scholarly journals Integrating Education for Sustainability in Preservice Teacher Education: A Case Study From a Regional Australian University

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reece Mills ◽  
Louisa Tomas
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Preservice Teacher Education ◽  
School Level ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Enabling Factors ◽  
Bachelor Of Education

AbstractEducation for Sustainability (EfS) has been prioritised in the School of Education at James Cook University (JCU), Townsville, Australia. This article presents a case study that explores the ways in which teacher educators integrate EfS in their teaching in the Bachelor of Education (BEd) (Primary) at JCU, and their perceptions of enablers and constraints. Two key findings arose from the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with four subject coordinators, and their subject outlines: (1) teacher educators at JCU integrate EfS in different ways through their choice of assessment, content and/or pedagogy; and (2) constraints operating at the school level, namely teacher educators’ perceptions and understanding of EfS, were perceived to be salient challenges to the integration of EfS in the program. Vision, leadership and funding at the university level were also identified as enabling factors that warrant further investigation. Findings contribute to existing literature regarding the integration of EfS in preservice teacher education, and serve to inform practice at JCU and universities more broadly.

Embedding EfS in Teacher Education Through a Multi-Level Systems Approach: Lessons From Queensland

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neus (Snowy) Evans ◽  
Jo-Anne Ferreira ◽  
Julie Davis ◽  
Robert B. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Preservice Teacher Education ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Fourth Stage ◽  
Systems Model

AbstractThis article reports on the fourth stage of an evolving study to develop a systems model for embedding education for sustainability (EfS) into preservice teacher education. The fourth stage trialled the extension of the model to a comprehensive state-wide systems approach involving representatives from all eight Queensland teacher education institutions and other key policy agencies and professional associations. Support for trialling the model included regular meetings among the participating representatives and an implementation guide. This article describes the first three stages of developing and trialling the model before presenting the case study and action research methods employed, four key lessons learned from the project, and the implications of the major outcomes for teacher education policies and practices. The Queensland-wide, multi-site case study revealed processes and strategies that can enable institutional change agents to engage productively in building capacity for embedding EfS at the individual, institutional, and state levels in preservice teacher education. Collectively, the project components provide a system-wide framework that offers strategies, examples, insights, and resources that can serve as a model for other states and/or territories wishing to implement EfS in a systematic and coherent fashion.

Historians, Archivists, and Museum Educators as Teacher Educators: Mentoring Preservice History Teachers at Cultural Institutes

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Preservice Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Education Programs ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
Educative Mentoring ◽  
Museum Educators

A relatively new phenomenon in teacher education involves preservice history teachers conducting fieldwork in museums, archives, and other cultural institutes. However, researchers have yet to generate understandings supported by empirical observations of the inner workings of such fieldwork experiences. Using interviews, observations, and artifacts, this article analyzes the pedagogies historians, archivists, and museum educators use when adopting the role of teacher educators. Findings offer possibilities for a collaborative and site-based structure of teacher education, running contrary to traditional models. Important to the development of preservice history teachers, mentors at cultural institutes conceptualize their work through an inquiry lens, growing intuitively out of their work as disciplinary experts. In addition, educative mentoring, while typically conceived of as a classroom-based method, was observed in practice at cultural institutes. This article concludes by offering suggestions for applying principles from this model to existing preservice teacher education programs.

scholarly journals Using the interactive whiteboard to scaffold a metalanguage: Teaching higher order thinking skills in preservice teacher education

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Preservice Teacher Education ◽  
Higher Order Thinking ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Interactive Whiteboard ◽  
Higher Order Thinking Skills

<p>This research focuses on how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) can be effectively used to teach higher order thinking skills to primary preservice teachers in the history classroom. The case study finds that skills such as analysis, evaluation and inference constitute a valuable metalanguage that needs to be explicitly taught to preservice teachers. The IWB provides an effective stimulus for teaching this metalanguage insofar as it offers the user scaffolding affordances to plan and design higher order thinking (HOT) activities when otherwise the task can appear too difficult to achieve, especially for the younger preservice teachers. But risks await those preservice teachers who grant the technology a determinant model of materiality.</p>

scholarly journals Inquiring into the Assessment Education of Preservice Teachers: A Collaborative Self-Study of Teacher Educators

in education ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-126
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ann Munroe ◽  
Jennifer Mitton-Kükner ◽  
Deborah Graham
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Protective Factors ◽  
Education Program ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Classroom Assessment ◽  
Preservice Teacher Education ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Self Study ◽  
Bachelor Of Education

As professors teaching courses in classroom assessment in a Bachelor of Education program, we engage in collaborative self-study as a means to understand the complexity of our preservice teachers’ learning. Here we describe two of the strategies we use in our teaching: purposefully introducing competing philosophies early in our courses, and guiding our preservice teachers’ to inquire deeply into their assessment histories. We examine our preservice teachers’ differing responses, which range from misunderstanding or resisting to thinking deeply about the course content. We conclude by identifying three protective factors that support us as we work with preservice teachers in the area of assessment education.Keywords: assessment education; preservice teacher education; self-study

scholarly journals Teacher educators’ perceptions and challenges of using critical pedagogy: A case study of higher teacher education in Tanzania

