Clinical Judgement in Pre-Service Teacher Education: An Opportunity for Enhanced Professionalism?

Enlightenment of teacher education patterns in foreign countries on Chinese teacher education reform

‘Burnout’ and praxis shock seem to be causing teachers to leave the profession early. Much research suggests that this is a reflection on the quality of teacher education programs. Interviews with teachers who were in their first four years in the secondary music classroom reveal how they view their pre-service preparation, and therefore provide an insight into how pre-service teacher education might be effectively reconceptualised. This paper explores the relationship between Zeichner and Liston’s (1990) teacher education ‘traditions’ and early-career music teachers’ perceptions of an ‘ideal’ teacher education course. Analyses of interviews with 15 early-career secondary classroom music teachers suggest the emergence of a common understanding regarding the design of effective music teacher education programs. Rather than representing any of Zeichner and Liston’s four traditions in particular, early-career music teachers speak of a music teacher education approach that incorporates all of the traditions in an integrated way. This understanding of an ‘ideal’ teacher education course should be considered when designing or reconceptualising teacher education courses in order to provide improved opportunities for future music teachers.

To enhance students’ understanding of nature of science (NOS), teachers need adequate pedagogical content knowledge related to NOS. The educational design research study presented here describes the design and development of a pre-service chemistry teacher education course on NOS instruction. The study documents two iterative cycles of problem analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation. The main aims of the study were (1) to create an in-depth and detailed description of the process used in the development of the course and the design solutions produced, and (2) to evaluate how the design solutions affected participants’ commitment to teach NOS. Based on the problem analysis based on challenges recognized from the previous research, three design solutions were produced: (1) definition of central dimensions of domain-specific NOS for chemistry education, (2) teaching cycle for explicit and structured opportunities for reflection and discussion, and (3) design assignments to translate NOS understanding into classroom practice. The major data-sources used in the evaluation of the design solutions were the four in-depth interviews conducted after the course. Based on the evaluation, the design solutions supported internalizing understanding of NOS and transforming the understanding to instruction. Supporting the implementation of new innovative teaching practices such as NOS instruction in pre-service teacher education is a challenge. However, the success of the participants in implementing NOS instruction demonstrates, that a pre-service teacher education course can be successful in producing early adopters of NOS instruction and thus might be one of the first steps in injecting NOS instruction into the curriculum.

Read as two case studies in “putting teacher education online,” the investigations reported in this chapter represent a small contribution to the small but growing body of “case law” focussed on how the increasing expectation to provide teacher education online plays out for those engaged in doing it, and on what might constitute effective practice in virtual (teacher) education. We provide an account of two action research studies looking at the incorporation of an email component and an online discussion board component into two teacher education courses, and the practical androgogical lessons learned from those experiences. Read as a formative, collaborative self-study, however, the investigations may also stand as a reminder that professional renewal is, or should be, as often the consequence of self-critique as it is of self-affirmation. It can be, as in the cases reported here, the consequence of active reflection on experiments and strategies which, though perceived as innovative and progressive in their inception, in the end were felt not only to have only partly worked, but in not working stimulated a valuable review of professional beliefs which went much deeper than the initial stimulus to try something out demanded. For us, what began as an exercise in expanding our repertoire of techniques and modes of teacher education course delivery, became an enquiry into what we really valued most in the experience of teacher education.

Introduction 1. Student Teachers' Changing Beliefs on a Pre-service Teacher Education Course in Hong Kong Icy Lee 2. Modern Languages Initial Teacher Education in England: The Impact of School-based Training Gee Macrory 3. Practical Theories of Teaching in Peripheral Contexts: Messages from Schools in Swaziland Sikelela Dlamini 4. Learning to Teach Many Languages: A Multilingual Teacher Education Programme Offered by the Wiener Volkshochschulen Thomas Fritz 5. 'Inviting Eve to Taste the Apple': Some Metaphors for the Issue of Theory in In-service Second Language Teacher Education Courses in Greece Eleni Manolopoulou-Sergi 6. Reframing 'Public Lessons' to Support English Teachers for Curriculum Change in China Qiang Wang 7. Exploring Continuing Professional Development: English Teachers' Clubs in Central India Amol Padwad and Krishna Dixit 8. Teacher Learning through Participation in Course Evaluation: an Indian Experience Susmita Pani 9. New Technologies in SLTE: A Virtual Teacher Development Experience in Tocantins, Brazil Chris Lima 10. Bringing Information and Reflection Together: A Distance Mentoring and Teacher Development Experience in South Korea Kyungsuk Chang and Shelagh Rixon 11. Experiencing a Change Process in ELT in West Bengal Kuheli Mukherjee 12. Becoming a Trainer: The Experience of Philippine English Teachers in the Primary Innovations Project Maria Luz C. Vilches Postscript ?

