Teacher Education Courses Research Articles

Pre-service teachers’ experiences of remote online learning: reimagining teacher education post-pandemic

ABSTRACT Background As teaching and learning processes evolve in the wake of COVID−19, fresh thinking about the role of remote online learning (ROL) is critical as part of a wider reimagining of education in a post-pandemic context. In this paper, attention is focused on ROL within teacher education. Purpose This study sought to explore pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their ROL experiences in a Fijian teacher education programme. Method The qualitative study design was informed by transactional distance theory. Using a narrative inquiry approach, data from 15 pre-service teachers were collected and analysed. Via individual interviews conducted online, the prospective teachers shared their perceptions about the nature of interactions experienced whilst engaged in ROL during the pandemic. Data were analysed thematically, in relation to instructional dialogue, course structure, and autonomy. Findings In-depth analysis of rich data allowed main themes to emerge that captured the participants’ viewpoints. Prominent themes in instructional dialogue revealed some concerns about the precedence of textual communication over verbal in ROL and the perception of emphasis on product over the process of learning. In terms of course structure, volume of assessment and teaching style were among aspects which participants identified as affecting learner-content engagement. Comments about learner autonomy suggested that the pre-service teachers sought positives amidst the difficulties encountered, whilst maintaining a focus on completing the assessments and passing the course. Conclusion The analysis of pre-service teachers’ experiences offers insight into how aspects of ROL may challenge participant engagement within elements of teacher education courses. It highlights the support that needs to be provided to prospective teachers in order to reduce transactional distance, suggesting that effective course design and instructional dialogue to promote learner autonomy are both crucial to sustainable teacher education in the post-pandemic context.

‘Seeing Whiteness’ in Norwegian education challenging a discourse of silence

ABSTRACT Employing a systematic literature review, this study explores research into whiteness studies in Norwegian education. Whiteness is broached as a sociogenic rather than a phylogenic phenomenon homologous with constructed social categories such as class. The review shows a preponderance of a tiny number of academics studying whiteness, reticence and discomfort in grappling with white privilege and a hierarchy of whiteness where the indigenous Sami and East Europeans are relegated to a lower tier of whiteness – what we refer to as ‘shades of whiteness’. Teacher education courses need to furnish student teachers with analytical tools developed by scholars in the field of whiteness studies. We also drawn attention to the attendant challenge of exploring ways of identifying and redressing the deleterious effects of an internalized discourse of white supremacy on the part of non-white students. This would go some way in grappling with the imbricated and matrix-like nature of whiteness.

Designing online teaching curriculum to optimise learning for all students in higher education

AbstractDisruptions to higher education teaching have raised significant concerns over the best curriculum design for teaching online and for the inclusion of all students. Universal design for learning (UDL) together with curriculum research models – taxonomy of significant learning and integrated curriculum design (ICD), provides a curriculum approach to optimising students' learning and building engagement with learning online. This paper outlines the redesign process and decisions made to improve the curriculum design in an online sociology course in teacher education. The goals of the redesign were to optimise all student learning, engagement and perceived satisfaction. Data collection included student responses (pre and post), course evaluation, analytics and reflections from an expert reviewer. Analysis was guided by the UDL curriculum design principles of engagement, representation and action/expression. Emerging from this research is the need to ensure that online learning redesign is user‐friendly and engaging, with multiple supported learning opportunities for the students. This redesign strengthens the quality of online learning, with learning becoming more meaningful and learning activities incorporating elements that are reflective, instructional and social. One interesting aspect that emerged was the importance of the partnership between the academic and the instructional designer in the redesign process.

Perceived influences of a music teacher education programme on preservice music educators’ occupational identity development

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine preservice music educators’ perceptions of how the culture of a music teacher education programme and its embedded communities of practice influenced their occupational identity development. Research questions were (a) What specific cultural influences and communities of practice, if any, did the participants describe as particularly influential in regard to occupational identity development and why? (b) How did the participants describe their respective changes in occupational identities, if any? Participants were preservice music educators enrolled in an early childhood music education methods class with authentic-context learning (ACL) experiences. Data included audio recordings of classes, observational field notes, transcripts from multiple individual interviews and a focus group discussion, and students’ reflection journals. Participants cited several music teacher education courses, embedded ACL experiences, and supportive interactions with peers and professors, as a constellation of factors that influenced an occupational identity transition within themselves to think more broadly about their identities as educators and the means through which music could be taught.

