The extent to which mentor teachers are able to address mentees' individual needs is an important factor in the success of mentoring. A two-dimensional model of mentor teacher roles in mentoring dialogues, entitled MERID, is explored empirically. Data regarding five aspects of mentoring dialogues were collected, using a sample of 20 transcriptions of mentoring dialogues, in which 112 topics were discussed and 440 mentor teacher utterances emerged. Correlations between the five aspects were determined and a cluster analysis was conducted. There is empirical support for the model. It is a useful framework to promote reflection on mentor teachers' supervisory behaviour.
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Mentoring dialogues play an important role in the supervision of prospective teachers. Mentor teachers have the dual role of guiding the students in the workplace and of stimulating students to reflect and learn from their teaching experiences. Does this happen in practice? This study describes the supervisory behavior of mentor teachers during their mentoring dialogues with prospective teachers by analysing 4 aspects of the dialogue: content, mentor teachers' role, the phases and time. There were three phases in the analysis of the literature. The results indicate that while teachers are effective in the guidance of prospective teachers in the workplace, they are not so effective in the area of stimulating reflection in the prospective teacher. In the mentoring dialogues it is usually the mentor teacher who is the dominant interlocutor; raising issues of organization, directing the prospective teacher in a prescriptive manner, deciding the content of the dialogue, not structuring the dialogue in phases and doing most of the talking. However, studies in this area vary greatly in the presentation of the issues and offer little coherence or correlation. So after looking at the literature, we propose a model where the roles of the mentor teachers can be catagorised and where the data collected can be correlated with the existing literature.
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The dialogue between a mentor teacher and a prospective teacher is a key element in the supervision of prospective teachers in the workplace. This literature study deals with the issue of how to conceptualize the supervisory behaviour of mentor teachers in mentoring dialogues by systematically examining empirical literature on aspects of mentor teachers' behaviour during dialogues with prospective teachers. From the findings a model is derived which can be used to describe and map mentor teachers' behaviour in mentoring dialogues. The model may be helpful in the further development of the quality of mentor teachers' behaviour in mentoring dialogues.
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Abstract At this international symposium on the professionalism of teacher educators an extensive review study on the roles, accompanying behavior and the factors that support the development of these roles and behavior will be presented. Six roles of teacher educators were distinguished, from which three are considered to be major: teacher of teachers, coach and researcher. This presentation will be followed by three in depth empirical research contributions of scholars from the UK, Israël and The Netherlands, each of them on one of the major roles. At the end of these presentations there will be a general discussion about developments in the roles and major themes for future research in this field. Session summary The international symposium on the professionalism of teacher educators has the objective to discuss (developments in the research on) the major roles and the professional development of teacher educators and to identify some major themes for future research in this field. In the first part of the session a recently conducted extensive review study, based on 160 articles out of a selection of more than 1250, on the roles, accompanying behavior and the factors that support the development of these roles and behavior will be presented. Based on this analysis six roles of teacher educators were distinguished: 1) teacher of teachers, 2) coach, 3)researcher, 4)curriculum developer, 5) gatekeeper, and 6) broker. The first three are considered as major roles. For each of these major roles critical features are identified and related to the research about the accompanying behavior of teacher educators. These professional roles are liable to continuous change. School-based teacher education changed the role of teacher educators in schools and universities and gave rise to the new role of broker. The changing place of teacher education within universities and de development of practitioner research as a distinct kind of research has influenced the role of research and scholarship in the teacher education profession (Borg, 2011; Wilson, 2006). This presentation will be followed by three contributions of scholars from different countries. They will present in depth empirical research based on mixed methods with respect to one of the three major roles of teacher educators. Research from the UK will be presented on the (developments in the) role of teacher of teachers, research from Israël will focus on the role of mentor and finally a Dutch case study about the development of the role of scholar/researcher in a new university setting will be presented. The scholarly or scientific significance of this symposium is that it will be held at the moment that during the last decades the profession of teacher educator has emerged as a distinct profession and research theme (Clarke, 2001; Murray & Male, 2005; Swennen, Jones & Volman, 2010). Special issues of journals, books and encyclopaedic articles have been published about the profession and the professional development of teacher educators (European Journal of Teacher Education, 2005; Teaching and Teaching Education, 2005; Professional Development in Education, 2010; Swennen & Van der Klink, 2009; Lunenberg, 2010; Smith, 2011). Professional standards for teacher educators have been developed (ATE, 2008; Koster & Dengerink, 2008). The amount of selfstudies is accumulating (Cochran-Smith, 2005). Now is the time to evaluate these developments in the profession and the research about the profession in this field and also to discuss how teacher educators can keep up their roles in accordance with the needs of the education of future teachers
