Examining Prospective Teachers' Ideological Beliefs and Preparation for Diversity

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.

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

Transforming the education system from traditional teaching and learning into blended learning promotes the expansion of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in higher education institutions. Teacher education is also facilitated by offering accessible, flexible, and self-paced learning opportunities. This study aims to highlight the comparison of teacher educators and Prospective teachers’ Attitudes towards E-Learning in MOOCs. Using a descriptive survey method, data were collected through purposive sampling. In this study, a sample of 100 Teacher educators and 100 Prospective teachers was taken, respectively. An attitude scale was developed for both teacher educators and Prospective teachers. The findings revealed that there is no significant difference between the attitudes of teacher educators and Prospective teachers’ attitudes towards E-learning in MOOCs. The results have implications for instructional designers, policymakers, and teacher education institutions regarding the optimal utilization of MOOCs in pre-service teacher education.

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.

The research presented in this paper aims to shed light on the complex role of mathematics teacher educators who led courses for prospective mathematics teachers. Theoretically, the research combines the documentational approach to didactics and the meta-didactical transposition frameworks, complementing the study with the analysis of the teacher educators’ beliefs about the prospective teachers’ needs. The methodology entails a comparative case study related to two courses, taking place in quite different contexts, led by the two authors independently, and a collaborative self-study of teacher education approach, based on eight reciprocal semi-structured interviews between the authors. The result is a holistic model of mathematics teacher educators’ work that takes into account their practices, including the design of teaching materials based on a variety of resources, justifying discourses and personal beliefs. This can deepen our insight into the expertise of mathematics teacher educators and, prospectively, can be fruitful for their professional development.

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa envisions a socially just society where all citizens enjoy fundamental human rights. Education is regarded as significant in realizing social justice (SJ). Hence, South African education policy is underpinned by the conviction that teachers are drivers of societal change and instrumental in creating a socially just society. It is therefore expected that initial teacher education (ITE) programs to train prospective teachers will be infused with knowledge, competencies, values and attitudes to develop the dispositions that would facilitate social justice in a democratic and open South African society. In this desk-top study, we investigate the attributes and competencies promoted and advanced through the Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications Policy (MRTEQ) (2015) concerning the training of prospective South African teachers for the realization of social justice. We gathered our data through a literature review and a policy analysis, and we drew from critical social theory (CST), which argues for social transformation, human emancipation, and capacitation to make sense of our findings. We found that the MRTEQ (2015) promotes and advances knowledge, contextual awareness, and critical pedagogy as significant attributes and competencies for realizing social justice through education and, more specifically, ITE. The implication is that all initial teacher programmes must be designed to equip prospective teachers with these attributes to contribute to realizing social justice and transforming society. Against this backdrop, specific recommendations are made to develop these attributes in prospective teachers.

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.

A framework for prospective primary teachers’ knowledge of mathematical reasoning processes

This article focuses on teacher educators’ reflections on prospective teachers’ cognitive engagement in the teaching and learning of mathematics during the pandemic. Using three interacting aspects that can foster learners’ cognitive engagement as a lens, observations and reflections from two teacher educators and anonymous screenshots of students’ work were gathered and analysed by a mathematics teacher educator. The prospective teachers’ self-regulated learning, engagement in solving tasks, and participation in productive discourse were positively surprising, showing the cognitive presence of the learners during virtual teaching. The influence of digital platforms like Blackboard and digital tools like GeoGebra, Desmos, Padlet, Google Docs, Google Forms and Google Sheets in teaching helped us observe the learners’ cognitive engagement in real time.Contribution: The GeoGebra Class function and the Desmos Teacher feature helped us to observe the prospective teachers’ cognitive engagement during the online teaching. However, continuously and rapidly creating digital content on said digital platforms can be demanding for educators.

