Causes of tension in post-observation feedback in pre-service teacher training: an alternative view

A central component in pre-service teacher training is teaching practice and feedback. In some cases, feedback results in disquiet and tension (Brandt, 2008). Many researchers attribute this tension to the incompatibility of the assessment and development roles that the trainer must perform. The research reported on here, however, suggests that tension may also be rooted in a difference in expectation amongst trainers and trainees about the purpose and performance of feedback. This can result in trainees not playing by the rules of the game (Roberts & Sarangi, 2001) either because they do not understand them or because they wish to challenge them.

Making a Case for Global Education: Revisiting Pre-Service Teacher Lesson Planning Methods

Globalization has tightened the bonds of interconnectedness and interdependence among nation-states. Students are destined for careers that are profoundly international in nature. They need to develop global literacy aided by a global education. This paper mandates the need for global education as part of the pre-service teacher-training programs.

Perspectives of Teachers Regarding the Integration of Mathematics and Science at the Secondary School Level

The integration of mathematics and science in secondary schools in the 21st century continues to be an important topic of practice and research. The purpose of my research study, which builds on studies by Frykholm and Glasson (2005) and Berlin and White (2010), is to explore the potential constraints and benefits of integrating mathematics and science in Ontario secondary schools based on the perspectives of in-service and pre-service teachers with various math and/or science backgrounds. A qualitative and quantitative research design with an exploratory approach was used. The qualitative data was collected from a sample of 12 in-service teachers with various math and/or science backgrounds recruited from two school boards in Eastern Ontario. The quantitative and some qualitative data was collected from a sample of 81 pre-service teachers from the Queen’s University Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) program. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the in-service teachers while a survey and a focus group was conducted with the pre-service teachers. Once the data was collected, the qualitative data were abductively analyzed. For the quantitative data, descriptive and inferential statistics (one-way ANOVAs and Pearson Chi Square analyses) were calculated to examine perspectives of teachers regardless of teaching background and to compare groups of teachers based on teaching background. The findings of this study suggest that in-service and pre-service teachers have a positive attitude towards the integration of math and science and view it as valuable to student learning and success. The pre-service teachers viewed the integration as easy and did not express concerns to this integration. On the other hand, the in-service teachers highlighted concerns and challenges such as resources, scheduling, and time constraints. My results illustrate when teachers perceive it is valuable to integrate math and science and which aspects of the classroom benefit best from the integration. Furthermore, the results highlight barriers and possible solutions to better the integration of math and science. In addition to the benefits and constraints of integration, my results illustrate why some teachers may opt out of integrating math and science and the different strategies teachers have incorporated to integrate math and science in their classroom.

10 th semester pre-service teacher beliefs and cognitive dissonances : a narrative reflection on efl practice at la Salle University

Tesis (Licenciado en Lenguas Castellana, Inglés y Francés).--Universidad de La Salle. Facultad de Ciencias de La Educación. Licenciatura en Lengua Castellana, Inglés y Francés, 2014

Education futures : transforming teacher education in the middle years

The young people who populate our classrooms live in a changed and rapidly changing society: a society where information is the most valued commodity and where traditional ‘truth’s such as nation and family are increasingly destabilized and fragmented. Educators at primary, secondary and tertiary level must, with some urgency, address issues relating the emergence of new citizenships and identities, the impact of new technologies and new economies. Our pedagogy and curriculums must be relevant to the need of students now and in the future. The School of Education, The University of Queensland is addressing issues of change, new technologies, new work places, critical citizenry and the need for pedagogical and curriculum innovation through the development of a new Middle Years of Schooling Dual Degree program. This program is designed to equip pre-service teachers to approach pedagogy and curriculum in innovative ways and to challenge them to embrace diversity and change. This paper outlines the key features of the Middle Years of Schooling Dual Degree, identifying a number of innovative approaches to pre-service teacher education.

