Group Of Prospective Teachers Research Articles

ATTITUDE TOWARDS TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATION OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS IN A MULTI-GRADE CLASSROOM

The purpose of this descriptive correlational research is to investigate the attitudes and professional qualification of BEED students enrolled in teaching multi-grade classes. The results showed that the respondents had an agreeable attitude towards the teaching profession. The mean score of the responses on professional qualification was very high, indicating that prospective teachers have a good understanding of the skills and competencies required for effective teaching in a multi-grade classroom setting. However, there was a negative correlation between attitudes towards teaching profession and professional qualification, which was not significant. The study highlighted the need for teacher education programs to provide more practical training opportunities and relevant curricula to enhance the professional competence of prospective teachers. The results also emphasized the importance of considering age and teaching experience when tailoring training programs to better address the needs of different groups of prospective teachers. Further research with a larger and more diverse group of participants is necessary to better understand the complex relationship between attitudes towards teaching profession and professional qualification. KEYWORDS: pre-service teachers, professional qualification, teaching multi-grade classes, teaching profession

Promoting Prospective Mathematics Teachers’ Professional Vision on a Whole-class Reflective Discussion: Contributions of Digital Resources

The present study aims to understand how the professional vision of prospective teachers (PTs) regarding whole-class reflective discussion develops as they explore a multimedia case (MC) in a mathematics teacher education course. The data come from the written productions of seven groups of PTs (N=15) related to whole-class discussion of one 6th grade lesson in two sections of the MC: first, they have focused on the teacher’s lesson plan and on her intentions for the whole-class discussion aiming at the students’ algebraic thinking; and in the second, they have analysed two video episodes of that lesson phase. The results show an integrated development of two processes of PTs’ professional vision – noticed events and the nature of the reasoning about them – with significant evolution from one section to another as they explore the MC. The study shows PTs’ alternative ways of accessing and making sense of the complexity of both ambitious and authentic teaching practices that can also be employed in at distance teacher education and mitigate the consequences of the impossibility to access the classrooms, such as that resulting from the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding Prospective Teachers’ Task Design Considerations through the Lens of the Theory of Didactical Situations

Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attention of educational researchers. The present research investigates task design of prospective teachers in the Scratch programming environment. A total of twenty-three female prospective teachers participated in a professional development program. They were in their third academic year majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school. The prospective teachers attempted to design mathematics-based programming problems. The present research utilizes the theory of didactical situations in mathematics, specifically the situation types, the paradoxes of the didactical contract and the situation components, to study the task design of the prospective teachers. It does that by focusing on one group of prospective teachers. The research results indicated that the prospective teachers were concerned mainly with the situation of information, situation of reference and situation of action. Doing so, they were concerned with the paradox of the said and the unsaid, the paradox of uncertainty, and the paradox of devolution. In addition, they took care of both algorithmic and creative reasoning. They also took care of students’ devolution, where this devolution was conditioned with following an institutionalization. They were also concerned with giving students autonomy and encouraging decision making regarding the solution of the problem. Furthermore, they planned to enable students’ control over their learning.

Psychosocial Factors that Shape the Professional Identity Crisis in Prospective Language Teachers

This case study, framed in the Socio-critical paradigm and following a narrative approach, describes the role psychosocial factors play in shaping the professional identity crisis in a group of prospective teachers in the Language Teaching Program of a private university in Medellín, Colombia. We developed three data collection techniques to conduct this study. First, participants in the stage of professional practicum were to write a narrative about their first experiences as prospective language teachers. Our objective was to describe the psychosocial factors shaping the identity crisis. Then, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the intention of defining the role these factors play in shaping the crisis; and finally, a focus group with the objective of relating these psychosocial factors with the identity crisis. Findings revealed that prospective teachers perceive themselves very vulnerable to fail, they tend to avoid frustration and their lack of self-confidence inhibits their class performance. We also found that the lack of career guidance during high school years, the social status of the teaching profession, and the idealization of the teaching profession as well as the social conditions of school contexts, played an important role in shaping the identity crisis in our prospective teachers. We find it advisable for Language Teaching Programs to develop psychosocial support strategies that bring prospective teachers’ voices to be heard in favor of constructing strong and resilient identities able to respond to current school demands.

