scholarly journals Establishing Sustainable Teacher Education with Weekly School Practice - Identifying Teacher Students’ Experiences of Didactic Dilemmas in the Swedish Primary School Classroom

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Stellan Sundh

AbstractTeachers face dilemmas of different kinds in their everyday practice. It is therefore essential that teacher students become aware of the dilemmas they will face in their future profession. By integrating school practice in teacher education programs, students apply theoretical knowledge to classroom situations. In a project at a Swedish university campus, the students worked as teacher candidates one day a week at different primary schools during their first semester. The purposes were to make the teacher education at the campus sustainable by attracting more students, limiting the number of dropouts and improving the quality in the education. In the present study, it is of interest to identify the didactic dilemmas teacher students experience in classrooms with 6 to 12 year-olds. By analysing the students’ written reports, the results indicate that the students’ identified dilemmas relate to classroom management, the lesson content and the establishing of relationships with the children.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Kibler ◽  
René Pyatt ◽  
Jason Greenberg Motamedi ◽  
Ozen Guven

Grow-Your-Own (GYO) Teacher Education programs that aim to diversify and strengthen the teacher workforce must provide high-quality learning experiences that support the success and retention of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) teacher candidates and bilingual teacher candidates. Such work requires a holistic and systematic approach to conceptualizing instruction and mentoring that is both linguistically and culturally sustaining. To guide this work in the Master of Arts in Teaching in Clinically Based Elementary program at Oregon State University’s College of Education, we conducted a review of relevant literature and frameworks related to linguistically responsive and/or sustaining teaching or mentoring practices. We developed a set of ten mentoring competencies for school-based cooperating/clinical teachers and university supervisors. They are grouped into the domains of: Facilitating Linguistically and Culturally Sustaining Instruction, Engaging with Mentees, Recognizing and Interrupting Inequitable Practices and Policies, and Advocating for Equity. We also developed a set of twelve instructional competencies for teacher candidates as well as the university instructors who teach them. The instructional competencies are grouped into the domains of: Engaging in Self-reflection and Taking Action, Learning About Students and Re-visioning Instruction, Creating Community, and Facilitating Language and Literacy Development in Context. We are currently operationalizing these competencies to develop and conduct surveys and focus groups with various GYO stakeholders for the purposes of ongoing program evaluation and improvement, as well as further refinement of these competencies.


2021 ◽  
pp. e20200014
Author(s):  
Elise St. John ◽  
Dan Goldhaber ◽  
John Krieg ◽  
Roddy Theobald

Emerging research finds connections between teacher candidates’ student teaching placements and their future career paths and effectiveness. Yet relatively little is known about the factors that influence these placements and how teacher education programs (TEPs) and K-12 school systems match teacher candidates to mentor teachers. In our study of this process in Washington state, we find that TEPs and K-12 systems share overarching goals related to successful student teacher placements and developing a highly effective teacher workforce. However, distinct accountabilities and day-to-day demands also sometimes lead them to prioritize other objectives. In addition, we identified informational asymmetries, which left TEPs questioning how mentor teachers were selected, and districts and schools with limited information with which to make intentional matches between teacher candidates and mentor teachers. The findings from this study inform both practice and research in teacher education and human resources. First, they illuminate practices that appear to contribute to informational gaps and institutional disadvantages in the placement of student teachers. Additionally, they raise questions about what constitutes an effective mentor teacher and provide researchers and policymakers with better insight into the professional realities of teacher educators and K-12 educators, as well as those of district human resource (HR) coordinators, which is important given their differing accountabilities and distinctive positionings in the education of teacher candidates.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Belete Mebratu

This study is an analysis of the reported observations of teacher candidates about the challenges and encouraging practices at schools following their field experiences visits required to meet course work and licensure for teaching.  The findings of the study indicate that the participants of the study observed that classroom teachers face the challenges of too much workload, meeting the needs of too many students who need support, lack of resources, classroom management, changes of curriculum and policies, and meeting the needs of diverse students. The candidates, however, are encouraged by their observations of the use and applications of a wide variety of instructional approaches, the prevalence of a culture of a community of learners and co-operations, discipline systems, applications of technology and inspiring teachers’ professionalism and commitment to make differences in the lives of their students. Ways of addressing the observed challenges include measures of providing support staff and assistants to the classroom teacher, supplying classrooms with adequate resources, efforts to involve parents and guardians in the education of their children and in the affairs of schools, refocusing teacher education programs on those reported areas of challenges classroom teachers face, and ongoing in-service trainings and professional development programs for teachers.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-35
Author(s):  
Chancey Bosch ◽  
Trevor Ellis