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In the Netherlands, and in many other countries, teacher policy and teacher education are strongly focused on ensuring that teachers meet certain minimum standards. As all student teachers need to meet these standards, teacher education programmes might put the main emphasis on the ‘average’ student and pay little attention to students who can perform better, which would lead to a middle-ofthe-road perspective on teachers and teacher education curricula. However, there is a growing awareness within higher education of the diversity of students with respect to their abilities and ambitions. In the Netherlands, there are initiatives to develop excellence programmes and honours programmes that recognize and accept student diversity. Such programmes offer ‘excellent’ students new challenges in the development of their excellence. But as ‘excellence’ is not centrally defined, higher education institutes can define the concept independently. Here, we present two examples of teacher education institutes that have developed honours programmes that emphasize excellent student teachers. While traditionally honours programmes in universities are focused on stimulating outstanding research performance of excellent students, in both examples a different focus is taken. The honours programmes in these universities for applied sciences do not focus on academic performance, but focus more directly on the roles of outstanding teachers in schools. One of these institutes focuses on primary teacher roles, the other on secondary teacher roles. Both use research in the content of the honours programmes and in the evaluation of the programmes. Here, an analysis of the two programmes is related to developments in teacher policy and the teaching profession with respect to teacher excellence, e.g. the recent recommendation from the Netherlands Education Council to nominate the top 5% of teachers as ‘excellent teachers’ – a recommendation that was received with mixed feelings by teachers, teachers’ unions and school leaders
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Mathematics teacher educators in primary teacher education need expert knowledge and skills in teaching in primary school, in subject matter and research. Most starting mathematics teacher educators possess only part of this knowledge and skills. A professional development trajectory for this group is developed and tested, where a design based research is used to evaluate the design. This paper describes the professional development trajectory and design. We conclude that the professional development design should focus on mathematical knowledge for teaching, should refer to both teacher education and primary education, should offer opportunities for cooperative learning, and need to use practice based research as a developmental tool.
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This paper reports on the EU-project 'Professionally Networking Education and Teacher Training' (PRONETT). The key objective of the PRONETT project (2001-2004) is to develop a regional and cross national learning community of pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators supported by webbased resources and tools to collaborate and to construct shared understandings of teaching and learning in a networked classroom. The reasons for the initiative and the design principles of the PRONETT portal offering a virtual infrastructure for the collaboration of participating students and teachers at www.PRONETT.org are presented. The initial pilots carried out by the project partners are described, highlighting the co-ordinating partners activities targeted at contributing to the local realisation of ICT-rich, competence based Teacher Education Provision. Results are reported of the evaluation and implementation efforts aimed at validating the original portal design and collecting information to inspire further project development and implementation strategies. We conclude by summarising the lessons learned and providing recommendations for improved and extended use and further dissemination of the project results and facilities.
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The present study focuses on the level of stress a teacher perceives when dealing with the most behaviorally challenging student in his or her classroom. To measure stress in Dutch elementary classrooms, a sample was drawn of 582 teachers. Two questions concerning this relation between student and teacher will be addressed. First of all, we focus on background variables of teachers and students as sources of variation in explaining the magnitude of challenging student behavior and the associated level of stress teachers experience. The second topic of this paper is to accommodate the potentially stressful relationship between student and teacher in a wider network of surrounding variables, which are, Self-efficacy, Negative affect, Autonomy in taking decisions, and Support amongst colleagues. To evaluate the presence of challenging behavior, the behavior of the student is related to more general variables like student responsibility, class size and ratio of boys to girls. We close our paper by assessing the validity of the studied relationship between teacher and student with respect to possible burnout.
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This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the AI-related skills and roles needed to bridge the AI skills gap in Europe. Using a mixed-method research approach, this study investigated the most in-demand AI expertise areas and roles by surveying 409 organizations in Europe, analyzing 2,563 AI-related job advertisements, and conducting 24 focus group sessions with 145 industry and policy experts. The findings underscore the importance of both general technical skills in AI related to big data, machine learning and deep learning, cyber and data security, large language models as well as AI soft skills such as problemsolving and effective communication. This study sets the foundation for future research directions, emphasizing the importance of upskilling initiatives and the evolving nature of AI skills demand, contributing to an EU-wide strategy for future AI skills development.
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National and international education policies acknowledge the importance of the quality of teachers. Research literature emphasises the teacher profession as an dynamic and extended profession, driven by a moral perspective and a collaborative identity across the profession. In this paper the question is raised to what extent this understanding is reflected in the way in which teacher quality is defined within the Dutch policy context. The Dutch narrative describes how the debate on teacher quality over the past 20 years has led to an image of a static, fragmented, narrow and instrumentalized profession. This creates a dilemma for teacher education institutes, balancing between the narrow formal expectations and the extended profession as derived from research. Creating space for that wider and innovative identity of teachers will require a process of redefining teacher quality in which all stakeholders need to play an active role.
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