This paper reports on a case study that tracked a group of beginning teachers who were undertaking an employment-based model of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). This ITE program combined academic study for a Masters-level degree with part-time employment in secondary schools. The beginning teachers were concurrently engaged in face-to-face and blended learning, with substantial professional in-school experience (0.8). The focus of the study was an investigation of the development of clinical judgement and how these beginning teachers articulate the knowledge, skills and attributes required for their professional decision-making with a model of clinical teaching. Drawing on data collected using open-text questionnaires at two-time points, findings of the study indicate a strong acknowledgement of the centrality of a student centred focus by the beginning teachers. Participants’ responses indicated awareness of the importance of using data to identify learning need/s and for planning pedagogic interventions. However, there was comparatively limited evidence of beginning teachers generating data on or reflecting on the implications of their pedagogical choices to inform adjustments for future interventions. This highlights the importance of providing beginning teachers with ongoing support to build their clinical judgement and refine its application in clinical teaching.

A Study on the Curriculum of Pre-service Teacher Education——from the View of Teachers’ Professional Development

This chapter examines different models of field experiences in a teacher education program designed for resiliency in response to the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the mentoring experiences of preservice teachers in each model. The chapter begins with an introduction to a general impact of the pandemic on teacher education, particularly on its field experience components, and provides a question that guides research reported in this chapter. The introduction is followed by a review of literature on how preservice teachers have been mentored in their field experiences. Then a methodology section describes one teacher education course as a site for data collection and the tools and procedure for data collection and analysis. Next, the research findings are presented in two parts, the survey results on the demography of the participants and their different models of field experience and the results from the follow-up interviews on the participants’ perceptions of their mentoring experiences. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion and implication of the findings for preservice teacher education post-pandemic.

ABSTRACTGlobal multicultural teacher education courses and programs have made claims to offer Prospective Teachers (PSTs) a global understanding of diversity and multiculturalism. However, there is very little research that has examined the classroom experiences of PSTs and teacher educators. Drawing on a collaborative autoethnography, this article explores the ways our transnational identities shaped our experiences (as a PST and a teacher educator) in a global teacher education course focused on diversity and multiculturalism. We were guided by the following research question: How do we, as South Asian transnational migrants, experience the curriculum of a global multicultural education course in the United States? We found that the curricular nationalism within multicultural education courses often negates any critical engagement with the influence of transnationalism on immigrants and their educational experiences. Transnational migrants are expected to translate their experiences, cultural practices, and life ways to fit into the container of the U.S. nation-state. Furthermore, there was a visible absence of narratives and research about transnational lives and identities in the course curriculum. As teacher education programs prepare PSTs to enter classrooms with growing immigrant populations, it is important that we attend to this glaring gap in both practice and research.

It is widely accepted that professional experience or practicum is ‘a critically important part of teacher education courses and is consistently valued highly by student teachers’ (eg Ramsey, 2000; Teaching Australia, 2006; Parliament of Australia, 2007). In Australia and overseas there is a growing emphasis on teacher educators working in partnership with schools to construct professional experiences that maximise student teacher engagement and learning (Parliament of Australia, 2007). The literature on professional experience in pre-service teacher education provides varied and detailed accounts of the roles of the Pre-service Teacher, the Mentor Teacher and the University Mentor (see for example, Gaffey & Dobbins, 1996; Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Zeichner, 1999). However the School based Professional Experience Co-ordinator, usually the principal or deputy principal, has received very little attention in the literature. The study on which this article is primarily based fills a gap in the existing literature on professional experience with its focus on the School based Co-ordinator role. It will be argued that Co-ordinators are essential in developing ‘new’ school-university partnerships which are necessary in ensuring high quality professional experiences.

This article discusses how two beginning mathematics teachers mobilize and develop their didactics knowledge, specifically concerning knowledge of statistical content and teaching practice, during a teacher education experience. This work was developed as part of a specialization course for elementary school mathematics teachers, in the subjects Data Analysis I and II. The teacher education course took place in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is a qualitative study with an interpretive paradigm, based on a case study with two beginning teachers. The data collected was obtained from sessions by a logbook, audio recordings, and interviews with the teachers after the teacher education course. The course was structured to articulate didactics and statistics knowledge from activities directed to teaching practice. Concerning statistical knowledge, the results show the development of knowledge about different concepts associated with carrying out statistical investigations. Regarding teaching practice, teacher’s learning is highlighted to carry out statistical activities of exploratory nature and statistical investigations in the school context.

