Showing papers in "Asia-pacific Journal of Teacher Education in 2012"

Motivations for choosing teaching as a career: effects on general pedagogical knowledge during initial teacher education

Abstract: The authors first ask to what extent future teachers in Germany endorse teaching motivations indicated by the FIT-Choice scale. This includes reporting on the confirmatory factor analysis they carried out to examine and to replicate the FIT-Choice scale structure in the specific cultural context of Germany with a sample of 1287 preservice teachers. Secondly, they investigate the relationship between future teachers' teaching motivations and their general pedagogical knowledge (GPK) using a subsample of 130 preservice teachers whose GPK was tested twice. Here the authors examine effects of preservice teachers' motivations for choosing teaching on their GPK. Among other findings of our study (1) the FIT-Choice instrument's factor structure is replicated, (2) the motivation profile typical for preservice teachers in Germany is replicated, (3) evidence is provided that intrinsic motivation is positively correlated, whereas extrinsic motivation is negatively correlated, with GPK at the first occasion of measur...

An introduction to teaching motivations in different countries: comparisons using the FIT-Choice scale

Abstract: The FIT-Choice program of research (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice; http://www.fitchoice.org) began in 2001, prompted by two questions that had been forming for Richardson over the course of a...

Factors Influencing Teaching Choice in Turkey

Abstract: Why choose to become a teacher in Turkey? The authors examined motivations and perceptions among preservice teachers (N = 1577) encompassing early childhood, primary and secondary education. The Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) instrument was translated into Turkish and its construct validity and reliability assessed. Altruistic ‘social utility values’ were the most influential, followed by the desire for a secure job. Intrinsic value and perceived teaching abilities came next, contrasting with higher ratings in Western studies, alongside prior positive teaching and learning experiences. Family flexibility, job transferability and social influences were moderate, and the negative ‘fallback career’ motivation lowest, although not far below the scale midpoint. Science-related teacher candidates scored more highly on fallback career, had chosen a teaching career the most recently, and were lower on almost all other teaching motivations, demonstrating a less positive motivational profile. Find...

The Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT)-Choice Scale in a Dutch Teacher Education Program.

Abstract: This study examined the suitability of the FIT-Choice scale in a Dutch educational context among two cohorts of preservice teachers (Ns = 62, 89), surveyed at the end and the beginning of their one-year program respectively. The relationships between the motivations for becoming a teacher and concurrent commitment were examined, as well as the differences between the two cohorts. The factor analyses were consistent with the original FIT-Choice structure. The main motivation for becoming a teacher was the self-perception of teaching-related ability. Affective commitment was predicted by the motivations of teaching ability, working with children, prior teaching and learning experiences, and time for family, as well as satisfaction with the choice of teaching and perceived task demand. Lastly, preservice teachers at the end of their teacher education considered social influences and teaching ability to be more important motivations for becoming a teacher.

Initial motivations for teaching: comparison between preservice teachers in the United States and China

Abstract: This study examined similar and differing initial motivations to teach between 257 US and 542 Chinese preservice teachers using the recently validated FIT-Choice scale. In both countries, participants were motivated to enter teaching because of their social utility values. US preservice teachers reported significantly higher motivations from social utility values, teaching abilities, intrinsic career value, and prior teaching and learning experiences, and lower fallback career motivations. While both viewed teaching as low in return, Chinese participants rated teaching to be low in demand whereas US participants perceived it as high in demand. Despite this, US participants were more satisfied with their career choice. Subtle similarities and differences between the two countries are discussed in relation to social and cultural-value differences.

Motivation and personality of preservice teachers in Croatia

Abstract: The study presents results founded upon the FIT-Choice scale validation and the relations between personality traits and motivation for teaching in Croatia. A sample of 374 first-year pre-service teachers from three universities participated in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis of the items comprising Croatian version of the FIT-Choice Scale provided support for the construct validity of this scale following the omission of six items with low factor loadings. Personality dimensions of the five-factor model provided a set of theoretically meaningful relations with the specific motivational factors determining the choice of teaching profession. In line with previous studies, our results showed that personality traits better predicted intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic motivation. Two interpersonal dimensions, extraversion and agreeableness were significant predictors of intrinsic career value, but also of satisfaction with the choice of this profession. Extraversion also predicted ability, whereas agreeableness demonstrated positive relations with social utility value of teaching career.

