Conference Agenda

The impact of COVID-19 has temporarily reshaped the delivery of lessons and possibly influenced the necessity for a teacher to equip technological knowledge. This emphasised the importance for teachers to possess not only content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, but also technological knowledge in a post-COVID era. Adding to existing literature that investigates Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) of pre-service teachers, the study aims to explore the process of pre-service teachers learning technological pedagogical content knowledge. Additionally, based in a 5-year Bachelor of Education programme (Chinese major), it intends to investigate the impact of Community of Practice (CoP) between senior years and lower years for TPACK.

Tondeur, Scherrer, Siddq, and Baran (2017) suggest teachers work with peers when they learn technology, and resonates Cohen (2003) that application of technology does not have a human component may result in students feeling isolated. Thus, our study aims to create a community with a collaborative environment (i.e. Community of Practice) where students can learn and share ideas virtually.

TPACK is defined as the knowledge of facilitating students’ learning of a specific subject content through using pedagogies and technologies (Koehler & MIshra 2009). It is one of the widely used frameworks that captures how teachers can effectively integrate technology into teaching. Having expanded from Shulman’s (1986) notion of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), TPACK is proposed to demonstrate how teachers understand the connections among technology, pedagogy, and content when designing and implementing digital instructions (Mishra & Koehler 2009).This framework acknowledges the importance of technological knowledge and describes teachers conducting classroom practices in an intricate and dynamic educational environment in this digital era.

Additionally, TPACK in language education is being paid attention to in these few years, where researchers like Tseng et al. 2020 reviewed TPACK specifically for language teaching and acknowledged its scarcity in the research field. Yatun et al. (2021) examines teachers’ TPACK in a blended-learning course adopting a qualitative descriptive research design. Results showed that TPACK helped teachers conduct effective teaching with technology during the blended learning activities. Most studies focused on in-service teachers, this study intends to fill the research gap in TPACK of pre-service teachers and provide insights for teacher education programmes.

Moorhouse & Harfitt (2019) explored the professional learning of pre-service teachers teaching abroad with collaborations with in-service teachers at the host school. It was found that both groups of teachers were benefited through pedagogical exchange of ideas. Instead of in-service teachers, this study created a mentoring programme which offered an opportunity for the Year 5 pre-service teachers to transfer their identity as novice teachers to be a mentor of Year 3 pre-service teachers. They are qualified to be the mentors and are considered as ‘veterans’ in their university course community as they have completed the teaching practicum and acquired technological knowledge to complement with teaching during the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. For Year 4 pre-service teachers who have just finished their field experiences in 2021, they shared similar learning experiences and are positioned as supervisors to monitor the whole mentoring process in this project. A Community of Practice (CoP) of TPACK is created for the Year 3 to Year 5 students in the programme.

The research questions of the study are as follows:

1) How are the pre-service teachers at different levels benefited from the Community of Practice (CoP)?

2) What is the impact of a Community of Practice (CoP) in learning TPACK for teaching applications?

Reflection is crucial to professional development. Although stimulating reflection is considered a key concept in most educational programs, including PETE, research have repeatedly shown how students reflections rarely move beyond what is considered lower levels of reflections (Standal et al., 2014). In other words, when students reflect, they mainly reflect on the technical aspects of their teaching such as how different strategies or methods used in a lesson led to different outcomes. While it is important to acknowledge the need for these reflections for future teachers to learn as they accumulate experiences, there is also a need for PETE students to reflect on a deeper level. Deeper reflections, for example referred to as political-ethical reflections (Van Manen, 1977), second order reflections (Wackerhausen, 2008) or sensitizing reflections (McCollum, 2002) in the literature, emphasize more of the social, moral, ethical, or political aspects of teaching.

Deeper or core reflection is also a key concept to deal with the perceived gap between theory and practice in teacher education (Korthagen, 2010). A possible solution to this problem is using personal teaching experiences as starting point for reflection. The idea is to promote a bottom‐up process starting from experiences and thorough reflection leading to fruitful knowledge about teaching (ibid.).

Core reflection is an approach developed by Fred Korthagen (Korthagen, 2004; Korthagen et al., 2013; Korthagen, 2017; Browning & Korthagen, 2021). Korthagen and colleagues extensive research point out the importance personality development can have on teachers’ professional development. The core reflection approach is inspired by positive psychology and aims at overcoming inner obstacles and learning to use one’s inner potential (core qualities) more actively. As a result, Korthagen`s research supports that core reflection helps student teachers finding their personal and authentic way of teaching (Browning & Korthagen, 2021).

In our approach, we explore how PETE students experience core reflection. We are interested to find out how core reflection can promote PETE students’ professional development.

The purpose of our paper is to present the results of our teaching approach in the context of PETE aiming at improving student teachers’ professional development by including core reflection in teaching practice. The research question for the paper is consequently:

How do PETE students experience core reflection, and what impact does core reflection have on their professional development?

