Creating a dialogic space for prospective teacher critical reflection and transformative learning

This study aims to examine mathematics prospective teachers’ critical thinking skills at mathematics education program, Medan State University. This research is intended to contribute to the program to improve the professionalism of prospective mathematics teachers in critical thinking, one of the important skills in the 21st century. The results of this study will be the basis for further action in developing a learning models with reference to the current status of math prospective teachers’ critical thinking skills. In this study, data analysis was carried out through quantitative analysis. The Watson and Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal in the Indonesian version was administered for data collection. Data was collected from 165 prospective teachers during the first semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. The results showed that prospective teachers’ critical thinking grades are in average level. Therefore, further studies must be carried out to identify and overcome deficiencies, to enhance critical thinking in math prospective teacher students.

The training of teachers has traditionally been connected with the transmission of the subject matter and the lesson techniques, and in most instances, it was believed to regard the delivery of the subject as opposed to the general growth of the teacher as a reflective and adaptable worker. However, due to dynamism of education now that is characterized by technology and different classes and transformation of expectations of the society, there is the need to revisit the traditional models of teacher education. The paper shall also focus on the way the traditional approaches to teacher preparation have shifted to a more transformative approach that is aimed at critical thinking, reflective learning and student-centered pedagogy. The current paper aims at discussing how the contemporary teacher education system can be altered to embrace the experiential learning, collaboration learning and reflective practice in an attempt to equip future teachers to be better equipped in addressing the complex classroom realities. It underlines the importance of the teacher building that implies not only the knowledge of subject matter but also the possibility to establish inclusive learning environment, address the needs of diverse learners, and stimulate critical thinking among students. It is a paper founded on the existing theoretical perspectives on the field of teacher education, teacher development, and transformative learning as a means of analyzing the new trends in teacher education. In addition, the research article discusses the responsiveness and responsiveness of educators through creative pedagogical practices such as project-based learning, mentorship models, technology-enhanced teaching practices, among others. The importance of ongoing professional learning as well as ethical responsibility and development of reflective teaching identities is also highlighted. Teacher education institutions have the opportunity to design courses that promote creativity, questioning, and professional responsibility in future teachers by exceeding the conventional delivery of lectures. The results indicate that teacher preparation transformation must be systematic in terms of curriculum design, assessment procedures and institutional support mechanisms. Globalization of learning between schools and universities, adding hands-on experiences of learning, and promoting critical thinking are also key towards equipping teachers with the knowledge of how to manage modern learning challenges. Finally, the transformation of teacher preparation through transformative practice can be used to help generate more effective teaching, student learning outcomes, and long-term educational development.

There is compelling evidence on the effectiveness of bibliotherapy for facilitating one’s development. Arguably, in teacher education, bibliotherapy has been shown to facilitate prospective teachers’ professional development. However, teacher educators may experience difficulties in finding relevant reading to stimulate prospective teachers’ identification process, which is essential if the application of pedagogical bibliotherapy is to be successful. This study is situated in a mathematics education course for prospective elementary school teachers and explores the features of relevant pedagogical reading via analysis of four prospective elementary school teachers’ identification processes with two case descriptions. The identification here relates to the reading of the so-called true stories; prospective teachers read stories of other prospective teachers from the same teacher education context. We outline the recommendations for the selection of reading material when applying pedagogical bibliotherapy in order to assist prospective teachers’ professional development.

Features of two lesson study contexts, one with prospective secondary teachers engaged in microteaching lesson study and one with prospective elementary teachers engaged in field experiences, were investigated for providing US prospective teachers with opportunities for growth as teachers of mathematics. In both contexts, the prospective teachers (PTs) exposed their knowledge, beliefs and practices to the scrutiny of peers and other experts, developing and reconsidering their thinking and practices through the shared teaching experiences. Similarities and differences in features of the two contexts are discussed with respect to PT learning. Similarities included the importance of negotiation during teaching cycles as catalysts for PT learning, the value of the cooperative nature of the experiences for sharing varying ideas and perspectives among PTs, the merits of overarching student learning goals for PT lesson planning, and the contributions of the group products (written or oral reports of the lesson study) to the learnercenteredness of the experiences. Differences influencing prospective teacher learning included the extent of focus on mathematics knowledge, extent of focus on classroom processes and management, use of videotaped lessons as part of formative feedback, and participation of knowledgeable advisors during or at the end of the cycles.

