International Portal of Teacher Education
The online resource of academic content on teacher training and teacher education
Section archive - Preservice Teachers
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478 items
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This study addresses how teacher candidates committed to a social-justice-oriented urban teacher residency programme articulate and reflect why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect from teaching so as to ascertain what they expect to do.
The participants of this study included 77 graduates who participated in four cohorts of an urban teacher residency programme from 2010 through 2014.
Employing a qualitative case study design, the authors analysed 77 sets of admissions essays, which were completed as part of the residency application process.
Building on their analysis of candidates’ admissions essays through inductive coding, the authors find that candidates’ reflections on why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect to do, stem from their beliefs in their role as a teacher and their beliefs about the role of education.
Such reflections are grounded in beliefs of teacher activism, pupil activism, and advocacy for pupils who have been marginalised due to systemic inequalities.
The study illuminates committed teachers’ reasons for entering the teaching profession so as to inform better recruitment strategies, and has implications for how initial teacher education (ITE) programmes could specifically improve their professional preparation and practices to recruit and retain qualified teachers who intend to stay.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jun. 14, 2020
2
This study explored the teaching motivations of 306 B.Ed. first-year teacher trainees who chose teaching as their career.
Analysing data of Likert questionnaires showed that altruistic factors were rated as more important than extrinsic and intrinsic factors regardless of gender.
Interestingly, MANOVA results indicated that females were more extrinsically motivated to be a classroom teacher than males.
The teacher trainees’ responses to open-ended questions showed that their socio-economic background and cultural and religious beliefs were other factors that motivated them to choose the teaching profession.
According to ANOVA results, there were significant differences in teaching motivations between teacher trainees who had the intention to work as a teacher before attending the teaching institution and those who did not.
Significant differences were also found in teacher trainees’ teaching motivations between and among the three groups in terms of their satisfaction with career choice.
However, there were no significant differences in teacher trainees’ teaching motivations in terms of their residency.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jun. 03, 2020
3
The present study examines future teachers’ motivations for teaching using the FIT-Choice (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice) scale.
The focus thereby is on subject interest, a factor that has rarely been accounted for by FIT-Choice studies although it is considered one of the most important factors to students for choosing teaching as a career.
It is also assumed that students of different subject domains belong to different subcultures and therefore differ in their motivations. On the basis of n = 386 first-year, Bachelor students qualifying for lower and upper secondary schools from a large university in Germany, a latent confirmatory factor analysis shows that the FIT-Choice scale structure could be replicated and subject-specific interest was rated the most important factor by pre-service teachers.
Latent path analyses reveal that students from different subject domains differ slightly in their motivations.
More importantly, students who value their studied subjects’ importance highly also show higher intrinsic, social-altruistic, and pedagogical motivations.
Published: 2019
Updated: May. 05, 2020
4
The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of teacher education students participating in an experiential learning environment designed to support active play opportunities for children.
43 Participants completed a 5-hour recess assistance volunteer activity, thereby leading active play, and were then asked to write about their experiences.
Student journal reflections were examined by researchers and coded in three phases: open, axial, and selective coding.
Findings indicated student teachers perceived three educational and professional development needs to successfully facilitate active play opportunities as future teachers: pedagogical experiences, content-based experiences, and relationship building.
Published: 2019
Updated: Feb. 25, 2020
5
This study examined Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers’ attitudes towards different types of parental involvement strategies and investigated whether these attitudes were related to the quality of relationships within their own family.
Data were collected by the authors from 163 Hong Kong pre-service early childhood teachers via questionnaire.
Results showed that engaging families in school decisions was perceived as the least important and feasible.
The pre-service teachers also felt least confident in implementing it.
There were, however, discrepancies in the perceived levels of importance, feasibility and confidence towards other types of parental involvement strategies.
The levels of cohesion and expressiveness in pre-service teachers’ own families were positively related to their attitudes towards some types of parental involvement strategies.
