Conference Agenda

The research problem of the study is undergraduate training and preparedness of social sciences teachers with a focus on philosophy. The main research objective is to analyze how future and beginning teachers of philosophy evaluate the benefits, content and sufficiency of their undergraduate training in the field of philosophy (as a partial social science discipline) in relation to their pedagogical practice. The paper is a partial output of the author's dissertation, where other objectives are to define key terms with regard to recently published professional theoretical and empirical studies from the Czech Republic and abroad. Furthermore, the aim is to map the form and content of undergraduate training at two types of faculties – education and philosophy, and to identify the variables that have an impact on the evaluation of the preparation. Additionally, undergraduate training is analysed from the point of view of developing desirable specific competencies. Last but not least, we synthesize recommendations to improve the training.

According to the OECD definition (2024), a teacher is a person whose profession involves imparting knowledge, skills and attitudes (i.e. competencies) to students that are specified in a formal curriculum. In the Czech environment, the teaching profession is defined legislatively by Act No. 563/2004 Coll., on Pedagogical staff. Unlike abroad, in the Czech Republic, the teaching profession cannot be considered a full profession because it still does not exhibit certain characteristics of a profession (e.g. the existence of a professional chamber, high social prestige and economic status, ...) (Gore & Morrison, 2001; Guerriero & Deligiannidi, 2017). Spilková et al. even describe Czech education policy as de-professionalising and de-qualifying, despite the fact that trends of increasing professionalisation of teaching can be observed worldwide (Spilková, 2016, 2023; Spilková & Štech, 2023).

Undergraduate training is understood as the first stage of the development of a teacher's professional career (Průcha, 2002) and is viewed as a process of developing professional competencies, which is in line with the document Competence Framework for Graduate Teachers (MŠMT, 2023). In the Czech Republic, future teachers are mainly prepared at pedagogical or philosophical faculties, and their (teachers of 2nd level of elementary school and grammar school) takes the form of a three-year Bachelor's degree and a two-year follow-up Master's degree. The goal of undergraduate training is to equip the graduate with pedagogical and professional knowledge and skills (European Commission, 2020), but going through a formal education process does not make a graduate a great teacher.

In this paper, we see student preparedness as a subjective perception or feeling. According to the authors Janišová & Strouhal (2023), being prepared for the teaching profession means being prepared for the change and variability that accompany teachers on a daily basis and can be viewed from different perspectives.

The research focuses both on students and their preparedness, but also on beginning philosophy teachers and their teaching. These are qualified teachers with a social sciences approbation with less than 3 years of experience teaching philosophy as a part of the school subject Basics of Social Sciences at grammar schools (Zhong, 2017; Chudý & Neumeister, 2014). Subject didactics of philosophy is only slowly developing in the Czech environment and foreign inspirations are very valuable (e.g. the competence-based approach by Tozzi or Tiedemann). Philosophy teaching in the Czech Republic takes place mostly in one year of studies at grammar schools and this issue is not a well-explored field in the world or in the Czech Republic, therefore we consider this study to be beneficial for both subject didactics of philosophy and subject didactics of social sciences, which is also not firmly anchored.

Teaching for creativity (TfC) is highlighted worldwide due to its crucial role in students’ learning motivation, creative performance, and academic achievement (Craft et al., 2008; Davies et al., 2013; Gajda et al., 2017). A line of research in the field of management has found that psychological capital (PsyCap) has a close relationship with individual creativity in many service settings (Huang & Luthans, 2015; Li & Wu, 2011; Rego et al., 2012; Sweetman et al., 2011). To date, few studies in education have explored whether and to what extent teachers’ PsyCap is related to their TfC behavior. To address the discussed research gaps, this study was designed to investigate the relationship between teachers’ PsyCap and their TfC behavior, by first examining the links between each of the four components of PsyCap—efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism—and teachers’ TfC, and then by analyzing the differences in these links between urban and rural teachers.

TfC emphasizes the development of creativity in students through their empowerment in the learning process. (Jeffrey & Craft, 2004; National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, 1999).

Luthans (2002) defines PsyCap as “positively oriented human resources strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement” (p. 59). From this perspective, Luthans, Avolio, et al. (2007) advanced four positive psychological resources as constituting PsyCap: efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience.

The relationship between efficacy and TfC can be addressed in three ways. Based on the previous literature, we postulated a positive relationship between efficacy and TfC.