Inquiry-Based Learning Implementation to Improve Critical Thinking of Prospective Teachers

Teachers must possess critical thinking skills to become good facilitators in the education process to produce students with high-order thinking skills. This research aims to evaluate the implementation of the inquiry-based learning (IBL) method in improving the critical thinking (CT) skills of prospective teachers with their own learning styles. An experimental study is the research method used in this research with the matching-only pretest–posttest with a control group design. The selected participants consisted of two groups of prospective teachers, a total of 76 people with low critical thinking skills and 50 people with very low skills. The experimental group was given the IBL method, while the control group was given the problem-based learning method, which refers to the latest curriculum. Treatment is given for 8 weeks. The statistical analysis used includes Wilcoxon, Mann–Whitney, and Kruskal–Wallis followed by post hoc. The results of this study show an increase in critical thinking in both the experimental group and the control group. However, the increase in the experimental group was significantly higher than the control group. The increase in experimental group with low and very low CT group did not differ significantly. On the other hand, in the control group, the increase in CT in the low group was significantly higher than the very low group. Furthermore, the Kruskal–Wallis difference test in the experimental group based on learning styles showed that prospective teachers with converging learning styles were more able to follow the IBL method compared to other learning styles.

Role of Teacher Education in Preparing Teachers for Teaching in Religious Schools of Balochistan

A large number of children in Balochistan attend religious schools (Madrasas) that have been criticized for spreading extremist views in the society. Teacher education institutions play a vital role in bringing cultural and religious harmony by producing prospective teachers who are able to cultivate tolerance, acceptance, patriotism, ethnic, religious respect and counter extremism, sectarian, and discrimination prospective. This qualitative exploratory study explores whether the prospective teachers in Balochistan are trained enough to teach in religious schools. The data were collected through in-depth interviews and focused group discussions. All teacher educators and prospective teachers from the universities that remained part of Pre-STEP or Teacher Education Project (TEP) assisted by USAID constituted the population of the study. Sample was selected through purposive sampling from two universities situated in Quetta. 10 teacher educators (5+5) and 10 prospective teachers (5+5) were selected as sample for interviews while two groups of prospective teachers (5 participants in each) were selected from the both case universities for focus group interviews. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings indicated that the prospective teachers and teacher educators considered the recent teacher education programs in Balochistan not enough to train teachers to teach in religious schools.
 Keywords: Prospective Teachers; Religious Schools; Teacher Education Programs; Balochistan

Research Attitude of Prospective Teachers: An Analysis of Universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad

The attitude of prospective teachers regarding educational research is one of the challenges that is linked with education.It's not commonly known that why teachers do not use research to solve instructional problems, but probably it is in connection with the attitude of teachers regarding educational research. A group of prospective teachers was administered by the updated scale. In the final scale, exploratory factor analysis had a significant relationship. The main factors that have an effect on the attitudes of teachers regarding educational research were; teachers' individual interest in conducting research, educational research's value, and benefits of research skills for teachers. The study concluded that teachers' attitude was connected to and in the influence with frequency and intensity of their experience to education research. Those teachers have a more positive attitude towards educational research and have just done a professional development course that has a focus on education research.