The authors of National Science Education Standards consider equitable science education prerequisite to a scientifically literate society (National Research Council, 1996). Issues of equity and teaching, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills are inherent in discussions about science education reform (National Research Council, 1996; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). Refocusing the goals of K-12 science education increases the need for science teachers to acquire more equitable teaching strategies. Gender studies in science education have focused on the sociocultural variables affecting students' subject choices (Eccles, 1989), intervention programs (Kahle & Meece, 1994), exemplary science teachers (Tobin & Fraser, 1987, 1990), teachers' public gender role (Tobin, Kahle, & Fraser, 1990), and students' views about science (Kahle & Meece, 1994). Recent reports on gender indicate that the Sputnik-era analysis of teaching may be inadequate for problems undermining adolescent girls' education (Eder, Evans, & Parker, 1995; Greenberg-Lake, 1994; Harris & Associates, 1993; Orenstein, 1994; Pipher, 1994; Schultz, 1991; Wellesley Center for Research on Women, 1992). For over two decades, researchers have studied the masculine image of science and its effect on recruitment and retention of women and girls into science, engineering, and technology fields. Keller (1992) argues that the image of science cannot change without challenging traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity. An explanation for science teaching's failure to reach girls is that many preservice science teacher education programs do not address the interwoven concepts of gender and science and how students' and teachers' different understandings of gender and science may affect their attitudes, beliefs, classroom behaviors, and expectations. Teachers' unconscious acceptance of gender-role stereotypes in science may influence their behaviors and teaching practices. Girls may receive fewer opportunities than boys to answer questions, use science equipment, and participate in science activities. Teachers may perceive boys' work to be more important than girls' work (Kahle & Meece, 1994). Teacher behaviors and practices reinforce the concept that science is a subject in which boys participate successfully more often than girls do. Kennedy (1990) suggests that successful inservice programs addressing changes in teachers' classroom practices should force them to question their experiences and to question the beliefs that are based on those experiences. Teacher education faculty may teach equity in education, but when one considers who takes and teaches science at tertiary-level institutions, universities are poor examples of equity in educational settings (Crozier & Menter, 1993; Scantlebury, 1994). Gender blindness does not begin when teachers enter their own classrooms. Martin (1991) challenges science educators to take responsibility for incorporating discussions about gender equity into science education. Many teachers are gender blind, believing that the equity issues in science teaching are resolved. Prospective teachers must consider how subtle and pervasive attitudes toward gender blindness may affect their classroom practices. Teacher education students have strong ideas about teachers and teaching from years of observation (Dunkin, Precians, & Nettle, 1994; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1987). Although Dunkin et al. (1994) imply that formal teacher education programs can influence preservice teachers' concepts about teaching, Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1987) argue that it is difficult for student teachers to critique what occurs in classrooms when they teach or in the classrooms of the teachers they observe. Preservice teachers often hold strong traditional attitudes toward gender-role stereotypes (Scantlebury, 1990). Field experiences in schools and conservative entities replicating and reinforcing traditional gender-role stereotypes may reinforce prospective teachers' stereotypic attitudes. …