These findings suggest that teacher educators should take pre-service teachers’ family experiences into consideration when preparing them to work with children’s families.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jan. 21, 2020
6
The present study investigates the nature of Iranian student teachers’ reflections and their professional development in the context of teacher education practicums.
The participants were student teachers (N = 41) enrolled in teacher education colleges at Farhangian University in Tehran, Iran.
A total of 620 reflective writing excerpts were coded using deductive content analysis across three cohorts in three different practicums during a two-year period.
The results show that routine levels of reflection significantly decreased across the three practicums, while technical levels of reflection significantly increased.
The higher levels of reflection, namely dialogic and transformative levels, were rarely found in student teachers’ reflective writings across the practicums.
This study discusses the need both to develop appropriate methods to guide student teachers in centralized contexts such as Iran and to investigate further aspects that enhance or hinder progress in the quality of reflection in teacher education.
Published: 2019
Updated: Jan. 12, 2020
7
The authors conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire study in 2016 with 697 student teachers from two Universities.
The study used structural equation modelling to analyse the effects of received social support from family and fellow-students as well as perceived self-efficacy in relation to the basic psychological needs in teacher education.
To measure the effects of received social support on the satisfaction of basic needs, the authors developed two scales adapting Mansfield’s qualitative approach on teacher resilience.
Perceived self-efficacy turned out to be effected directly by received fellow-students’ support as well as having a mediation effect on higher levels of autonomy and competence, whereas received family support leads only to higher levels of autonomy.
Especially received fellow-students’ support is directly connected to higher levels of need satisfaction.
Finally, the authors discuss conclusions for shaping conditions of university-life according to experiencing what is necessary for a higher level of perception and satisfaction of basic psychological needs.
Published: 2019
Updated: Dec. 10, 2019
8
University students experience stress, and how they cope with this stress affects their academic achievement.
This study examined stress in teacher education students and had three objectives:
to describe different degrees of stress and coping styles;
to study the relationship between stress, coping strategies and academic achievement;
and to examine whether increased age can moderate the effects of stress on academic achievement in 334 university-students.
There were three main findings: many students experienced stress and used avoidance coping strategies;
the students who were under less stress and engaged less in cognitive avoidance and more in problem-focused coping were also the students who made more academic achievement;
and students under more stress performed worse, but with age stress affected performance less.
In teacher education students, it is important to recognize and address the harmful effects of stress on well-being and academic achievement, to avoid long-term problems in professional and personal life.
Published: 2019
Updated: Dec. 09, 2019
9
This paper reports on an exploratory study designed to determine and enhance the conceptual understanding of a group of pre-service mathematics teachers at one Irish university utilizing an established framework for understanding mathematics.
23 students on a one-year Professional Diploma in Mathematics Education participated in the study, which involved the distribution of a pre- and post-test and engagement in a ten week intervention designed to enhance their subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).
The findings highlight that although there was an improvement in overall conceptual understanding across the entire cohort at the end of the intervention, within certain mathematical topics there was a statistically insignificant improvement and many deep-rooted issues remain. In this paper the authors focus on the pre-service teachers’ understanding of elementary algebra, in particular, how to solve a linear equation.
Published: 2019
Updated: Oct. 23, 2019
10
Results from a metasynthesis of the relationships between 14 different types of preservice teacher preparation practices and teaching quality, preschool to university student performance, and university student and beginning teacher belief appraisals are reported.
Each type of preservice practice (e.g., course-based student learning) included different kinds of instructional methods (e.g., problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and project-based learning).
The metasynthesis included 118 meta-analyses and 12 surveys of more than three million study participants.
Findings clearly indicated that active university student and beginning teacher involvement in mastering the use of instructional practices and both knowledge and skill acquisition by far stood out as the most important preservice teacher preparation practices.
The pattern of results helped identify high leverage and high impact teacher preparation practices. Implications for future research and improving teacher preparation are described.
Published: 2019
Updated: Sep. 12, 2019