This study explores how 33 student teachers’ reflections during 106 ‘bumpy moments’ while in an international student teaching internship reveal their professional beliefs, and how the moments make the student teachers reflect upon their subjective educational theories. Student teachers described four themes of professional beliefs: (1) pedagogical content knowledge, (2) school context, (3) organisational skills and (4) self-reflection. Their reflections highlighted aspects of their subjective educational theories when they perceived they lacked an appropriate practical teaching strategy or they had pedagogical interactions with pupils or supervisors. The student teachers’ reflections on pedagogical interactions in a cross-cultural context made them aware of moral dimensions in teaching and their own position during normative (inter)actions. The findings of this study indicate that teacher educators should focus on everyday teaching details that occur during bumpy moments in a student’s teaching practice to explicate larger concepts such as the student teachers’ beliefs.
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Meetings with other professionals are considered crucial for enhancing the quality of teachers' reflections. However, little is yet known about how any beneficial effects of such meetings are brought about. This study explores the peer coach's roles and their influences on the learning processes of their peers and seeks to understand how watching video records of own practice, supports teachers to examine their own professional behaviour in new ways. Within subgroups three teachers took turns in different roles: as trainee, as coach and as observer of the coaching dialogue. They used video recordings of the interactions in their classrooms as feedback. Data for this study included videotaped and transcribed group dialogues and, for triangulation, data from learning reports, questionnaires, and in-depth semi-structured interviews with all participants. Coaching promoted broadening the scope of their reflections. Teachers often started just describing work situations with technical reflections on 'how to'. Non-directive coaching skills created necessary safety and space for learning, but video feedback and more directive coaching skills such as 'Continue to ask questions' were necessary to deepen the reflection process and to relate reflections with analysis of feelings, perspectives of other actors, and with political notions concerning social, moral and political issues. Peer coaching with video feedback affords positive impact to those who coach in addition to those who receive the coaching. Understanding different forms of teacher learning provides insight for research on teacher cognition and may inform the design of video-based professional development.
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In autumn 2016, Malmö University started two “fast track” trajectories for teachers with refugee backgrounds. The participants were offered an education of 26 weeks as an introduction to the Swedish school system, consisting of content courses, professional Swedish and workplace learning. The aim of this small explorative study was to get an impression of the participants’ views and understanding of the role of becoming a teacher in Swedish schools, realising the characteristics of pedagogy aimed for in the curriculum, specifically the interaction patterns and student participation in learning processes. Main research questions addressed participants’ expectations of differences and challenges in the Swedish school context as compared to their experiences in Syrian contexts. A combination was chosen of focus groups interviews with a small number of teachers and students on their views and experiences with pupils’ involvement in classroom communication as well as quantitative data gathering. The quantitative survey measured teachers’ acquisition and participation-oriented views on learning. Open-ended reflection on learning questions was also given to the students. Results showed significant development towards more participation-oriented beliefs on learning. Interview data and written statements reveal varied differences between the Swedish context and the participants’ experiences from schools in Syria.
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This study aims to map VE teachers’ perceived importance of assessment competence. The study was conducted in the Netherlands among teachers of professional studies in Universities of Applied Sciences. A large-scale study was conducted to represent a broad population of teachers, including various vocational fields, roles, and situations, allowing for the exploration of differences across these contextual variables.
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Our research aims to formulate design guidelines for stimulating teachers' professional development using video feedback in collaborative settings. The study investigates guidelines concerning video feedback in peer coaching settings and focuses on a setting with three roles (of trainee, coach and observer), (c) coach training, (d) ownership of learning goals and (e) focus on outcomes in classroom. A scheme was developed consisting of six coach training sessions and of peer reciprocal coaching in subgroups with video feedback of classroom performances. Within these subgroups three teachers took turns in different roles: as trainee, as coach and as observer of the coaching dialogue. The study explores the coach's roles that are beneficial for the learning process of their peers and seeks to understand how watching video records of own practice supports teachers to examine their own professional behaviour in new ways. Data for this study includes videotaped and transcribed subgroup dialogues and, for triangulation, data from learning reports, audio tapes and observational notes of the training sessions, questionnaires, and in-depth semi-structured interviews with all participants. Coaching in a setting with three well defined roles (trainee, coach, observant) proved valuable. The coach role was very important for the depth of the reflection process. Non-directive coaching skills created necessary safety and space for learning, but more directive coaching skills such as 'Continue to ask questions' were necessary to deepen the reflection process from more descriptive and perceptive reflections to more receptive, interactive and critical reflections. In the dialogues the participants reflect on practice, on context, on values, and on improvements. Working with (peer) observers of the coaching dialogs improved performance and forced the group to take their roles more seriously. Essential for the scheme to work is a high degree of equality between participants.