Certainties and uncertainties : ethics and professional identities of early childhood educators

This study is an inquiry into the professional identity constructions of early childhood educators, where identity is conceptualised as social and contextual. Through a genealogical analysis of narratives of four Queensland early childhood teachers, the thesis renders as problematic universal and fixed notions of what it is to be an early childhood professional. The data are the four teachers’ professional life history narratives recounted through a series of conversational interviews with each participant. As they spoke about professionalism and ethics, these teachers struggled to locate themselves as professionals, as they drew on a number of dominant discourses available to them. These dominant discourses were located and mapped through analysis of the participants’ talk about relationships with parents, colleagues and authorities. Genealogical analysis enabled multiple readings of the ways in which the participants’ talk held together certainties and uncertainties, as they recounted their experiences and spoke of early childhood expertise, relational engagement and ethics. The thesis concludes with suggestions for ways to support early childhood teachers and pre-service teachers to both engage with and resist normative processes and expectations of professional identity construction. In so doing, multiple and contextual opportunities can be made available when it comes to being professional and ‘doing’ ethics. The thesis makes an argument for new possibilities for thinking and speaking professional identities that include both certainty and uncertainty, comfort and discomfort, and these seemingly oppositional terms are held together in tension, with an insistence that both are necessary and true. The use of provocations offers tools through which pre-service teachers, teachers and teacher educators can access new positions associated with certainties and uncertainties in professional identities. These new positions call for work that supports experiences of ‘de-comfort’ – that is, experiences that encourage early childhood educators to step away from the comfort zones that can become part of expertise, professional relationships and ethics embedded within normative representations of what it is to be an early childhood professional.

Teacher leadership : interns crossing to the domain of higher professional learning with mentors?

Over the last two decades, the notion of teacher leadership has emerged as a key concept in both the teaching and leadership literature. While researchers have not reached consensus regarding a definition, there has been some agreement that teacher leadership can operate at both a formal and informal level in schools and that it includes leadership of an instructional, organisational and professional development nature (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Teacher leadership is a construct that tends not to be applied to pre-service teachers as interns, but is more often connected with the professional role of mentors who collaborate with them as they make the transition to being a beginning teacher. We argue that teacher leadership should be recognised as a professional and career goal during this formative learning phase and that interns should be expected to overtly demonstrate signs, albeit early ones, of leadership in instruction and other professional areas of development. The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which teacher education interns at one university in Queensland reported on activities that may be deemed to be ‘teacher leadership.’ The research approach used in this study was an examination of 145 reflective reports written in 2008 by final Bachelor of Education (primary) pre-service teachers. These reports recorded the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their professional learning with a school-based mentor in response to four outcomes of internship that were scaffolded by their mentor or initiated by them. These outcomes formed the bases of our research questions into the professional learning of the interns and included, ‘increased knowledge and capacity to teach within the total world of work as a teacher;’ ‘to work autonomously and interdependently’; to make ‘growth in critical reflectivity’, and the ‘ability to initiate professional development with the mentoring process’. Using the approaches of the constant comparative method of Strauss and Corbin (1998) key categories of experiences emerged. These categories were then identified as belonging to main meta-category labelled as ‘teacher leadership.’ Our research findings revealed that five dimensions of teacher leadership – effective practice in schools; school curriculum work; professional development of colleagues; parent and community involvement; and contributions to the profession – were evident in the written reports by interns. Not surprisingly, the mentor/intern relationship was the main vehicle for enabling the intern to learn about teaching and leadership. The paper concludes with some key implications for developers of preservice education programmes regarding the need for teacher leadership to be part of the discourse of these programmes.

Biotechnology learnings using ‘Claymation’ and ‘Slowmation’

This ‘Claymation’ and ‘Slowmation’ project incorporated content as well as skill development. The participants – 4 pre-service teachers and 4 secondary school students explored chromosome mapping and DNA replication. Through research, the writing, revising and editing of storyboards, two short videos were produced. Two of the pre-service teachers had prior experience with Claymation, however none of the participants had prior knowledge of chromosome mapping or DNA replication. This paper describes the learnings of the participants in terms of their self generated questions, the need for attention to detail, and argumentation / negotiation skills.

Blogs, wikis and podcasts : collaborative knowledge building tools in a design and technology course

Design and Technology has become an important part of the school curriculum. In Queensland, Australia, Technology (which encompasses Design) is one of the Key Learning Areas (KLAs) for students in the first ten years of schooling. This KLA adopts a student-centred, hands-on constructivist approach to teaching and learning. The ability to conceptualise and implement appropriate learning experiences, however, has been a challenge for some early career teachers. This paper describes how Design and Technology is being taught to pre-service primary teachers at an Australian University through their involvement in a range of authentic problem-solving activities supported by social learning tools such as wikis and blogs. An interview with a sample from this group (N=5) provides an insight into how these social software tools enhanced their knowledge and learning. This paper will describe how these social learning tools impact on the agency of learning.

David Hicks and Cathie Holden (eds.) (2007). Teaching The Global Dimension. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 212 pages.