Kimya ve Fizik Öğretmen Adaylarının Kuantum Sayılarına Yönelik Bilişsel Yapılarının İncelenmesi

This study firstly aimed to analyse prospective chemistry and physics teachers’ comprehension levels to quantum numbers. Secondly, the study analysed the changes in both groups of prospective teachers’ levels of comprehending quantum numbers. In this context, qualitative research method was used and purposeful sampling method was employed in the selection of the participants in this study. 8 prospective chemistry and 9 prospective physics teachers were included in the study. The prospective teachers’ responses to the seven open-ended questions were analysed separately by the two researchers according the classification made by Abraham, Grybowsky, Renner and Marek (1992). First, prospective chemistry and physics teachers’ level of understanding quantum numbers was determined. Then, variability in their levels of understanding was examined. In addition to that, prospective teachers’ probable misconceptions/alternative concepts/wrong concepts and deficient knowledge was also determined. It was concluded that prospective teachers in general had wrong concepts in addition to partial understanding the subject. It was also found that there were considerable changes in their comprehension levels. In this context, the nature of prospective teachers’ understanding of quantum numbers was discussed in details.

Making sense of the average concept through engagement in model-eliciting activities

The modelling approach to teaching and learning mathematics emphasizes the usefulness of mathematics in the real-world. The aim of the current study is to examine whether engagement in modelling activities provides learners an opportunity to expand their knowledge of a specific concept – the average concept. Our data include recordings of four groups of prospective teachers as they worked on two model-eliciting tasks. Their working process was video-recorded and transcribed and their discourse was then analysed via the communicational framework. Specifically, we monitored changes in the participants’ use of the word average. The findings indicate that the participants expanded their use of the word average by shifting from references to arithmetic mean and reasonable values to references to benchmark, weighted value and mid-value.

Breaking with tradition: An investigation of an alternative instructional sequence designed to improve prospective teachers’ noticing skills

This experimental study aims to investigate the effect of an alternative instructional sequence designed to improve prospective teachers’ noticing skills. The participants consisted of two groups of prospective teachers (N = 28). To assess their noticing skills, the participants were asked to note critical events in the classroom and to provide detailed explanations about why they found these worth noting. The results indicate that the participants in experimental group showed higher levels of noticing skills compared to those in control group. The study presents a discussion of the success of the instructional approach in improving the noticing skills of future mathematics teachers.

A Study on the Use of Speech Acts: A Review of Selected Paper

This article is a review of the theory of speech act by Searle & Austin (1962). Describe what the action strategies used in the language themselves are speaking and what speech acts are used by a group of prospective teachers while apologizing, complaining, rejecting and giving thanks. Focusing on the paper written by Akdeniz University, Faculty of Education Nihat Bayat, titled ‘A study on the use of speech acts.’ This present paper uses descriptive qualitative analysis in an attempt to address the gap how to determine what type of speech act is used in the Turkish language strategy, which will provide convenience in teaching Turkish as a native and foreign language. Look at using data content analysis obtained from descriptive analysis for deeper processes. The data in this study were collected through asking participants to write the structure of the language they used in apologizing, complaining, rejecting and thanking. This present article aims to review and discuss the findings, as well as the strengths and weaknesses found in Nihat's paper. The article seems to have a clear flow on how to explain these two types of education and made the discourse easy to understand. Therefore, the replication of Nihat's research should be easy enough for similar research purposes.

Spinning the Cube with Technologies

The rise of dynamic modeling and 3-D design technologies provides appealing opportunities for mathematics teachers to reconsider a host of pedagogical issues in mathematics education, ranging from motivation to application and from visualization to physical manipulation. This article reports on a classroom teaching experiment about cube spinning, integrating traditional tools, GeoGebra (www.geogebra.org), and 3-D design and printing technologies. It highlights the rich interplay between worthwhile mathematical tasks and the strategic use of diverse technologies in sustaining sense making and problem solving with a group of prospective teachers.

How Do Prospective Elementary and Gifted Education Teachers of Gifted Students Perceive Scientists and Distinguish Science from Pseudoscience?

The present study aims to examine the perceptions towards scientists and science/pseudoscience distinctions of gifted education and elementary education teacher candidates who will educate gifted students especially at the elementary education level. A total of 92 volunteer prospective teachers, composed of candidates from gifted education and elementary education departments, participated in the study, which was carried out as a survey research. The data were collected using the Draw-a-Scientist Test and the Science/Pseudoscience Distinction Scale. The results of the study showed that both groups of prospective teachers‘ crafted drawings that reflected stereotypical perceptions in terms of appearance, work carried out by scientists, and gender. However, according to the results of the independent samples t-test, the elementary education teacher candidates were found to reflect more stereotypical characteristics in their drawings of scientists than the gifted education teacher candidates. The candidates‘ science/pseudoscience distinction scores did not significantly differ in department and there was a negative significant correlation between stereotypical image scores and scientific method scores.

