scholarly journals Preparing Practice-Based Researchers for Diverse Classrooms: A Pathway for Teacher Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Lammert
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Diverse Classrooms ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Conducting Research

Twenty-first century educators are faced with new dilemmas, as well as new opportunities. In response to the increasing racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of students, some school districts and states have implemented policies mandating particular curriculum. However, evidence increasingly shows that teachers who are effective in diverse classrooms are adaptive and responsive rather than strictly adhering to scripted curriculum. One proposed solution is preparation to conduct practice-based research as part of teaching. Practice-based research is a method of studying ones’ own teaching that draws on action research, design-development research, and transformative research. As a method through which teachers define questions, explore solutions, and share successes in professional communities, practice-based research holds tremendous potential to support teachers in diverse classrooms as they work to teach in culturally sustaining ways despite external pressures. This chapter begins with the history of action research and the tradition of teachers conducting research on their practice. Then, examples of practice-based research in literacy teacher education settings from a review of the research literature are provided to demonstrate the challenges, opportunities, and design features for this work. The chapter concludes with recommendations for teacher education policies, for teacher educators, and for practice.

Listening to the Experiences and Concerns of Pre-Service Teachers During Teaching Practice Programme

2021 ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Darshana Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Education Programme ◽  
Practical Training ◽  
Teacher Education Programme ◽  
Practice Teaching

Teaching Practice is widely recognised as the sine-qua-non of any teacher education programme. It is a component in the teacher preparation programme where prospective teachers are provided with an opportunity to put their theoretical studies into practice, get feedback, reflect on practice and consequently further improve their teaching skills. As teaching practice is an important component of a teacher education programme, considerable attention must be given to make it more effective and fruitful. This paper is based on a research study conducted to know pre-service teachers' experiences of the quality of teaching practice and the common concerns they have during teaching practice. On the basis of focussed group discussion a total of five themes were identified, these are (1) usefulness of teaching practice (2) experiences/concerns with pupils' behaviour (3) experiences/concerns with own behaviour (4) experiences/concerns with supervisors' behaviour (5) experiences/concerns with institutional and personal adjustments. The outcome of the focussed group discussion was used to prepare a structured questionnaire. Among other things, the study recommended rigorous practical training in lesson planning, demonstration lessons by teacher educators, simulated teaching before the commencement of practice teaching, school orientation programmes, a separate internship of two weeks and writing a journal by student teachers during teaching practice.

Equitable Teaching and the Core Practice Movement: Preservice Teachers’ Professional Reasoning

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Britnie Delinger Kane
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Student Teacher ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Student Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Collaborative Analysis ◽  
Core Practice

Background/Context The Core Practice movement continues to gain momentum in teacher education research. Yet critics highlight that equitable teaching cannot be reduced to a set of “core” practices, arguing that such a reduction risks representing teaching as technical work that will be neither culturally responsive nor sustaining. Instead, they argue that preservice teachers need opportunities to develop professional reasoning that takes the specific strengths and needs of students, communities, and subject matter into account. Purpose This analysis takes up the question of how and whether pedagogies of investigation and enactment can support preservice teachers’ development of the professional reasoning that equitable teaching requires. It conceptualizes two types of professional reasoning: interpretive, in which reasoners decide how to frame instructional problems and make subsequent efforts to solve them, and prescriptive, in which reasoners solve an instructional problem as given. Research Design This work is a qualitative, multiple case study, based on design research in which preservice teachers participated in three different cycles of investigation and enactment, which were designed around a teaching practice central to equitable teaching: making student thinking visible. Preservice teachers attended to students’ thinking in the context of the collaborative analysis of students’ writing and also through designed simulations of student-teacher writing conferences. Findings/Results Preservice teachers’ collaborative analysis of students’ writing supported prescriptive professional reasoning about disciplinary ideas in ELA and writing instruction (i.e., How do seventh graders use hyperbole? How is hyperbole related to the Six Traits of Writing?), while the simulation of a writing conference supported preservice teachers to reason interpretively about how to balance the need to support students’ affective commitment to writing with their desire to teach academic concepts about writing. Conclusions/Recommendations This analysis highlights an important heuristic for the design of pedagogies in teacher education: Teacher educators need to attend to preservice teachers’ opportunities for both interpretive and prescriptive reasoning. Both are essential for teachers, but only interpretive reasoning will support teachers to teach in ways that are both intellectually rigorous and equitable. The article further describes how and why a tempting assumption—that opportunities to role-play student-teacher interactions will support preservice teachers to reason interpretively, while non-interactive work will not—is incomplete and avoidable.

