This paper explores how a group of engaged, enquiring teachers orient themselves towards research. The evidence discussed in this paper comes from work undertaken by teachers in the Learning to Learn Phase 3 Evaluation. This action research project ran for three years in primary and secondary schools in three clusters across UK. The paper focuses on identifying those aspects of being involved in L2L that support teachers' learning and the way that the teachers themselves understand the impact on their professional development. The findings contribute to our understanding of the role of inquiry and research in schools in supporting professional learning by suggesting how tools and models of working are developed.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

This paper describes the way four school-based teacher educators fulfill their role as educators of student teachers who learn how to teach while participating in the workplace. The authors use tools (e.g., apprenticeship assignments) developed within the teacher education institute and rely on their professional knowledge as experienced schoolteachers. The results indicate that student teachers being provided with useful tricks which, however, hardly helps them to interpret and elaborate their experiences from a more conceptual or theoretical perspective.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

In this article, the authors describe the requirements of standard 9 of the National Science Teachers Association Standards for Science Teacher Preparation. This standard is designed to ensure that science teacher preparation programs provide preservice science teachers with the knowledge and skills to understand and successfully engage students in a safe and ethical manner.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 12, 2010

During the course of an Initial Teacher Education programme, beginning teachers develop strong professional relationships. This study investigates the nature of these webs of relationships as networks, from a teacher's ego-centric perspective. Three case studies, set within a wider sample of 11 secondary school science teachers leaving one UK university's PostGraduate Certificate in Education, were studied. The focus of the paper is on how the teachers used others to help shape their sense of belonging to this, their new workplace. The paper develops ideas from network theories to argue that membership of the communities are a subset of the professional inter-relationships teachers utilise for their professional development.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

What knowledge is needed to teach mathematics with digital technologies? The overarching construct, called technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK), has been proposed as the interconnection and intersection of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge. Mathematics Teacher TPACK Standards offer guidelines for thinking about this construct. A Mathematics Teacher Development Model describes the development of TPACK toward meeting these standards. The standards and model provide structured detail to further the work of various groups.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: February 7, 2010

The goal of this study is to investigate the nature of student-teachers' learning practices in primary school chemistry classroom contexts. The theoretical approach of this study is based on the sociocultural view of learning and development. Forty university students participated in the study at the at the Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, Oulu University, Finland. This qualitative case study follows a three-step research design: pre-narrative, intervention and post-narrative, in order to highlight the practices involved in teacher learning and development.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

The purpose of this study is to examine an online pedagogical activity that fosters the social construction of science knowledge by primary pre-service teachers working in small virtual teams. The study examined how the pre-service teachers collaborated online in virtual teams to complete set tasks. The study also examined their attitudes toward and beliefs about the effectiveness of the online learning experience, and the types and quality of the resources developed. The findings indicated positive attitudes toward the collaborative learning even though beliefs about online learning were mixed.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

The dialogue re-presented in this article is intended to foster mutual engagement—and opportunity for learning—across different perspectives on research within the education research community. Opening and closing comments set the dialogue in historical context, highlight issues raised, and suggest next steps for collaborative learning from the diversity of perspectives in our field.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: February 1, 2010

This article critiques the articles by Connor et al., Croninger and Valli, Pianta and Hamre, and Rowan and Correnti, by taking a cultural-historical perspective on reading and reading instruction. The author of this critique presents evidence that challenges each of these assumptions and argues that by accepting them, the authors of the critiqued articles institute an order that values the system above relational aspects of schooling and teachers’ informed decision making.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: February 1, 2010

The main objective of this study was to investigate the differences between pre-service English teachers' self-efficacy beliefs with the instructors' views of the teaching competence of these pre-service teachers. Thirty-nine Turkish student teachers and five Turkish female instructors participated in the study. The results of the research indicated that the student teachers' self-efficacy judgments were higher than the instructors' judgments for the student teachers' teaching competence.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

In this paper, the authors’ goal is to explore how teacher candidates are inclined to think through issues of content and pedagogy, the cultural backgrounds of their students, and the values driving their moral reasoning. The authors provide a heuristic that organizes dispositions around three domains - intellectual, cultural, and moral. The authors use a small sample of teacher candidate journal entries to ground the discussion of each disposition domain. The authors offer recommendations for how teacher education programs can provide opportunities for prospective teachers to consider their dispositions and to identify how their dispositions influence teaching decisions.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

This article investigates the cultural agenda in Finnish language teacher education from a student teacher perspective. The focus is on the students' perceptions regarding how effectively cultural aspects are dealt with in their training, and how these perceptions may be affected by the length of time they have spent abroad. The empirical evidence suggests that both the language studies and the pedagogical studies tend to address cultural aspects to a small or very small extent. The main emphasis is placed on traditional aspects of culture.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: January 31, 2010

The authors desired a mentoring approach for graduate students in education that would foster an understanding and practice of teaching as a relational process. This article provides a practitioner account of an action research study focused on the development of such an approach. In a semester-long feminist participatory study, the authors utilized weekly dialogues, reflective journals, classroom observations and written documents to explore the mentoring experience of one graduate advisor, one graduate teaching assistant, and two critical friends.

Publication Year: 2009    |    Updated in ITEC: February 2, 2010