Becoming a teacher: the thoughts of undergraduates training to work in Primary Education and ideas for their university education

ABSTRACT

What makes a good teacher and what motivates a person to want to teach are timeless questions that concern us all. This study focuses on those who are currently training to become teachers, more specifically undergraduates studying a degree in Primary Education in the universities of Catalonia. It adopts a quantitative methodology based on a self-administered questionnaire conducted with a representative sample. Participants’ open-ended responses are recorded and codified. Three main categories are constructed: personal, authentic teacher; the teacher as story teller; and, the teacher as motivator of learning. Results highlight important differences between these categories, extolling above all the authentic, personal teacher, who leaves a mark thanks to their character and way of being. This, together with other findings, raises various considerations for the university training of future teachers.     

Changement et résistance au changement dans le milieu universitaire roumain

December 1989 meant for the Romanian academie world the break off with the communist dogmaticism and the politics of indoctrination and also the possibility of installing a critical analysis and the continuity of the true values of Romanian universities. Two inquiries conducted in 1990 and 1991 among students and Professors revealed a strong contesting pathos (persons, teaching contents and methods. The entire educational System were contested) and also a true desire to find out the critical aspects which enhances a new ideology in the higher education System. Students and a part of the faculty have discovered expressions like “academic freedom” and “academie autonomy”. They started to use concepts like “change”, “academic democracy”, “social responsibility”. New expectations concerning the behavioural offer of Professors occurred. When defining the direction of this change, authors chose the expression “toward normality”. Indices of normality could be the assumption by the university of new functions and value orientations previously forgotten and abandoned, under the dictatorial system such as creation and diffusion of values, introduction of criteria of competence and morality in evaluating both academic status and behaviour of Professors.     

MySpace Politics: Uses and Gratifications of Befriending Candidates

This study examines the uses and gratifications (U&G) of accessing political candidate profiles on social network Web sites. An online survey of visitors to the MySpace profiles of 2008 primary candidates revealed that voters are drawn to this source of political information mainly by the desire for social interaction with other like-minded supporters, followed by information-seeking, and entertainment. While information seeking and entertainment are common U&G of consuming online political content, they were weaker factors compared to the social interaction factor that seems to distinguish MySpace, possibly SNSs in general, from other online sources of political content.