Competence In Teacher Education Research Articles

Stories to live by on the professional knowledge landscape

In this article I want to talk about some work I have been doing with a group of colleagues at universities and in schools over the past 20 years or so. It is work that explores questions of teacher knowledge, what it means t o come to know as teachers and how our knowing as teachers is shaped by the landscapes on which we come to know as teachers and the landscapes o n which we now teach. I will try and make connections between what is commonly called, in Canada and the United States and here in New Zealand, standards and competencies in teacher education and some of our work.

Guidelines and Regulations for Teaching Digital Competence in Schools and Teacher Education: A Weak Link?

Teacher education has recently been criticised for not fulfilling its obligation to adequately prepare teachers to utilise digital tools in the classroom. In this paper, we raise the question of why Norwegian teacher education does not prepare student teachers to integrate digital tools into their teaching as required by the Norwegian curriculum. We question the formal premises governing the development of digital competence in teacher education and how they correspond with the requirements of the Norwegian national education curriculum. To gain insight into this question, we analysed how digital competence is presented in the official key documents that create the framework for teacher education, and compared them to the requirements of the Norwegian National Curriculum. Our findings indicate that there is a weak link between the curriculum and the premises for digital competence in teacher

Appropriation of Digital Competence in Teacher Education

The aim of the article is to explore opportunities for appropriation of digital competence in teacher education. Digital competence is knowledge, skills and attitudes required in order to use technology critically and reflectively in the process of building new knowledge. According to Wertsch learning to use a cultural artefact is characterized by two processes: mastery and appropriation. The article reports from a case study of two teacher education institutions. Findings indicate that the same challenges are found in both institutions: the conflict between mastery and appropriation, and between personal and educational use of technology, and the resistance towards technology among some teacher educators. The results signify that in order to create opportunities for appropriation of digital competence and encourage use of technology as part of pre-service teachers’ professional didactic competence, technology should be better integrated as pedagogical tools for teaching and learning in all subjects in the teacher education programmes.

Competences in Teacher Education at Schwyz University of Teacher Education (PHSZ), and the Swiss Education Policy

Competences in Teacher Education at Schwyz University of Teacher Education (PHSZ), and the Swiss Education Policy

Common pressures, same results? Recent reforms in professional standards and competences in teacher education for secondary teachers in England, France and Germany

Over the last decade, the introduction of professional standards and competences in initial teacher education for secondary teachers in England, France and Germany has provided the cornerstone of education reform in all three countries. The precise number and specific content of a measurable set of skills for teachers have offered challenges for policy makers, teacher educators, student teachers and teachers alike. The concept of standardised teacher education feeds into the idea that there is some convergence towards a uniform teacher ideal. However, an examination of the skills required of teachers in each of the three countries in this study reveals distinct education systems where path divergence is more evident.

Development of Student Teachers’ Digital Competence in Teacher Education - A Literature Review

AB STRA CT This article is a literature review of online peer-reviewed empirical studies from 2000 to 2013 regarding the development of digital competence of student teachers in teacher education qualified to teach in the secondary school grade level. The purpose of the review is to showcase and establish knowledge about empirical research on ICT-training in teacher education, and contribute with an overview of approaches for researchers, teacher educators, and policymakers on how teacher education develop student teachers’ digital competence for the secondary school grade level. A total of 42 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Based on a thematic analysis of the studies, including coding and categorization strategies, eight approaches were identified: collaboration, metacognition, blending, modeling, authentic learning, student-active learning, assessment, and bridging theory/practice gap. The approaches consider ways that teacher education programs promote student teachers’ digital competence, and educate them in professionally using ICT for their future use in school and classroom teaching in secondary education.

Appropriation of Digital Competence in Teacher Education

Appropriation of Digital Competence in Teacher Education

Professional Digital Competence in Teacher Education

Professional Digital Competence in Teacher Education

Developing a Portfolio of Intercultural Competences in Teacher Education: The Case of a Finnish International Programme

The concept of intercultural competences is contested, although it is omnipresent in varied fields of research and practice. Its assessment is also questioned: how can it be done? By whom? When? Should assessment be summative or formative—or both? In order to be able to assess anything, learning and teaching objectives must be clear, coherent, and consistent. Yet intercultural competences are often polysemic and rely heavily on problematic concepts such as (national) culture and identity. Here we revisit the concept and reflect on its use for formative assessment within international teacher education. Having developed a Portfolio of Intercultural Competences (PIC) to be used by student teachers in an English-medium teacher education programme in Finland, we explain how the portfolio came to life (theory, methods) and how it can help develop students' intercultural competences. We report on three components of the portfolio: the students' reflexive and critical essays on five stories of meaningful and/or memorable intercultural encounters written during a course on multicultural education, and focus group discussions amongst the students. We analyze the data with discursive pragmatics, a linguistic method which looks deeper into participants' discourses.