PENINGKATAN KEMAMPUAN PENALARAN MATEMATIS MAHASISWA CALON GURU MATEMATIKA MELALUI BLENDED-LEARNING DENGAN STRATEGI PROBING-PROMPTING

Blended learning is a learning method that combines two or more learning method. The objective of this research is to know the improvement of mathematical reasoning ability of student of mathematics prospective teacher, through Blended Learning with Probing-prompting learning strategy. The research method used is quantitative research, and divides participants into two groups. The first group is the experimental class group, it is the group of prospective teachers who get Blended Learning with Probing-Prompting Strategy and the second group is the control group; which is prospective teachers who get conventional learning. The study was conducted on 6th semester prospective teacher students from one university in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. Based on this research, it is known that: experimental class group; which is the group of prospective teachers who get Blended Learning has improved the ability of mathematical reasoning is better than the control class group. It can be seen from the results of the normalized gain calculation of the experimental class reaches an average of 0.50 while the normalized gain of the control class reaches an average of 0.34. Although both are still in medium category, but based on t-test results between two parties, found that the increase has significant differences.

Developing a university contribution to teacher education: creating an analytical space for learning narratives

What might a distinct university contribution to teacher education look like? This paper tracks a group of prospective teachers making the transition from undergraduate to teacher on a one-year school-based postgraduate course. The study employs a practitioner research methodological framework where teacher learning is understood as a process of developing and evaluating self-representations. Students persistently revised a story of ‘Who I am becoming’, referenced to evolving notions of pedagogic subject knowledge. University sessions provided a platform for students to share and discuss their experiences in schools and reflect upon the research process as it occurred. Our findings suggest this approach enables student teachers to account for their learning in more nuanced and sophisticated ways where time for university-based reflection is restricted. The theoretical perspective draws on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Subjectivity is conceptualized not as fixed but persistently re-produced in an increasingly analytical developmental perspective. Data comprise reflective and analytical material produced by students at successive stages of the course, where this material provides temporal reference points for them in tracking and asserting their own development. The paper provides a methodological framework for teacher education informed by critically reflective constructions of the process through which individuals become teachers.

Selected aspects of conditions in the use of new media as an important part of the training of teachers in the Czech Republic and Poland - differences, risks and threats

The paper presents the complex problems of preparation of pedagogy students to work as teachers in the context of their readiness to use ICT in the didactic process. The complexity of this subject matter has been proved by the current, ongoing, discussion about the direction of the expected transformations of contemporary schools and the prospective teachers education system in the age of prevalent digitization. Considering the complexity of conditions, the main research problem has been formulated as follows: Conditions of what type affect the preparation of prospective teachers to use new media in learning and teaching process?. Thus, the empirical analysis conducted in the paper focuses on the following issues: the style of using new media by students, identification of students’ attitudes towards media, subjective (from the students’ point of view) assessment of how university level schools are prepared to shape modern media competences among their students and self-evaluation of media and IT competences in the group of prospective teachers. Czech and Polish students, despite being the so called digital natives, do not present homogeneous styles of using new media. They also reveal different attitudes toward applying digital solutions to the didactic process. Factors such as: low evaluation of one’s own competences or lack of evaluation in this area, lack of creative approach to the use of new media, lack of education in the area of new applications, lack of skills necessary to handle basic digital tools (e.g. interactive board, e-learning platforms) negatively affect, in most cases, the attitude toward the active use of ICT tools in future didactic work. On the basis of the gathered empirical data and inductive qualitative analysis a typology of students attitudes toward new media was developed. It consists of four categories: techno-optimist, techno-realist, techno-pessimist and techno-ignorant. The whole of analyses has the character of comparative research and involves two neighboring countries of the Visegrad Group: Poland (N = 466) and Czech Republic (N = 168).

