Auli Toom

Guided reflection as a means to demonstrate and develop student teachers’ reflective competencies

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which the reflection presented in student teachers’ teaching practicum contributes to the development of their professional knowledge. The paper addresses the task of investigating the quality of teacher reflection in its guided forms. By using the procedures of guided reflection, this paper builds a conceptual account with which to structure and describe the forms of reflection presented in student teachers’ reflective talk. Based our results, there is a need to investigate more closely what creates changes in teachers’ knowledge and what kind of reflective processes can contribute to such changes. We hope that the procedure of guided reflection opens new opportunities for studying the development of teachers’ professional learning.

Investigating Finnish teacher educators’ views on research‐based teacher education

In this article, we examine teacher educators’ views on research‐based teacher education. Finnish research‐based teacher education has four characteristics: (1) the study programme is structured according to a systematic analysis of education; (2) all teaching is based on research; (3) activities are organized in such a way that students can practice argumentation, decision‐making and justification when inquiring about and solving pedagogical problems; and (4) the students learn formal research skills during their studies. According to the results, teacher educators appreciate the research‐based approach to which the university is committed, although they were sceptical about how well this vision transfers to the students.

The Stimulated Recall Method and ICTs in Research on the Reasoning of Teachers

This article reports methodological aspects of a research study on the reasoning of teachers. The aim is to describe and evaluate the use of the stimulated recall method (STR) when information and communication technologies (ICTs) are involved in terms of educational settings and therefore in the research setting as well. First, we introduce the research context of the study: the teacher’s pedagogical thinking and concept mapping as a student’s school task. Second, we discuss how the development of research on the teacher’s pedagogical thinking has influenced the progress of research methods in which video observation and interviews are employed. A combination of these can be classified under the STR, which will be described. Third, we look more closely at the case in which ICTs were involved in the object of the research, that is, a class project for eight‐year‐olds conducted in the school’s computer lab, and evaluate the research methodological implications of this. We argue that traditional use of video‐stimulated recall interview in teacher thinking research can be advanced by focusing on the student’s learning process with the recordings of the student’s digital concept map creation instead of plain teacher performance analysis on the video.

Student teachers’ patterns of reflection in the context of teaching practice

This study clarifies the basic structure of student teachers’ reflective thinking. It presents a constructivist account of teacher knowledge through a detailed analysis of various patterns of reflection in student teacher portfolios. We aim to gain a greater understanding of the process and outcomes of portfolio writing in the context of teaching practice. By closely analysing portfolio texts, we defined six main starting points for reflective episodes and several patterns under each of them. Also, the patterns of reflective episodes were analysed according to their deductive and inductive dimensions, together with their static and dynamic features. According to our results, it is possible that student teachers can reflect beyond solely practical issues on teaching, articulate multiple concerns about practice and elaborate them in an integrative manner as well as learn both from theory and from practice as a result of reflection for their future profession.

What Contributes to First-Year Student Teachers' Sense of Professional Agency in the Classroom?.

This study explores Finnish first-year primary teacher students’ (N = 244) sense of professional agency in the classroom. In addition, the interrelation between student teachers’ sense of professional agency and the perceptions of teacher education as a learning environment is explored. The sense of professional agency in the classroom simultaneously requires the motivation to learn, efficacy beliefs about learning and intentional acts for facilitating and managing new learning in the classroom. The results showed that these basic elements are embedded in the contextualised components of student teachers’ professional agency, entailing judgements of one’s competence in teaching, transformative and collaborative practice, reflection in the classroom and modelling as a learning orientation. The results further suggested that teacher education provided an encouraging learning environment for student teachers. However, only peer relations in the learning environment were positively related to perceived professional agency.

Finnish Teachers as ‘Makers of the Many’

Finnish teachers have recently been at the focus of interest of the international media, public decision makers and politicians as well as researchers into teaching. The results of Finnish pupils in PISA have encouraged many people to inquire about the characteristics and atmosphere of Finnish schools, and especially the working conditions as well as the enthusiastic, committed orientation of Finnish teachers. This chapter describes the work of Finnish teachers, their pedagogical responsibilities and freedom related to their role as well as their pedagogical thinking at the background of their everyday work in classrooms with pupils.

Educating inquiry-oriented teachers: students' attitudes and experiences towards research-based teacher education

In this article, we will discuss research-based teacher education as an organizing theme of teacher education. We will report the results of two surveys in which students expressed their attitudes towards the research-based approach and their experiences of research-based teacher education. The construct validity of the inventory was tested using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The comparison of the factor means revealed that the multimode teacher education group had a statistically higher mean score than the traditional class teacher education group for factors which dealt with the pedagogical content knowledge of those subjects that class teachers teach in their classes. When the experienced implementation of the research-based approach was analyzed, the results ran in the same direction. The difference between the attitudes and experiences concerning the research-based approach was remarkable. However, our results suggest that the research-based approach is an appreciated general level organizer for teacher education.

Early career teachers’ sense of professional agency in the classroom: associations with turnover intentions and perceived inadequacy in teacher–student interaction

ABSTRACT Teachers’ capacity to learn intentionally and responsively in the classroom is particularly vulnerable during the first years in the profession. This study investigated the interrelations between early career teachers’ turnover intentions, perceived inadequacy in teacher–student interaction, and sense of professional agency in the classroom. The survey data were collected from 284 in-service teachers with not more than 5 years of experience and analysed by structural equation modelling (SEM). The results showed that the negative relation between turnover intentions and early career teachers’ sense of professional agency was completely mediated by perceived inadequacy in teacher–student interaction. The results indicate that experiences of insufficient abilities to solve pedagogically and socially challenging student situations have a crucial effect on early career teacher’s capacity for adaptive reflection and active transformation of instruction.

Social support as a contributor to student teachers’ experienced well-being

Abstract The aim of this study is to gain better understanding of the dynamics of the social support system adopted in teacher education and its significance for the student teachers’ experienced well-being. The focus was on exploring the extent to which empowering emotional, informational or instrumental support is enabled for student teachers during their studies. Altogether, 40 student teachers were interviewed, and the data were subjected to content analysis. The results showed that the student teachers faced both empowering and burdening experiences involving social support, or lack of it. Informational support was the most frequently reported. Further, most of the informational and emotional support was appropriate and was received from both peers and teacher educators. Conversely, a lack of or inadequate support was experienced burdening. However, active efforts to develop a more supportive social environment – i.e. offering or giving social support for others – were rarely described.

Student teachers’ self- and co-regulation of learning during teacher education

Self-regulative learning skills are extremely important contributors in student teacher learning. Also, interest in co-regulation in learning as a facilitator for pupils’ self-regulation skills and an ability to learn how to support peers’ regulated learning has increased significantly during the past decade. Still, our understanding of student teachers’ co- and self-regulative learning during their studies is shallow. This study aims to explore student teachers’ self- and co-regulation of learning, including their elements and qualities embedded in various contexts of teacher education. In this study 19 primary school student teachers from a large research-based Finnish university were interviewed. The data were content analysed by applying an abductive strategy. The results showed that student teachers applied self-regulated learning more often than co-regulated learning, and that teaching practice provided a primary arena for regulative learning. Further investigation revealed that although self- and co-regulation had the same components, they differed in terms of the quality of regulation. Our findings suggest that co-regulated learning activities that involve peers and teacher educators reached a more profound and meaningful level when learning to become a teacher than learning activities involving self-regulated activities.