10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Programme Leaders’ Dilemmas while Devising Retraining Studies
Ainat Guberman1,2, Gal Ben-Yehudah1, Rinat Arviv Elyashiv3
1The MOFET Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel; 2David Yellin College of Education, Jerusalem, Israel; 3Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel
Presenting Author: Guberman, Ainat;
Arviv Elyashiv, Rinat
High quality teacher educators are necessary for providing high quality education to teachers (European Commission, 2013). However, there is little agreement as to how teacher educators’ professionalism should be conceptualized and what it entails. The neo-liberal approach views teacher educators’ role as training student teachers to reproduce successful teaching methods. It suggests evaluating teacher educators’ professionalism by assessing their adherence to strict curricula and teaching standards, or through their students’ performance and perseverance as teachers. In contrast, the ‘academic’ approach claims that teacher educators have multiple roles in addition to second order teaching (teaching about teaching and learning and teaching how to teach). They mentor student teachers, act as gatekeepers of the profession, develop teacher education curricula, broker between higher education institutions, schools and other stakeholders, and conduct research (Lunenberg et al., 2014). These roles share broad practical and theoretical knowledge bases. They require a critical reflection upon practice and policies and a commitment to social justice and equity (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). Although individual teacher educators do not need to perform all of these roles, they are typical of teacher educators’ work. Their professionalism is revealed through the reflective and committed manner of their work that is highly sensitive to context. In order to understand how teacher educators’ professionalism unfolds, it is crucial to conduct studies that examine teacher educators’ reasoning and actions within different work contexts (Cochran-Smith, 2021; Mayer, 2021; Vanassche, 2023).
This study is aligned with the academic approach to teacher educators’ professionalism. It aims to understand how teacher educators enact their professionalism by examining senior teacher educators’ considerations as they design an initial teacher education programme, and how the contexts of their work affect their decisions. The findings could provide policymakers with information about policies that promote and impede the provision of high quality teacher education to student teachers.
The study took place in Israel, where all initial teacher education programmes take place in academic institutions. This aligns Israel with the ‘academic’ conceptualization of the profession. Nonetheless, some of the education system’s characteristics are strongly associated with the neo-liberal approach. First, Israel’s investment in education, including teachers’ wages, is low in comparison to OECD countries (OECD, 2023a). As a result, it suffers from an acute teacher shortage, particularly in STEM subjects due to the lucrative alternatives that are available to bachelor degree holders in those areas (Weissblai 2023; Wiggan et al., 2021). Teacher education institutions compete against each other over student registrations, since the number of applicants is dropping (ICBS, 2023). Finally, the academic freedom of teacher education is somewhat constrained by the requirement to adhere to the Ministry of Education’s national curriculum frameworks.
The study focuses on programme leaders that work in a project called ‘From High Tech to Teaching’. The project retrains high tech academic professionals as high school STEM teachers. It takes place in several academic institutions, each offering programmes in some or all of the project’s subjects (math, physics, chemistry, biology and computer science). By choosing to focus on this project’s programmes, we tried to find the ‘middle way’ between an in-depth study of a single programme that may be too idiosyncratic, and a broad examination of a large group of programmes, that may be too heterogeneous and, thus, gloss over significant distinctions (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015).
The research question are: 1. What are the professional reasoning processes of programme leaders while designing re-training programmes for academic former high-tech employees as high school STEM teachers? 2. How are their decisions affected by their work contexts?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedParticipants: The study included 18 (10 female) programme leaders from 12 teacher education institutions. (Fourteen are responsible for one programme in a specific subject area, whereas four others are project coordinators who are responsible for all of the projects’ programmes in their institution.
Data collection: Semi structured interview protocols were used. Programme leaders were asked to describe it: the number of years their programme has existed, the number of semesters, study days, where the practical experience takes place and whether it is individual or in a group. Then they explained how the program changed over the years, what difficulties they encounter and how they would have devised the programme had they been provided with ideal conditions. The programme leaders were also asked about the challenges that students and alumni have to face. The interviews lasted for 45 – 90 minutes. They were audio-recorded and transcribed.
Data analysis: We used the Braun and Clarke (2006; 2021) Thematic Analysis method. The analysis starts with repeated reading and free coding. The codes’ scope and definitions change as the connections between them are noted, articulated and organized. Finally, codes are used to build themes. Themes are not category names but full sentences that represent the central insights the researchers derived from the analysis of the data.
