Cohort Of Pre-service Teachers Research Articles

Engaging with Engagement: Interrogating Preservice Teachers’ Theories of Engagement in Their Literacy Planning and Reflection

ABSTRACT The term engagement is widely used in teacher education and professional development. There is, however, a lack of consensus about the meaning of this term: it is defined in numerous ways with various theoretical underpinnings. This article employs a postqualitative approach to explore conceptualizations of engagement and their implications for teaching and learning. Specifically, we examine written teaching reflections from one cohort of preservice teachers, asking: 1) How did preservice teachers use the word “engage(ment)” in their planning for and analysis of one-on-one literacy instructional events? and 2) What conceptualizations of engagement did these usages reflect? Through the analytic approach of thinking with theory, we plug these data into four theoretical perspectives that are relevant to preservice teachers’ talk about engagement: 1) First Generation Activity Theory, 2) Reader Response Theory, 3) Self-Determination Theory, and 4) Inter-Comprehension Theory. We explore how each perspective illuminated our data, as well as questions that emerged. We conclude by (re)imagining engagement through a languaging relations perspective, arguing that this lens shifts toward a more humanizing conceptualization of engagement by centering the ongoing (re)making of relationships as people teach and learn.

“Learning Functional Grammar is fun”: A snapshot of functional grammar unit at an English Education Department in Indonesia

This paper reports on a teaching program for the Functional Grammar (FG) unit at an English Education Study Program of a state university in West Java Indonesia in 2020-2022. Three cohorts of pre-service teachers in semester six were involved in the program (38 students in 2020, 26 in 2021, and 36 in 2022). The teaching program was conducted online due to the Covid 19 pandemic. The report focuses on exploring students’ understanding of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) – FG in particular, and their ability to use SFL in text analysis. The study also addresses students’ opinions on learning SFL through FG unit. The study used a qualitative case study design and the data were obtained from participant observations, a questionnaire distributed at the end of the teaching program, and analysis of students’ essays on text analyses. In the interest of space, the paper will only present and discuss data from the questionnaire and three samples of student essays. The questionnaire data were analysed qualitatively using a thematic analysis of different aspects of the unit and SFL, and students’ essays were analysed using SFL, especially theme, transitivity, and mood systems in lexicogrammar stratum. The data from the questionnaire indicate that all the students in all cohorts responded positively to the teaching program. Many students in each cohort said that learning FG is fun, enjoyable, interesting, and useful for both daily and academic life. They displayed a good understanding of SFL, including its basic principles, notions, and values ­ – especially concerning their reading and writing improvement. The data from students’ essays also reveal their ability to show how and why the text means what it does and to evaluate why the text is or is not effective for its own purposes. On this basis, it is recommended that SFL be introduced to Indonesian university students to enhance their literacy capacity and to Indonesian teachers to improve their teaching skills and their ways to develop assessment that is linguistically informed.

The digital silver lining of the pandemic: The impact on preservice teachers’ technological knowledge and beliefs

COVID-19 drastically disrupted teaching and learning worldwide and across all educational levels. Technology took on a central role in redefining education under these exceptional circumstances and frequently revealed challenges related to both infrastructure and to teachers’ and learners’ technological skills and readiness. This study aimed to investigate whether the experience of emergency remote education significantly impacted preservice teachers’ knowledge and beliefs for their future teaching with technology. We investigated three cohorts of preservice teachers (pre-lockdown, n = 179; during lockdown, n = 48; post-lockdown, n = 228) and explored differences in their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and their technological beliefs. Findings showed positive effects in the post-lockdown cohort, reflected in higher levels of technological knowledge (TK) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) compared to the pre-lockdown cohort. In addition, unique positive effects on content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) were found in the post-lockdown cohort among preservice teachers with prior teaching experiences. No effects of either cohort or experience emerged for preservice teachers’ technological beliefs. These findings indicate that, despite the challenges related to COVID-19 lockdowns, preservice teachers not only appear to have maintained positive beliefs towards technology but may have even been able to draw benefits from the experience of lockdown. These findings and the positive effects associated with teaching experience are discussed with regard to their implication for teacher education.

