Investigating preservice classroom teachers’ practices and views about teaching physical education lessons: An exploratory case study

Focusing on preservice classroom teachers (PCTs) with a physical education (PE) specialization, this exploratory case study aimed at investigating the teaching quality in the lessons offered by these teachers during their field placement, as well as examining their views about teaching PE. Toward this end, seven volunteer female PCTs studying at a national university in Cyprus were recruited; all had attended three PE specialization courses before their field placement. Data were gathered through systematic observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. The quantitative data were analysed using SPSS and the qualitative data using case and cross-case analysis. These analyses suggested that the PCTs could effectively employ classroom and time management as well as skill demonstration; they could also provide quality student practice. In contrast, task progression, accountability of student practice, and task explicitness appeared to be more challenging for them to successfully enact. Interestingly, their lesson plans foreshadowed how effectively most of the examined practices would be employed by the PCTs. This study contributes a new understanding of PCTs’ PE teaching during field placement and their views thereof. The implications of the findings for PCTs’ education are discussed.

Preservice Teachers Taking Action: Enacting Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Theories in an After-School Literacy Club Field Experience

This article examines the teaching practices and pedagogical theories preservice teachers (PSTs) enacted in a newly designed after-school literacy club field placement. We draw from sociocultural and activity theories to analyze data collected in the qualitative study that examined the following research questions: (1) What teaching practices do PSTs enact in an after-school literacy club field placement? (2) What pedagogical theories guide their choices about which teaching practices they enact in the after-school literacy club field placement? and (3) In what ways does this field placement afford and constrain PSTs’ appropriation of these practices and theories? Findings consider three ways that the field experience afforded—and at times also constrained—the opportunities made available for PSTs to enact teaching practices and pedagogical theories related to their learning in coursework including learning from and with fellow PSTs, developing ownership over curriculum, and making connections to university coursework.

Lon Fuller: A Progenitor of the Pedagogy of Skills?

This essay examines Professor Fuller’s Mediation—Its Forms and Functions article for passages that describe a number of the specific skills that students learn in law school mediation courses today and that reflect his recognition of, and admiration for, their essentiality. Professor Fuller passed away in 1978, long before the legal academy’s reorientation toward a pedagogy of skills. Influenced by the MacCrate and Carnegie Reports and Roy Stuckey’s Best Practices and by the recommendations of its Task Force on the Future of Legal Education, the American Bar Association (ABA) approved Standard 303 in 2014, pursuant to which law schools must offer a curriculum that requires each student to satisfactorily complete six credit hours of experiential course(s) in the form of a simulation course, a law clinic, or a field placement that “integrate(s) doctrine, theory, skills, and legal ethics, and [that] engage[s] students in performance of … professional skills. …” (ABA Standard 303(a)(3)(i), 2017–18)....

Opening Thirdspace: Cultivating critical geographies in art teacher education

Pre-service teachers new to a field placement need the opportunity to orient themselves in relation to their larger teaching contexts and configure geographies that resonate with the lives of their students. Soja’s Thirdspace offers a lens through which teachers might explore place multi-dimensionally. Building upon a previous arts-based educational research study assessing the potential of arts-based inquiry for supporting pre-service teachers in exploring their teaching contexts, this study, through a second curricular iteration, focused explicitly on art pre-service teachers’ critical geographic analysis, in the form of Thirdspace. In mapping their school zones, pre-service teachers began to identify illusory impressions and conceptions of students, schools and communities and then began to deconstruct them. Such Thirdspace journeys offer space for pre-service teachers to hone their perceptions, to retrain their gazes to see their students’ physical and lived worlds in their complexity and plurality, and to re-imagine the relation between place and pedagogy.

The Use of Self

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of the use of self, a process of developing self-knowledge that enables social workers to use their personal characteristics and experiences to enhance their work with clients. The social work profession requires that practitioners attend to drawing reflectively on the “self” in organizing their practices. Various methods are presented to help social workers realize how personal characteristics can influence their practice in both positive and negative ways. By learning to capitalize on their strengths, social workers can develop a more effective relationship-development style. Several case vignettes from students in their field placement are used to illustrate that process.

Challenges in adapting field placement during a pandemic: A Jamaican perspective

The field experience component of social work training had to be quickly adjusted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and various factors guided this process. This short essay briefly explores how information and technology, home visits, insurance and liability, and licensing and regulation have impacted the adjustment of social work field placements in Jamaica during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights the different methods of field placements that have been used in light of the challenges.

When Internships Goes Virtual

In early 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic ravaged countries across the world, causing them to essentially shut down. Communities had to retreat indoors and socially distance from one another. One aspect of life that drastically changed was schooling. It moved from traditional face-to-face spaces to online digital platforms. Students, faculty, and staff across all levels of schooling shifted to teaching and learning vis-a-vis online digital platforms. Those of us connected to the training of the next generation of teachers navigated through the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic at the preschool to post-secondary levels as well. This chapter focuses on the authors' experiences as a Black university supervisor and as a Black field placement coordinator.