Teacher collaboration, particularly through collaborative lesson planning, plays a key role in fostering professional development and teaching skills. This study investigates the effectiveness of the proposed Shared Collaborative Lesson Planning (SCLP) procedure in enhancing the professional development of prospective teachers through the lens of socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL). Twenty-four prospective information and technology teachers participated in two rounds of SCLP activities. Using a cyclical framework, the prospective teachers engaged in collaborative tasks supported by an online learning platform and other computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) tools. Detailed descriptions from observations, recordings, questionnaires, and interviews revealed that the SCLP procedure can help facilitate structured collaboration, improve professional skills, and encourage adaptive regulatory behaviors among the prospective teachers. The integration of CSCL tools further enhanced the effectiveness of the collaborative lesson planning process. However, challenges related to technical proficiency and emotional regulation were identified. The study concludes that the SCLP procedure offers a promising approach for teacher education by fostering a collaborative learning environment and promoting regulatory behaviors. Future research should explore the long-term impacts and adaptability across diverse educational contexts to strengthen teacher education programs or courses.

Mathematics teacher education research often focuses on ways teacher education can change prospective teachers' views in ways prescribed by teacher educators. In this paper, we explore a different perspective, one that emphasises the importance of understanding the diversity of views that prospective teachers bring to their teacher education programmes, not as a basis of change, but as a platform to build upon. In doing so, we make a case for ‘aestheticising’ mathematics teacher education research and propose an arts-based approach to analysing and presenting data concerning prospective teachers views on the teaching and learning of mathematics. We exemplify this approach by presenting a fictionalised dialogue between four prospective teachers from Sweden, based on interviews conducted prior to them entering teacher education.

Contrasts in teacher educators' cultural knowledge about teaching and differential exercise of power relations show how their practice embodies two distinct gendered ideologies—a voice of the professor/father and a voice of the teacher/mother. Each voice reproduces an engendered loyalty and a corresponding engendered practice among the prospective teachers who learn with a particular teacher educator. By decentering each voice, teacher educators can begin a dialogue about power/knowledge issues in collaborative school‐university relationships with colleagues.

Digitalization has profoundly transformed the organizational processes,activities, experiences and teaching-learning models to fully persuade theshifts and prospects of a blend of digital technologies and their elevatingeffects across whole education sector in an ordered, strategic andhighlighted way. Teacher education is highly influenced by the digitaltransformation globally. In Pakistan, it is imperative to digitallytransform teacher education so that by overcoming the current prevailingchallenges. Digital divide is one of the biggest challenges predominatedin teacher education which necessitates to be bridged for meetinglearning needs of prospective teachers. This research study wasconducted to analyze the need and ways to bring digital transformation inteacher education by bridging the digital divide between teachereducators and prospective teaches. The study was descriptive in naturewhich followed quantitative method whereas sample of this studycomprised of prospective teachers and teacher educators from educationdepartments of three universities of Lahore. The study revealed that thereis a dire need to bring digital transformation in teacher education, whilethere exists a prominent digital divide where prospective teachers arecomparatively more superior in digital competencies and digital literacy.It was also found that digital transformation and digital divide are closelyrelated and occurrence of digital transformation is dependent uponapplying strategies to bridge digital divide. The study suggests that ifteacher education institutions employ some digital divide-bridging strategies like e-Training, digitization of curriculum, enhancing digital infrastructure and devising digital strategies, it is possible to beget digital transformation in teacher education.

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.

This article analyses the concept of internationalizing teacher education curricula in Turkish higher education. It relies on the data collected from the prospective teachers with an international experience during their pre-service teacher education process. The eleven participants from different teacher education programs of a state university in the west part of Türkiye explain their opinions on internationalization through comparisons between their university in Türkiye and the host university abroad, focusing on the curriculum used in each country. The findings mainly show that the prospective teachers have a favourable viewpoint regarding internationalization and agree with the necessity to add an international aspect to the teacher education curricula. However, they find the curricula in their countries insufficient for internationalization and for providing prospective teachers with a global perspective. Furthermore, they have more optimistic perceptions about the curricula used in the host countries and desire that teacher educators use more interactive teaching methods in their countries, too. These findings suggest that teacher education must include an international aspect in the curriculum, and this process must be integrative and multi-faceted.