Conference Agenda

Internationally there has been a shift in educational policy towards evidence-based decision-making within schools (Mandinach, 2012; Schildkamp, Karbautzki, & Vanhoof, 2014; Scottish Government, 2017) to the extent that many Western democracies have implemented laws and policy reforms focused on education and schooling. These reforms are designed to put the child at the centre of the education system and places demands on teachers to use multiple sources of evidence that they have available to them to guide their professional judgments and decisions. Notable examples of these law and policy reforms range from the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) - now superseded by the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) - in the United States, the European Union's Strategic Framework for European Cooperation in Education and Training (ET 2020), the National Education Plan in France and the Education (Scotland) Act (2016) in Scotland. In recent years, however, there has been an intensification in this trend towards datafication in education. Teachers and school leaders around the world are now encouraged (to varying degrees) to base their decisions on data (Merk, Poindl, Wurster, & Bohl, 2020). Indeed, many European governments have followed suit by enacting educational policies that mandate the increased use of educationally relevant data by teachers and school leaders to drive improvement in educational outcomes for children and young people (Mandinach & Jimerson, 2016). These policies imply that teachers and school leaders ought to be cognisant of, and conversant with the multiple lines of evidence available to them whilst placing the onus on them to be able to make effective professional judgements about students learning and be able to act on those judgements in a manner that facilitates improvements in performance outcomes.

Research suggests that many teachers feel threatened by the concept of data-informed decision making and ill-prepared to engage in a sustained way with educationally relevant data (Dunn, Airola, Lo, and Garrison, 2013a). Research evidence also suggests that many teachers do not systematically use data-informed judgements within their daily practice or if they do, they only trust the data that confirms their intuition rather than using all of the available evidence available to them to shape their professional judgements (Dunn, Airold & Garrison, 2013b; Schildkamp & Ehren, 2013). These findings indicate that many in-service teachers may lack the skills, motivation, or positive attitude towards the use of educational data to support their professional judgements. What is less well understood is how Initial Teacher Education (ITE) student teachers (also referred to as pre-service teachers) are prepared to use the wide range of educationally relevant data available to them and what factors might affect their use of data within their professional judgement.

This study aims to explore how final year ITE students handle, analyse and make meaning from educational data as part of their professional judgment and decision-making processes. This aim is operationalised by the following research questions (1) To what extent can final year ITE students analyse and interpret educationally relevant data as part of their reflective practice? (2) Does final year ITE students’ ability to analyse educationally relevant data differ compared to their programme of study.

Recent worldwide policies and agendas in the field of education and beyond (UN, 2015; World Bank Group, 2015) have made it clear that inclusive education is not a mission that solely regards students with special needs. It also encapsulates issues related to socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religion, language, culture and any other factor that may lead to exclusion. Valuing diversity, guaranteeing equal opportunities and quality education for all have, thus, become priorities for action of the community at large, including the school, to guarantee wellbeing, prosperity, and sustainable development (UN, 2022). Against this backdrop, teachers have a fundamental role to play. Besides ensuring student academic achievement, they need to devise ways to facilitate the acquisition of transformative (OECD, 2019) and global (OECD, 2018) competencies. They are requested to be the catalysts of change by challenging the status quo in school communities; they are to embark on a development process that involves all stakeholders in a system-wide, whole-school reform and restructuring of the vision, mission, curricula, pedagogy, classroom practice, assessment and reporting, and extra-curricular opportunities.

The plethora of literature on teacher competency profiling (Caena, 2011) and on the proximal and distal variables influencing the implementation of inclusive practices (Biesta, Priestley & Robinson, 2015; Sharma & Mannan, 2015; De Boer, Pijl & Minnaert, 2011), substantiates the fact that meeting these goals is a complex task which requires careful planning, competent action, and constant reflection. Indeed, Shulman (2005) claims that the three fundamental dimensions for teacher professional development are the head (what teachers know), hands (what teachers do) and heart (what teachers care about). Within a constructivist perspective of the teaching-learning process, planning teacher education course programmes is not a straightforward undertaking, especially when targeting the development of values and attitudes. In fact, it is claimed that the latter often receives far less attention in teacher education (Shulman, 2005; Sharma, 2018). One of the key strategies to educate the heart is engaging in individual and reflective practice as it offers a myriad of opportunities to reflect on beliefs, concerns, opinions, and attitudes related, but not limited, to teacher identity, the profession, diversity and inclusion (Larrivee & Cooper, 2006; Ghaye, 2011).

