This open access book follows the development of the Building Resilience in Teacher Education (BRiTE) project across Australia and internationally. Drawing on the success of this project and the ...related research collaborations that have since emerged, it highlights the importance of cultivating resilience at various stages of teachers’ careers. Divided into three sections, the book includes conceptual, empirical and applied chapters, designed to introduce readers to the field of research, provide empirical evidence and showcase innovative applications. The respective chapters illustrate the ways in which teacher resilience can be enhanced in a variety of contexts, and address specific learning activities, case studies, resources and strategies, student feedback and applied outcomes. They also consider future directions including cross-cultural applications and the use of technologies such as augmented reality. The book will appeal to researchers, teacher educators and teachers, as well as those interested in supporting the cultivation and ongoing development of professional resilience for pre-service and practicing teachers.
Student teachers consider cooperating teachers to be one of the most important contributors to their teacher preparation program. Therefore, the ways in which cooperating teachers participate in ...teacher education are significant. This review seeks to move conceptions of that participation beyond commonly held beliefs to empirically supported claims. The analysis draws on Brodie, Cowling, and Nissen's notion of categories of participation to generate 11 different ways that cooperating teachers participate in teacher education: as Providers of Feedback, Gatekeepers of the Profession, Modelers of Practice, Supporters of Reflection, Gleaners of Knowledge, Purveyors of Context, Conveners of Relation, Agents of Socialization, Advocates of the Practical, Abiders of Change, and Teachers of Children. When set against Gaventa's typology of participation, the resultant grid highlights the importance of negotiated or invited spaces for cooperating teacher participation and provides a new way of thinking about, planning professional development for, and working with cooperating teachers.
There is growing interest in the professional development of teacher educators as the demands, expectations, and requirements of teacher education increasingly come under scrutiny. The manner in ...which teacher educators learn to traverse their world of work in the development of their knowledge, skills, and ability is important. This article outlines some of the crucial shaping factors in that development, including the transition associated with becoming a teacher educator, the nature of teacher education itself, and the importance of researching teacher education practices. Through a careful analysis of these features, a framework for better understanding what it might mean to professionally develop as a teacher educator is proposed. The framework is designed to draw serious attention to the major aspects of teaching and learning about teaching that are central to shaping scholarship in teacher education and offer insights into the ways in which teacher educators' professional development might be better understood and interpreted. Author abstract
Given that teacher shortage is an international problem, teacher job satisfaction merits closer attention. Not only is job satisfaction closely related to teacher retention, but it also contributes ...to the well-being of teachers and their students, overall school cohesion and enhanced status of the teaching profession. This study investigates the relations between teacher job satisfaction, school working conditions and teacher characteristics for eighth grade mathematics teachers. The study employs TIMSS 2015 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) data from Sweden. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are used as main methods. Results demonstrate a substantial association between school working conditions and teacher job satisfaction. More specifically, teacher workload, teacher cooperation and teacher perceptions of student discipline in school were the factors most closely related to teacher job satisfaction. As to teacher characteristics, female teachers, teachers with more exposure to professional development and more efficacious teachers tended to have higher levels of job satisfaction. In addition, it was found that the relationship between the extent of teacher cooperation and job satisfaction was more pronounced for male teachers, while student discipline was more important for job satisfaction of teachers with lower self-efficacy beliefs. Implications for policy are further discussed.
This article extends prior research seeking to identify preparation features related to better workforce outcomes. To our knowledge, it is the first to link many dimensions of preparation to ...graduates’ first-year observation ratings. It follows 305 preservice teachers (PSTs) who student taught in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 2014–2015 and were subsequently hired in CPS in 2015–2016. PSTs received stronger observation ratings when their CTs had stronger observation ratings themselves, their CTs reported providing stronger coaching in specific areas, they gained employment in their field placement schools, and they student taught in self-contained elementary classrooms. Finally, we tested whether these same preparation features were associated with two other outcomes—(a) how well prepared PSTs felt after student-teaching and (b) how well prepared their CTs felt their PSTs were—and found they were not. We discuss implications for using workforce and survey-based outcomes to identify promising forms of preparation.