Ethics: The authors are researchers at an Institute that hosts the project’s administrative unit. After receiving the institutional IRB’s consent, we approached program leaders, and asked them to be interviewed. There are no authority relationships between the authors, the administrative unit and the interviewees. The latter work for their respective academic institutions. Although the administrative unit knows who the program leaders are, we kept the identity of those that were interviewed confidential. We use pseudonyms in all of the study’s reports and all potentially identifying information was removed.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe analysis of programme leaders' reflections upon revealed four dilemmas that they had to navigate. The dilemmas exemplify how contexts and particularly state level policies affect programme leaders’ professional considerations (Craig, 2016; Darling-Hammond, 2017).
1. Selection vs. subsistence. Rejecting candidates that seem unsuitable for teaching is necessary to save public and candidates’ resources, and is part of the programme leaders’ role as gatekeepers (Lunenberg et al., 2014). However, it may endanger their program’s subsistence, since it is dependent upon a minimum number of student teachers. 2. Providing extensive preparation vs. minimizing the study load. As curriculum developers (Lunenberg et al., 2014), programme leaders wish to provide students with extensive preparation for the different classes and roles they would have, but students’ available time for studies is very limited. Studies overload may ‘push’ them towards less demanding programs in other institutions or deter them from retraining programs altogether. Scholarships could enable retrained students make the most of their studies, yet the funding they currently receive is insufficient. 3. Group vs. individual learning. Learning Groups provide students with emotional and professional support, and enable them to transform schools. However, the group limits students' opportunities to practice teaching an entire class and receive individual supervision. In this dilemma, programme leaders’ as mentors who care for their students (Lunenberg et al., 2014) may collide with their commitment to social justice (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). 4. Preparing for the desirable vs. the ubiquitous schools. Teaching ‘best practices’ in excellent schools provides students with vital experience to become excellent teachers but may exacerbate their ‘reality shock’ (Veenman, 1984) when they start to teach in typical schools. This dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that in Israel, gaps between ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘best performing’ schools are large (OECD, 2023b).
ReferencesBraun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328-352.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2021). Rethinking teacher education: The trouble with accountability. Oxford Review of Education, 47(1), 8-24.
Cochran-Smith, M., Stringer Keefe, E., & Carney, M. C. (2018). Teacher educators as reformers: Competing agendas. European Journal of Teacher Education, 41(5), 572-590.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Villegas, A. M. (2015). Framing Teacher Preparation Research: An Overview of the Field, Part 1. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1), 7-20.
Craig, C. J. (2016). Structure of teacher education. In J. Loughran, & M. L. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education (Vol. 2, pp. 69-135). Singapore: Springer.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Teacher education around the world: What can we learn from international practice? European Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 291-309.
European Commission. (2013). Supporting Teacher Educators for Better Learning Outcomes. European Commission.
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (2023). Trends in teacher training, specialization in teaching and beginning of teaching, 2000-2023. Publication 085/2023. [In Hebrew] https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2023/085/06_23_085b.pdf
Lunenberg, M., Dengerink , J., & Korthagen, F. (2014). The professional teacher educator: roles, behaviour, and professional development of teacher educators. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
Mayer, D. (2021). The appropriation of the professionalisation agenda in teacher education. Research in Teacher Education, 11(1), 37-42.
OECD (2023a). Education at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/e13bef63-en.
OECD (2023b). PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/53f23881-en.
Veenman, S. (1984). Perceived problems of beginning teachers. Review of Educational Research, 54(2), 143–178.
Vanassche, E. (2023). Teacher education policy and professionalism: A personal review of teacher education policy research. In R. J. Tierney, F. Rizvi, & K. Erkican (Eds), International encyclopedia of education (Fourth Edition, Vol. 4, pp. 10-19). Elsevier.
Vanassche, E., & Kelchtermans, G. (2015). The state of the art in self-study of teacher education practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(4), 508-528.
Weissblai, E. (2023). Teacher shortage. Jerusalem, Israel: The Knesset Research and Information Center. [In Hebrew]
Wiggan, G., Smith, D., & Watson-Vandiver, M. J. (2021). The national teacher shortage, urban education and the cognitive sociology of labor. The Urban Review, 53, 43-75.