This paper presents a qualitative study carried out to investigate the course participants’ opinions regarding a study-unit that proposed guided reflective practice using a strengths-based approach. The overarching aim of the proposed study programme was not only to engage in reflective practices but also to shift the focus from deficit-based to strengths-based approaches in order to be able to develop their skills in identifying resources, assets, and solutions even when faced with particularly challenging scenarios. The premise is that wellbeing depends on the individuals’ ability to take cognisance of their inner cognitive, affective, and motivational resources, identify the community’s assets, and capitalise these strengths in a harmonious manner to act proactively and bring about positive change. It is posited that endorsing such a viewpoint not only helps to promote an inclusive school culture, but also facilitates the acquisition of fundamental values and attitudes necessary to bring about change. To this end, the 30-hour programme drew on various theories, models and tools. These included: Antonovsky’s concept of salutogenesis (Mittlemark et al., 2022), Sen’s (1993) capability approach, the domains and indicators in quality-of-life models (Brown & Shearer, 1999; Schalock & Verdugo, 2002), asset-based community development (Russell & McKnight, 2022) and the Index for Inclusion (Booth & Ainscow, 2011). The course participants had the opportunity to reflect on their beliefs, values and attitudes regarding concepts and issues inherent to diversity, inclusive education, teacher identity, and their role as change agents in the school community.

A multitude of changes have been observed in teachers’ work, making the profession more complicated and demanding (Räsänen et al., 2020). Alongside of these changes, researchers concerned with initial teacher education have been trying to identify the professional learning needs of pre-service teachers (Livingstone & Flores, 2017) to prepare them for the rapidly changing, complex and demanding future work of a teacher. Research on in-service teachers has focused, for instance, on the new realities of teachers’ work, teacher competence needed (Metsäpelto et al., 2021) and the impact of various working conditions on teacher retention and attrition (Kelly et al., 2019).

Teacher education research has long been concerned with pre-service teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning due to their impact on teachers’ instructional practices. Various conceptions have been addressed in the research literature, such as pre-service teachers’ conceptions of specific subjects (Lau, 2022), conceptions of assessment (Lutovac & Flores, 2022), conceptions of online learning and digital literacy (Tarchi et al., 2022) and conceptions of self-as-a-teacher (Lee & Schallert, 2016) to name a few. Pre-service teachers’ conceptions have been investigated in relation to personal practical theories and reflection (Körkkö et al., 2016). Concerning in-service teachers, previous research has targeted, for instance, teachers’ conceptions of assessment (Brown et al., 2019) and conception of inclusive education (Sanagi, 2016). Pre-service and in-service teachers’ conceptions of teachers’ work, however, have received lesser attention but may be crucial at the point in time of uncertainty in teachers’ professional lives and work and when the changes in the society and teaching profession have brought forth the need to “(re)think ways of (re)educating teachers for scenarios that are unpredictable and unknown” (Flores, 2020, p. 453). Gaining a deeper understanding of pre-service and in-service teachers’ conceptions of teachers’ (changing) work can contribute to the discussion about professional development of future teachers and other important constructs regarding teachers’ work, such as teacher identity, resilience, attrition and retention. Better understanding pre-service teachers’ conceptions of teachers’ work is also important for elucidating what pre-service teachers learn during teacher education, how prepared they feel when entering the profession, how they respond to change and how these responses impact teacher attrition.

This study aims to examine Finnish pre-service and in-service teachers’ perspectives of teachers’ work today to shed light on diversity in teachers’ work. Moreover, this study aims to better prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to tolerate change, anticipate and respond to it and, more importantly, act as agents of change. In addition to social skills, this level of flexibility and adaptability is emphasized as an important professional skill of the twenty-first century. The research question guiding this work is: How do pre-service and in-service teachers conceive the new realities of teachers’ work?