Contemporary Teacher Education Research Articles

”Jag ville testa på att plugga på universitetet… och så ville jag få jobba med barn”

During the past two decades, teacher education has come to comprise the largest student enrollment in higher education programs in the Swedish context. This study examines 11 students enrolled in a teacher program specializing in school-age educare (grundlärare i fritidshem). School-age educare students exhibit a notable gender balance and many come from low-level educational and/or migrant backgrounds, leading to an exploration into the (re)production of class and gender dynamics. Through a thematic analysis of interviews, this article delves into how these students articulate their educational choices in relation to migrant background, gender, and class, and envision their future profession. The study highlights the dual motivation driving their specific educational decision: a desire for higher education and the need to enhance employability. Within this context, school-age educare emerges as a distinct and special kind of teacher endeavor. Gender, as perceived by the students, could both be framed as an asset and as a possible obstacle in discussions about their future profession. Male teachers could be both viewed as important role models yet also as ambivalent figures. This study offers insights into the interplay of class, gender, migrant background and educational aspirations, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of contemporary teacher education in Sweden.

Assessing the efficacy of online teacher training programs in preparing pre‐service teachers to support students with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms in the UAE: A case study

AbstractThe study aimed to explore the challenges and potential benefits of online delivery in preparing pre‐service teachers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for inclusive teaching. The study specifically examined their readiness to assist students with special educational needs (SEN) within the K‐12 education system. It employed semi‐structured interviews to comprehensively understand the perspectives and experiences of 11 pre‐service teachers enrolled in an online teacher education programme. The findings revealed that the participants expressed significant concern about their preparedness to teach students with SEN. They expressed apprehension about the limited opportunities they had during their teacher education programme to learn about and interact with students with SEN. The findings also shed light on the gap between theory and practice, underscoring the importance of contemporary teacher education programmes in re‐evaluating their curricula to address the emerging needs of both learners and teachers, specifically in the post‐pandemic era of COVID‐19. Lastly, the study provided implications for practice and suggested future research in this area.

Reviewing Teachers’ Competency for Distance Learning during COVID-19: Inferences for Policy and Practice

Following the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in March 2020, distance learning has gained more attention from national and international education policies. This timely paper aimed to review the literature about digital competencies that K-12 and pre-service teachers require in order to succeed in supporting online learners during and post COVID-19. A critical question in this review pertained to how contemporary teacher education programs and teacher professional development can respond to the evolving needs of online learners. The findings showed that currently practicing K-12 teachers need more support around the technical, pedagogical, and content development associated with distance learning. In contrast, teacher education programs are urged to ensure that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) knowledge is well integrated into their curricular courses. Further, teacher educators must have the necessary ICT skills and experience to prepare competent K-12 teachers for distance learning. Conclusion and recommendations for teacher education policy and practice for distance learning are offered.

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY TEACHER EDUCATION (JCTE)

Journal of Contemporary Teacher Education is an annual publication ofSecondary Teacher Education Department, Faculty of Education, AllamaIqbal Open University, Islamabad. Articles published in the journal areselected on the basis of quality. Views expressed in the journal are thoseof authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Journal ofContemporary Teacher Education

INSTRUMENTALISATION OF THINKING: ON THE ILLUSION OF REFLEXIVITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION

Contemporary teacher education research point out that one of the most important elements of teacher professionalism is reflexivity. Teacher (self)reflection is aimed at gaining autonomy, at not succumbing to uncritical traditions or established norms, at (self-)criticism, at not agreeing to follow “top-down orders”. In this perspective, reflexivity is a priority element of teacher training, which should be reflected in the teacher education programme. The authors reflect on the category of reflexivity in the context of professional development of teachers and teacher education. We refer to the reflection theory of Donald Schön, Max van Manen, Nevill Hatton and David Smith as well as Johan Luttenberg and Theo Bergen. The adopted research perspective for collecting and interpreting empirical material is a critical discourse analysis. The subject of the analysis is Regulation of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. The results of research and analyses indicate that the category of reflexivity is present in educational programmes only to a small extent and mainly refers to the level of technical reflexivity of a pragmatic nature. This is a consequence of the technical-scientistic, formalised approach to the construction of educational programmes in force in Poland. This programme is oriented towards instrumentally understood objectives and the usefulness of knowledge and skills on the labour market. A consequence of this is the lack of the broadly understood category of reflexivity as a deep reflection on action. In the analysed document, reflexivity is illusory and apparent in its nature, appears only to a limited extent, and is treated instrumentally.