School practicum is an essential component of teacher training and is important for developing preservice teacher’s professional teacher identity (Alves et al., 2019; Fuentes-Abeledo et al., 2020; Standal & Moen, 2017). Internationally school practicum has been a subject for research in a number of countries over several decades. Overall, research has documented that practicum is not beneficial in and of itself – the pedagogical value of school practicum is not only depended on the content, structure and how it is carried out in relation to the overall program, but also depending on how the preservice teachers have been prepared for learning (Fuentes-Abeledo et al., 2020). Furthermore, research has documented that they experience a ‘gap’ between the University-based portion of their teacher education and school practicum (e.g., Ottesen, 2007), and that preservice teachers often have unrealistic expectations about school practicum (Alves et al., 2019). While González-Calvo et al. (2020) highlights that preservice teachers are in a vulnerable position given that they are uncertain of their professional subjectivities and future careers.

In Norway there is little research on the school practicum part of physical education teacher education (PETE). However, Moen and Standal (2014); and Standal and Moen (2017) draw their attention to preservice teachers practicum in PETE in Norway. Their focus has been on the preservice teachers learning in and through practicum, and similar to previous studies, they highlight that the preservice teachers’ experiences that the PETE educators occupied a relatively distant role during their school practicum (Moen & Standal, 2014; Mordal-Moen & Green, 2012; Standal & Moen, 2017).

The importance of professional identity for teachers has been widely acknowledged, and Alves et al. (2019) highlight that challenging emotions during school practicum have a deep impact on the preservice teachers construction of a professional teacher identity. Developing a professional PE teacher identity is complex, consisting of what others think or say, as well as how we see ourselves and our capacity to reflect upon our experiences (Luguettia & Oliver, 2018). Oliver and Oesterreich (2013) highlights the importance of providing preservice teachers space to debrief. Debriefing involves the preservice teachers reflect and discuss their lived experiences with teaching with respect to the curriculum and pedagogy. Furthermore, it involves reflection upon what facilitates/hinders their interests, motivation and learning during school practicum. This is in line with student-centered approaches to teaching in PE and PETE, which is our main focus throughout this project.

In this project we have followed the preservice teachers closely during their three-week school practicum. This has not only given us valuable knowledge about how they perceive this mandatory part of their education, but also facilitated a deeper understanding of how we – as PETE educators, facilitates for the preservice teacher’s motivation, learning and interest as they enter school practicum. Drawing on the preservice teachers experiences from school practicum; the purpose of this study has been to examine how they use school practicum as an opportunity to develop their professional teacher identity. Our goal has been to prompt further debate and discussion about how the PETE program support the preservice teachers experiences of school practicum and by drawing on Oliver and Oesterreich (2013) how a student-centered approach in PETE can contribute to developing the preservice teachers professional identity.

One of the Horizon 2023 objectives, established by the European Union, aims at promoting inclusive skills, cultural awareness, and creativity. In this context, teacher educators are to adopt pedagogical models that pursue the development of these skills to promote students’ development and ability to coexist in the 21st century. In addition to this, there has been an increase in the demand of carrying out content subjects through and additional language during the last decades. This is due to the fact that language is a fundamental tool for future teachers to face the social challenges and changes of the current society (Duff, 2019). Consequently, approaches such as Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) are being increasingly applied to foster foreign language learning and practice. This pedagogical model, which has been traditionally built upon the 4c’s framework (content, culture, cognition and communication) (Coyle et al., 2010), emerges as an opportunity to move pedagogic thinking forward (Coyle, 2018).

However, language is not the only aspect to bear in mind to promote pre-service teachers development. For example, pedagogical models such as cooperative learning are said come with the promotion of fundamental skills related to cooperation, among which we may find positive interdependence, individual responsibility, face to face interaction, social skills or group processing (Johnson & Johnson, 1999). In this pedagogical model, students play different roles, acquiring diverse responsibilities (Roger & Johnson, 2009), and their contributions are fundamental to success. Moreover, authors such as Casey and Goodyear (2015) assert that cooperative approaches are essential to promote intellectual development and social relationships.

Against this background, previous literature has started to propose the hybridization of different pedagogical models to make the most of both of them. In fact, when CLIL and cooperative learning are applied together, there is an improvement on social skills and personal efficacy (Valverde-Esteve et al., 2022). Nevertheless, literature on this topic is still scarce, and there is a need to keep on delving into the implications of combining these two approaches.

When pre-service teachers are expected to use a language they do not master and cooperate with other peers, that is to say, when their lessons are carried out through cooperative learning and CLIL; they may be prompted to use their creative skills to success. As we have mentioned before, creativity is one of those skills to be fostered according to Horizon 2023. Creativity may be triggered when one is to face some type of constraint (Torrents et al., 2021) such as a task, individual limitations or the environment (Newell, 1986), which is the case of the students who are performing a task in a foreign language and under personal constraint. In this context, pre-service teachers are to generate diverse responses, which are degrees of freedom (Torrents et al., 2021).

A relevant concept to better understand how the different degrees of freedom may occur is that of the ecological approach (Keay et al., 2019). In the context of a lesson held in a teacher education course, the pre-service teachers’ cultural background, the level of English displayed, or the social relationships will act as entangled constraints. Bearing these ideas in mind, the pedagogical approach use is one of those factors they may have an impact on pre-service teachers experiences and learning, even more if this approach entails relevant constraints such as language use and peer cooperation in a hybridized CLIL-Cooperative Learning course.

This communication aims at examining the experiences and knowledge acquired by the pre-service teachers attending to the Didactics of Physical Education course, which was carried out by hybridizing CLIL and Cooperative Learning.