Understanding Of Student Teachers Research Articles

Listening to foreign language student teachers: The use of transcripts to study classroom interactions

Although many issues about the use of transcripts for studying classroom interactions have been addressed in other studies, little attention has been given to the use of transcripts to study student teachers’ classroom interactions. To achieve a deeper understanding of student teachers’ perspectives and permit the formulation of a more appropriate framework, it is crucial to hear from student teachers and investigate their experiences about the use of transcripts. Therefore, in the study reported on here we used 7 focus-group interviews of approximately 6 Saudi EFL (English as a foreign language) student teachers in each group to investigate their perceptions on the use of transcripts for studying their classroom interactions. The data were thematically analysed. Three themes that represented the participants’ experiences of using transcripts to study their classroom interactions emerged: using the transcript analysis, learning from the transcript analysis, and committing to using the transcript analysis. The findings reveal that most participants felt they had autonomy in using transcripts to study their classroom interactions, but experienced some challenges. Most students were determined to change their classroom interaction based on their analyses of classroom interactions but only a few demonstrated the determination to continue using the transcript analysis approach.

Characteristics of social support experienced by differently engaged student teachers

ABSTRACT This study explored student teachers’ experiences of study engagement and burnout by utilising profile analysis. Interrelations between the student teachers’ profiles and perceptions of their learning environment were also explored. To complement the statistical analysis, the student teachers’ social support experiences during teaching practice were explored based on interview data. Two study engagement—burnout profiles were detected among student teachers. The student teachers exhibiting the engaged in studies with a low risk of burnout profile had significantly more positive perceptions of their learning environments compared with the group classified under the reduced study engagement with an increased risk of burnout profile. Further investigation showed that student teachers most frequently reported informational support received from their teaching practice supervisors. The groups representing the two profiles showed both similar and different characteristics in the types and sources of social support. The study contributes to the understanding of student teachers’ study engagement in relation to the learning environment of teacher education. It provides practical implications for teacher educators to improve the learning environments of differently engaged student teachers, particularly during teaching practice, a central arena for student teacher learning.

“Cooperation with a peer in practicum is nice but teaching alone makes me feel I am teaching for real.” How pre-primary and primary student teachers experience single and paired field placements

As part of the reform of teacher education, field placements for student teachers have been expanded and new forms such as paired field placements implemented into standard programmes. For many years, the single field placement has been the standard model for student teachers, but various forms of paired internships have been introduced. However, little is known about the processes of cooperative learning during field placements and how student teachers benefit from different forms of field placement, such as single versus paired field placements.This qualitative study aims at a deeper understanding of student teachers’ learning in single and paired field placements from student teachers’ perspective. Theoretically, our study is based on the offer-and-use model in field experiences combined with the autonomy-parity pattern. Student teachers (N = 20) from the University of Teacher Education in Bern, Switzerland, were interviewed in depth about their learning gains after completing four paired field placements and one single field placement. Results showed that although student teachers appreciate the work and exchange with a peer, the majority of student teachers prefer single field placements. The desire for autonomy and the ability to work flexibly in single field placements seemed to outweigh the advantages of paired field placements. The majority of students considered single field placements to be closer to reality. The results encourage future discussion and research about student teachers’ attitudes towards field placements and the teaching profession.

Student Teachers’ Sustainable Behavior

This study contributes to the understanding of student teachers’ sustainable behaviors. (Future) teachers are perceived as models of social learning as they model desirable behavior, attitudes, values, and emotions while living and demonstrating a pro-sustainable lifestyle. Therefore, it is essential to understand which personal variables, aptitudes, and psychological benefits predispose them towards a pro-sustainable lifestyle. This study’s intent was to consider components that can affect sustainable actions such as psychological tendencies (e.g., attitudes, motives, beliefs, values, norms) and consequences (e.g., well-being or happiness) associated with sustainable actions. This study’s main objective was to test the sustainable behavior model on a sample of student teachers. A total of 496 student teachers participated in the study. The results analyzed by SEM indicate that student teachers’ sustainable behavior is directly predicted by their intention to act, which is both positively and significantly influenced by indignation and affinity towards diversity. Additionally, sustainable behaviors slightly (but statistically significantly) predict the self-assessment of happiness. These findings contribute to a better general understanding of sustainable behaviors’ antecedents and repercussion variables, especially within a student teacher population.

