Teacher-working-environment fit as a framework for burnout experienced by Finnish teachers

The purpose of this study was to explore the kinds of episodes that challenge comprehensive school teachers’ occupational well-being and cause burnout and how teachers perceive the relationship between themselves and their working environment in these episodes. Altogether, a selected group of 68 primary and secondary school teachers were interviewed. The narratives of burdening episodes were identified and analysed from the qualitative data. The results suggested that teachers’ working environment provides multiple contexts for burnout. Sources for teacher burnout varied between the working contexts provided by the single school. Moreover, the results showed that there was heterogeneity in the quality of the teacher-working-environment fit reported by the teachers while facing burdening situations or series of events in their work.     

‘So she has been educated by a vulgar,silly, conceited French governess!’ Social anxieties,satirical portraits,and the eighteenth‐century French instructor

Maria Edgeworth’s pedagogical short stories ‘Mademoiselle Panache’ (1800, 1801) and ‘The Good French Governess’ (1801) portray contrasting French instructors, and illustrate a transformation in English girls’ education in French at the end of the eighteenth century. While ‘Mademoiselle Panache’ looks back to the disingenuous French instructors of eighteenth‐century comedy, demonstrating English anxieties about the supposedly corrupting influence of the French on young girls, ‘The Good French Governess’ shows the positive influence of French émigrés in late eighteenth‐century French instruction. In contrast to critical assumptions that the English public’s outraged response to the French Revolution terminated English interest in all things French, these and other contemporary texts show that English girls’ education in French was not diminished by anti‐Jacobin attitudes, and indeed flourished into the nineteenth century.     

安徽省中学体育教师课程改革认同感现状调查

随着我国课程改革的推进,教师对于课程改革的认同度成为影响改革推进的重要因素。本研究通过对安徽省4座城市80所中学体育教师的问卷调查,发现:教师对新一轮课程改革的认同感普遍较为正面;中学体育教师对课改的优势及其对教师自身和学生发展的价值都持较为积极的态度,但对学校在推进课改的管理措施方面有不少负面意见;课程改革特征、教师价值感和学生价值感知会影响体育教师的课改认同感,而学校改革管理则对上述影响因素产生作用,因此要提升中学体育教师的课改认同感,学校管理层应提供更多支持、更多课改学习机会和更多参与课改校务决策的机会。     

大学教师的身份认同

近年来大学教师的社会声誉呈下降的趋势,其原因是复杂的,其中缺乏自觉的身份认同是一个重要原因。本文从＂身份认同＂的视角看待大学教师形象劣化的问题,讨论作为学术职业的大学教师个体身份认同和作为学术共同体的大学教师群体身份认同。     

The influence of formal and informal formative pre‐service experiences on teacher self‐efficacy

Formal pre‐service training has been shown to be effective in building teacher self‐efficacy beliefs. However, the impact of other, less formal, ‘teacher‐like’ pre‐service experiences on the formation of efficacy beliefs has not previously been investigated. This study examines the associations between both formal and informal formative pre‐service experiences and teacher self‐efficacy. In addition, the effect of years of teaching experience on these associations was investigated. Three hundred fifteen teachers of general and Judaic studies in Jewish day schools in the USA responded to a survey about their formal pre‐service experiences; informal experiences as youth advisors, camp counsellors and childcare supervisors; and two measures of teacher self‐efficacy. Formal pre‐service training and positive student‐teaching experiences, as well as each of the three informal experiences, were found to be associated with positive teacher self‐efficacy. Interestingly, formal and informal pre‐service experiences appear to be associated with different aspects of teacher self‐efficacy. Formal teacher training was most strongly associated with efficacy for instructional practices, while the positive informal experiences were most strongly associated with efficacy for student engagement. The potential impact of both formal and informal experiences did not appear to fade over time. On the contrary, for those variables where an interaction with years of teaching was detected, it was the efficacy beliefs of the most senior teachers that were most related to their pre‐service experiences. These findings have important implications for the practice of both teacher trainers and those charged with recruiting and supporting teachers.     

Biopower,disciplinary power,and the production of the 'good Latino/a teacher'

This inquiry explores who is the ‘good teacher of color’. Through Michel Foucault's notion of biopower and disciplinary power, the analysis attempts to problematize the subject-position of ‘teacher of color’ by exploring how a Latino intern and a Latina intern negotiated their subjectivity in a large diverse school district. Participants' construction of subjectivity was found to be located within the nexus of the school district, the university, and the Latino counter-discourse through which biopower and disciplinary power operated.     

Beginning teachers as enquirers: m-level work in initial teacher education

In order to deliver life-long learning for teachers, practitioner-based enquiry learning is being promoted by teacher education institutions on the basis that this form of learning gives teachers the ability to understand factors affecting learning within their own classrooms by systematic investigations of issues and the construction of an evidence-base on which decisions which improve learning can be taken. In turn this enhances teacher professionalism. This article presents a study of how practitioner-based enquiry was embedded in an initial teacher education programme; the reasons for this; and the purposes of the strategy, which raised the one-year postgraduate qualification to masters-level. It looks at the reasons for the change; the nature of the change, which included educating teachers intending to teach in primary schools together with those intending to teach in secondary; the introduction of practitioner-based enquiry; some early student reaction; and the structural, cultural and learning issues which have emerged.     

Development of mentor teacher role inventory

This study aimed to develop and investigate the validity and reliability of the Mentor Teacher Role Inventory (MTRI). A total of 1843 student teachers in the Distance English Teacher Training Program participated in the study. The 58 items of the Mentor Teacher Role Inventory underwent principal factor analysis, which revealed nine factors relating to mentorship and explained 52.971% of the total variance. The KMO value of the MTRI was calculated as .968. The Cronbach's alpha was .951. These results indicated that a reliable and valid MTRI could be used for both the distance English teacher training programme and other distance teacher education programmes.     

Pre‐service primary education teachers’ changing attitudes towards teaching: a longitudinal study

This study investigated the longitudinal changes in the attitudes of pre‐service primary education teachers towards the teaching profession as they progressed through training. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards the profession between their freshman and senior years. Moreover, the findings obtained through interview data have shown that both positive and negative changes occur in pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards teaching throughout their education, and these changes are observed to be related to teaching practice, cooperating teachers, teacher education institutions and teacher educators.     

Turkish elementary student teachers’ epistemological beliefs and moral reasoning

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships among Turkish elementary student teachers’ epistemological beliefs and moral reasoning, and to determine which types of epistemological beliefs elementary student teachers exhibit. The findings of the present study demonstrated that epistemological beliefs did not make a unique contribution to moral reasoning and student teachers’ epistemological beliefs developed as more or less independent beliefs. The factor analyses results suggest that multidimensional theory is more appropriate than unidimensional theory in explaining student teachers’ epistemological beliefs.