Shifting the ways prospective teachers frame and notice student mathematical thinking: from deficits to strengths

Noticing the strengths in students’ mathematical thinking is a critical skill that teachers need to develop, but it can be challenging due to the prevalence of deficit-based thinking in mathematics education. To address this challenge, a teacher education course was designed to encourage prospective teachers to engage in critical reflection on their own and others’ framings of students’ thinking and shift their focus towards noticing students’ strengths. The study analyzed written responses from the prospective teachers, collected at the beginning and end of the course, to investigate their framing and noticing of students’ mathematical thinking. The analysis focused on the aspects of students’ thinking that the prospective teachers paid attention to, the stances they took when interpreting students’ thinking, and the instructional moves they proposed in response to their thinking. Furthermore, the study established a spectrum of deficit-based and strength-based framings on students’ mathematical thinking. This spectrum allowed for the identification of each participant’s written noticing responses within a range of possibilities, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the changes in teachers’ framing and noticing of students’ thinking over time.

Relational Ethics Through the Flesh: Considerations for an Anti-Colonial Future in Art Education.

In this article, we reflect on our teaching practices that include the development of an artist-in-residency program in one teacher education course and one graduate course in the Fall of 2022 at The University of British Columbia. During these residencies, Carrier Wit'at artist and printmaker Whess Harman and Indigenous scholar and a/r/tographer Jocelyne Robinson of the Algonquin Timiskaming First Nation demonstrate through their art practices how love and land are central tenets to relational ethics. We engage with Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua's theory in the flesh alongside the artists-in-residencies as we consider an anti-colonial future in art education. We propose the concept of relational ethics through the flesh as a reflexive, embodied, social justice-oriented way of being in the world.

Misinformation as a Societal Problem in Times of Crisis: A Mixed-Methods Study with Future Teachers to Promote a Critical Attitude towards Information

Global society is facing major challenges, which are to be met by pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Digitalization processes bring many opportunities for achieving SDGs, but they also bring pitfalls. For example, on one hand, social media makes it easier for more parts of society to participate. On the other hand, the ability to rapidly circulate unfiltered information can lead to the spread of misinformation and subsequently interfere with the achievement of SDGs. This effect could be observed during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to occur in the context of climate change. Young people are especially likely to be exposed to misinformation on social media. With this in mind, it is enormously important for schools to prepare young people to critically handle the overload of information available online. The aim of this study was to provide future middle and high school teachers with a fruitful approach to foster a critical attitude towards information in classrooms. To this end, we expanded an existing approach by implementing active, technique-based inoculation and technique-based debunking within the COVID-19 content framework in a teacher education course. This implementation was monitored by a mixed-methods study with n = 24 future middle and high school teachers who participated in two courses in subsequent semesters. By performing statistical analysis on pretests and posttests and qualitative content analysis on reflective journal entries, we found that future teachers’ self-efficacy expectations for detecting and debunking misinformation, as well as their debunking skills, increased throughout the courses. In addition, our results show that future teachers perceive active, technology-based inoculation as a helpful approach for their future teaching. They feel that this approach can be a way to implement education for sustainable development in schools with a focus on the promotion of critical thinking. In summary, we believe that the approach presented in this article may be beneficial for teaching the critical treatment of information in various thematic contexts.

Development and application of an anti-racist approach in English language teaching: from theory to practice

ABSTRACT South Koreans have long perceived their country to be an ethnically homogenous nation despite the rapidly growing inflow of migration workers and international marriage migrants. Such perceptions foster negative attitudes towards people viewed as outsiders. To counter such attitudes, English teachers acknowledge the need to nurture respect for cultural diversity and recognition of pluralism in a globalized world in their study and address anti-racism in their regular English class. However, what and how to teach anti-racist pedagogy to students are not sufficiently studied in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. In this regard, this study aims to provide English teachers with step-by-step guidelines on how to prepare for and implement anti-racist pedagogy to the English language teaching in a pre-service English teacher education course in Korea. To achieve these pedagogical goals, I discussed the need of an anti-racist approach at school and provided the rationales and pedagogical practices for involving pre-service English teachers in certain activities that can raise awareness about issues of inequality, oppression and marginalization. Moreover, I suggested anti-racist teaching strategies for English teachers to implement in their classrooms and provide an opportunity to design their course and develop their teaching skills through a teaching practice experience.