The Iceberg Design framework has been utilized to represent the progression of students’ mathematical understanding, moving from informal, contextually grounded reasoning toward formal mathematical abstraction. This study investigates how prospective mathematics teachers develop Iceberg Designs within the Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) framework, a model that enhances contextual learning and supports mathematical literacy. Thirty prospective mathematics teachers from Universitas Negeri Surabaya participated in this qualitative study, collaboratively designing Iceberg models as part of their coursework. Data from document analysis, interviews, and observations were evaluated using content analysis, the research evaluated the depth and coherence of their designs across four key components: situational contexts which evaluates the relevance and variety of real-world situations, model-of representations which examines the assistance of mathematical representation to connect the context into mathematical concept, model-for abstractions which assess the use of mathematical models toward formalization, and formal mathematical concepts which assess the mathematical ideas being explicitly involved. The findings reveal significant variation in the quality and completeness of the Iceberg Designs. Models for equivalent ratios and quadratic equations exhibited strong integration, using multiple, varied contexts to bridge situational and formal mathematical understanding effectively. Conversely, designs for fraction multiplication and quadrilateral area conservation were often surface level, relying on a single, underdeveloped context that hindered abstraction. Importantly, the study underscores the potential of Iceberg Designs to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in fostering critical thinking, practical problem-solving, and meaningful contextual learning for high quality of education (SDG 4) and decent work for sustainable economic growth (SDG 8). These insights indicate the need for deeper integration of RME principles in teacher education and curriculum development through sustained investment in this area.

This study aimed to describe the self-regulated learning skills of prospective teachers studying at a public university in Istanbul and reveal their differences in relation to the components of these skills, namely motivation and taking action to learn, planning and goal-setting, strategy use and evaluation, and attachment in learning, as well as other variables, including their major, type of high school completed, age, gender, socioeconomic level and parents’ education level. It was also investigated whether there was a relationship between the participants’ self-regulated learning skills and their major and grade levels. The screening model was used in the research. The sample consisted of students studying at a public university in Istanbul in the 2018-2019 academic year and selected using the simple random sampling method. The participants comprised 926 first-, second-, third- and fourth-grade students attending the departments of computer education and instructional technology, classroom teaching, preschool teaching, mathematics teaching, science teaching, guidance and psychological counseling, Turkish language teaching, social studies teaching, special education, English language teaching, French language teaching, and German language teaching. The Self-Regulatory Learning Skills Scale (SRLSS) and a personal information form were used as the data collection tools. The findings of the research revealed that the prospective teachers had high scores in the subscales of SRLSS and the overall scale. It was concluded that the prospective science teachers had higher scores in planning and goal-setting than the students attending all other programs except for mathematics teaching. Furthermore, the scores of female prospective teachers in all subscales were higher than those of the male participants. Considering the type of high school, the participants that had completed basic high school scored higher in strategy use and evaluation compared to those that had finished other types of high school. When the prospective teachers’ self-regulated learning skills were analyzed according to their parents' education level, no significant difference was found. Keywords: self-regulated learning, prospective teachers, teacher education.

Science teacher education literature has emphasized the importance of prospective teachers’ prior knowledge of their K-12 experiences as a key factor influencing their professional development as future science teachers. The purpose of the study was to identify the teaching practices in prospective teachers’ prior knowledge of science instruction before their enrollment in a science teaching methods course. Constructs from the practice-based theory of teaching, reform-based science instruction, and the pedagogy of poverty framework collectively served as the conceptual lens to focus on teaching practices. Three-hundred and sixty-one prospective teachers took part in this qualitative study. Visual (drawings) and written (narratives) served as the data and thematic analysis was used to identify and categorize teaching practices. The predominant teaching practices were framed by the pedagogy of poverty (68.4%) (giving information and directions). Other teaching practices were framed by a combination of teaching practices (pedagogy of poverty and core science teaching practices) (28.0%) (giving information and directions, engaging students in investigations, and facilitating classroom discourse), and teaching practices that reflected only core science teaching practices (8.0%) (engaging students in investigations and facilitating classroom discourse). Prospective teachers in this study had identified and accepted as knowledge-for-practice from their K-12 experiences a set of limited teaching practices. The findings indicated that prospective teachers’ prior knowledge of science instruction reflected the inclusion and an over reliance on specific teaching practices that contradicted or limited current reforms in science education and imply that they are yet to experience science instruction as stipulated by the current reforms.

