Tacit assumptions of citizenship education: A case study in Spanish initial teacher education

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Estelles ◽  
Jesús Romero

Current curricula, which organize initial teacher education programs, include, among their stated purposes, preparing teachers to help their future students to grow as global, participatory, and ethically engaged citizens. However, we know little about how teacher educators prepare their students to be citizens. This article analyses how a group of teacher educators from a public university in Spain understand citizenship education, exploring the net of metaphors and idealized visions they seem to share, regardless of their formal conceptualizations. The discussion of the findings considers the implicit hierarchies of these shared assumptions that define what is deemed as real, desirable, and possible in citizenship education. Implications for teacher education are also contemplated.

Author(s):  
Diane Mayer ◽  
Wayne Cotton ◽  
Alyson Simpson

The past decade has seen increasing federal intervention in teacher education in Australia, and like many other countries, more attention on teacher education as a policy problem. The current policy context calls for graduates from initial teacher education programs to be classroom ready and for teacher education programs to provide evidence of their effectiveness and their impact on student learning. It is suggested that teacher educators currently lack sufficient evidence and response to criticisms of effectiveness and impact. However, examination of the relevant literature and analysis of the discourses informing current policy demonstrate that it is the issue of how effectiveness is understood and framed, and what constitutes evidence of effectiveness, that needs closer examination by both teacher educators and policymakers before evidence of impact can be usefully claimed—or not.


Author(s):  
Lucy Bailey ◽  

This chapter reports on the process used to develop a revised curriculum for initial teacher education in the Kingdom of Bahrain, using this case-study institution to reflect on the evolving nature and purpose of teacher preparation in the twenty-first century (McMahon, Forde & Dickson, 2015), and the drivers and impediments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to ensuring that teacher education programs keep abreast of wider social change. The chapter, therefore, contributes to the burgeoning literature analyzing the worldwide evolution of teacher education (Tan, Liu & Low, 2017). The chapter begins by explaining the reasons underpinning a proposed revision of the Bachelors in Education (BEd) programme. It next reports on the process that was adopted to undertake the curriculum revision, arguing that the concepts of ―policy borrowing‖ and ―policy learning‖ are both problematic, and suggesting that these should be replaced by the idea of ―institutional partners‖. The chapter subsequently examines how potential tensions between local and global practices were leveraged in the revision through this partnership model. This case study in the development of a pre-service teacher education curriculum is of interest to international scholars as it explores the place of teacher education in both driving and reflecting social change, and it raises questions about how competing conceptualizations of teacher education reflect contrasting visions for society (Säfström & Saeverot, 2017). Interweaving sociological and philosophical perspectives on teacher education and development, this chapter will be of interest to curriculum developers, teacher educators, and teacher practitioners alike.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-384
Author(s):  
Lucinda Grace Heimer

Race is a marker hiding more complex narratives. Children identify the social cues that continue to segregate based on race, yet too often teachers fail to provide support for making sense of these worlds. Current critical scholarship highlights the importance of addressing issues of race, culture, and social justice with future teachers. The timing of this work is urgent as health, social and civil unrest due to systemic racism in the U.S. raise critiques and also open possibilities to reimagine early childhood education. Classroom teachers feel pressure to standardize pedagogy and outcomes yet meet myriad student needs and talents in complex settings. This study builds on the current literature as it uses one case study to explore institutional messages and student perceptions in a future teacher education program that centers race, culture, identity, and social justice. Teaching as a caring profession is explored to illuminate the impact authentic, aesthetic, and rhetorical care may have in classrooms. Using key tenets of Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool enhanced the case study process by focusing the inquiry on identity within a racist society. Four themes are highlighted related to institutional values, rigorous coursework, white privilege, and connecting individual racial and cultural understanding with classroom practice. With consideration of ethical relationality, teacher education programs begin to address the impact of racist histories. This work calls for individualized critical inquiry regarding future teacher understanding of “self” in new contexts as well as an investigation of how teacher education programs fit into larger institutional philosophies.


2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Epstein

The client analysis conducted in this study explores the professional development needs of11 language teachers, five in South Africa and six in Canada. The study employs a questionnaire and interviews to discover how each teacher's background and context affects his or her perceived professional development needs. Interviews show that teacher educators cannot necessarily predict teachers' professional development needs based on their backgrounds and contexts alone. A variety of inputs from recipients over an extended time is desirable and would yield more accurate predictability of an individual's professional development needs. This would result in teacher education programs that more accurately meet a teacher's real needs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorena Guillen ◽  
Ken Zeichner

This article examines the experiences of a group of nine community-based mentors of teacher candidates who partnered for several years through a local, community-based organization with the graduate elementary and secondary teacher education programs at a research university in the Pacific Northwest. Following a brief discussion of the history of partnerships between teacher education programs and local communities, we report the findings of a study of the perspectives of these community mentors on their work with teacher candidates and university teacher educators.


Author(s):  
Melissa D. Hartley ◽  
Barbara L. Ludlow ◽  
Michael C. Duff

Second Life®, an online virtual world, is currently used at West Virginia University for simulation activities and role-playing exercises in teacher education programs in special education. The purpose of this chapter is to describe a design experiment in a pilot case study, explain the rationale for using virtual reality, describe how learning activities were developed, implemented, and evaluated, discuss plans for future research and practice, and offer suggestions for using virtual simulations in other teacher education programs.


Author(s):  
Jarrett D. Moore

This chapter advocates for the (re)framing of critical thinking from a skill to a disposition and proposes a framework whereby teacher education programs can create space for pre-service teachers to develop a critical disposition. By studying the context of American education and schooling and their corporate interest, pre-service teachers along with teacher educators can start to unravel the discourse and power inherent in American education. Understanding how these concepts lead to hegemony can begin the process of creating a counterhegemonic movement among American educators that includes the reclaiming of the purpose of education, raising pertinent epistemological question, and practicing critical self-reflection. The final part of the new framework for developing critical dispositions is a reintroduction of broader theoretical concerns into teacher preparation programs.


Author(s):  
Trish Lewis ◽  
Letitia Hochstrasser Fickel ◽  
Glynne Mackey ◽  
Des Breeze

Preservice teacher education programs prepare teachers for a variety of educational settings that serve a diverse range of children. Research suggests that many graduates lack confidence and the capability to teach those from backgrounds different from their own, including children from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and children with additional learning needs. In the bicultural, and increasingly multicultural, New Zealand context, preservice teachers are overwhelmingly from White, middle-class, monolingual backgrounds. This chapter offers a case study of the development of a community engagement course within an initial teacher education degree program. Based on Kolb's model of experiential learning and Moll's notions of funds of knowledge and identity, the course aims to enhance preservice teachers' knowledge of the lives of children they teach, and their dispositions and cultural competence for teaching, through personal and professional interaction with the community.


Author(s):  
Vivian H. Wright

In teacher education programs, there is a consistent need to locate and to recommend to teacher educators, teacher candidates, and in-service teachers, viable technology tools and concepts that can be used in the classroom. Digital storytelling is a concept that is growing in popularity and one which offers versatility as an instructional tool. This chapter presents information and ideas on how to facilitate learning, productivity, and creativity through a variety of digital storytelling classroom uses.


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