Language Students' Training as Future Teachers

The purpose of the chapter is to show to what extent university-based teacher training programs reflect the new educational standards required by the reform applied to the Romanian higher education system. Specifically, it attempts to analyze the relevance of the curriculum that forms the basis of the language teachers' preparation focusing on its content, structure, and educational aims and purposes. It also tries to highlight the degree to which such programs meet not only learners' needs but also the ones of today's society. Last but not least, the study aims to identify what elements resulted from the Romanian educational reform could be useful for the researchers interested in the field of initial language teacher training.

Teachers' Perspectives Using the Instructional Quality Assessment as a Professional Development Tool

This chapter will provide readers with an overview of professional development created and enacted to support teachers' selection and implementation of cognitively demanding tasks using the Instructional Quality Assessment as the professional development tool. This case study seeks to give voice to mathematics teachers in third through eighth grades who participated in the professional development as they share their perspectives on using the instructional quality assessment rubrics and structure of professional development. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the structure of the professional development, and share the aspects of the professional development the teachers identified as supportive or a hindrance when planning and implementing tasks in their mathematics classrooms. With this information, the article concludes by discussing ideas for future professional development aimed at providing teachers with instructional practices to incorporate into classrooms.

Development or Training

As a testing ground for theory and practice transition, teaching practice is a key element of teacher training process. One way to ensure that teacher candidates are acquiring and practicing critical teaching skills is to provide feedback through reflective practice during the student teaching. However, it should be beyond the helpful prescriptions in order for student teachers to develop their own teaching philosophies. For this reason, this study focuses on the growing trend toward cooperative models of student teaching supervision: the clinical supervision model (CSM). The study reports on the student teachers' perceptions on professional development with regard to the feedback they receive (direct or indirect). Twelve ELT student teachers contributed to the study and the data was collected via an open-ended and a closed-ended questionnaire, researchers' field-notes and video-taped reflection sessions. The data analysis revealed that although having varying degrees of abstraction, most of the student teachers had positive perceptions regarding indirect feedback during CSM.

Critical Friends Group and Its Impact on Teachers and the Learning Process

This chapter investigates the perceptions, experiences and learning of native and non-native EFL teachers towards in-service teacher education (INSET) through critical friend group (CFG) in a language preparatory program, at a private high school in the western part of Turkey. Specifically, the study identifies the specific aspects of CFG which might enhance teacher-learning and finally, better understand their perceptions towards reflective practice. The participants were four EFL teachers offering English lessons in a preparatory class at the high school. Data were collected through interviews, video recordings, and reflective essays. The findings revealed that participating in CFG has promoted teacher-learning through collaboration as it became the vehicle that facilitated teachers to alter their classroom practices, which in return, supported the learning process in their classrooms.

Exploring Prospective EFL Teachers' Beliefs About Teachers and Teaching Through Metaphor Analysis

This study aimed to explore prospective EFL teachers' metaphors of “teachers, teaching and being a prospective EFL teacher” at the beginning and the end of a ten-week practicum course. A total of 110 Turkish prospective EFL teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation forms. Results lead to three major conclusions. First, the participants' prior beliefs about the role of an EFL teacher and teaching were affected by their previous experiences as language learners. Second, although the content analysis of the metaphors revealed a limited change throughout the practicum experience, the analysis of the interviews showed the dynamic nature of beliefs held by the prospective teachers. Finally, data analysis of the interviews revealed that the variation in beliefs and practices mainly derived from individual experiences with mentoring practices of the cooperating teachers and the socio-professional context of the practicum school.

A Multimedia Professional Development Process for Teacher Education and Professional Development

In this updated chapter, the authors introduce a multimedia professional development process that can be used to support teacher candidates or inservice teachers' needs. The multimedia process has three key components: 1) teachers learn new evidence-based practices using multimedia vignettes including modeling videos; 2) teachers receive customizable curriculum materials to use during daily instruction; and 3) teachers receive data-driven coaching and personalized supports for making needed improvements or enhancements. The chapter details research backing each component of the process and includes resources for implementation.

Creating Sustainable Project-Based Learning Through Teacher Professional Development

This chapter highlights the effectiveness of teacher professional development to expand and support the implementation of project-based learning. Teacher professional development is essential for the growth of teacher content comprehension in the educational environment, confidence, and refining instructional learning segments. The purpose was to increase the capacity and implementation of project-based learning through teacher professional development that afforded distinctive methods in which teachers acted as a team with a variety of learning tasks, assessments, tools and materials. Consideration was given to educational collaboration and support, the influence of teacher mindset and self-certitude, resource impediments, and improving student participation. The results denoted valuable inferences of how professional development for teachers could guide the function of project- based learning in the learning environment.

The Comparison of Parents' Perceptions of Early Educators' Real and Ideal Personality and Optimism

Given the importance of personality traits and optimism of early childhood educators in their work with children, this research was aimed at comparing their actual and ideal personality traits and optimism from the perspective of the parents. The study involved 295 parents from three counties of the Republic of Croatia. Parents evaluated the real and ideal personality traits and the optimism of 41 early childhood educators from the six kindergartens their children were enrolled. Two questionnaires were applied: TIPI for measuring the personality traits and the LOT-R for measuring optimism. Parents have rated the real and ideal educators' personality traits and optimism at very high levels. Testing the significance of differences, the results revealed that there are significant differences between the realistic and ideal image of educators' personality and optimism. In other words, ideal educators are considerably more extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, more emotionally stable, more open and more optimistic than their profiles based on realistic ratings.

Teacher Satisfaction, Research Engagement, and the Conceptualization of Research From In-Service English Teachers' Perspectives

This chapter reports a mixed-methods study that aimed to explore in-service English teachers' job satisfaction and research engagement in Turkey and reveal whether these two constructs are related. The study also attempted to understand reasons behind the frequency of teacher research engagement. The data were collected from 2,476 teachers through an online questionnaire. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics, and Pearson's correlations; the qualitative data were analysed through content analysis. Most of the participants were satisfied with being teachers but were not satisfied with their teaching practices. Positive correlation was found between reading research, doing research, and job satisfaction. The frequencies of doing research and reading research were not in agreement, in that participants reported to do research more frequently than they read research. Participants equated doing research with studying English. This shows that most in-service English teachers are not aware of the construct teacher as a researcher.

Prospective EFL Teachers' Perceptions of Using CALL in the Classroom

The study focuses on prospective English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perspectives on the use of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) resources in teaching English as a foreign language context. One hundred and six prospective EFL teachers enrolled in a teacher education program participated in the study, completed a survey on the perceived used of CALL in a classroom, and attended semi-structured face-to-face interviews with the researchers. Thus, the study aimed to identify the prospective EFL teachers' perceptions of their existing skills to integrate CALL into the future professional practices. The common perceptions and strategies of the prospective EFL teachers to use and integrate CALL into the language classes were examined and reported. In addition, pre-service teachers' perceived benefits and challenges of using CALL in EFL teaching contexts will be addressed from the participants' perspectives. Finally, the study provides implications for further research in addition to recommendations for EFL teacher education programs.