Students’ Motivation in an Online and a Face-To-Face Semester

Abstract: Challenges for university students were high during distance education in lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Self-regulation and motivation became more important, but motivation was possibly challenged more. To investigate motivational differences and possible positive effects of evidence-based learning activities, we followed two cohorts of preservice teachers over the course of one semester: One cohort was followed in 2019 in a face-to-face semester ( N2019 = 225), and another cohort was followed 1 year later during the first lockdown ( N2020 = 311). Students indicated their motivation at five measurement occasions and reported their use of learning activities twice. Multigroup linear change models indicated an overall decline of motivation in both cohorts. Surprisingly, neither initial motivation level nor motivational change differed between cohorts. Students who used more learning activities reported a more positive motivational development. This highlights the chance of evidence-based learning activities for students’ motivation in regular and distance education.

Pre-service teachers content-related analyses of a physical education learning task

ABSTRACT Introduction: There remains some consensus that pre-service teacher education should be centered on the development of teachers’ content knowledge, as it is considered to be essential for quality teaching and learning. The development of more effective forms of pedagogical content knowledge requires pre-service physical education teachers to analyse teaching and learning tasks within contextualized situations. The Joint Action in Didactics (JAD) framework provides a set of concepts that take into account the teacher, the students and the content knowledge at stake during learning tasks [Amade-Escot, C., and P. Venturini. 2015. “Joint Action in Didactics and Classroom Ecology: Comparing Theories Using a Case Study in Physical Education.” Interchange 46: 413–437.]. The purpose of this study was to use the JAD framework to understand how a cohort of pre-service teachers (PTs) analyse the content knowledge embedded in teachers’ and students’ didactic interactions. Methods: An open-ended questionnaire was distributed to 46 PTs to collect their individual didactic analyses of a recorded game-based basketball teaching-learning task. PTs were asked to analyse the effective actions of the students and the teacher involved in the learning task, to interpret the actions of the students and the teacher in relation to the planned content knowledge and propose possible adjustments of the learning task to facilitate student learning. A content analysis of the PTs responses was performed using a systematic process of inductive analysis and constant comparison. Results: PTs were able to identify the gap between what was planned and the actual actions of the teacher and students in a situated content learning task. They encountered some difficulties in capturing the complexity of the interactions between the teacher, students and the content knowledge at stake. Analyses mostly centered on the clarity and accountability of instructions provided by the teacher and failed to take into account the students’ meanings or potential adjustments to the didactic milieu. Conclusions: The JAD framework provides PTs a potential lens to forefront contextualized content knowledge as a critical dimension in their analysis of the teaching-learning process. This level of analysis arguably provides a more robust platform for the development of more sophisticated and situated forms of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge.

Professional digital competence in initial teacher education: An examination of differences in two cohorts of pre-service teachers

Professional digital competence in initial teacher education: An examination of differences in two cohorts of pre-service teachers

Supporting preservice teachers to become informed teachers of reading through one-to-one tutoring in an English initial teacher education setting

ABSTRACT Training preservice teachers as teachers of reading is a complex task, as is reading itself. Preservice teachers need to understand the theory that underpins practice; the cognitive skills and knowledge required to read and the contextual factors that impact beginner readers. This longitudinal, mixed-methods study evaluates the benefits for preservice teachers and for the children they tutor, of a collaborative approach between an English university, its city’s schools and Local Education Authority. Preservice teachers (n = 362) were trained in and then implemented the Boosting Reading at Primary intervention. The children’s (n = 724) pre- and post-intervention reading age data was analysed along with qualitative and quantitative data from a case study of one cohort of preservice teachers (n = 87). The study demonstrates the reading progress made by children in the project and the increased knowledge, skills, pedagogic practices and self-efficacy of the preservice teachers.