Becoming a VET teacher as a second career: investigating the determinants of career choice and their relation to perceptions about prior occupation

Abstract: Ageing and the threat of shortages among vocational education and training (VET) teachers are current issues in Europe. Yet, there is little research conducted so far that has investigated scientifically the motivation and perceptions of these teachers. We examine the factors influencing the choice of a second career as a VET teacher in Switzerland. German- and French-speaking VET teachers (N = 483) reported their motivation to become teachers, and their perceptions of teaching, using the FIT-Choice scale. In addition, perceptions of the participants' former occupation were examined in relation to the reasons for choosing teaching as a second career. The results provide an examination of validity of the FIT-Choice scale in a new context, a picture of the determinants of VET teachers' career choice, and an analysis of the relations between perceptions of prior occupations and these determinants, controlling for individual characteristics. Some adaptations of the FIT-Choice framework for investigating VET t...

Encouraging teacher development through embedding reflective practice in assessment

Abstract: Learning to become a teacher is a developmental process, part of which is learning to become a reflective practitioner. The authors have implemented a structured approach to developing the habits of critical reflection, the purpose of which is to guide their university students (who are pre-service teachers) to progress through the stages of teacher development and to facilitate self-motivated professional growth. Their attempts to incorporate into these pre-service teachers' learning the ‘practice’ part of reflective practice have included the development of different kinds of practical and applied tasks. In turn, their attempts to incorporate the ‘reflective’ part of reflective practice have involved the embedding in assessment activities of different scaffolds for metacognitive reflection. Their innovative processes of embedding reflection in assessment have been guided by Dewey's and Schon's views of reflection, their own views of the teacher education process, and Brookfield's conception of ‘critical...

Enlarging the social justice agenda in education: an analysis of rural teachers' narratives beyond the distributive dimension

Abstract: The sustained disadvantages suffered by rural schools place the concept of social justice at the centre of any discussion of rural education. However, too often a one-size-fits-all model is adopted that equates it with distribution of resources. Drawing on Iris Marion Young's work, this paper instead demonstrates the necessity of adopting a plural framework of social justice that includes issues of recognition and participation within the current neoliberal environment. The author draws on findings from a qualitative study with teachers in two rural schools in Victoria, Australia. While the teachers acknowledged the importance of a better distribution of resources, just as significant was their concern for issues of power, respect and participation in their work. The author argues that the distributive dimension offers a useful but limited approach and that a plural framework of social justice better informs teachers' experiences, and contributes to their understanding of the contexts in which they work.

Producing ‘quality’ teachers: the role of teacher professional standards

Abstract: In 2012, discussions about what constitutes ‘quality teaching’ and the role of teacher professional standards in determining and monitoring quality will, no doubt, continue to be important in Austr...

Leading an international teaching practicum: negotiating tensions in a site of border pedagogy

Abstract: Across the world, the work of teacher educators in universities is subject to contradictory discourses of, on the one hand, globalisation and standardisation and, on the other, innovation in both teaching and research. This article is a critical account of a particular experience of an Australian teacher educator leading an international teaching practicum in South Africa. The account shows how multifarious tensions play out in the practice of a teacher educator working in transcultural spaces utilising ‘border pedagogy’.

Reorienting teaching standards: learning from lesson study

Abstract: Teaching standards are regularly described as a mechanism for improving the status of the teaching profession and as a means to develop high-quality teachers. Less attention has been paid to the difficulties of fostering professional learning when externally produced standards are imposed on teachers. This paper outlines how lesson study can inform the use of teaching standards to shift the focus to centre on learning rather than teaching to richly inform national and international views on the use of teaching standards. More specifically, it explores how lesson study was a powerful process that developed a lived understanding of teaching standards and fostered two significant discursive shifts in teacher understanding of standards: from individual to collegial activity; and secondly from statements of teaching to centring the focus on processes of learning.

‘Society has taught us to judge’: cultures of the body in teacher education

Abstract: The body is a powerful symbolic form and all bodily activities are expressions of culture. The look, size, shape and physicality of bodies are perceived by all and compared to particular cultural standards. In this way the body is inscribed with culture and can serve as a site for social control. Various discourses of the body, including those around appearance, health and fitness, circulate within societal institutions and through relations of power these impact on the way in which we come to understand bodies. In times marked by individualised responsibility for all aspects of life, the body and technologies of self around bodywork are also significant in relation to self-formation and self-government. This research investigates the impact of various cultures of the body, on pre-service physical education teachers' understandings and meaning making about bodies, fitness, health and personal engagement in bodywork. Implications for future practices in teaching, relationships with school students and mess...

Quality of learning outcomes in an online video-based learning community: Potential and challenges for student teachers

Abstract: This study investigates the learning outcomes of 25 student teachers in an online video-based learning community (VBLC). Data were drawn from the student teachers' written comments and feedback recorded in the VBLC and the post-course interviews. Based on Biggs and Collis's Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy, the majority of comments and feedback were classified as uni-structural, but more sophisticated responses could also be found. The interviews revealed that the student teachers benefited from the opportunities of peer interaction and self-reflection. The study thus makes suggestions for further improvement of the operation of the VBLC.

