Teacher Cooperation and Education Levels as Contributors of Teachers’ ICT Use

The objectives of this research are: (1) to reveal how teacher's education level can affect the quality of students of SLTP in Sukoharjo regency; (2) to describe how far the school facilities can effect the students' quality; (3) to detect how far external environment means can affect students' quality of SLTP in Sukoharjo regency. The hypothesis made was that there is a significant correlation between teacher’s education level and quality of graduated students of SLTP in Sukoharjo regency. The researcher used descriptive analysis to support this research, and used questionnaires to collect the data. Quotasampling method is used to determine 30 SLTPs as samples and 10 teachers in every SLTP to be respondents. Based on the data analysis, F value (8.244) was greater than F table, so Ho was rejected. It means that there is a significant correlation between education and quality of graduated students of the SLTP in Sukoharjo regency with the level of significance 5 percent. Based on the data analysis results, the researcher suggests that the policy makers on education should implement continuous improvement on the quality of teaching learning process by maintaining qualified teacher with minimum bachelor degree and upgrading course.

This paper attempts to determine the latent structure of the curriculum for primary school teacher education in the first cycle of studies at Serbian teacher training and education faculties. By applying the factor analysis into the first level of teacher education, four latent dimensions could be identified that could be nominated as General Education, Basic Education, Methodological Education, Specific Education, and one bipolar factor. The results indicate that learning outcomes and competences in certain fields of instruction should be re-examined and re-directed in line with the experience of the EU countries in order to harmonize and modernize the curriculum for primary teacher education in Serbia.

Objective. This article aims to compare the use and appropriation of digital technologies (ICT) by faculty in initial teacher training centers in Uruguay and Chile. Methodology. This research employed a mixed, sequential exploratory, quantitative-qualitative approach and data analysis, including two stages: (I) an online questionnaire administered to directors of centers in Uruguay and Chile; (II) interviews and discussion groups with members of selected centers in each country. Results. Results show that Chilean teachers most frequently use laptops, followed by cell phones. In Uruguay, the order is reversed. Concerning the use of ICT for pedagogical or professional development purposes, including videoconferencing, the creation of professional learning communities, and content creation, Chile is better positioned. Nonetheless, because of the pandemic and the adoption of other techniques, Uruguay has begun to increase its use of ICT for pedagogical purposes. Likewise, teachers have been identified both as facilitators of digital inclusion, thanks to their motivation, and as obstacles, due to fears, advanced age, and training. Conclusions. These findings show the relevance to keep intervening at the level of teacher education as a key focus to improve digital inclusion for pedagogical and professional development purposes.

In the Finnish teacher education system, teachers (in grades 1–12) pass a master’s degree in the university. In this chapter, the most important theoretical aspects that underpin the Finnish teacher education programmes are described and analysed, and we consider why it may be called research-based teacher education. The primary class pre-service teachers write their master’s thesis in ‘education’, while the secondary subject pre-service teachers write it in their ‘main subject’ within their own faculty (mathematics, physics, history, language, religion, etc.). Teacher education is considered from two perspectives or strata. The first deals with everyday practice and can be called a basic level of teacher education; the other stratum may be called a conceptual level of teacher education. An organising theme, a research-based approach, is applied as an integrative principle throughout the programme. It is built on evidence of research, teachers’ pedagogical thinking, and close theory-practice relation. University practice schools have an important role connecting practical experiences with theoretical studies. These schools and their teachers, mentors of student teaching at the same time, are specialised in teacher education and work closely with the supervisors of the university department. The system is supported with a model of peer-group mentoring in order to facilitate adaptation into the profession at the beginning of the career.

The Indian teacher education scenario has undergone numerous changes in the last few years especially with the shift to the two-year teacher preparation programmes. As a result of this change, both the teacher educators and the student teachers had to adapt to the modified curriculum, teaching methodologies and assessment process. This paper focuses on assessing student teachers’ perceptions about their classroom learning environments and teacher interpersonal behaviour. The study utilises the modified version of the What Is Happening In This Classroom (WIHIC) questionnaire and the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). The data was collected from 150 student teachers from a teacher education college studying in the third and fourth semester of the two-year B.Ed./B.Ed. Special Education programme. The results show that student teachers positively perceived their classroom learning environments. They expressed a lot of student cohesiveness, teacher support for the students, task orientation and involvement of students in the classroom activities. Students perceived an environment that promotes innovation, equity and a high level of cooperation. Results for teacher interpersonal behaviour show that student teachers perceived their teacher educators as good leaders who understand their needs. They are helpful and friendly and provided ample opportunities for students to express themselves freely. They also give responsibility to accomplish different tasks. The negative aspects of teacher interpersonal behaviour like uncertainty, admonishing and dissatisfied behaviour were given a low rating by the student teachers. They, however, felt that the teacher educators were strict in the class. Data analysis reveals that no significant associations exist between academic achievement and classroom learning environments and teacher interpersonal behaviour. Results also show that there were no significant gender differences in the learning environments. However, there were significant gender differences in the teacher interpersonal behaviour in favour of female student teachers. Also, no semester and programme based differences in the classroom learning environments and teacher interpersonal behaviour exist at the teacher education level.