Preservice Physical Education Teacher’s Development of Adaptive Competence

Purpose: This study had two purposes. One purpose was to explore preservice physical education teachers’ development of adaptive competence in six core practices during planning and teaching in physical education. The second purpose was to understand how rehearsals and repeated teaching as two pedagogies of practice-based teacher education were perceived by preservice teachers in their development of adaptive competence. Methods: This was a mixed-methods study using descriptive analysis to analyze data collected from lesson plans and a collective case study to analyze semistructured interviews. Findings: Preservice teachers made the most adaptations in the core practices of coordinating and adjusting instruction, establishing rules and routines, and providing precise instruction. Rehearsals and repeated teaching were perceived as effective strategies to facilitate the development of adaptive competence in teaching. Conclusions: Findings are discussed in terms of three contemporary teacher education conceptualizations: (a) adaptive competence, (b) core practices in physical education, and (c) practice-based teacher education pedagogies.

Contemporary Teacher Education: A Global Perspective-Introduction to a Special Collection of Research

This special issue on “Contemporary Teacher Education: A Global Perspective” contains eleven articles focused on varied current topics in teacher education all over the world [...]

Contemporary teacher education: contributions and learning

The birth of the XXI century provided changes in various spheres of society, including education. In this perspective, a survey that aimed to analyze and evaluate the contributions of an extension course conducted at the State University of Southwest Bahia (UESB), Campus Itapetinga, whose proposal was to make through debates, discussions and reflections was performed the training of teachers through the challenge of contemporaneity. The research was qualitative, descriptive type and survey and participants in this research were 52 course participants. The training could provide moments of reflection and change. Another important point in this work was to realize the importance of the relationship between teaching, research and extension to promote the formation of this new faculty. Thus, it is worth thinking in teacher training as required in this complex and changes so lacking in society.

The Challenge of Educating Purposeful Teachers in Finland

This article discusses the challenges of educating teachers in Finland. As a goal in teacher education for the 21st century we propose the purposeful teacher, referring to a teacher who has a long-term moral commitment to serve students, the school community and society. Our data collected from student (N = 912) and practising (N = 77) teachers yielded information on the purposes they identified as important in their lives. The survey included quantitative instruments and open- ended questions. The teachers identified happiness, relationships, work and self-actualisation as the most important contents of their aspirations. All the content categories could be understood as potential purposes in that the benefit extended beyond the teachers themselves. However, almost half of the student teachers (46%) and over half of teachers (55%) revealed only self-orientation. Less than half of them (43%, 36%, respectively) showed a beyond-the-self orientation, which is indicative of a purposeful teacher. Among the practising teachers, teaching appeared to be mainly a mediating factor in realising their purposes or aspirations. These results have implications related to contemporary teacher education in Finland. Both pre- and in-service teachers need to know about purposeful teaching in order to find meaning in their work.

Interculturality in Teacher Education in Times of Unprecedented Global Challenges

As societies face unprecedented challenges that are global in scope and “more-than-wicked” in nature, educators and educational policy makers emphasize the importance of deepening knowledge about the causes of these problems, creating policies to address them more efficiently, and offering more compelling moral arguments that might persuade people to change their convictions, and ‐ as a consequence ‐ their behaviour. These concerns shape how policies on the study of interculturality are approached in contemporary teacher education in our contexts in Canada and the UK. Our research, however, positions these as problems that cannot be solved with improved information, enhanced cross-cultural skills, or moral claims, because they are rooted in modernity’s systems, which structure the possibilities for co-existence on the planet. We see these problems as ontological challenges of being that emerge from a modernist ontology rooted in colonial violences. Our approach therefore explores an orientation to intercultural education which enables student teachers to expand their understanding of cultural and ecological relationships beyond existing frameworks of modernist knowledge, politics, and economic systems. In this paper, we share some of our current learning about the affordances and limitations of dominant approaches to intercultural education, and then explore how the method of “social cartography” can enable engagement with ontological problems in teacher education in a way that generates possibilities for imagining decolonial learning futures, beyond modernity.