This study integrates 40 years of teacher self-efficacy (TSE) research to explore the consequences of TSE for the quality of classroom processes, students' academic adjustment, and teachers' ...psychological well-being. Via a criteria-based review approach, 165 eligible articles were includedfor analysis. Results suggest that TSE shows positive links with students' academic adjustment, patterns of teacher behavior and practices related to classroom quality, and factors underlying teachers 'psychological well-being, including personal accomplishment, job satisfaction, and commitment. Negative associations were found between TSE and burnout factors. Last, a small number of studies indicated indirect effects between TSE and academic adjustment, through instructional support, and between TSE and psychological wellbeing, through classroom organization. Possible explanations for the findings and gaps in the measurement and analysis of TSE in the educational literature are discussed.
Currently, the field of teacher education is undergoing a major shift—a turn away from a predominant focus on specifying the necessary knowledge for teaching toward specifying teaching practices that ...entail knowledge and doing. In this article, the authors suggest that current work on K-12 core teaching practices has the potential to shift teacher education toward the practice of teaching. However, the authors argue that to realize this vision we must reimagine not only the curriculum for learning to teach but also the pedagogy of teacher education. We present one example of what we mean by reimagined teacher education pedagogy by offering a framework through which to conceptualize the preparation of teachers organized around core practices. From our perspectives, this framework could be the backbone of a larger research and development agenda aimed at engaging teachers and teacher educators in systematic knowledge generation regarding ambitious teaching and teacher education pedagogy. We conclude with an invitation to the field to join with us in imagining approaches to generating and aggregating knowledge about teaching and the pedagogy of teacher education that will move not only our individual practice but also our collective practice forward.
Teacher education programs are under great pressure to produce highly capable teachers. Teacher self-efficacy has been shown to correlate with teacher motivation and perseverance, yet little is known ...about how specific teacher education experiences predict teacher self-efficacy. Four sources contributing to teacher self-efficacy beliefs during teacher education programs include mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion from teacher educators, and verbal persuasion from cooperating teachers. In this study, perceptions of these sources were examined to determine how well they correlate with and predict preservice teacher self-efficacy. Results showed all four variables were strong predictors of preservice teacher self-efficacy, but that these variables accounted for only 18% of the variance, suggesting additional sources need to be examined. Perceptions of training experiences were examined across nine programs (N = 783). Implications for teacher educators and mentor teachers are provided so as to find ways to strengthen preservice teacher self-efficacy.
Video is being used more widely in professional development to help teachers learn to notice and systematically analyze teaching practice. Video captures the authenticity and complexity of teaching ...and can promote the examination of classroom interactions in a deliberate and focused way. However, simply viewing video does not ensure teacher learning. An important question concerns how to facilitate substantive analysis of teaching practice with video so that it becomes a productive learning tool for teachers. In this study, we examine the in-the-moment moves facilitators make in two different video-based professional development programs to offer a framework for facilitation with video. We then examine patterns in facilitation across both contexts and identify practices that are unique to the goals of each setting. The findings from this study have implications for the design of video-based professional development and for developing a knowledge base for professional education.
Commonsense reasoning says that quality teacher education relies on quality teacher educators. Yet, there is minimal attention to what teacher educators should know and be able to do. Unquestionably, ...teacher educators cannot teach what they do not know; but what should they know, and should they be prepared? This study of 293 teacher educators investigated the following: What do current teacher educators consider to be the foundation elements of their practice? How do they evaluate their own preparation in these areas? How can their experiences inform the preparation of teacher educators? We use Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s theorizing about “relationships of knowledge and practice” to understand knowledge essential to teacher educating (a term we use to differentiate teaching teachers from teaching students). Our findings reveal that practicing teacher educators often feel unprepared to assume their role but can offer helpful insight into how we should think deliberately about quality teacher educator preparation.