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A primary teacher needs mathematical problem solving ability. That is why Dutch student teachers have to show this ability in a nationwide mathematics test that contains many non-routine problems. Most student teachers prepare for this test by working on their own solving test-like problems. To what extent does these individual problem solving activities really contribute to their mathematical problem solving ability? Developing mathematical problem solving ability requires reflective mathematical behaviour. Student teachers need to mathematize and generalize problems and problem approaches, and evaluate heuristics and problem solving processes. This demands self-confidence, motivation, cognition and metacognition. To what extent do student teachers show reflective behaviour during mathematical self-study and how can we explain their study behaviour? In this study 97 student teachers from seven different teacher education institutes worked on ten non-routine problems. They were motivated because the test-like problems gave them an impression of the test and enabled them to investigate whether they were already prepared well enough. This study also shows that student teachers preparing for the test were not focused on developing their mathematical problem solving ability. They did not know that this was the goal to strive for and how to aim for it. They lacked self-confidence and knowledge to mathematize problems and problem approaches, and to evaluate the problem solving process. These results indicate that student teachers do hardly develop their mathematical problem solving ability in self-study situations. This leaves a question for future research: What do student teachers need to improve their mathematical self-study behaviour? EAPRIL Proceedings, November 29 – December 1, 2017, Hämeenlinna, Finland
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Present study focuses on revealing and developing personal constructs regarding problem behaviour in classrooms. The main idea is that teachers opinions about their students and themselves influence the way they interact with them. Their thoughts and ideas about students - their personal constructs - are generally unconscious. We used the Personal Construct Theory from Kelly (1955) and his Repertory Grid Technique for exploration mental constructs. They can give an impulse to the development of thinking and acting of teachers. We think it can help them to build up their professional identity towards problem children. Twenty-nine teachers formed the sample that worked with this method. We investigated the number of unique construct pairs mentioned by the teachers. This number happened to be remarkably high. While assessing pupils, the teachers use primarily personality characteristics. There is hardly any agreement between the teachers constructs, which complicates their communication about their pupils. We considered the number of construct pairs named by one participant. This number seems to depend on the type of education the teacher is involved in. The type of the school the teacher is working at also influences the average scores on the constructs. We shall also turn to the issue of pupils sex and its role if any in the teachers scores. No significant differences have been found.
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In: Heimbrock, H. (Ed.). (2016). Taking position: Empirical studies and theoretical reflections on Religious Education and worldview. Waxmann.
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This study focuses on the complexity and uniqueness of 45 beginning teachers’ professional identity, an important perspective that is usually not an explicit part of induction programmes. Data were collected in four workshops designed to support beginning teachers in reflecting on personal and contextual aspects that influence (the development of) their professional identity. Based on these reflections, portraits of each teacher were constructed. Five overarching identity themes emerged from these portraits: Classroom management, Students learning, Workload, Collaboration and Standing up for oneself. All themes were visualised into a configuration consisting of personal and contextual aspects, arranged according to three foci: focus on oneself, on students, and on team/organisation. The configurations differ in their magnitude but do justice to the unique and complex nature of each teacher. Constructing configurations is a promising way for understanding what really matters in beginning teachers’ professional identity development and helping them deepen their reflection.
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Earlier research argues that educational programmes based on social cognitive theory are successful in improving students’ self-efficacy. Focusing on some formative assessment characteristics, this qualitative research intends to study in-depth how student teachers’ assessment experiences contribute to their self-efficacy. We interviewed 15 second year student teachers enrolled in a competence based teacher educational programme. Thematic content analysis results reveal that the assessment characteristics ‘authenticity’ and ‘feedback’ exert a positive influence on student teachers self-efficacy during all phases of the portfolio competence assessment. The results provide a fine-grained view of several types of self-efficacy information connected with these assessment phases.
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