Section archive - Beginning Teachers

The authors engaged preservice teachers in a redesigned mathematics field experience with a central focus on children’s reasoning through teaching experiments and purposeful reflection on practice through Lesson Study. Indicators of effective teaching were examined through analysis of lesson plans and enactment, comparing student teachers who participated in the revised approach with student teachers in conventional forms of field experience. Findings suggest that teaching aspects fostered by the revised approach during the field experience had a positive residual effect during student teaching. Those who took part in teaching experiments and lesson study had lesson plans that provided for sense-making, encouraged collaboration, and included investigative mathematics to a greater degree than those in the conventional group. Those in the revised group implemented lessons during student teaching that were more student-centered and considerate of classroom culture than those who took part in the conventional field experience. We provide recommendations for designing field experiences.

An extraordinary number of young children are exposed to trauma that impacts their development and well-being. Early care and education (ECE) programs are uniquely positioned to support children exposed to trauma yet may lack access to resources and professional development to enhance their capacity to deliver trauma-informed care. Using a qualitative multiple case study methodology, this study investigated how five urban ECE programs adopted new trauma-informed practices as a result of participating in a collaborative model for professional learning. This model, called the Breakthrough Series Collaborative, is designed to build both individual and organizational capacity to implement new practices and is supported by theoretical frameworks from organizational and improvement science. The study explored the changes that occurred at the individual, classroom, and organizational levels. Results suggest changes in knowledge and attitudes about trauma, empathy, and teacher empowerment; classroom and practice level shifts including social and emotional teaching and family centered communication; and at the organizational level a more caring and collaborative workplace culture and improved interagency collaboration. The results further suggest that professional development delivered at the organizational level may support the coordinated implementation of new trauma-informed care (TIC) practices by both teachers and administrators building organizational capacity to improve and sustain these practices.

Rapid developments in ideas of knowledge, the role of educational technologies and the needs of students suggest that innovation is important in higher education. However, many factors can affect how and whether innovation occurs. In a study of identified innovative teachers, five thematic dimensions were identified that served to support or constrain pedagogical innovation: the teacher, the institution, colleagues, students and the teaching environment. In this paper the authours discuss the ways in which innovative teachers experienced each theme within their practice. They also consider how individuals and institutions might better support pedagogical innovation.

Affective-reflective skills are an integral component of classroom pedagogy, providing teachers with emotional understandings and confidence that can improve overall classroom performance. This article presents a case study of early career primary school teachers, showing how such affective-reflective skills can be developed through iterations of a purpose-designed collaborative protocol. Use of this novel protocol allowed teachers to examine their classroom practices via critical moment analysis of affective responses observed from lesson videos. Findings demonstrate how teachers’ use of this non-judgmental and self-evaluative protocol contributed to an emerging understanding of the relationship between their affective-reflective skills and teaching confidence. Findings support an argument for reframing teacher professional learning, from a focus largely on curriculum content and pedagogy, to a focus that includes the teacher’s emotional experience and its subsequent analysis, as part of the learned content that supports the growth of teacher confidence.