Abstract
<p style="text-align: justify;">The early phase is the decisive period for the teachers’ career. Intellectual styles (particularly thinking styles) play a vital role in teachers’ professional development. With the purpose of measuring thinking styles of teachers at the early phase, this study was designed to validate a revised inventory of thinking styles (TSI-R2) for pre-service and early career teachers. A sample of pre-service teachers (n = 248) were invited to join the pilot study and a sample of teachers with one year work experience (n = 252) participated in the main study. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis were performed. The results suggested that with slight modification, TSI-R2 was a reliable and valid instrument to measure thinking styles of pre-service teachers and early career teachers, which has some implications to enhancing teacher education and development.</p>
Highlights
The early phase (1-3 years’ experience) of teaching career matters the most for teachers’ professional development (Clement & Wilkins, 2011; Huberman et al, 1989)
The results suggested that with slight modification, TSI-R2 was a reliable and valid instrument to measure thinking styles of pre-service teachers and early career teachers, which has some implications to enhancing teacher education and development
Notwithstanding the existence of ample evidence supporting the relationship between intellectual styles and teachers’ professional development, there is still a paucity of research focusing on whether and how early career teachers can survive, or thrive in, the eventful transition period with different types of intellectual styles
Summary
The early phase (1-3 years’ experience) of teaching career matters the most for teachers’ professional development (Clement & Wilkins, 2011; Huberman et al, 1989). To “sink or swim” may be a function of early career teachers’ individualized ways of dealing with these problems, which can be conceptualized as intellectual styles (Zhang & Sternberg, 2005). Successes and failures in educational settings have been attributed mainly to such traditional individual differences as ability, motivation, and personality These classic variables, cannot suffice to tell the whole story of individual differences, as Zhang (2012) argued. In this regard, intellectual styles may provide a window into a better understanding of early career teachers’ “sink or swim” in terms of professional development.
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