Section archive - Preservice Teachers

A challenge for teacher educators is providing preservice teachers with the opportunity to develop the confidence and efficacy required to address their future students’ socio-cultural, academic, and social-emotional needs in this era of standardization, accountability, and limited resources. This case study investigated this issue by examining how a sample of preservice teachers made sense of how their coursework supported them in becoming teachers who center their practices on the needs and interests of their current and future students while attending to policymakers’ reforms. By analyzing the findings of this study, it becomes apparent that these preservice teachers questioned whether the coursework in their program supported their development in becoming classroom teachers in a manner that reflected how their instructors expected them to teach their students. Interpreting these findings provides insight into how teacher educators and their programs can better support preservice teachers’ confidence and efficacy as they enter their future classrooms.

Isolation, organisational pressures, and role-related distress, can result in teachers, particularly early career teachers (ECTs), experiencing greater risk of burnout. For many ECTs, a lack of practical strategies for dealing with these conditions contributes to this. Using self-study methodology, this research unpacks why ECTs experience burnout, identifies adaptive strategies that experienced teachers use, and discusses the applicability of these practices for ECTs. Conversations between an ECT and three experienced teachers provided alternate lenses to apply reflective unpacking of adaptive strategies. The findings illustrate how the risk of burnout for ECTs is increased by challenging student behaviour, isolation, a lack of collegiality and engagement with professional networks, and being overloaded with responsibilities. The findings also suggest that being overworked is less of a contributing factor to burnout than feeling disconnected from one’s school, peers, and community. Adaptive strategies for alleviating the effects of burnout were explored and recommendations for practice presented.

Early childhood education (ECE) is not given as much attention as primary and secondary education in rural areas in China, and rural preschool teachers lack opportunities to receive high quality and appropriate pre-service and in-service professional training. This study focused on professional development (PD) opportunities available for preschool teachers in Heilongjiang, one of China’s largest provinces, wherein 44.3% of the population lives in rural areas. This study (i) considered PD opportunities available for preschool teachers in rural areas; and (ii) surveyed key stakeholders, including preschool teachers and principals, to understand their views on PD activities. A total of 71 teachers and 3 principals from three preschools completed online surveys. Results indicated that (i) rural preschool teachers had relatively limited PD opportunities; (ii) school-based activities that focused on curriculum implementation were the dominant form of PD; and (iii) teachers felt that the PD they received was relevant, of good quality and effective, and that the individual mentoring they received had a positive impact on their pedagogical practices. Implications of the findings are discussed.

This year-long study by an undergraduate teacher candidate explores the identity and emotional work involved in learning decisions through her teacher preparation program. Using personal reflections, analytic memos, and notes, she was able to discover patterns of learning in the emotional geographies in teacher education. Further, the authors employed both a critical and meta-critical friend to rigorously develop and interrogate themes and interpretations. Findings revealed that decisions to ‘invest’ in any particular learning context did not merely constitute an intellectual commitment. Rather embodied emotional responses to persons, ideologies, and environments challenged her to make sense of her place in emotional geographies. Her decision-making process involved moving toward investing in learning or presenting a more superficial performance. These decisions depended, in part, on her deliberations of whether the emotional geographies provided opportunities that she perceived would ‘build her’ or ‘break her.’ The authors assert that learning actively requires students to make decisions about their position, identity and belonging within educational relationships. Attending to embodied emotional work in classroom learning is often understudied, and yet is relevant to issues of power and equity with teacher education. This self-study offers teacher educators and researchers a glimpse into the benefits of a teacher candidate initiating and conducting a self-study and suggests that this could be a fruitful area to pursue methodologically. This research contributes a deeper understanding of such emotional work and how self-study involving teacher candidates can be used as a source of knowledge in teacher preparation programs.