English

As indicated by the Warnock Report, even 40 years ago, the necessity of responding to different student abilities and needs in school and thus the importance of adequate adaption of a regular curriculum regarding differentiation and personalization had already been described. Due to changes in policy and legislative frameworks, more and more students with special educational needs (SEN) attend regular education. However, placing the students with SEN within mainstream classrooms does not automatically lead to changes in teaching practices in these classrooms. In line with this, it would be interesting to know the way in which and to what extent students in inclusive classes perceive established inclusive practices, such as differentiation and personalization. Therefore, data from 47 inclusive classes from North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) were collected. In total, 872 primary school students (grade 4; ages 9–11 years) were asked to rate how frequently their class teachers used inclusive instructional practices (personalization and differentiation) using the Inclusive Classroom Practices Scale (ITPS). In addition to students, teachers were also asked to rate their own teaching practices in general and then in addition for each student separately. As differentiated instruction and multifaceted teaching practices are considered to be measures for meeting the needs of children with different educational needs, results that show a high use of these approaches were expected. Descriptive results indicate a consistent homogeneous understanding of prevailing inclusive teaching practices, which could be characterized by existing, but not intensive implementation, of inclusive practices. Differences regarding students' gender, migrant background, or SEN were not found for the students' ratings of teachers' inclusive practices or the teachers' self-ratings group. Moreover, the teachers' student-specific ratings indicate that teachers did not strongly differentiate or personalize with a focus on students' characteristics. A small overlap between teachers' general ratings of their own inclusive teaching practices and students' individual ratings was found. The results of the current study provide insights into actual inclusive teaching practices in German inclusive classrooms and make it possible to address the need for action and inclusive interventions.

PurposeThere is little research into how teachers think about and teach creative writing and its redrafting and how this might differ depending upon the age of the pupils being taught. This paper aims to compare the creative writing conceptualisations and practices of primary school teachers (5–11-year olds) and secondary school teachers (11–18-year-olds) in England through a qualitative survey. This comparison enables to think about the influence of policy on creative writing in primary and secondary schools as well as what professional development could look like for these teachers to improve the teaching of creative writing.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative survey exploring the creative writing and redrafting pedagogies and conceptualisations was responded to by primary school teachers (n = 18) and secondary school teachers (n = 19). Taking an ecological view of creative writing and teacher identity, the authors undertake a comparative analysis of the survey data using the 5A’s theory of creativity (Glaveanu, 2013) and a view of professional identity existing within “landscapes of practice” (Wenger-Trayner, Wenger-Trayner, 2015). This enables to illuminate how and why creative writing is contextually afforded, or otherwise, in primary and secondary landscapes of practice.FindingsThis analysis demonstrates how the redrafting of creative writing is marginalised in both landscapes of practice and how redrafting is largely conceptualised as a technical rather than critical or creative action. The authors show how teachers, particularly in primary school, aim for their pupils to produce “products” rather than engaging in the “process” of creative writing. This analysis also shows that whilst creative writing is overall more marginalised in the secondary school landscape, it is often taught through process approaches. In both landscapes of practice, the re-drafting of creative writing is largely taught through product approaches.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is potentially skewed by the fact that we recruited our participants through networks relating the teaching of English, including creative writing. What is worrying about this limitation, however, is that the picture of creative writing in schools in England probably leans more to a product approach than the picture this research has uncovered.Practical implicationsProfessional development for teachers in both landscapes is needed in relation to pedagogical actions for creative writing and its redrafting. Some of the key differences we have outlined in conceptualisations and practices between primary and secondary schools landscapes, notably the overuse of product-based teaching actions in primary landscapes, and some of the differences we have outlined within discrete landscapes of practice, notably how some primary school teachers feel more confident to challenge the product-based approach, with one conceptualising redrafting as “creative”, indicate that professional development should involve teachers working across schools.Social implicationsPolicy needs to be reformed to move away from the technicist view of creative writing held in both landscapes of practice. Linked to this, the way creative writing is assessed as a product in secondary schools needs to change – the re-introduction of portfolio-based coursework (Bishop, 1990) would provide the affordance of redrafting as an action central to creative writing processes.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a rare piece of research which compares primary and secondary school teachers’ approaches to teaching creative writing. It shows that primary school teachers can be formulaic in the way they teach creative writing, using product approaches. However, in secondary schools the picture is different: teachers, particularly those, who are writers themselves, give students more agency in redrafting and shaping their writing. This indicates how professional development should involve primary and secondary school teachers in dialogue with one another to cross boundaries of practice.

