Teacher preparation to proficiency and beyond: exploring the landscape

Concerns around the provision and retention of quality teachers are global. Amongst these concerns are the preparedness of graduate teachers and the quality and nature of teacher education. The purpose of the article is to focus questions of teacher preparedness and education within a wider discussion around the professional life-cycle of teachers. Initial teacher education is viewed as the first phase of the professional life-cycle of a teacher; part of a professional continuum of learning and expertise, rather than a distinct preparatory phase. We do not present a detailed model for this continuum; believing there is still significant work to be done on defining and delineating the levels of expertise. Such work is beyond the scope of this paper. We do provide a starting point for further consideration. Further, we suggest a scaffolded transition, determined by the learning needs of teachers, between initial teacher education and induction, moving to in-service learning, with closer connections between providers and schools to mitigate against a disconnect between these phases of development. The potential role of professional standards in supporting teacher learning across the professional life-cycle is also discussed.     

Education and Opportunity: Some Economic Perspectives

Abstract

This paper argues against the current tendency to regard the acquisition of facts and useful skills as primary in education. While this tendency has often been criticised in theory before, it remains prevalent in practice. Moreover, influential theses in philosophy of education are often taken to support such a tendency, and the current political climate appears to be influencing educational policy in that direction. Hence it is worth opposing it again with, it is hoped, some fresh lines of thought.

An outline is sketched of a philosophical position which supports a different kind of approach which the author has seen in practice.

While there is a place in education for factual knowledge and useful skills, they should be recognised as secondary. The primary qualities, it is argued, are the development (a) of moral values and attitudes, and (b) of critical independent thinking in a spirit of creative enquiry.

In practice one sees a more widespread commitment to a Personal Enquiry conception of education, which incorporates the primary qualities, in primary than in secondary schools.     

Developing mental orthographic representations in refugee spellers with low literacy: how much input is too much?

Background

We used two principles of implicit learning, variability and complexity, to train mental orthographic representations in refugee English learners to improve spelling.

Methods

Twenty‐eight refugees enrolled in a 10‐week English class were trained on classroom words using stimuli designed to encourage implicit learning. We contrasted high‐variability visual input combined with either high‐linguistic or low‐linguistic complexity, using a short (<5 minute) PowerPoint‐based training. Participants were regularly tested on their spelling and were compared with themselves using single subject design. Individual effect sizes were aggregated across participants, and we used dependent measures t‐tests to compare conditions.

Results

Participants learned significantly more treated words than control words in the high‐variability/low‐complexity condition, but not in the high‐variability/high‐complexity condition.

Conclusions

Refugees can benefit from interventions designed to promote implicit learning but can be overwhelmed by too much input.     

Broadening the basis of assessment to prevent the narrowing of learning

ABSTRACT

This article presents an argument for a reconsideration of the types of assessment pro‐ moted by national policy. It argues that education for the twenty‐first century should place emphasis on higher‐order skills and ‘deep learning’ while not neglecting basic skills. The evidence relating to the impact of assessment on learning is briefly reviewed, as is the current state of understanding about different types of learning. On this basis it is argued that the range of types of assessments used, both formally and informally, should be expanded to illuminate and support a wide spectrum of rel‐ evant learning, including both the learning of facts and skills, deeper understandings of concepts and principles and their application in unfamiliar contexts. The impli‐ cations for policy and for the refocusing of national assessment in England are then discussed and an alternative framework is proposed.