Vispārīgā didaktika skolotāju sagatavošanas programmās

The implementation of the European Union regulation “Europe 2020” has given the possibility to review the content of the offered educational programmes. New study courses have appeared, and the existing ones have changed the emphasis from knowledge acquisition to competence-based learning. At the same time, the students’ view of general didactics as one of the basic disciplines in pedagogy is changed. The aim of the research is to help to understand the problems in contemporary teacher education and purposefully push further the development of education improving its quality. For analysis of the research data the following methods are employed: descriptive statistics and content analysis. In Latvia, currently teacher education programmes are implemented by seven higher education institutions, which offer 24 study programmes, but the research topics of general didactics are included in the offer of four higher education institutions. Other educational institutions have included topics related to the particular didactics in their programmes. The study course on general didactics should be developed taking into consideration the interaction between the concepts of science and pedagogy, general didactics, study course and competence. In Latvia, considering the development of general didactics as a sub-branch of science, it is supplemented with the explanations of concepts used in higher education.

What Psychology Can Contribute to Contemporary Teacher Education: Basic Concepts and Exemplary Implementations

Abstract
 We describe basic concepts of contemporary teacher education from a psychological perspective, typified with examples from teacher education programs run at the University of Münster, Germany. After describing the context of teacher education in Germany, criteria are discussed which guide the selection of psychological contents to be included into teacher education curricula. Furthermore, three curriculum components are discussed that help to adopt a psychological perspective on instruction at school. Classroom videos reduce the distance between psychological knowledge suitable to guide teacher behaviour and examples of how teachers actually behave during class. Students’ small-scale classroom research projects bridge the gap between theory and practice, and curriculum components focussing on individual differences help to raise awareness for diagnostics, individual aid, and inclusion. Finally, psychology’s role in teacher education is discussed with regard to relevant content knowledge and methodological knowledge teacher education curricula might benefit from. 
 
 Key words: teacher education, video-based instruction, evidence-based teaching, inclusion

It’s Heart Work: Critical Case Studies, Critical Professional Development, and Fostering Hope Among Social Justice–Oriented Teacher Educators

As social justice–oriented teachers and teacher educators, it can seem as if we are fighting a losing battle against neoliberal education policies designed to disrupt and dismantle our field. In this article we draw upon traditions of critical race theory, counterstorying, and critical hope to examine the complex realities of contemporary teacher education and envision an alternate reality in which our profession develops and thrives. To do so, we first present a series of autoethnographic critical case studies that highlight dilemmas of practice. We then invite readers to examine each case through multiple lenses, as they grapple with the complexities of a visionary path forward. In so doing, we offer tools for critical professional development that articulate, deconstruct, and reimagine social justice–oriented teacher education and activism in this changing landscape. We close with recommendations to increase our collective capacity as social justice teacher educators, placing a central emphasis on the need for community, critical professional development, and hope.

The ABCs of the XYZs: Adding a Critical Dimension to Contemporary Teacher Education

Currently, the faculty at post-secondary institutions are mostly Baby Boomer and Generation-X (Gen X) faculty teaching Gen-Y and -Z students as undergraduates. According to numerous social commentators, these generations tend to vary in their worldviews, and the differences can challenge the teaching-learning relationship. In the following discussion, we would like to share some information from a few current resources that attempt to characterize and analyze the two most dominant generations among post-secondary students today. Then, we will pose a few ways that teacher educators might seek to update their instruction for Gen-Z students.