Interdisciplinary Learning for Pre-service Teachers

In this action research study, the researchers worked collaboratively to integrate curriculum in four ways: 1. Professors engaged students in an interdisciplinary project, 2. Students performed a real-world task, 3. Students worked in small cooperative learning groups, and 4. Students engaged in helping young students experience a positive holiday season. The purpose of this study was to review how these integrative principles effected the preservice teachers academically, socially, and emotionally. Two cohorts of preservice teachers were enrolled in the same three courses during this study. One cohort of physical therapy (PT) majors were enrolled in a course developed to assist PT professionals with their communication skills, understanding of basic psychology, and special needs principles. The preservice teachers were learning how to teach: (a) penmanship, (b) letter writing, and, (c) promotive small group social skills for their future students. Seventy-nine students (54 pre-ervice teachers and 25 physical therapy students) participated in this action research project by engaging in a Santa writing experience. Young students in four schools wrote letters to Santa, and the university student participants responded to the letters of young students. Four professors collaborated in this project. The teachers included: a language and didactics professor, a curriculum professor, a writing (penmanship) professor, and an adjunct professor working with first year physical therapy students. Results of the study indicated that students: 1. found the process to be more difficult than they first thought; 2. appreciated the opportunity to help young students celebrate their holiday dreams; 3. felt they learned more deeply the goals of their classes; and 4. were proud to help young people enjoy their holidays. This process was fairly complex and, in spite of that complexity, the majority of students found the experience worthwhile from a teaching and learning perspective and from an existential perspective.

A measure of classroom management: validation of a pre-service teacher self-efficacy scale

ABSTRACT Classroom management skills are essential for effective teaching and consequently form an integral part of undergraduate teaching degrees. Self-efficacy in classroom management influences an individual’s willingness to undertake specific actions and their perseverance in the face of difficulties in executing these actions. In order to track the progress of pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in classroom management, an easy to administer Classroom Management Self Efficacy Instrument (CMSEI) was developed and piloted with a third year cohort of pre-service teachers. This article reports on the psychometric properties of the CMSEI as determined through a Rasch analysis. The analysis supports the Classroom Management Self Efficacy Instrument (CMSEI) as an accurate and internally consistent, unidimensional scale for use with undergraduate pre-service teachers.

A Case Studies Approach to Teaching Introductory Physics

Over the past several years, we have contributed several articles to TPT that focused on a forensics-style reexamination of historical events. In each article, we presented a case study as a pedagogy for teaching topics from introductory-level physics courses. Recently, we assembled our prior work into a series of “MythBusters”-style modules for pre-service teachers (PSTs). The goal of these modules is to widen the pedagogical viewpoint of the PSTs by exposing them to case studies as a means of teaching physics, problem solving, and critical thinking. In this article, we describe the design and rationale of our modules while providing anecdotal commentary from a cohort of PSTs who trial tested them. We identify several unique teaching opportunities that we share with readers of TPT.

(Re)engaging Our Ethical Commitments and Becoming Activists in Our Own Backyards

In this manuscript, I provide an example of what activism in your own backyard may look like in institutional contexts using Foucault’s notions of ethics. To this end, I report findings from a two-year study conducted in my own science methods courses with two cohorts of pre-service teachers. Through a critical autoethnographic lens, I recount a synthesis of struggles and successes that illustrate what happens when one’s ethical and professional commitments to work for social justice intersect (collide) with the urgent need to address opp(regre)ssive practices in our own programs. Suggestions for how to be an activist in our own backyards and how to (re)engage our ethical commitments through a praxis of self-care are also provided.