Teacher Preparation and Practice: Reconsideration of Assessment for Learning introduces the reader to a collection of thoughtful research-based works by authors that represent current thinking about assessment. What we know is that assessments are designed and implemented in educational settings (both university-based teacher preparation and school-based teacher practice in school classrooms) that serve to inform and guide teaching and learning. We also know that there is a dichotomy between assessment of learning (summative) and assessment for learning (formative) that is recognized on a global level in teacher preparation. Importantly, the reported research examines assessment and the application of professional judgment guided by assessment for learning in contrast to the more normalizing assessment of learning that currently pervades the nature of assessment in teacher preparation and practice. There is a need in the “work of teaching” for assessments that focus on cultural competence and relational sensitivity, communication skills, and the combination of rigor and imagination fundamental to the teaching and learning practices in classrooms. Each chapter focuses on assessment and the preparation and practice of teachers who will enter classrooms to instruct the next generation of students. Chapter One opens the book with a focus on assessment and its relationship to teaching and learning in the classroom, providing the reader with an introduction to the book and an understanding of the role assessment plays in teacher preparation and practice. The authors of Chapters Two–Nine present field-based research that examines assessment in teacher preparation and practice. Each chapter offers the reader an examination of assessment in teacher preparation and practice based on formal research that provides the reader with insight into how the research study was conducted as well as equally important, the findings and conclusions drawn with respect to assessment and teacher preparation and practice. Finally, Chapter Ten presents an epilogue that focuses on the future of assessment in teacher preparation and practice.

Effective teaching practices are crucial for fostering the intellectual development of learners, thereby making the evaluation of instructional practices during Teaching Practice (TP) sessions imperative. This study aims to investigate primary and secondary school mentor teachers' perceptions about teaching practice assessment rubrics and their role as mentor teachers, all to enhance teaching practice coordination. Drawing from constructivist, social cognitive, situated learning, professional identity development, and critical pedagogy theories, a qualitative case study approach was employed within an interpretivist paradigm. Data were collected through focus group discussions from 77 secondary and primary school mentors during a teaching practice orientation workshop in the central region of Botswana. The analysis of data was thematic, revealing mentor teachers' perceptions of assessment rubrics, challenges faced, and readiness to supervise student teachers. Results indicate that while mentors perceive the rubrics as effective tools, challenges such as lack of clarity and workload burden exist. The study further recommends enhancing assessment rubric clarification, addressing workload issues, improving student teacher resource supports, promoting collaboration, as well as conducting further research on teaching practice coordination. Implementing these recommendations can enhance teaching practice effectiveness, better preparing aspiring teachers for future roles, and fostering a supportive learning environment.

Despite considerable expenditure by school systems on ICT in terms of hardware, software, and related professional development programs, the impact on classroom practice remains disappointing to many. Current models of teacher professional learning in ICT appear to have had minimal impact. Based in the interpretative paradigm, this thesis describes the experience of the participants in a unique professional development program in which students in Grades 3 and 4 mentored teachers in their school in the use of ICT. The study was undertaken in two schools in Melbourne, Australia, and involved the professional development of teachers in the use of digital cameras and related software. Following their initial training with the researcher in one school and a focus teacher in another, the children worked in pairs to conduct three semi-structured sessions with a teacher, mentoring them in the use of the technology. The children were also available to the teachers for further consultation or assistance. It was intended that the mentoring program would enhance teachers' knowledge of the technology and also their classroom practice. This thesis reports the benefits of student mentors in ICT as seen by teacher mentees involved in the project. In particular, the focus of this study is on the teachers' perceived effect of the student mentoring approach to professional development in relation to their skills and confidence with ICT, their classroom practice with ICT and their recognition of other values inherent in the program. Data were collected throughout the project in the form of surveys, interviews, observations and student and teacher journals. Using NVivo, these data were analysed into themes to ascertain teachers' reported benefits of the program in relation to their skills, confidence and classroom practice with ICT.;Findings of the project included the improvement in teachers' skills and confidence and an impact on their thinking and practices with technology in the classroom. As well as these intended outcomes, teachers also reported a greater knowledge of their personal learning preferences, which influenced the way they saw the children's learning and therefore their classroom practice. Child mentors flourished in the mentoring relationships, showing their prowess in mentoring teachers with ICT, with several surprising their teachers with their capabilities. Overall, the teachers were very positive about the mentoring experience and the influence it had on their confidence, skills and classroom practice. This study showed the potential impact of children as mentors of teachers in ICT, and offers a model for consideration by schools and school systems in the way in which they approach professional learning in ICT of their teachers.