Teacher education in a post-modern liberal democratic society

In the last few years, there is a strong inclination to see a technological development, economic growth and social cohesion as the goals of education and therefore teachers are taken to be responsible for social solidarity and for national success in the global economic competition. This paper rejects the reduction of teaching to maximize effective instruction in the service of economic success and group solidarity and therefore resists the utilitarian thrust of much recent policy and practice in teacher education. The main argument is that teachers today are committed to a moral education from the virtue ethics perspective. The role of the teachers in a post-modern democratic society that respects the ideal of autonomy is to seek the development of their students, shaping their character while practicing certain virtues and leading them to a life of individual flourishing and self-fulfilment. Having the ability to cultivate young people character while guiding them towards finding their own ideas about how to lead a valuable life depends on the relationships that teachers and students maintain. The conclusion is that teachers are required to base decisions first and foremost on values like attentiveness, sensitivity, empathy, responsiveness and trust, values which are derived from an ethics of care. An ethics of care is the most suitable ethical framework for guiding teacher's practice nowadays. The paper provides an account of why virtue ethics and an ethics of care, which is sometimes seen as a version of virtue ethics, are the appropriate ethical frameworks for contemporary teacher education.

Millennial generation preservice teachers inspiring the design of teacher education

The article presents an interpretive phenomenological approach (IPA) to preservice teachers’ experiences of their current secondary teacher education programme (STEP) in Finland. The focus of the study is the millennial generation cohort in which new teachers comprise a key group to be studied because they will contribute to the future of education. Thirteen preservice teachers participated in the study. Their experiences are interpreted through the lenses of generation theory and contemporary teacher education research. The findings include three phenomenological themes that are core elements of STEP: time balance, reciprocal participation and meaningfulness. These themes are discussed and suggestions made for ways to transform teacher education to make it more relevant.

What Is 'Really' Taught As The Content of School Subjects?: Teaching School Subjects As An Alchemy

What Is 'Really' Taught As The Content of School Subjects?Teaching School Subjects As An Alchemy Thomas S. Popkewitz There is general belief in current reforms that a teacher cannot teach a school subject unless she has adequate knowledge of the disciplinary field of that teaching. Coinciding with this belief is the emphasis in teacher education reforms and research on pedagogical knowledge teachers need for children to learn the content knowledge. The identification of "the best practices" and "the core" teaching knowledge to enact the curriculum exemplifies this belief. "Benchmarks" or standards are indicators of whether the teacher has mastered the core or best practices. The professional, highly skilled teacher is one who exhibits the benchmarks and classified as "effective" and "authentic" in classroom teaching. The pedagogical knowledge to implement teaching of school subjects is the focus of teacher and teacher education reform. This assumption underwrites the McKinsey reports on educational assessments of national school systems. An international consulting agency that writes public service reports on education, McKinsey uses international assessments of student performances (PISA) in science and mathematics, for example, to outline models of school change that focus on teacher education and school system recruitment and professional training (Popkewitz, 2017). The models of change focus on the management of pedagogical practices to provide the "pathways" or "highways" for improving science, mathematics, and literary education. The highway metaphor directs attention to change as simply instrumental: "to get rid of potholes [and] make educators and employers part of the solution by providing 'signs' and concentrate on patch of pavement ahead" (Barton, Farrell, & Mourshed, 2013, p.54). Teacher education reform programs follow the same kind of assumptions but at the micro level of classroom interaction. The problem of good teaching is better implementation strategies for students to learn the curriculum. Teacher training is to enable teachers to "approximate" the professional practices of 'what teachers really need to know and be able to do" (Grossman, McDonald, Hammerness, & Ronfeldt (2008, p.247, italics added). This article gives attention to the principles of change that organize contemporary teacher and teacher education reforms. It suggests that the models of change are built on a chimera or illusion. That illusion is that teaching is about learning science, mathematics, art, or music; and professional competence is finding the "core" pedagogical knowledge. The discussion argues historically that the school curricula for teaching school subjects have little to do with learning disciplinary practices, but rather are models of practices for making kinds of people. They embody cultural principles about who the child is and should be, and who is outside and does not "fit" into the spaces of normativity. To explore the principles of the models of curriculum, the analogy is made with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century alchemists who sought to turn base metals into [End Page 77] pure gold. As the medieval alchemy, the school subjects involve magical processes that transform physics and mathematics, for example, into the school curriculum. The alchemy of the school subjects is explored historically to ask how is it possible to think about curriculum reforms as we do and the limits of these models for school change. While it is often pleasing to think of schools as places for children "learning" and teaching as a "help profession", to think of the curriculum as an alchemy directions attention to a different historical quality of schools. Historically they are concerned with the making of kinds of people. Some of these kinds of people are today called the lifelong learner, the adolescent, and the disadvantaged child. Pedagogy (and pedagogical knowledge), the argument continues, links norms and values of collective belonging with the interior of the child in governing "the soul." The second section discusses how theories about the nature of society and collective belonging (the citizen) are brought in to order the curriculum to talk about science, arts, music and mathematics education. The theories in the curriculum and psychologies of the child generate principle about what is thought, talked about and "seen" as the practices of teaching. And embedded in the alchemy of teaching school subjects is the paradox of contemporary reforms. The designing of the curriculum to recognize differences and inclusion so "all children learn...

