Erika Löfström

Finding myself as a teacher: exploring the shaping of teacher identities through student teachers’ narratives

The aim of the study was to explore the professional identity development among student teachers in a five-year integrated teacher education programme in Estonia. Thirty-eight students in the first through fifth year of the primary school teacher education programme provided written stories about themselves as teachers today. The narratives were analysed both across different study years in the teacher education programme using inductive content analysis, and through in-depth thematic analysis of one case exemplifying the emergence of teacher identity. In the latter, Kelchtermans’ professional identity model was applied. Findings indicate that the practice periods appear to be highly influential for identity development. In the students’ development, phases similar to those identified in prior research emerged, with focus shifting from oneself towards teaching methods and skills and pupils’ learning. Teacher educators can help students recognise these patterns and support the students in reflecting on the strategies they have applied in their learning and development and their ways of coping with challenges, and help them to identify personal working theories developed during the education process. This way the newly qualified teachers entering schools can be supported to become teachers with solid professional identities well-equipped to begin their careers in primary schools.

The Supervisory Relationship as an Arena for Ethical Problem Solving

Doctoral supervision involves the analysis of situations and decision making, some of which include ethical perspectives. This research endeavoured to gain a better understanding of the nature of the ethical problems encountered by supervisors. We have interviewed fourteen supervisors in two disciplines: the natural sciences and the behavioural sciences. We have identified the ethical issues in light of five ethical principles, namely respect for autonomy, non maleficence, beneficence, justice, and fidelity. We have located the ethical issues within the supervisory activity in two locations: the dyadic supervisor-student relationship and the academic community. The study shows that supervisors encounter a plethora of ethical issues. Many of the supervisors were highly aware of the ethical challenges in supervision and actively worked to anticipate and prevent ethical problems. The supervisors described a number of sustainable solutions, but at the same time, ethical problems and malpractice were reported. This suggests that the complexities of ethics are not always evident to the actors themselves. We claim that in order to expose and scrutinize supervision practices, it is insufficient to analyse the ethical issues only on dyadic level. What appears to boil down to a dyadic relationship may in fact be indicative of the values, attitudes, norms, and practices of the community.

Supporting emerging teacher identities: can we identify teacher potential among students?

The research focuses on Estonian university students’ emerging teacher identity and their interest in becoming teachers. Five hundred and sixty‐five first, third and fifth year students participated in the survey. The results suggest that pedagogical reasons for entering teacher education and clear motives for studying are significant indicators of teacher potential. Pedagogical reasons for entering teacher education or the teaching profession and the wish to function as a change agent in the society were related to academic self‐efficacy beliefs and the belief that the teacher expertise is mainly pedagogical in nature. However, at the point in their studies at which the students are able to choose their masters programme and entry into teacher education, their likelihood of choosing teacher education remains low, indicating that there is a need to develop pedagogical content, study counselling and career guidance services to encourage students’ continued interest in and entry to teacher education and the teaching profession.

Ethical Issues in Doctoral Supervision: The Perspectives of PhD Students in the Natural and Behavioral Sciences

Our aim was to identify the ethical issues faced by students in the behavioral and natural sciences during their doctoral programmes. The participants were 28 PhD students who were interviewed about their doctoral study and supervision experiences. We identified a total of 102 ethical issues compromising the principles of nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, justice, or fidelity. There were some differences in emphases, with the students in the behavioral sciences displaying a broader range of ethical compromises than the students in the natural sciences. Ethical problems emerged in the individual supervisor–student relationships, but often problems involving the scholarly community appeared in the background.

Visualisations as a means for exploring academics’ teacher identities

Academics’ teacher identities is a relatively little explored area. This paper explores this through an analysis of drawings by academics. The data consist of 90 drawings. The participants are academics who have attended basic courses in university pedagogy. The drawings were content analysed. In the drawings, the academics expressed themselves as teachers through the teaching context and the actors, artefacts and activities of teaching and learning. By drawing attention to these elements, academics can be encouraged to reflect on their beliefs about teaching and teacher role.

Teachers’ Views of Curriculum Policy: The Case of Estonia

Abstract Unlike in England, since the late 1980s the rhetoric of curriculum reforms has been overwhelmingly decentralist in many countries. However, decentralisation has often involved the delegation of centrally appointed tasks, rather than a real shift in power. The Estonian case demonstrates how a decentralised curriculum policy with centralised control can have the same de-professionalising effect on teachers’ perceived professional autonomy as does a system where both input and output are centrally controlled.

Giving shape and form to emotion: using drawings to identify emotions in university teaching

Academia is generally not considered a place for expressing emotions, yet emotions are inevitably present in complex activities such as teaching. We investigated whether drawings could be used as a means of gaining access to emotions in university teaching and how. The data consisted of academics’ drawings of themselves as university teachers (n = 86). We examined emotions in university teaching through thematic analysis. Positive, neutral, negative and mixed emotions were identified. Our findings suggest that emotions related to university teaching are contextual. Positive emotions were typically conveyed in a seminar and group work setting. Neutral emotions were mostly connected with lecture settings or had no context depicted. Only four drawings were interpreted as portraying negative emotions, and, with one exception, these were placed in lecture settings. We suggest that drawings can be a helpful exercise for facilitating reflection in academic staff development.

Images in Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Abstract In this chapter, the authors discuss the use of various kinds of images, namely photographs, drawings and verbal metaphors, as research data. These, perhaps less conventional forms of data, have been used to identify and probe deeper into beliefs and conceptions that are closely connected with identities, but which might not be obvious to the research participants themselves. The purpose of this chapter is to provide examples of how images can be used in research, and to identify some of the features particularly pertinent or specific to the use of images. The authors draw on their own research using these forms of data in studies on teaching and learning in higher education. The authors describe key issues related to data collection and analysis, and identify challenges in these processes. They also discuss trustworthiness of images as data and dependability of interpretations in the process of analysing photographs, drawings and metaphors, and identify ethical perspectives specific to research utilising these data.

Teaching research integrity in higher education: policy and strategy

Recently published research suggested that university academics have qualitatively disparate views on some key aspects of teaching research integrity within the broader construct of academic integrity and surprisingly ambiguous views on others. In the light of this variation, we have reviewed the research and academic integrity policies of our institutions, and the relevant international literature, with respect to six areas of interest in order to understand how policy and strategy elements relate to, and may need to adapt to, the diversity of viewpoints that university colleagues may hold about them. We develop some generic recommendations that may help our institutions, and others, adapt to the diverse perspectives of academic colleagues about research and academic integrity and how it could be taught.

Pedagogically aware academics’ conceptions of change agency in the fields of science and technology

Pedagogical transformations in universities are typically explored as ‘top down’ attempts or in the context of training programs targeted towards educating more pedagogically aware individuals. In this study, promoting pedagogical development is explored on a community level as change agency: acting as a broker between the discipline-specific and pedagogical communities of practice in order to establish mutually shared new concepts and practices of teaching and learning. Thirteen pedagogically aware academics from the fields of science and technology participated in thematic interviews in which they were asked to describe change agency. The descriptions were explored utilizing a social theory of learning and categorized with content analysis. The findings reveal practical means of promoting pedagogical development between academic communities and point out various identities related to acting as a change agent. The study provides a theoretical model and further advances the understanding of pedagogical change agency in the fields of science and technology.