Giving birth to a supervisory identity built upon pedagogical perspectives on teaching: The case of a novice physical education cooperating teacher

Teaching perspectives in initial teacher education are useful analytical tools for exploring the development of professional identity and the supervisory practices of cooperating teachers working with preservice teachers on school placement. A case study design was employed with an experienced physical education teacher newly appointed as a cooperating teacher to a cohort of three physical education preservice teachers to examine how his professional identity was challenged by the demands of the new role as a mentor. Data were collected throughout a one-year school placement and included three semi-structured interviews and the cooperating teacher’s weekly journal entries. Analysis was informed by grounded theory coding procedures. Open codes were collapsed into three metaphorical axial themes: (a) the chameleon, (b) a tailor-made cooperating teacher, and (c) the liaison of relations. To perform his new role as a cooperating teacher and surpass the emergent supervisory challenges in developing a pedagogical relationship with his first cohort of preservice teachers, the cooperating teacher called upon his educational perspectives on teaching physical education built on constructive, collaborative and inquiry premises, but ended up practising teaching perspectives echoing an apprenticeship model due to the preservice teachers’ personal characteristics.

How do pre-service physical education teachers understand health education and their role as health educators?

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine how pre-service physical education (PE) teacher education students understand health education and their role as health educators. The challenges that a cohort of pre-service teachers ( n = 20) majoring and minoring in PE face in engaging in a socially contextualised understanding of health are examined. Design: Study participants were in a semester length foundational health education course. Following ethics board approval, participants’ reflective journals were accessed for data. The data were coded for themes and then analysed using Windschitl’s framing of constructivism in practice. Setting: Undergraduate health education teacher education programme at an Australian university. Results: Findings reveal how PE teacher education students made meaning of socially contextualised and contested areas of health, and developed their own understanding of health education pedagogical practice. Common challenges were evidenced by the students when attempting to explain their expanding understanding of health education pedagogy and practice. Conclusion: The simple understandings and conceptual ambiguities evident in this group of students help to explain why health education taught in secondary schools by PE teachers more often takes the form of ‘PE theory’ than health education.

Influence of a models-based physical education teacher education program on the perspectives and practices of preservice teachers

ABSTRACTA recent innovation in the United States is for university faculty to deliver models-based physical education teacher education (PETE) programs. The study described in this paper evaluated the effectiveness of one such program. Participants were three cohorts of preservice teachers (PTs). The cohorts were a non-entry cohort (NEC; n = 29), an entry cohort (EC; n = 31) that were due to enter the core PETE program, and a completion cohort (CC; n = 55). Data were collected by interviewing all three cohorts about (a) their perspectives and practices regarding physical education and (b) their acculturation, and professional socialisation. Data were analysed by categorising the PTs within each cohort as having one of four orientations (i.e. hard core coaching, moderate coaching, moderate teaching and hard core teaching) to the physical education profession from which data were then further analysed within each orientation and cohort. Data were reduced to key themes by employing Leximancer text mining software and traditional interpretive techniques. Key findings were that the PETE program appeared to have an influence on PTs, none of the PTs possessed hard core coaching orientations and a relatively large percentage of PTs had moderate teaching orientations at entry into PETE.

Cross-university collegiality: Supporting 21st century cooperation in preservice English Language Arts teachers

As preservice teachers develop ideas about what it means to be and become educators, they benefit from opportunities that allow them to experience cooperative group work with diverse populations. This is especially important because during the induction phase, as they cross over from teacher education students to inservice teachers, they are often expected to engage in collegial work with their coworkers. In this article, the authors describe a cross-university project using a digital platform that afforded two sets of preservice teachers from two different universities to cooperate over the course of four weeks to inform each other’s practice. This cooperative project included peer review sessions focused on lesson plans and synchronous revision conferences as part of a digital learning community. The authors considered the affordances and limitations of using an online platform as a way to foster cooperative practice among preservice teachers. Overall, preservice teachers had a positive perception of this project. In this article, we share the planning and implementation of the project, the ways in which students engaged with both their peers and the digital tools, and the trials and tribulations of the authors as instructors of these two cohorts of preservice teachers. Ultimately, our goal is to highlight the need in teacher education for projects that engage preservice teachers in cooperative practice with both the use of digital tools and authentic conversations with others outside of their own educational communities. DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v6i1_rybakova

