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Pre- and In-service Teachers’ Conceptions about Teachership
Abstract
In this study we have examined pre - and in-service teachers' conceptions about good teachership. Eighteen 2nd year teacher students participated in the study in the spring 2008; eighteen class teachers participated in February 2009. In order to find in-service teachers' and pre-service teachers' conceptions an open-ended questionnaire was used. The questionnaire was theory-based and considered the following four topics: professional knowledge, interaction, values and ethics, and motivation. The research approach was phenomenographical. Four teacher type categories emerged: a) student centred, b) profession and teaching oriented, c) rather societally reserved, and d) society orientated, humanistic approaches to teachership. Differences between pre- and in-service teachers were seen especially as grounded in amount of teaching experience and ways of practice. Contrary to in-service teachers pre-service teachers pronounced theoretical aspects brought from their teacher education programs. They emphasized a student centred practice and stressed work endurance, renewal and development. In-service teachers' experience showed in their conceptions of students as being a source of strength. © Common Ground, Sivbritt Dumbrajs, Tuula Keinonen, Anssi Kinnaslampi, Heini Kinnaslampi.
... Faculties of education should address these issues and develop positive attitudes towards mathematics (ATM) since evidence shows that it's not all about the teachers themselves. Many studies demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between teachers' positive ATM and their instructional performance (Chester and Beaudin, 1996; Mewborn ve Cross, 2007; Thompson, 1992), their pupils' achievement (Lake and Kelly, 2014; Lindgren, 1995; McLeod, 1994; Pehkonen, 1994; Schram et al., 1988) and motivation (Vinson, 2001). When it comes to early childhood PSTs, the problem seems to be a deeper one. ...
As in many countries, early childhood teachers introduce mathematics content in kindergartens in Turkey. Therefore, early childhood teachers should master a certain level of mathematics knowledge and are offered a mathematics methods course in faculties of education. Teacher training programs are also expected to improve early childhood preservice teachers (PSTs) attitudes towards mathematics (ATM). In this context, it seems important to investigate whether and how much early
childhood PSTs’ attitude towards mathematics changed throughout their university lives. Our study was conducted with a sampling of 43 participants studying at a state university in the north of Turkey, in the Black Sea Region. The data was collected from early childhood PSTs using the same attitude scale in their 1st and 3rd years of study. The quantitative analysis of the data in SPSS 22 using t-test for paired samples demonstrated that the early childhood PSTs’ attitudes towards mathematics have improved from the 1st to the 3rd year. In our sampling, one-way ANOVA and t-test for independent samples revealed that the ATM of the early childhood PSTs were not associated with variables such as gender, the type of completed high school, total family income, and parents’ level
of education. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the mathematics methods course offered to early childhood PSTs in their 2nd year might be effective in improving the attitudes towards mathematics.
Our research takes off from two different perspectives. Primarily we focus on the life story of a primary school teacher, who has participated in our previous research project on class teachers. Secondly we allowed all her six pupils in the age range of 6 to 9 years to draw a picture of their teacher as she is busying herself. With use of phenomenological reduction the autobiographical narrative has been rewritten. Reduction, as used in analysis of open-ended interviews and essays, involves bracketing of all casual explanations, generalizations, or interpretations. Concrete details are asked for. Thus experience can be seen as an activity of encounter with the world. Drawing pictures is another way of enacting experience. Children imitate other people's actions. They are attentive to gestures and postures, which express everything that goes to make an accomplished adult. This understanding is not cognitive but relational, situational and actional. We were able to reach a synthesis between our two interdisciplinary approaches. Each child experienced the teacher in a different way that was related to some aspect found in the teacher's autobiography. © Common Ground, Seija Jouhki, Sivbritt Dumbrajs, Tuula Keinonen, Tove Westerlund.
This study began as an exploration of the following questions: What do individual science teachers bring into their teaching
that frames and mediates their teaching philosophy and of what, if any, value is it in science education? Drawing from a life
history case study of Anna, an in-service science teacher, I show that her moral beliefs, perceptions, experiences, and interests
dialectically frame and mediate her views of science teaching. Anna brings into her classroom her personal philosophy of teaching
and learning. This is in contrast to studies concluding that different aspects of teachers’ personal philosophies, such as
their understanding of the nature of science and their behavior and pedagogical decisions are not connected and may be neatly
segregated from one another. In the “transmission” [Transmission is presented in quotes because in this manuscript it is used
dialectically, as opposed to a one-directional and “objective” process. The science teacher is not just a “lens” for the transmission
of cultural capital; the cultural capital “transmitted” though Anna is seen as existing in a state of creation/recreation.]
of cultural capital, Anna embodies dialectical relationships and processes, not just as a mediator of culture, but also as
an organic entity that contributes to how culture is created, recreated and exchanged in a science classroom, and as such,
is referred to here as an organic link. Science teacher identity and science teaching philosophy are thus seen as much closer
to the human experience—merging the intellectual, the personal, the cultural, the political, and the environmental with the
relationships and the processes that connect each to the others and to the whole. They are viewed as, at once, being mediated
by as well as mediating one another. I argue that the total of what science teaching is exceeds the sum of its commonly “measurable”
parts, like content and pedagogical knowledge. Although the designing and framing of this study was initially a life history
investigation, a dialectical approach and analysis were found to be necessary to develop the theoretical conceptualization
of the emerging interwoven themes, illustrating how the researcher’s own philosophy and development are dialectically intertwined
with, and at once affect and are effects of the research process and outcomes.
Effective teaching is a factor that is considered, in public view, as a prerequisite for effective learning. The ability of learners to acquire a meaningful understanding of the content and ability to practically engage such understanding in solving challenges they face in life, will depend on the professional craft nature of the teacher in his attempt to maximize learner understanding of what is being learned. Education stakeholders have always linked such teachers with various attributes in an attempt to qualify their exemplary achievements in their profession. This paper seeks to establish the perception about an exemplary teacher as held by Master of Education Students at a university in Eastern Africa. It presents views of the students and makes a generalization of who an exemplary teacher is. This investigation was based on a whole population sample of 22 participants. The focus was on issues such as work planning, classroom practices, classroom management and personal view points and how these attributes are perceived by the participants in qualifying who an exemplary teacher is. Results show that an exemplary teacher is one who maintains high standards in all the four competencies investigated, with work planning being the most significant attribute. Personal view points on learner, teacher and gender issues investigated reveal that teacher's ability to attend to work with other teachers, rate high as significant attributes of an exemplary teacher.
As a dimension of beginning teachers' identities roles and ways of working form an important factor. Teachers' professionalism is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomenon. Individual differences might be notable due to, for example, interpretation and transposition of curriculum contents, adaptation of teaching objectives, organization of time, of space and working material, and the composition of the learning groups. Also the didactic contract has influence on individual differences as well as the relationship between teacher and pupils, the relationship between pupils, the class dynamics, the learning climate, and the teacher's representation of the knowledge she has to teach and the methods that could be used. Altogether six pre- and in-service primary teachers took part in an investigation of their individual features as emerging in teaching of sciences. The teachers wrote an essay over the themes curriculum, teamwork, integration, concreteness, and their own teacherhood. At a second stage they had to choose one picture out of twelve that they thought well corresponded to an instructional situation from a science lesson. They should also give a short comment on why they had chosen the picture in question. Only three pictures were chosen. These pictures and the essays made it possible to allocate the teachers to three different teacher types. One of these is mainly performance oriented; the other two are mainly representing a humanistic-constructivist pedagogy. However, all three categories are strongly overlapping.