Exploring culturally sustaining practice for indigenous learners in initial teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand

Culturally sustaining practices are advocated for enhancing learning experiences of Indigenous learners. Developing the use of culturally sustaining practice is challenging, in part as many educators do not have Indigenous heritage and have not themselves experienced such teaching. Here we discuss an investigation into how we develop student teacher understanding of practice culturally sustaining for Indigenous Māori learners in our initial mathematics teacher education courses. We show how a four-dimension framework (accommodation, reformation, transformation, and representation) can expose strengths and opportunities for improvement in course content and approaches towards developing culturally sustaining practices. Factors considered include education policy, resources, course development and content. Affordances (e.g., ease of use) and challenges (e.g., contextal factors) of using the framework are discussed. We demonstrate that the framework can be a useful tool for teacher educators working to strengthen their focus on developing culturally sustaining teacher practice to enhance educational opportunities of Indigenous learners.

ELT SOPHOMORES’ EVALUATIONS ON THE APPROACHES AND METHODS COURSE

Student teachers’ reflections on their course activities play an important role in both teacher educators’ reflective teaching practices and bettering pre-service teacher education programmes. Since teacher cognition is also shaped during pre-service education years, teacher educators should collaborate with student teachers to serve their needs better and refresh their academic identity. Thus, this study aimed to find out ELT sophomores’ evaluations on the Approaches and Methods Course. The study was conducted at a state university in ELT Department during 2018-2019 Fall term and there were 31 participants (8 males, 23 females, aged between 19-22) taking the course. The participants filled out a 10-item survey regarding their experiences and their opinions about the course activities, and content analysis was applied to code and categorize their written answers. All the participants indicated that this course is a professional requirement, basis of ELT and they have learnt various classroom activities or techniques. 11 think the approaches and methods learnt in the course are applicable in their future teaching contexts while 4 think they are inapplicable and finally 16 think some of them are applicable stressing the contextual differences, time constraints, crowded classrooms, different learner characteristics and effect of technology. 27 stated that they were taught English via GTM in their previous learning experiences. 27 indicated that the course contributed to their professional knowledge and skills in terms of gaining valuable teaching skills, having different standpoints, developing teaching experience, improving reading, comprehension and vocabulary, serving changing student needs. All reported that the preliminary discussions held at the very beginning of the class about the last week’s topic were a useful reminder of the previous topic, made easier adaptation to the lesson, were a good means for checking student understanding, reinforcement, better and easier understanding and getting ready for the new topic. 14 held negative perspectives about making theoretical presentations with their classmates. They focused on public speaking anxiety, presenter' incompetence, irresponsible members, complicated content. However, 13 held positive perspectives and focused on learner autonomy, cooperative skills, sharing responsibility, fun, feeling like a teacher. 29 stated that watching related videos about the approaches/methods at the end of the class was beneficial in terms of remembering the details, seeing real applications, fun, clear and better understanding, practical awareness, real life applications. 20 stated that they encountered some difficulties while making presentations such as public speaking anxiety, pronunciation mistakes, abstract language of the book, irresponsible members, intense content, lack of content knowledge. 14 stated that all course activities were useful, 10 found micro teaching as the most important activity whereas 10 found theoretical presentations as the least important activity. Finally, 14 recommended teacher lecturing instead of student lecturing for theoretical presentations. The findings offer significant clues for teacher educators for their delivery of instruction and give opportunities for a better understanding of student teachers’ learning preferences. Article visualizations:

Mathematics Undergraduate Student Teachers’ Conceptions of Guided Inductive and Deductive Teaching Approaches

This contribution aimed at developing an understanding of student teachers’ conceptions of guided discoveryteaching approaches. A cross-sectional survey design involving eleven secondary mathematics teachers who hadenrolled for an in-service mathematics education degree was used to address the research question: What areundergraduate student teachers’ conceptions of deductive and inductive teaching approaches? Task-based interviewswere used in conjunction with oral interviews as settings for unravelling students’ conceptions of the two teachingapproaches. Drawing in part from Ausbel’s learning theory and Tall’s notion of a met-before, the study also aimed atassessing the students’ level of grasp of fundamental limitation of empirical explorations despite many benefitsassociated with them such as helping in identifying patterns, use in formulation and communicating of conjecture,and providing insights on what needs to be solved. Verbatim transcriptions from follow up interviews and textualdata from task based interviews were subjected to directed content analysis to infer meaning about students’conceptions of guided teaching approaches. Qualitative data analysis using in part Robert Moore’s notion of conceptusage uncovered conceptual limitations that include inconsistencies in student teachers’ definitions of the teachingapproaches, use of specific examples instead of arbitrary mathematical objects in illustrating analytic teaching.Limitations identified should be given attention by mathematics educators in order to increase understanding of theapproaches among teachers. Research studies into factors contributing to limitations identified can go a long way inimproving the teaching and learning of school mathematics.