In spite of growing amount of technologies, tools and information communication and technology (ICT) by providing pre-service teacher education courses, pre-service teachers' ICT utilization is not still as predicted. Research shows many barriers influencing pre-service teachers’ utilization of ICT. Many researchers have identified a number of factors to describe why student teachers do not feel ready to use ICT in their classrooms. The purpose of this review of research literature is to discover what reasons are key obstacles that prevent utilization of ICT in pre-service teachers’ educational courses. The review results show that most of the researchers believe that lack of enough training, lack of suitable software and hardware, lack of knowledge and skills, lack of ICT leadership support, lacking time, and lack of self-efficacy are the key barriers for utilization of ICTs in pre-service teachers’ educational courses. The study also concluded that understanding the amount to which these obstacles affect ICT users and institutes can support decision-making on how to equip them. Keywords: pre-service teacher, ICT utilization, obstacles, educational courses

The article analyses novice teachers’ perception on the pre-service teacher education courses of English at Tribhuvan University (TU) and to describe their beliefs and satisfaction on teaching profession. It also aims to describe novice teachers’ practice to implement the acquired knowledge and skills of these courses in their teaching field. Narrative inquiry was adopted as a research method and three novice teachers of community school of Sindhuli were selected as informants following purposive sampling technique. The semi-structured interview was used in order to elicit in depth data from the participants. Content analysis framework was used to analyse data by developing main themes into codes and using them to look for relevant features in the text. The findings divulge that pre-service teacher education courses are supportive and satisfactory for novice teachers as it provides methodological skill and theoretical knowledge to them to teach in the classroom. The novice teachers, who strongly believe in the teaching profession, also think that the contents are theoretically appropriate but they lack some practical applications.

O curso de formação inicial de professores é um dos principais espaços para a construção de conhecimentos docentes sobre a sala de aula, envolvendo teo-rias de ensino e aprendizagem de línguas. Alguns autores argumentam que tais conhecimentos devem ser relacionados aos conhecimentos locais, uma vez que métodos e práticas desenvolvidos por pesquisadores externos podem não condizer com as especificidades de um grupo de aprendizes num contexto educacional particular, inserido num determinado meio sociocultural (Birch, 2009). A Prática de Ensino, componente comum em tais cursos, prevê a inserção de alunos-estagiários no cotidiano escolar para que eles reconheçam e recons-truam seus conhecimentos pedagógicos, tomando como base as diversidades e adversidades dos contextos educacionais nos quais se dá a atividade docente (Gebhard, 2009). Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir dados de uma pesquisa qualitativa, que buscou investigar a complexidade do processo de (re)construção de conhecimentos teórico-práticos em um curso de formação inicial de professores de língua inglesa. Em se tratando de um recorte, neste trabalho, serão discutidos os dados coletados por meio de questionários de alunos-professores e relatórios de estágio, com o intuito de melhor compreender elementos presentes nas reflexões acerca dos contextos educacionais e verificar conhecimentos acessados durante essa prática reflexiva. Resultados indicaram que durante a experiência formativa vivenciada na Prática de Ensino, os alunos-estagiários puderam desenvolver habilidades e reconstruir conhecimentos para o ensino de línguas, reconhecendo as particularidades dos contextos educacionais, por meio da prática reflexiva e colaborativa.Palavras-chave: formação inicial, prática de ensino, reflexão.

Recently the "Green Paper" (Dawkins, 1987, p. 18) commented that a "better understanding of ... science by primary teachers" is needed, and it was proposed that a major discipline assessment of "teacher education in ... science" be undertaken. These remarks beg the question: "What do we know about the science education courses provided in preservice primary teacher education program mes? Two recent reviews of science teacher education (Owen et. al. 1983; Tisher, 1986) concluded that there was little written about preservice primary teacher education courses. Following the above review by Owen et. al. (1983), a major project in science in primary teacher education was conducted (Owen et. al. 1985). One aspect of this work surveyed the content and structure of preservice primary science courses in Victorian CAE's. This paper extends the data available on preservice primary science teacher education courses by analysing and comparing the espoused curricula of primary science curriculum units offered by eleven NSW tertiary institutions in 1985/7. Comparisons are made with the Victorian study.