Teachers’ Competencies for the Implementation of Educational Offers in the Field of Education for Sustainable Development

The term of education is an integral part of any programmatic political document on sustainable development. This fact underlines the significance that is assigned to education in the context of sustainable development. It leads to the question of what competencies teachers need in order to develop and implement educational offers in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) so that they can aspire to and attain specific educational goals with their students. This touches on the question of the building of corresponding competencies in teacher education and further education. So far, few attempts have been made to describe teachers’ competencies regarding ESD and to develop corresponding competence models. The following article presents two models—Curriculum, Sustainable Development, Competences, Teacher Training (CSCT Model) and Learning for the future: The Competences in Education for Sustainable Development (ECE Model)—and discusses their benefit for teacher education and further education. These models differ in how broadly they define ESD and in what audiences they target at. This comparison shows and explains why competence models should focus on profession-specific core competencies if they are to be used as a basis for the conception of educational offers in the field of ESD in education and further education of teachers. The drawn conclusion consists in initial considerations for the conception of another competence model.

Competencies in teacher education: Preservice teachers' perceptions about competencies and their attitudes*

This study aims to identify the general teaching competency levels and professional attitudes of preservice teachers who are to graduate from four-year education faculties. It was conducted with a total of 379 senior-year students who were attending Pamukkale University Education Faculty during the spring term of the 2008 to 2009 academic year. The dependent variables of the study were general teaching profession competencies and professional attitude levels, while the independent variables were gender, type of high school attended, department of study and academic success. Data were collected by using the “general teaching competencies self-assessment form” and the “scale for attitudes towards the teaching profession”. The results showed a positive and meaningful relationship between general teaching competency perceptions and attitudes towards the profession. Key words: Teacher education, preservice teacher, generic teacher competencies, attitude

Lærerutdannerens digitale kompetanse

This case study focuses on how three teacher educators attempt to enhance their digital competence by participating in the project “Teach As We Preach (TAWP)”. At a policy level in Norway, high priority is given to information and communication technology (ICT) through the new educational reform (Læreplan for Kunnskapsløftet [LK06]). The ICT density is high in school, with one laptop per student considered desirable - a goal that is accomplished in upper secondary school. The main obstacle, however, seems to be the lack of digital competence among both pre-service and in-service teachers. However, the new White Paper No. 11 enhances digital competence to the fifth basic competence in teacher education. The study aims to enhance our understanding of how teacher educators’ develop their digital competence as part of their digital didactics and the research question is: How can students’ feedback in- and after plenary lectures contribute to enhance teacher educator’s digital competence? The empirical analysis shows that the informants, despite thresholds and challenges, find the strategy applied in this project constructive with regards to their professional development within the field of digital competence.

The Sherborne Developmental Movement (SDM) teaching model for pre‐service teachers

Previously, the Sherborne Developmental Movement (SDM) has been found to contribute to the development of emotional competencies in higher education. This study presents and evaluates a teaching model based on SDM for the development of emotional competencies in teacher education. The study examined the contributions of this model to the increase of emotional competencies in 67 future educators. Measurements included reflective diaries, questionnaires, a final project and emotional intelligence and empathy scales. Findings indicated that SDM activities integrated into a teaching model created social interactions that evoked emotional understanding of self and others, improving emotional competencies.

Digital competence in the Norwegian teacher education and schools

The purpose of this article is to examine how policy documents in Norway the last ten years have interpreted ICT and digital competence in teacher education and in school. Norway implemented in 2006 a new national curriculum which increased the status of digital competence to be the fifth basic skill in the Norwegian elementary school (stage 1-13). This was a historic event and never before has digital competence achieved such status in curricula, neither nationally nor internationally. The same has newly happened with the new General Plan for Teacher Education where digital competence has become the fifth basic skill in all subjects. However, both teacher educators and teachers lack sufficient digital competence to fulfil these ambiguous policy goals and therefore the article suggest how a model of digital competence can bridge some of the gap between the intentions in the policy documents and the teachers/teacher educators’ practise. At the same time the article attempts to elaborate our perception of the concept digital competence in an educational discourse and how one can define digital competence in light of a Scandinavian educational perspective. The research question in this article is: how can digital competence be defined and what are the foundations of digital competence in teacher education and schools in light of the policy documents in Norway?

