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MOFET ITEC Portal Newsletter
Dear Subscriber,
We are delighted to be sending you another issue of The International Portal of Teacher Education monthly newsletter.
As usual, the current issue presents some significant trends from the latest articles published in academic journals focusing on teacher education, pedagogy, instruction, and the professional development of teachers.
Some of you may have noticed that from time to time we present a new and original text, i.e. a text written especially for The International Portal of Teacher Education by professionals and researchers in the field. We feel fortunate to have these colleagues share their vision, research, professional knowledge, views and experience with us. Over 20 such texts have already been published on our website, and in this issue Haya Kaplan writes about The ABC of Motivation in Teacher Education.
Wishing you interesting and enjoyable reading,
The MOFET Portal Team
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Please note: a complete list of recent additions to the portal follows the Featured Items.
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 Identity in Activity: Examining Teacher Professional Identity Formation in the Paired-Placement of Student Teachers
The purpose of this study is to better understand teacher professional development in a paired-placement context. It focuses specifically on how two teacher students (STs) in Vietnam, Hien and Chinh, develop their professional identities in the collaborative setting, and how factors specific to pair-work mediate this process. Findings from this study suggest that an individual teacher’s identity influences her/his cognitive and affective perception of an event. Paired-placement created an environment whereby the student teachers’ conflicting identities, associated with different cognitive and affective perceptions of the experience, were challenged, leading to contradictions. However, within the framework of planned and supervised collaboration, the STs resolved most of their conflicts constructively and experienced qualitative development in their teaching identities.
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 Finding Possibility in Pitfalls: The Role of Permeable Methods Pedagogy in Preservice Teacher Learning
The purpose of this study was to examine how opportunities to learn to teach writing in preservice preparation mediated candidates’ appropriation of tools for teaching writing. In this study, the author compared between tools and processes across two university preparation programs in United States. The author found that while the candidates in the Madrona program demonstrated a fairly sophisticated appropriation of writing workshop tools, the Altavista candidates appropriated a wide array of tools at a surface level. This permeable setting in Madrona program supported candidates to develop habits of thinking about pedagogical tools, habits that facilitated uptake of integrated instructional frameworks. However, methods activity in Altavista program focused almost exclusively on the tools and tasks presented in that setting.
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 Perils to Self-Efficacy Perceptions and Teacher-Preparation Quality among Special Education Intern Teachers
This study examines special education intern teachers’ perceived levels of teaching efficacy and the important roles of teaching resources, teachers’ backgrounds, and support from school districts, teacher preparation programs, and pupils’ parents. The findings reveal that the relationship between the quality of support and the level of personal teaching efficacy (PTE) was statistically significant for intern teachers. The authors explain that teaching context in the form of lack of support from school districts, lack of resources, and heavy workloads present grave perils to teachers’ self-efficacy and can weaken the ultimate success of special education teachers. Low levels of self-efficacy combined with increased stress brought about by the emphasis on test scores can contribute to teacher burnout and high rates of attrition for special education intern teachers.
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 Teacher Education Futures: Today’s Trends, Tomorrow’s Expectations
This article investigate teacher educators’ views of current trends and their consequences for teacher education futures. The findings reported give voice to the expert participants. The data were then used to develop the discussion which comprised two scenarios. Two major fields of change are identified here and these are used to imagine different futures through the use of a two-dimensional model. The two major fields identified from the discussion are a continuum on location of teacher education, from school based to university based, and a continuum on autonomy and regulation, ranging from high government regulation to self-regulation by the profession.
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 Community, Difference, and Voice in Teacher Education
This article explores the ethical, methodological, and practical issues of translating critical theory and research into praxis through a case study analysis of a graduate capstone seminar that explored the familiar, and seemingly benign, concepts common to educational discourses. The author argues that while the data demonstrated that the teachers positioned their students as active, engaged, and thoughtful participants in their own learning process, three important points that speak to the seminar’s pedagogical objectives can be pulled from the data analysis. The three themes from the analysis of data stand in contrast to the seminar experience.
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