Primary preservice teachers’ exploration of possible selves through narrated metaphors during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study examines how primary-level preservice teachers (PSTs) in an online asynchronous course (co-)constructed and (re)negotiated their professional identities through the use of metaphors in online asynchronous courses in the U.S. By using metaphors and narrating their lived experiences in relation to their chosen metaphors, participants expressed their desired and feared identities. Their metaphorical expression of identities reflects the complex interplay between participants’ construction of their possible selves within the temporal, social, and spatial context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual and collaborative metaphor-based reflections provided a reflective space for PSTs to explore professional becoming and future possibilities at the interface between their sense of agency and their situated temporal, spatial, and social context, even within asynchronous online teacher education courses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rethinking assessment in teacher education

This action research in education discusses the relationship between learning assessments and students' mental health, focusing on a Teacher Education course at a university in the Czech Republic. Institutional and relational practices are identified to foster better assessment opportunities.

Perceived affordances of a collaborative virtual teacher education course on CLIL and technologies during remote teaching

Perceived affordances of a collaborative virtual teacher education course on CLIL and technologies during remote teaching

Supporting Asian American Multilingual College Students Through Critical Language Awareness Programming

ABSTRACT Critical language awareness (CLA) encourages teachers and students to examine language as social practice and reflect on ideologies and power dynamics embedded within language use. In this article, the authors—both instructors in an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) federal grant project at a university in New York City—describe how we integrated a CLA framework to create an Asian American Studies class that uses culturally sustaining pedagogies to affirm student linguistic identities and demystify academic research practices. Specifically, we analyzed a project where we introduced the term linguistic landscapes (LL) and asked students to visit Asian American ethnic enclaves to examine linguistic signage. While implementations of CLA have been based in K-12 instruction, university writing courses, and teacher education courses, this paper presents a successful example of a project based in CLA used in credit-bearing university courses, specifically, in an Asian American Studies program.

An Action Research on Constructing a Teacher Education Course With Cultural Interaction and Understanding

An Action Research on Constructing a Teacher Education Course With Cultural Interaction and Understanding

The Application of BOPPPS Teaching Method in the Teacher Education Curriculum

The teacher education curriculum should guide the future teachers to master the necessary educational knowledge and ability. The teaching reform is the core link of the teacher education curriculum reform. Based on constructivism and communicative approach, the BOPPPS teaching model is a closed-loop teaching process model which emphasizes students’ participation and feedback. The BOPPPS teaching model is helpful to realize effective teaching of teacher education courses. The application of the BOPPPS teaching method in the teacher education curriculum is helpful to deepen the theoretical teaching and consolidate the theoretical knowledge of education and teaching.

A Reflective Study Investigating Looping in Higher Education as a Pedagogical Methodology Model

Looping, an educational pedagogical approach in which student groups are taught by the same teacher in successive years, has long been implemented in K-12 schools to various degrees of success. However, little research of its occurrence in higher education settings exists. To address the lack of professional scholarship of looping in colleges and universities, this reflective study examines looping as a pedagogical methodology in teacher education courses at the undergraduate level. Having emerged from several years of the author’s personal looping implementation at both middle school and collegiate levels, this reflective research study seeks to examine how looping in higher education differs from more traditional course delivery models. Grounded in the ecological framework of reflection and reflective methodology, the study looks at looping and proposes ideas for further areas of investigation.

Towards a socio-ecological practice of mathematics teacher education

This theoretical article is a response to UNESCO’s call for a new social contract for education, in the context of mathematics teacher education. The article sets out four principles behind “socio-ecological” practices in mathematics education: not taking nature as a fixed background for concerns; avoiding the epistemological error of taking the individual as the unit of learning; questioning what is centred in our work; moving towards a dialogic ethics. The article considers the “what” and the “how” of mathematics teacher education, from this socio-ecological perspective. In terms of the “how”, it is argued a dialogic ethics prompts attention to the potential for a mathematics teacher educator taking a “meta-perspective” in relationships with prospective teachers, recognising those prospective teachers as “teachers”, from the start of a teacher education course. In contexts where the “what” of mathematics teacher education is highly constrained, the “how” of socio-ecological practices may still be possible to enact.

