Clare Kosnik

Professors, and the Practicum: Involvement of University Faculty in Preservice Practicum Supervision

Preservice practicum supervision is often carried out by special supervisory staff rather than by tenured or tenure-track education faculty. Some researchers feel this creates an unfortunate separation between the campus program and the practicum and results in lost opportunities to strengthen the school-university partnership. Five years ago, in an elementary preservice cohort program, the authors adopted a policy of heavy involvement in practicum supervision by all members of their faculty team; the authors also devised ways of supporting the faculty in their supervision. Over the past 4 years, the authors studied the effects of applying this model; it was found to strengthen the school-university partnership, enhance both the practicum and the campus program, and help faculty grow in knowledge and understanding of schooling. However, the approach was time-consuming and presented some other challenges for faculty. If it is to be adopted widely in preservice education, stronger institutional support is needed.

From Cohort to Community in a Preservice Teacher Education Program.

Abstract It is often suggested that student teachers be placed in cohorts during their preservice program. In this paper we describe how we implemented a cohort model and examine the effects on our student teachers. We found there were many positive effects, such as a high level of participation in whole class and small group activities, greater awareness of the value of collaboration, and greater willingness to take risks in collegial relationships and in the practicum. However, the approach proved to be quite demanding for the faculty; strong institutional support will be needed if the model is to be widely implemented.

Quality teacher educators = quality teachers? Conceptualizing essential domains of knowledge for those who teach teachers

Becoming a teacher educator involves more than a job title. One becomes a teacher educator as soon as one does teacher education, but one’s professional identity as a teacher educator is constructed over time. Developing an identity and practices in teacher education is best understood as a process of becoming. Though the work of teaching shares much in common with the work of teacher education, the two positions are significantly divergent in important ways.

Priorities in Teacher Education : The 7 Key Elements of Pre-Service Preparation

1. Program Planning 2. Pupil Assessment 3. Classroom Organization and Community 4. Inclusive Education 5. Subject Content and Pedagogy 6. Professional Identity 7. A Vision for Teaching

The action research process as a means of helping student teachers understand and fulfil the complex role of the teacher

Abstract The Mid-Town elementary preservice cohort programme at OISE/UT has, for several years, had action research by student teachers as a major component. In this article, the authors outline the view of action research held by the faculty team and explain why they turned to action research as a strategy in teacher education. They detail how the action research requirement is implemented in the programme, and describe the effects of the action research process on the understandings, skills and behaviour of the preservice teachers. The findings suggest this is potentially a very valuable approach to teacher education, provided certain other conditions are fulfilled.

Fostering multiliteracies pedagogy through preservice teacher education

Teacher education for literacy teaching is often fairly narrow in focus. New approaches are needed that are sociocultural in orientation and take due account of the diversity of language forms, both traditional and contemporary, formal and informal, literary and non‐literary. We believe this need can be met by largely adopting a ‘multiliteracies’ approach as articulated by the New London Group. This research examined the ideas and practices of 10 literacy faculty in a large school of education and 22 first year literacy teachers from the same institution. It found that despite some important advances in a multiliteracies direction, many shortcomings remained. Part of the difficulty was lack of clarity about the nature and purpose of multiliteracies pedagogy. This paper has two main purposes: first, to attempt to clarify the nature and importance of a multiliteracies approach; and second, to report on the successes achieved and challenges encountered in moving in this direction in one school of education.

Becoming teacher educators: an innovative approach to teacher educator preparation

This paper describes an initiative, Becoming Teacher Educators (BTE), which is a group for doctoral students who want to become teacher educators. The group is composed of two professors and 12 doctoral students. The various activities in which the group has engaged over the past three years are described. This article brings to light a few key elements of the BTE group, namely, its strengths as a community, the importance of shared leadership, the opportunity to develop knowledge of teacher education, the improvement of research skills, the influence on identity, and improvement in practices as beginning teacher educators.

Preparation for the First Year of Teaching: Beginning Teachers' Views about Their Needs

In this study we asked beginning elementary teachers about their needs as first-year teachers and the adequacy of their preservice program in helping to meet them. The new teachers varied in satisfaction with their preparation but showed considerable consensus on their needs. They felt the study of both theory and practice should be conducted in depth and focused on certain key areas. The main areas mentioned included comprehensive planning for the whole year, how to set up the program, assessment and evaluation, and implementation of effective group work.

We Taught Them about Literacy but What Did They Learn? The Impact of a Preservice Teacher Education Program on the Practices of Beginning Teachers.

This article reports a study of literacy instruction in our own elementary preservice program. It examines the views and practices of both the preservice faculty who teach literacy and a sample of graduates of the program during their first three years of teaching. The new teachers reported learning many things from their preservice program, including the importance of engaging learners, strategies for developing an inclusive class community, the names of high-quality works of childrens literature, and a variety of general teaching strategies. However, there were gaps between what was taught and what the new teachers wanted to learn. The new teachers struggled with program planning, desired more direct instruction on developing a literacy program, and wanted closer links between theory and practice. The teacher educators tried to cover so much material that the new teachers were unable to develop a focused, coherent pedagogy. The authors describe how they are revising their courses in light of these findings, modifying their approach to preservice instruction, and giving priority to certain key aspects of teaching.

Academic work and identities in teacher education

Across the world, ‘reforming’ teacher education has been seen as a powerful lever for bringing about change in school systems. Yet, in the plethora of evaluations and analyses of teacher education produced over recent years, the work of teacher educators in creating and implementing high-quality teaching programmes for intending teachers is often overlooked. Moreover, teacher educators in general remain an underresearched and poorly understood occupational group (Zeichner 2006; Bates et al. 2010). This seems an odd situation, not least because recent reports on the clear links between teacher quality, teaching and pupil learning in schools (e.g. Barber and Mourshed 2007; Hattie 2009) underline the centrality of all educators in the programmes they teach. That teacher education should be the subject of such sustained attention from policy makers and researchers without accompanying consideration of teacher educators, as the profession with direct responsibility for designing, teaching and evaluating the programmes, seems then not a little curious. Our stance, like that of Furlong et al. (2000, 36), accepts that ‘what student teachers learn during their initial training is as much influenced by who [our italics] is responsible for teaching them as it is by the content of the curriculum’. This understanding that teacher educators are a vital part of teacher education, and that research into their work and identities is central to understanding its full complexity, underpins this special issue. We would wish to acknowledge in full that many school teachers also work as teacher educators, working to support the learning of student teachers in the classroom by taking on roles as mentors or participating teachers in partnership schemes. In addition, the growth of employment-based teacher education routes in some countries means that there are now a significant number of ‘hybrid educators’ (Zeichner 2006) who take on extended teacher education roles while working within schools. Such individuals have brought further diversity to the occupational group of teacher educators. But, while acknowledging the importance of this growing diversity, in this special issue we focus only on exploring the identities of higher education-based educators, working within higher education institutions and on ‘traditional’ initial teacher education programmes. Our approach therefore underlines our firm commitment to the place of higher education in teacher education programmes, as well as to the centrality of teacher educators in the learning processes. With its clear focus on the area of teacher educators’ work and identities in higher education, this special issue aims to make a contribution to addressing gaps