task in mathematics. The tasks focused on teacher candidates' ability to recognise the key features of a piece of student work. The teacher candidates' responses to the tasks highlighted the diverse nature of the prior knowledge that underpinned their responses. The study raises questions about the pedagogy of initial teacher education, particularly in relation to the assumptions teachers educators make about the candidates they teach. The findings suggest that the prior knowledge that students bring to initial teacher education is both a resource and a challenge for teacher educators.     

Troubling identities: teacher education students' constructions of class and ethnicity

Working with diverse student populations productively depends on teachers and teacher educators recognizing and valuing difference. Too often, in teacher education programs, when markers of identity such as gender, ethnicity, ‘race’, or social class are examined, the focus is on developing student teachers' understandings of how these discourses shape learner identities and rarely on how these also shape teachers' identities. This article reports on a research project that explored how student teachers understand ethnicity and socio‐economic status. In a preliminary stage of the research, we asked eight Year 3 teacher education students who had attended mainly Anglo‐Australian, middle class schools as students and as student teachers, to explore their own ethnic and classed identities. The complexities of identity are foregrounded in both the assumptions we made in selecting particular students for the project and in the ways they constructed their own identities around ethnicity and social class. In this article we draw on these findings to interrogate how categories of identity are fluid, shifting and ongoing processes of negotiation, troubling and complex. We also consider the implications for teacher education.     

Who Is at Risk and Why? Teachers' Reasons for Concern and Their Understanding and Assessment of Early Literacy

This study focuses on an issue of recent policy significance—the need to aid teachers in successfully identifying why children struggle to acquire literacy. This study (a) asked K–1 teachers to nominate students that they believed to be at risk for literacy difficulties and to provide reasons for their concern, (b) examined how these reasons relate to teachers' broader conceptions of literacy, and (c) investigated whether teachers' initial reasons and checklist-guided ratings align with concurrently administered standardized assessments. Results revealed that teachers have a wide array of initial concerns for students. There was some discordance between teachers's specific reasons for concern and their broader conceptions of early literacy. Comparison of student performance on standardized measures with teacher rationale also revealed discordance. Specific guidelines to teachers on use of a literacy checklist increased concordance between subsequent teacher ratings and standardized measures in some reading-related skills but not others. Implications for the use of multiple sources of evidence for student performance, as well as professional development, are discussed.     

Negotiating White science in rural Black America: A case for navigating the landscape of teacher knowledge domains

The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of requisite teacher knowledge for teaching lower-track science students. Using video accounts, student focus groups, and teacher reflections researchers documented missteps, dead-ends, and unfruitful trajectories informed by the teacher’s incoming knowledge and compared these instances to necessary modifications informed by students’ voices and cultural artifacts. Our study revealed the shifting nature of sociocultural and pedagogical content knowledge of the teacher immersed in a context unlike that he experienced as a student. Results showed that teachers of majority backgrounds could learn to teach diverse students with at least moderate success from the perspective of their students. Implications for research and teacher education in diverse settings are discussed.     

Special education teachers’ experienced burnout and perceived fit with the professional community: A 5-year follow-up study

In many countries, including in Finland, promoting inclusive school practices supporting pupils’ equal rights for learning is the focus of school development. Special education teachers play a central intermediary role in developing inclusive school and classroom practices by providing support both for pupils and peer teachers. This may increase their risk of experiencing exhaustion, cynicism towards the teacher community and/or inadequacy in pupil–teacher relationships. However, the resources of a school's social working environment experienced as a functional teacher–working environment fit may buffer the risk of developing burnout. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the interrelation between, and development of, special education teachers’ experienced burnout symptoms and perceived teacher–working environment fit across time. The longitudinal study included two measurements (in year 2010, n = 760 and in year 2016, n = 485). The results show that special education teachers’ experienced inadequacy in pupil–teacher relationships predicted teacher exhaustion, cynicism towards the teacher community and inadequacy in pupil–teacher relationships 5 years later. Moreover, a perceived good teacher–working environment fit predicted lower cynicism towards the teacher community 5 years later.     

小学教师实践性知识发展的叙事研究

教师实践性知识研究已成为研究者关注的热点,运用教育叙事,以一位小学教师为个案,从自我知识、学科教学知识、学习者的知识和情境知识等方面展示其实践性知识发展的真实状况。个人的教育信念、原有的受教育背景和生活经验、教学反思的意识、学习方式的转变和学校文化的创设等是影响小学教师实践性知识形成与发展的深层次原因。研究启示,教师实践性知识的生成离不开日常教学生活、教学反思以及教师学习共同体的建立。     

The Dynamics of Interaction During Post‐lesson Conferences and the Development of Professional Activity: Study of a pre‐service physical education teacher and her co‐operating teacher

The purpose of this study was to characterise the development of a preservice physical education teacher's professional activity over the course of training interactions with her co‐operating teacher. The student teacher's professional development was studied using a hermeneutic and inductive approach based on the analysis of data from observation and self‐confrontation interviews. The results showed that the preservice teacher's conceptions regarding her teaching developed despite communication difficulties with her co‐operating teacher and that she constructed new knowledge—at times without her co‐operating teacher's awareness—even when she disagreed with him. However, the student teacher's classroom activity did not always change as a result of this new knowledge. The self‐confrontation interviews revealed her construction of knowledge, as well as the reasons for disagreement and her resistance to changing her classroom action.     

