Reijo Byman

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.

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.

From two-dimensional to three-dimensional curiosity: A reanalysis of depth-breadth-factor model

Abstract This study employs confirmatory factor analysis techniques to reanalyse the correlation matrix computed from the data gathered by Ainley (1985). The data consisted of 227 teacher education students from different tertiary colleges. Ainley used five (12 subscales) frequently used questionnaire measures of curiosity in her study. The purpose of the present study was to test the statistical fit of the two-factor model of curiosity subsuming two styles—breadth of interest and depth of interest. Application of goodness-of-fit indexes offered by the LISREL program revealed that the two-factor orthogonal model fitted the data poorly. Using confirmatory factor analysis in an exploratory fashion a tentative three-factor confirmatory factor model was constructed. The third factor can be labelled as “venturesomeness” or “physical thrill-seeking”. The fit of the three-factor model was significantly better statistically than the two-factor model. With the help of a specification search it was still possible t...