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Programme Curricula and Course Syllabi in Swedish Primary Teacher Education – a Document Analysis with Focus on Thesis Work
Mattias Börjesson, Rimma Nyman
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Presenting Author: Börjesson, Mattias;
Nyman, Rimma
In Sweden Teacher Education (TE) programmes are regulated by the national by the Higher Education Ordinance (SFS 1993:100) and additional national examination goals for TE that are more specific and detailed than most other Swedish higher education goals. In addition, each university or university collage must have a programme curriculum for each teacher education programme. These curricula must include the national education goals but also allows for a local focus. In addition to this each course within TE must have a course syllabus. Theses in TE are a significant component of the program. Thesis work allows aspiring teachers to delve deeper into their chosen topic of study, provides an opportunity to explore and contribute to the existing body of knowledge in education (Holmberg, 2006). Throughout the process of completing the thesis, students engage in extensive research, data collection, analysis, and critical thinking to address relevant issues in the field (Råde, 2016; Zackariassson, 2019). By conducting empirical studies or literature reviews students gain valuable insights into teaching profession and practices, curriculum development, educational policies, or other areas of their interest. The thesis work in teacher education not only enhances students' research and analytical skills, it also prepares them to become reflective practitioners who can contribute to the improvement of educational practices and student learning outcomes (Erixon & Erixon Arreman, 2018). Even though thesis work is found advantageous, there has been a discussion among policy makers and researchers in Sweden about the focus and purpose of theses in TE. One orientation has been that theses and thesis work should immerse student teachers with knowledge in education sciences as a basis for the teacher profession (Beach & Bagley, 2013). Another orientation has been that theses should have a connection to teaching and i.e. the vocational dimension of the teaching profession (Karlsudd et al., 2017; Mattsson, 2008; Wernersson & Hansen Orwehag, 2016), while some researchers have highlighted the benefits of integrating these two orientations in relation to thesis work (Erixon & Erixon Arreman, 2018; Råde, 2019). In the 2000s, the quality of theses were seen as a main indicator of the quality of higher education in the governmental evaluations (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, 2006; Svärd, 2014), which in combination with the increasing prominence of thesis work in TE, contributed to an interest in TE theses in educational research. In recent years the final thesis is not the only quality indicator in these evaluations, as they are combined with self-evaluations by universities; but it is still the case that if final theses have low quality, and if it is not improved in a satisfactory manner the university can lose the right to operate the programme. This gave incentives to TE departments to focus on scientific literacy and research skills in TE during the 2010s, while the vocational dimensions of teacher work were less highlighted in relation to thesis courses (Råde, 2016).
The purpose of this study is to identify orientations of thesis courses in Swedish primary teacher education by an analysis of programme curricula and course syllabi documents.
- What orientations can be identified in 2023 programme curricula and course syllabi in the thesis courses in 18 Swedish primary teacher education programmes track K–3 and 4–6?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe empirical material analysed in this paper consist of programme curricula and course syllabi. Swedish primary teacher education is given at 18 universities or university collages, and they are all included in the empirical material of programme curricula (U1–U18) and course syllabi at the five largest primary teacher education universities in Sweden (U1, U2, U3, U5, U13). The programme curricula (tracks K-3 and 4-6) and course syllabi are public documents, so they were accessible at each university or university collage. We chose programme curricula of Swedish primary teacher education given at 18 universities. A deductive thematic analysis performed made using the four orientations were used to identify to orientations, which knowledge and skills, that was emphasised in the documents (Bergström & Boréus, 2017). Programme curricula covers the entire primary teacher education programme, we selected the parts relating to Independent work 1 and Independent work 2 courses in the document analysis. Course syllabi of final thesis courses (thesis 2) at five universities were analysed as a whole. We chose to analyse course syllabi at five universities; they were chosen because they have large primary teacher education programmes. Concerning the analysis procedure, starting with a holistic reading of the documents we identified key words in each document relating to the orientations and used descriptive statistics to present the results (Börjesson & Nyman, 2023). The key words (table 2) provide a basis for comparisons of differences between the different universities.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe analysis revealed that the Academic orientation was most prominent, 16 programme curricula contained items with an emphasis on subject-matter. This was followed by the Vocational orientation, about half of the curricula (10 of 18) contained items that underline that theses should have a relevance for teacher practice. The Educational science orientation could be identified in a third (6 of 18) of the programme curricula, which emphasised knowledge and skills related to independent research (such as theory and analysis). Few programme curricula (2 of 18) highlighted aspects of the Applying research orientation, such as the ability to find relevant research in relation to a specific problem. However, the in the course syllabi the Educational sciences orientation was most prominent, and the Academic orientation was least prominent. That is, the programme curricula and course syllabi differ in orientation in relation to thesis courses. In this paper presentation we will show the distribution of the orientations and discuss implications for teacher education as well as how future teachers get acquitted with the relevance and use of those for their thesis word. In further research, it would be interested to investigate the role of theory in material used in teacher education courses.