Finding out more about teacher candidates' prior knowledge: implications for teacher educators

Abstract: While it is recognised that prior knowledge is a key factor in determining future learning, its influence on learning to teach is less well known. This study investigates two cohorts of teacher candidates studying for a one-year, graduate qualification for primary teaching, who completed two tasks at entry to their initial teacher education programme: a task in writing and a task in mathematics. The tasks focused on teacher candidates' ability to recognise the key features of a piece of student work. The teacher candidates' responses to the tasks highlighted the diverse nature of the prior knowledge that underpinned their responses. The study raises questions about the pedagogy of initial teacher education, particularly in relation to the assumptions teachers educators make about the candidates they teach. The findings suggest that the prior knowledge that students bring to initial teacher education is both a resource and a challenge for teacher educators.

Challenging science teachers' beliefs and practices through a video-case-based intervention in China's primary schools

Abstract: The present study aims to challenge primary school science teachers’ beliefs about education and teaching efficacy, as well as their teaching practices, through a videocase-based intervention programme in a Chinese educational setting. A total of 46 in-service teachers were involved in this study (experimental group = 23, control group = 23). Pre- and post-intervention surveys were administered to examine possible changes in the participants’ beliefs about education and science teaching efficacy. Video data were gathered through classroom observations of 9 participants from the experimental group and 9 participants from the control group. The results of one-way analysis of covariance indicate that the reported post-intervention beliefs of teachers who participated in the programme differed significantly from their pre-intervention beliefs. More specifically, teachers in the experimental groups reported fewer traditional and more constructivist beliefs after the intervention, as well as stronger personal science teaching efficacy beliefs. One exception included beliefs about science teaching outcome expectancy. The video data showed that teaching practices became more constructivist in terms of both practical activities and student ICT use.

The possibility of cosmopolitan learning: reflecting on future directions for diversity teacher education in Australia

Abstract: This paper is situated in the re-visioning ethos that has been part of the genealogy of multicultural education. In the context of teacher education, the authors ask: where to now? In this paper, they reflect on their design and delivery of a new undergraduate unit offered by the School of Education, University of Western Sydney. The unit attempted to work through ideas of ‘cosmopolitanism’ as a way of rethinking diversity education for the twenty-first century. The paper offers a critical review of multiculturalism in teacher education and examines theories associated with cosmopolitanism in the education context. The authors examine the ways in which a ‘cosmopolitan imagination’ might have relevance in contemporary contexts of diversity in Australia, and particularly in the western and south-western Sydney region in which they teach.

Personal metaphors of prospective secondary economics and science teachers

Abstract: Using the responses to open questions, this qualitative study examines the personal metaphors expressed by prospective secondary education teachers, 46 science graduates and 41 economics graduates. The metaphors are classified into the four categories of Leavy, McSorley, and Bote: the behaviourist/transmissive, the cognitivist/constructivist, the situative, and the self-referential. The results showed most metaphors to fall into the behaviourist/transmissive category, followed by the cognitivist/constructivist, self-referential, and situative categories, although some teachers expressed metaphors framed in more than one category. Of the 129 metaphors detected in the study, only one, of a chemistry graduate concerning the equilibrium between reactants, was associated with the prospective teachers' specific undergraduate education. The rest were expressions of their overall vision of teaching and learning, regardless of the speciality.

How has recent curriculum reform in China influenced school-based teacher learning? An ethnographic study of two subject departments in Shanghai, China

Abstract: Curriculum reforms with a focus on helping students ‘learn to learn’ are now an established global educational phenomenon. China has been implementing such curriculum reform and this poses challenges to teachers as they need to develop new pedagogical skills and knowledge to deal with new educational demands that arise. This ethnographic study investigates the impacts of current curriculum reform on teacher learning using two subject departments from two schools in Shanghai, China. It shows that teachers direct much attention towards searching for good practices and norms of practice to encounter new curriculum challenges. Findings show that outside experts who act as ‘boundary brokers’ are crucial in teacher learning. They also identify two modes of teacher learning activities: hierarchical, which relies on imported expert knowledge; and reciprocal, which depends on exploiting local knowledge. Striking a balance between these two approaches may be the way forward.

Theorising on-site teacher education: Philosophical Project Knowledge (PPK)

Abstract: Working within the general framework of Habermas and Shulman, the research reported here probes new directions of teacher education and school–university partnerships. The paper presents preliminary evidence of the theorising of teaching practice by pre-service teachers and university staff as they work together with the praxis inquiry protocol and preliminary data regarding the generation of Philosophical Project Knowledge. The project attempts to open up the question of epistemological equity for lower socio-economic children in particular by describing and theorising practice involving pre-service teachers so that communities of practice are established in all classrooms. The research stance is one of democratic practitioner research so that generalised ideas emerge from professional practice and are embedded in the reality of classroom problems and experience. In adopting a general research methodology of autoethnography, the authors critically reflect on, analyse and change their own practice without...