The previous chief editor of the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, Professor Barbara Jaworski, often commented that each issue of the journal seems to have its own theme or common thread, even though the articles are published more or less in the order that they are ready for publication. It is intriguing to contemplate the commonalities that seem to link together otherwise randomly written articles. This issue of the journal includes four articles that happen to be now ready for publication. The first article, by Michelle Chamberlin, Jeff Farmer and Jodie Novak, titled Teachers’ perceptions of assessing their mathematical knowledge in a professional development course, addresses a key topic in mathematics teacher education that of mathematical content knowledge. Normally teacher educators shy away from assessing the mathematical knowledge and understandings of practising teachers with whom they work, but these authors overcome the usual concerns by including specific well-designed assessments of mathematics as part of a teacher professional learning experience. The examples they chose were designed so that failure would not have been a reflection on the teachers’ past learning, thereby reducing some of the obvious threats that such assessments create. Their finding was that the assessment and the emphasis on mathematical knowledge enhanced the teacher professional learning, and was recognised as such by the teachers. The second article, by Blake Peterson and Steven Williams, titled Learning mathematics for teaching in the student teaching experience: Two contrasting cases, examines the relationship between a supervising teacher and prospective teachers during student teaching or practical placements. One of the case studies is about a restricted range of supporting actions that perhaps reflected the perspective of the supervising teacher, and the other case study describes a set of productive experiences that clearly lay the foundation for rich, reflective learning. The implication is that the supervising teacher matters, and that the quality of the student teaching placement is directly connected to immediate opportunities for teacher professional learning. The third article, by Peter Grootenboer, titled Mathematical belief change in prospective primary teachers reports a prospective teacher program that focused on facilitating

<p style="text-align:justify">Investigating critical incidents is one way to assist prospective teachers in expressing any developmental stage when accomplishing the teaching practice program. It is a significant component of reflective teaching in an educational framework related to continuing professional development (CPD), particularly self-directed learning. This study aims at exploring EFL prospective teachers’ field experience in cultivating their teaching competence through a critical incident analysis. A qualitative approach was applied. Three participants with different levels of English proficiency took part in this study by sharing their experiences through participating in and answering an interview and an opinionnaire. To analyze the data from the instruments, this study used descriptive analysis and coding techniques respectively. Results indicate that both negative and positive critical incidents contribute to the participants’ teaching development. The incidents support the learning process towards becoming a teacher and assist shaping their awareness of teacher identity. Further, the result of this study reveals that English proficiency level seems to take part in the strategy used for identifying critical incidents. This study implies that critical incidents provide a chance for prospective teachers to be more reflective. Thus, teacher education program stakeholders need to support critical incident analysis by giving relevant assignments while they are doing teaching practice, which in turn builds professional development in the context of prospective teachers.</p>

This study is driven by a dual objective. Firstly, it aims to scrutinize the trajectory of self-efficacy beliefs among prospective science teachers before and after their participation in the Teaching Practicum Course which was conducted for 14 weeks. To accomplish this, 201 senior prospective teachers were stratified into low and high self-efficacy cohorts based on their pre-course overall self-efficacy and sub dimensions of self-efficacy (i.e., efficacy for student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management) assessments. Subsequently, a mixed between-within-subjects ANOVA was employed to ascertain whether significant differences existed between these groups, utilizing post-course self-efficacy scores. Secondly, this study attempts to explore the factors influencing prospective teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs within the scope of self-efficacy sources. To this end, predictor variables such as the number of courses taught by prospective teachers, class sizes, adequacy of school resources, the level of mentorship received, and initial efficacy levels were incorporated, and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. The findings revealed divergent trajectories in the self-efficacy alterations of low and high self-efficacy groups. Furthermore, it was found that variables such as initial efficacy levels, effective mentoring, and adequacy of school resources significantly explained shifts in self-efficacy. These findings are discussed within the context of related literature.