An international association advancing the multidisciplinary study of informing systems. Founded in 1998, the Informing Science Institute (ISI) is a global community of academics shaping the future of informing science.

Research into teacher education is an Australian government high priority and teacher educators are increasingly called to use research to demonstrate the effectiveness and the impact of their teaching, their programs and ultimately, the impact on student learning. While teacher education researchers endeavour to share their research, their work is often critiqued as being self-serving, small-scale and generally not responsive to government policy directions. This chapter specifically examines these three areas: the research policy context; an examination of the current critique of teacher education research and a critical analysis and discussion of the research conducted by teacher educators within this volume. As evidenced within the chapters, many teacher educators have located their research studies within the current Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG, Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers, 2014) reform agenda. What the studies also reveal is how reform agendas are taken up by different institutions and the importance of providing the rich contextual discussion of their findings. While the majority of the studies are small-scale, viewed collectively however, they have much to offer the broader education research community. More opportunities for connected small-scale studies that highlight both macro and micro levels of teacher education are recommended.

With the changing paradigms in mainstream educational sciences identifying teacher education as a relatively independent area, approaches and policies in second language teacher education have undergone significant reforms throughout the world in the last two decades. Turkey, as a country in the midst of both social and cultural changes due to stream of events around it, has also attempted for such reforms in its English Language Teacher Education (ELTE) policies since the foundation of Higher Education Council leading to a unified model of pre-service teacher education. Teacher education, however, has always been one of the highly debated and criticized issues in the country by all the stakeholders. This paper scrutinizes the current ELTE policies in both pre-service and in-service levels in Turkey. The pre-service ELTE programs and how teachers are trained after graduation are presented focusing on the weaknesses and the drawbacks of the programs addressing to the relevant literature. Finally, the necessary policy reforms at all levels of teacher education are suggested by referring to the implementations of countries with high-quality teacher education systems.

Recognizing the need and importance of environmental education (EE) in India, recently several efforts have been made to reorient and reorganize school education and establish EE more formally. School textbooks, in all subjects and at all levels, have been revised to integrate environmental concepts. The effects of these curricular revisions will not be sustained unless they are coupled with appropriate changes in teacher education curricula. Efforts have been made to develop curriculum and other support materials for introducing EE at all four levels of teacher education in the country. Incorporating EE in teacher education involves deliberating several issues relating to content, learning and teaching methodologies, materials development and capacity building requirements for its effective implementation. This paper, by reviewing some exemplar experiences from India, seeks to examine the focus given to EE in teacher education and the challenges for teacher education in achieving the goals of sustainable development in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD).

The quality of any education system is significantly dependent on the quality of teachers in that system. A 21st century teacher professionalism requiring specialist knowledge and skills is essential for ensuring the quality of teachers. This paper will describe the key features of the teacher education model used in Singapore. In addition, the paper will discuss some key challenges for the teaching profession in the 21st century and possible ways to prepare teachers for the 21st century. Since its establishment as the Teacher Training College in 1950, the National Institute of Education (NIE) has served as the national teacher education institute in Singapore. NIE provides all levels of teacher education, from initial teacher education programmes to professional development programmes as well as higher degree programmes. The NIE's Teacher Education Model for the 21st Century (TE21) and how this model addresses several key challenges for teacher education are explained in this paper. NIE's TE21 Model revolves around the Values, Skill and Knowledge (V3SK) model which focus on three value paradigms: Learner-centredness, Teacher Identity, and Service to the profession and community. Finally, the paper will outline some possible issues relevant for the improvement of teacher education.

The purpose of this study was to determine if levels of teacher education and experience would influence how teachers respond to children's play needs in a preschool classroom. The interactions of eight teachers—three of whom were categorized as high education/high experience, three as low education/high experience, and two as low education/low experience—were videotaped and analyzed over a 6-month period. Specific levels of child play need and teacher guidance were first coded. The degree to which there was a good fit between the amount of child need and teacher support was examined. Differences in these good- (and poor-)fit interactions across the three groups of teachers were studied. Four interviews with adult participants were conducted to elucidate quantitative findings. Findings show that teachers with high levels of education and experience were more likely to perform good-fit play interactions. In interviews, teachers from this group identified specific elements of teacher education that enhanced their classroom experiences and, consequently, their ability to match their interactions to children's play needs. In contrast, low/high teachers were more likely to provide poor-fit responses to play, often giving direct support when none was needed. Teachers of the low/low group were unpredictable in their responses to children's play, often failing to interact at all when opportunities arose for meaningful play intervention. Interviews with these two groups revealed reasons for these poor-fit interactions, including a lack of knowledge about play and an inability to reflect on child outcomes. Implications of these findings for teacher education are considered.