Teacher Educators Struggling to Make Complex Practice Explicit: Distancing Teaching through Video

This self-study examines our use of video with a cohort of preservice teachers as a means to address the challenges we face as teacher educators who are working with candidates in extensive clinical practice. We came to video as a nuanced way to discuss and make meaning of complex practice and as a means of bridging theory and practice. We found that our use of video supported preservice teachers and their mentors in decomposing, representing, and approximating practice. We also found that, as suggested by the literature, the use of video distanced preservice teachers from their experiences in practice. Finally, we discuss the implications for using video to support the work of rich clinical teacher education.

Influencing Greek pre-service teachers’ efficacy beliefs and self-confidence to implement the new ‘Studies for the Environment’ curricula

This study explores the effect of an innovative course examining Greek elementary student teachers’ (STs’) efficacy beliefs and self-confidence for curriculum-based teaching on ‘Studies for the Environment’ topics. These two variables are influencing teachers’ ability to teach environmental issues for young children. Five new factors were also examined for their influence on STs’ self-efficacy and self-confidence: the role of workshops and simulations, teacher–student interchange role, teaching observation, analysis of other teachings and student-assessed teaching. The study provides useful guidelines for teacher preparation programmes towards the implementation of textbook-free and curriculum-based teaching that maximise students’ learning. A pre/post/6 month-delay-post research design using both quantitative (STEBI and factors’ ranking) and qualitative (interviews) research tools were implemented in two cohorts of pre-service teachers (N1 = 25, N2 = 16). Quantitative data were subjected to significance testing and effect sizes analysis, and triangulated with bottom-up categories developed from interviews. Results indicate a considerable and durable increase in STs’ personal and outcome expectancy self-efficacy beliefs scores. In respect of the STs’ self-confidence, pedagogical content knowledge and especially its sub-factors of Studies for the Environment Pedagogy, reflection, and teaching experience were the most influential factors, while some inertia in the increase of self-confidence was also observed.

Teacher legitimisation through language(s) use: towards a framework for language teacher education

ABSTRACTLanguage teachers are positioned differently depending on whether they are L1 or L2 speakers of the target language. In this article I suggest that, in language teacher education, it can be useful to think explicitly about this positioning as it pertains to both languages rather than just one. I propose a relational two-language continuum based on the constructs of authenticity and legitimacy. The objective of the continuum is to help pre-service foreign language teachers gain legitimacy through two languages in Australian language classrooms. Given the prevalence of monolingual educational structures in Australia, the continuum is primarily viewed as a tool to help a diverse cohort of pre-service teachers think about how to increase communicative target language use in mainstream language classrooms.

Changes in Residents’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs in a Clinically Rich Graduate Teacher Education Program

ABSTRACTIncreasing the clinical preparation of teachers in the United States to meet greater rigor in K-12 education has become a goal of institutions of higher education, especially since the publication of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education Blue Ribbon Panel Report on Clinical Practice. Using a theoretical framework grounded in teacher self-efficacy, this article documents changes in perceptions of effectiveness in a cohort of preservice teachers over the course of a year-long clinically rich graduate-level residency program. Using the categories of the rubric that were being utilized for classroom observations, we surveyed residents about their perceptions of their own effectiveness in these areas prior to and at the conclusion of the residency program.

Preparing Preservice Teachers for Diverse Mathematics Classrooms Through a Cultural Awareness Unit

We designed a student-centered cultural awareness unit as a resource for mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) who want to explore the issues of culture, equity, and diversity with their preservice teachers (PSTs) but are not sure how and where to start. This unit is an introductory step toward beginning to listen to PSTs' views about culture and diversity in mathematics education. In this article, we report on three cohorts of PSTs who participated in the unit, which consisted of an article critique, class discussion, and postdiscussion reflection. We describe the methods courses, the unit, the impact of the unit on PSTs' cultural awareness, our reflections as MTEs, and suggested modifications to the unit.