Teacher learners theorizing from practice: A case of the concept of learner engagement in interactive second language learning tasks

This study investigated second language (L2) teacher learners' abilities to theorize from practice and their perceptions of this theorizing experience. Fifty-four L2 teacher learners completed a theorizing task probing for their conceptualization of ‘learner engagement’. Focus-group interviews were later conducted with 17 participants. Findings show that the teacher learners were able to generate their theories of learner engagement, which strongly aligned with expert conceptualizations. Notably, their personal theory was formed by their personal practical knowledge (PPK), including knowledge of the subject matter, instruction, and contexts. These findings demonstrate the usefulness of guiding L2 teacher learners to theorize from practice and suggest a framework for L2 teacher educators to promote theorizing within language teacher education courses.

Raising Critical Language Awareness in a Translanguaging-Infused Teacher Education Course: Opportunities and Challenges

ABSTRACT In this classroom-based qualitative study, we examine how a small group of content area teacher candidates developed emerging critical language awareness (CLA) during one graduate-level translanguaging-infused teacher education course on multilingual theories and practices. The findings point out the potential of translanguaging in prompting spontaneous reflections on pre-service teachers’ personal experiences with language and languaging, paving way for them to critically rethink the status of English in teaching, learning, and communication for social justice. Yet, although teacher candidates demonstrated their emerging CLA as manifested at the ideological level, they encountered difficulties enacting critical translanguaging into practice. In their lesson plans, English was largely positioned as the end goal of content-area education and translanguaging was often reduced to a translation strategy to scaffold academic language development. Based on the findings, we propose suggestions for teacher education course design and advocate for program-wide efforts in sustaining and strengthening CLA across the curriculum.

Learning-centered lesson design and learning about teaching in a pre-service teacher education course

Designing lessons is a prominent means in pre-service teacher education for developing student teachers’ understanding of what good teaching involves and how to plan for such teaching. A new approach to teaching lesson design in a pre-service teacher education program has prompted research on what and how student teachers learn from this new approach to prepare them for teaching. This article reports on practitioner research that draws on principles derived from the body of scholarship dubbed the “science of learning”. An interpretive research approach was followed, and data was collected via semi-structured interviews that were juxtaposed with lessons that student teachers designed. The pattern that emerged from the analyzed data was that this new lesson design approach helped student teachers to develop a good understanding of the nature of learning; and that such understanding is important because teaching is ultimately about helping learners to learn. In addition, participants articulated that invoking the principles used forced them to be more metacognitive and intentional in designing the lessons. Thus, moving beyond teaching methods and classroom discipline to a focus on how to best guide and support the intended learning of specific learners. Participants were also of the view that the approach is suitable to use in varying contexts because it is not dependent on the availability of resources. The authors conclude that a lesson design approach that draws on the science of learning has much to offer student teachers towards becoming adaptive experts who are able to create significant learning experiences for learners. Additionally, pre-service teachers will benefit from an approach that is modelled by teacher educators, and which employs an iterative process that uses deliberate practice to work towards adaptive expertise.

Using video-recordings to enhance pre-service teachers’ abilities to identify mathematical activities in pre-school

Previous studies highlight the importance of investigate the construction in videorecorded learning situations. The aim of this study is to investigate how video-recordings can be used to enhance pre-service teachers’ abilities to identify children’s exploration of mathematics in preschools. Even if some previous studies have focused the use of video-recordings of learning situations to improve teaching, only a few of them focused how constructed videos enhance pre-service teachers’ abilities to identify when children explore mathematics through learning-situations in preschool. The participants were pre-service teachers in a higher education course. Data consisted of pre-service teachers’ written responses after viewing eleven edited video clips before, during, and after a compulsory mathematics teacher education course. The analysis is based on variation theory and show the impact of the construction of the video clips and how to design the clips to enhance the pre-service teachers’ abilities to define mathematical components during the children’s activities.