European Teacher Education: A Fractal Perspective Tackling Complexity

This article takes stock of the complex scenario of the European education space in its past, present and future developments, which highlights the priorities of the modernisation, improvement and convergence of the goals for education and training systems in the knowledge and learning society. The critical case of teacher education is then analysed within the European Higher Education Area, with its characteristic display of national and cultural features and constraints, often jostling with European recommendations about the competences and preparation of quality European teachers. This results in changes and reforms at a diverse pace, or even with contradictory trends, in different national contexts. An approach for tackling some of these issues has been devised by the European project EMETT (European Master for European Teacher Training), involving an academic network of eight universities within its Lifelong Learning Programme. The outcomes and reflections of this project work are thus reported, concerning the development and implementation of a European teacher education curriculum for a joint Master's degree. The key European priorities of mobility and intercultural, multilingual competences in teacher education have been taken into account within the framework of an integrated, flexible curriculum that can best be described by a fractal metaphor dealing with complexity from an ecological perspective.

Sociocultural Competence in Teacher Education

For the past few years we have been developing a longitudinal study of biliteracy development in children by following, all within the same dual-language school, a case study cohort of 20 students throughout their elementary school years. This cohort sample represents considerable diversity in terms of ethnicity, social class, and language proficiencies upon starting school, with just a few children fluent in both Spanish and English as early as kindergarten. The study reveals that all students, not only those in our study sample but in the entire school, and regardless of their sociocultural characteristics or initial language profile, became literate in both languages. Our analysis identifies several characteristics that give the school its additive personality. For present purposes, we highlight only three such characteristics. One is that the school features, in contrast to most high-poverty schools, a highly qualified and diverse teaching corps, most of them (88%) female, as is the norm. All of the instructors are certified bilingual teachers--most hold a master's degree or higher--and have taken academic courses in both Spanish and English and have taught in a dual-language program for more than 9 years. This highly qualified staff not only help give the school its academic emphasis and direction, its academic identity we could say, but also facilitate a particular social setting, cultivating a supportive environment for the development of biliteracy in all students in which the teachers, among other things, protect the students (and themselves) against the often blatant attacks and insults by English-only advocates. A second characteristic relates to the deliberate development of confianza (mutual trust), a term borrowed from our analysis of household funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, in press). In the original work, we used it to refer to the necessary trust households need to establish social relations of exchange; in fact, we referred to confianza as the glue that held the households' multiple (and sometimes fragile) social networks together. Here we extend this concept to refer to the nature of the social relationships among administrators, teachers, and students that help establish the particular of the school; a culture of caring, if you will, to borrow from Noddings (e.g., 1992), that came to characterize the school and helped define who these teachers are in relation to each other and to the children (see also, Bryk & Schneider, 2002). In particular, the administrators entrust the teachers to help make pedagogical and policy decisions for the school. This trust helps teachers define themselves as a particular type of professional, and as a particular type of person, with the necessary funds of knowledge to make curricular decisions that help define the nature of the educational relationships in the school. A third characteristic is that of ideological clarity. The teachers became well aware of how much teaching is a political activity, especially after defending the children's language rights in their efforts to preserve the current dual-language arrangement. It would be accurate to state that the administrators and teachers are constantly vigilant of any attempts to either alter the dual-language agenda of the school or impose an English-only curriculum and do not hesitate to activate the school's social network of parents and other allies to defend the school. In this setting, therefore, biliteracy is, without vacillation, a clear academic goal promoted through a duaManguage pedagogy and sustained by an ideology that favors the development of both languages in all children. The school, consequently, is not only successful in producing biliterate students, a rare achievement in U.S. schools, but also successful despite the heavy ideological and programmatic pressures of the state to dismantle bilingual education, a consequence of the state's English-only language policy, and the current emphasis on high-stakes testing, also conducted only in English. …

Assessing Writing Competence in Teacher Education

Abstract The literacy needs of our diverse multicultural society are so compelling that writing needs to receive increased emphasis at all levels of schooling. In programs designed for the preparation of classroom teachers, writing competence as an admission or exit requirement is of importance for at least three reasons. First, teachers communicate with multiple audiences throughout the day. Frequently they can not communicate on a face-to-face basis and, therefore, they must depend on writing skills. Second, teachers are role models. Truly effective teachers are models of literacy who help students improve their writing skills. Finally, teaching demands that one be a life-long learner, and writing is one of the surest ways to make knowledge personal, connected, and accessible to self. The authors of this essay describe the background and rationale for a holistically scored writing exam in teacher education. Practical suggestions include a sample scoring guide, writing prompt, and general directions.

Partnership, Mentoring and Competences in Teacher Education

Partnership, Mentoring and Competences in Teacher Education