Technology-enhanced learning continues to provide opportunities for increased interventions in educational programing. For teacher education programs, novelty pales in comparison to providing meaningful instruction and enduring outcomes. The use of avatars has provided integration of research evidence that increases intended behaviors; however, research is lacking on teacher self-efficacy change via an avatar experience. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and avatar use in a teacher education program. A relational study using both parametric and non-parametric designs for four different samples indicated a significant relationship between avatar intervention and teacher self-efficacy in classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement. The sample from a student teaching course, which had a limited number of participants, provided mixed results. More studies need to include experimental designs and isolation of variabilities in the avatar model.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Anne Block ◽  
Paul Betts

Teacher candidates’ individual and collaborative inquiry occurs within multiple and layered contexts of learning. The layered contexts support a strong connection between the practicum and the university and the emergent teaching identities. Our understanding of teacher identity is as situated and socially constructed, yet fluid and agentic. This paper explores how agentic teaching identities emerge within the layered contexts of our teacher education program as examined in five narratives of teacher candidates’ experience. These narratives involve tension, inquiry, successes and risks, as teacher candidates negotiate what is means to learn how to teach, to teach and to critically reflect on knowledge needed to teach. We conclude that navigating teacher identity is a teacher candidate capacity that could be explicitly cultivated by teacher education programs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marla S. Sanders ◽  
Kathryn Haselden ◽  
Randi M. Moss

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to promote discussion of how teacher education programs can better prepare teacher candidates to teach for social justice in ethnically and culturally diverse schools. The authors suggest that teacher education programs must develop teacher candidates’ capacity to teach for social justice through preparation programs that encourage critical reflection and awareness of one’s beliefs, perceptions, and professional practice. The authors ask the following questions: How can teacher educators provide structures in professional preparation programs that will produce reflective practitioners? How might we prepare teacher candidates who are constantly thinking about how they perceive their students and their families and how those perceptions affect the way they relate to students? Through a discussion of five case scenarios, the authors discuss prior research on preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools and offer suggestions for improving professional education programs.


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):  
Carolyn Haviland Obel-Omia

Teacher education programs are increasingly responsible for preparing teachers who use technology fluently across curricula. Future teachers must define literacy more broadly than they have in the past to include digital modes of reading and writing. Experience with digital tools in literacy methodology courses provides opportunities for teacher candidates to reflect critically on these tools, preparing teachers to use technology to its advantage in elementary school classrooms. This chapter describes four digital practices designed to engage teacher candidates in participating in and reflecting on authentic reading and writing to develop next-generation literacy teachers. These practices include examples of activities that can be adapted to both teacher preparation and elementary education classrooms.


Author(s):  
Kristien Zenkov ◽  
Seth A. Parsons ◽  
Audra K. Parker ◽  
Elizabeth Levine Brown ◽  
Lois A. Groth ◽  
...  

Unprecedented and long-overdue attention has recently been given to the role of field-based clinical experiences in teacher preparation. Traditional models of university coursework disconnected from real world field-based clinical experiences serve neither prospective teachers nor PreK-12 students. This chapter presents a broader notion of field-based teacher preparation structures occurring in school-university partnership contexts and professional development schools, with the authors drawing from data of four field-based experiences, which fall along a continuum of partnership, from three teacher education programs at two universities. These partnerships illustrate a developmental framework for building mutually beneficial relationships that enhance the engagement of all stakeholders and acknowledge the need for differentiation in teacher education practice. A pathways orientation to school-university partnerships/PDSs and a project-based clinical approach offer chances to develop mutually beneficial learning opportunities for PreK-12 students and teacher candidates.


Author(s):  
Patricia Dickenson ◽  
Cynthia Sistek-Chandler

Teacher Education programs worldwide are engaging in a digital conversation around best practices for supporting and teaching teacher candidates in the creation of digital content for a 21st century blended classroom. This chapter examines the status of teacher preparation in technology and explores current trends for instructors of the NextGen educator. Further the authors share how 21 Century Skills and global competencies among pre-service teachers can be applied in an online learning environment in teacher education programs.


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