scholarly journals Developing Communities of Praxis: Bridging the theory practice divide in teacher education

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael James Anderson ◽  
Kelly Freebody
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Beginning Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teach For America ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Initial Teacher Education ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
The University ◽  
New Education

Teacher education in universities is under pressure. In many new education policies there is a renewed focus on teacher quality, and therefore quality initial teacher education. In some countries this renewed focus has led to a resurgence of “alternative approaches” to teacher education such as Teach for America / Australia. One of the most persistent complaints about pre-service teacher education is that educational theory presented in these programs does not relate sufficiently to the real work of teachers. In an attempt to overcome these real or perceived divides, tertiary drama educators at the University of Sydney constructed a professional experience program based on both the community of practice model (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and Frierean notions of praxis (1972). The community of praxis approach emphasises the importance of integrating theory and practice to support the development of beginning teachers. This article outlines the development, implementation, and evaluation of this approach, including the reasoning behind its foundation and the theoretical and practical significance of such an approach for teacher-educators.

scholarly journals DEVELOPMENT OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS REFLECTIVE TEACHING PRACTICE (RTP) SCALE

2020 ◽  
pp. 337-348
Author(s):  
Karuna K Simha ◽  
Umme Kulsum
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Attitude Scale ◽  
Reflective Teaching ◽  
Reflective Practitioners ◽  
The Government

The NCF-2005, NCFTE-2009 and the New Education Policy-2020 recommend teachers to be reflective practitioners. The realization of the concept of reflective teaching practice helps us to openly accept the new changes that are brought about by the education system and enables us to progress towards the betterment of the education system. The fundamental principle of teacher education is to be on reflective teaching model. As the reflective practice has been introduced more recently, there has been a shift in the approaches of teaching from teacher centeredness to learner centeredness. Adapting to the novel changes requires a mind-set to acknowledge the changes and evolve according to the need. It also involves likes and dislikes which can be rightly called attitudes. It is helpful to know the level of attitude of teachers, so as to provide them with required training, motivation and support. This helps the teachers also to change their attitudes towards reflective teaching. The measurement of attitude towards reflective teaching practices enables the teacher-educators, the educationists and the government to design programmes to help teachers develop a positive attitude to the new recommendations. It also helps the teacher education institutions to inculcate the positive attitudes towards the reflective teaching so as to prepare the entrant teachers to become reflective practitioners. Hence the attitude scale was constructed. The main purpose of the attitude scale is to measure and quantify the attitude towards reflective teaching practices. The reflective teaching practice scale was developed based on Likert scale construction procedures. The theoretical framework was adopted from the Pollard’s Reflective Teaching.

scholarly journals Learning From Students, Teachers, and Schools: Field-Based Teacher Education for Emergent Bilingual Learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-161
Author(s):  
Amy J. Heineke ◽  
Elina Giatsou
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
First Year ◽  
Bilingual Learners ◽  
Emergent Bilingual ◽  
Diverse Classrooms ◽  
Undergraduate Teacher Education

Today’s schools are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before, prompting the need for teachers with the requisite expertise for work with emergent bilingual learners. As students grow in numbers and fill seats in classrooms spanning grades and disciplines, teacher educators must consider ways to prepare an increasing number of teachers, including those spanning licensure areas. This research probed one university’s efforts to prepare all teacher candidates for this growing subgroup of students through a field-based undergraduate teacher education program in the urban Midwest. Using artifact data from 29 program completers and survey and interview data from five focal teachers spanning licensure areas, this study investigated how particular facets of the field-based program promoted or deterred candidates’ learning across the 4-year program and into teachers’ first year of teaching. Implications center on how universities can leverage field-based teacher education to prepare future teachers for diverse classrooms.

scholarly journals Abstracts: Teacher education

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-360
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
School Level ◽  
Teaching Beliefs ◽  
Diverse Classrooms ◽  
Secondary School Level ◽  
The Impact