Based on self-determination theory, this study explored how much secondary school teachers in public schools were motivated to work in their careers and how their motivation related to classroom practices. The study adopted a quantitative study design. A study recruited 70 secondary school teachers (male=36 and female=34) from different public schools who were randomly selected and involved. The questionnaire was administered to 70 teachers, and all the papers were returned positively. Teachers’ motivation was measured using the modified Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers (WTMST) (Fernet C. et al., 2008). The Teachers’ classroom practices were measured using an adapted vignette-based instrument, the Situations-in-School (SIS) Questionnaire (Alterman A. et al., 2019). The score for autonomy motivation was computed by averaging the subscale of intrinsic and identified motivation, and the score for controlling motivation was calculated by averaging the subscale of introjected and external motivation. The result indicates that, to a large extent, secondary school teachers are autonomously motivated to work in their careers. It also found that teachers’ autonomy motivation allied significantly with structure (need-supportive) and control (need-depriving) classroom practices. Controlling motivation and motivation are significantly related to control and chaos (need-depriving) classroom practices. The study findings are crucial to educational stakeholders in addressing teachers' challenges to boost their motivation, which positively relates to their classroom teaching and, in turn, can affect students' performance. Conclusively, any change in the educational structure that promotes teacher motivation should result in improved levels of classroom teaching.

This article concerns pedagogical practices of schools to meet objectives of the curriculum and provide learning experiences to the students. This article aims to explore teachers’ ways of carrying out classroom practices and to locate how the constructivist perspective could foster wider learning experiences of learners. We conducted an ethnographic field study - in one of the schools located in Ithaki Sub-metropolitan, Sunsari district – which involves a three-day visit to the school and continuous observation of a particular class to generate the data. Theoretically, this paper focuses on the constructivist perspective to understand the classroom practices of school teachers and locate them to conceptualize the school pedagogy. We highlight that the current school practice, the school teachers are adopting, is a traditionally dominant approach that strongly upholds “the jug to the mug concept” – the teacher as a jug that pours knowledge and information as a form of water to an empty mug as a student. We argue that teachers' traditionally based classroom practice is one of the responsible factors for not shifting Nepalese classroom practices into student-centered or reciprocal classroom practices that embrace the constructivist paradigm. This paper unveils teacher-student power-relations, which is fueling to promote the traditionally focused classroom practices that undermine the possibility of multiplicity in knowledge construction.

The aim of this study was to learn the opinion of the teacher candidates who study pedagogical formation in Karabuk University in 2016-2017 teaching session, as well as mentor teachers and coordinators who lead them during the teaching practices at schools. This research study is mainly based on qualitative techniques. Working group of this study is composed of 155 teacher candidates, 56 mentor teachers and 16 coordinators. Three open-ended questions were given to the teacher candidates, mentors and coordinators for collection of data. The data were evaluated as in the mean of content analysis. According to the findings, teacher candidates expressed that “mentor teachers and coordinators at schools of implementation had a positive and supportive attitude towards them” while some of the candidates were expressing that “mentor teachers are not supportive.” Mentor teachers and coordinators found teacher candidates’ attitudes positive and refined. Mentor teachers and coordinators mentioned negative references about teacher candidates. They said that teacher candidates didn’t use proper teaching methods, techniques and materials when the teacher candidates are teaching, and failed to manage and maintain classroom atmosphere and the intended lesson time. It is considerable that teacher candidates had also mentioned that “they were doing the same mistakes what their coordinators and teachers determined.” As a result, teaching practice schedules should be well arranged in the way of cooperation between the University and the National Ministry of education, which was suggested to the authorities in the Turkish Higher Education Board.

