Search results for: Educational environment

This article focuses on how preservice primary teachers can be supported to embrace digital learning technologies (DLTs) in their teaching of mathematics. The findings reveal that preservice teachers demonstrated a high degree of initiative. In addition, the students began to recognize the potential of such creative DLTs as a bridge between the use of familiar hands-on materials as representations and abstract representations of mathematical models. Furthermore, the students gained confidence after successfully presenting their DLTs to their peers, and their self-efficacy in using technology to teach mathematics increased due to these enactive mastery experiences.

This study explores the job satisfaction and career development of beginning teachers in Hong Kong at a time of education reform. The authors are interested to understand teachers’ reasons for joining the profession, and how their personal goals interact with the teaching environment to shape job satisfaction. The participants were eleven graduates from the Post-graduate Diploma of Education (PGDE) Primary Programme of the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2007. The findings reveal that the school environment was found to be more determinative of teachers’ satisfaction and their initial teaching orientation. The authors suggest that teachers’ level of job satisfaction may be improved through systematically reducing their non-teaching workload by a generous increase in the number of supporting staff in schools.

This paper is a critical account of a particular experience of an Australian teacher educator leading an international teaching practicum in South Africa.

This research explored the ways that preservice teachers today (a) use Web 2.0 and other new technologies in their daily lives and in their learning experiences and (b) create online content informally and formally while learning to use new technologies in their teaching and producing teaching materials for students using new technologies. The findings reveal that preservice teachers were highly aware of new technologies and not only adopted them for personal use, but also adapted them in certain educational contexts for group projects or communication. However, this group of preservice teachers applied their knowledge of digital technologies for assignment and group work but not for classroom activities and assignments that were instructor directed.