“We Need to Give the Profession Something that No One Else Can”: Swedish Student Teachers’ Perceptions and Experiences of their Preschool Teacher Training Programme

Current research points towards preschool and qualitative pedagogical relationships as being determined and formed by a close link between care and teaching. An Early Childhood Education should lead not only towards the acquisition of knowledge within specific areas but should also enhance the  personal development of student teachers. New and creative competences need to be developed to cope with increasingly complex, changing and diversified learning environments. The crucial questions are: How well does contemporary Teacher Education prepare student teachers for their future role? Do students feel that their teacher-training programme has sufficiently prepared them for their profession? This study comprises Swedish student teachers’ perceptions and experiences of their Early Childhood Education. Data is based on 181 written evaluations by final year student teachers. Results are discussed using a theoretical framework based on the sociological concept of an “educational contract” comprising three different levels of negotiation: students’ education and their current workforce; students and their teacher training programme; students, teachers and learning in any given educational situation  https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.16.9.6

Innovative Mindset in School Education: A global issue or trend in Pakistan

Education and training are emerging now key drivers of competitiveness for any country on the globe. To cope with the globalization a country has to elevate her education system. In Pakistan, HEC upgraded the Teacher Education (TE) by replacing the one-year B.Ed. with the 4 years B.Ed. (Honors). The upgraded TE and the global challenges are well connected with the real implementation of vision 2030 agenda in the School Education (SE). And very crucial to address the advancements in TE for the production of teachers with the innovative mindset to grip the global reach in the future. The Punjab government is planning to stop the upgraded 4-year program offered since 2009 in the 33 Government Elementary Colleges for Teachers Training (GCETs) instead of making them self-sustain. The study with main objectives: i) to collect, need assessment data for the global advancements adaptation from the GCETs. ii) To analyze critically educational documents along with the budget allocation for globalization. iii) To propose a conceived factual framework for transforming teacher education in Punjab was conducted by utilizing mixed research methods, visualized the advanced professional training needs and essential global interventions. Then it strived to propose a transformation mechanism for the elevation of TE. The data analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively through percentages, triangulation and content analysis. The study resolved the globalization issue, by bridging the gaps through a transformation framework outlines for modification in TE. The conceived factual framework is a dynamic revolutionary route to improving the quality of school education via contemporary TE. The suggested framework if implemented in future after validation it would save the scarce resources and provide maximum outputs through quality education.

New Teacher Perceptions of Inclusive Practices: An Examination of Contemporary Teacher Education Programs

This article details a sequential explanatory mixed-method study into the perceptions of 44 new teachers regarding inclusive practices from their teacher education program, as well as their relative intent to utilize them in their practice. The purpose of this study was to determine the self-perceived capacity of the next generation of teachers leaving a Canadian teacher education program from a mid-sized university in Southern Ontario. As new teachers are the product of contemporary teacher education programs, their lingering needs and perceptions are potential avenues for intervention in continuing the refinement of teacher education. First, a complete audit of relevant teacher education was performed, followed by participants completing a mixed-methods survey. Then, these survey findings informed critical-case interviews. Analyses yielded two groups of themes: confidence from teacher education, and the lingering needs of new teachers. These data suggest that teacher education programs are not entirely effective at producing new teachers who are confident in their abilities to be inclusive practitioners in the classroom. Further, the perceptions of new teachers illustrate avenues for intervention in making teacher education programs more effective.