ReferencesBeach, D., & Bagley, C. (2013). Changing professional discourses in teacher education policy back to towards a training paradigm: A comparative study. European Journal of Teacher Education, 36(4), 379-392. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2013.815162
Börjesson, M., & Nyman, R. (2023). Degree projects in Swedish primary teacher education – a content analysis of didactics and topics. Acta Didactica Norden, 17(1), 19 sider. https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.9594
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Competencies for Sustainability: Systems Thinking in Initial Teacher Training
Diego Gavilán-Martín, Gladys Merma-Molina, María José Hernández-Amorós, Salvador Baena-Morales
University of Alicante, Spain
Presenting Author: Gavilán-Martín, Diego;
Merma-Molina, Gladys
Global organisations linked to education and academia argue that university students need to be agents of change and that, to do so, they need to acquire skills linked to systems thinking; that is, for example, they need to be able to connect ideas, contradictory or incompatible positions, approach problems holistically (OECD, 2018; Ben-Zvi-Assaraf & Knippels, 2022), establish cause-effect networks and identify non-linear relationships and feedback loops (Uskola & Pug, 2023; Hipkins, 2021). This has increased interest in the scientific community, especially in Europe, to investigate and understand systems thinking, especially in chemistry (Reyunders et al., 2023) and engineering (Monat et al., 2022; York et al., 2019). In contrast, there needs to be more research on developing systems thinking skills in the social sciences, specifically in training future teachers. Among the latter, some studies have investigated systems thinking in Primary Education (Feriver et al., 2022; Mambrey et al., 2022), in Secondary Education (Rachmatullah & Wiebe et al., 2022), as well as in postgraduate students in Business Studies, Health Sciences, Education and Natural Sciences (Alm et al., 2022).
In short, systems thinking is increasingly essential for all people and professions because it provides a new way of understanding and managing complex problems (Choudhury, 2022). However, its research is disparate across different fields of natural and medical sciences and exact sciences such as biology, sustainability, medicine, and engineering. While it has yet to be a central theme in any of these fields, discussions are recently being stimulated as systems thinking is being investigated in depth.
Systems thinking is interpreted differently and according to the discipline; however, it is certainly understood as the ability to deal with a complex set of dynamically interacting elements. Moreover, it is almost always counter-intuitive thinking (Green et al., 2022). Based on the above, systems thinking can be understood as a set of skills and a way of thinking that enables people to understand dynamic complexity. People strive to understand and reason about complex systems (Streiling et al., 2021) and to understand how they might solve complex problems as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Future teachers play a fundamental role in students' systems thinking learning as they train the generations of today and tomorrow. Therefore, integrating this competence into university curricula in coordination with other disciplines is urgent. The growing complexity of education and the elements involved in learning requires trainers of trainers to develop the ability to think in systems so that they can pass this on to future teachers. In this way, teachers of children and adolescents could, in turn, develop, in their future professional development, this thinking, which they learnt previously. This study seeks to answer the following research question: What skills related to systems thinking do future teachers have? On this basis, the study aimed to identify and analyse the skills linked to systems thinking in undergraduate and postgraduate university students of education.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedConsidering the research objective, the quantitative approach was used, with a non-experimental and exploratory design.
The study involved 287 students from three degrees in the field of education at the University of Alicante (Spain) (Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education, Bachelor's Degree in Primary Education, Bachelor's Degree in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences) and two Master's Degrees (Master's Degree in Secondary Education Teaching and Master's Degree in Educational Research). Of these, 65.2% were women, 34.5% were men, and one person reported being of another gender. About age, 76% were aged between 18 and 22, 10.5% between 23 and 27, 6.3% between 28 and 32, 3.1% between 33 and 37, and 4.2% over 38. About their studies, 66.2% were students with a Bachelor's Degree in Primary Education, 13.2% had a Bachelor's Degree in Physical Activity and sports sciences, 13.2% had the Master's Degree in Secondary Education, 3.8% of the Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education and 3.5% of the Master's Degree in Educational Research.
The data collection instrument was the scale proposed and validated by Camelia et al. (2018). This was developed to assess students' learning about systems thinking in engineering students. Therefore, the instrument was adapted to students studying education. The original reliability and validity of the instrument indicated a high internal consistency of the items (Cronbach's alpha of 0.908). After rechecking the internal consistency of the items (Cronbach's alpha 0.87), the final instrument consisted of 19 items. Some of them are:
When I encounter a problem, I use multiple points of view to understand and analyse it; I think I am good at projects and personal organisation; I like to be daring and take risks to solve problems; I prefer to ask questions of my peers rather than research on my own; I enjoy using mind maps, pictures, causal diagrams or graphs to understand problems; when leading a group project, I make it a point to see how the whole project works, rather than focusing only on my tasks; and when working on a joint project, I value the contributions of others to complete the task.