A Qualitative Inquiry in the Evaluation of a Pedagogical Course from the Prospective Teachers’ Points of View

Qualitative inquiry has gained importance in the evaluation of educational settings because it provides in-depth information, shedding light on context, situations, or processes. In this study, a qualitative inquiry was undertaken in order to evaluate a pedagogical course from the prospective teachers’ points of view. In this case study, data were collected through focus group interviews with three groups of prospective teachers. The lack of putting theories into practice, the lack of relating the topics to teaching life, the lack of attention and participation, and the lack of a variety of materials appeared to be the most essential problems. In this study, the expressed problems and suggestions were discussed in terms of their implications for the improvement of the course.

Teacher training through social networking platforms: A case study on Facebook

<p>Numerous studies have attempted to explain the role of social networking platforms within educational environments, though none of them has reported on their potential for enhancing professional development in education. The purpose of this qualitative research was to explore the reflections of prospective teachers who were assigned to design and conduct instruction on Facebook. Seven groups of prospective teachers (<em>n</em>=25) attending a teacher training program in Turkey participated in the study. Reflections of these prospective teachers on online teaching through Facebook were elicited by means of reflective papers. As an outstanding result of the online teaching project in the current study, the prospective teachers gained positive experiences in utilising Facebook for designing and implementing online teaching activities that are in accordance with the constructivist learning paradigm. However, sustaining learner involvement, enhancing interaction, and problems resulting from group work processes were observed as destructive issues throughout the online teaching project.</p>

Effects of an Additional Mathematics Content Course on Elementary Teachers' Mathematical Beliefs and Knowledge for Teaching

This longitudinal study examines the effects of changes in an elementary teacher preparation program on mathematics beliefs and content knowledge for teaching of two groups of prospective teachers (N = 276): (1) those who completed a program with three mathematics content courses and two mathematics methods courses and (2) those who completed a program with four mathematics content courses and a single mathematics methods course. The results reveal salient benefits of a second methods course that were not evident in the new program with only one methods course. Further, the addition of a fourth content course did not result in notable differences in mathematical knowledge for teaching. In addition, mathematical knowledge for teaching was positively linked to change in pedagogical beliefs about learners, further illuminating the interwoven nature of knowledge and beliefs.

ELICITING AND LADDERING PROSPECTIVE LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ CLASSROOM-RELATED CONSTRUCTS

This article has a dual aim. First, the author reports on how two techniques were used from personal construct psychology, dyadic elicitation and laddering (Fransella, Bell & Bannister, 2004:27-34, 39-43) to raise a cohort of prospective teachers’ awareness of their classroom-related constructs (N = 21). Second, the process for elicitation of the constructs depended on the trainees’ ability to deal with the cognitive and the social-interactive demands of the elicitation tasks. These demands were enacted in a discursive process which conversation analysts refer to as ‘sequential organisation’; in addition, participants followed the rules that govern sequence organisation typical of the interview (Schegloff, 2007: 231). Using 12 random combinations of 10 classroom-based scenarios, which served as elements for the elicitation process, the researcher elicited approximately 800 constructs from the group of prospective teachers. A matrix-based summary of 48 constructs elicited from 10 teacher-trainees for the first scenario combination are presented. In addition, how one of the teachers responded to the full range of scenario-based elements is outlined briefly. The conclusion is drawn that the attaching of verbal labels to their meaning-making constituted deliberate and conscious thinking by prospective teachers about their experience, which is typical of awareness-raising activity. Moreover, the social-interactive demands of this interview type, requiring the prospective teachers to follow the rules of interaction in this context to explore and label their personally held constructs, served to reinforce the awareness-raising process. A further conclusion was that the matrix-based analysis was contentious: Although students may use the same labels to refer to a construct, the meanings they attach to those labels may vary.