Aborigines of the Imaginary: Applying Lacan to Aboriginal Education.

Abstract: This paper applies the work of Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, to decipher the desire of the teacher in Aboriginal education. It argues that the images of Aboriginal people represented in Australian classrooms are effects of the teacher's Imaginary, the Imaginary being one of the three psychoanalytic domains theorised by Lacan over a period of 30 years of teaching. The author questions whether it is possible for teacher education courses to move the student teacher beyond the Imaginary, and beyond the inventions of Aboriginal people that he or she has produced in his or her own mind. A possible way out of this endless cycle of romantic idealism and deficiency is proposed outside the usual approaches to cultural awareness training and professional development.

Perspectives of new trades tutors: boundary crossing between vocational identities

Abstract: This article reports on a study of the perspectives of new tutors teaching traditional vocational trades who recently commenced teaching in the Institutes of Technologies and Polytechnics (ITPs) sector in New Zealand. The perspectives are collated from questionnaires and interviews of 13 tutors, from five ITPs, who have been teaching full-time for two years. In this article, a focus is made on the transformation process from expert trade worker to effective trades tutor, along with suggestions to assist the ‘boundary crossing’ process between two diverse vocational identities. Suggestions include aligning trades tutors' existing workplace training-based conceptualisations of teaching and learning to extend trades tutors' teaching craft knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

‘Wow, this is where I'm supposed to be!’ Rethinking gender construction in teacher recruitment 1

Abstract: This paper focuses on how understanding male gendered ways of experiencing the teaching profession might help us address the current shortage of male diversity in teaching. The study discusses the factors that may influence males to enter teaching and proposes the possibility of considering the participation of males in teaching as a way to contribute to education without essentialising notions of gender, but rather by acknowledging the gendered experience of becoming and being a teacher. An analysis of interviews with male teachers and teacher candidates indicates that the most salient aspect that drove the male participants into teaching is their desire to give back to the community and to promote social justice. The author thus proposes a set of guiding directions for how to begin the process of rethinking gender construction and attracting males into the teaching profession in a way that addresses gender balance and teaching quality.

‘What rough beast?’ Conceptualising the poetry teacher in Ireland through the eyes of the pupil

Abstract: Pupils have a significant contribution to make in the construction of knowledge about teaching and learning in schools. Therefore, consultation with pupils should play a significant role in the pursuit of pedagogical advancement. This study explores pupils' conceptions of effective poetry teachers at Leaving Certificate level in Ireland. Taking a phenomenographic approach, this study draws on interviews conducted with 23 senior cycle pupils. Set against a transcontextual backdrop of pupil apathy and disengagement in the poetry classroom, this study identifies five significant categories of learning for pre-service teachers aiming to optimise student engagement within the poetry classroom. The imperative for action, specifically at pre-service level, is outlined and recommendations in the pursuit of pedagogical advancement in the poetry classroom are proposed.

First off the blocks: professional experience and learning for first-year preservice Physical and Health Education teachers

Abstract: Recent research focusing on professional experience has shifted towards understanding preservice teachers' learning. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the learning of preservice Physical and Health Education teachers throughout three progressively designed professional experiences. Ten volunteering first-year preservice teachers, who were enrolled in a four year degree, were recruited. A qualitative practitioner inquiry approach was employed, with participants interviewed twice to provide insights into their learning and theorising of practice. Key themes emerged around the relationship between the unit content (theory) and professional experience (practice); notions of professionalism; engagement with the syllabus and lesson planning; communication; and understanding of students. Findings indicate the potential of microteaching placements as stepping-stones to larger, more intense professional experience placements. However, future research is needed to provide stronger evidence for these pl...

The Retention and Success of Under-Represented Groups in a Bachelor of Education Program in New Zealand.

Abstract: For several decades researchers have raised questions regarding factors that enable undergraduate students, particularly those from ethnic minority groups living in low socio-economic areas, to persist with their studies to degree completion. Seeking answers to these questions becomes more urgent as universities around the world enrol increasingly diverse cohorts of students. This article reviews the patterns of participation and success for students enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program at one university, distributed across three different locations and attracting different cohorts of students. This provided the university with a unique opportunity to learn about the retention and success of diverse cohorts, particularly those traditionally under-represented at undergraduate-level study. At least 75% of students in the under-represented groups passed their courses. Surprisingly the pass rates of students at the three campuses were similar, despite dissimilarities in ethnicity, socio-economic status...

Learning and teaching: issues for teacher education

Abstract: Over the course of the past few years we have been keen, as Editors, to act responsively to the interests, needs, and concerns of teacher educators around the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. In sha...