Many printed and electronic texts to date abound with visual information purportedly integrated to enrich the learning experience of the readers. The world today is inundated with images. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, visual learning is becoming prominent in every learning situation and inevitably in the print-based open distance learning model (ODL) in teacher education. In this paper I argue that there is no proportionate growth between the use of visual language and visual semiotics competences for open distance learning at teacher education level in Zimbabwe. This paper is based on empirical findings from a gender critical visual narrative study conducted in Zimbabwe with 20 teacher education students. Prompts in conjunction with focus group discussions were used to solicit participants to exhibit how gender perspectives were interpreted through the encoding and decoding of visual displays. The results showed that the images actually exhibited gendered data, particularly critical social themes such as gender violence, fights for equal rights and gender oppression reversals in addition to the predictable patriarchal, masculine, hegemonic themes identified. The study therefore concluded that exposing the student teachers to visual pedagogy during ODL without the pre-requisite visual interpretation skill is disastrous, ineffective and time wasting. Learning becomes divorced from the world in which the learner lives. The paper therefore puts forward some guidelines for the adoption of visual pedagogy and recommendations to expose the teacher education students to the visual grammar and semiotic skills necessary for visual analysis.

Kazan Federal University (KFU) has one of the longest histories among Russia universities and has contributed significantly to education and science in the country throughout its 212 years. KFU has lived through several transformations since its establishment in 1804, the latest of which started in 2010 and is a part of a wider framework of higher education reforms in Russia. Priority areas for development were identified as part of KFU’s innovation programme – teacher education was one of these. Kazan Federal University is the first classical university in Russia seeking to create a new model of teacher education alongside the previously existing model of teacher training universities that has remained unchanged for several decades. The first stage in this innovation and development process was the merger, in 2011, of two pedagogical universities with KFU, one in Kazan itself and one in Elabuga, a city 200 kilometers to the east of Kazan. It was one of the first such mergers in Russia and as a result of it, KFU became the third largest teacher training institution in the country. KFU is now one of the few Russian universities to offer all the levels of teacher education and teaching majors in all the subjects of the current secondary school curriculum. This chapter charts the transformations that have taken place in teacher education at KFU.

At present teacher education in Pakistan is in a transitional phase. The Government of Pakistan has developed ten professional standards for teachers’ recruitment and training (NPSTP, 2009). Two subjects ‘Computer literacy’ and ‘ICTs in Education’ have been introduced in the new curriculum to equip prospective teachers with Standard # 7 of NPSTP 2009 (i.e., ‘Effective Communication and Proficient Use of Information and Communication Technologies’) and to enhance contemporary technological skills required by a 21st-century educator. This quantitative descriptive study was aimed to investigate teacher educators’ attitudes towards the pedagogical use of ICTs in the teaching and learning process. For this quantitative study, five research questions, one descriptive and four inferential were formulated. A questionnaire was used for data collection. The sample of the study of 133 teacher educators’ was conveniently selected from different teacher training institutions of Karachi. The descriptive analysis of the attitude scale illustrates the moderate level of positive attitude towards the use of ICTs among teacher educators of Karachi TTIs. The analysis ofinferential questions (null hypotheses) illustrates that there is no significant difference in attitudes of teacher educators concerning gender, age, and experience, and this finding is aligned to recent studies conducted by Mustafina (2016) and Tweed (2013). Consequently, from the findings of this study, it may be concluded that demographical variables (i.e., gender, age, and experience) are not the determinants of teacher educators’ attitudes towards the use of ICTs. The findings of the study suggest that supportive conditions and hands-on training on the pedagogical use of ICTs should be conducted in TTIs.

This paper supports the advocacy for a sustainable future and discusses the strategies that could be adopted in order to make Social Studies, an integrated social science subject in the Nigerian school curricula which is saddled with the responsibility of promoting informed citizenry to educate for sustainability. Issues surrounding the prospect of using Social Studies to teach the rudiments of Education for Sustainability are discussed after having examined the strength, weakness, opportunities and strength of Social Studies, especially at the level of teacher education. The study concluded that the threat to Social Studies which are enormous may need to be quickly addressed so that teacher education institutions may have clear-cut directions on how to mainstream the learning content of Education for Sustainability into the subject and consequently prepare preservice teachers that are critical and holistic in their thinking to handle a more robust holistic Social Studies in the primary and secondary schools in Nigeria.