In this study relationships between preservice early childhood teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and their mentor teachers’ mentoring were examined. Quantitative research method was used in the study by the using multivariate data collections. The Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI) was administered to 96 pre-service teachers and mentor teachers. Time spent teaching and observing science was recorded also recorded by participants by the using time trackers. The Mentoring for Effective Science Teaching (MEST) instrument measured perceptions of the teachers’ mentoring activities, including modeling and feedback. Correlational analyses estimated the relationship between the preservice and mentor teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, beliefs and time spent teaching, and beliefs and modeling and feedback. The findings suggest that mentor teachers play an important role in the preparation of preservice teachers, and that this role is particularly true for those mentors with higher science teaching self-efficacy beliefs. It also showed that how teaching practices have significant roles while preparing future teachers. For teacher education program could be pay attention to teaching practices while giving a decision for choosing mentor teachers. For future researchers may also look at the different sections of mentoring practices and their impacts on preservice teacher’s teaching skills.

Funded by the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act, the Mustard Seed Project's major goal T91maoivti1ts was to train teachers to differentiate curricula for gifted students in the general education classroom. This study addressed the changes in classroom practices and the factors that influenced these changes. Changes were measured using the Classroom Instructional Practices Scale Johnsen, 1992). The sample included 1 urban and 5 rural sites, 8 principals, 74 teachers, mentor teachers, and 18 community representatives. Throughout the two years of implementation, majority of teachers at each site made changes. Changes in classroom practices and influencing factors, were determined from interviews, field notes, formal and informal observations, and a final survey. Participants cited staff-development activities, leadership, mentoring, resources, and project support as extremely beneficial.

Teaching practice is a compulsory, legislated component of initial teacher education programmes in South Africa. During this experience, preservice teachers engage with their mentor teachers. By exploring first-year students’ experiences with their mentor teachers during their first teaching practice, we argue that mentorship is a vital component of teaching practice in order for first-year students to grow and develop their teaching skills and their professional development. The theoretical framework chosen underpins the mentorship processes based on Hagger and Macintyre’s work, this enabled a multi-dimensional analysis and account of mentorship. Four hundred and twelve first-year students participated in this study and the data were analysed by means of an open coding method. The results were that 376 (91%) of participants reported that they felt unsupported and powerless during teaching practice, because of negative engagements and experiences with mentor teachers. These findings have implications for the preparation of preservice teachers in other contexts too.

Lectures are a commonly used teaching method in higher education, but there is significant debate about the relative merits of different classroom practices. Various classroom observation tools have been developed to try to give insight into these practices, beyond the simple dichotomy of “traditional lecturing versus active learning”. Here we review of a selection of classroom observation protocols from an ethological perspective and describe how this informed the development of a new protocol, FILL+. We demonstrate that FILL+ can be applied reliably by undergraduate students after minimal training. We analysed a sample of 208 lecture recordings from Mathematics, Physics, and Veterinary Medicine and found a wide variety of classroom practices, e.g. on average lecturers spent 2.1% (± 2.6%) of the time asking questions, and 79.3% (± 19%) of the lecture talking, but individuals varied considerably. The FILL+ protocol has the potential to be widely used, both in research on effective teaching practices, and in informing discussion of pedagogical approaches within institutions and disciplines.

Based on the theory of constructivism and analysis of characteristics and mental types of students in vocation college, the new classroom teaching model is constructed. Illustrated with the course of municipal engineering planning the design and practice of classroom teaching were discussed and the theory of project planning was applied to the practice of teaching based on the new classroom teaching model reaching to better effect of teaching and learning.

Writing pedagogy in the early years: A study of teacher beliefs, classroom practices and influences

Creative activity of primary school students is one of the pedagogical conditions for the general development of children of this age. This fact is recognized by both researchers and practicing teachers. At the same time, Russian teachers rarely organize creative activities in the classroom, more often this is done in classes of technology, fine arts, in extracurricular activities or at home under the guidance of parents. In this regard, the authors of the article set a goal to study the methodological foundations of the problem of managing the creative activity in primary school to analyze cases from the practice of primary school teachers on the organization of creative and research activities of pupils, to give recommendations for overcoming the difficulties identified. The key point of the research is to understand the nature of creativity as a human activity to create something new. Creative and research (project) activities of schoolchildren are interrelated, similar in nature, but differ in terms of procedure. During the analysis of the cases, there were identified problems in misunderstanding the essence of creativity, disorganization of primary school students’ creative and research activities, insufficient informational work with parents who help children to carry out projects, and some others. Recommendations are given on how to overcome difficulties.