From anxiety to enthusiasm: emotional patterns among student teachers

Studying to become a teacher is a highly emotional experience. Nevertheless, little is known about emotional patterns and emotional change. The aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of student teachers’ academic emotions by exploring patterns of emotions experienced in emotionally loaded episodes. A total of 19 primary school student teachers were interviewed. The qualitative content analysis revealed five different emotional patterns: positive, negative, ascending, descending and changing. Most of the emotional patterns were positive or changing in nature. Yet all the emotional patterns were highly focused on studying and learning. Moreover, the patterns were experienced equally in short, medium-length and long episodes. Our study showed that emotional patterns were triggered by various task-related elements of teacher education: most commonly, fulfilled or unfilled expectations, sufficient or insufficient abilities, and experiences of social support received or not received.

Student teachers’ self- and co-regulation of learning during teacher education

Self-regulative learning skills are extremely important contributors in student teacher learning. Also, interest in co-regulation in learning as a facilitator for pupils’ self-regulation skills and an ability to learn how to support peers’ regulated learning has increased significantly during the past decade. Still, our understanding of student teachers’ co- and self-regulative learning during their studies is shallow. This study aims to explore student teachers’ self- and co-regulation of learning, including their elements and qualities embedded in various contexts of teacher education. In this study 19 primary school student teachers from a large research-based Finnish university were interviewed. The data were content analysed by applying an abductive strategy. The results showed that student teachers applied self-regulated learning more often than co-regulated learning, and that teaching practice provided a primary arena for regulative learning. Further investigation revealed that although self- and co-regulation had the same components, they differed in terms of the quality of regulation. Our findings suggest that co-regulated learning activities that involve peers and teacher educators reached a more profound and meaningful level when learning to become a teacher than learning activities involving self-regulated activities.

A design for teacher education based on a systematic framework of variation to link teaching with learners’ ways of experiencing the object of learning

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: Can student teachers use variation theory to design and review lessons? Can exposure to variation in designs for lessons with the same intended object of learning develop student teachers understanding of design?Design/methodology/approach – The student teachers were undertaking an English‐medium education degree, a feature of which was peer teaching, with the teachers collaborating planning, teaching and reflecting on lessons. A sample of individual student teachers’ written reflections on the design and effect of 15 lessons involving seven objects of learning was collected and analysed using a comparative method. The lesson designs in terms of the pattern of variation and critical aspects afforded, and the teachers’ evaluations of the lessons, are described.Findings – Four critical cases show how variation in the enacted object of learning created by the student teachers in their lessons, and in the lived object of learning of their studen...

Student teachers' understanding of policy behavioural directives concerning the reporting of child sexual abuse: findings from one Australian state

Background: In the Australian state of Queensland, many Department of Education Policies include behavioural directives for school teachers, whereby ‘the teacher must …’ behave in a certain manner. The introduction of an education policy, such as the mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse by teachers, has significant and wide-ranging implications for the lives of children. However, little is known, and little literature has been found, about student teachers' knowledge and understanding of these new behavioural directives for teachers. Purpose: This study audits Bachelor of Education (Primary School) student teachers who are about to become qualified teachers, on their knowledge, and their confidence in that knowledge, of the Department of Education behavioural directives on child sexual abuse mandatory reporting policy, which they will soon have to implement when they are employed in professional teaching positions in primary schools. Sample: A fourth-year, final-semester volunteer cohort of 52 Bachelor of Education (Primary School) student teachers at a major university in Queensland, Australia, provided this sample of 42 females and 10 males, whose ages ranged from 21 to 45 years. Design and methods: The audit's five-page, anonymous and confidential questionnaire included a series of valid statements, and one invalid statement, about the behavioural directives for teachers contained in the Queensland Department of Education policy on the mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse. Participants self-evaluated their knowledge of the policy on a quantitative three-point scale, and their confidence in that knowledge on a four-point scale, and then responded to an open-ended qualitative query about their understanding of the policy, during their tutorial classes. The quantitative responses were analysed and displayed as histograms, and the qualitative responses were clustered into three categories. Results: Analysis of the data shows that while the majority of these student teachers claim satisfactory levels of knowledge and confidence concerning their Department's behavioural directives, such results seem disappointing given a necessarily high standard of competence, and significant numbers indicating uncertainty of knowledge and/or lack of confidence regarding their roles as mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse. Conclusions: It is expected that all new teachers be properly equipped and prepared in pre-service training, with appropriate knowledge and understanding of these important directives, to report the cases of suspected child abuse they will encounter in their schools. Current pre-service education of primary school teachers at this Queensland university, and very likely throughout the state, does not reach a standard that engenders educators' satisfaction and confidence in student teachers' understanding of their Department's behavioural and legal requirements upon qualification. This conclusion is consistent with national and international research, showing that teachers and student teachers lack confidence and are inadequately prepared to fulfil their role as mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse.