Teaching The Global Dimension (2007) is intended for primary and secondary teachers, pre-service teachers and educators interested in fostering global concerns in the education system. It aims at linking theory and practice and is structured as follows. Part 1, the global dimension, proposes an educational framework for understanding global concerns. Individual chapters in this section deal with some educational responses to global issues and the ways in which young people might become, in Hick’s terms, more “world-minded”. In the first two chapters, Hicks presents first, some educational responses to global issues that have emerged in recent decades, and second, an outline of the evolution of global education as a specific field. As with all the chapters in this book, most of the examples are drawn from the United Kingdom. Young people’s concerns, student teachers’ views and the teaching of controversial issues, comprise the other chapters in this section. Taken collectively, the chapters in Part 2 articulate the conceptual framework for developing, teaching and evaluating a global dimension across the curriculum. Individual chapters in this section, written by a range of authors, explore eight key concepts considered necessary to underpin appropriate learning experiences in the classroom. These are conflict, social justice, values and perceptions, sustainability, interdependence, human rights, diversity and citizenship. These chapters are engaging and well structured. Their common format consists of a succinct introduction, reference to positive action for change, and examples of recent effective classroom practice. Two chapters comprise the final section of this book and suggest different ways in which the global dimension can be achieved in the primary and the secondary classroom.

Colin Marsh (2008) Becoming a Teacher: Knowledge, Skills and Issues. 4th edition, Frenchs Forrest: Pearson Education Australia, 460 pages

Becoming a Teacher is structured in five very readable sections. The introductory section addresses the nature of teaching and the importance of developing a sense of purpose for teaching in a 21st century classroom. It also introduces some key concepts that are explored throughout the volume according to the particular chapter focus of each part. For example, the chapters in Part 2 explore aspects of student learning and the learning environment and focus on how students develop and learn, learner motivation, developing self esteem and learning environments. The concepts developed in this section, such as human development, stages of learning, motivation, and self-concept are contextualised in terms of theories of cognitive development and theories of social, emotional and moral development. The author, Colin Marsh, draws on his extensive experience as an educator to structure the narrative of chapters in this part via checklists for observation, summary tables, sample strategies for teaching at specific stages of student development, and questions under the heading ‘your turn’. Case studies such as ‘How I use Piaget in my teaching’ make that essential link between theory and practice, something which pre-service teachers struggle with in the early phases of their university course. I was pleased to see that Marsh also explores the contentious and debated aspects of these theoretical frameworks to demonstrate that pre-service teachers must engage with and critique the ways in which theories about teaching and learning are applied. Marsh weaves in key quotations and important references into each chapter’s narrative and concludes every chapter with summary comments, reflection activities, lists of important references and useful web sources. As one would expect of a book published in 2008, Becoming a Teacher is informed by the most recent reports of classroom practice, current policy initiatives and research.

Mentoring across the professions : some issues and challenges

Mentoring has been identified as a valuable learning activity for beginners and more experienced personnel across a range of professions. For example, education, nursing, medicine, law, accounting , and public administration are among those professions that have utilised mentoring programs as a way of socialising and developing the skills and competencies of new professionals. The definition of mentoring used in this paper comes from Hansford, Tennent, and Ehrich (2002, 2003) that describes mentoring as a process whereby a more experienced practitioner works with, supports, guides and provides professional development to a less experienced practitioner. Mentoring, then, is often used to develop novice or less experienced professionals at two important phases in their career: (i) during their initial university training; and (ii) after graduation from university. For example, within the field experience components of many university degrees in education, nursing, medicine, social work, and other human service programs, students are assigned workplace mentors who assist them in transferring important skills and knowledge learned at university into practical setting. For concentrated periods of time during their degree, pre-service teachers, pre-service nurses and medical students work in the field alongside a workplace mentor.

Internship : interpreting micropolitical contexts

Many university faculties of education across Australia employ a model of internship for final semester pre-service teacher education students to help them make a smooth transition into the teaching profession. While a growing body of research has explored pre-service teachers’ experiences of their practicum, including the internship, which is the final professional experience within a course of study, very little work has considered micropolitics as a lens through which to interpret interns’ relationships with their school supervisors/mentors. This paper uses a micropolitical framework to interpret reflective reports written by 145 Bachelor of Education (primary) interns who recorded their perceptions of their professional learning experience within the context of a relationship with their school-based mentors. Several key themes are identified that highlight interns’ reports of a range of micropolitical strategies at play. The paper concludes by raising a number of implications for universities and schools regarding how better to facilitate interns’ transition into the profession.