Student teachers in the contact zone: developing critical intercultural ‘teacherhood’ in kindergarten teacher education

This paper reports on the results of a narrative-grounded investigation ofstudent teachers' intercultural experiences and learning during their teaching practice. Our interest is in the meaning of the intercultural contact zone and how education for diversities is conceptualised and reflected upon in Finnish teacher education. Critical event narratives were collected from 10 kindergarten student teachers' teaching practice portfolios where the focus was on observing and reflecting on diversities in education. Theoretically, the study relies on Pratt's theory of contact zone. The methods and conditions for supporting student teachers' understanding of diversities in teacher education are discussed.     

Engaging with Higher Education Academic Support: a first year student teacher transition model

The need for a redefinition of first year experience in higher education is advocated with the aid of two models, which, although focused on a sample of Australian pre-service teaching students, is proposed as generalisable across the first year. Introduction to the mores of higher education is generally supported by teaching institutions during Orientation days and into the first few weeks of study on the assumption that students are then prepared for academic study. Institutions have invested significantly in providing a range of resources and services to support this process but their effectiveness relies on their timely and appropriate use by students. It is proposed that first year students' transition be identified as the FYST, a unique and important experience and the first of a series of transitions that occur throughout tertiary study. It is also argued that student engagement should be explicitly linked to critical points in the academic programme. Student teacher focus group feedback suggests that Timely, Individualised, and Prioritised Survival [TIPS] support may be key to aiding students' transition to higher education and valuable to student retention.     

Teacher identity development in the first year of teacher education: A developmental and social psychological perspective

The present study examined the development of teacher identity in a cohort of first year student teachers from a developmental and social psychological perspective, relying on Erikson's (1964) theory of identity development and Turner, Oakes, Haslam, and McGarty's (1994) self-categorization theory. As hypothesized, aspects of both personal identity development and social identity were significantly associated with higher teacher identity after controlling for several covariates. The findings have several implications for teacher education programs and point to the potential utility of applying well-researched psychological theory when examining the processes by which student teachers develop a professional teaching identity.     

Comparative and international education in initial teacher education: an Irish case study

Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, Comparative and International Education (CIE) has almost disappeared from the curricula of teacher education colleges in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Yet, CIE is experiencing a revival at postgraduate level. This article will explore the reasons for this dichotomy and the decline of CIE in initial teacher education. It will use findings from a research study in an Irish teacher education college to inform this exploration. The author initiated, developed, and offered a CIE course to final year BEd (n=24) students in 2003 and again in 2005. This article will use data gathered during the latter course to explore CIE for undergraduate trainee teachers, considering students’ motivation for choosing to study CIE, their perceptions of CIE, and their beliefs about how it may enhance their professional practice in classrooms. It will explore, in particular, a significant finding that emerged from the study – the potential of CIE in developing student teachers’ capacities to teach in multicultural classrooms.     

Teacher expectations and student literacy engagement and achievement

Notwithstanding the complex and dynamic nature of teaching and learning in schools, over four decades of research findings have consistently revealed a correlation between teacher expectations and student achievement. Focusing on teacher expectations for the narrative structures created by young children, this article features a discussion of data gathered during a multifaceted study with 7‐ and 8‐year‐old students. The overall purpose of the case study research was to explore the development of student understanding of elements of visual art and design and diverse narrative structures in picturebooks. For the culminating activity of the research, the students had opportunities to apply and transform their knowledge of the instructional foci when they composed their own multimodal print texts. Analysis of the students' narrative structures revealed the multiple forms of metalepsis, the purposeful breaking of storyworld/narrative boundaries, evident in their writing and artwork. In addition to a discussion about the socially situated nature of the children's multimodal text‐making, the article includes a consideration of the importance of teacher expectations with respect to student literacy engagement and achievement.     

‘X is the odd one out,because the other two are more about the farmland’ – Dutch L1 student teachers’ struggles to reason about grammar in odd one out tasks

Grammatical knowledge is an important part of L1 language education. Nevertheless, teachers find it challenging to convey an in-depth understanding of grammar to their students. Previous research suggests that understanding might be stimulated by focusing on grammatical reasoning. The current mixed-methods study explores the grammatical reasoning of 108 Dutch L1 student teachers’ in odd one out tasks, showing that student teachers struggle with such reasoning tasks. A multilevel regression analysis indicates that their level of grammatical understanding as measured by a Test of Grammatical Understanding (TGU) and the elaborateness of student teachers’ argumentation significantly predict the quality of their grammatical reasoning. Student teachers’ performances were also compared to 14 year old pre-university students’ performances (N = 120). Contrary to what was hypothesized, senior student teachers did not manage to outperform junior student teachers, nor did student teachers outperform pre-university students. The paper discusses plausible reasons for these findings and explores how teacher education might need to shift focus to better develop student teachers’ grammatical reasoning skills.     

When style meets pattern in mentoring talk: implications for student teacher community learning environments in practice teaching

This study investigates how mentor talk unfolds in a community of learners during an entire school year in the context of practice teaching in university teacher education. Specifically, it focuses on how emergent styles and patterns of mentor’s talk shaped power relations in the discourse, promoting different kinds of learning environments. Data collection included 23 video-recorded meetings of the learning community of 11 student teachers and a university mentor and 25 semi-structured interviews with all participants including the mentor. Findings show that styles and patterns of mentor talk are central to how a particular learning environment in a community develops. Implications for pre-service mentors’ roles in the context of student teacher learning in a community are discussed.