07–615Dogancay-Aktuna, Seran (Southern Illinois U, USA), Expanding the socio-cultural knowledge base of TESOL teacher education. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 19.3 (2006), 278–295.07–616Gonçalves, Maria de Lurdes (U Aveiro, Portugal) & Ana Isabel Andrade, Connecting languages: The use of theportfolioas a means of exploring and overcoming frontiers within the curriculum. European Journal of Teacher Education (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) 30.2 (2007), 195–213.07–617Kurihara, Yuka & Keiko Samimy (Ohio State U, USA), The impact of a U.S. teacher training program on teaching beliefs and practices: A case study of secondary school level Japanese teachers of English. JALT Journal (Japan Association for Language Teaching) 29.1 (2007), 99–122.07–618Poulou, Maria (U Patras, Greece), Student-teachers' concerns about teaching practice. European Journal of Teacher Education (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) 30.1 (2007), 91–110.07–619Santoro, Ninetta (Deakin U, Australia), ‘Outsiders’ and ‘others’: ‘Different’ teachers teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) 13.1 (2007), 81–97.07–620Vacilotto, Silvana & Rhoda Cummings (U Nevada, Reno, USA; [email protected]), Peer coaching in TEFL/TESL programmes. ELT Journal (Oxford University Press) 61.2 (2007), 153–160.

Book Review: An Ambitious Undertaking: Countering Mathematics and Science Teachers' Resistance to Teaching for Diversity: A Review of Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms: Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-472
Author(s):  
Jo Clay Olson
Keyword(s):  
Science Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Diverse Classrooms ◽  
Lead Teachers ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Mathematics And Science Teachers ◽  
Mathematics And Science

Inspirational stories about teachers who are able to transform students' lives pepper the literature (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1994). Ladson-Billings described characteristics of culturally relevant teaching and then explored the stories of three teachers who enacted a personal pedagogy that led to high achievement among African American students. Stories such as these provide insights and can lead teachers to change aspects of their teaching practice. At times, teachers may be transformed by these success stories and radically change their actions. However, when teachers enact a new practice without an ideological shift in beliefs, the change is often superficial and may not result in the desired vision (Ball, 1992; Cohen, 1990; Fennema & Nelson, 1997). The question arises, how can teacher educators and professional developers help both practicing and prospective science and mathematics teachers recognize the need for culturally relevant pedagogy when science and mathematics are often considered devoid of culture?

The Potential of English for Social Purposes and Cooperation for Emergency Remote Language Teaching

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-90
Author(s):  
Francisco Javier Palacios-Hidalgo ◽  
Cristina A. Huertas-Abril
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Material Design ◽  
Language Teacher Education ◽  
Responsive Materials ◽  
Socially Responsive ◽  
Teachers Training

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to explore new practices in language teacher education. English for Social Purposes and Cooperation, a socially-responsive and technology-friendly approach to English language learning, may help students around the world continue learning from home. This chapter analyzes the perceptions of a group of pre-service teachers after designing socially responsive materials specially created for the COVID-19 crisis. Action research is employed to improve teacher educators' activity and pre-service teachers' training, and a mixed-method approach based on grounded theory and content analysis is performed. Findings show that the experience has provided participants with meaningful examples of material design. This encourages teacher educators to include the proposed approach in their teaching and reveals the need for specific training in material design. Results may help prove the potential of action research for improving the teaching practice.

scholarly journals Action research’s instructional impacts: Article review

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Eyob Milkias
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Classroom Practices ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Practical Experiences ◽  
Review Model ◽  
Research Impacts

The main intention of this paper was reviewing action research (AR) related academic articles and investigating the impacts of AR on classroom practices. In detail, it has addressed the benefits of AR for teachers and the influences of conducting AR on teachers’ classroom practices. Moreover, the reviewer has examined the practices of conducting AR in Ethiopia. The reviewer has used and followed the interrelated steps of reviewing research literature. He has identified, downloaded, gathered, evaluated and selected original and frequently cited relevant research articles from diverse journals. It was structured and organised by using thematic literature review model. This article review may help student-teachers, teacher-educators and instructional supervisors to get awareness about the impacts of conducting AR. AR improves the classroom practices of teachers, empowers them, and enhances their self-confidence, problem solving and leadership ability. The teachers’ practical experiences on engaging and conducting AR in Ethiopian context is not that much sufficient. Keywords: Action research, impacts and instructional practices.

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