What can psychology tell us about teaching dance? The potential contribution of Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior

This study explores the potential contribution of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to our understanding of student teachers' strength of intention to teach dance prior to and following an intensive eight‐hour module before beginning their school‐based practice. Students attending a primary Postgraduate Certificate in Education Course (PGCE) (n=89) were identified as ‘intending strongly’ or ‘not intending’ to teach dance. They then completed a questionnaire designed to measure their behavioural beliefs, their normative beliefs and their control beliefs in accordance with Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour. They were also questioned about their feelings of self‐efficacy and self‐identity as prospective teachers of dance and about their perceived barriers to teaching dance effectively. The questionnaire was re‐administered at the completion of the intensive dance course. Initially, no significant difference was found between the strength of behavioural beliefs, attitude and self‐efficacy of intenders and non‐intenders (p<.01), but a difference was found in the level of normative beliefs. Following the dance course a significant positive shift (p<.05) was shown in the intentions of the non‐intenders. Significant positive relationships were found between most variables, apart from perceived behavioural control. Taken as a whole the combined contribution of these variables accounted for 32.9% of the variance in intention to teach dance, and multiple regression analysis indicated that the model was a highly significant predictor of intention. Some implications of these findings for dance teacher training are proposed.

From Behind the Pupil's Desk to the Teacher's Desk: A qualitative study of student teachers' professional learning in Hong Kong

This paper presents a qualitative study of student teachers' school-based learning in a teacher education program for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. Learning to teach is examined through the lens of a personal-professional conceptualization of learning. An in-depth study of two cases of student teachers' professional learning is reported. Research methods used include interviewing, tape-recording supervisory meetings, field observation and document analysis. Through an inquiry into the individual's interaction with pre-training influences, the teacher education program and the teaching practice context in the two cases, this study extends our understanding of student teachers' professional learning in terms of the formation of the teaching self and the process of framing in the action and socio-professional contexts of teaching practice.

Congruence of student teachers' pedagogical images and actual classroom practices

An understanding of student teachers' pedagogical images plays an important role in helping teacher educators plan learning experiences. The purposes of this study were to obtain a profile of pedagogical images of a group of student teachers, and to assess whether there is congruence between their pedagogical images and classroom practices. Applying the conception of teaching model proposed by Pratt, Chan developed a questionnaire to evaluate teachers' views about teaching, which was modified here and administered to 59 first-year student teachers before and after their teaching practicum in physical education for secondary schools. Results indicated that the student teachers possess a Nurturing image, whereas in actual classroom practices, their approach was a mix between the Apprenticeship and the Transmission approaches. In other words, whereas student teachers conceive themselves as having a more child-centred approach to teaching, in reality, their practices constituted more a teacher-centred approach. The investigators considered that this type of information would be helpful for teacher educators when planning learning experiences.

Stories from Discontinuing Student Teachers

This paper tells the stories of two early childhood student teachers who decided to discontinue their enrolment in their pre‐service programme. Both consistently received above‐average grades and positive practicum reports but became distressed by their experiences in the programme. The paper focuses on the emotional intensity of their responses to the experiences they encountered. It suggests that an understanding of student teachers' emotional frames of reference and their epistemological perspectives might assist teacher educators to become more sensitive to students' emotional well‐being. In turn, this might alleviate some of the emotional distress which can accompany learning to teach, and help to stem attrition from teacher education programmes.

Home Visiting the LD Child

The benefits of a single home visit can follow the child throughout the entire school year in terms of student-teacher understanding and rapport.