The item values ranged from a minimum score of 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Always).
The questionnaire was created using Google Forms and was answered by the students in an average time of 15 minutes. The collected data were analysed with the statistical package SPSS v. 25 for Windows.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe most salient findings show that 79.4% of the participants considered it essential to analyse the specific needs of students before teaching (4.7), followed by 79.1% who said that they would be interested in knowing what the results of their future professional performance would be (4.5). On the other hand, 61.3% said that when working on a joint project, they value the contributions of others (4.2). In comparison, 58.9% of participants said they try to maintain communication with others (4). Similarly, a group of students (58.2%) stated that it is essential to acquire knowledge in areas of knowledge other than their specialisation (e.g. in psychology, sociology, philosophy or educational administration) (4.1). From the above, it can be inferred that the skills linked to systems thinking, which the students most reported having, are related to their professional profile (e.g., identifying students' needs or having communication skills).
Other striking results are that 28.2% of participants said they almost always try to find a quick answer to a problem without investigating further. 20.6% prefer to avoid taking risks to solve a problem, and 32.1% prefer to investigate individually. On the other hand, a group of students say they are not proactive (14.2%), and another considerable group consider themselves to be proactive only sometimes (32.8%). From these data, many students do not have sufficient skills linked to systems thinking or the capacity for future projection. This can be alleviated with relevant training that provides them with a more significant and better understanding of the complexity of the relationships between education, the environment and people (Astaíza-Matínez et al., 2021). A second conclusion is that they have not yet sufficiently developed more instrumental and systemic competencies specifically linked to problem-solving or the transformation of reality. Therefore, these skills must be systematically included in future teachers' curricula.
ReferencesAlm, K., Beery, TH, Eiblmeier, D., & Fahmy, T. (2022). Students’ learning sustainability–implicit, explicit or non-existent: a case study approach on students’ key competencies addressing the SDGs in HEI program. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 23(8), 60-84.
Ben-Zvi Assaraf, O., & Knippels, M.-C. (2022). Lessons learned: Synthesizing approaches that foster understanding of complex biological phenomena. In O. Ben-Zvi Assaraf, & M.-C. Knippels (Eds.), Fostering understanding of complex systems in biology education (pp. 249–278). Springer.
Camelia, F., Ferris, T. L., & Cropley, D. H. (2018). Development and initial validation of an instrument to measure students' learning about systems thinking: The affective domain. IEEE Systems Journal, 12(1), 115-124.
Choudhury, A. (2022). Toward an ecologically valid conceptual framework for the use of artificial intelligence in clinical settings: need for systems thinking, accountability, decision-making, trust, and patient safety considerations in safeguarding the technology and clinicians. JMIR Human Factors, 9(2), e35421.
Feriver, Ş., Olgan, R., Teksöz, G., & Barth, M. (2022). Impact of early childhood education settings on the systems thinking skills of preschool children through the lens of Bronfenbrenner's theory. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 39(1), 85-103.
Green, C., Molloy, O., & Duggan, J. (2022). An empirical study of the impact of systems thinking and simulation on sustainability education. Sustainability, 14(1), 394.
Mambrey, S., Schreiber, N., & Schmiemann, P. (2022). Young students’ reasoning about ecosystems: The role of systems thinking, knowledge, conceptions, and representation. Research in Science Education, 52(1), 79-98.
Monat, J., Gannon, T., & Amissah, M. (2022). The case for systems thinking in undergraduate engineering education. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy, 12(3), 50-88.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2018). The future of education and skills. Education 2030.
Rachmatullah, A., & Wiebe, E. N. (2022). Building a computational model of food webs: Impacts on middle school students' computational and systems thinking skills. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 59(4), 585-618.
Reynders, M., Pilcher, L. A., & Potgieter, M. (2023). Teaching and Assessing Systems Thinking in First-Year Chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 100(3), 1357-1365.
Streiling, S., Hörsch, C., & Rieß, W. (2021). Effects of teacher training in systems thinking on biology students—an intervention study. Sustainability, 13(14), 7631.
Uskola, A., & Puig, B. (2023). Development of systems and futures thinking skills by primary pre-service teachers for addressing epidemics. Research in Science Education, 1-17.
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