What does the teacher do?: Constructivist pedagogies and prospective teachers’ beliefs about the role of a teacher

This study was conducted to reveal the educational beliefs of prospective physical education and sports teachers, who receive education at the higher education level in Turkey, according to dependent and independent variables. Within this scope, the “Educational Belief Scale” was used to collect the data from 359 prospective teachers. The data collected from the sample were first analyzed by SPSS 22.0 package software. In the correlation analysis, it was observed that the “Educational Beliefs Scale” and the progressivism subscale were correlated very strongly and positively, which was the strongest correlation in the analysis (r = 0.918; p < 0.05). In the regression analysis, four different model structures were created, where it was determined that the subscale with the highest prediction power for the “Educational Beliefs Scale” was the progressivism subscale that predicted 84% of the variance of the “Educational Beliefs Scale” (R2 = 0.840). In conclusion, it was discovered that the prospective teachers did not internalize the fundamentalism, which is included in the traditional educational philosophy. Significant responsibilities fall on the shoulders of academics and decision-makers to enable prospective teachers to save the valuable sections of basic information and values of the past and transfer them to new generations while approaching teaching with a perspective that promotes the potential of new generations in building a better civilization upon the achievements of past generations.

The study aims to develop critical thinking skills among prospective teachers. The study was experimental in nature; quasi experimental approach was used to conduct the study. The population of the study was prospective teachers studying at master level. Sample of the study was 73 prospective teachers enrolled in the educational research course in two groups. The first was labeled as the control group, while one was labeled as the experimental group. To assess the critical thinking skills of prospective teachers test was developed by the research using guidelines of Watson and Glaser test. Test was consisted of five dimensions i.e. analyzing, assumptions, deduction, and inference and interpreting information. Cronbach's alpha determined the test's reliability to be 0.80. Intervention was consisted of 10 lessons related to educational research course. The prospective teachers performed well in analyzing, Assumptions, deduction and overall CTS in post-test as compare to pre-test. There was statistically noteworthy the variation between the or before as well as post-test grades of Inference and interpreting. The critical thinking skills are essential element to compete 21st century challenges. Prospective teachers have to face many educational challenges to improve students learning, it is necessary that they should be prepared with CTS either to infuse through separate curriculum or embed with existing curriculum.

This study explores the nature of learning that transforms established frames of reference for those who engage in it. It also explores the nature of pedagogy that is likely to foster this transformative learning. It is based on the explorations of the teacher-researcher as she reflects on the learning experiences of some of her students and on her own teaching practice. The teacher-researcher's reflections emanate from her experiences teaching high school English to Years 10 and 11 students within a co-educational school in Sydney. Through engaging in hermeneutic phenomenological research, the teacher-researcher explores the types of learning contexts and pedagogical approaches that may be effective in fostering transformative learning. The literature review highlights the fact that explorations of the nature of transformative learning and transformative pedagogy have occurred almost exclusively within the domain of adult education and many researchers have expressed the view that this is a uniquely adult phenomenon. In exploring the transformative learning experiences of students between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, this study calls into question the view that only adults may experience transformative learning. It also raises awareness about the significance of transformative pedagogy in a high school context. The study highlights a number of pedagogical practices that are potentially transformative and concludes that transformative learning is most effectively fostered through relational forms of knowing emerging in dialogical learning contexts. Critical reflection is seen as being central to transformative learning and the importance of both affective and cognitive dimensions in the process of critical reflection is emphasised. Within a high school English context, the value of introducing students to a range of texts that may expose them to alternative ways of seeing is highlighted. The study demonstrates that integral to transformative pedagogy is the importance of providing students with both challenging learning experiences and with scaffolds designed to equip them to meet these challenges. The personally transformative nature of engaging in teacher-research is also highlighted and this is seen to have implications for models of staff professional development within schools. Reference is made to the limitations of the study, including those associated with being a teacher-researcher. As with other phenomenological studies, the findings do not purport to have direct and specific relevance to other contexts, although they may prove interesting to others interested in fostering transformative learning through transformative pedagogy.