August 2 | International Portal of Teacher Education

Aug. 02, 2016

Dear subscriber,

MOFET ITEC Portal Newsletter

Dear Subscriber,

We are delighted to be sending you the monthly newsletter of the International Portal of Teacher Education, containing the latest articles on teacher education, pedagogy, and instruction that have been published in academic journals.

On Monday, September 5, we invite you to participate in the webinar "Public space as a mobile learning environment" with Talila Yehiel.
In this webinar, we will learn to use a mobile platform called "thewandering" for indoor and outdoor location-based learning that is based on Walter Benjamin’s ideas.
Yehiel will share her personal experiences, as well as those of her colleagues from Kenya, Spain, Austria, Italy, and Mexico, in using the platform. You will visit sites containing indoor activities that take place in schools and museums and outdoor experiences that occur in a botanical garden and parks. You will learn a variety of beneficial ways to teach and engage your public.
As usual registration is free of charge, click here for details.

Wishing you an interesting reading,

The MOFET Portal Team

August 2, 2016

International Portal of Teacher Education

Please note: a complete list of recent additions to the portal follows the Featured Items.

August 2016

Featured Items

Creating Spaces for Reflection on Learning to Teach a Foreign Language through Open Journals: A Canadian-Dutch self-study

This collaborative self-study examines the notion of writing reflectively in teacher education, and documents how student teachers in Canada and the Netherlands respond to their teacher educators’ reflective journals. The authors conclude that participating in such a study helped them to: engender a sense of teaching about teaching that goes beyond the simple delivery of ideas, information and theories about teaching and helps to create a bridge into the world of learning through experience.

Pre-service and In-service Teachers’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Confidence towards Self-injury among Pupils

This study aimed to understand and explore differences between pre-service and in-service teachers’ knowledge, confidence and attitudes towards non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and how these variables relate to demographics and prior education in NSSI.The findings revealed that despite their willingness to help pupils who self-injure, pre- and in-service teachers identify their lack of knowledge, training and resources to address confidently self-injury in schools.

Digital Oral Feedback on Written Assignments as Professional Learning for Teacher Educators: A Collaborative Self-study

The current paper reports on a self-study of teacher educators involved in a preservice teacher unit on literacy. In this study, the teacher educators provided the preservice teachers with digital oral feedback about their final unit of work. The authors found that working as a team enabled them to provide more in-depth feedback on the assessment criteria for each assignment than was previously the case with written feedback. Through this dialogical feedback, the teacher educators were able to construct the preservice teachers’ assignments as an important textual gift for their collaborative professional learning.

Does Preservice Preparation Matter? Examining an Old Question in New Ways

This article aimed to investigate relationships between teacher preparation and teacher outcomes. The findings suggest that features of preservice teacher preparation are positively related to teacher outcomes. Teachers who completed more practice teaching and more methods-related courses felt significantly better instructionally prepared in their first year of teaching. Results suggest that estimated effects of preparation also vary by kind of school, and particularly by school level and urbanicity. Secondary school teachers, more than elementary school teachers, seem to benefit from additional preparation. The findings also indicate that estimated positive effects of preparation are stronger among teachers employed in urban and rural settings as compared to teachers in suburban settings.

Mentoring and Professional Development in Rural Head Start Classrooms

This study reports on the development of a small-scale, professional development program aimed at preparing preschool teacher assistants to earn the Child Development Associate (CDA). The study examined both the participants’ and mentors’ perceptions of the program. The results revealed overlapping themes across teacher assistants and their mentors, including readiness for the CDA credentialing process, mentoring support/ relationship-building, and mutual respect.