Conceptual work backed by empirical evidence indicates that hopeful individuals are apt to welcome creativity. Zhou and George (2003) argued that creativity-related performance at work requires a willingness to explore despite the possibility of failure. From this literature, we anticipated a positive association between hope and TfC among teachers.

Resilience is the ability to adapt to changing contexts and life stressors, to bounce back from failure, uncertainty, and adversity, and even to move beyond resilience to achieve success (Luthans, Youssef, et al., 2007; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). Given that failures and challenges are inherent in creative tasks (Amabile, 1983) as well as the cultivation of student creativity (Bereczki & Kárpáti, 2018), feeling at ease in abnormal situations and persevering despite failure are prerequisites of creativity-related behavior. We postulated that the positive association between resilience and creativity found in this literature would be also applicable to TfC.

Optimism refers to an individual’s generalized positive expectancy for, and attributions of, success (Scheier et al., 2001). Empirical studies have also found that optimism can enhance flexible cognition, trigger intrinsic motivation, and promote creative thinking and creativity-related performance (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Sweetman et al., 2011). Based on the theory of optimism and the attendant empirical studies, we predicted that a positive association between optimism and TfC.

In China, due to community poverty, isolation, and distance from the centers of political, economic, and cultural life (Sargent & Hannum, 2005), rural teachers in under-resourced schools may exhibit different features of PsyCap and face distinct challenges in TfC. we predicted that the structural relationships between efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism to TfC are invariant across urban and rural teachers.

This research grew out of a change in pre-service teacher (PST) placement practice on one undergraduate Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme in the Republic of Ireland because of changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic and as a response to Teaching Council policy and guidance documentation (2020a; 2020b, 2021) during that period. The Year 1 PST placement experience over the period from 2020-2022, moved from a video-recorded microteaching experience (Allen and Ryan, 1969; Arsal, 2014) teaching students from a local school in the University setting, followed by a primary school placement, to an online synchronous peer teaching placement experience (Teaching Online Programme 1 - TOP1).

Post-Covid, the programme academic team re-evaluated the placement experience. Team research had found that while the TOP “offered …[a chance to build] knowledge in a safe environment where risks could be taken … with technology that might not be attempted in the classroom” (Doyle et al., 2021, p.61), it was also the case that “some student-teachers … missed the real encounter with pupils in the classroom” (Doyle et al, 2021, p.58). Considering these findings and research published in response to online teaching during Covid-19 (Donlon et al., 2022; Giner-Gomis et al., 2023; White and McSharry, 2021), the team designed and implemented a re-imagined form of PST placement practice in Year 1 of the academic year 2022-2023. The research question for this qualitative study asks: What is the process that led beginning pre-service teachers to the moment of embodiment in becoming a teacher? It is concerned with the threshold moment in the becoming of a PST as experienced in this re-imagined placement experience and how this might inform PST placement practice internationally. We acknowledge that there are many different types of PST experiences across the globe, however, this research will transfer to the becoming of a teacher whatever the format (Newman, 2023).

The conceptual framework for this study comes from the concept of becoming as suggested in the work of Deleuze and Guattari (2003). They define becoming as “a threshold, a middle, when things accelerate” (p.25). We will argue that year one of ITE is such a threshold or middle. There is no beginning with becoming, only middles and muddles (St Pierre, 2013) as the PST already has images and ideas of who and what a teacher might be. However, becoming is a process in which any given multiplicity “changes nature as it expands its connections” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003). Sellers (2013) clarifies that becoming involves a dynamic process, through/with/in which an assemblage (PST) is constantly changing through connections it is making. ITE offers a variety of spaces for the pre-service teacher to make and expand these connections both on site in the university, online and in the classroom.

The concept of becoming offers the concepts of multiplicity and difference which are significant in this framework. They will help interrogate how the pre-service teacher becomes something new through the inter and intra-connections of these concepts. This understanding undercuts the importance of identity and being and disrupts the thinking of a human as stable and rational, who experiences change but remains the same person. It also undercuts the search for an “identity” for the pre-service teacher and points rather to process, movement, expansion, and confluence. Stagoll (2010) suggests “one’s self must be conceived as a constantly changing assemblage of forces, an epiphenomenon arising from chance confluences of languages, organisms, societies, expectations, laws and so on” (p.27). This study will map how teacher placement works for the first-year pre-service teacher and how it acts as a threshold for the initial embodiment of their becoming as teachers.