Section archive - Preservice Teachers

This study aimed to determine the attitudes of pre-service teachers toward co-teaching and inclusion. It also explored the impact of the systematic approach on participating teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward co-teaching. The authors argue that their approach combines faculty co-teaching of pre-service classes with seminar and field experiences to develop a specific knowledge base and skill set around collaboration and co-teaching. These results indicate that curriculum development must consider and respect the developmental trajectory of pre-service teachers such that their learning is meaningful and deep.

This study explores 10 pre-service English foreign language (EFL) teachers' motivation change in a Government-funded Normal Program in China. The findings reveal that the participants’ motivations experienced ups and downs in the process of learning to teach, which ultimately led to their enhanced intrinsic motivations towards teaching. Further, the authors found that the pre-service teachers' engagement with their peers and the teacher educators in the coursework facilitated their cognitive learning with positive influences on their self-efficacy and also brought them a sense of social connectedness, which together contributed to their motivational development.

This research examines the quality of student–teachers’ (STs’) verbal communication during their teaching practice on the ‘Studies for the Environment’ subject. It also identifies potential factors affecting it. The results reveal that student teachers clearly dominate classroom discussion, the questions they address to their students are of poor quality, and are not facilitating the development of students’ critical thinking. The findings reveal that the student teachers used types of questions that do not consider students as researchers and do not provide them the opportunity to develop the fundamental skills specified in the ‘Studies for the Environment’ curricula, requiring them to be able to investigate complex issues. The authors also found that the factors influencing STs’ verbal communication are the absence of relevant theoretical and practical background, the inappropriate training school setting and the lack of teaching experience are the most prominent.

This study aimed to determine whether past research experience and pre-existing motivation style influence pre-service teachers’ perceptions of research. This study demonstrates that pre-service teachers generally display a positive attitude towards research, although these attitudes depend on their perceived research experience and also on their motivational styles. Furthermore, the authors found that students who believe they possess research experience are more likely, compared to students who believe they do not possess such experience, to value research and support the university’s attempts to promote research at the undergraduate level.