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Patrick Kavenuke ◽  
◽  
Abdulghani Muthanna ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Style ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Teaching Resources ◽  
Effective Use

This study investigates teacher educators’ perceptions of and challenges affecting the use of critical pedagogy in higher teacher education in Tanzania. The study employed a qualitative case study design and collected in-depth data through semi-structured interviews and direct classroom observations. The findings showed that critical pedagogy is a significant approach for developing students’ abilities to do critical reflection. However, critical pedagogy demands building a friendly relationship with students and encouraging dialogic interactions; all these lead to critical reflection in return, ensuring better understanding of the subject content. Most importantly, the findings report several challenges related to the presence of crowded classes, the use of lecturing teaching style and the use of English as a language of instruction, the use of unsuitable assessment format that is university guided and lack of teaching resources. These challenges impede the effective use of critical pedagogy in teaching. To overcome such challenges, policy makers and institutional leaders need to rethink of providing teaching resources and encouraging the use of critical pedagogy in teaching and learning at higher teacher education programmes. The study concludes that by practising what teacher educators perceive to be critical pedagogy, classrooms will be transformed into places of liberation. Further, while this qualitative study does not intend to make any generalisation, the findings might be of interest to international teacher educators who are interested in employing the critical pedagogy approach effectively.

scholarly journals Pathway to ‘Knowing Places’ — and Ecojustice — Three Teacher Educators’ Experiences

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 260-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Paige ◽  
David Lloyd ◽  
Richard Smith
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Beginning Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
School Teacher ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Teacher Education Programs ◽  
Shared Beliefs

AbstractThe case study reported here seeks to promote the sharing of successful practice in Education for Sustainability (EfS). It uses literature and three personal and professional autobiographies as background to the development of a set of sustainability educational practices integrated into a primary/middle school teacher education program. The set of activities focus on developing in students an understanding of EfS and of processes appropriate to it that they can use in their classrooms on graduation. It is the authors’ view that their collaborative building on shared beliefs, contemporary ecojustice literature and three decades of developing enabling pedagogical practices has assisted their efforts to ‘get’ EfS, and to ensure that their students, particularly as beginning teachers, ‘got it’. The ecojustice principles for teacher education programs are outlined in this article and are believed to have wide applicability in many aspects of ecojustice approaches to pro-ecosocial education.

Creating a Health and Sustainability Nexus in Food Education: Designing Third Spaces in Teacher Education

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Elsden-Clifton ◽  
Debi Futter-Puati
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
The Public ◽  
Food Education ◽  
Third Spaces ◽  
Scientific Fields

AbstractThere is growing pressure from the public health sector, government, environmental, medical and scientific fields to teach young people about food. However, little is known about pre-service teachers’ preparation in this area. This article addresses this gap by providing a case study of one approach to food education, which was purposefully designed to bring together two fields — health education and education for sustainability (EfS) — in teacher education in Victoria, Australia. This article outlines the ways in which this approach has the potential to challenge the conventions of both fields and ‘spaces’ of health (first space) and sustainability (second space), and gave rise to a possible ‘third space’ (Soja, 1996). This article uses data collected from Promoting Health Education, a 10-week course designed for generalist primary school pre-service teachers. It also utilises reflections from pre-service teachers and teacher educators (also the authors) to explore how they navigated first, second and third spaces. In doing so, the authors examine some of the learning potentials and difficulties within third spaces, including: designing third spaces; wrestling with the dominance of first space; complexities of second space; and questioning what might be lost and gained through the design of third spaces.

scholarly journals Parental Involvement and Academic Achievement of Primary Students: A Case Study of Two Nigerian Parents

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-31
Author(s):  
Fawzul Razeen
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Parental Involvement ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
School Level ◽  
Primary Students ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Class Teacher

This case study reveals how parents perceive their involvements and expectations of their children’s academic achievements. The primary purpose of this study is to explore parental involvement in the academic achievement of primary students in Nigerian schools and to assess parental involvement at the Primary School level and how it enhances academic achievement. The researcher chooses the qualitative research method for this study and makes use of Semi-structured interviews to collect data on the first-hand experiences of two international post-graduate (PG) students at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). The major finding of this study is parental involvement with their children. The Parents went to school to communicate with the class teacher and also they assisted with their children’s homework at their residential premises. Parents had high expectations of their children’s academic achievement in the class. There were some differences in the way the two parents were involved in the academic work of their children. This is because of some causes such as lack of time, new subject matter and distance to the schools. The findings of this study have implications mostly for teachers, teacher educators and educational decision-makers.

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